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"Race X is not the most powerful, but it is the easiest."
I don't get this. You often see quotes like this lying around but I don't get how this can possibly be the case. It like defies basic intuition. Let's take a simple thought experiment, let's make injects "easier, but not more powerful", let's make injects autocast. A queen will automatically inject a close enough hatchery that is not spawning larvae when she has 50+ mana. Okay, what does this mean? Well, it means that the Zerg will now have some extra time available for other things, the creep spread of the Zerg will improve, the larva count will improve, the drop defence will improve, the mutas will harass better. Making any aspect of a race easier frees up the player's attention to do other things and do them better. Baneling control tends to improve if you don't have to look away mid battle to inject. There is no such thing as a race being "easy" but not "powerful", I don't get it. Both concepts go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other. Powerful is nothing but how easy it is to win.
In this case, if you play the ladder seriously you are always stretched to the very limits of your mechanical ability. I don't see how you can not be. If you weren't, you could up the ante, play a little bit better and win more often, your MMR would increase and you would eventually face players of who would be your match in your true final form. The nature of the MMR system ensures that you will always have to give everything to win unless you purposefully go smurf a couple of leagues below of course.
You often see people say "I faced someone of race X on the ladder and he or she didn't even have to work to win.", I don't get how that is possible, if he or she didn't have to work. Then he or she could just up the ante, work a bit harder, get a 70% winratio, increase MMR to a point where he or she does have to work to win. The only way you don't have to work to win on the ladder is if you purposefully tank MMR for whatever reason. Again, easy and powerful are the same thing. If the race meant one doesn't have to work. You can just work a bit, climb up the ladder and boom: Finish the season highlier, easy == more powerful.
I'm not claiming that a race can't be overpowered. I'm just saying that the concept of not being overpowered, but being easy does not make sense. If a race is easy it is more powerful. On the assumption that the game is balanced (I am not saying that assumption is true) every race is as easy as every other race. Everyone will have to be stretched to the limits to the compete. Unless of course you believe that "Players of race X (my race, of course) are just better!", a fallacy which is trivially disproven by the fact that many top Koreans play all races pretty much as well as their main race. If Terrans were just better, then MC would not have a Terran offrace that is pretty much as good as his main Protoss. If Protosses were just better, then Taeja would not have a Protoss offrace that is pretty much as good as his main race. I find it hard to believe that one race would just attract "better" players, it's not true. Even a mid range foreign ladder hero like Minigun has shown that no race is harder than any other by mastering the other two races at a nigh even level as his main.
As a random player myself. All three races are very close to 50% and which one is statistically my best really differs from season to season and is most statistically significant. Last season I finished with Zerg at 52%, Protoss at 50% and Terran at 49%. The season before that it was Terran at 51% and Zerg and Protoss both at 50%.
What you just said above does rely on the assumption that the skill ceiling is infinite though
Yeah, it does. It makes the implicit assumption that if your race does not stretch you to the limits, there is always something more you can do with your APM to increase your win-factor. But the skill ceiling is practically infinite at the moment. All players are so far removed from it that anyone can stand to still improve. Let's assume that Zerg did not stretch pro players to their very limits and they were still winning with it. So go spread creep some better then? Creep spread isn't close to perfect at the moment. I think someone once demonstrated that with perfect creep spread by a bot you can get entire maps covered at the 5 minute mark. Seems like it would be pretty fucking impossible for aplayer at the current top of Protoss or Terran to compete against something like that. The reason Zergs aren't spreading creep better of course is because they are taxed to their limits already.
And make no mistake, "perfect macro" does not exist in isolation. GGTracker says I have low gm level spending quotient. The quintessential fallacy with these kind of metrics is that one's spending quotient is a function of the player one is playing against. Do you think I would not drop to platinum level spending quotient if I played against bomber or something? Bomber would stress my multitasking so much that my unspent would go up considerably. That's the fallacyof these metrics, it's not like they are a constant only depending on you in isolation. It's simply not fair to say "Ah, I have the same spending as iNcontrol playing against master league opponents!", iNcontrol has that spending when playing against grandmaster opponents and I wouldn't have that any more at that point.
That's why the skill ceiling is practically infinite. You can say "Ohh, but bomber is macroing close to perfect, the skill ceiling is almost reached", Bomber wouldn't macro close to perfect any more if he were to face himself from 2 years into the future. Future-Bomber would have such more advanced multitasking and better training than his past self that past Bomber would macro worse because of being taxed more.
  
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Interesting post, but I don't agree with the statement "easy=powerful". There are many builds that are relatively easy to perform, but aren't as powerful as builds that are harder. Your example was of a mechanic, and sure, easier mechanics lead to more time to do other things - hence more powerful. But saying for instance that "Protoss is easier than Zerg" does absolutely make sense, not from an objective or statistical viewpoint perhaps, but from the notion that as all things are subject to interpretation (thanks Nietzsche) and are fundamentally different, people will view different elements of the game differently. Some people are better at running short distances, some at long distances, and the same applies to mechanics within and between the races. I, as a Zerg player, enjoy the mechanics of larvae injecting and making rounds of units rather than constant production. But starting with Zerg from scratch was very demanding for me as a lot of the builds are based on intuition and responding to the opponent. Comparing that to when I sit down with Protoss in "Banchmarker" and completely rip off an all in from a Code S player, it takes a few hours before the build is extremely solid, and I can perform that build on ladder without scouting (or with bare minimum at least), as I will be the aggressor in almost every case. Therefore, for me, Protoss all-ins I am doing right now are easier to do than the Zerg playstyle I use as I don't have to use as much focus on things I am bad at, which makes the build more fluent, but the Protoss macro style is much harder for me and I would struggle infinitely more as I consider the mechanics much harder. But when it comes to "powerful" i consider the Zerg style I use to be far superior to the all-ins I do, as I can always win the game with correct scouting/response/mechanics.
The notion of power=easy works on mechanics such as your example, but when it comes to other things, the two can be separated. Although, I will agree on that "race X requires less skill, and is therefore easier" is a fallacy, not because of power=easy, but because of personal attributes rendering every player to have a different view on what is "easy" and what is "skilled" or "hard".
Great post by the way, keep 'em coming!
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thank you for posting this.
It's so retarted how Terran players claim that they are "harder" to play on top of being underpowered... That's just so stupid.
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On July 08 2014 17:01 Zeweig wrote:
Interesting post, but I don't agree with the statement "easy=powerful". There are many builds that are relatively easy to perform, but aren't as powerful as builds that are harder. And this is what I don't buy, if the build was truly that easy you could in fact improve your execution of it and win with it anyway. Unless of course the build can't be further improved whatsoever and you already play against the skill ceiling. Of which I'm sceptical it's actually happening with any build.
[qupte]Your example was of a mechanic, and sure, easier mechanics lead to more time to do other things - hence more powerful. But saying for instance that "Protoss is easier than Zerg" does absolutely make sense, not from an objective or statistical viewpoint perhaps, but from the notion that as all things are subject to interpretation (thanks Nietzsche) and are fundamentally different, people will view different elements of the game differently. Some people are better at running short distances, some at long distances, and the same applies to mechanics within and between the races. I, as a Zerg player, enjoy the mechanics of larvae injecting and making rounds of units rather than constant production. But starting with Zerg from scratch was very demanding for me as a lot of the builds are based on intuition and responding to the opponent. Comparing that to when I sit down with Protoss in "Banchmarker" and completely rip off an all in from a Code S player, it takes a few hours before the build is extremely solid, and I can perform that build on ladder without scouting (or with bare minimum at least), as I will be the aggressor in almost every case. Therefore, for me, Protoss all-ins I am doing right now are easier to do than the Zerg playstyle I use as I don't have to use as much focus on things I am bad at, which makes the build more fluent, but the Protoss macro style is much harder for me and I would struggle infinitely more as I consider the mechanics much harder. But when it comes to "powerful" i consider the Zerg style I use to be far superior to the all-ins I do, as I can always win the game with correct scouting/response/mechanics.[/quote]And if that would be the case, then protoss would be more powerful. You could use that build to climb the ladder and gain a better ranking, therefore Protoss is more powerful.
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On July 08 2014 17:13 Big J wrote:
thank you for posting this.
It's so retarted how Terran players claim that they are "harder" to play on top of being underpowered... That's just so stupid. Underpowered is the same thing as harder. What's stupid is when people say "Despite my race winning everything right now, it's still harder to use."
That does not make sense.
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On July 08 2014 17:13 Big J wrote:
thank you for posting this.
It's so retarted how Terran players claim that they are "harder" to play on top of being underpowered... That's just so stupid.
Wait. That's exactly what OP is defending though? "Hard" means "Hard to win with", which pretty much means "Underpowered".
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"It like defies basic intuition"
yes, nuff said! The argument is illogical in itself and i think it is pretty easy to see, that it is. Still gonna 5/5 this for pointing it ou in a rather smart way :>
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On July 08 2014 17:37 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2014 17:13 Big J wrote:
thank you for posting this.
It's so retarted how Terran players claim that they are "harder" to play on top of being underpowered... That's just so stupid. Underpowered is the same thing as harder. What's stupid is when people say "Despite my race winning everything right now, it's still harder to use." That does not make sense.
On July 08 2014 17:47 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2014 17:13 Big J wrote:
thank you for posting this.
It's so retarted how Terran players claim that they are "harder" to play on top of being underpowered... That's just so stupid. Wait. That's exactly what OP is defending though? "Hard" means "Hard to win with", which pretty much means "Underpowered".
My problem is that you can claim the one or the other. You cannot claim both, since then you just claim the same thing twice. Well, I guess you could, but it would be redundant. And most people do not realize this and treat it like two different issues, when it is just plainly the same issue, once in the balance-related form and once in the oh-so-noble-fuck-all-other-races-for-not-being-so-skillfull-as-mine-I-need-to-work-so-much-harder form.
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So the speed that I have progressed at my offrace protoss in BW is vastly faster than the speed I progressed at my offrace zerg. This is because protoss is a lot easier. Does this mean that zerg is a worse race? No it just means at lower levels protoss is a lot easier and a lot stronger.
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So it's not the game's fault that I lose, it's mine?
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I don't agree. The best analogy to use would be that there is a juggling contest between two people and the goal of the contest is to be able to juggle the most balls for ten minutes straight. One person is given 5 balls and one person is given 10. The person who is given five balls is allowed to drop 3 of their balls and still be in the contest whereas if the person who juggles 10 is not allowed to drop one or else they are disqualified. In this analogy it is obvious that the person who has been given 5 balls to juggle and is allowed to drop 3 of their balls in the 10 mins has a much easier task than the person who has to juggle 10 for ten mins, but if the person juggling ten does manage to accomplish that feat then they will win all the time. This means that the person juggling ten is technically overpowered because if they perform perfectly they will win all the time, but the person only juggling 5 has a much better chance of winning.
This is where the Protoss vs Terran argument stems, Protoss is allowed to drop a few balls and does not have as many to juggle to win but a Terran who is on top of their game is able to destroy a Protoss, but only if they are able to keep all their balls in the air.
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On July 08 2014 20:11 Goofinator wrote:
I don't agree. The best analogy to use would be that there is a juggling contest between two people and the goal of the contest is to be able to juggle the most balls for ten minutes straight. One person is given 5 balls and one person is given 10. The person who is given five balls is allowed to drop 3 of their balls and still be in the contest whereas if the person who juggles 10 is not allowed to drop one or else they are disqualified. In this analogy it is obvious that the person who has been given 5 balls to juggle and is allowed to drop 3 of their balls in the 10 mins has a much easier task than the person who has to juggle 10 for ten mins, but if the person juggling ten does manage to accomplish that feat then they will win all the time. This means that the person juggling ten is technically overpowered because if they perform perfectly they will win all the time, but the person only juggling 5 has a much better chance of winning.
This is where the Protoss vs Terran argument stems, Protoss is allowed to drop a few balls and does not have as many to juggle to win but a Terran who is on top of their game is able to destroy a Protoss, but only if they are able to keep all their balls in the air.
This analogy is flawed simply because in the juggling scenario you introduce a skill ceiling. A point where you can't improve any more. If you juggle 5 balls, you can't improve any more no matter how good you are because you only have 5 balls.
I explicitly explained in the argument that the argument indeed relies on the skill ceiling of this game being for practical intends infinite and unattainable and there always been room to improve, your analogy removes that dogma.
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On July 08 2014 16:30 SiskosGoatee wrote:
I'm not claiming that a race can't be overpowered. I'm just saying that the concept of not being overpowered, but being easy does not make sense. If a race is easy it is more powerful. On the assumption that the game is balanced (I am not saying that assumption is true) every race is as easy as every other race. Everyone will have to be stretched to the limits to the compete. Unless of course you believe that "Players of race X (my race, of course) are just better!", a fallacy which is trivially disproven by the fact that many top Koreans play all races pretty much as well as their main race. If Terrans were just better, then MC would not have a Terran offrace that is pretty much as good as his main Protoss. If Protosses were just better, then Taeja would not have a Protoss offrace that is pretty much as good as his main race. I find it hard to believe that one race would just attract "better" players, it's not true. Even a mid range foreign ladder hero like Minigun has shown that no race is harder than any other by mastering the other two races at a nigh even level as his main.
Sorry, but Minigun's offrace was nowhere near his Protoss, even if you watched his one TvP near the end of his stream Minigun was so far behind and his opponent just did a really bad job of capitalizing on it. He was just playing against people way below his level.
Saying a race can be easier but not stronger isn't a fallacy either, actually in game design this is something you want to create in order to teach your players to get better. An one base all-in for example is (typically) easier to execute than a macro build, especially for how powerful it is, but a well executed macro build will almost always beat an all-in.
Here's an Extra Credits episode which explains the concept pretty well.
+ Show Spoiler +
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Technically there is a skill ceiling in starcraft, but the point is that it is just so stupidly high that no human could ever reach it. The idea with the juggling example was to make things easy to understand. Regardless, the point still remains that because the races are different, one player might have an easier time doing the tasks they need to do to win whereas another player has a harder time but if they were able to do all the tasks they would win all the time.
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On July 08 2014 21:14 Goofinator wrote:
Technically there is a skill ceiling in starcraft, but the point is that it is just so stupidly high that no human could ever reach it. The idea with the juggling example was to make things easy to understand. Regardless, the point still remains that because the races are different, one player might have an easier time doing the tasks they need to do to win whereas another player has a harder time but if they were able to do all the tasks they would win all the time. And no one can do all the tasks because as you said, the skill ceiling is stupidly high.
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The races are not symmetrical meaning that the reward to skill curves are not the same. This means that for a lower amount of skill at one point on the curve you can have a higher amount of reward than the same skill gets on the other, but as you move along the curve you can get to a point where you always have a lower amount of reward for your skill in comparison to the curve that initially got less reward for more skill. This means that you can have a race that is easier to get to a "competitive" skill level than another, but not be overpowered because at higher skill levels the other race would be overpowered. Watch the extra credits video, it explains it better than I can.
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On July 08 2014 21:50 Goofinator wrote:
The races are not symmetrical meaning that the reward to skill curves are not the same. This means that for a lower amount of skill at one point on the curve you can have a higher amount of reward than the same skill gets on the other, but as you move along the curve you can get to a point where you always have a lower amount of reward for your skill in comparison to the curve that initially got less reward for more skill. This means that you can have a race that is easier to get to a "competitive" skill level than another, but not be overpowered because at higher skill levels the other race would be overpowered. Watch the extra credits video, it explains it better than I can.
Which is possible, likely happening, but most likely hardly significant in a game like starcraft, in which 95% of the tasks you do with each race (selecting, sending, toggling through selection hotkeys, toggling through production buildings, toggling through UI menues) are exactly the same.
It's not like one race is being played with a mouse and another with a keyboard.
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I agree with you in a Starcraft context, but I don't think this necessarily holds true for other games.
Also, I think it's relevant that certain races or strategies may be easier for players at certain skill levels.
For example, in a lot of fighting games certain characters are considered "easier" because they have powerful moves or combos that are easily accessible to beginners, but these characters are not "better" because this advantage is erased at higher levels of play, and learning how to play more difficult or complicated characters allows you to reach a higher peak.
It may well be that Banelings are "easier" to use at lower levels because if you a-move then you will trade very effectively with a Terran who can't/doesn't know how to split, but that doesn't mean they are more powerful than Marines. Another example is people also talk about Terran being more "forgiving" of mistakes because you can call down Supply Depots and drop multiple Mules at a time, which compensates for poor macro.
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On July 08 2014 21:59 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2014 21:50 Goofinator wrote:
The races are not symmetrical meaning that the reward to skill curves are not the same. This means that for a lower amount of skill at one point on the curve you can have a higher amount of reward than the same skill gets on the other, but as you move along the curve you can get to a point where you always have a lower amount of reward for your skill in comparison to the curve that initially got less reward for more skill. This means that you can have a race that is easier to get to a "competitive" skill level than another, but not be overpowered because at higher skill levels the other race would be overpowered. Watch the extra credits video, it explains it better than I can. Which is possible, likely happening, but most likely hardly significant in a game like starcraft, in which 95% of the tasks you do with each race (selecting, sending, toggling through selection hotkeys, toggling through production buildings, toggling through UI menues) are exactly the same. It's not like one race is being played with a mouse and another with a keyboard.
Of course 95% of the actions are the same, but those same actions have different effects and the reward/punishment of doing/not doing those those actions is different as well.
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Let's create a new race, Zerg2. Zerg2 has autocast on queens, and creep puts alerts on the minimap when it detects enemy forces. However, Zerg2's units deal less damage than zerg units.
Zerg2 is easier to play than zerg. You won't be making a ton of macro mistakes, and you won't be caught off guard as easily. Less APM and less attention are required. Now, if I decide that the reduced damage is 95% of the damage zerg units deal, Zerg2 will be favored in zvz2. If I decide it's 20% of the damage zerg units deal, you won't ever win with it.
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EPT
