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Brood War, Starcraft II, and Balance

Blogs > sadiroTnuda
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sadiroTnuda
Profile Blog Joined October 2014
United States10 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-26 19:27:07
October 26 2014 03:31 GMT
#1
What was this about? It was about trying too hard. If you’ve read an earlier version of this you could probably tell I was trying to hard. Even the title is trying to hard.

What was it about? It’s about map balance, and, more specifically, it’s about the idea that maps balanced Brood War and the idea that they could play a similar role in balancing Starcraft II. It’s about the point at which it’s easier to watch the game in order to learn the outcome rather than use map statistics to predict it. Well, it’s always easier to watch the game, but is it as fun? Should be a simple question to answer really.


***
DjKniteX
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States245 Posts
October 26 2014 04:28 GMT
#2
awesome read!
"You know my methods.... Apply them"
Birdie
Profile Blog Joined August 2007
New Zealand4438 Posts
October 26 2014 04:58 GMT
#3
ITT sadiroTnuda lost vs a Terran as Zerg and is mad

+ Show Spoiler +

More seriously, interesting read, didn't read in great depth but certainly maps played a big part in shaping the stories of Brood War. One of the things that made the bonjwas stand out is how they could win even on maps that were severely not in their favour in a particular match-up. To beat someone in the face of rising odds is something that people remember, something that drives stories to greater heights and make them last longer.
Red classic | A butterfly dreamed he was Zhuangzi | 4.5k, heading to 5k as support!
ninazerg
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
United States7291 Posts
October 26 2014 05:21 GMT
#4
Coca Cola OSL? Fighting Spirit? Are you Pucca?

"If two pregnant women get into a fist fight, it's like a mecha-battle between two unborn babies." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
lichter
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
October 26 2014 06:26 GMT
#5
did i read a martyr in there somewhere
AdministratorYOU MUST HEED MY INSTRUCTIONS TAKE OFF YOUR THIIIINGS
sadiroTnuda
Profile Blog Joined October 2014
United States10 Posts
October 26 2014 07:09 GMT
#6
On October 26 2014 15:26 lichter wrote:
did i read a martyr in there somewhere


...would it validate your existence if you had? Don't answer that. Don't you have Blizzcon articles to write? Don't answer that either.
ninazerg
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
United States7291 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-26 07:10:39
October 26 2014 07:10 GMT
#7
So you wrote thousands and thousands of words and did a ton of research and formatted it into a blog, then decided after the fact, "Nah, it's not worth it."?
"If two pregnant women get into a fist fight, it's like a mecha-battle between two unborn babies." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
BigFan
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
TLADT24920 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-26 07:19:31
October 26 2014 07:15 GMT
#8
^ I blame lichter!

well, I was going to read this blog to see what you wanted to say, refresh and bam, it's gone T.T Something about maps being unbalanced etc... Why take it out now? So long as you aren't bashing either game, it should be fine. Also, yes, some maps early on in BW were heavily favoured towards one race over another and TvZ has always been a bit in Terran's favor for KR progamers so seeing 60/40 or much more isn't surprising imo.

As for the Boxer one, too late. Someone already wrote a huge post in a thread in the BW section a while back talking about Boxer's wins and how he always ended up playing maps that favoured Terran. Doesn't really change much though.
Former BW EiC"Watch Bakemonogatari or I will kill you." -Toad, April 18th, 2017
ZodaSoda
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
Australia1191 Posts
October 26 2014 09:17 GMT
#9
I say if you can, bring back your post dude, you're allowed to have your views and opinion and you don't gotta feel good or bad about what people say about them.

Or at the very least if you feel disheartened after reading your own words, rewrite them and return.
LiquipediaI'm the strongest Dragon that you've ever seen, You're gonna die motherfucker, I take up five screens. -Kraid
endy
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
Switzerland8971 Posts
October 26 2014 09:42 GMT
#10
I wanna read what you wrote, please bring your post back!
ॐ
LoneYoShi
Profile Blog Joined June 2014
France1348 Posts
October 26 2014 10:32 GMT
#11
I feel like I missed something...
GeckoXp
Profile Blog Joined June 2013
Germany2016 Posts
October 26 2014 11:26 GMT
#12
On October 26 2014 16:15 BigFan wrote:


As for the Boxer one, too late. Someone already wrote a huge post in a thread in the BW section a while back talking about Boxer's wins and how he always ended up playing maps that favoured Terran. Doesn't really change much though.


Whenever I stumble across posts like that I start to wonder if there's like

Boxer Wins + Terran Wins -> Map imba -> Rigged

or

Map slightly imba -> Boxer wins & Terran win

or

Map ordinary for the time -> Boxer adds to the strategies -> Terrans adapt -> Statistics favour Terran

Multiple examples of this. e.g. the map stats favouring Zerg after 3 Base Spire and shit.
lastride
Profile Joined April 2014
2390 Posts
October 26 2014 12:10 GMT
#13
what about the other terrans lol why was always boxer the guy that was winning during that era...
bITt.mAN
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
Switzerland3701 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-26 16:05:35
October 26 2014 16:03 GMT
#14
We've got a tricky case of 〈conjunction does not necessairly prove cause〉. Boxer was good, TvP (on certain maps) was imbalanced. Which one caused the other, how do we deconvolute these two different influences?

EDIT: DAMMIT the post doesn't display well. Here, read it from this image instead + Show Spoiler [NiceFormattingVersion] +
[image loading] yay for Sublime Text 3 indentation, and PragmataPro font for the win!
is what its meant to look like.

<Detective_Deductive_Logic>

1. Boxer is better than other Terrans
2. Boxer adds to the strategies
3. Map Terran Favoured
4. Boxer (conveniently) ends up playing Terran Favoured maps


How do we determine 「3. Map Terran Favoured」?
      Well, look at overall win-rate stats. And look at the same numbers, without Boxer's contribution. Does the winrate go up or down? Someone do this!!

Is 「3. Map Terran Favoured」 or is it simply 「2. Boxer adds to the strategies」?
How to Quantify Influence of 「2. Boxer adds to the strategies」, a.k.a. 〈figuring out how to abuse a map〉
      Chronological search, see if Terran winrates change over time. Presumably, you could observe a time before 「2. Boxer adds to the strategies」, then a few notable games occur, and there'd be a shift in how map is played.
      There's a difference between developing new strategies, and simply finding map-specific gimmicks. The former is something that can be used on any map (like 3 base Spire). The latter would be for example (I don't know who popularized it) the early 2-base TvP timing on Blue Storm to kill the Protoss Nexus. Measure TvP winrates on that map as a function of time, and you should see when people figure out how to abuse the map.
      Or by easier analogy, Flash, simply because we have more, better-documented games form the more recent era. Look for the emergence of 「Flash's Armoury build」 as an analogy to 「a new Boxer strat」, since you should probably see Flash running way ahead of the pack, and that may take a bit of time to become apparent (i.e. before the map was 〈figured out〉).

Is 「3. Map Terran Favoured」 or is it simply 「1. Boxer is better than other Terrans」?
How to Quantify Influence of 「1. Boxer is better than other Terrans」, a.k.a. 〈what measures a player's dominance, MU-specific expertise, or overall superiority?〉
      Is it because Boxer is flat-out BETTER than the competition, or is it simply a MatchUp specific speciality?
      Compare the player's winrates between matchups, arguably if they're straight-up better, shouldn't that be apparent across all MU's? I'm not sure - discuss!
      We don't want to say e.g.├Boxer is the bestest evar┤ if his only matches were always TvP. So you want to normalize the number of wins, relative to the number of matches in that matchup - MatchUp-specific winrates account for this.
      I'm not decided on how to judge the situation, if there's a significant MU-imballance in which matches a player ends up playing. Is Zero's ZvZ expertise an argument that he's overall better than other players, simply because he played (and won) a greater number of ZvZ games, than some players have played (and won) total games in their careers?
      I don't think there's any ideal solution to this conundrum, but mirror-MU games are good, since they remove the 〈metagame racial imballance〉 and 〈map racial imballance〉 parameters.

How to Quantify 「4. Boxer ends up playing Terran Favoured maps」, a.k.a. 〈disproportionate ratio of games played on certain maps〉
      Boxer proably played more games than just about anyone else, so he's bound to have a bigger ╠number of games on Terran imba maps╣. What we want is divergence, is his game-rate on those map DISPROPORTIONATE compared to other Terrans of the time who went similarly deep into tournaments?
      Are there any other Terrans who can serve as contemporaries to Boxer's game-number? Does Boxer systematically play more of his games on T (TvP) favoured maps? TLPD his games within the time-period under question, compare to other players!
      Finally, what could the organizers have done to give Boxer an advantage? I mean, the clearest MOTIVE would be to contrive one eSports Titan as a figurehead and eaisly-marketable public-face of the sport, to help it grow, and give it a sense of continuity and legacy (rather than the 〈faceless programers〉 phenomenom apparent in a rapidly-changing leaderboard).
            『Pick maps for the tourney that were known to be TvP imba.』
                  Were the maps known to be TvP favoured at the time when they would have been picked? What sample-size is sufficent to show a MU-specific imballance? 20 games, 1 major tourney, 1 season, rumors and opinions from different practice houses?
            『Seed Boxer in groups that had favourable maps picked for Bo1 Bo3 matches』
                  Ok, examine the seeding process. Was is pre-arranged, was there a group-selection ceremony, to what reasonable extent could it have been rigged?
            『Deliberatley make Boxer-favoured maps played more often』
                  If Boxer is mad good at map X, then to give him a hand, you'd make Bo5 series play map X twice. What was the selection process of 〈which map is played twice in a Bo5〉? Could the organizers have plausibly known which X to pick (to give Boxer a hand) at the point in time that they picked it?


</Detective_Deductive_Logic>
BW4LYF . . . . . . PM me, I LOVE PMs. . . . . . Long live "NaDa's Body" . . . . . . Fantasy | Bisu/Best | Jaedong . . . . .
ninazerg
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
United States7291 Posts
October 26 2014 19:11 GMT
#15
Using some deductive logic, I am beginning to believe that the author here actually is Pucca. At first, it was a joke of mine, but some of the similarities are striking:

- References to the 2001 Coca-Cola OSL, which Pucca casted from start to finish.
- Critique of Fighting Spirit, which Pucca dislikes.
- Overuse of rhetorical questions.
- A poor understanding of StarCraft. (i.e., that whole 'z>p>t>z' rubbish, not understanding that map statistics do not affect the outcome of individual games)
- User has only 6 posts, and also has a working knowledge of the 2001 OSL, meaning he's been around since 2001 and has never bothered to register an account until yesterday. Then registered to write this blog and just happened to write something eerily similar to what Pucca would say.
- Deleted the entire post after I commented "Are you Pucca?"
- Weird attempt to bash balance in Brood War by poorly advocating some weird conspiracy theory that somehow pertains to SC2.

So why does that pertain to Puccaesque tendencies? Well, to be brief, Pucca took some criticism for his lack of game knowledge, which one could argue is warranted, but he also took some criticism for his speaking mannerisms, which I highly disagree with. Whatever the case may be, Pucca did not take the criticism well, and lashed out at the 'Brood War community' several times. Inevitably, there was some push-back from the community, which caused Pucca to become increasingly (and at times possibly obsessively) aggressive against Brood War as a game.

The main argument being made in this blog before it was deleted was that SC2 should not look to its predecessor for solutions regarding balanced, because at a professional level, Brood War was rigged, which is why Jaedong and Flash are not 'winning', regardless of Flash's most recent tournament win.

In conclusion, it is Pucca.
"If two pregnant women get into a fist fight, it's like a mecha-battle between two unborn babies." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
bITt.mAN
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
Switzerland3701 Posts
October 26 2014 19:48 GMT
#16
And so I've daintily side-stepped this issue entirely. If anyone is sufficiently mature and right-minded, to raise interesting topics we'd like to spend time discussing, let us not hunt them out for their previous, shameful behavior.

Maybe 2001 OSL is a niche example, but the concept still stands - how do we separate a player's dominance, from the maps they play on. Is this ever possible, what are the relevant parameters, how would we investigate correlations, and to what extent can we substantiate claims of organizer-led-match-boosting?
BW4LYF . . . . . . PM me, I LOVE PMs. . . . . . Long live "NaDa's Body" . . . . . . Fantasy | Bisu/Best | Jaedong . . . . .
Kau *
Profile Joined March 2007
Canada3502 Posts
October 27 2014 03:22 GMT
#17
On October 26 2014 12:31 sadiroTnuda wrote:
What was this about? It was about trying too hard. If you’ve read an earlier version of this you could probably tell I was trying to hard. Even the title is trying to hard.

What was it about? It’s about map balance, and, more specifically, it’s about the idea that maps balanced Brood War and the idea that they could play a similar role in balancing Starcraft II. It’s about the point at which it’s easier to watch the game in order to learn the outcome rather than use map statistics to predict it. Well, it’s always easier to watch the game, but is it as fun? Should be a simple question to answer really.


You spelled your name backwards.
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