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Hi TL, its been a long time since I posted a blog. This blog will be long, angry and self centered.
In the time since my last blog, Ive made a lot of progress in my journey as a BW player. In 2016, I won the TLS Championship, which at that point was the highest pinnacle one could reach in terms of foreign tournaments during BW's hibernation, lets call it. Subsequently I went into inactivity while spending my BW time as a coach in the CPL teamleague.
Now though, with SCR and the influx of new players, new tournaments, new life into the BW scene, I feel my competitive spirit rising again. Time to test myself on new battlegrounds, this time against both the old guard and the new. I want to bring myself to new heights, and fully explore the depths of BW strategy in a quest to conquer all. (all non koreans that is, lol) Its strategy that intrigues me, and keeps bringing me back after each period of inactivity, that plus the adrenaline rush of competitive play, or even non competitive play really. BW is just amazing..im really in love with this game. Or at least, the portion of it ive chosen to partake in thus far.
So heres my problem, TL. Im a racepicker. I play ZvP PvT PvZ, that is my main race. Ive done this for as long as ive been trying to get good at 1v1 in BW, probably like 12 years on and off. A long fucking time...And it didnt used to be a problem. In all the tournaments, clanwars, and nationwars ive played in before the release of SCR, only one had a problem with racepicking. It was an american teamleague hosted by Xeris[LighT], and he said I would have to play pvp. His reason given was that "proleague doesnt allow racepicking". Because thats more important than allowing foreigners in your foreign league to play their main race apparently. Yes, I could choose to not participate in his tour, but with BW, theres usually not a huge variety of tours to choose from. Each is an opportunity to compete, so I played anyway.
Fast forward to 2months ago, PATL league comes up. Psyionicreaver is the host, and hes inspired by xeris to create a similar league. The same arbitrary rule was applied, and I argued that racepicking should be allowed, because really what is the disadvantage to it? This time the reason was that "its too much work" which is a bunch of bullshit, and psyionicreaver just stopped listening to me, even though I offered to help him with admin responsibilities. There would literally be zero extra work from submitting my race as "ZvP/PvT/PvZ" instead of "P". Again, I decided to suck it up and play anyway.
Now today, Im registering my team for SKTL, another new teamleague that I am, or was, excited to play in. I thought, ok this league will be better, surely they wouldnt ALSO not allow racepicking. I semi seriously posted for confirmation of this. So obviously, I was shocked that yet another teamleague host decided to arbitrarily handicap me and all other racepickers. SKTL is hosted by [SK]619. His reason was, exactly quoted:
"No we will not allow that. Makes for a better manager to try and guess where they think that player will be fielded.
Adds strategy to the game."
Ok, because BW doesnt have enough strategy by itself, this is a game about managing, not actually playing the game right? And let me emphasize that what this hypothetical manager has to guess is, where will dragon be placed so I can snipe him in a pvp, where he can lose to a worse player in a matchup he doesnt fucking play. Im sure thatd be really satisfying for my opponent too lol. A real accomplishment. Does it add more "strategy" to give certain players a disadvantage but not everyone else? Howbout we add more strategy to the game by actually allowing me to play good quality games in my god damn main race, instead of this discriminatory garbage.
At this point I dont know If i want to participate in SKTL anymore. I really want to play in it, but I really also want to not be handicapped. I have teammates who also racepick, and I know we are not the only team. The callousness of these organisers frustrates me. There is literally no disadvantage to anyone to allow me to racepick, they are making a problem where there was none before. I fucking challenge anyone to come up with a solid, logical argument against it. Even though I am polite and mannered, my arguments are ignored after a certain point. Because I, and my fellow racepickers are a minority, we dont matter.
Ok, now aside from teamleagues, ive also managed to qualify for the Zotac Masters 20k NA/SA Tournament, which im super pumped about. (They allowed me to racepick, thank god). But, this is a fucking miracle because I can barely practice without being able to ladder. What I mean by that is, I can ladder, but im forced to offrace again. When I ladder as protoss and pvp, I lose a lot. This brings down my rating to a point where any zerg or terran players I face are going to generally be beneath my level, and so the growth I get from these games is very limited. Who knew that protoss was also the most popular race? And dont even get me started on trying to practice ZvP laddering full zerg. If I want to practice all 3 of my matchups on ladder, I actually have to learn 6. And then what was the fucking point of racepicking. Blizzard doesnt give a shit about racepickers either. Ive posted in threads on TL, and on the bnet forums multiple times how matchup picking is easily implemented, but its just ignored. I love that SCR has a ladder, but I got better practice on Iccup with a population of 500. I want to practice for the Zotac finals, I really want to ladder, but its not really working.
So at this point I dont know what to do. I know youre probably thinking "just learn PvP, and stop bitching about it, fuck". That is an option. Its not a good option. In order to get my PvP up to the level of my other matchups, id have to invest thousands of games, thousands of hours, an agonizingly long time to regain confidence as a complete player, while many competitive opportunities are passing me by as I flounder in mediocrity. And then I just forget about ZvP, one of my favourite matchups. Its a colossal waste. If I invested that much time, that much energy into the matchups I already play, Id be miles ahead instead of back to square one. ALSO, and this is a big fucking problem to me, PvP is one of those matchups, as far as I can see, where there is a rock paper scissors aspect. You can play a solid "standard" game, and still just automatically be at a disadvantage vs some specific builds, that you wont be able to react to and all you can do is just take it on the chin. Thats not acceptable to me in a matchup I want to invest time into, Im not about that shit. Fuck rock paper scissors, I want to win or lose with skill, not luck. Im not 100% certain that this is the way it is, but in my limited experience in PvP it certainly seems so.
I feel like im being punished for a decision I made 12years ago. Suddenly racepicking is a big disadvantage, even bigger than it normally is. And yeah it is a disadvantage, if I went back I would probably do it again because I love zvp and fuck rock paper scissors, but Im not making it easy for myself. In playing 2 difference races, I have to learn 2 different sets of micro abilities, while pure race players only have to learn one. Obviously the person whos units overlap in every matchup will have a much easier time perfecting their micro with muscle memory. As it is, things like muta micro or reaver/shuttle control are abilities where I dont have the overlapping experience from zvt/zvz or pvp respectively to really have top level control. And there is also strategy overlap as well. ZvP is more similar to ZvT than it is to any protoss matchup.
Ill figure it out TL, I will rise above this. Im just posting to vent my frustration. Maybe some of you can relate. If you got this far lol.
Also I want to note that Im not trying to shit on xeris, psyionicreaver, or 619. Theyve all contributed a lot to and/or are continuing to support the BW community with hard work and dedication and they deserve respect. I disagree with their decisions regarding racepicking, that is all.
TLDR: im a racepicker and it sucks now, im pissed off because im super competitive
  
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I don't know if ladder is ever going to change to accommodate race pickers but dear lord I'd be pissed at tournament organizers for following suit LOL
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Play PvP, the game progresses slow enough that you can turn a game from a build order disadvantage, it's not crazy like ZvZ.
Also, I should note that despite the difficulties a race picker faces, there is an advantage that they have (they get to play 2 favorable match ups)
Since typically Z>P>T>Z, you get to be on the right side of that equation 2 times out of 3.
On a final note, you could race pick in any of my events and I believe TL Open allows race picking, Rus_Brain cup... There are options out there. Of course, no one can help you with the Blizzard ladder situation.
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Yeah it's annoying.
Can't even avoid ZvZ on ladder. I want to play TvZ dammit!
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I guess it's because how would you resolve
ZvP PvZ PvT
against a
TvT TvZ PvT
player?
You no longer share a matchup. You only want to play against Terran as Protoss, but this Terran has decided he will only play Protoss vs Terran. Even though that's not a common set of racepicks, you can see the logic of keeping two stable matchups and dodging the one that Terrans usually dislike. Just because he picks a mirror match, is it really that different?
Mainly the situation doesn't come up because there aren't many race-pickers. I guess you could make a rule that racepickers aren't allowed to choose a mirror. And in matchmaking you could just let people play whatever they feel like. Racepickers usually don't need to be told not to pick a mirror, since every racepicker ever decided to do so because the non-mirror matchups are more interesting.
Well, it sucks. Hopefully tournaments stop enforcing that rule, because I'm pretty sure it would be good enough just to rule out mirror matchup race-pickers.
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Hey eywa, thnx for the support. Im not sure what event of yours there are that im eligible for though? Im not saying there are no events for me to play in, im saying that any one tournament that just arbitrarily disallows racepicking is hurting players unnecessarily.
Also Id rather play all 3 "hard" matchups than any rock paper scissors matchup. Those imbalances can usually be evened out by playing on decent maps. A luck based matchup cant.
If you guys want to racepick on ladder, maybe blizzard will listen if enough people post about it. Here is the thread I referenced earlier https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20758647830
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@chef your example of TvT TvZ PvT, that player dodges all protoss players lol, thats not a complete set of matchups, so hes going to have bigger problems than just playing vs me. The only time ive never encountered a racepicker who I didnt share a matchup with was vs someone who liked ZvZ PvP PvT. One game out of a lifetime. I decided not to play it, but we couldve easily just done RvR or something else. In my idea for the blizzard ladder system, you would select a race to play vs each race: vs P, vs T, vs Z, and vs R, and I would include racepickers who I dont share a matchup with in that R section. So if I happened to run into that guy again, my vs R match is protoss, maybe his vs R matchup is also protoss, so wed do a PvP. Either way, its an extremely minor concern.
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I side with you and your frustrations, Dragon. I also race-picked for the past 12+ years along with playing random. I don't understand why ANY foreign tournaments would ban race-picking or random. While I don't play in any tours due to weekend plans and only being able to play at night, the frustration is still real with the current matchmaking system that's in place.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9933 Posts
have the same sentiment here. i don't play tournaments, but ladder is really frustrating for me. i TvZ TvP and ZvT, and now i just play TvT all day...
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Not entirely the same but I used to play T and Z in SC2 (no ZvZ but I played 5 matchups). When tournaments stopped letting me switch races in between games I tilted off the face of the earth and quit the game pretty soon after XD.
Feels really bad man. 
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On October 26 2017 01:28 SCC-Faust wrote:
puppykiller is a vegan.
Wow, that's a pretty low blow.
@dragon
I agree with you. I personally don't race-pick, but I don't mind people who do. As usual, 619's argument(s) make no sense, but if you want his delicious esports dollars, you have to play the meta-meta-game.
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What would help is a separate MMR for each of the matchups. Then your PvP doesn't plummet the other MMRs.
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On October 26 2017 21:09 Navane wrote:
What would help is a separate MMR for each of the matchups. Then your PvP doesn't plummet the other MMRs.
This is actually an interesting idea and I agreed with it for a moment, but I could see people just dropping out of games that aren't in the match up they want to play - since it wouldn't affect their MMR (which isn't a huge problem unless a lot of people start doing it).
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You should just be able to pick a race to play vs each race, and then MMR would be the same as it always is except select your race differently based on the person you matched with. So me I would pick ZvP PvZ PvT PvR, and included in PvR is also other racepickers who I dont traditionally share a matchup with.
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DragOn, I've found the answer for SKTL, + Show Spoiler +get recruited onto team SK, race picking will instantly be allowed.
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Norway28584 Posts
I agree entirely. I just don't play in any of the tournaments that don't allow it. I obviously can't play PATL anyway, but for the SK tour, it's plausible that I'd seek out a team if not for this rule. It's just a stupid rule that showcases a total lack of understanding of the foreign community. There's no actual reason given, and it's a really, really big deal to all affected players. Which actually is a significant bunch of the nonkorean community; I checked the top 25 of iccup when remastered was released. Literally half the players dodged a mirror matchup, either playing tvz tvp pvt, zvt zvp pvz, zvp pvz pvt or pvt pvz tvp.
I can at least understand having a rule against no random. There's some logic to that giving an unfair advantage. (Although I'd argue, and history backs me up quite strongly, that having to learn 9 matchups is a bigger disadvantage), but no race picking? I've race picked in a 5 digit number of games and like you, I can recall exactly one opponent who went zvz pvp, where we had a hard time figuring out what matchup for us to play. I also think viewership suffers. Pretty damn certain if you poll people asking 'do you prefer watching tvz/pvz/tvp or zvz/pvp/tvt then it's gonna be pretty lopsided in favor of the first group.
I haven't had time to ladder much lately so I'm still just race picking in tourneys, but I think I might go back to being full random if I have more time to practice, my terran win ratio is only like 10% lower than zerg and 5% lower than protoss. I'm basically really happy that I'm not really committed to playing competitively, I'd be so frustrated then. No way am I doing zvz one third of the time, it's just.. significantly less fun than every other matchup in the game.
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lmao eywa, for real, im not impressed with that shit. SK was trying to recruit me too
seems im not alone here, thnx for the understanding guys. Only way to make change is to get heard
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A race picker who plays TvZ, PvT, and ZvP won't be able to play another race picker who plays those same matchups. The same is true for two race pickers both playing PvZ, ZvT, TvP.
All other combinations will work as long as race pickers don't play any mirror matchups.
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Norway28584 Posts
To my knowledge it's been more than 10 years since you had anyone remotely competitive outside korea playing either of those combos though. (Trek did play tvz, pvt and zvp.) Most race pickers are zergs who play tvz or pvz instead of zvz, then the rest are terrans (who usually play pvt instead of tvt) or protoss (who usually play zvp instead of pvp). The whole 'what do you do if two players who race pick different, non-matching combos' really isn't a real problem because it only occurs like 1/10000 games. I'm confident every single race picker prefers having to choose a matchup they have no experience with 0.01% of the games rather than 33% of the time.
Not actually saying you were saying it's a big issue, sundersoft. I'm just clarifying this for everybody else. It's a made up problem which doesn't need a solution.
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So, hypothetically, in a tournament situation where two race pickers go up against each other.
Player 1: ZvP TvZ PvT
Player 2: ZvP TvZ TvT (or PvT)
What race does each person play?
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On October 27 2017 12:29 AManHasNoName wrote:
So, hypothetically, in a tournament situation where two race pickers go up against each other.
Player 1: ZvP TvZ PvT
Player 2: ZvP TvZ TvT (or PvT)
What race does each person play?
If that ever happened in a tournament setting they'd probably just end up having to blind pick their races.
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I don't really see an issue involving race-picking. In the case of the ladder, maybe it makes things slightly more complicated for Blizzard? But I can't see it being a real issue.
I figure the point of these leagues and tournaments is to provide good quality/entertaining games. In DragOn's case that would mean ZvP instead of PvP, I don't really see why he should be penalized now, and offer the community lower quality games (in a MU he's 12 years behind in), especially when this was never an issue before. I saw this mentioned earlier, but I also think the viewers would prefer to watch non-mirror's to mirror's more often anyway (of course we'd still have mirror match-ups for those who enjoy them more).
As for the ladder, I'd be happy if they allowed race-picking as suggested. I personally don't race-pick, but I'm tired of getting a lot of mirror MU's on ladder. I don't mind playing it every once in awhile, but I feel like I get PvP more than anything (and I've heard Zergs say the same about getting a lot of ZvZ). Allowing race-picking on ladder would cut down on the number of mirror matches in general. I think race-pickers and even a lot of non-race pickers would be happy about that.
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Norway28584 Posts
On October 27 2017 12:29 AManHasNoName wrote:
So, hypothetically, in a tournament situation where two race pickers go up against each other.
Player 1: ZvP TvZ PvT
Player 2: ZvP TvZ TvT (or PvT)
What race does each person play?
Honestly, I'd guess both end up randoming. 
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On October 27 2017 12:29 AManHasNoName wrote:
So, hypothetically, in a tournament situation where two race pickers go up against each other.
Player 1: ZvP TvZ PvT
Player 2: ZvP TvZ TvT (or PvT)
What race does each person play?
I'll tell you why that's a bad example. Nearly every race-picker, including Dragon, does not play their mirror match-up. Dragon plays PvT PvZ, but not PvP. He plays ZvP instead. Ret also used to do this, and played TvZ instead of ZvZ. I've seen race-pickers play each other in tournaments without much trouble. They just decide who is playing what. If they cannot, then it will become necessary to write a simple rule set to resolve the issue.
Anyone who runs a tournament and doesn't write their rules down in clear, concise terms beforehand is being lazy and sloppy. Most people don't want to sit down and write a rule-set because they're too lazy. They'd rather just go "Competitive rules, here's the maps, bo3, go play", then if any issues arise, they just rule by decree. For small tournaments, this is fine. For a league with money involved, this is not okay. If there is no clear rule-set, then the tournament organizer has no standard to go by, and can do ridiculous things like advancing their friends and teammates over people who should've advanced.
The reason I bring up rules is because nobody wants to write a set of rules for race-picking. Not because it's extremely difficult, but because it's easier to be lazy and go "Don't race-pick." So, here's a template I thought of for tournament organizers to borrow:
1. If there is a disagreement among two race-picker players about which match-up will be played in a Bo1 series, and cannot reach an agreement within a reasonable amount of time, a referee will pick who will play which match-up.
2. In any BoX greater than 1, the same procedure will be followed as dictated in rule 1. The LOSER of each match will pick the match-up in the next game. For example:
Player 1 and Player 2 both play ZvP ZvT and PvZ. There is a disagreement about who will play Zerg and who will play Protoss.
map 1: p1  v p2  <- ref picks
map 2: p1 v p2 <- player 2 lost game 1, so he or she wants to be the Zerg player for match number 2
map 3: p1 v p2 <- player 2 lost game 2, but he or she wants to go back to playing Protoss versus Zerg.
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Norway28584 Posts
two players both play zvt zvp pvz is something that does happen. Usually that leads to whomever picks zerg first in the game lobby getting to be zerg. I played a tourney vs fuNny, the russian guy, a couple weeks ago, and I knew that he was a zvp pvz player. I felt like playing zvp, so I just immediately picked zerg when joining the lobby, and then he went protoss. If he had picked zerg before I joined the first game, I would have just went with p instead. Sometimes I don't actually have that much of an opinion on which matchup I prefer, and I just flat out ask 'you wanna play pvz or zvp?' and then I go with the other one.
Never really seen an argument arise over this, race pickers are fine with playing all three matchups they have decided to specialize on. Having rules in place to deal with a possible conflict is nice, though, but I'd still be surprised if they ever had to be enforced.
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On October 27 2017 18:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Never really seen an argument arise over this, race pickers are fine with playing all three matchups they have decided to specialize on. Having rules in place to deal with a possible conflict is nice, though, but I'd still be surprised if they ever had to be enforced.
I've seen race pickers complaining a lot in clan leagues and tournaments back in the day, especially in the lower ranks. you have all kinds of weird people having the weirdest picks. the problem evens out, once people are better than - let's say - a high D-Rank. Never experienced any problems with competitive rules, however.
at some point i do understand why an organizer is tempted to just get rid of race picking and/or random, but personally, i wouldn't enforce it. then again, i'd prolly don't complain about it in a league with only a small prize pool, i simply wouldn't attend.
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Norway28584 Posts
yeah I've never participated in any of the D rank or yellow rank leagues or whatever, so I can't comment on those. But I've played in hundreds of tournaments as a race picker, I've met other race pickers on many occasions, and I don't think we've ever spent more than 10 seconds figuring out the match up.
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On October 27 2017 19:47 Liquid`Drone wrote:
yeah I've never participated in any of the D rank or yellow rank leagues or whatever, so I can't comment on those. But I've played in hundreds of tournaments as a race picker, I've met other race pickers on many occasions, and I don't think we've ever spent more than 10 seconds figuring out the match up.
It depends a lot on the league itself and what goals the organisers have in mind. if it is a larger league, you might have divisions with lower ranked players, and those come with their own problems, such as complaining about smurfing, random and race picking. same goes for tournaments, it just eats time to not set up a ruling in this case, e.g. "then both pick random". never underestimate the authority and willingness people show when it comes to just get to the next round without actually having to play. sometimes users are assholes. therefore, i do like brain's approach of saying "go and host your own tournament if you don't like mine". people should always act like that.
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Norway28584 Posts
yeah I mean so far I've had no issues. Only two tournaments ban race-picking - PATL, and this SK clan league. I'm not part of any team that currently participates in leagues, and PATL i'd be ineligible for either way. But I'd be really sad and dismayed if this was gonna start a trend, I'm loving playing tournaments, but I'm not playing in a tourney that does not allow for race picking.
I should win the lottery and start hosting tourneys with the rule 'you are not allowed to pick the same race twice in a row'. I'd enjoy that.
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Thanks for the infos everyone! Appreciate you indulging my hypothetical :D Quite an interesting conversation here.
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On October 27 2017 18:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:
two players both play zvt zvp pvz is something that does happen. Usually that leads to whomever picks zerg first in the game lobby getting to be zerg. I played a tourney vs fuNny, the russian guy, a couple weeks ago, and I knew that he was a zvp pvz player. I felt like playing zvp, so I just immediately picked zerg when joining the lobby, and then he went protoss. If he had picked zerg before I joined the first game, I would have just went with p instead. Sometimes I don't actually have that much of an opinion on which matchup I prefer, and I just flat out ask 'you wanna play pvz or zvp?' and then I go with the other one.
Never really seen an argument arise over this, race pickers are fine with playing all three matchups they have decided to specialize on. Having rules in place to deal with a possible conflict is nice, though, but I'd still be surprised if they ever had to be enforced.
Yep, I play ZvP ZvT and PvZ too, and did so in a TL D Rank tournament a few years ago
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Racepicking should be allowed as long as you play against the 3 races. That sucks and I hope organizers will realize it's a mistake to ban racepicking.
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EPT
