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On July 28 2015 22:26 thezanursic wrote:
While I like the write-up I disagree with the assumption that Terran "figured" out Zerg on FS. I would assume level of play is actually lower than it was a couple years back and if the current Terrans faced the Zergs from 2010 they wouldn't perform as well.
That's reasonable. Lower level play in most games tends to exacerbate balance issues. You can even see this in a game like chess, for example.
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Maybe the newer strategies are more effective on FS. Was a late game mech switch that popular in the Kespa era?
FS is very good for a late game mech switch.
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United States10367 Posts
On July 28 2015 23:39 JieXian wrote:
Maybe the newer strategies are more effective on FS. Was a late game mech switch that popular in the Kespa era?
FS is very good for a late game mech switch.
Mech switches were beginning to take rise in the late KeSPA era. But late game turtle with mass tanks was always in the meta (see the FlaSh vs Calm gif)
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United States2948 Posts
On July 28 2015 18:32 nimdil wrote:
OK this is annoying.
A drop from 72% to 46% is not 26% difference. It's 26 percentage points or 26pp difference. It is - however - also a 36% difference or a drop by 36%. Please update the article accordingly. :/
Otherwise - cool read but kind of predictable conclusion. Thanks, fixed the language to reflect this. +26% win rate and using the average as the divisor 25.9/((45.9+71.8)/2), it represents a 44% difference.
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Thx for the BW writeups, love to read this 
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Bisutopia19333 Posts
Great job FlashFTW. Glad this was finally published!
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Nicely written, but calling FS imbalanced amounts to heresy, you know :D
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@FlashFTW
Great article. Question:
When did Fantasy actually invent the now popular Late Mech Switch and how long did it take to get popular? Compare that to the KesPA life-span of Fighting Spirit. Did Fighting Spirit's cycle end just as late mech became popular?
Maybe that explains it.
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United States10367 Posts
On July 29 2015 05:09 HyralGambit wrote:
@FlashFTW
Great article. Question:
When did Fantasy actually invent the now popular Late Mech Switch and how long did it take to get popular? Compare that to the KesPA life-span of Fighting Spirit. Did Fighting Spirit's cycle end just as late mech became popular?
Maybe that explains it.
To be completely honest, I don't know exactly when the mech switch began becoming popular. I think it began mid-late 2010.
Maybe the TvZ meta shifted to favor Terran? Maybe? But at the same time, I think if the meta did shift in favor of Terran, wouldn't we see similar results on every other map like La Mancha, Sniper Ridge, Neo Jade?
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Amazing article mate.
Id like to drop my 2 cents on this topic, apart from what the article already mentioned.... well a bit more than that:
-FS is a easy map to understand in terms of vectors.
Historically, zerg was always the race that benefited the most from multi angled atacks and flanks.
Every map was easy enought to understand, but the atacks could come from at a lot of different locations, due to the map layouts (What I means is that you could hit the enemy in many adjacent areaes and still flank them rather well, if the army position was correct).
This made it quite hard for both terran and Protoss to anticipate when exactly the pincer would try to close around you, requireing more expirience in each of these situations to know where to evacuate if it was required. How to allocate your army for maximum efficiency and most importantly, how to set your army's layers.
If you take a close look at FS, very few areas allow for well coordinated pincers, and in all cases, the exit route is extremely easy to spot.
This does not mean that it is easier to do it correctly, just that it is harder to screw up.
Terrans have always benefited from micro intensive battles due to their mid term stand in between zerg and protoss (more life than zerg, more dps than Protoss, less life than protoss, less dps than zerg... huge generalization, I know).
So, everytime you want to do something (for example establish a 4th) its rather clear how you want to do that in FS.
If you want to push a Protoss base with mech, its rather clear where to set mines to cut off reinforcements or main armies.
*What I mean in terms of vectors is that if A enemy, and his army goes X side, my army B should go this other side, etc.
-FS is a map that has been played enought for terrans to develop very clutch timings.
We all know zerg vs terrans tries to delay making sunkens for the first push as long as possible.
We all know that Zergs try to use mutas to delay pushes.
We all know that zergs almost MUST make lurkers to defend safely and eco-efficient the 3rd base.
Pros know it even better, and a simple things like 1 overlord kill or 1 vulture that kills 2 gas drones can be enought to block the zergs natural flow and respose to a normal game.
The main thing here is that the terrans can think about a specific way they want to get that 1 small win to cripple the zerg enought for their timing and practice it for a while.
The zergs cannot themselves imagine all possible variables, and mentaly prepare for all of them, and then practice all of them. (This is also why unorthodox plays like zeros 2 base hive work so well sometimes, its something terrans dont have expirience with).
-FS is a rather small map.
Back in the Blood Bath map days, zergs were destroying everyone due to map size.
FS gives rather short time, unless cross spawns, of warning before the enemy is at your door.
Zerg has clearly a problem here due to larva mechanics. There is a lot more to it, like the variablility of early builds terrans can do, adding more complexity, but id say thats a rather big factor.
-Terrans VS Zerg is a VERY imbalanced match up.
This might surprise most of you.... but I always thought zerg had the shorter end of the stick here, massivly.
Players have been able to "balance" the game due to their builds and skill, not due to patches (plz no sc2 comments here :D).
For those of you who dont know it, pro korean scene had a sort of cycle when a certain race dominated untill it was dethroned.
Boxer, ILoveoov, Saviour, Bisu, Nada, Flash, Jangbi..... Those were all players who destroyed the previous imbalances by beating players with things they had no practice against, because only they knew how their build worked.
Same happens now. I mentioned Zero before. Only he knows how to make the 2 base hive build, so it will be very hard to practice against it with your ally to get ready for a match vs Zero.
We do not have pro broodwar teams anymore, so even if a Zerg figures out a new amazing build.... who does he test it with?
He cant do it with the player he will play against.... and its likely that his friends wont be as high of a caliber as his enemy in a SSL.... so tehre is no way to confirm if a new build would be good or not...
This leads to rather known builds, and in this current state of effects, Terrans is in my opinion stronger than zerg, zerg slightly stronger than Protoss, and terran and protoss are about even. (My opinion of course).
Finally, Id like to point out one thing i disagree with the author:
Free is in my opinion a players who is best at PvT, with quite crappy PvP and terrible PvZ.
He is one of my favorite players, and I always loved his PvTs, but almost watched praying when he was against a Z or a P.
CatsPaw Out.
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On July 28 2015 18:32 nimdil wrote:
OK this is annoying.
A drop from 72% to 46% is not 26% difference. It's 26 percentage points or 26pp difference. It is - however - also a 36% difference or a drop by 36%. Please update the article accordingly. :/
Otherwise - cool read but kind of predictable conclusion.
Hell for perfectionists :D.
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lost temple is still cooler than fighting spirit
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If you throw that few units into a ton of siege tanks, you deserve to lose. But yeah, the map is really turtley. I've said this for years. You can play super-greedy and get away with it (1-fact double expo; what?) because each of the four quadrants are very efficient to defend because they funnel units into a very small area.
On July 28 2015 11:18 Ty2 wrote:
StarCraft has always been imbalanced. terran has always been the underpowered one among protoss and Terran. The problem is no one knows how to play Protoss or Zerg which is why there's so much imbalance in Terran's favor. Bisu is the closest one to using Protoss correctly and has a similar playstyle to mine.
Sometimes, I just want to slap you.
On July 29 2015 06:16 Bill Murray wrote:
lost temple is still cooler than fighting spirit
no
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Really good write up. I'm so sick of terrans winning every TvZ with the same few bio mid games into mech switch late game.
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Poland3756 Posts
On July 29 2015 03:26 prech wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2015 18:32 nimdil wrote:
OK this is annoying.
A drop from 72% to 46% is not 26% difference. It's 26 percentage points or 26pp difference. It is - however - also a 36% difference or a drop by 36%. Please update the article accordingly. :/
Otherwise - cool read but kind of predictable conclusion. Thanks, fixed the language to reflect this. +26% win rate and using the average as the divisor 25.9/((45.9+71.8)/2), it represents a 44% difference.
OK why the average?
You use - as divisor - the number from which you start the comparison.
So i.e. drop from 100 to 80 is 20% drop while increase from 80 to 100 is 25% increase.
22.5% or 20/((100+80)/2) has no place here for anything, really. Unless english has some obscure rule about it ... ?
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NEW statistics. Love it!!! it would be great to see the statistics, if they are even recorded, of all the iccup games ever played on fs. Thanks for the article
A perfect map and perfect balanced game can and will never exist. If it did, the game would break down. Its the same concept as perpetual motion.
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On July 29 2015 05:38 FlaShFTW wrote:
To be completely honest, I don't know exactly when the mech switch began becoming popular. I think it began mid-late 2010.
Maybe the TvZ meta shifted to favor Terran? Maybe? But at the same time, I think if the meta did shift in favor of Terran, wouldn't we see similar results on every other map like La Mancha, Sniper Ridge, Neo Jade?
Isn't the 3rd base slightly harder to secure/defend on all three of those maps compared to Fighting Spirit? They seem harder to access and reinforce from the natural.
I admit most of my games are played on FS, so these are just observations from pro games. It's interesting to think about, great article.
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What struck me about your initial stat-binge was the contrast between Fighting Spirit and two of the other "standard" maps you mentioned: Icarus and La Mancha. While you described Icarus as "favoring Zerg", it would be equally accurate to say it is "anti-Protoss", based on the KeSPA numbers. Which perhaps explains why it's fallen out of favor post-KeSPA. La Mancha, meanwhile, displays "normal" imbalance both KeSPA and post-KeSPA (though Protoss appear weaker).
My initial instinct on examining the maps is to say the design of the third bases is the critical factor in otherwise fairly similar and standard maps.
However I want to first touch on a couple other differences. First, the center designs are strikingly different. Fighting Spirit's center is flat but broken-up. Icarus' middle is essentially unbroken though slightly narrower. La Mancha has impassable terrain in the very middle, but the circular center pattern resulting is very wide all the way around. The ridges (like on HBR, but more so) are important in the early and mid-game "contain" stage but (relatively speaking!) lose importance in the face of late-game army sizes. The openness of both these maps would seem to favor Zerg on a first guess in ways Fighting Spirit's layout doesn't.
The thirds, however, are even more different. On Icarus, the third is "safe" once established but hard to get to, allowing a Zerg to contain the Terran much more easily. On La Mancha, the third is on low ground (removing one defender's advantage) and the access from the natural is much wider (making runbys easier).
My tentative hypothesis is that late-game mech (or at least a heavy tank count) has become much more relatively common in post-KeSPA Korean play, which has resulted in Fighting Spirit's relatively easily defended terrain becoming more Terran-friendly.
It's not definitive, of course. But it's the naturally-occurring explanation, and certainly warrants further exploration. Though perhaps watching hundreds of games and comparing builds is... time-consuming. Maybe we need to start adding build catalogs to games, analogous to classifying chess games by opening?
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Wouldn't hate it if BW had one more balance patch to address how the meta has changed since 2001, much less the post-Kespa era... after all SC2 has had something like 22 balance-patches (literally).
But of course, there's no real incentive for Bliz to do that, not unless they re-released the game ('Bnet 2.0 Edition'?).
And even if they did, in the state the company is in now... would they just screw it up? 
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Eh: The map itself did not change during the transition so statistics should remain the same. What? This is of course false.
Some may suggest that with more time, the pros are able to abuse every small advantage they could, and Terran players ultimately came out on top. However, I am very skeptical. This argument suggests that both players and coaches could not solve the map in its reign of over 5 years, which seems extremely doubtful, even laughable. What? Again, this is of course false: The implication given by saying that Terrans eventually came out on top, IS the claim that the coaches and players will solve a map over the course of five years. Claiming terran is better on fs may or may not be true, but it clearly isnt the antithesis of saying players will figure out maps.
As for the rest, to summarize neatly: Map balance changes because the meta game changes, and I dont think map making is reducible simply to looking at statistics of maps with similar features, as it is the complex interplay of these features that actually create balance. And, as the metagame changes, a map will become more or less favourable over time. In the current meta game t > z, z > p, in a more substantial way than at the very end of the kespa era. Basically every map has become harder for protoss to beat zergs, and zergs to beat terrans. And these maps could remain imbalanced for the next year, two, or indefinitely. The meta game may simply evolve to necessitate features these maps are lacking...
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EPT
