It's always bothered me that StarCraft has no official rules for when a game is officially drawn or tied. There are two caveats to this.
1) Maybe there are official rules about drawing that are very clear in Korea and I'm just not aware of them.
2) This doesn't come up very often. Games that get into the territory where things become extremely tedious and draw rules might be necessary are rare. Professional games that are actually ruled as drawn, though there have been a couple, are even rarer.
It just seems like a fundamental flaw with the game, if only a small one, and since this game is so good otherwise I wish someone would fix it. To explain the flaw, sometimes a game reaches what is effectively a stalemate. This is when it is literally impossible for either player to eliminate the other's last building. When this happens, or comes close to happening, I certainly get very excited because it is such a strange occurrence in StarCraft, and I'm sure lots of other people get excited too. But after 10 minutes or so of the game stretching on with absolutely nothing happening, it becomes a problem, not just for the spectators, but even for the players themselves. Sometimes the game is technically winnable, but just very difficult for both players to make progress without taking a disproportionate risk. Other times both players may feel confident that they can still win, but are overindulgent in taking their time towards activating their plan.
Some of you may be aware that this is something that comes up much more frequently in the game of chess. In chess, there is a long, time-honoured tradition of long boring games that go nowhere, and they have a number of very clear and simple rules to help players, and tournament organizers navigate those waters. In chess the conditions for a draw are simple:
1) If one player offers a draw, at any time during the game, and the other player accepts.
2) If it is logically impossible for either player to win, because they lack the necessary in-game resources to meet the win conditions. In the context of chess, the necessary resources for winning are very well understood by chess theorists, so this rule is completely explicit and can be applied by simple reference to a manual, if necessary.
3) If at any point in time, play has continued for a certain period of time without certain official markers of definite progress being met. In the case of chess, a game is ruled a draw after 50 moves have gone by without either player moving a pawn, or capturing a piece. This helps tremendously with ruling over the gray area where the game simply becomes very boring, while still technically being winnable, without the rules needing to be arbitrary in order to deal with it.
My suggestion is that StarCraft should implement a slightly modified version of at least some of these rules, so that when this does happen, it isn't as confusing or lame or torturous to everybody involved. It is also just as important, in my opinion, if for no reason other than a matter of principle, that the process by which a game is ruled a draw is completely non-arbitrary. The whims of sports referees are often defended by fans for their ability to inject a "human" element into the ruling of the game. This results in games like soccer having a very different time-honoured tradition, namely riots. In my opinion it is better that things are as objective as possible, which usually means being explicitly set in stone as much as possible.
So here's my rough idea. Suggestions and refinements to this idea, as well as a wholesale rejection of all of my stated premises, are welcome. A game of StarCraft should be automatically ruled a draw:
1) If both players have buildings which are inaccessible to each other's standing army, and no possible access to resources which would allow them to make an army capable of destroying each others' buildings.
2) [edited] If at any time during the game, 3 minutes go by without either player producing or damaging any unit or building, a draw will result, assuming that both players have either the capability to win, or the capability to defend themselves. If only one player can win, and the other can neither win nor defend himself, then the player who can win will be awarded the win automatically.
On September 17 2018 04:19 GeckoXp wrote: what now in 15 years of playing i havent been able to produce a draw that wasnt on a non-standard map
I've had it happen maybe once or twice in 15 years of playing
It DOES happen now and then though. my friend had a game a while back where he left his computer on for a day while he slept and went to work and the guy hadn't left by the time he returned lol.
7 minutes is a long time. What was it in SC2? And even that was ridiculously long for a draw timer.
The rule should be simple, if progress cannot be made in a game, the game is drawn. It can either be because there are too much static defense for what few units you have left to kill them, or because players have armies but are unwilling to progress the game state. (FlaSh vs Jangbi Blue Storm being the obvious one).
In a situation of Stork vs GGPlay on Andromeda, where GGPlay holed himself up on the 12 island and Stork had to fly an arbiter in with recall, if Stork felt like the risk was too much and refused to attempt the recall, then the game would end in a draw, since GGPlay had no means of every leaving the island and winning the game. Therefore, Stork would be the one to need to progress the game state and manage to recall his army into the island to eliminate GGPlay.
easiest fix would be to implement a button with the options to draw. If both players click it, the game ends. It should be displayed only when necessary though. For instance if no player is mining minerals for 5+ minutes for a start.
On September 17 2018 04:19 GeckoXp wrote: what now in 15 years of playing i havent been able to produce a draw that wasnt on a non-standard map
i had a draw recently on Tau cross! PvP, i played 9/9 offgate, he proxied DT's in resposne. Funny as it sounds i couldn't kill his last pylons against dt's and he couldn't kill my last two cannons i managed to hide somewhere when he killed my base. My opp solved the problem by disconnecting, but i lost the points ))=
I don't think hard-coded rules are required for such a rare scenario. Having an menu option where one player suggests a draw to the other might be good though. Limit how often it can be used during a game though, just like pauses, to discourage griefing.
On September 17 2018 04:19 GeckoXp wrote: what now in 15 years of playing i havent been able to produce a draw that wasnt on a non-standard map
I've had it happen maybe once or twice in 15 years of playing
It DOES happen now and then though. my friend had a game a while back where he left his computer on for a day while he slept and went to work and the guy hadn't left by the time he returned lol.
Both their computers now perpetually occupied by an undead game of BroodWar, they each had to buy a new one to go on with their lives. To be save vs. unexpected power outages they also each had to hook their PCs up to an emergency backup generator. The rooms with the computers, generators and generous supplies of diesel fuel are now sealed off and entirely dedicated to keeping that game up and running. And if their CPUs haven't melted or Blizzard force-cancelled it for a server update the game is still running to this very day and will continue for all eternity.
The End
Theoretically Protoss can build a full control group of Archons from a left-over 1200 minerals bank and one mining depleted Assimilator, it just takes forever. A single Tank, Guardian or Battlecruiser can kill any number of buildings. One single Dark Archon can mind control an entire opponent's army, just to name a few examples of possible late-game crazyness. It may become boring to watch if no player is actually willing to give up, but the possibility of it actually being able to happen is in itself exciting. I don't think there is an actual issue here.
And you are actually missing some draw rules from chess, like stalemates (player to move has no legal move available) and perpetual checks (this just to underline how even a strictly logical, turn-based game like chess actually needs quite a lot and intricate rules to properly define what makes a draw).
I've had a few draws which is also known as just going AFK for 5+ hours and waiting for your opponent to win when you're convinced you have the upper hand.
Most of the time there aren't stalemates though because people do a lot of timings / all ins / people don't have the patience and will try to win instead of wait out a potentially endless stalemate, which has happened to me many times lol
The easiest solution is just if neither side destroyed a building or mined minerals for the last 5 minutes, the game ends in a draw.
If only one side mined minerals, but again neither side destroyed a building, the game ends in a draw in 15 minutes. Prevents a person from stalling with a 200 mineral patch by mining it every few minutes.
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
Has this ever happened in a KESPA/televised game? I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen this happen in a pro level game. It must have happened at some point though.
On September 22 2018 11:27 Luddite wrote: Has this ever happened in a KESPA/televised game? I'm pretty sure I've never actually seen this happen in a pro level game. It must have happened at some point though.
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
because you are changing the 20 year old win/lose condition of the game by adding in a draw condition. in any tournament, you just regame. and if you spend hours in one of the rare ladder stalemates, because the result is so important to you, then imo you clearly have too much time.
the comparision to chess doesnt work, just look at how many drawn games there are compared to bw. draws are so easy/frequent, that sometimes high level players actively go towards them from the beginning (lots of early piece exchanges)
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
I think we had one once at wcg and then it s up to the referee. I think the rulebook said to call a pause and go talk to the players. Propose a rematch. If a player refuses (that didnt happen) the resume game and wait. Having an automatic setup has drawbacks because ppl will try and force draw as we see in sc2. The draw request command by one player is interesting though but perhaps enable it after a set of condition has been detected (no fight after x mins) to prevent abuse.
Edit: agree with bakuryu. I dont think it ever was a problem in tournaments. Also, as you mention in the op, if you dont have the function it forces a move if there is even a remote chance as opposed to just say "alright i ll aim for the draw" A kespa/asl ref opinion would be interesting too
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
how is it "abuse" to allow people to use and type /draw once in game?
unlike a pause it would not interrupt the game at all. it will just give a yellow message similar to when someone changes the latency. the other player can either ignore it or type /draw to agree to a draw.
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
how is it "abuse" to allow people to use and type /draw once in game?
unlike a pause it would not interrupt the game at all. it will just give a yellow message similar to when someone changes the latency. the other player can either ignore it or type /draw to agree to a draw.
you make a new account at 1500mmr, you type /draw in the beginning of the game, you begin to demolish you opponent, he uses /draw to not lose the game, mmr does not get changed since neither player won (unless you want to count draws into mmr), repeat. if you count draws into mmr, you can "draw" yourself up the ranks, and people will make challenges on how far you can go only playing draws, until you get stream sniped where somebody kills himself and you get a win, ending the challenge
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
how is it "abuse" to allow people to use and type /draw once in game?
unlike a pause it would not interrupt the game at all. it will just give a yellow message similar to when someone changes the latency. the other player can either ignore it or type /draw to agree to a draw.
you make a new account at 1500mmr, you type /draw in the beginning of the game, you begin to demolish you opponent, he uses /draw to not lose the game, mmr does not get changed since neither player won (unless you want to count draws into mmr), repeat. if you count draws into mmr, you can "draw" yourself up the ranks, and people will make challenges on how far you can go only playing draws, until you get stream sniped where somebody kills himself and you get a win, ending the challenge
by that same logic people can abuse MMR just by quitting the game early before they win
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
how is it "abuse" to allow people to use and type /draw once in game?
unlike a pause it would not interrupt the game at all. it will just give a yellow message similar to when someone changes the latency. the other player can either ignore it or type /draw to agree to a draw.
you make a new account at 1500mmr, you type /draw in the beginning of the game, you begin to demolish you opponent, he uses /draw to not lose the game, mmr does not get changed since neither player won (unless you want to count draws into mmr), repeat. if you count draws into mmr, you can "draw" yourself up the ranks, and people will make challenges on how far you can go only playing draws, until you get stream sniped where somebody kills himself and you get a win, ending the challenge
by that same logic people can abuse MMR just by quitting the game early before they win
but then your opponent gets points. with draw, nobody gets points (or only few points), making it up to twice as effective at stopping your opponents mmr progression.
if your prediction that there would be this massive epidemic of skilled players doing their best to sit at 1500 mmr really does become true, it could easily be fixed by disallowing the initiation of a /draw for new accounts and limit the number of times any account can initiate a /draw request to once every 24 hours (or longer if needed)
There is no Draw, it is the one that leave the game last that wins. I recall that player who posted one of his game vs a kor on blue storm, 8 hours long until his opponent decided to quit. Psychological warfare is a very important thing in bw. There is no draw ok...
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
how is it "abuse" to allow people to use and type /draw once in game?
unlike a pause it would not interrupt the game at all. it will just give a yellow message similar to when someone changes the latency. the other player can either ignore it or type /draw to agree to a draw.
you make a new account at 1500mmr, you type /draw in the beginning of the game, you begin to demolish you opponent, he uses /draw to not lose the game, mmr does not get changed since neither player won (unless you want to count draws into mmr), repeat. if you count draws into mmr, you can "draw" yourself up the ranks, and people will make challenges on how far you can go only playing draws, until you get stream sniped where somebody kills himself and you get a win, ending the challenge
So this assumes that you can actually beat your opponent in the first place and are just wasting your points to grief him in a very weird way? And this is assuming that the hypothetical /draw command works by simply having it typed by each player at any point in the game, which would be a bloody stupid implementation to begin with.
On September 22 2018 16:40 iFU.pauline wrote: There is no Draw, it is the one that leave the game last that wins. I recall that player who posted one of his game vs a kor on blue storm, 8 hours long until his opponent decided to quit. Psychological warfare is a very important thing in bw. There is no draw ok...
Look at North and South korea. There is no official peace, the countries are still at war. No draw. Get it? No draw.
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
how is it "abuse" to allow people to use and type /draw once in game?
unlike a pause it would not interrupt the game at all. it will just give a yellow message similar to when someone changes the latency. the other player can either ignore it or type /draw to agree to a draw.
you make a new account at 1500mmr, you type /draw in the beginning of the game, you begin to demolish you opponent, he uses /draw to not lose the game, mmr does not get changed since neither player won (unless you want to count draws into mmr), repeat. if you count draws into mmr, you can "draw" yourself up the ranks, and people will make challenges on how far you can go only playing draws, until you get stream sniped where somebody kills himself and you get a win, ending the challenge
So this assumes that you can actually beat your opponent in the first place and are just wasting your points to grief him in a very weird way? And this is assuming that the hypothetical /draw command works by simply having it typed by each player at any point in the game, which would be a bloody stupid implementation to begin with.
any implementation of it will be stupid imo. yes i assumed that there are people strong enough to beat people at 1500mmr while making fun of them. but there shouldnt be lots of them that actually do that.
like i already posted, draws never were a problem in tournaments. they also never were a problem on iccup, because you reported the game and points were refunded. but you cant do that in remastered, so now that 1 in 1000 games (yes you are correct iopq) is apparently a problem now. a problem so big, we are talking about adding HARDCODED rules into the game.
so we are going to satify the few people upset with the 20 year old win/lose conditions (which to those people occurs in about 0,1% of their games), by changing the game for everybody to a win/lose/draw condition?
are you kidding me? whats next? do people want to add a "reveal enemy buildings when without main building" timer as the next QoL thing? because who wants to spend time searching for buildings? except you will completely change the interactions in base races and with hidden expos.
this is not starcraft 2, nor chess.
if you really want to add a /draw command to be able to report the game as "draw game" (refund points), the players should not be able to conclude any information about enemy mining/buildings/whatever and therefore the requirement to using that can only be none or a fixed amount of time (e.g. after 10 minutes). but unless you have somebody checking those games or have complex requirements, people could abuse it (e.g. ladder qualification for tournament)
If people wanted to they could just take wins at 1500, and then alternately leave the game in a won scenario to give the points back, to remain at 1500 indefinitely. I don't see people "griefing" by playing below their skill level, and not taking points for their own wins, as a big problem either way.
It also doesn't change anything about actual gameplay, in the vast majority of games. The only thing it really changes is that people will occasionally be playing for a draw instead of playing for a win-by-default. I.e. any scenario in which players would traditionally sit in front of their keyboard passively for hours on end waiting for their opponent to leave the game so that they get the full points, for a game in which they are incapable of fulfilling the actual win condition, with draw conditions the game would end in a more reasonable fashion.
I personally didn't suggest draw-by-agreement for Brood War because I thought it would be more controversial, but it's not that big of a deal TBH.
I definitely agree that hard coded rules are going to be very likely to cause more trouble than help because of the low incidence drawn games have in the first place. It should also be noted that even the already existing hard-coded rule (leave within first 2 (?) game minutes) can be and is frequently abused…
With a draw-on-mutual-agreement-rule on the other hand people could still grief each other by simply refusing to agree to a request.
On September 17 2018 04:23 zobz wrote: It happens in base trade scenarios and mine-out scenarios, both of which are very rare in themselves. Still, it happens.
HongTube - a recent example, in a high level practice game.
I'm enjoying this search for a solution that itself is searching for a problem.
In seriousness, this seems like overkill. Any solution is likely to introduce unanticipated and undesirable side effects. Cure is likely worse than the disease.
On September 22 2018 09:22 Bakuryu wrote: im 100% against having rules that automatically default into a draw.
and having features implemented for that 1 game in 100000+ games you will play....
I'm curious why you think this. It seems like if you can have a quality of life change, like a draw counter for actually drawn games, what is the issue with that? Sure it affects a minescule amount of the games you will play, but it dosent change the experience for the other 99.99 percent of games. The one aspect I could see people getting upset about, is the whole " Oh blizzard spent time on this when they should of fixed "X", "Y" and "Z". But if the process of implementing a stalemate clock like sc2 has is simple and quick for blizz to do, why not? seems like a no-brainer to me. Right now stalemates are just a test of patience really.
in terms of adding a /draw command, people already abuse the pauses, dont need them to abuse another command.
how is it "abuse" to allow people to use and type /draw once in game?
unlike a pause it would not interrupt the game at all. it will just give a yellow message similar to when someone changes the latency. the other player can either ignore it or type /draw to agree to a draw.
you make a new account at 1500mmr, you type /draw in the beginning of the game, you begin to demolish you opponent, he uses /draw to not lose the game, mmr does not get changed since neither player won (unless you want to count draws into mmr), repeat. if you count draws into mmr, you can "draw" yourself up the ranks, and people will make challenges on how far you can go only playing draws, until you get stream sniped where somebody kills himself and you get a win, ending the challenge
you seems to have no experience about how 1v1 elo works (mmr is similar). If you gain point by drawing it means you opponent will loose the same amount of point. Aka, drawing will be a normal way to gain some points some times.
I don't understand these convoluted arguments. If nothing is built, mined, or attacked for X amount of time, say 5 minutes or less . The ability to offer a draw should be available. If a player really wants to go AFK for 20 hours then more power to them. The result of a draw is no mmr change. The game essentially didnt happen. This isn't something can be abused by new players, and will improve the quality of life for a few games. The ONLY reasonable argument to this is perhaps the work required by blizzard. I dont really know how hard this would be and dont think it should be a priority (cough 2v2 cough). But If its something they could bang out in the next patch, go ahead.
On September 23 2018 10:21 Gorgonoth wrote: I don't understand these convoluted arguments. If nothing is built, mined, or attacked for X amount of time, say 5 minutes or less . The ability to offer a draw should be available. If a player really wants to go AFK for 20 hours then more power to them. The result of a draw is no mmr change. The game essentially didnt happen. This isn't something can be abused by new players, and will improve the quality of life for a few games. The ONLY reasonable argument to this is perhaps the work required by blizzard. I dont really know how hard this would be and dont think it should be a priority (cough 2v2 cough). But If its something they could bang out in the next patch, go ahead.
I have no problem leaving a game and taking a loss once every 10 years because there is a draw scenario. I have probably played over 5000 games and never had a draw scenario occur. This seems like a non issue. It seems so silly to think that is in my opinion.
EPT
DRaW
