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On April 01 2019 18:46 M2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2019 18:37 M3t4PhYzX wrote:
Infi picking Random (!) against Moon in the finals yesterday was absolutely ridiculous.. hah.. what a guy..
that was a great watch. Providing that he got the best possible match ups, while having the advantage of moon not knowing what is his race made this decision ingenious. He only derived the positives of being random without a single negative. Incredible move. I have a really low opinion on Infi, TH and 14sui who abuse the dumb in my opinion rule in WC3 that you can change race during a tournament by only picking obviously imbalanced match ups in their favor, however, the going random move restored some of my respect for infi
I have never quite understood that position.
It's not warcraft's fault that tournaments designed their rules this way. And it is not abuse to use this freedom if the rules allow.
Additionally, if it was such a big advantage, then more pros would do it. Certainly, as pro gamers, they are trying to maximise their chances of winning (Grubby says this very often) by any ingame means necessary (obv. not including cheating, being an asshole etc..) So given that all pros probably try to maximise their chances of winning, one should wonder if putting your time into practicing all races is really worth it and assume that it probably is if and only if you are already really close to your best race with the other races.
But well, you are entitled to your own opinion and can like/dislike whatever you like. I would just be interested in what exactly your reasoning is aside from "I just dont like race picking and think people should stick to one race". After all if everybody race switched, we would probably not see imbalanced matchups as much, so it would arguably make the game fairer (I dont fully share this point of view).
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On April 01 2019 19:01 Joni_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2019 18:46 M2 wrote:On April 01 2019 18:37 M3t4PhYzX wrote:
Infi picking Random (!) against Moon in the finals yesterday was absolutely ridiculous.. hah.. what a guy..
that was a great watch. Providing that he got the best possible match ups, while having the advantage of moon not knowing what is his race made this decision ingenious. He only derived the positives of being random without a single negative. Incredible move. I have a really low opinion on Infi, TH and 14sui who abuse the dumb in my opinion rule in WC3 that you can change race during a tournament by only picking obviously imbalanced match ups in their favor, however, the going random move restored some of my respect for infi I have never quite understood that position. It's not warcraft's fault that tournaments designed their rules this way. And it is not abuse to use this freedom if the rules allow. Additionally, if it was such a big advantage, then more pros would do it. Certainly, as pro gamers, they are trying to maximise their chances of winning (Grubby says this very often) by any ingame means necessary (obv. not including cheating, being an asshole etc..) So given that all pros probably try to maximise their chances of winning, one should wonder if putting your time into practicing all races is really worth it and assume that it probably is if and only if you are already really close to your best race with the other races. But well, you are entitled to your own opinion and can like/dislike whatever you like. I would just be interested in what exactly your reasoning is aside from "I just dont like race picking and think people should stick to one race". After all if everybody race switched, we would probably not see imbalanced matchups as much, so it would arguably make the game fairer (I dont fully share this point of view).
Yeah, first I would have to say that I completely agree that the main flaw is the tournament rule, not the game itself or even the players. I also understand why players abuse it, trying to get a competitive advantage. Now I ll try to explain why I dislike it. First are the problems I see with that rule. If WC3 was a top tier competitive esport, with players being in teams, big tournaments, big salaries, big sponsors and big awards, then the players would have been forced to play whats optimal and if switching races is the optimal scenario it will create an environment where some match ups will completely disappear and arguments will rise when both opponents are trying to race switch favorably and cannot agree on a match up. Additionally, with patches switching things, players will have to switch races and we wont ever be able to see them perfecting a race and best quality gameplay and map and match up specifically tailored surprising and high level strats. Now regarding TH and Infi at the moment particularly, I dont like the fact that they abuse the game imbalance to get competitive advantage, because, everyone else is more or less waiting for next patches, again, the problem is with the rule, but if all players were like them, we would have have only NE tournaments or something like that. I respect how the UDs and Orcs are trying to find a way even though there is not really a way and keep the tournaments fresh and interesting, sometimes there is even a non elf or race picker on the semis which is something xDD. However, this is just my opinion and personal view on this. If you dont like your human's chances to win, why dont you play orc or undead or even random, but no, they go for the most obviously imbalanced in their favor choice, which again, I can understand, but will never respect
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Northern Ireland26096 Posts
Hey folks, been enjoying my time dipping back in to WC3, been watching Grubby's stream a lot, Back2Warcraft is bloody great as well. Was wondering if I could solicit some advice and help.
I've decided to really go for WC3 and make it my main game. I tend to only really play one competitive game for the most part, and only 1v1 games, team games are too obnoxious to play solo and my work schedule is out of sync with many of my friends who play DoTA or CS etc.
I am running into similar problems I had with going back to Brood War with Remastered, namely it's difficult to find games with folks in a similar position to me (BW my gap was some 15 years, WC3 it's 10/11 years), and the majority tend to be either vets or very high level RTS players. There is a pretty big knowledge gap to bridge to get to having decent games and to the level you can start improving by simply playing more games.
Not just me but a bunch of our local SC2 scene are a bit burnt out on that game and want to give another RTS a go, and many of those guys are considerably younger than me and didn't even play WC3 casually as a teenager and they're all having the same .
Anyway, where does one go to plug the gaps in terms of game knowledge and strategy? My intention is to pull as much as I can and re-write a lot in some kind of condensed form for my own personal use once I find what I'm looking for, and probably put that out to others in some form for my friends and others to get into the game more quickly.
Grubby's building layout tutorials on Youtube are very good for example, but a lot of other stuff is too basic for Blizz RTS vets (hotkeys and control groups are something good SC2 players tend to know for example). I do pick up pieces here and there from the aforementioned streams, but a lot of those broadcasts are geared towards longtime WC3 fans so a lot of knowledge is assumed and not verbalised, it's not especially time-efficient to watch hours of streams for a few little tricks and whatnot.
I always found forums such as this way quicker to sift through as you can skim text in a way you can't with videos, but some of the stuff I've found thus far I remember from my casual mid-2000s Warcraft 3 days so I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's probably not competitively viable stuff anyway and almost certainly outdated.
Thanks in advance folks for anything you can throw my way, see you on the ladder (eventually!)
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On April 02 2019 03:10 Wombat_NI wrote:
Hey folks, been enjoying my time dipping back in to WC3, been watching Grubby's stream a lot, Back2Warcraft is bloody great as well. Was wondering if I could solicit some advice and help.
I've decided to really go for WC3 and make it my main game. I tend to only really play one competitive game for the most part, and only 1v1 games, team games are too obnoxious to play solo and my work schedule is out of sync with many of my friends who play DoTA or CS etc.
Thanks in advance folks for anything you can throw my way, see you on the ladder (eventually!)
Cant help you personally, but go to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/WC3/ and shoot your questions there. I think its the most alive wc3 forum atm.
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On April 02 2019 03:10 Wombat_NI wrote:
Thanks in advance folks for anything you can throw my way, see you on the ladder (eventually!)
You need to watch more of Grubby. Especially this playlist.
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On April 01 2019 19:01 Joni_ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2019 18:46 M2 wrote:On April 01 2019 18:37 M3t4PhYzX wrote:
Infi picking Random (!) against Moon in the finals yesterday was absolutely ridiculous.. hah.. what a guy..
that was a great watch. Providing that he got the best possible match ups, while having the advantage of moon not knowing what is his race made this decision ingenious. He only derived the positives of being random without a single negative. Incredible move. I have a really low opinion on Infi, TH and 14sui who abuse the dumb in my opinion rule in WC3 that you can change race during a tournament by only picking obviously imbalanced match ups in their favor, however, the going random move restored some of my respect for infi However, this is just my opinion and personal view on this. If you dont like your human's chances to win, why dont you play orc or undead or even random, but no, they go for the most obviously imbalanced in their favor choice, which again, I can understand, but will never respect
I mean, what does it say about the skill ceiling and RNG-factor of the game that Infi can pick random and beat Moon in an NE mirror?
Can you even imagine SC2 players being able to pull that off? Imagine Maru switching to Zerg against Dark. Would Dark even drop a map in a BO7?
It just seems to me like WC3's skill ceiling isn't even close to SC2's...
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I think skill across races in wc3 is more universal, it's more about unit control. Sc2 build orders, timings and macro is more different between races.
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On April 02 2019 23:58 whoopsome wrote:
I think skill across races in wc3 is more universal, it's more about unit control. Sc2 build orders, timings and macro is more different between races.
That is true indeed. Especially that "macro" in WC3 is in big part comprised of creeping, micro and item management. Those do not change between the races. In BW/SC2 each race has a very distinct macro game. It's also less focused on individual unit control than WC3, where you can't really allow for losses.
It's more about utilizing the map and making the best of item management than anything else at the highest levels (since mechanically those players are pretty much on par with each other).
Another thing to note is that all those players have been playing for so long that they've pretty much mastered every single race. What they choose to play at tournaments is simply what they consider their favorite for whatever reason (ex: I can play race X just as well as race Y but I'm too fond of unit sounds or whatever for race Y so I'll be sticking to it for the most part).
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On April 02 2019 22:10 byte-Curious wrote:
It just seems to me like WC3's skill ceiling isn't even close to SC2's...
On top of the fact that the skillset is more general in WC3, I think the relative size of the pro scenes means the pinnacle of play in SC2 is probably higher in relative terms than it is in WC3.
That doesn't mean that SC2 is inherently a game with a higher skill ceiling than WC3, just that it has a much larger pro scene. It seems unlikely that the best players in WC3 would get as close to the game's theoretical skill ceiling as their counterparts in SC2 do.
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Well, WC3 had a lot more time to develop, and at its peak, was about as big as SC2, except it was more local to China than Korea.
It's just bewildering to me seeing the best of the best, who have more than ten years of experience, get things like spending gold reliably wrong. Like Moon floating 800 gold at 60 supply etc. That's like fifty seconds of not spending on double income / low upkeep.
That's not to diminish some of the truly godlike moves we're seeing from those top players, of course.
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Northern Ireland26096 Posts
On April 03 2019 16:08 byte-Curious wrote:
Well, WC3 had a lot more time to develop, and at its peak, was about as big as SC2, except it was more local to China than Korea.
It's just bewildering to me seeing the best of the best, who have more than ten years of experience, get things like spending gold reliably wrong. Like Moon floating 800 gold at 60 supply etc. That's like fifty seconds of not spending on double income / low upkeep.
I mean yes and no, they're very different games especially when it comes to macro, in SC2 there are few times where not spending your money is a bad thing to do, in WC3 not always the case. Didn't see the Moon games in questions to comment whether it was tactical or forced by other factors. Even obviously all time great players like Zest have an occasional tendency to float a lot of money in SC2, and that's in a game where that's much more of a big deal.
On the other hand, Happy is 1298 for 27 losses on Europe ladder at the minute, amongst a sea of 75%+ win rate players, most of whom are the same guys who were at the top of the scene a decade ago. SC2 may well be more rigidly optimised, but it does appear Warcraft 3 more reliably sees the better player win more often than Brood War, which itself does that more than SC2.
I personally think it's pretty cool that players can play at 95%+ of the level of their main race with the others, means I only have to watch Grubby's stream and I can get a feel for them all! It's just too difficult in SC2, plus there tends to be more on the line if one was to even try it. It's more competitive at top tournament level, it is more volatile and even a small drop in form can take you from tournament winner to not even qualifying for them.
I think there's just too much of a variance in macro rhythms that you're going to have a really hard time trying to play even 2 races to an equivalent level never mind 3. Getting into that inject rhythm, or structuring your production expansion as T and queuing, or not missing warp cycles as P, there's just a different 'groove' to them all.
If in hypothetical land all 3 races basically had the same method of building things and producing units you'd see comparable examples of race-picking in SC2, WC3's races are cool, varied and do play differently in ways but that basic core is pretty much the same.
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Northern Ireland26096 Posts
On April 02 2019 06:44 M2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2019 03:10 Wombat_NI wrote:
Hey folks, been enjoying my time dipping back in to WC3, been watching Grubby's stream a lot, Back2Warcraft is bloody great as well. Was wondering if I could solicit some advice and help.
I've decided to really go for WC3 and make it my main game. I tend to only really play one competitive game for the most part, and only 1v1 games, team games are too obnoxious to play solo and my work schedule is out of sync with many of my friends who play DoTA or CS etc.
Thanks in advance folks for anything you can throw my way, see you on the ladder (eventually!) Cant help you personally, but go to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/WC3/ and shoot your questions there. I think its the most alive wc3 forum atm.
When I took a long break from SC2, I could at least come back on TL and peruse the strategy forums at my leisure and take notes. I have been looking for something like that on some WC3 site somewhere that I might have missed. That subreddit is good.
On April 02 2019 10:49 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2019 03:10 Wombat_NI wrote:
Thanks in advance folks for anything you can throw my way, see you on the ladder (eventually!) You need to watch more of Grubby. Especially this playlist.
If I watched any more Grubby atm I wouldn't have time to shave, possibly even eat. Yeah that playlist is bloody great, a shame as I wanna keep with NE and maybe play some UD that there's a bit of Orc bias, who'd have thought Grubby would focus on Orcs? Still he does cover a lot of what NE/UD are doing against Orcs so there's still really useful stuff there.
Thanks for the responses folks.
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On April 03 2019 16:08 byte-Curious wrote:
Well, WC3 had a lot more time to develop, and at its peak, was about as big as SC2, except it was more local to China than Korea.
It's just bewildering to me seeing the best of the best, who have more than ten years of experience, get things like spending gold reliably wrong. Like Moon floating 800 gold at 60 supply etc. That's like fifty seconds of not spending on double income / low upkeep.
That's not to diminish some of the truly godlike moves we're seeing from those top players, of course.
Like Wombat already explained a bit in WC3 macro is different than SC2 and you don't want to spend your resources as soon as you can. There are times when you want to float. Usually that's the time when you've reached 50 supply and any more would break upkeep. Then you want to float a significant amount so you can go from 50 -> 70/80 supply immediately instead of slow increments (think of it as saving for a bulk purchase).
If you break upkeep just to go to 53 or 56 supply you're basically wasting a lot of gold since your power spike is negligible but you're now mining 30% less resources, which slows you down a lot. In the meantime your opponent has 2 units less but is banking his gold and soon thereafter he has 10 extra units to your 3-4 and that is a very big difference.
The rule of thumb here is that you bank until you have enough money for 2 full rounds of production. By the time the second round finishes you should have gathered enough with reduced income to get out a 3rd round.
Another thing that Wombat mentioned is despite all the RNG involved in WC3 a better player will win 99.9% of the time (can't really 6-pool in WC3). It might seem way more volatile than it is when watching tournaments because when you have 2 pros facing against each other they are pretty much equal when it comes down to experience and mechanics and RNG tends to be more of a factor (also how the player is using it to their advantage).
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On April 03 2019 20:12 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2019 16:08 byte-Curious wrote:
Well, WC3 had a lot more time to develop, and at its peak, was about as big as SC2, except it was more local to China than Korea.
It's just bewildering to me seeing the best of the best, who have more than ten years of experience, get things like spending gold reliably wrong. Like Moon floating 800 gold at 60 supply etc. That's like fifty seconds of not spending on double income / low upkeep.
That's not to diminish some of the truly godlike moves we're seeing from those top players, of course. If you break upkeep just to go to 53 or 56 supply you're basically wasting a lot of gold since your power spike is negligible but you're now mining 30% less resources, which slows you down a lot. In the meantime your opponent has 2 units less but is banking his gold and soon thereafter he has 10 extra units to your 3-4 and that is a very big difference. .
Yeah, obviously.
I specifically said he's floating that much money at 60 supply, i. e. between upkeep caps.
Even at 50, you don't want to float that much money, you usually want to spend on invuls or heal scrolls.
I've seen Fly buy two circlets at 50 pop because he was floating too much money and the shops were out of scrolls / invuls.
On April 03 2019 20:12 Manit0u wrote:
Another thing that Wombat mentioned is despite all the RNG involved in WC3 a better player will win 99.9%
I just don't see any evidence of that being true.
Yeah, Happy dominates Northrend in a way nobody on EU-SC2 does. But that's because he's not facing Koreans / Chinese players or even the European pros.
The better player doesn't win 99% of the time, far from it.
Just watch Foggy's super sloppy games against Fly recently, Moon vs. Infi NE mirror...
RNG, the relatively high cost of scouting and imbalanced match-ups make it so that the better player loses quite often.
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Well I think that what he meant by the "Another thing that Wombat mentioned is despite all the RNG involved in WC3 a better player will win 99.9% " is that in WC3 its close to impossible to win with just a specific BO (or play or timing) that goes un-scouted, like in lets say both Starcrafts, if you put some building somewhere on the map and the opponent neither scout nor sense them then he already lost even if he is a godlike player with godlike mechanics. In WC3 the opponent always has a chance and the time to react and many times even if you hard surprise him, he will be able to get back in the game if he is the superior player. However, the race imbalances like the nowadays Keeper can surely lead to an inferior players winning over better ones who do not have access to same imbalances.
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I realise it sounds like I'm bashing the game, which could not be further from the truth. I love it more than I ever loved SC2.
It's just that at the very top of competitive play, SC2 seems like the... fairer game.
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Northern Ireland26096 Posts
On April 03 2019 22:35 byte-Curious wrote:
I realise it sounds like I'm bashing the game, which could not be further from the truth. I love it more than I ever loved SC2.
It's just that at the very top of competitive play, SC2 seems like the... fairer game.
It's fairer in terms of racial balance as things stands for sure, elsewhere not sure.
Tbh I think some of the racial balance is so skewed that it outweighs other considerations at present. If not, I'd consider it a fairer game than SC2 just because of the relative lack of complete coinflip builds that people can take down far better players with.
I do love the build order planning and strategising when players have some preparation time though and it's at least Bo5, I think that element of strategy really does add to SC2 and those mind games in that kind of match feel 100% fair to me.
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Wouldn't the fact that the best players in the world with 10+ years experience playing at the highest level still make macro mistakes speak in favour of the game's high skill cap?
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On April 03 2019 22:24 M2 wrote:
However, the race imbalances like the nowadays Keeper can surely lead to an inferior players winning over better ones who do not have access to same imbalances.
This is the main thing.
I can understand why watching WC3 at the moment could give the impression that the skill ceiling isn't that high. Watching a NE creep, harass, tech and expand all at the same time tends to be pretty unsatisfying and Infi seems to have perfected that style (he's a pretty great player). But watch the Yule cup finals. Watch 120's play in the second map (Amazonia) and tell me the skillcap in this game isn't as high as anything you've seen in Starcraft.
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Northern Ireland26096 Posts
They're just different beasts really. In a sense I like that in both games that you can float resources at a particular time and still win, they're strategy games after all not macro cycle machine games. There's an element of strategically prioritising that one thing that's hard, so hard you might not be able to keep up your macro, but it's of such importance that you can win the game.
I can find big micro imperfections in any big engagement in SC2, not the fault of players there's a lot going on, but also engagements are just too fast to do a lot once armies start clashing. I sometimes wonder if the game is just a bit too fast tbh.
I think the game's in a good spot with Legacy all in all and I'm not complaining or advocating anything, just spitballing. It's always been the case in SC2 that micro potential doesn't scale with bigger armies clashing. You see neat micro wars all the time in early game PvP, ling/bling dances or Terrans microing small pockets of bio the engine and the units allow for really smooth micro if one has the skill.
On the other hand bio v colossus you don't really see say, optimal target firing from Collosi to spread it's AoE damage, and a Terran splitting out to mitigate it etc. It's borderline not possible to do as a player, or at least the gains in doing it are so low compared to A-moving, or the risk/reward of doing it when the real thing to focus on is winning the binary battles of Collosus/Viking counts or Ghost/Templars etc.
I don't follow many other eSports at all outside of RTS games, I think it's a lot easier and to me preferable to follow a 1v1 game anyway, but also I just enjoy how much RTS players have to do mechanically all over the place.
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