Is there an extension for your BW model on LotV or did you recreate it in hots?
Also do you use triggers or the data editor?
Finally: do you have numbers on minerals/minute (hots or LotV) and overall income on 8 through 16 workers?
Nah mate, is pure data. As simple as increasing amount mined and time to mine, and some tweaks to wait-to-return time. By default, workers are optimized to not trip each other, being perfectly synchronized in SC2: that's why you saturate at 2 workers and the third is less efficient. BW model is the same principle, but with 1 worker. You can search for extension mods in custom games.
Btw, I didn't did them, I used KTVMaps' mod (the one on the worker pairing thread). However SC:BW econ mod is a bit bugged since workers don't bounce properly, thank you for pointing it ^^. I'll look for Starbow data since they use BW econ model. You can see a bit its performance in this vid done by one man of the Starbow crew (jump to min 5).
I'll have to fix the BW mod. I think that there might be some mod done by the Starbow team (forget it, ther is), which is the same but obviously for only 1 gas geyser, meaning that gas measurements are not reliable as we have 2 gases.
I don't have accurate data, since I haven't spoken with the creator , so I don't know id it's optmized for 7,8 or 9 mineral patches, but I think that initial worker mines a bit more than actual SC2workers (around 50-55mins per min I'd say), but it's optimized to make 2worker saturation mine only at 75%-80% efficiency since workers lose time bouncing looking for free mineral patches. Look for Starbow Economy mod to experiment with the concept. There has been some talk today about this topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/31gwwx/even_after_all_the_hype_for_lotv_i_still_think/
4 Gates, 3 rax play, the 1-1-1, ect... you didn't just get an expansion for free. You had to actually scout and make reads
Honestly I think the majority of the playerbase dislikes the pokerelement in Sc2. When you have to guess whether its DT, Blink Stalkers, Oracles or Immortal-all in based on very limitted information, it imo becomes less of the Starcraft that I enjoy. I think strategic diversity should be about soft-counters and how you use the units in different ways. Not about "I build X and since you didn't have Y --> you instalose".
That is how I felt in WOL before I began to learn how to make good reads. I don't think there was that much of a poker element at the end of WOL at all, unless people took blind economic risks (which ironically enough, were often best punished by one base play).
Scouting was probably the skill I had refined the most. I had my Probes, and I used em to scout at certain specific times in every matchup to figure out what my opponent was doing. And the best part was, my opponent might actively work to deny scouting. The game of cat and mouse when it came to scouting wasn't pokerish at all. It was in fact skill based.
And I think a lot of BW players didn't like it, because it wasn't about mechanics, it was about thinking and strategy. As Sun Tzu said: All warfare is based on deception. I would actively work to deceive my opponents regarding my build order. If they scouted as much as I did, and as well as I did, then my tricks wouldn't work. But people like to assume so they can focus on their mechanics.
But now I just float my MSC over their base, and send out a Hallucination when I can, and I know that even if I don't scout well, I can just press F and click on my Nexus and hold a lot of timings.
Wait what? Have you ever watched any BW game? Scouting is a key element of any BW game even in a game with 10 years of professional play without the rules constantly changing, i.e., without blizzard's interference with patches artificially changing things.
Scouting was as important in BW as it ever was in SC2. . .and no, no BW player will tell you the scouting part of the game is boring because it is not about mechanics...hell you can even argue that keeping a scouting worker alive in the early game to scout is even more mechanic dependent than it is in sc2 and will give you the same level of information.
Other than that, I agree with your points regarding the importance of the early game and scouting.
Re-reading it, what I said was not clear, in fact it was poorly worded and misleading, let me clarify that. What I meant to say was that there is a lot more deception, mind games, proxy builds and powerful one base play in SC2 than in BW (I'm not an expert on BW by any means, just from what I've seen) and that BW players didn't like that because it wasn't about mechanics, it was about trickery.
I liked that though, because it gives the game variety. I find HOTS to be quite boring PvT because I play basically the same game every game with only a small variations. But back in 2011 in WOL, if I came up against a Terran player, they might 11-11, might 3 rax, could 1-1-1 or 1-1-2 or might go CC first or even a Thor rush. You literally had no clue, and they had no clue what you might do. Standard play was far less common and expanding wasn't a given.
Scouting and making reads was the key, not mechanical superiority.
WOL felt like the wild west and it was fun... almost anything could work really well if you dug deep and worked hard on it. That's the way it should be, a game should reward many types of hard work; like it rewarded Gaulzi who was cannon rushing everyone in GM with a high level of success because his cannon rushes were so well thought out.
I want that back. I want a real nerf to Infestors without Swarm Hosts and ridiculous regen on Mutalisks. I want Terran Mech to actually have a AOE damage that is good without the Widow Mine needing to be in the game (hint: buff Siege Tanks!) And I want a real fix to Vortex that doesn't ruin Broodlords (hint: buff the Carrier!). One can dream.
Is there an extension for your BW model on LotV or did you recreate it in hots?
Also do you use triggers or the data editor?
Finally: do you have numbers on minerals/minute (hots or LotV) and overall income on 8 through 16 workers?
Nah mate, is pure data. As simple as increasing amount mined and time to mine, and some tweaks to wait-to-return time. By default, workers are optimized to not trip each other, being perfectly synchronized in SC2: that's why you saturate at 2 workers and the third is less efficient. BW model is the same principle, but with 1 worker. You can search for extension mods in custom games.
Btw, I didn't did them, I used KTVMaps' mod (the one on the worker pairing thread). However SC:BW econ mod is a bit bugged since workers don't bounce properly, thank you for pointing it ^^. I'll look for Starbow data since they use BW econ model. You can see a bit its performance in this vid done by one man of the Starbow crew (jump to min 5). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gavX7sH4OIE
I'll have to fix the BW mod. I think that there might be some mod done by the Starbow team (forget it, ther is), which is the same but obviously for only 1 gas geyser, meaning that gas measurements are not reliable as we have 2 gases.
I don't have accurate data, since I haven't spoken with the creator , so I don't know id it's optmized for 7,8 or 9 mineral patches, but I think that initial worker mines a bit more than actual SC2workers (around 50-55mins per min I'd say), but it's optimized to make 2worker saturation mine only at 75%-80% efficiency since workers lose time bouncing looking for free mineral patches. Look for Starbow Economy mod to experiment with the concept. There has been some talk today about this topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/31gwwx/even_after_all_the_hype_for_lotv_i_still_think/
I'll fix both BW econ mods tomorrow. XD.
Ah I see I've been working with a lot of those mods doing research lately for a new article.
The reason I asked for in game numbers is because I've found all the theoretical numbers differed vastly from my in game tests.
So I decided to just use the in game stuff.
No need to fix the BW ones on my account BTW since I've found a model I really like and I'm going to stick with it for the rest of my analysis.
On April 06 2015 03:38 Umpteen wrote: Personally I think TheDwf's post was more well written than it was necessarily right. Eloquence is often more compelling than it deserves to be.
There is no less time in lotv than in hots. There MAY be more that someone can do before you scout them, but there's always been a lot of options, including the bad things I do during that time. There will still be safe, standard play. Comparisons with chess, a turn based game where your moves must precisely counter those of your opponent one-for-one, are not valid. To paraphrase: all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.
Guys, stop talking about chess like you get it unless you're experienced players. There are situations in which what you say about chess is true, and situations in which it's not. One-to-one moves and counter-moves are sometimes necessary, and they do inform the formation of plans, but likewise, long-term and short-term plans typically inform the selection of optimal moves. Blitz chess is more of a test of your ability to simply maintain basic competency at all times, compared with a standard chess game, in which you can, for example, afford to take on practical risk to obtain a theoretical advantage. In RTS this might be the equivalent of intentionally building the minimal number of defensive units to secure an economy which should put you in a good position down the line, but then having to defend with extreme precision.
I believe TheDwf's comparison to blitz chess is valid as with reduced opportunity to think/scout the effectiveness of the highest skill in the game (in chess understanding and in RTS the acquisition and exploitation of information) is potentially reduced such that decision making is replaced with gambling and/or non-specific, uninformed preparations.
On April 06 2015 10:40 JCoto wrote: On April 06 2015 07:17 ZeromuS wrote:
Is there an extension for your BW model on LotV or did you recreate it in hots?
Also do you use triggers or the data editor?
Finally: do you have numbers on minerals/minute (hots or LotV) and overall income on 8 through 16 workers?
Nah mate, is pure data. As simple as increasing amount mined and time to mine, and some tweaks to wait-to-return time. By default, workers are optimized to not trip each other, being perfectly synchronized in SC2: that's why you saturate at 2 workers and the third is less efficient. BW model is the same principle, but with 1 worker. You can search for extension mods in custom games.
Btw, I didn't did them, I used KTVMaps' mod (the one on the worker pairing thread). However SC:BW econ mod is a bit bugged since workers don't bounce properly, thank you for pointing it ^^. I'll look for Starbow data since they use BW econ model. You can see a bit its performance in this vid done by one man of the Starbow crew (jump to min 5). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gavX7sH4OIE
I'll have to fix the BW mod. I think that there might be some mod done by the Starbow team (forget it, ther is), which is the same but obviously for only 1 gas geyser, meaning that gas measurements are not reliable as we have 2 gases.
I don't have accurate data, since I haven't spoken with the creator , so I don't know id it's optmized for 7,8 or 9 mineral patches, but I think that initial worker mines a bit more than actual SC2workers (around 50-55mins per min I'd say), but it's optimized to make 2worker saturation mine only at 75%-80% efficiency since workers lose time bouncing looking for free mineral patches. Look for Starbow Economy mod to experiment with the concept. There has been some talk today about this topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/31gwwx/even_after_all_the_hype_for_lotv_i_still_think/
I'll fix both BW econ mods tomorrow. XD.
Ah I see I've been working with a lot of those mods doing research lately for a new article.
The reason I asked for in game numbers is because I've found all the theoretical numbers differed vastly from my in game tests.
So I decided to just use the in game stuff.
No need to fix the BW ones on my account BTW since I've found a model I really like and I'm going to stick with it for the rest of my analysis.
Please send me that one! Anyways, since I want to test BW model because I have a mod that uses it, I want to fix them xD. What happens is 2 things: that is optimized to create bounce in close mineral patches, meaning that far minerals are almost viable to be saturated with 2 workers most of the time (not that bad), and that the pathing footprint of minerals for the bounce effect was not set up. Now it works correctly. Now it should be working properly. In fact, they bounce like crazy.
However I agree with you that the BW model might be too strong economically, and may need to be tuned down. The Double Harvest mod simply does the same, but with more clear effect (mining rounds take lots of time, but deliver hughe amount of minerals). I think that once we get a good core concept, it's just about nubmers.
On April 06 2015 10:40 JCoto wrote: On April 06 2015 07:17 ZeromuS wrote:
Is there an extension for your BW model on LotV or did you recreate it in hots?
Also do you use triggers or the data editor?
Finally: do you have numbers on minerals/minute (hots or LotV) and overall income on 8 through 16 workers?
Nah mate, is pure data. As simple as increasing amount mined and time to mine, and some tweaks to wait-to-return time. By default, workers are optimized to not trip each other, being perfectly synchronized in SC2: that's why you saturate at 2 workers and the third is less efficient. BW model is the same principle, but with 1 worker. You can search for extension mods in custom games.
Btw, I didn't did them, I used KTVMaps' mod (the one on the worker pairing thread). However SC:BW econ mod is a bit bugged since workers don't bounce properly, thank you for pointing it ^^. I'll look for Starbow data since they use BW econ model. You can see a bit its performance in this vid done by one man of the Starbow crew (jump to min 5). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gavX7sH4OIE
I'll have to fix the BW mod. I think that there might be some mod done by the Starbow team (forget it, ther is), which is the same but obviously for only 1 gas geyser, meaning that gas measurements are not reliable as we have 2 gases.
I don't have accurate data, since I haven't spoken with the creator , so I don't know id it's optmized for 7,8 or 9 mineral patches, but I think that initial worker mines a bit more than actual SC2workers (around 50-55mins per min I'd say), but it's optimized to make 2worker saturation mine only at 75%-80% efficiency since workers lose time bouncing looking for free mineral patches. Look for Starbow Economy mod to experiment with the concept. There has been some talk today about this topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/31gwwx/even_after_all_the_hype_for_lotv_i_still_think/
I'll fix both BW econ mods tomorrow. XD.
Ah I see I've been working with a lot of those mods doing research lately for a new article.
The reason I asked for in game numbers is because I've found all the theoretical numbers differed vastly from my in game tests.
So I decided to just use the in game stuff.
No need to fix the BW ones on my account BTW since I've found a model I really like and I'm going to stick with it for the rest of my analysis.
Please send me that one! Anyways, since I want to test BW model because I have a mod that uses it, I want to fix them xD. What happens is 2 things: that is optimized to create bounce in close mineral patches, meaning that far minerals are almost viable to be saturated with 2 workers most of the time (not that bad), and that the pathing footprint of minerals for the bounce effect was not set up. Now it works correctly. Now it should be working properly. In fact, they bounce like crazy.
However I agree with you that the BW model might be too strong economically, and may need to be tuned down. The Double Harvest mod simply does the same, but with more clear effect (mining rounds take lots of time, but deliver hughe amount of minerals). I think that once we get a good core concept, it's just about nubmers.
You said earlier it's pure data and not trigger driven.
I haven't seen any pure data implementation of BW econ in SC2. They have all been trigger based. I hope you're not just changing Harvest Time and Harvest Amount, and thinking that's all it takes to create BW econ.
You have to eliminate this hardcoded queuing condition to have a comparable system. Afaik you can't do it without using triggers.
Double Harvesting/Double Mining also uses triggers to manipulate that queuing condition.
In SC2 a worker arriving to an occupied patch will always bounce if the currently mining worker has more than ~2s remaining before finishing. If the currently mining worker has less than ~2s remaining, the arriving worker will queue.
reduced opportunity to think/scout the effectiveness of the highest skill in the game (in chess understanding and in RTS the acquisition and exploitation of information)
MarineKing would be in silver league if that was true, and I highly doubt information was the relevant factor that made Polt win an WCS yesterday.
Maybe protoss is more poker-based, but teran definitely is focussed mainly on mechanics.
reduced opportunity to think/scout the effectiveness of the highest skill in the game (in chess understanding and in RTS the acquisition and exploitation of information)
MarineKing would be in silver league if that was true. Maybe protoss is more poker-based, but teran definitely is focussed mainly on mechanics.
You seriously think people above Silver have better strategical understanding than MarineKing?
reduced opportunity to think/scout the effectiveness of the highest skill in the game (in chess understanding and in RTS the acquisition and exploitation of information)
MarineKing would be in silver league if that was true. Maybe protoss is more poker-based, but teran definitely is focussed mainly on mechanics.
You seriously think people above Silver have better strategical understanding than MarineKing?
Do you literally think literally means literally? The point here is that MarineKing is known to not be the smartest player out there, yet still is a pro. If information really was the most important metric in the game, MarineKing wouldn't be a pro.
A general observation of mine is that people who are convinced that Stacraft is this strategically rewarding game are usually gold league or below. They have not played enough games to discover that most of the decisions you make in the game are pretty obvious and automated (obviously there are exceptions though, that was just an observation - its also possible that they are protoss players).
The same concept can probably be applied to poker as well, and its why pros play 16 tables at once as 95% of the decisions are super obvious. So they need to play alot of hands before it gets apparent who the most skilled player is.
A reason the poker-element sucks in Starcraft is because you usually only play one game against one player. In poker the read-and-trick aspect is awesome when you have played hundreds of hands against a player.
But when you only have 1 chance vs an enemy it becomes much more of a coinflip than skill.
That said, strategy should indeed be further rewarded in Starcraft. More compositions and more options should be viable and have various advantages and disadvantages. I wanna see creative minds explore the game.
But I don't want more hardcounters that create scenarios like these: "I didn't think he would go X and therfore I instalose since I went Y". That doens't fit into a model where you play one game only and not 300 hands.
reduced opportunity to think/scout the effectiveness of the highest skill in the game (in chess understanding and in RTS the acquisition and exploitation of information)
MarineKing would be in silver league if that was true. Maybe protoss is more poker-based, but teran definitely is focussed mainly on mechanics.
You seriously think people above Silver have better strategical understanding than MarineKing?
Do you literally think literally means literally.
Just a general observation based on my experience: Usually people who talk like Stacraft is like this strategic focussed game are gold league and below. They have not played enough games to discover that most of the decisions you make in the game are pretty obvious and automated.
Thats probably true for poker as well, and its why pro poker players play like 16 tables at once because 95% of the decisions are super obvious.
The reason the poker-element sucks in Starcraft is becasue you typically one play one game against one player. In poker the read-and-trick aspect is awesome when you have played hunreds of hands against a player. But when you go up against one guy 1 time it becomes much more of a coinflip than skill.
How can you say that the decisions you make are obvious and automated? Decision making is what makes the most difference between players. If you let a low masters player get up an economy unhindered and max out with an amove army you might not tell the difference between him and a progamer. The difference is that a progamer will always know how to react to all the countless different situation that might be presented to you during the game. Knowing when to attack, when to expand/play greedy, when to cut workers and defend. As well as micro-related decision making: when to pull workers, which units to focus fire, etc. Everyone above low masters knows how to build workers continuosly and not getting supply blocked too often.
FYI, when I am talking about strategy/decisions in this context (we were talking about information and scouting), it's more general/"macro"-focussed. E.g. which units to build and how to move army around and how to scout and react. Many of the examples you bring up are more "micro"-focussed.
Decision making is what makes the most difference between players. If you let a low masters player get up an economy unhindered and max out with an amove army you might not tell the difference between him and a progamer.
As I said before, protoss might be different here, but it's also no surprise why people hate the race. Its way too amove'ish. Terran could use more diversity, but the high control skill cap of bio is awesome. There is definitely a difference how you control a maxed out terran army in TvZ from a top progamer to a master league player.
Everyone above low masters knows how to build workers continuosly and not getting supply blocked too often.
Macro is like 10% of the mechanical requirement when you play bio.
so protoss is lacking the 'core' unit everyone was asking for......what a surprise. i dont even know what the adept is suppose to do...its just useless. give me the dragoon back and stop making protoss even more gimmicky
just a few weeks ago people were complaining sc2 had too easy mechanics and too little advantage for players with superior mechanics. Now they whine about sc2 having too much mechanics and should have 'more thinking'. It's not like, just because the game is faster, a player doesn't have time to think of strategy. You still have lots of time to think of strategy, even with the LOTV changes.
Out of curiousity, how many of you people who already complain and write huge novels about LOTV being dangerous for the genre as a whole and blabla, do actually have the beta and have been playing? I feel most of the people commenting here with very strong opinions haven't even played the game. I have also yet to see a single response from a professional player who, as far as I'm concerned, know shitloads more than 99,9% of the posters in this thread.
I for one love the quick pace of the game, it forces you to be very fast and accurate mechanically, while also making the right decisions. I love rewarding speed and skill.
EDIT: editing to clarify a few things. By professional players knowing more than 99,9% of the posters here, I mean that they know more how LOTV works out in reality, not in theory. They are playing the game, while people who post here sit and theorycraft about something they don't really know anything about. I'm also sure some of you have played the beta, and of course this is not directed at you who have.
4 Gates, 3 rax play, the 1-1-1, ect... you didn't just get an expansion for free. You had to actually scout and make reads
Honestly I think the majority of the playerbase dislikes the pokerelement in Sc2. When you have to guess whether its DT, Blink Stalkers, Oracles or Immortal-all in based on very limitted information, it imo becomes less of the Starcraft that I enjoy. I think strategic diversity should be about soft-counters and how you use the units in different ways. Not about "I build X and since you didn't have Y --> you instalose".
That is how I felt in WOL before I began to learn how to make good reads. I don't think there was that much of a poker element at the end of WOL at all, unless people took blind economic risks (which ironically enough, were often best punished by one base play).
Scouting was probably the skill I had refined the most. I had my Probes, and I used em to scout at certain specific times in every matchup to figure out what my opponent was doing. And the best part was, my opponent might actively work to deny scouting. The game of cat and mouse when it came to scouting wasn't pokerish at all. It was in fact skill based.
And I think a lot of BW players didn't like it, because it wasn't about mechanics, it was about thinking and strategy. As Sun Tzu said: All warfare is based on deception. I would actively work to deceive my opponents regarding my build order. If they scouted as much as I did, and as well as I did, then my tricks wouldn't work. But people like to assume so they can focus on their mechanics.
But now I just float my MSC over their base, and send out a Hallucination when I can, and I know that even if I don't scout well, I can just press F and click on my Nexus and hold a lot of timings.
Wait what? Have you ever watched any BW game? Scouting is a key element of any BW game even in a game with 10 years of professional play without the rules constantly changing, i.e., without blizzard's interference with patches artificially changing things.
Scouting was as important in BW as it ever was in SC2. . .and no, no BW player will tell you the scouting part of the game is boring because it is not about mechanics...hell you can even argue that keeping a scouting worker alive in the early game to scout is even more mechanic dependent than it is in sc2 and will give you the same level of information.
Other than that, I agree with your points regarding the importance of the early game and scouting.
Re-reading it, what I said was not clear, in fact it was poorly worded and misleading, let me clarify that. What I meant to say was that there is a lot more deception, mind games, proxy builds and powerful one base play in SC2 than in BW (I'm not an expert on BW by any means, just from what I've seen) and that BW players didn't like that because it wasn't about mechanics, it was about trickery.
I liked that though, because it gives the game variety. I find HOTS to be quite boring PvT because I play basically the same game every game with only a small variations. But back in 2011 in WOL, if I came up against a Terran player, they might 11-11, might 3 rax, could 1-1-1 or 1-1-2 or might go CC first or even a Thor rush. You literally had no clue, and they had no clue what you might do. Standard play was far less common and expanding wasn't a given.
Scouting and making reads was the key, not mechanical superiority.
WOL felt like the wild west and it was fun... almost anything could work really well if you dug deep and worked hard on it. That's the way it should be, a game should reward many types of hard work; like it rewarded Gaulzi who was cannon rushing everyone in GM with a high level of success because his cannon rushes were so well thought out.
I want that back. I want a real nerf to Infestors without Swarm Hosts and ridiculous regen on Mutalisks. I want Terran Mech to actually have a AOE damage that is good without the Widow Mine needing to be in the game (hint: buff Siege Tanks!) And I want a real fix to Vortex that doesn't ruin Broodlords (hint: buff the Carrier!). One can dream.
There are at least several one base allins in BW for every race. And I shall always argue about strategical variety of SC2 and BW, because BW looks so much more flexible and thought through game.
While reading the TheDwf post I kept thinking about how every year we have a different SC2 champion and how it is difficult for all professional players to maintain same performance. Which perfectly matches TheDwf's arguments about strategy & luck, the faster the game is the more irrelevant the skill becomes.
On April 07 2015 00:16 letian wrote: While reading the TheDwf post I kept thinking about how every year we have a different SC2 champion and how it is difficult for all professional players to maintain same performance. Which perfectly matches TheDwf's arguments about strategy & luck, the faster the game is the more irrelevant the skill becomes.
agreed. yesterday we had another nobody terran coming out of nowhere and winning WCS. because sc2 is fundamentally broken players just can't be consistently succesful. The amount of luck is just too high in this game.
On April 07 2015 00:16 letian wrote: While reading the TheDwf post I kept thinking about how every year we have a different SC2 champion and how it is difficult for all professional players to maintain same performance. Which perfectly matches TheDwf's arguments about strategy & luck, the faster the game is the more irrelevant the skill becomes.
agreed. yesterday we had another nobody terran coming out of nowhere and winning WCS. because sc2 is fundamentally broken players just can't be consistently succesful. The amount of luck is just too high in this game.
When was the last time Polt won something more serious than a tournament with three koreans including him? Maybe you can name at least one BW-esque dominant player in SC2 history?
On April 07 2015 00:16 letian wrote: While reading the TheDwf post I kept thinking about how every year we have a different SC2 champion and how it is difficult for all professional players to maintain same performance. Which perfectly matches TheDwf's arguments about strategy & luck, the faster the game is the more irrelevant the skill becomes.
agreed. yesterday we had another nobody terran coming out of nowhere and winning WCS. because sc2 is fundamentally broken players just can't be consistently succesful. The amount of luck is just too high in this game.
This is not entirely true. Remember that this WCS was almost excluded of Koreans. Yes, Polt is better than most foreigners, but he wouldn't win GSL if that's what you think.
Let's also remind you that Parting just won two tournaments within a week, Life has been performing great in Korea and elsewhere. SC2 is not as random as you seem to think. Polt winning a foreign tournament with mostly foreigners in it is not a very big surprise.
There are also other players who has been on the top and stayed there for quite a while, e.g MVP, Life, Parting, Innovation etc. It's not too different from BW times actually. Remember that in the end of BW, FlaSh wasn't that dominant anymore either. Players are figured out by other players on a daily basis and things will always change. That doesn't mean the game is random or luck based.
EPT
