On January 05 2013 13:02 kill619 wrote: From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
TL;DR: You won't know if your opponent will rush/early push/preassure you even if you know your opponents race if you don't scout. The Random players should always be scouted early. This makes Random a non-issue and just gives more joy to the player who enjoys playing Random.
This just isn't true, at all. I played random at a high masters/low GM MMR for 2 seasons straight a while back and I can attest to the fact that being random is a huge advantage. They can't scout you early enough to know whether a 14p or a 15 hatch is the right choice, or if they should ffe or gate expand, etc. It's not JUST PvR. ZvR and sometimes even TvR can mean you want to go for a different build, and there's no reason for it. And even having to scout early enough to be able to alter your build order (especially in something like a PvP) gives your opponent a pretty significant advantage.
I stopped playing random because of that advantage and it's actually no different. I don't see how someone could argue the fact that they get more "joy" from having their opponents NOT know what race they are. The other player should be able to see what race you got on the loading screen or by pressing the button at the top right; seeing "random" is unfun as shit for the enemy and really doesn't add any joy that couldn't be kept by making random show the race in the loading screen for your average player.
On January 05 2013 13:02 kill619 wrote: From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
TL;DR: You won't know if your opponent will rush/early push/preassure you even if you know your opponents race if you don't scout. The Random players should always be scouted early. This makes Random a non-issue and just gives more joy to the player who enjoys playing Random.
This just isn't true, at all. I played random at a high masters/low GM MMR for 2 seasons straight a while back and I can attest to the fact that being random is a huge advantage. They can't scout you early enough to know whether a 14p or a 15 hatch is the right choice, or if they should ffe or gate expand, etc. It's not JUST PvR. ZvR and sometimes even TvR can mean you want to go for a different build, and there's no reason for it. And even having to scout early enough to be able to alter your build order (especially in something like a PvP) gives your opponent a pretty significant advantage.
I stopped playing random because of that advantage and it's actually no different. I don't see how someone could argue the fact that they get more "joy" from having their opponents NOT know what race they are. The other player should be able to see what race you got on the loading screen or by pressing the button at the top right; seeing "random" is unfun as shit for the enemy and really doesn't add any joy that couldn't be kept by making random show the race in the loading screen for your average player.
so, why arent professional competitive players capitalizing on this "huge advantage?"
On January 05 2013 13:02 kill619 wrote: From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
TL;DR: You won't know if your opponent will rush/early push/preassure you even if you know your opponents race if you don't scout. The Random players should always be scouted early. This makes Random a non-issue and just gives more joy to the player who enjoys playing Random.
This just isn't true, at all. I played random at a high masters/low GM MMR for 2 seasons straight a while back and I can attest to the fact that being random is a huge advantage. They can't scout you early enough to know whether a 14p or a 15 hatch is the right choice, or if they should ffe or gate expand, etc. It's not JUST PvR. ZvR and sometimes even TvR can mean you want to go for a different build, and there's no reason for it. And even having to scout early enough to be able to alter your build order (especially in something like a PvP) gives your opponent a pretty significant advantage.
I stopped playing random because of that advantage and it's actually no different. I don't see how someone could argue the fact that they get more "joy" from having their opponents NOT know what race they are. The other player should be able to see what race you got on the loading screen or by pressing the button at the top right; seeing "random" is unfun as shit for the enemy and really doesn't add any joy that couldn't be kept by making random show the race in the loading screen for your average player.
so, why arent professional competitive players capitalizing on this "huge advantage?"
Pretty sure you're just baiting so I guess I might fill it in? Maps. Experience. They can try to cheese. There are safe openings.
not really baiting. just saying that the whole idea that there is a "huge advantage" to playing random, and the fact that nobody who plays this game for a living plays random do not make sense.
On January 06 2013 12:43 dAPhREAk wrote: not really baiting. just saying that the whole idea that there is a "huge advantage" to playing random, and the fact that nobody who plays this game for a living plays random do not make sense.
Maybe the advantage one gets from playing random is greatly diminished the more skilled player someone is.
On January 06 2013 12:43 dAPhREAk wrote: not really baiting. just saying that the whole idea that there is a "huge advantage" to playing random, and the fact that nobody who plays this game for a living plays random do not make sense.
Maybe the advantage one gets from playing random is greatly diminished the more skilled player someone is.
That's right, that's why people should focus on improving their skills, instead of complaining about random players.
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
I'll but in and say while I agree on all the points in the video I don't think that HR is the main concern for how you play against the Random race in SC2, it always comes down to hidden build orders and the meta game. These two factors are what should be defining your play, not HR.
The only reason not to scout in any MO is the meta game - the assumptions that player A makes on how player B will play and vice versa. These assumptions shouldn't be applied to laddering, unless in very high level play or small player pools (like GM or high masters) since you in most cases will have absolutely no prior experience with the player you're facing off against. The hidden build orders is why most people won't feel at ease with facing off against a Random player. This is not bad counter-play, it's the complete opposite. While its true that it makes it so that you as a race picking player can't go with your cookie-cutter end all win all opening play against a known opponent it also poses you with a new problem that can be solved, as with any other race. Restrictions in BO's is not the same as bad counter-play since the same is true against all races. If most players would view R as a 4th race not only in theory but also in practice they would find that it has it's own gameplay and as such should be treated as a different race from the other three.
Edit: I suppose I'm slightly contradicting myself regarding the meta game. Of course you have to rely on the basics of the actualy race (not random) meta game for mid-late game. The meta game for the actual race should be disregarded for the opening where the hidden build order is in effect, until you know (or have a guess on) your opponents build order (and race). The point I'm trying to make is that in a ladder situation the defining variables for any opening in any match up are imo (1) map size, (2) spawn location, (3) opponent's opener and (4) race (z/t/p/r).
On January 06 2013 12:43 dAPhREAk wrote: not really baiting. just saying that the whole idea that there is a "huge advantage" to playing random, and the fact that nobody who plays this game for a living plays random do not make sense.
Maybe the advantage one gets from playing random is greatly diminished the more skilled player someone is.
And that skill level asymptotes at high masters-GM where random drops off entirely. In the context of high level play, theres still a huge capacity to outplay your opponent. Yet, despite random's advantage, it is virtually extinct at the top of the ladder in an environment it supposedly thrives in.
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
Video doesn't prove anything, lol. The basic concept of expanding choices is situational to a strategy game like SC2. For like the tenth time you tunnel vision on random when SC2 is a game which strategy revolves around limited choices. Dealing with problems that have FEW meaningful solutions. This applies to every fucking aspect of SC2. You have TONS of options; correct choices and subpar choices. You have a huge array of strategies you can play vs random; chances are most of them will suck. There are TONS of cool ways to open in mirror match-ups; majority of them will get you killed. Like, everything you advocate for random applies almost equally to SC2; the only way to satisfy such ridiculous constraints would be to make a single grey blob race that removes all diversity and imbalance.
It's not counter-play, it's (ironically) another choice. In your OPINION, it's not a good idea, and in your OPINION, it should be fixed. You don't get it, but many others do. Have you ever considered that you have a bias you're unwilling to give up? For every reason you take issue with random you take issue with starcraft itself in ways, but you're only willing to blame random itself.
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
I'll but in and say while I agree on all the points in the video I don't think that HR is the main concern for how you play against the Random race in SC2, it always comes down to hidden build orders and the meta game. These two factors are what should be defining your play, not HR.
The only reason not to scout in any MO is the meta game - the assumptions that player A makes on how player B will play and vice versa. These assumptions shouldn't be applied to laddering, unless in very high level play or small player pools (like GM or high masters) since you in most cases will have absolutely no prior experience with the player you're facing off against. The hidden build orders is why most people won't feel at ease with facing off against a Random player. This is not bad counter-play, it's the complete opposite. While its true that it makes it so that you as a race picking player can't go with your cookie-cutter end all win all opening play against a known opponent it also poses you with a new problem that can be solved, as with any other race. Restrictions in BO's is not the same as bad counter-play since the same is true against all races. If most players would view R as a 4th race not only in theory but also in practice they would find that it has it's own gameplay and as such should be treated as a different race from the other three.
Edit: I suppose I'm slightly contradicting myself regarding the meta game. Of course you have to rely on the basics of the actualy race (not random) meta game for mid-late game. The meta game for the actual race should be disregarded for the opening where the hidden build order is in effect, until you know (or have a guess on) your opponents build order (and race). The point I'm trying to make is that in a ladder situation the defining variables for any opening in any match up are imo (1) map size, (2) spawn location, (3) opponent's opener and (4) race (z/t/p/r).
also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
When I was saying that, I was referring to what a player can firmly, even mathematically, prove that their opponent can and can not do at any given point in a game. Metagaming something is completely different, although related to actually knowing it, and that's what determines viable opener when HR is not present; Knowing exactly what a given race can and can not do. ex. Fe builds aren't viable because you can metagame that they won't attack you early in the game, but because, when properly executed, the Fe'ing player has adequate defense for any attack that could threaten him/her.
Restrictions in BO's is not the same as bad counter-play since the same is true against all races.
So if I'm reading this correctly your saying that the number of viable build orders isn't limited any more by HR than it already is by knowing an opponents race. If so, iirc, there are examples that contradict that statement. ZvR for example. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong , optimal builds for zerg match ups are Hatch first for ZvT, and pool first for the other two. Introducing HR means there is no such thing as a viable optimal opening, and is replaced with either gambling on picking the correct opener for the right match up or knowing that certain map features can compensate for any disadvantages of your build, the latter limiting map viable features which is bad for a number of reasons.
If HR expands one players number of viable openers at the expense of another player's, how is that not bad counter-play?
If most players would view R as a 4th race not only in theory but also in practice they would find that it has it's own gameplay and as such should be treated as a different race from the other three.
The only difference between picking your race and selecting random, is HR. The only thing that a random player could do that a non-random player can't is attempt to take advantage of his opponents lack of information of an opponents race in the beginning of a game. It all seems to fall back to the counter-play idea, that this mechanic gives more options to one player at the expense of another players experience of the game.
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
I'll but in and say while I agree on all the points in the video I don't think that HR is the main concern for how you play against the Random race in SC2, it always comes down to hidden build orders and the meta game. These two factors are what should be defining your play, not HR.
The only reason not to scout in any MO is the meta game - the assumptions that player A makes on how player B will play and vice versa. These assumptions shouldn't be applied to laddering, unless in very high level play or small player pools (like GM or high masters) since you in most cases will have absolutely no prior experience with the player you're facing off against. The hidden build orders is why most people won't feel at ease with facing off against a Random player. This is not bad counter-play, it's the complete opposite. While its true that it makes it so that you as a race picking player can't go with your cookie-cutter end all win all opening play against a known opponent it also poses you with a new problem that can be solved, as with any other race. Restrictions in BO's is not the same as bad counter-play since the same is true against all races. If most players would view R as a 4th race not only in theory but also in practice they would find that it has it's own gameplay and as such should be treated as a different race from the other three.
Edit: I suppose I'm slightly contradicting myself regarding the meta game. Of course you have to rely on the basics of the actualy race (not random) meta game for mid-late game. The meta game for the actual race should be disregarded for the opening where the hidden build order is in effect, until you know (or have a guess on) your opponents build order (and race). The point I'm trying to make is that in a ladder situation the defining variables for any opening in any match up are imo (1) map size, (2) spawn location, (3) opponent's opener and (4) race (z/t/p/r).
but many maps are very big, even if you scout from the 1st depot/pylon whatever or from the start, and your opponent is on the 4th expansion that you will check, then there is a big chance that if you are not "good enough" that you will be inevatbly behind and it greatly limits what you can do, in fact you can do only 1 thing as many people have stated before, you can only do the one build that works vs all races. not only is this very boring, but it is also unfair that you are forced to do this because the other opponent wants to play more races.
also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
When I was saying that, I was referring to what a player can firmly, even mathematically, prove that their opponent can and can not do at any given point in a game. Metagaming something is completely different, although related to actually knowing it, and that's what determines viable opener when HR is not present; Knowing exactly what a given race can and can not do. ex. Fe builds aren't viable because you can metagame that they won't attack you early in the game, but because, when properly executed, the Fe'ing player has adequate defense for any attack that could threaten him/her.
And the same is true for Random. You seem to forget that the Random player won't know what the race picking player is doing until he scouts him. As I argued this is the defining moment of the early game, not the races by themselves.This since most cheese has similar timings and counters disregarding race. Early pushes would be scouted anyways so as long as you scout your own BO can still be close to optimal, at least viable, against any early game BO that the Random opponent throws at you.
So if I'm reading this correctly your saying that the number of viable build orders isn't limited any more by HR than it already is by knowing an opponents race. If so, iirc, there are examples that contradict that statement. ZvR for example. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong , optimal builds for zerg match ups are Hatch first for ZvT, and pool first for the other two. Introducing HR means there is no such thing as a viable optimal opening, and is replaced with either gambling on picking the correct opener for the right match up or knowing that certain map features can compensate for any disadvantages of your build, the latter limiting map viable features which is bad for a number of reasons.
If HR expands one players number of viable openers at the expense of another player's, how is that not bad counter-play?
Because the defining factor still isn't HR but hidden build order (HBO), map and spawning point before it's race. The map will always dictate the possibility to FE, rush or early push more then the race you are up against (except special cases in PvR where you have to account for PvP on maps like Tal'darim). As for ZvR hatch first is viable on all 4 player maps asfaik (and larger 2 player maps as well, ex Daybreak). This since the Random player will not know where you are fast enough, or the map will be big enough, for rushes to really be the end all win all games BO for a Random player. So lets bring it down to this: in all cases but PvP on Taldarim it's viable to expand early (or reasonably fast) against a Random opponent. These expands might not be the optimal way to FE but it will not put you behind enough to lose against an early or midgame push. And after that you should be outplaying your opponent mechanicaly.
The only difference between picking your race and selecting random, is HR. The only thing that a random player could do that a non-random player can't is attempt to take advantage of his opponents lack of information of an opponents race in the beginning of a game. It all seems to fall back to the counter-play idea, that this mechanic gives more options to one player at the expense of another players experience of the game
This is just you beeing biased. Not all Random players will cheese/greed so then the HR will be of no effect. You're overthinking what a Random player can do with this. It's not like he's going to be able to have 50 reapers by the 2 minute mark. It doesn't give more options! The cheese and greed will be the same! This is also arguing that all Random players who doesn't cheese or greed are not playing their race optimally. But that's because cheesing/greeding in every game is (a) not very fun for anyone, (b) not actually a good way to play since it also involves high risk for the cheeser/greeder.
On January 06 2013 12:43 dAPhREAk wrote: not really baiting. just saying that the whole idea that there is a "huge advantage" to playing random, and the fact that nobody who plays this game for a living plays random do not make sense.
Maybe the advantage one gets from playing random is greatly diminished the more skilled player someone is.
And that skill level asymptotes at high masters-GM where random drops off entirely. In the context of high level play, theres still a huge capacity to outplay your opponent. Yet, despite random's advantage, it is virtually extinct at the top of the ladder in an environment it supposedly thrives in.
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
Video doesn't prove anything, lol. The basic concept of expanding choices is situational to a strategy game like SC2. For like the tenth time you tunnel vision on random when SC2 is a game which strategy revolves around limited choices. Dealing with problems that have FEW meaningful solutions. This applies to every fucking aspect of SC2. You have TONS of options; correct choices and subpar choices. You have a huge array of strategies you can play vs random; chances are most of them will suck. There are TONS of cool ways to open in mirror match-ups; majority of them will get you killed. Like, everything you advocate for random applies almost equally to SC2; the only way to satisfy such ridiculous constraints would be to make a single grey blob race that removes all diversity and imbalance.
It's not counter-play, it's (ironically) another choice. In your OPINION, it's not a good idea, and in your OPINION, it should be fixed. You don't get it, but many others do. Have you ever considered that you have a bias you're unwilling to give up? For every reason you take issue with random you take issue with starcraft itself in ways, but you're only willing to blame random itself.
Hmm. So if we ignore aaaaall the points I've tried to make and my motive for being on this thread, that I've already mentioned at the end of every post that you seem to miss anyway, and just peg me as some guy who wants random removed because I'm simply projecting problems with sc2 onto random or more specifically HR, which, again I feel made pretty clear isn't the case, then why not remove HR? If the problems exist with or without HR, then why does it matter whether it's in the game or not, why are you auguring in favor of it so much if it really doesn't matter?
On January 06 2013 12:43 dAPhREAk wrote: not really baiting. just saying that the whole idea that there is a "huge advantage" to playing random, and the fact that nobody who plays this game for a living plays random do not make sense.
Maybe the advantage one gets from playing random is greatly diminished the more skilled player someone is.
And that skill level asymptotes at high masters-GM where random drops off entirely. In the context of high level play, theres still a huge capacity to outplay your opponent. Yet, despite random's advantage, it is virtually extinct at the top of the ladder in an environment it supposedly thrives in.
On January 06 2013 17:47 kill619 wrote:
On January 06 2013 01:51 rd wrote:
On January 05 2013 23:47 kill619 wrote:
On January 05 2013 19:55 rd wrote:
On January 05 2013 13:02 kill619 wrote:
On January 05 2013 09:30 rd wrote:
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
Video doesn't prove anything, lol. The basic concept of expanding choices is situational to a strategy game like SC2. For like the tenth time you tunnel vision on random when SC2 is a game which strategy revolves around limited choices. Dealing with problems that have FEW meaningful solutions. This applies to every fucking aspect of SC2. You have TONS of options; correct choices and subpar choices. You have a huge array of strategies you can play vs random; chances are most of them will suck. There are TONS of cool ways to open in mirror match-ups; majority of them will get you killed. Like, everything you advocate for random applies almost equally to SC2; the only way to satisfy such ridiculous constraints would be to make a single grey blob race that removes all diversity and imbalance.
It's not counter-play, it's (ironically) another choice. In your OPINION, it's not a good idea, and in your OPINION, it should be fixed. You don't get it, but many others do. Have you ever considered that you have a bias you're unwilling to give up? For every reason you take issue with random you take issue with starcraft itself in ways, but you're only willing to blame random itself.
Hmm. So if we ignore aaaaall the points I've tried to make and my motive for being on this thread, that I've already mentioned at the end of every post that you seem to miss anyway, and just peg me as some guy who wants random removed because I'm simply projecting problems with sc2 onto random or more specifically HR, which, again I feel made pretty clear isn't the case, then why not remove HR? If the problems exist with or without HR, then why does it matter whether it's in the game or not, why are you auguring in favor of it so much if it really doesn't matter?
I've addressed -every- single point, the majority of which cherry pick problems of random and conveniently ignore the "problem" that extends across the entire game. All of these aren't problems at all; they're entirely normal to the game. It all revolves back around to the underlying issue that players with an invested bias against random shouldn't be given credence in an argument to remove it simply because they don't think it's fun to play against. You keep bringing up "problems" with random which simply aren't "problems."
HR is already in the game, people enjoy HR, and there has yet to be an argument convincing enough to remove it for the sake of pleasing disgruntled non-random players. It adds a little more depth to the game without taking anything away from it.
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
I'll but in and say while I agree on all the points in the video I don't think that HR is the main concern for how you play against the Random race in SC2, it always comes down to hidden build orders and the meta game. These two factors are what should be defining your play, not HR.
The only reason not to scout in any MO is the meta game - the assumptions that player A makes on how player B will play and vice versa. These assumptions shouldn't be applied to laddering, unless in very high level play or small player pools (like GM or high masters) since you in most cases will have absolutely no prior experience with the player you're facing off against. The hidden build orders is why most people won't feel at ease with facing off against a Random player. This is not bad counter-play, it's the complete opposite. While its true that it makes it so that you as a race picking player can't go with your cookie-cutter end all win all opening play against a known opponent it also poses you with a new problem that can be solved, as with any other race. Restrictions in BO's is not the same as bad counter-play since the same is true against all races. If most players would view R as a 4th race not only in theory but also in practice they would find that it has it's own gameplay and as such should be treated as a different race from the other three.
Edit: I suppose I'm slightly contradicting myself regarding the meta game. Of course you have to rely on the basics of the actualy race (not random) meta game for mid-late game. The meta game for the actual race should be disregarded for the opening where the hidden build order is in effect, until you know (or have a guess on) your opponents build order (and race). The point I'm trying to make is that in a ladder situation the defining variables for any opening in any match up are imo (1) map size, (2) spawn location, (3) opponent's opener and (4) race (z/t/p/r).
but many maps are very big, even if you scout from the 1st depot/pylon whatever or from the start, and your opponent is on the 4th expansion that you will check, then there is a big chance that if you are not "good enough" that you will be inevatbly behind and it greatly limits what you can do, in fact you can do only 1 thing as many people have stated before, you can only do the one build that works vs all races. not only is this very boring, but it is also unfair that you are forced to do this because the other opponent wants to play more races.
Yes, but the same is true for all matchups. Your FE isn't ever safe. That's not because of Random but because it's a calculated risk. And your opponent will need to scout you too so you should know his race faster then you reach his base in a "4-player map wrong scoutpath scenario". If you're a Protoss player I will give you that you probably will have to gate expand on larger 4 player maps, which might not be ideal but still gives you all the possibilities there is for the race in the mid game.
also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
When I was saying that, I was referring to what a player can firmly, even mathematically, prove that their opponent can and can not do at any given point in a game. Metagaming something is completely different, although related to actually knowing it, and that's what determines viable opener when HR is not present; Knowing exactly what a given race can and can not do. ex. Fe builds aren't viable because you can metagame that they won't attack you early in the game, but because, when properly executed, the Fe'ing player has adequate defense for any attack that could threaten him/her.
And the same is true for Random. You seem to forget that the Random player won't know what the race picking player is doing until he scouts him. As I argued this is the defining moment of the early game, not the races by themselves.This since most cheese has similar timings and counters disregarding race. Early pushes would be scouted anyways so as long as you scout your own BO can still be close to optimal, at least viable, against any early game BO that the Random opponent throws at you.
So if I'm reading this correctly your saying that the number of viable build orders isn't limited any more by HR than it already is by knowing an opponents race. If so, iirc, there are examples that contradict that statement. ZvR for example. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong , optimal builds for zerg match ups are Hatch first for ZvT, and pool first for the other two. Introducing HR means there is no such thing as a viable optimal opening, and is replaced with either gambling on picking the correct opener for the right match up or knowing that certain map features can compensate for any disadvantages of your build, the latter limiting map viable features which is bad for a number of reasons.
If HR expands one players number of viable openers at the expense of another player's, how is that not bad counter-play?
Because the defining factor still isn't HR but hidden build order (HBO), map and spawning point before it's race. The map will always dictate the possibility to FE, rush or early push more then the race you are up against (except special cases in PvR where you have to account for PvP on maps like Tal'darim). As for ZvR hatch first is viable on all 4 player maps asfaik (and larger 2 player maps as well, ex Daybreak). This since the Random player will not know where you are fast enough, or the map will be big enough, for rushes to really be the end all win all games BO for a Random player. So lets bring it down to this: in all cases but PvP on Taldarim it's viable to expand early (or reasonably fast) against a Random opponent. These expands might not be the optimal way to FE but it will not put you behind enough to lose against an early or midgame push. And after that you should be outplaying your opponent mechanicaly.
The only difference between picking your race and selecting random, is HR. The only thing that a random player could do that a non-random player can't is attempt to take advantage of his opponents lack of information of an opponents race in the beginning of a game. It all seems to fall back to the counter-play idea, that this mechanic gives more options to one player at the expense of another players experience of the game
This is just you beeing biased. Not all Random players will cheese/greed so then the HR will be of no effect. You're overthinking what a Random player can do with this. It's not like he's going to be able to have 50 reapers by the 2 minute mark. It doesn't give more options! The cheese and greed will be the same! This is also arguing that all Random players who doesn't cheese or greed are not playing their race optimally. But that's because cheesing/greeding in every game is (a) not very fun for anyone, (b) not actually a good way to play since it also involves high risk for the cheeser/greeder.
And the same is true for Random. You seem to forget that the Random player won't know what the race picking player is doing until he scouts him.
Both players are without the information of knowing exactly what the other is doing until they scout, true. The difference is that one player can limit the opponents possibilities to the race they're playing at the beginning of the game and the other player can't. It's an un-even level of preparation granted to only one player, and I don't understand why it's there.
The map will always dictate the possibility to FE, rush or early push more then the race you are up against
Doesn't the ability to proxy and for Terran to fe and plant the cc any where they want make this not valid?
This is just you beeing biased. Not all Random players will cheese/greed so then the HR will be of no effect.
You can't balance an ability, mechanic, feature, etc. in your game with this logic. It's not bias, it's just that you can't put an option into a game and balance around the idea that a player will decide to stop using it eventually or not use it at use it to begin with. ex. You can't up marine damage to 50 and justify it with "maybe players will grow a conscious or get bored and stop using it"
Even if HR, isn't changing games, player experience, match making etc. that still doesn't answer why it's in the game. iirc, the conclusion I've been able to make about it is that it's suppose to act as an incentive to play random, which i don't really get why there needs to be more of them than what would already exist with out it, and the incentive is in the form of an advantage, that may or may not even exist. It's almost like gamification, but less effective. A mechanic introduced into the game to solve a problem, that didn't exist, in a way that's less efficient than other methods available.
On January 06 2013 12:43 dAPhREAk wrote: not really baiting. just saying that the whole idea that there is a "huge advantage" to playing random, and the fact that nobody who plays this game for a living plays random do not make sense.
Maybe the advantage one gets from playing random is greatly diminished the more skilled player someone is.
And that skill level asymptotes at high masters-GM where random drops off entirely. In the context of high level play, theres still a huge capacity to outplay your opponent. Yet, despite random's advantage, it is virtually extinct at the top of the ladder in an environment it supposedly thrives in.
On January 06 2013 17:47 kill619 wrote:
On January 06 2013 01:51 rd wrote:
On January 05 2013 23:47 kill619 wrote:
On January 05 2013 19:55 rd wrote:
On January 05 2013 13:02 kill619 wrote:
On January 05 2013 09:30 rd wrote:
On January 05 2013 08:58 kill619 wrote: If playing random is truly harder than main-ing a race, which I agree it is to an extent, and having your race hidden is an advantage, wouldn't the win rates for random only represent the diffidence in difficultly between picking a race and random not compensated for by your race being hidden, the compensation itself requiring some experimenting to even begin to quantify? Even if on average a random player will be worst than an equally ranked non random player, I don't understand why it makes since to introduce such an element of chance into the game. It seems so counter intuitive to go through the trouble of making a match making system that does such a good job of giving players such evenly matched opponents and such a balanced game to turn around and tell the player,"Is your opponent random? Man, better hope he's not good enough to overcome the disadvantage he gave him self combined with the advantage we gave him too". Random, or offracing, already messes with how the match making system interprets a players skill, so I don't understand how they could think it would be a good idea to mess with it a little more by hiding the race. The only advantage I can think of to this whole thing is that the advantage in the early game allows random players to win more in their weaker match ups(kinda have to exclude higher level play where the gimmicks aren't enough to overcome skill) lowering their mmr's uncertainty, making their ranking slightly more accurate and making Random player's games "closer". Even that explanation is trumped by the fact that they could have just had separate ranks for each race on an account and have the "Random" option just tap into one of those ranks.
I get that playing random is fun and isn't meant to and probably never will be viable, hidden race or not, at the highest levels of play, but something about giving players the option of any sort of an advantage in such a competitive setting as a ranked match making system, where most people care so much about winning as it is, seems misplaced. Maybe having it as an option in custom and arcade games would be fun, but feels like it contrast the competitive aesthetic(?) a match making system creates.
Your last sentence seems a bit ironic.Of all the fun things about playing random the only things that's ruined by revealing the race is the ability to "have fun" at the expense of non-Random players.
That's a very general issue with match-making though, lol. When you queue up against the random player who's as good as you, you're basically queueing against a slightly favored opponent. You're just as likely to hit the random whos on par with you in a match-up as you are hitting up a Terran who is simply a better player -- he doesn't even have to be rated higher either. Either way, there are way too few random players to dent the ladder's rating inflation. The entirety of the match-making rating system is shaken by much more common abuses of rating inflation/deflation: You could be a Zerg with a sick ZvP but terrible ZvT. Any protoss you fight will get stomped as your MMR is held back by the fact you lose more often than normal to Terran. You could simply be smurfing and purposefully tanking your MMR to stomp lowbies. MMR inflation is pretty normal, and random is by far one of the most benign forms of it. In a game with multiple races you can't expect people to be equally competent against all three of them -- let alone be trusted to exert their full effort and achieve their proper rating.
Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting. If it were a perfect world maybe randoms would be slightly better, but the nature of ladder means you will never always have an even match-up with ANY race; random included. Theres nothing wrong with random in a competitive setting where skill levels vary pretty wildly. You generally break even at equal ratings, and you have occasional favored for and against with all races including random. The only time random is really affected by ladder is when the skill levels asymptote at top ratings and random players can no longer win by being better than their opponent.
Every race has early game advantages, but because they're advantages of a traditional race it's okay -- fuck random. Random exists with hidden races. It's not the other way around. Non-random players bear the burden that it's a material fact of life; you dont simply wish it gone. You can literally take that exact idea and strawman it to oblivion with ANYTHING in starcraft 2 that isn't fun: Ling run-by's are fun for zerg at the expense of Terran and Protoss, etc. SC2 is a game of solving problems. Problems aren't always fun. If you don't enjoy brick walls, SC2 probably isn't for you.
1.Sure, I'd agree that's a problem with the match making system that I would also argue is made worst by having random, in any form, as an option, but for the sake of staying on topic lets just assume that were talking about a RvX game where no matter what match up gets rolled that the Random player is of the same skill level as his opponent, seeing as how that't the only way you could balance Starcraft and it's match making system based on player skill.(if were gonna keep talking about this)
2. "Random doesn't really have any advantages in an even rating setting"
I don't even know where you stand on this any more.
"The advantage wasn't given to them because they deserved it"
"The race being hidden balances this out just a little to alleviate the difficulty."
"You suggest random to be removed as it currently functions, i.e. remove the hidden race mechanic; the only thing that makes random remotely advantageous"
"All of your complaints bring up the advantages of playing random when the disadvantages massively overwhelm them."
"The advantage they gain from this balances (not really) the fact that random is ridiculously difficult and unviable."
These are all things quoted directly from you in the past page of this thread. If you don't think the problem exist, I play terran but iirc there are some problems with ZvR and PvR openings that have talked about plenty of times before, probably even in this thread. If you do think it exist, then welcome back to the conversation. There's an advantage, also acting as an incentive, to the race option Random in the form of hiding the Random players race. The advantage isn't enough to matter at the highest skill levels, but it's still enough to alter how matches are played and their outcomes just about every where else.
From the player perspective, it creates trolls who play random to abuse the lack of information a non-Random opponent suffers from and introduces an element of chance into an otherwise very skill driven game. By the way, I'm not saying that every person playing random is doing so to abuse it, but that there are players who purposely opt to not reveal their race, abuse their opponents lack of information, and bm opponents for the advantage that was given to them by the game hiding their race. From the match making perspective, It gives random players the option to inflate their mmr by winning games, with the help of the advantage given to them, against opponents that they may not have been capable of beating if both players had had the the same information of each others race at the very beginning of the game. So why does it exist? The only answer that makes any sense is that it's suppose to be an incentive to players to play mulitplayer in a more challenging way than picking their own race, but even in that case why do you need an incentive attched to playing random and, if it's really necessary incentivise playing random, why would make that incentive something as game altering as hiding one players race? More or better portriats, decals, just about anything cosmetic really, getting more ladder point for wins, etc. would have made for fine incentives without messing with other players experience of the multiplayer. I just don't understand why they would make this decision.
You're mixing up three separate ideas. Let me summarize my statements: Even rating =/= even skill level. Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating, but has an equal chance to win. At an even skill level they're likely favored just a little in rating. This interaction only exists in the lower leagues because everyone has the capacity to have such hugely varying skill differences -- this is infinitely more impactful than ANY advantage one particular race can offer. When you get to high levels the random player can no longer outplay opponents to the extent he did before; the advantage of the hidden race is made all but irrelevant. Ladder inflation isn't a problem as much as it's a simple fact of life on ladder. It's not an issue of random, it's just the nature of how the ladder attempts to gauge skill. If theres a problem at all it's with the ladder system itself, and you'll probably never get a system more accurate with multiple races (keyword: multiple races cause inflation not random).
You're also taking a bunch of issues that are general to the ladder and the playerbase and associating it with random, and then presumptuously touting random as the problem behind it. ALL races have trolls; ALL races have advantages that incentivize playing them; ALL races have portraits and decals; ALL races are capable of being played for fun -- and given how few random players there are, random represents the least trolls of any race. Baseless complaints amount to evidence only of an issue with a player who can't deal with random and not random itself. Stop acknowledging them, lol. Seriously. Should EVERY complaint be acknowledged as an issue of the game? You have yet to prove anything other than random is irrelevant -- but certainly not an issue.
Random's MMR gets slightly inflated by the fact the race is hidden, so a random player is on average worse at an even rating
Saying it's inflated because of hidden race(HR) assumes that a Random player is benefiting from their advantage and saying that a random player of even rating is, on average, worse than their opponent(ie. not a 50% chance of winning) assumes that that same player would decide to stop using their advantage, despite it still being available to them. The first assumption can be made, but the second can't, at the very least not simultaneously. Unless I'm misinterpreting you and your referring to the players whose mmr will be inflated to the threshold of mmr's where players' skill negates the advantage, which I would predict is still well above the majority of the 1v1 population on any server, and thus worth looking into if not to make any changes to random at least understand why it exists with HR.
That aside, I did and still do agree with you that there is a problem with the match making system, but would go further to say that random, HR or not, exacerbates the problem. Hypothesizing that if the problem exist because of how much variance in skill one account can have in 3(4) match ups as a race picker, then the option of random having 9(12) allows for more variance in skill that one's rank has to attempt to account for. It creates a larger uncertainty(Standard deviation) for your mmr than what already exist if the player were only playing one race, resulting in less evenly skilled matches and a less effective match making system. HR, however, doesn't have much to do the topic,as interesting a topic it is. When HR is thrown in to the equation, as you said, it inflates the average rank of random players up until an unspecified "high level of play". A sort of icing on the cake that is a match making system that still has room for improvement. The match making probably could have been designed in such a way that an account is given an mmr for every specific match up in the game(Random not included) and use that mmr, for race pickers and random players,to be used for match making.
I suppose my troll argument is based on the fact that HR gives you the opportunity to win games vs players you wouldn't be able to beat without it and the assumption, imo a safe one but still one that doesn't have any proof, that most players are more annoyed and flustered by bm during or after losing than they are by listening to whine after beating a bm'er. I'll concede that point.
I'm not out to prove anything or bash anyone, just interested in why HR exist. If it's there to be a fun and different way to play the game, why introduce the mechanic to ranked match-making and force people who are, can be somewhat assumed if there playing ranked making, looking to play the most competitive and skill based mode multiplayer has to offer to deal with HR? It's not like random suddenly becomes pointless to play if the races where revealed, there are plenty of random players who already willingly reveal their race. There are so many reasons that exist outside of the HR advantage for wanting to play random, so if it's suppose to be purely an incentive to play as random I don't really understand that either. Like I said a few post ago, there are so many other incentives that could have been used that wouldn't alter how the game functions. What's the need for an incentive to play random anyway? Even if they went about it in such a way that didn't affect game play or the ranking system, what to be gained from doing exactly? What's to be gained by trying to get more people to play random? I don't see the motive behind all of it.
Theres no assumption at all: They have the advantage and utilize it, otherwise they'd have to be significantly better (not at a specific match-up but all-round) to fight on par with a worse opponent at an even rating. But none of that has anything to do with why HR exists. HR has always been on random and it simply worked out the way it does now. It wasn't a calculated decision after observation of random on ladder (or maybe it was, but I highly doubt it). There could be 30% of players playing random and it wouldn't have any effect on the ladder's inflation The system itself can't accurately pin a player to their rating with multiple races and create perfectly even matches; nor will it ever.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames. Even without random, ladder has always had its own metagame. If someone actually has ambitions to reach the top, then random is by far the least of their problems -- yet like all problems, random has a capacity to be solved and defeated consistently at even ratings. Players don't have the freedom to complain how they'd like that altered to their advantage; just an opinion on whether they personally like it. You don't walk into a PvZ and ignore the threat of speedlings, refuse to simcity, and then turn around and bitch when you lose your workers to a run-by because speedlings alter the way a protoss prefers to function. It's a ridiculous point that exhumes entitlement. You're also speaking for a very small vocal minority, who have a legitimate bias when random is outnumbered massively in SC2.
And incentives? A player that likes making tons of cheap units is incentivized to play zerg. A player that likes to build gigantic deathballs is generally more interested in protoss. SC2 is a game of strength and weaknesses; you simply can't begrudge random because it has strengths of it's own too, citing how random shouldn't be offered 'incentives' to play. If they really wanted to give an incentive to play random they'd buff it. It's just how it is. Theres no further logic then that. Every single point you bring up applies to EVERY in starcraft 2; moreso than random, even. As long as there are multiple races, random included, people will get upset at the other two (three) races, because losing in a difficult game isn't fun.
Ladder wasn't made to create a high level competitive environment akin to tournament level metagames.
Then why is it designed to give players the most evenly skilled opponents it possibly can? Why does it rank players according to their skill? I think our definitions of a "competitive environment" are very different, but either way i don't think it relates to the problem I'm having understanding HR's existence.
So you seem to think that random HR is no different than any other advantage than that of picking a race, and that questioning why HR exist is no different than questioning why any of the other race specific advantages exist. I think I found a video that explains the concept that I haven't been able to put into words that's very relevant to HR.
A mechanic or ability in a multiplayer game should increase the number of meaningful choices available to the player using it and the player it's being used on.
In the context of our argument, HR is bad counter-play. While its fun and gives more options for the player picking random , in the form of the ability to abuse their opponents lack of information, it also limits what the non-random player can and can't, at least not safely, do in the beginning of the game.
So if you could agree that HR is bad counter-play, then why is it still in the game? It's been in Starcraft since the beginning, made into to WOL and so far seems like it's going to be in HOTS. It's hard to believe that through 14+ years of developing and tweaking such a well designed game in so many other regards that no one at blizzard ever stopped to see that this was not a good idea and fix it. It only leaves that there's some underlying reason, that isn't simply incompetence, that it's still there, but what is that reason? I just. Don't. Get it.
Video doesn't prove anything, lol. The basic concept of expanding choices is situational to a strategy game like SC2. For like the tenth time you tunnel vision on random when SC2 is a game which strategy revolves around limited choices. Dealing with problems that have FEW meaningful solutions. This applies to every fucking aspect of SC2. You have TONS of options; correct choices and subpar choices. You have a huge array of strategies you can play vs random; chances are most of them will suck. There are TONS of cool ways to open in mirror match-ups; majority of them will get you killed. Like, everything you advocate for random applies almost equally to SC2; the only way to satisfy such ridiculous constraints would be to make a single grey blob race that removes all diversity and imbalance.
It's not counter-play, it's (ironically) another choice. In your OPINION, it's not a good idea, and in your OPINION, it should be fixed. You don't get it, but many others do. Have you ever considered that you have a bias you're unwilling to give up? For every reason you take issue with random you take issue with starcraft itself in ways, but you're only willing to blame random itself.
Hmm. So if we ignore aaaaall the points I've tried to make and my motive for being on this thread, that I've already mentioned at the end of every post that you seem to miss anyway, and just peg me as some guy who wants random removed because I'm simply projecting problems with sc2 onto random or more specifically HR, which, again I feel made pretty clear isn't the case, then why not remove HR? If the problems exist with or without HR, then why does it matter whether it's in the game or not, why are you auguring in favor of it so much if it really doesn't matter?
I've addressed -every- single point, the majority of which cherry pick problems of random and conveniently ignore the "problem" that extends across the entire game. All of these aren't problems at all; they're entirely normal to the game. It all revolves back around to the underlying issue that players with an invested bias against random shouldn't be given credence in an argument to remove it simply because they don't think it's fun to play against. You keep bringing up "problems" with random which simply aren't "problems."
HR is already in the game, people enjoy HR, and there has yet to be an argument convincing enough to remove it for the sake of pleasing disgruntled non-random players. It adds a little more depth to the game without taking anything away from it.
All of these aren't problems at all; they're entirely normal to the game.
Of the things we've discussed, problems with the match making, counter-play, player freedom and choice etc., most of them are rooms for improvement more than they are things to just be accepted. If the game can be improved in anyway, I don't see why it would make sense not to.
Have you stopped to think why are there so many people that don't like random, or HR specifically, instead of bashing people for incompetence? Because for one,It sort of ties into counter-play if the "depth" of introducing HR is coming at the price of upsetting some of your player base, depending on why exactly they're upset, and for two whining, or lack thereof, doesn't happen for no reason. Any whining that happens with a certain level of consistency is worth examining to find it's source, as to accurately decide whether or not to make a change to quell it and what that change should be.
And the same is true for Random. You seem to forget that the Random player won't know what the race picking player is doing until he scouts him.
Both players are without the information of knowing exactly what the other is doing until they scout, true. The difference is that one player can limit the opponents possibilities to the race they're playing at the beginning of the game and the other player can't. It's an un-even level of preparation granted to only one player, and I don't understand why it's there.
And the other one has the un-even level of skill since he/she will be better at any given matchup (in theory).
The map will always dictate the possibility to FE, rush or early push more then the race you are up against
Doesn't the ability to proxy and for Terran to fe and plant the cc any where they want make this not valid?
No, because both players have the same ability to cheese and FE or early push based on the map, not the race. The timing and purpose of all cheese is roughly the same and it is not bound to Random. And again, on 4 player maps without cross spawns a proxy is more likely to fail then win you the game.
This is just you beeing biased. Not all Random players will cheese/greed so then the HR will be of no effect.
You can't balance an ability, mechanic, feature, etc. in your game with this logic. It's not bias, it's just that you can't put an option into a game and balance around the idea that a player will decide to stop using it eventually or not use it at use it to begin with. ex. You can't up marine damage to 50 and justify it with "maybe players will grow a conscious or get bored and stop using it"
Even if HR, isn't changing games, player experience, match making etc. that still doesn't answer why it's in the game. iirc, the conclusion I've been able to make about it is that it's suppose to act as an incentive to play random, which i don't really get why there needs to be more of them than what would already exist with out it, and the incentive is in the form of an advantage, that may or may not even exist. It's almost like gamification, but less effective. A mechanic introduced into the game to solve a problem, that didn't exist, in a way that's less efficient than other methods available.
You can't justify it to be in the game because you don't view it as a different race from p/t/z. It's a forth race with it's own openings, mechanics, challange, incentive and gameplay. View it as such and find what you think is the proper way of dealing with the race, Random. It shouldn't be limiting, it should be a test on how well you know and play that specific match up (as with any other race).
EPT
