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A lack of replays means that a player can get away using a single unorthodox build longer, even if it's crappy, and has a lot of holes, because it takes time for people to find the holes. Even if its crappy compared to what? If the holes are covered because of lack of experience, then a more experienced player who's seen the same type of unorthodox play will be better suited to deal with it.
Why should unorthodox players have to switch it up more? As far as I can tell, they've never dominated to the same extent as mechanically flawless players, and any innovation performed by dominating players almost immediately becomes the 'one build' you refer to next.
What it does is prevent a player from sitting on ONE build and winning games with it just because no one can watch a replay in detail and notice the holes in its timing. But that's simply not what happens. Players regularly DO sit on one build, and innovative players rarely get by with unorthodox play after a map is 'solved'. We simply DO NOT see Boxer v. Hiya moments anymore, because the moment someone sees someone going bio in a TvT on blue storm, its pretty obvious why and how they're playing.
What happens if that one game turns into 5 and you see successive players trying to work out what's going on, or try something novel of their own? Wherein you have a complete shakeup of the development of a matchup on a map because of a new, unexplored build? You get more jaw dropping moments like when Flash solved Katrina. More 'oh shit savior proxied a goddam hatchery to get overlords out to stop DTs from raping his hydra bust'. More 'wow, boxer is going bio on bluestorm in a tvt'.
That's why maps are switched up in the first place; to produce novel games, something interesting to watch and interesting to play.
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Sweden33719 Posts
You realize, of course, that it would be pretty fucking obvious even without the replay?
On October 06 2009 05:50 FaZ- wrote:
I feel like the game will reach a boring and stale state like what we have now with StarCraft 1 much faster with replays. 90% of games today play out in one of a few very established way. If you like that mechanical challenge, fine, but it takes the strategy out of an RTS when all you're doing is reacting. Even today, foreigners have trouble getting replays of top players and so it's difficult to mirror something exactly and we end up doing things our own ways.
Personally, I love replays, they help me become a much better player. Looking at the big picture, though, replays contribute greatly to the stagnancy of a game. The StarCraft of today is far more predictable and thus, to most, more boring than it could otherwise be. If StarCraft 2 reaches that point in 18 months, who will still be playing it 18 months later?
Faster? Yes. But this is inevitable - unlike SC1, we'll have thousands of people going 100% full steam ahead from the very first second the game is released.
But keep in mind that for the first year, the game will undergo many balance patches, and after that you'll have an expansion, followed by another year+ of balance patches... And after that? ANOTHER expansion and ANOTHER year+ of balance patches.
There's a minimum of what... 4 years of huge balance changes before the game can even BEGIN to stagnate.
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On October 06 2009 05:59 Ecael wrote:
Can you really say that? Even when we said that ZvP has developed to a steady state where people invariably 3hatch lair into 5hatch hydra, we still ended up with a thread pointing out a dominance of Z in the ZvP matchup, long after the development of the build. The Bisu build was supposed to have been the PvZ killer that every P would do to the doom of Z, yet that didn't happen either. Without replays, we would see much longer reigns by particular builds, how is that any better than the situation that people are fearing?
People are too quick to claim that replays will create a state of stagnation when we don't see that even in the original SC. Not releasing replays is just a way to artificially slow down that progression, a path toward an end that we are not wholly sure of yet.
And why is it not dominating as people thought it would? Because it is just a build. Artificially slowing down progression doesn't necessarily make the game worse.
I do agree that a steady state in strategies can make balancing easier. But the same can be said about about unorthodox strategies which exploit imbalances
I don't see why people call Boxer and Bisu hypocrites. Obviously they learned from replays as well. It was the only way to keep up with the progress others were making. Only because they do it doesn't meant they like it or that is a good thing to do. They are pro-gamers. It's a job. They will do whatever is legally or even illegally possible to give them an edge over other players.
As for people having an advantage because they have an unorthodox strategy. Honestly, I'd rather have someone dominate with such a strategy for a while than 80% of the pro-gamers play out standard builds every game.
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Yeah lets slow down the strategic advancement of the game so players can more effectively use one-shot strategies that fall apart if your opponent has seen so much as a single replay of them.
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As Dustin has explained, replays are an exellent way to improve your play. Analysing both your achievements and mistakes as well as how tge enemy took advantage of you when he could are both critical learning components. I don't care if private leagues have rules against saving replays, but over b.net (including the ladder) it should be 100% fine.
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Artificially slowing down a game is just a way to lie to yourself, to me, I'd much rather see cutthroat competition from each build leading to an eventual field of versatile (and standard) builds than to see one build dominate simply because people aren't provided the information to study it with. Though that's probably just a difference in opinion, as you said that you would prefer the opposite. Honestly, I am not much for larger differences. The fact that HBR creates a ZvP style that relies heavily on abusing lurks differs from what we'd see on another map, say, Destination, is enough for me.
To slow down the progression to a steady state artificially by denying access to replays could certainly contribute to variations as well, but at a great expense to quality demanded of Blizzard. Through the variety of maps we saw last year, we see TvZ's horizons broaden as it turned into a matchup that sports a great number of builds differing greatly. Instead of seeing such a variation created by not letting people optimize counter builds and adjust for the metagame, it reflects much better on the game itself should we be able to see that even with easy access to information.
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Brood War has been out since 1998. Thats over 10 years to figure out a game. With Starcraft 2 newer strategies will be used to better effect because the game will not be known to the same level Starcraft is right now. So basically i agree with FA. No need to worry to much about it
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Just because replays being uploaded is necessary for tournament administration doesn't mean those replays should be made public immediately. To be fair to the players in the tournament the replays could be held privately until after the tournament is over.
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And I just want to note that it is to make replay OPTIONAL, not to get rid of it completely.
A trend could develop where everyone always chooses to share replays, and other people won't join rooms that have replay option off, like how people never make or join team melee games. This is actually very possible because when people see that replays are not going to be shared, they will suspect a strong player or a clever strategy. And most gamers (at least the ones on b.net with "newbs only!") don't like losing.
And since there will be some amount of replays floating around, it won't be absolutely stagnant and frustrating. There will be certain group of people trying to figure things out and make them available, which makes strategies more valuable.
But also with the option to not share replays, someone who doesn't want to reveal the strategy for whatever reason can choose to hide it. But even if that's the case, it'll get exposed eventually.
And this option can be exercised according to the situation. If online tournaments need replays, then they'll require replays and contestants will save the replays. But in offline tournaments, by choosing to hide the replay, the gamer doesn't have to worry about the possibility of the opponent looking through the strategies.
I'm not saying that this option MUST be implemented. But I think these are some points that should also be considered.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
People, do you really think that watching replays make people that much better? A replay doesn't even tell you like 5% of what a build is like because it only figures one scenario out of a millon. A build is not really a cooking recipe - "bake at 200 degrees for 5 minutes" etc. It's more like a tree and you're only viewing one branch. Now as much as I enjoy people going awkward builds that get them a win or loss at 5 minute mark, anything that lasts beyond that mark is adaptive gameplay that can be understood only with like 100 games of practice. Replays tell you nothing of where the players made their mistakes, what went wrong, what did they change in their plans when their opponent surprised them or they saw an unexpected opening, replays only tell you how the game unfolded. It's clear as day considering the fact that both players, if they are serious, have builds that have been tailored for a win, but only one players wins.
I can understand Boxer being frustrated about specifically bred strats for a single important game against a well-studied opponent being leaked out of the training office. But that's more of a training office policy than game restriction. Restricting replay saving over Battle.net is stupid, and yes, since the client anyway inherently has all the info required, it's possible and probably even trivial to hack. Everything that comprises a replay is there in the network traffic, even the initial synch to figure the common RNG seed.
If anything, random map generation and/or playing on completely unknown maps might prolong the game's longevity, because they will support that breed of players we all love who tend to pull stuff out of their asses more often than practice a single strategy to clinical death. Now the algorithms needed to make a viable SC map were a bit too tough for 1998, but they will do fine in 2010.
Considering how important this feature is for game enjoyment (we all love watching reps for fun) I don't see a single opening that would allow it's removal.
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On October 06 2009 08:53 DN2perfectionGM wrote:
And I just want to note that it is to make replay OPTIONAL, not to get rid of it completely.
A trend could develop where everyone always chooses to share replays, and other people won't join rooms that have replay option off, like how people never make or join team melee games. This is actually very possible because when people see that replays are not going to be shared, they will suspect a strong player or a clever strategy. And most gamers (at least the ones on b.net with "newbs only!") don't like losing.
And since there will be some amount of replays floating around, it won't be absolutely stagnant and frustrating. There will be certain group of people trying to figure things out and make them available, which makes strategies more valuable.
But also with the option to not share replays, someone who doesn't want to reveal the strategy for whatever reason can choose to hide it. But even if that's the case, it'll get exposed eventually.
And this option can be exercised according to the situation. If online tournaments need replays, then they'll require replays and contestants will save the replays. But in offline tournaments, by choosing to hide the replay, the gamer doesn't have to worry about the possibility of the opponent looking through the strategies.
I'm not saying that this option MUST be implemented. But I think these are some points that should also be considered.
Everything you just said is a reason not to include such a feature. "Allowing people to opt out of replays won't be THAT bad, because people will circumvent it anyway."
More accessible information leads to greater preparation which results in a higher quality of games. That's all there is to it.
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But what is a 'higher quality of games'? Is it a higher quality of game experience, or is it more optimized gameplay?
In the case of optimization, the amount, and effect of metagaming increases with the slower divulgence of information which doesn't reduce the optimization, just changes where the optimization takes place. Even then, the effect isn't absolute.
You realize, of course, that it would be pretty fucking obvious even without the replay? In SC2, sure. But that begs the question why you need your opponent's information in the replay at all.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
Oh an yeah, consider this scenario:
<scenario>
I'm a noobie that has shown some promise and I've just had my first sexual intercourse yesterday, the stars aligned perfectly and my country just won the World Soccer champ, so, even though I'm usually mediocre, today I'm on fire. Inexplicable luck matches me against Boxer and even though he executes some brilliant build vs me I get super lucky and manage to pull it off, winning a 45 minute long game full of thrilling action that is officially my best StarCraft for now or maybe even forever.
Now I'm just choking with excitement and guess what? I want to share it with friends. I want everyone to know that I've beat Boxer and in a very entertaining manner. And now click "Save Replay"... Stop! WHAT?
"Player Boxer has not allowed replay saving".
</scenario>
I can imagine people quitting the game after this. Don't rip people off their victories, like some other dirty business we all men do it, but never tell each other about it - we save our own replays. Memorable games that we sometimes watch. I would hate winning vs a better player and not being able to save the replay.
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On October 06 2009 09:05 Lysdexia wrote:
Everything you just said is a reason not to include such a feature. "Allowing people to opt out of replays won't be THAT bad, because people will circumvent it anyway."
More accessible information leads to greater preparation which results in a higher quality of games. That's all there is to it.
read again.
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On October 06 2009 06:46 FrozenArbiter wrote:You realize, of course, that it would be pretty fucking obvious even without the replay? Show nested quote +On October 06 2009 05:50 FaZ- wrote:
I feel like the game will reach a boring and stale state like what we have now with StarCraft 1 much faster with replays. 90% of games today play out in one of a few very established way. If you like that mechanical challenge, fine, but it takes the strategy out of an RTS when all you're doing is reacting. Even today, foreigners have trouble getting replays of top players and so it's difficult to mirror something exactly and we end up doing things our own ways.
Personally, I love replays, they help me become a much better player. Looking at the big picture, though, replays contribute greatly to the stagnancy of a game. The StarCraft of today is far more predictable and thus, to most, more boring than it could otherwise be. If StarCraft 2 reaches that point in 18 months, who will still be playing it 18 months later? Faster? Yes. But this is inevitable - unlike SC1, we'll have thousands of people going 100% full steam ahead from the very first second the game is released. But keep in mind that for the first year, the game will undergo many balance patches, and after that you'll have an expansion, followed by another year+ of balance patches... And after that? ANOTHER expansion and ANOTHER year+ of balance patches. There's a minimum of what... 4 years of huge balance changes before the game can even BEGIN to stagnate.
I think thats too hopeful thinkg Blizzard will release the next part of the sc2 trilogy a year later (I would be happy if they did though :D). But I do agree there are going to be balance changes alot because the game will NOT be balanced on release. I bet it will take awhile before all the sc2 strategies are figured out and like you just said expansions will change it alot as well (new units and stuff like that).
Sc2 will live very long imo I don't see it failing and most people who have played it said its a lot of fun so yea ^^.
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I can't even believe that this is being seriously discussed. I've played games where people can ride out a few tourney wins on stupid gimmicks when a new game comes out just because there's so much to learn and so little access to information, no replays, definitely no bwchart type tools, and few vods and high level players never really post up strats in most game communities unlike starcraft. Instead we just have scrubbies doing stupid gimmicks that get them a tournament win or two. No replays decreases the overall skill levels of EVERYONE in the whole game, including the pros. It's terrible for the community and it hurts everyone.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On October 06 2009 09:13 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 06 2009 06:46 FrozenArbiter wrote:You realize, of course, that it would be pretty fucking obvious even without the replay? On October 06 2009 05:50 FaZ- wrote:
I feel like the game will reach a boring and stale state like what we have now with StarCraft 1 much faster with replays. 90% of games today play out in one of a few very established way. If you like that mechanical challenge, fine, but it takes the strategy out of an RTS when all you're doing is reacting. Even today, foreigners have trouble getting replays of top players and so it's difficult to mirror something exactly and we end up doing things our own ways.
Personally, I love replays, they help me become a much better player. Looking at the big picture, though, replays contribute greatly to the stagnancy of a game. The StarCraft of today is far more predictable and thus, to most, more boring than it could otherwise be. If StarCraft 2 reaches that point in 18 months, who will still be playing it 18 months later? Faster? Yes. But this is inevitable - unlike SC1, we'll have thousands of people going 100% full steam ahead from the very first second the game is released. But keep in mind that for the first year, the game will undergo many balance patches, and after that you'll have an expansion, followed by another year+ of balance patches... And after that? ANOTHER expansion and ANOTHER year+ of balance patches. There's a minimum of what... 4 years of huge balance changes before the game can even BEGIN to stagnate. I think thats too hopeful thinkg Blizzard will release the next part of the sc2 trilogy a year later (I would be happy if they did though :D). But I do agree there are going to be balance changes alot because the game will NOT be balanced on release. I bet it will take awhile before all the sc2 strategies are figured out and like you just said expansions will change it alot as well (new units and stuff like that). Sc2 will live very long imo I don't see it failing and most people who have played it said its a lot of fun so yea ^^.
Just going by their official "1 to 1.5 years between expansions". It's about the time between WC3->TFT and SC->BW as well.
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I think the only viable method for compromise between the 2 sides (both sides have good points) is by making a lock system on the replay u just played. After the game finished, there is an option to save replay or not. There is also another option to save confidential replay and it requires you to put in a password to lock the file.
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If replays werent introduced boxer would have won like 10 osl by now lol.
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On October 06 2009 09:48 fearus wrote:
If replays werent introduced boxer would have won like 10 osl by now lol.
Boxer fell from the top not because people were able to analyze his replays and copy/ counter them. (It probably contributed though. But lets not mention the fact that the some stuff Boxer did was so unique that people didn't even try to copy them) When Boxer was at the top, the professional sc was played in terms of micro. The age of Macro showed that Macro > Micro which really brought down Boxer because it undermined his entire playstyle. Macro killed Boxer, not replays
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EPT
