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Unless the replays are hosted on a Blizzard server, which is unlikely, it will be impossible to restrict access to replays. Any ID limitations would have to be saved in the replay file, and it will only be a matter of time until the specs of that file have been found out, and a tool to fix the restrictions of a replay is written. A very short time.
The same thing applies for replays without food counts, unit production and so on. You can easily fix the file to allow it again as long as there is the option to show it if all players agree, and that option WILL be there or else they were working on tons of replay features for nothing.
And again, I don't think this is suc a big deal for the proscene as it sounds in the OP. To disclose strategies, pros would have to use the strategy in a game against someone who they cannot trust and outside of a regulated tourney. Then another pro has to get his hands on that replay. If a mediocre player could beat a pro just because he has a replay of his strategy, something is wrong with the strategy in the first place.
Considering that pros mostly practice their best strats with teammates (because you can coordinate training better, practice certain situations...), replays of those strats souldn't be open to the public anyways. And I am sure that you won't be able to spread the replays of bit offline tourneys just like that. If they get out after a month or two it doesn't hurt anymore.
So the only place where I would accept a no-replay-saved feature would be tourneys. But for anti-cheating purposes the replays would have to be submitted to the tourney host (online tourneys of course).
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As the OP stated, this is the interview where this replay business came up:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=102321¤tpage=4
One important point I think that wasn't quoted was "Boxer: The time at which the skill level of progamers started to become more even coincides with the introduction of replays. I think it’s a responsibility of progamers to research a variety of strategies and playstyles, but nowadays everyone plays the same way. I think it ended up just making Starcraft less fun."
After reading this whole things and everyone's points, it seems that it would be good to have a replay disable option, and when you see a game in the lobby or when you join it, it says "Replay saving disabled" in red text somewhere noticeable.
This would not be the end of replays though, everyone can just join games that enable replays, there is nothing stopping them. Then for progamer level, they could disable replays and be happy that their strategies are safe and everyone at amateur level can enable or do whatever they want.
I honestly see no harm coming out of this feature except if someone does a really tricky cheese that pwns for a while, but anyway a VOD will show the rough idea of what the player did, and remember, there will still be an abundance of replays of amateurs around.
So I say go for it Blizz!
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Strategies will inevitably going to be figured out, but at a much slower rate if there is an option to disable replays before game.
Once someone uses a very creative/effective strategy in a TV game, other players can watch that VOD over and over again to see the main lines of the strategy, but it will be way more tedious and harder.
When people see one good strategy on TV, even though they don't have the replay, they can practice trying to imitate it, and once you got hundreds/thousands of people trying to mimic some strategy, it will eventually be figured out to almost exact detail.
Disabling replays won't make a progamers impossible to figure and imitate, it will just avoid a replay with that strategy from spreading all over the internet in a matter of days, thus expanding that strategy's exclusivity lifespan a whole lot.
This rewards making an effort for creativity, since it is harder to just copy someones strategies and just focus on mechanics like crazy, and pros will get a sense that any strategy they develop with hard work won't become just a one time element of surprise, but that it would take some more time to be figured out, so the payoff is much bigger.
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On October 07 2009 20:26 RamenStyle wrote:
This rewards making an effort for creativity, since it is harder to just copy someones strategies and just focus on mechanics like crazy, and pros will get a sense that any strategy they develop with hard work won't become just a one time element of surprise, but that it would take some more time to be figured out, so the payoff is much bigger.
That is a really good point, probably one of the better ones on the for side of having the replay disable option available.
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Aren't the pro gamers not allowed to put replays anywhere anyway? How can we copy strategies from pro's when they don't release the replays? The people who figure it out will have to watch the vods over and over again anyway. I think the replay disable option would be dumb as one of the things I hated about aoe3 was the fact is if you had an epic game but you didn't record it you could never watch it again. Way more pro's then cons imo.
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On October 07 2009 22:46 blade55555 wrote:
Aren't the pro gamers not allowed to put replays anywhere anyway? How can we copy strategies from pro's when they don't release the replays? The people who figure it out will have to watch the vods over and over again anyway. I think the replay disable option would be dumb as one of the things I hated about aoe3 was the fact is if you had an epic game but you didn't record it you could never watch it again. Way more pro's then cons imo.
boxer is complaining about the offline tournament situations where opponents instantly review the replays of the previous games.
that particular complaint is targeted to a narrow situation, but the implication of a bigger scope can be thought of.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 08 2009 00:23 DN2perfectionGM wrote:
boxer is complaining about the offline tournament situations where opponents instantly review the replays of the previous games.
1) If you play the same build multiple times in a set, you have no reason to complain about your opponent being given a chance to figure it out.
2) If it's in the narrow span of a set, shouldn't a player be rewarded for being able to analyze and evaluate the game in such a short span of time?
On October 08 2009 00:23 DN2perfectionGM wrote:
that particular complaint is targeted to a narrow situation, but the implication of a bigger scope can be thought of.
What bigger scope? If Kespa keeps control over where replays go post-game, I don't see how there needs to be a "bigger scope".
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On October 08 2009 00:23 DN2perfectionGM wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2009 22:46 blade55555 wrote:
Aren't the pro gamers not allowed to put replays anywhere anyway? How can we copy strategies from pro's when they don't release the replays? The people who figure it out will have to watch the vods over and over again anyway. I think the replay disable option would be dumb as one of the things I hated about aoe3 was the fact is if you had an epic game but you didn't record it you could never watch it again. Way more pro's then cons imo. boxer is complaining about the offline tournament situations where opponents instantly review the replays of the previous games.
Since it's offline, stopping people from doing that is simple. If that really is all there is to this, it is by far outweighed by things like easier hacking, additional effort to find a game, etc.
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Sweden33719 Posts
... I think this thread is insane.
Disabling replays wtf.
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I don't understand how giving people the option to control how they are recorded is insane.
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On October 08 2009 05:43 L wrote:
I don't understand how giving people the option to control how they are recorded is insane. Insane may be an overstatement  but you definitely shouldn't be able to control whether or not the OTHER person records the game.
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The problem is that your opponent can control if you are allowed to save a replay of your game (against him).
And simply saying "then don't play that guy" isn't going to make this a good idea. As manifesto7 said, it divides SC gamers into 3 groups groups, those who want replays, those who don't want them, and those who don't care.
By the way, has it been mentioned yet that you won't be able to watch the replay yourself if you disable replay saving (it would be totally unfair if you could but your opponent could not)? I guess there are times when you would want to check what went wrong with your build. And you can't place the disable-replay-button in the after game screen, because that would be even more ridiculous. "Will he allow me to save the replay or not?"
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I think it's pretty obvious that to please both the noobs who copy everyone else's strategies instead of playing the game for themselves, and for those who invent strategies on their own, the replay feature should be optional. A pre-set game setting, like the game speed or map. If you want to play with replays, join the game that allows replay saving. If you have created your own strategy that you don't want every moron on battle.net to duplicate for years to come, join the one that doesn't allow replay saving.
It's nice to have a replay of a great game you played, to watch it and be proud, or show others your victory. If there was a setting that allowed the player to view only what was visible to him in the game, I would choose that option every time. That's how I want people to see the game, as it was played, from my perspective.
It would be nice to be able to share a replay just once, with whoever you choose. Right now, when you host a replay, whoever joins the room has it in their download folder and can view it over and over to copy exactly what you did. It would be nice to be able to control the exposure. Share it once, show only what needs to be shown for entertainment. It doesn't have to be used for strategy stealing.
I miss the days when there were no replays, and creative strategy was still part of the game. It's less and less a game of strategy when the way to win is to download the latest Bisu replay and imitate his every move.
Boxer struggles now, because I believe his main strength was his creative ability. Inventing successful strategies that no one else had seen. Thanks to replays, these can only be used once. The number of new strategies is quickly depleted, even in a game as complex as SC. Your hard work is public property, and every moron with no understanding of the game can memorize your every move after watching the replay, and do exactly what you did. Within a week, everyone on battle.net has either reenacted or played against this strategy that one player invented.
Yes it makes everyone more prepared to deal with anything that could be thrown at them. But at what cost? Once all the creative strategies have been used and are known throughout the community, the game has lost most of its strategy aspect, which should be valued above fast clicking, time spent memorizing the builds of professionals, micro and macro skills.
I know this isn't a popular idea among the remaining SC players, as StarCraft has no room for creative builds anymore. It's all been tried and proven, and there's nothing left to discover. We all know what works, and what doesn't. The only challenge now is executing these public domain builds perfectly, and there is no strategy in that.
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On October 08 2009 06:20 Kadoka wrote:
I think it's pretty obvious that to please both the noobs who copy everyone else's strategies instead of playing the game for themselves, and for those who invent strategies on their own, the replay feature should be optional. A pre-set game setting, like the game speed or map. If you want to play with replays, join the game that allows replay saving. The problem here is with the matchmaking system. I can understand this option being harmless for custom cames, but it shouldn't be an available option for someone joining an AMM ladder game.
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On October 08 2009 03:01 FrozenArbiter wrote:
... I think this thread is insane.
Disabling replays wtf.
Yup. Even without reading the entire thread I can even call up one situation out of my head where automatic replays have decided a lot. It was during a WCG where one player was accused of abusing the system (which was not allowed) and the only way to check it out was to watch this replay (as none of the players, accused and accuser even bothered to save them). (If you know what Forestwalking in WC3 is then you're probably familiar with the situation)
Besides, who cares if their strats are going to be shown?
1. There's a lot of pride to be taken if your strat is considered "teh uber pwn" and swinging all over the internet (you're comfortable with it, because noobs can't execute it and other pros will prepare for it and you'll destroy them with something completely different).
2. People are going to see it sooner or later anyway.
3. If having a spy on your team is ok, but auto-saving replays is not, then you have a problem.
4*. You play a televised game and you worry about replays? o_O
* in case of pros only.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 08 2009 06:20 Kadoka wrote:
I think it's pretty obvious that to please both the noobs who copy everyone else's strategies instead of playing the game for themselves, and for those who invent strategies on their own, the replay feature should be optional. A pre-set game setting, like the game speed or map. If you want to play with replays, join the game that allows replay saving. If you have created your own strategy that you don't want every moron on battle.net to duplicate for years to come, join the one that doesn't allow replay saving.
Way to make generalizations about the people who want replays and those who don't. Also, as has been stated, this further divides the community, which is a bad thing. Even if it was proven that having replays shortens the competitive lifespan of the game (a shaky statement at best), I would still say that having a healthier, united community overall would be better than splitting the community.
On October 08 2009 06:20 Kadoka wrote:
It's nice to have a replay of a great game you played, to watch it and be proud, or show others your victory. If there was a setting that allowed the player to view only what was visible to him in the game, I would choose that option every time. That's how I want people to see the game, as it was played, from my perspective.
And that would be extremely limiting to someone who's actually trying to learn the game, and not just "copy builds". A good portion of what you can learn isn't just by seeing what's on your side of the table. How are you supposed to learn any form of timing if you can't judge what's happening relative to your own play?
On October 08 2009 06:20 Kadoka wrote:
I miss the days when there were no replays, and creative strategy was still part of the game. It's less and less a game of strategy when the way to win is to download the latest Bisu replay and imitate his every move.
You're looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. You're also acting like replays of progamers come out every week, which they don't. Kespa limits the release of progamer replays. The only games that get out are through international events like Blizzcon and IEF, and practice games that get out like ICCup games. Leaked replays will still be leaked, and replays released by Blizzard will still be released by Blizzard. Whatever automated system you implement will always be circumvented by that.
On October 08 2009 06:20 Kadoka wrote:
Boxer struggles now, because I believe his main strength was his creative ability. Inventing successful strategies that no one else had seen. Thanks to replays, these can only be used once. The number of new strategies is quickly depleted, even in a game as complex as SC. Your hard work is public property, and every moron with no understanding of the game can memorize your every move after watching the replay, and do exactly what you did. Within a week, everyone on battle.net has either reenacted or played against this strategy that one player invented.
Boxer struggles now because his strategic creativity gave him a static advantage, where the constant improvement of other progamers in mechanics gave them a steadily growing advantage. You can't change that. Surprise doesn't become more surprising the more you improve at it--macro, micro, and decision making do get better. That's inherent to the way strategic games are played. Chess players memorize openings and Go players memorize Joseki, because improving how you analyze known positions has more room to grow than having a few random surprises.
On October 08 2009 06:20 Kadoka wrote:
Yes it makes everyone more prepared to deal with anything that could be thrown at them. But at what cost? Once all the creative strategies have been used and are known throughout the community, the game has lost most of its strategy aspect, which should be valued above fast clicking, time spent memorizing the builds of professionals, micro and macro skills.
I know this isn't a popular idea among the remaining SC players, as StarCraft has no room for creative builds anymore. It's all been tried and proven, and there's nothing left to discover. We all know what works, and what doesn't. The only challenge now is executing these public domain builds perfectly, and there is no strategy in that.
Again, stop exaggerating. The strategic limits of Starcraft have not been exhausted. There are plenty of players like Fantasy, Upmagic, and Horang2 who are doing just fine off of primarily unconventional play. Having unconventional builds does not REPLACE strong mechanics and decision making--nor should it. A player who can play solid, unconventional openings in a game like Chess or Go still fall apart against a player with more solid mid-late game decision making. The same is true in Starcraft, and the same should be true in SC2.
What's more, any sort of causal link between replays and and mechanically-dependent play is basically unfounded. You could just as easily chalk up the copy-builds-and-train-mechanics style to aspects of Asian culture and teaching style just as much as you could to replays. It sounds absurd, but there's honestly no less evidence for that (given the way schooling and training in other areas is done in Asian countries) than for the cause being replays.
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this discussion is pretty moot. blizzard would never implement a feature like this
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I've posted my opinion already, but it wasn't a very detailed explanation so here's a better one:
Open information is always good for a competitive game, and for starcraft replays are essential to open information.
Open information increases the quality of play as a whole by incentivizing preparation and increasing general knowledge about the game. The reason there's a higher incentive for preparation is pretty simple: more accessible information lets players know what to prepare for. Without replays it would be much more difficult to analyze a build and come up with a response. This is magnified in a game like starcraft where a strategy can have a huge number of small nuances that would be near impossible to discover without a replay.
People who say open information decreases strategy are very myopic. The players who came up with counters to boxer's shenanigans were just as "creative". In fact they were employing more strategy because they had to create something to beat a specific build, not a generic strategy that could work against anything if it wasn't properly dealt with. There's a name for this process. It's called the strategic evolution of the game. People analyze things that other people are doing and come up with ways to beat them, and as a result our collective knowledge of the game increases, as does the quality of games at all levels (as spectators we care about the quality of pro games).
All of the sweet strats people marvel over don't just materialize out of thin air. Someone analyzed what other people were doing and tried to come up with a way to beat it. This is only possible through openly accessible information.
Lack of information is what drives people towards generic strategies. Without information there's no incentive to prepare specific strategies because there's no way of knowing 1. if people are actually using the strategy you're preparing against and 2. all of the little nuances and tricks that could fuck up your prepared strat. The really exiting, high quality games played in the pro scene are frequently the ones where players prepared strategies specifically for that game, on that map, against that player. Without the ability to create such strategies, generic strats (either standard play or a universally applicable cheese) would be the only option.
I mean, just think about it. If before playing someone you had the opportunity to analyze their last 20 games to see what they did, and you had pro level knowledge to figure out what to do against that, would you do that or just roll with whatever standard thing you would do absent that information? This is magnified at the pro level where people know who they're playing farther in advance and have more time to sit around (with their coaches) and create strategies.
If after looking at all this information it turns out the player thinks playing standard is the best option then obviously that's what people will do, but having the information there dramatically increases the possibility for a new or unique strategy. And quality of play will still be higher just by virtue of the fact that everyone knows more about the game generally as well as more about the current metagame.
The other problem with the claim that open information decreases strategy is it relies on a flawed view of what strategy is and how strategy actually affects the outcomes of games.
Creating a strategy in starcraft is basically figuring out a goal then looking at what stuff you have available and deciding how best to use it to achieve that goal i.e. I want to kill my opponent fast so I'll build gateways in their main. This is obviously strategy, but not all or even most aspects of strategy can be reduced to this. In fact this process is very far removed from how most games are actually decided.
In order to understand how strategy is actually applied to real games, we need to take a step back in terms of what we think of when we think of "what stuff you have available". In the example I gave the stuff was gateways and the fact that you can build them in your opponent's main. In actual games this stuff is the range of strategies a player can use. Instead of saying "I want to kill my opponent fast" and then looking at all the potential choices they could make with regards to units and buildings and the placement of those buildings and arriving at building gateways in your opponent's main as a good way to achieve that goal, players say "I want to kill my opponent fast, so I will use the strategy of proxying gateways".
The difference may seem subtle but it's very important. When a player is deciding what to do in a particular game the set of "stuff" is NOT all of the units and buildings and various things you can do with them, it's the set of strategies you know. The buildings and units and such are of course the building blocks of those strategies, but that is unimportant to how players make strategic decisions in actual games.
So the strategic decision is not "I am going to build gateways in my opponents main", the strategic decision is "I am going to (use the strategy called) proxy 9/9 gate". In terms of it's relevance to actual games and deciding their outcomes, strategy is the decisions you make about your build (drawn from a set of builds you have previously learned, not created out of thin air) before the game and how you adapt in the game.
Once we start looking at strategy from this perspective it's obvious that more accessible information is essential for strategy. With more information players will have a wider range of potential builds, have more knowledge about when to use what build, and have more knowledge about how to adapt that build in a game.
Players knowing more builds from having watched replays of them or from creating a build to counter one they studied a replay of increases the number of strategic options players have, increasing the strategic depth of the game and the amount of strategic knowledge necessary to compete at a high level.
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Are you guys really serious? Disabling replays to hide your starcraft strategy?...I mean, c'mon, really?
If you are a good player then you shouldn't have to hide a one trick pony from the public.
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I don't mind disabling repays as option. Online tournaments / ladders can still require replays.
In poker, you don't get to see your opponents hands after you lost your money 
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EPT
