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On April 16 2010 05:35 Liquid`NonY wrote:
Blizzard can not balance the game by reacting strongly to trends. Trends are strong because of metagame. It would be absolutely delightful for Blizzard if everyone tried to truly solve their losses rather than patching them up with metagame. Blizzard must be patient and wait for people to innovate before reacting too strongly to lopsided win rates among the races. If Blizzard reacts too strongly to what metagame-heavy players are doing, then they're guaranteeing themselves a never-ending cycle of "balancing" the game in response to trends.
Entirely agree.
I've seen far too many games run into the dust because of the aforementioned reasons.
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Metagame is super important. Situational strategies are not. Metagame does also spill over into player psychology within the game too. You can't guess what they're doing without involving metagame, so it's a no win situation. Metagame is essential to success. What you're arguing is that you shouldn't be predictable, which is a metagame strategy in it of itself.
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I will say while I agree with your principles Nony, there is one metagame aspect I believe that should be followed EVERY PvT..
ALWAYS make sure to rush for a fast stalker to fend off the first Reaper. You never know when/if that first reaper will come, and its better being safe than sorry. I get core before 2nd pylon every PvT even though economically it is not as solid, just incase they did some kind of 8rax proxy, and it has saved me a few times.
(obv unless you are doing some kind of proxy 2gate all-in, but every other situation I feel a fast stalker is required when facing terran)
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On April 16 2010 05:41 Cloak wrote:
What you're arguing is that you shouldn't be predictable, which is a metagame strategy in it of itself.
Hmmm.. Not really. Part of what he's arguing is that you shouldn't blindly counter builds because they are a current trend. Or in other words, you shouldn't let other player's predictability cause you to be lazy about improving all aspects of your game.
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8751 Posts
I'd just like to put this on record too... Metagame is awesome. I used it a ton in TSL. But it's kinda just a cherry on top. I spend all my effort coming up with the best strategies I can. Then as a match comes up, if I see an opportunity for metagame, I might use that too for a boost.
This is where the definition Smuft linked from urbandictionary starts to feel appropriate. I think the problem is that the metagame isn't such a beautiful thing in a developing game (SC2) where, to be honest, nobody is really playing it at a high level. In SC:BW and Poker, it's a beautiful thing.
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if everyone was trying to develop solid gameplay where u scout and respond blizzard would probably find it easier to balance. altho if everyone was doing like this it would be impossible to figure out what is safe and works, the best way to create a good and solid build is in an environment filled with ppl who r cheesing. once ppl stop cheese u or punish u, u will get greedy and become an abusive gamer rather than a safe player
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On April 16 2010 05:45 jtype wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2010 05:41 Cloak wrote:
What you're arguing is that you shouldn't be predictable, which is a metagame strategy in it of itself. Hmmm.. Not really. Part of what he's arguing is that you shouldn't blindly counter builds because they are a current trend. Or in other words, you shouldn't let other player's predictability cause you to be lazy about improving all aspects of your game.
Well the only way you can blindly counter established builds is to be predictable in response. The problem is predictability. If predictability is too high, strategic growth gets stagnant. I agree wholeheartedly with those sentiments. I advocate a lot more ambiguity with soft counters, since ambiguity and diversity of unit composition is the key to gameplay diversity. I guess I'm arguing that metagame isn't entirely memorizing builds from Liquipedia, but involves more active prediction of your opponent's behavior, which usually boils down to GateRoboGate or whatever. Anything that involves human beings within the game necessarily involves rules above and beyond the game, hence metagame.
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you can't "use metagame." you can have knowledge of the metagame, and use that to your advantage, but you cannot use something that does not physically exist. It's a game state.
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On April 16 2010 05:35 Liquid`NonY wrote:
Let's say Terran is winning 60% of its games against Protoss. 1% of Protoss have figured out a way to defeat the thing that Terrans are doing to win 60% of their games. Blizzard is aware of what this 1% are doing. Blizzard should not (and would not) make a balance change to instantly get TvP back to 50/50. They'd let that 1% of Protoss players reap the benefit of their knowledge and wait until that knowledge spreads and see if it tips the balance the other way. If it does, then they'll wait to see if it's reasonable for Terran to come up with a counter or not. If Terran players probably can't, then Blizzard might have to in fact buff Terran, when at the start of the scenario (in the same patch) it was Terran winning 60% of the time.
I really like this example.
Also, learn your terms, people!
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Calgary25998 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:24 Antimage wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2010 05:01 Liquid`NonY wrote:On April 16 2010 04:46 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:
Very good post. Just wondering, what inspired you to write this? Have you been coming up against a lot of players going for all-in/semi-blind strategies? Yeah. I think that people feel safer and more solid than they actually are. They dismiss their losses instead of learning from them. And when they do learn from their losses and change their game, they tend to sacrifice the strength of whatever they were doing before the changes. Or they might just be content with how often they're winning at the time and they don't know how to improve. They win 60% of the time with their shaky strategy and they stick with it until it drops below 50%. Then they react to that new thing and hit 60% again. They have no idea how to win 70% or more of the time. And cycling back through older strategies can always threaten their 60% win rate. Basically, instead of focusing on moving forward with strategies, they're moving sideways. But because one thing came first and the other thing came second, they feel like they've made progress. Metagame is the culprit. The thing is, some matchups are so broken that metagame cannot possibly evolve without further patches/game fixes. Look at PvT and PvP (from a protoss standpoint). I don't mind losing my games if I know how to fix it in further games, but when it comes to the early game immortal imbalance in PvT or the eventual mass colossi vs mass colossi in PvP, if you don't abuse/act upon those factors, the other player will. (Granted, PvP isn't that bad - I personally don't understand early game but that's just me and I suck at PvP) And to ignore what's been working for 90% of the top players on the server and experiment is very difficult, even if you find a partner willing to do this with you. Fact is, it's a beta and things are broken. The only matchup where I find strategies and choices can vary from game to game is PvZ (again, as a protoss player). And my god, all those posts have really confused me so if I'm going off topic, sorry but this is how I feel right now.
This is so short-sighted. Remember when PvZ was unplayable from 1998 to around 2004? It is impossible to say that the matchups are broken after playing them for a month. I'm actually getting a little tired of people at the top of the ladder acting like they have some level of understanding of the game that is seven times deeper than the rest of us.
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On April 16 2010 05:53 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2010 05:24 Antimage wrote:On April 16 2010 05:01 Liquid`NonY wrote:On April 16 2010 04:46 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:
Very good post. Just wondering, what inspired you to write this? Have you been coming up against a lot of players going for all-in/semi-blind strategies? Yeah. I think that people feel safer and more solid than they actually are. They dismiss their losses instead of learning from them. And when they do learn from their losses and change their game, they tend to sacrifice the strength of whatever they were doing before the changes. Or they might just be content with how often they're winning at the time and they don't know how to improve. They win 60% of the time with their shaky strategy and they stick with it until it drops below 50%. Then they react to that new thing and hit 60% again. They have no idea how to win 70% or more of the time. And cycling back through older strategies can always threaten their 60% win rate. Basically, instead of focusing on moving forward with strategies, they're moving sideways. But because one thing came first and the other thing came second, they feel like they've made progress. Metagame is the culprit. The thing is, some matchups are so broken that metagame cannot possibly evolve without further patches/game fixes. Look at PvT and PvP (from a protoss standpoint). I don't mind losing my games if I know how to fix it in further games, but when it comes to the early game immortal imbalance in PvT or the eventual mass colossi vs mass colossi in PvP, if you don't abuse/act upon those factors, the other player will. (Granted, PvP isn't that bad - I personally don't understand early game but that's just me and I suck at PvP) And to ignore what's been working for 90% of the top players on the server and experiment is very difficult, even if you find a partner willing to do this with you. Fact is, it's a beta and things are broken. The only matchup where I find strategies and choices can vary from game to game is PvZ (again, as a protoss player). And my god, all those posts have really confused me so if I'm going off topic, sorry but this is how I feel right now. This is so short-sighted. Remember when PvZ was unplayable from 1998 to around 2004? It is impossible to say that the matchups are broken after playing them for a month. I'm actually getting a little tired of people at the top of the ladder acting like they have some level of understanding of the game that is seven times deeper than the rest of us.
haha, qft, well tbh, everyone technically is bad at SC2, even "top players," because no one's play is near optimal. and the days of, "omg ultraling is insta win" were entertaining.
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8751 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:45 jtype wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2010 05:41 Cloak wrote:
What you're arguing is that you shouldn't be predictable, which is a metagame strategy in it of itself. Hmmm.. Not really. Part of what he's arguing is that you shouldn't blindly counter builds because they are a current trend. Or in other words, you shouldn't let other player's predictability cause you to be lazy about improving all aspects of your game.
That's right. Here's an example that might help explain myself to Cloak
If I completely scout a Zerg at one point and see a Spire building but no Hydra Den, and going Spire is a really popular strategy at the time, I could use metagame and think "ok I'm just going to counter Mutas."
If I don't use metagame, I think of all the possibilities. I think, if he's going Hydras, they're going to be delayed X amount of time because he didn't build the Hydra Den as fast as possible because he used a Drone and some resources to start that Spire. He could also just be doing the optimal build for going straight to Spire. (There are of course a million other things he could be doing, but let's just stick to these two. Let's also assume it was a completely even game when I first scouted, that it was really easy for me to get that first scout in, but it would not be cost-efficient for me to get any more scouting done in any situation because now he can deny scouting really well.) If the game is balanced, then I will have a way to defend both the optimal Spire build and the sub-optimal Hydra Den build simultaneously without incurring a disadvantage.
So I'm saying that everything should be taken at face value. One thing doesn't automatically lead to another. One thing might be optimal for only one follow up, but ignoring the other (sub-optimal) follow ups is using metagame.
Being unpredictable... it doesn't really come into question here. If you have options that are equally effective, then I suppose yeah it's best to use them all unpredictably, and yes that'd might technically be using metagame. But that's not the point here.
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On April 16 2010 05:53 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2010 05:24 Antimage wrote:On April 16 2010 05:01 Liquid`NonY wrote:On April 16 2010 04:46 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:
Very good post. Just wondering, what inspired you to write this? Have you been coming up against a lot of players going for all-in/semi-blind strategies? Yeah. I think that people feel safer and more solid than they actually are. They dismiss their losses instead of learning from them. And when they do learn from their losses and change their game, they tend to sacrifice the strength of whatever they were doing before the changes. Or they might just be content with how often they're winning at the time and they don't know how to improve. They win 60% of the time with their shaky strategy and they stick with it until it drops below 50%. Then they react to that new thing and hit 60% again. They have no idea how to win 70% or more of the time. And cycling back through older strategies can always threaten their 60% win rate. Basically, instead of focusing on moving forward with strategies, they're moving sideways. But because one thing came first and the other thing came second, they feel like they've made progress. Metagame is the culprit. The thing is, some matchups are so broken that metagame cannot possibly evolve without further patches/game fixes. Look at PvT and PvP (from a protoss standpoint). I don't mind losing my games if I know how to fix it in further games, but when it comes to the early game immortal imbalance in PvT or the eventual mass colossi vs mass colossi in PvP, if you don't abuse/act upon those factors, the other player will. (Granted, PvP isn't that bad - I personally don't understand early game but that's just me and I suck at PvP) And to ignore what's been working for 90% of the top players on the server and experiment is very difficult, even if you find a partner willing to do this with you. Fact is, it's a beta and things are broken. The only matchup where I find strategies and choices can vary from game to game is PvZ (again, as a protoss player). And my god, all those posts have really confused me so if I'm going off topic, sorry but this is how I feel right now. This is so short-sighted. Remember when PvZ was unplayable from 1998 to around 2004? It is impossible to say that the matchups are broken after playing them for a month. I'm actually getting a little tired of people at the top of the ladder acting like they have some level of understanding of the game that is seven times deeper than the rest of us.
From 1998 to 2004 there was a very small pro scene in Starcraft 1. SC 2 hasn't even come out yet and there is a huge market already developing for it. And you want to wait around for strategy development?
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Calgary25998 Posts
On April 16 2010 05:58 Antimage wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2010 05:53 Chill wrote:On April 16 2010 05:24 Antimage wrote:On April 16 2010 05:01 Liquid`NonY wrote:On April 16 2010 04:46 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:
Very good post. Just wondering, what inspired you to write this? Have you been coming up against a lot of players going for all-in/semi-blind strategies? Yeah. I think that people feel safer and more solid than they actually are. They dismiss their losses instead of learning from them. And when they do learn from their losses and change their game, they tend to sacrifice the strength of whatever they were doing before the changes. Or they might just be content with how often they're winning at the time and they don't know how to improve. They win 60% of the time with their shaky strategy and they stick with it until it drops below 50%. Then they react to that new thing and hit 60% again. They have no idea how to win 70% or more of the time. And cycling back through older strategies can always threaten their 60% win rate. Basically, instead of focusing on moving forward with strategies, they're moving sideways. But because one thing came first and the other thing came second, they feel like they've made progress. Metagame is the culprit. The thing is, some matchups are so broken that metagame cannot possibly evolve without further patches/game fixes. Look at PvT and PvP (from a protoss standpoint). I don't mind losing my games if I know how to fix it in further games, but when it comes to the early game immortal imbalance in PvT or the eventual mass colossi vs mass colossi in PvP, if you don't abuse/act upon those factors, the other player will. (Granted, PvP isn't that bad - I personally don't understand early game but that's just me and I suck at PvP) And to ignore what's been working for 90% of the top players on the server and experiment is very difficult, even if you find a partner willing to do this with you. Fact is, it's a beta and things are broken. The only matchup where I find strategies and choices can vary from game to game is PvZ (again, as a protoss player). And my god, all those posts have really confused me so if I'm going off topic, sorry but this is how I feel right now. This is so short-sighted. Remember when PvZ was unplayable from 1998 to around 2004? It is impossible to say that the matchups are broken after playing them for a month. I'm actually getting a little tired of people at the top of the ladder acting like they have some level of understanding of the game that is seven times deeper than the rest of us. From 1998 to 2004 there was a very small pro scene in Starcraft 1. SC 2 hasn't even come out yet and there is a huge market already developing for it. And you want to wait around for strategy development?
I don't see your point. Having a more competitive scene somehow solved the game 100 times more quickly? Clearly this isn't true and is ridiculous.
I don't want to wait for anything, but I certainly don't want to force it. People are short-sighted to the point of ignorance by suggesting radical band-aid solutions. I want the opposite - let's leave the game imbalanced (if it is) until we're sure and then make small tweaks since it's possible that the players' styles will solve the problem.
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On April 16 2010 05:58 Antimage wrote:
From 1998 to 2004 there was a very small pro scene in Starcraft 1. SC 2 hasn't even come out yet and there is a huge market already developing for it. And you want to wait around for strategy development?
you made me lol
LOL
also, only protosses that could sometimes kill zerg while being Terran destroyers could succed at that time
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I honestly never heard of this kind of metagame lol. I don't think it should be used the other type is the commonly referred one and you'll just make things confusing.
Pvp plays stupid and that's how it's gonna stay till we see patch/expansion.
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On April 16 2010 06:03 Chill wrote:u want to wait around for strategy development?
I don't see your point. Having a more competitive scene somehow solved the game 100 times more quickly? Clearly this isn't true and is ridiculous.
Of course it would evolve more quickly. For two reasons. First of all, the bigger a competitive scene is the more people are able to contribute, and second, the bigger a competitive scene is, the more money is on the line, and hence, more competition. Competition leads to innovation.
That being said the statement was kind of lulzy. SC1 pro scene before 2004 was still pretty influential and sizable. Just not as influential or sizable as it was in 2005 lol.
I don't want to wait for anything, but I certainly don't want to force it. People are short-sighted to the point of ignorance by suggesting radical band-aid solutions. I want the opposite - let's leave the game imbalanced (if it is) until we're sure and then make small tweaks since it's possible that the players' styles will solve the problem.
I definitely agree, and I think some of the knee jerk changes blizzard sometimes make can be counterproductive. For instance, removing the Pheonix's overload, reaper grenades, and low hp high regen roaches because it wasn't immediately balanced, despite the fact that many things in SC1 wasn't originally balanced either, all abilities that promoted interesting play and micro.
However, the metagame does reflect the actual game in some way, and if you properly analyze the metagame, you can find causative for its current state. Many of them may be based on lack of player skill or incomplete development. But if you can logically show how its the result of an underlying problem, change is warranted assuming you can sufficiently prove it to blizzard and the community as a large.
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Calgary25998 Posts
On April 16 2010 06:05 CagedMind wrote:
I honestly never heard of this kind of metagame lol. I don't think it should be used the other type is the commonly referred one and you'll just make things confusing.
Pvp plays stupid and that's how it's gonna stay till we see patch/expansion.
There's only one type. Whatever definition you invented for yourself is incorrect.
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
[QUOTE]On April 16 2010 05:58 Antimage wrote:
From 1998 to 2004 there was a very small pro scene in Starcraft 1./QUOTE]
Who are you? Were you around in 2004 and i just don't recognize you? Joined 3-4-2010 13:00:24
Oh no nevermind, he's talking shit.
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tl;dr version:
Everything you do should be rationalized within the context of the match.
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EPT
