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On April 16 2010 07:10 0neder wrote:
I think a few things to note about balance that I've thought of recently (not really new):
1 - Brood War probably ISN'T 'balanced' with the 1.08 patch. HOWEVER, players of the respective races have pushed themselves and evolved the potential of each race to achieve balance.
2 - Map design will evolve to complement racial balance. This is one of the biggest strengths of RTS games and SC in particular IMO. The nature of them allows for maps to significantly influence balance, compared to, say, a fighting game.
umm... this is SCII...
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I know exactly what you mean!
Its honestly hard for a new player like me to adjust to things so I get absorbed into the meta game and i lose every time because people adjust to my cookie cutter builds.
I'll keep this in mind, thanks!!!
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This is an absolutely great post, but I think the people who aren't doing the same 1 base all in builds every game are the ones that already try new builds / timings / ideas at the cost of win percentage.
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a cry for a better gaming world
<3 very well written
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Setting aside the whole issue of people not using words correctly, I think this raises a good point: this is the beta, and the main goal of all beta testers should be to help Blizzard finish the game.
If you find something that you think is overpowered and breaks the game, then don't whine about it, just use it. Switch races if you have to. If you think it can be countered, then concentrate on countering it. If it can be countered, then people will figure it out pretty quickly. If it can't, then the developers will notice in due time.
Blizzard has stated their intention to balance the game at all levels of skill, not just for top players. So they're going to be trying to eliminate things like "zergling rush" strategies where one player just follows a simple no-skill script, and the other one has to scout properly and react intelligently to stay in the game. That means they're going to change things even when it seems balanced to high-skill players.
From the point of view of a player at a specific skill level, you can't relate to the decision-making process of the developers. My advice is to stop second-guessing the designers, assume the game is imbalanced, and just try to exploit the imbalances as much as possible to win as much as you can.
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United States1774 Posts
Don't focus on the metagame.... yet 
Agree 100%
however at some point not -too- long after release metagame will become an integral part of how the game is played at higher levels. If you're gonna try to teach someone how to play SC:BW you teach em the game, and then the metagame. Theres no point in teaching a player an obsolete build/style. However these things only exist because of an evolution and mastery of breaking the game down to it's most efficient parts.
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Agreed wholeheartedly Nony! When playing one of my friends I pretty much know what he is going to do (we play so he can practice to be better) yet I still scout, poke in, etc just because I don't want to fall into the lazy metagame mentality trap.
I treat it like I didn't know him and I need to scout properly that way when I play ladder later or one of my far better practice partners I haven't mucked up my mentality.
For a tournament metagame is very useful but in the context of your post ie ladder/balance then it's a distracting waste of mental energy and more often than not a crutch that leads to inferior play down the road.
People try blind hard counters on me all the time (because Im zerg and I MUST be using roaches right!) and with scouting them + burrowing whatever I did happen to build, I just abuse it. Funny enough these failed blind-build players are often the worse mannered about their loss when it happens. I can only assume they are used to easy wins because the metagame currently makes their build a good idea in most scenarios.
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I would think you could catch what you want to say in the following phrase:
Players who play to win polarize the player base towards the same play style due to imbalances.
If players would play Bo5 or Bo3 sets to count as a single win, imbalance abusive builds can be countered by meta game and could iron out those wrinkles, perhaps?
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I think that focus on the metagame is actually very important to helping Blizzard fix the imbalances.
For instance, build order rock-paper-scissors is a big part of Starcraft. When you've got "good old rock - can't go wrong with that!" players, this is something you should recognize and take advantage of. You can't make an "always rock" strategy look bad unless you play paper more than one third of the time.
There are huge advantages to specializing in only one strategy, and the only disadvantage is its vulnerability to metagaming (i.e. predicting the predictable). An "always rock" player's rock will generally beat a random player's rock, and give him a 60+% win rate.
By refusing to metagame, you make bad players and bad strategies look good.
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8751 Posts
On April 16 2010 08:12 Funchucks wrote:
I think that focus on the metagame is actually very important to helping Blizzard fix the imbalances.
For instance, build order rock-paper-scissors is a big part of Starcraft. When you've got "good old rock - can't go wrong with that!" players, this is something you should recognize and take advantage of. You can't make an "always rock" strategy look bad unless you play paper more than one third of the time.
There are huge advantages to specializing in only one strategy, and the only disadvantage is its vulnerability to metagaming (i.e. predicting the predictable). An "always rock" player's rock will generally beat a random player's rock, and give him a 60+% win rate.
By refusing to metagame, you make bad players and bad strategies look good.
Well it's all about inventing a 4th option that is outside of the rock-paper-scissors dynamic.
And I think Blizzard's people understand a great deal about this kind of stuff. They aren't going to be deceived by something that just "appears" to be good. Of course they look at statistics that are blind to this kind of stuff, but they also look at real games and can figure out what is going on.
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On April 16 2010 04:13 Tropics wrote:
This is a good post but I think the main problem about this is the fact that people run off all sorts of different definitions for the word metagame
People can use all sorts of definitions for the word "Giraffe," but that's their ignorance.
Meta game means "game outside of (or beyond) the game." That's what it means. If you use it to mean something else that's your ignorance, and failure to make proper use of language.
In regard to the OP: I disagree. Ultimately, the very definition of standard play or "all around strong" builds rest on a certain degree of weighted reasoning or inductive logic based on what you can realistically expect to see.
If you are on Steppes of War and you open up 13 pool in ZvZ, you will lose very often to a 6 or 7 pool, yet strong players consistently open up 13, 14, even occasionally 15 pool, based on the knowledge that other strong players will rarely risk such an all in strategy. Yet if every one did 6 or 7 pool, then 6 or 7 pool would not be risky, and it would also not be especially effective. Knowing that 6 and 7 pool strategies are common, the best opening would be an 8, 9 or 10 pool strategy. Yet the best strategy against 8-10 pool would indeed be 12 or 13 pool.
Therefore, any analysis of a "best" or "strongest" strategy must include some analysis of what is likely to occur, and that requires understanding the meta game and basing your decisions upon it.
Perhaps a better point to make would be: Don't mistake the meta game for the game itself. The meta game is an important element of being a good player, but it is a very unsteady basis for long term success, because it shifts around a lot over time. It is better to look for ways to buck the trend than simply to depend on ways to exploit them. That way you are not caught flat footed when your assumptions turn out to be incorrect or trends change.
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On April 16 2010 06:51 huun wrote:
this is not a game like chess contains very deep and different strategies. one year later there will be only a couple of proven and working strategies which players stick to.
A year after chess was created, I doubt there was much realization of depth.
Depth is realized when people have time to explore and repeat and find all of the nuances. The depth of SCBW was mainly only realized once Blizzard stopped patching and forced players to solve their own problems, so to speak.
The possible number of game paths on even a single SC2 map dwarfs the entire universe of possibilities in Chess. The depth that potentially exists to be explored is literally beyond the ability of a single generation to comprehend. It is not a question of whether depth exists, only a question of whether balance exists and whether the game is entertaining enough that we will ever bother to explore the depths that exist.
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haha if u think nony doesnt use metagame then watch his TSL games vs idra
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He absolutely uses meta-game; his point is that people shouldn't learn SC 2 through meta-gaming.
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Wow... I played BW for like 2 years and I never even got to metagame part... I just got to the losing part. I was really good at the losing part.
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On April 16 2010 08:52 Azarkon wrote:
He absolutely uses meta-game; his point is that people shouldn't learn SC 2 through meta-gaming.
Well that also depends on what it is that you want to learn most or learn first.
If you are trying to sharpen your ability to react on the fly, then you shouldn't use any set build order, or only a skeleton order. On the other hand, if you are trying to up your technical ability (APM, scouting, building placement, etc) then the opposite may be true. You may wish to dogmatically use only a single build order or a very small sub set of build orders, so that you can evaluate yourself and grow without the distraction of so many other variables.
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8751 Posts
On April 16 2010 08:33 Wintermute wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2010 04:13 Tropics wrote:
This is a good post but I think the main problem about this is the fact that people run off all sorts of different definitions for the word metagame People can use all sorts of definitions for the word "Giraffe," but that's their ignorance. Meta game means "game outside of (or beyond) the game." That's what it means. If you use it to mean something else that's your ignorance, and failure to make proper use of language. In regard to the OP: I disagree. Ultimately, the very definition of standard play or "all around strong" builds rest on a certain degree of weighted reasoning or inductive logic based on what you can realistically expect to see. If you are on Steppes of War and you open up 13 pool in ZvZ, you will lose very often to a 6 or 7 pool, yet strong players consistently open up 13, 14, even occasionally 15 pool, based on the knowledge that other strong players will rarely risk such an all in strategy. Yet if every one did 6 or 7 pool, then 6 or 7 pool would not be risky, and it would also not be especially effective. Knowing that 6 and 7 pool strategies are common, the best opening would be an 8, 9 or 10 pool strategy. Yet the best strategy against 8-10 pool would indeed be 12 or 13 pool. Therefore, any analysis of a "best" or "strongest" strategy must include some analysis of what is likely to occur, and that requires understanding the meta game and basing your decisions upon it. Perhaps a better point to make would be: Don't mistake the meta game for the game itself. The meta game is an important element of being a good player, but it is a very unsteady basis for long term success, because it shifts around a lot over time. It is better to look for ways to buck the trend than simply to depend on ways to exploit them. That way you are not caught flat footed when your assumptions turn out to be incorrect or trends change.
Strong enough builds don't exist in SC2 yet, but I can honestly say that many of my builds in SC:BW were ready for anything. There were no assumptions about anything. The information I gather about my opponent in that particular game is all that's needed to determine every one of my decisions. My past games make up the rules and policies for how I respond to things, but every new game is a clean slate that follows my latest flow chart of decision making. This type of play is legitimate all the way to the top -- I mean, beyond even me, up to S-Class Koreans.
Your argument only works if this type of play isn't possible in SC2. But this type of play should be sought after by pretty much everyone -- players who want to be the best players, designers who want their game to be the best and spectators who want to see a robust strategical competition. If this type of play isn't possible, we have bigger problems. There's no reason to think it can't work though. It takes a ton of experience and brilliance from a whole community of players to hammer out all the nuances that enable it. I'm urging people to actually join in this effort because their commitment to winning via metagame is virtually opting out of it.
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Yea i wish ladder was best of 3
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You have to remember, with the way SC2 is going right now, im sure by October/late 2010 there will be 2-3 "set strategies" in each matchup, hell its almost to that point right now. The Metagame will be more thought out, and people will start doing the "safe" builds, and the occasional proxy.
BUT remember, theres TWO expansion packs coming within the next 2 years, meaning that Blizzard has time to see what the common trends are in each matchup, and adding diverse options to counter those specific trends, hopefully while maintaining the other viable options, giving each matchup at least 4-5 potentially equal strategies. That is what BW is missing right now in my opinion, and although it has evolved slowly (one new strategy every 2-3 years, such as Savior saron-zerg, then Bisu PvT, then recently with Flash), but if they just introduced afew new units every say 3-5 years, it really changes up the game and if done correctly, will make the game much more enjoyable in the longrun.
If done correctly, SC2 should be very diverse and offer lots of options once it is all said and done. Doing the same 1 strategy everygame for years is what kills off most RTS games in my opinion, such as War3. SC2 has a long process to go before we can confidently label it as a "bust" or "great".
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EPT
