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I really think people are not thinking this through. Let's review the points both for and against:
Practice BO should be private:
1. Allows advantage to the player who views the opponent's latest builds.
2. It becomes hard to hide creative strategies.
3. Most other sports have practice strategies hidden.
My thoughts:
1. Assuming players are not practicing random things to throw people off (because playing this game shouldn't have to be about tricking your opponent outside the realm of the game), knowing that a player is likely to use a certain strategy enables one to prepare for it better. An advantage doesn't have to be drastic as "ABC is going 15 hatch so I'm going to proxy gateway". It can be something as plain as "I'm ambivalent between my 2 gate and 1 gate opening anyway so I might as well go with the one that has a higher chance of being a good counter for the opening that my opponent favors".
2. No one is going to win a tournament by being a one-trick pony who only knows how to do PF rush. But pulling one off in a high level tournament is always very interesting to watch. Additionally it punishes weaknesses in the other player's play.
3. Because money is involved in other sports, teams do anything within legal limits to win. Hiding strategies is one of the things they can do. This does not have a negative effect on the sport. Starcraft can benefit from having these established sports rules.
Practice BO should be public:
1. Both players can do it. It's not unfair.
2. Other sports allow players to watch replays.
My thoughts:
1. This is true. However it's possible a player can truly hide his practice plays by having a secondary account that people don't know about. This kind of practice is not what Starcraft should be about - players shouldn't be forced to view other people's replays to retain fairness; players shouldn't be forced to buy additional accounts; players shouldn't be forced to try to throw their opponents off their game via fake practice matches. Additionally fairness isn't the only consideration. We can all remove fog of war, remove food caps, etc. Those changes would keep the game fair, but would also remove types of play that make Starcraft good. Analogously, if people know what builds their opponents favor, Starcraft would have much less room for tricky/creative play in tournaments. We will see a lot of standard openings and safe play. This is arguably much less interesting for players and spectators alike.
2. This is true, however to keep the analogy consistent, one must then consider the case in which coaches/players can view other teams' practices. Watching real tournament games is one thing, but watching what the opponent is practicing/preparing to use against you in tomorrow's game is a different thing entirely.
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BOs should be visible only on games you actually played, this way you can still check your BOs or your opponent BOs if you missed something and lost.
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Don't pro-gamers go over various replays of their opponent beforehand anyway?
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On June 25 2010 04:27 Bibdy wrote:
Don't pro-gamers go over various replays of their opponent beforehand anyway?
They can, but that's beside the point. Those replays are public. Most likely intentionally public or were from tournaments. The last 15 build orders a player played is most likely the practice that player has prepared to use against his opponent in their upcoming match.
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i find people getting so upset about this pretty ridiculous. idra's examples, to me, do not make sense.
say some show match is coming up, and through hours of research, player a figures out player b is doing a fast expo 2 rax build (example). is player a going to not scout anymore because he knows this? of course not.
i really don't see how it changes the game. its not like people will just assume someone else is doing something because of their match record, because that alone is riskier than just going into the game with no specific assumptions
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On June 25 2010 04:37 vT.sOel wrote:
i find people getting so upset about this pretty ridiculous. idra's examples, to me, do not make sense.
say some show match is coming up, and through hours of research, player a figures out player b is doing a fast expo 2 rax build (example). is player a going to not scout anymore because he knows this? of course not.
i really don't see how it changes the game. its not like people will just assume someone else is doing something because of their match record, because that alone is riskier than just going into the game with no specific assumptions
But at that point you know that fast expo 2 rax is the opponent's most rehearsed build. That means if you throw down an opening that's a hard counter to that, you just threw away the opponent's past few days of practice because then he'll have to do something else.
Additionally, watching the exact timing on the BO can help you decide when to scout, beyond the first peon (with sac ol, scan, obs, whatever).
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But at that point you know that fast expo 2 rax is the opponent's most rehearsed build. That means if you throw down an opening that's a hard counter to that, you just threw away the opponent's past few days of practice because then he'll have to do something else.
is this why flash keeps losing?
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example 1
player A has been practicing fast expand with protoss
player B has been practicing fast expand with protoss
player A studies player B and learns that he's practicing fast expand with protoss.
player B studies player A and learns that he's practicing fast expand with protoss.
who wins?
example 2
player A has been practicing a fast DT
player B has been practicing a fast void ray
they study each other
who changes their game plan, why, and who wins?
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In both those cases, both players make use of the BO being public. In this case it's not a question of fairness. It's a question of making the game less interesting. Players are forced into safer less creative plays.
I already put out a (I think) valid analogy. Whole map is revealed at all times with no fog of war. Both players sees the other the whole game. Is this unfair? no, but we can see how this can make the game much less enjoyable for everyone involved. Other posters have listed the scenario of 200/200 armies, with no macro involved. Is that fair? yes, but again this removes a fun element of the game.
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Knowing this, can't you just willingly pad your replay record with crappy BOs in anticipation of a trounament? Yeah, you practice hardcore for the type of BO you want to go with, then hit a bunch of custom games and randomly screw around or just test other BOs... then what?
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
On June 24 2010 07:45 Sorry.NotYet wrote:Hello everyone ! It is not a secret that you can add anyone by right-click in lobby or after game and see the person's build orders in many matches. Since Idra recently spoke about this question, I started thinking that practically any tournament right now is vulnerable to this problem. The fact that there is no privacy in the way you play your games ruins the competitive basis of StarCraft. My question is (since I couldnt find it on blizz forums) - is there any response from Blizzard on this matter? Are they going to fix it somehow or they don't see any problem about it? I think it is easily solvable by letting the user choose which info they want to show on their profile page (much like Facebook ^^) or at least give the opportunity to hide your match record. Since there is no privacy right now and everyone can add you - this, at least, will prevent players from studying your playstyle before you actually play with them  Any suggestions on this matter ?
Tournament games should be on public record. Like in Chess and football this does not ruin competition, but enhances it.
And the couple thousand or so players whose builds may be worth stealing can just practice with their friends on private accounts with non-sensical names like "OM2LZ12J9"
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But using another account is going to cost you another copy of the game.
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
On June 25 2010 06:13 DanielD wrote:
But using another account is going to cost you another copy of the game.
Do you really care about the additional few hundred dollars business expense to team eStro? I don't.
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United States5162 Posts
On June 25 2010 06:18 TossFloss wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2010 06:13 DanielD wrote:
But using another account is going to cost you another copy of the game. Do you really care about the additional few hundred dollars business expense to team eStro? I don't.
But in the end it's still a waste. Why have a system that people are going to try to circumvent? Just let people practice privately like they do in every other sport.
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With this bo-stealing tool pro's have to buy one new copy of the game when their smurf-account gets revealed.
Knowing what my upcoming opponent practised the most in the last XX-games is going to be bad for the whole competitive scene.
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When I read a topic like this, I am reminded that SC 2 does not have LAN. It's unfortunate since it would give players some privacy for practicing their builds.
A privacy option where you may or may not choose to have your builds posted sounds interesting. Let's say a player chooses only certain builds to be listed. Maybe his opponent thinks he will go for an alternate build, or maybe he's bluffing and will use it.
I agree that in general privacy could some some work on Bnet2.
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There is absolutely no problem with this. In BW, people looked over build orders. In every sport, people are able to watch what the opposing team has done in the past. Showing build orders just makes this easier and more intuitive.
I'm actually amazed that Idra would speak about this seeming as he watched Orb's stream before the HDH and scouted out a proxy because he saw Orb do it several times in his stream.
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not sure if this has been mentioned but in korea t couldnt they easily just use a different screen name for practice. koreans can subscribe to sc2 for a day or month and just use different names every time
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Just make it so you can't look at BO's on custom games imo.
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On June 25 2010 06:49 Wr3k wrote:
Just make it so you can't look at BO's on custom games imo.
^^this.
I think what public B.O.s encourages is having to be good with multiple, different builds, so that your opponent doesn't know which you are going to employ. Then again, isn't this the case already? Doesn't good scouting still play the bigger role than looking up your opponent's practice history?
[Forgive me if tone is inflammatory. This is not intended.]
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EPT
