EPTOfficial State of the Game Podcast Thread - Page 1027
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Popss
Sweden176 Posts
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slyboogie
United States3423 Posts
On May 07 2011 07:57 Sakarabu wrote: No. Nicely written, and you did manage to fool some people here but.. Here's where Idras (and your) whole argument falls apart; If he really believed what he was saying and didn't just want some scapegoat for being bad in a specific game, or some reason to get attention, then guess what? HE IS FREE TO CHANGE HIS RACE That is the difference in SC2 compared to the other situations you mentioned. If it really came down to brass tacks and like you said it was"his livelihood" at stake, don't you think he would have changed race by now after whining for so long? That means either: 1) He thinks Zerg give him the best chance of winning. In which case fuck him and his whining, it's becoming a joke and as witnessed on SotG people just laugh at him cause they know he is full of shit. I mean seriously? How can people even take him seriously when he says absurd shit like "We are supposed to win, we've been in Korea for 3 years". He sounded like a spoilt brat who thinks he should get wins on a silver platter for playing a completely different game for afew years in Korea. 2)He also shares Day9's view, and thinks there is some puzzle to be solved. In which case he should keep his arrogant mouth shut and let people play the game instead of acting like the spoilt whining child constantly. Going off historical evidence there is no reason that day9's point of view isn't valid. Hey, it worked for another little game called Starcraft: Broodwar. Idras point of view on the otherhand holds no worth at all, he whined about his race (Terran) in BW when the majority of people thought it was probably the strongest in top level play (paraphrasing from what Incontrol said). And now he is whining in SC2 when Zerg are probably the strongest race right now. TL;DR Idra should stfu sometimes and focus on improving his gameplay instead of assuming he is already perfect and it's the game that is broken. I don't really appreciate you saying that I "fooled" people, when that was never any intention of mine. My little piece was not an argument. It was just an observation. I did not mean to inject any value or judgment into my words. To make myself transparent, I like Day9's point more. If you search my post history, you'll see many posts where I say the game is still young and balance talk should be limited. Secondly, I don't think you took away what I was trying to say in the Idra paragraph. Do you think that in the current state of the game(haha,) that Zergs struggle? That's it: Do Zergs struggle? Obviously, many Zergs feel that they do(I won't speak to the factuality of that thought, just that the thought exists.) Many Zergs think they struggle mightily and seek a balancing. How is this balancing to come? As previously discussed, there are two styles of balance: A. Blizzard In darkness, Zergs fumble. They struggle in vain and all hope is lost. Suddenly! Dawn breaks over the horizon. Creep now spreads twice as fast. Overlord base movement speed is increased to 1. Lairs now cost 50 gas. The Zerg race rejoices, as Idra, Sen, Nestea, Dimaga and other pros lead the charge. The new patch changes lead to dynamic play - both aggressive and passive. Dozens of new builds emerge and Zergs become the most competitive race.* B. Emergent Gameplay In darkness, Zergs fumble. They struggle in vain and all hope is lost. Suddenly! A young man steps out of the darkness. With 400 APM, he slaughters 2 barrack pushes with 10 lings. With genius intuition, he finds the perfect angles with which Overlords can see. With brilliant multitasking, his creep reaches the base of his enemy in 9 minutes of game time. His tremendous strategies smash Protosses who feebly try to concoct builds to counter the prodigy. He takes a record 4 GSL titles, represents his country with a Gold medal in WCG, he even takes 1st in at an MLG Pro Circuit event. It's a golden age for Zerg.* *Obviously, this is all made up. I suppose both would work. But the point is this: Idra doesn't want to have to be Saviour. He doesn't want to have to be Jaedong. He, especially, does not want to have to wait until someone else comes along before he feels confident that he can win any game. I guess, from a fundamental point, you are accurate. Any player could play any race. | ||
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Frozenserpent
United States143 Posts
On May 07 2011 08:31 Dystisis wrote: Yes, and the maps affect "meta game" (play styles) and play styles eventually affect new maps as well. You're misusing the word "imbalanced", though. The races were imbalanced *statistically*, strategical imbalances. This does not mean that any race is better than another, which Idra for some reason keeps stating, though he has no grounds for stating it; because the potential of any race is yet to be reached (an equilibrium/culmination of strategy-development), we have all reason to think that a race struggling in the current state of the game will dominate in the next based on player innovation, player skill and map rotation. Idra knows no more about the potential of a race than a Gold level player, all they know is in the paradigm of the current state of the game. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but you are essentially stating that A. statistically the races were imbalanced. B. statistical imbalance does not necessitate imbalance between races. C. Idra states that there is imbalance between races. D. Idra has no grounds for stating such imbalance. E. potential for a race is yet to be reached, so there are no grounds for stating imbalance. F. a race struggling currently can, for all we know, be the dominant race due to other factors. G. these other factors is innovation, skill, and maps. H. Idra knows only as much about the potential of a race as a gold level player because he can only see current metagame. First of all, it seems to me that D is disproven simply because of A. Idra does have SOME ground at the very least because of statistical imbalance. Even though B is true, that A does not NECESSARILY mean imbalance between races (which, I feel, is a very big problem in discussing balance, because it seems that people have varying definitions of what racial imbalance is), A does give evidence towards imbalance. As in, if statistically the races are imbalanced, it is more likely that the races are imbalanced. Problem with the argument of E is that you can always see more potential in a game. There is pretty much no time where you can safely say that you've fully explored the game's potential. And if more potential for a race exists, E states that you can't state there is any imbalance. That means there is no time where you can state there is any imbalance. But in other communities there have been instances where things have been banned from tournaments, and it was commonly agreed that certain things WERE imbalanced. An example would be akuma for street fighter 2. No one felt that they fully explored the potential for their game. If you hold E to be true, then you have to reject the notion of imbalance in those games, and you would never agree to anything being banned from tourney play. As for F, the way you phrased it makes it sound like we have absolutely no clue if one race will dominate or not. The problem is, we do have some clue. We can't predict for 100% certainty, but we have a rough idea of how things will go. For example, if we see a lot of potential in a certain opening (example: TvZ 2-rax opening), we have an idea that T is more likely to do better in the future metagame than Z is. My first experience with 2-rax opening is from Artosis' tweet about the build and about how it will be a strong player in the metagame. And you know what, he was correct. TvZ metagame shifted more towards T favor in the next few months. Surprisingly, TvZ statistics is still T favored even now, months and months after the introduction of 2-rax. If you are trying to state that we have NO idea how metagame will change, then you are wrong. We can have SOME idea. We just won't be correct all the time. One point about G is that you consider map pool to be a factor outside of racial balance. I, on the other hand, consider it as being part of racial balance. It's a multiplier, kind of... I'm a bit uncertain of how to explain what I mean exactly. But consider this, TvZ can be imbalanced on certain maps. You would say, oh, T/Z isn't imbalanced. The maps are imbalanced. I would say, TvZ is imbalanced in this way on this map. And there would be racial balances/imbalances on every map. For example, imagine a map where you spawn right next to your opponent. I think it's safe to say that one race will be imbalanced. I think it will be Z favored against T, because Z can regenerate (i'm fairly certain of this). I would say there is a racial imbalance on this map. I guess my point is that racial balance can be changed with maps, not necessarily through balance changes. Well this is a trivial point since it's more semantics than anything. But I feel like when idra talks about game balance, he is including map balance in the picture as well, while you are talking solely about racial imbalance. H seems rather absurd, along similar veins in F. Someone who understands the game more should have a better idea of future metagame developments. We can't see the future, but it doesn't mean we are completely blind. That's what the whole learning thing is about, being able to predict future based on past experiences. | ||
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Rainmaker5
United States1027 Posts
On May 07 2011 08:29 tdt wrote: They should. They don't even have a foreign language requirement. I have cousins in your country that speak and write 3. You can graduate college without knowing calculus or even trig. I am an accounting major and highest math I had to take was business calc with only has limits. Then you should probably go to a better college. I'm an accounting-focused business major and my calculus requirements were rather comprehensive. Also I believe all UCs and CSUs have Foreign Language requirements. | ||
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Ropid
Germany3557 Posts
On May 07 2011 08:29 tdt wrote: They should. They don't even have a foreign language requirement. I have cousins in your country that speak and write 3. You can graduate college without knowing calculus or even trig. I am an accounting major and highest math I had to take was business calc with only has limits. The same could be said about colleges and universities and degrees here. About languages, you could perhaps be a bit misled about the average situation. You naturally only get exposed to people that have practice speaking English, while in reality one can get through school with very bad English, forget everything, and still get a university degree (as an example, I forgot all French I learned in school). | ||
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kzn
United States1218 Posts
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blade55555
United States17423 Posts
On May 07 2011 08:43 Popss wrote: Wonder how long Idra can rant about imbalance in this game until people stop taking him seriously again. When he's the only player that does (or one of the very very few top players) | ||
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Kich
United States339 Posts
And then SSF4 happened (the equivalence of a balance patch) and neutered him due to an overreaction from Capcom. Horrifically off topic, but it's at least analogous to the situation at hand: overreacting and patching things before people are given enough time to work things out it can be detrimental to the game.. If Zerg's are buffed to be compensated for these issues they're having, and then a style of play emerges that not only would have dealt with the issues prior but are now backed by unnecessary buffs, you leave Zerg in a power position and will likely have to then nerf them back down. As of right now, the only patching I think should occur are to promote unit diversity (For instance the protoss changes promoting Archon usage, the unit was largely ignored and I feel that will no longer be the case after 1.3.3) or some overwhelmingly powerful strategy that completely dominates the game (To an extent, the 4-gate, but even that after enough time is now deemed "easy to fend off and useless"). | ||
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confusedcrib
United States1307 Posts
On May 07 2011 09:15 Rainmaker5 wrote: Then you should probably go to a better college. I'm an accounting-focused business major and my calculus requirements were rather comprehensive. Also I believe all UCs and CSUs have Foreign Language requirements. What is going on here? | ||
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genopath
80 Posts
 Also for those saying "it's a poor transcript". I clearly state its been modified by removing bad words, and a few other unimportant moments for the conversation and no we didn't cut anything relevant of what IdrA said especially content wise. | ||
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taintmachine
United States431 Posts
On May 07 2011 09:24 blade55555 wrote: When he's the only player that does (or one of the very very few top players) they might bring it up, but who else brings it up as much? which of the top players even come close? | ||
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MonsieurGrimm
Canada2441 Posts
On May 07 2011 10:15 taintmachine wrote: they might bring it up, but who else brings it up as much? which of the top players even come close? so he's more outspoken, that doesn't mean the other players don't feel the same way. also, more people ask him too, since they expect him to talk about it honestly. | ||
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The KY
United Kingdom6252 Posts
Not that we should disregard what he says, but just...keep that in mind. | ||
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taintmachine
United States431 Posts
On May 07 2011 10:29 MonsieurGrimm wrote: so he's more outspoken, that doesn't mean the other players don't feel the same way. also, more people ask him too, since they expect him to talk about it honestly. yea, that really has nothing to do with what blade555 said in response to popss. | ||
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MonsieurGrimm
Canada2441 Posts
On May 07 2011 10:48 taintmachine wrote: yea, that really has nothing to do with what blade555 said in response to popss. you and blade are talking about who talks about imbalance and how much those pros talk about imbalance I was saying that idra talks about imbalance a lot more but other pros feel the same way. How does that have nothing to do with what you're talking about? | ||
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taintmachine
United States431 Posts
On May 07 2011 11:01 MonsieurGrimm wrote: you and blade are talking about who talks about imbalance and how much those pros talk about imbalance I was saying that idra talks about imbalance a lot more but other pros feel the same way. How does that have nothing to do with what you're talking about? because whether or not other pros (more specifically, the very few top players) agree with idra is besides the point when we're talking about someone possibly talking too much about a particular topic (popss's point). | ||
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suejak
Japan545 Posts
On May 06 2011 05:58 epik640x wrote: I know Greg has said things about Zerg before as well but at this point it doesn't seem like anything was severely over exaggerating or anything. It's funny, coz IdrA will complain about something, and then when that thing gets patched a month or two later, he'll say it's no longer a problem because the metagame has moved past that, and zergs no longer struggle with it. "This patch would have been a good patch a month or two ago," he said when reapers were nerfed to stop 6rax reaper. But I was left wondering, if the game evolved so as to make 6rax reaper not a problem, why did Idra say that the patch "would have been a good patch a month or two ago"? If the metagame eliminated the need for patching, why did Idra say that the patch would have been useful? I think it's because Idra is uncomfortable with the process of players discovering solutions. At the end of the day, he doesn't care about that process of metagame evolution, which is a point you make. I think that's right. He doesn't care about what can happen; he cares about the current state. If he can't figure out how to beat something in the moment (e.g., 6rax reaper), then it needs to be patched so he can go back to winning and making money, which in a just world would be easy for him. The long-run doesn't matter. This is how he thinks. It truly does seem like Zerg is still the toughest to play and the fact that it attracts--generally--the most skilled players from BW makes it even tougher to gauge the true imbalance. You, sir, have fallen for the Idra line hook, line, and sinker. Just because Idra plays zerg and Idra says Ret is a god among men does not mean that the "most skilled players from BW play zerg". This is what Idra says to bolster his case, because he lies a lot. But whether you're talking Korea or non-Korea, it's not true. Really, only Idra, Ret, and now Morrow play zerg. Tyler does not. GosI[Terran] does not. Of top foreign BW players who did not go to (or almost go to) Korea, White-Ra does not play zerg. Strelok and Mana do not. Cloud does not. I can go on... | ||
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AndAgain
United States2621 Posts
On May 07 2011 08:43 Popss wrote: Wonder how long Idra can rant about imbalance in this game until people stop taking him seriously again. Unfortunetly, he's a pretty high end SC2 player so a lot of fanboys will hang on every word of his. That wasn't the case in BW. | ||
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awesomoecalypse
United States2235 Posts
1.) Winning--prize money, etc. and 2.) Reputation--sponsorships, lessons, etc. The former is tied directly to the strength of his race, so he has a clear incentive to try to get them patched to be stronger. The latter is also indirectly tied to the percieved strength of his race, in that if he can convince everyone he plays a UP race, he'll get more respect for his wins, and take less flack for his losses. As such, everything he says regarding game balance as it relates to Zerg is suspect. That doesn't mean it should be 100% dismissed, but it should be taken with a huge grain of salt, and anyone saying "IdrA says X about Zerg so it must be true" is an idiot. IdrA said a whole lot of bullshit about Terran in BW that wasn't true in the slightest (interestingly, in both games it seems to be Protoss that sends him into the biggest ragefits). | ||
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suejak
Japan545 Posts
On May 07 2011 12:45 awesomoecalypse wrote: The idea that IdrA is some objective commentator whose views should be taken as face value is laughable--even if he wasn't a notorious whiner, who bitched about imbalance back in Brood War...he just has a huge, obvious conflict of interest. His livelihood depends on 1.) Winning--prize money, etc. and 2.) Reputation--sponsorships, lessons, etc. The former is tied directly to the strength of his race, so he has a clear incentive to try to get them patched to be stronger. The latter is also indirectly tied to the percieved strength of his race, in that if he can convince everyone he plays a UP race, he'll get more respect for his wins, and take less flack for his losses. As such, everything he says regarding game balance as it relates to Zerg is suspect. That doesn't mean it should be 100% dismissed, but it should be taken with a huge grain of salt, and anyone saying "IdrA says X about Zerg so it must be true" is an idiot. . PERFECT summary of the problem. Very concisely put. | ||
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