On April 06 2011 20:15 Cuddle wrote: Just wonderful to have IdrA on. I love it and support the addition of the IdrA-Pillar.
I love that he aint afraid to discuss balance. Others doesnt even wanna tuch the subject and the show is called "STATE OF THE GAME". Everything now is down to promoting tournaments and talking about players, and theres allmost no talk about strategies and balance. Show has become SC center v2.
I love the show, but please dont be so afraid to talk about it. Maby its because they all play protoss and doesnt have anything to complain about atm, but dont just lol at idra when he wants to utter his opinion.
balance talk is counter productive in the sense that when you lose you don't blame yourself for the loss, but blame the developers of the game. Idra's w/l ratio against Protoss is significantly low not due to balance but due to his strong belief that he doesn't have a fair chance to take games of Protoss players. That exact attitude is the center of balance talk, assuming that the game is broken and nothing can be done you don't have any motivation to play your best because you believe that the only way to win is to completely outplay your opponent, or to let your opponent completely fuck up. People whined excessively about Terran, now since it has been nerfed (or people learned how to deal with Terran) people whine about Protoss (mind you not that many changes were done to that race -most of the changes were nerfs since the release). Maybe Zerg is currently slightly more difficult to win with at a pro level play, but it is not by any means impossible and unrealistic.
On April 06 2011 19:41 Novalisk wrote: I didn't like the part where Tyler hinted that the NASL will give you your money's worth more than the GSL.
More games=/=more quality content. As a player you might want more games to study, but a spectator(majority of the viewerbase judging by a recent poll) will likely want a better viewing experience, which the NASL has yet to show.
I didn't hint at anything. I meant simply what I said.
I honestly wouldn't worry about people only watching the NASL. While the NASL offers a crap ton of content, it's not fair to compare it with the content GSL and MLG offers.
I'm not familiar with all the details, but I'm guessing most of the NASL games will be played online as opposed to on location like MLG and GSL. This offers a completely different spectator experience(crowd and player emotion for example), and together with the casters and production, makes the content very different.
NASL offers more games, while GSL+MLG offers a more immersive viewer experience. I think the NASL at its early stages will take on the "filler" role while on location tournaments like the GSL, MLG, and Dreamhack will be take on the "main event" role.
I don't know about this. NASL is going to cast their games live but then they are going to edit everything before it's actually aired. I think because of that you can expect a really high level of production value and we'll end up watching a really quality product. Even when the NASL isn't in it's final on site stage I think the quality will be greater than what we can expect from a live tournament like MLG which has very little editing/etc and at the very least equal quality to the production of the GSL.
On April 06 2011 20:15 Cuddle wrote: Just wonderful to have IdrA on. I love it and support the addition of the IdrA-Pillar.
I love that he aint afraid to discuss balance. Others doesnt even wanna tuch the subject and the show is called "STATE OF THE GAME". Everything now is down to promoting tournaments and talking about players, and theres allmost no talk about strategies and balance. Show has become SC center v2.
I love the show, but please dont be so afraid to talk about it. Maby its because they all play protoss and doesnt have anything to complain about atm, but dont just lol at idra when he wants to utter his opinion.
They were discussing things that happened over the weekend, tournaments going on in the future. You're obviously basing this on this one episode because a couple weeks ago, they spent an hour discussing PvP.
They don't want to discuss "imbalance" because it's a shitty way of saying "I don't care to figure out a solution to this problem I'm having in game." They don't want to discuss it because it just shits all over the time and effort they spend understanding the way the game works. Maybe if Idra said something about what can I do to prevent this problem I'm having instead of a short inflammatory statement, it would've been worth discussing.
I liked what Idra had to say and I mostly agree with him. Although it was not fair that they invite him, get him to talk about balance and then make fun of him after that I have to agree with what Day9 said once he finally stopped trolling. I think Idra could use some personal coaching with Day9.
On April 06 2011 16:29 Velr wrote: It's hard to figure something out when you get stomped by a 4 or 6 gate every second game because you were busy figuring out Z lategame...
MLG was "ok" according to most of them? Lol... They are so biased, if this would have been any other tournament it would have gotten ripped to shreds by them, and that for good reason.
I'm so tired of seeing this. MLG fucked up, we all said that, we all know that. Why the fuck would we spend more time on something people already spent the entire weekend talking about? What do you want us to say other then what has already been said?
I'm sorry for pointing out the few positive aspects of such a negative event. I guess its how I look at things.
There may have been a few positives from your standpoint but from ours there were close to none. We saw a total of like....2 games on friday AND saturday. Yeah, sure, the live event was great, but what about the majority who were sitting at home staring at a screen that said "The stream will start momentarily".
On April 06 2011 19:41 Novalisk wrote: I didn't like the part where Tyler hinted that the NASL will give you your money's worth more than the GSL.
More games=/=more quality content. As a player you might want more games to study, but a spectator(majority of the viewerbase judging by a recent poll) will likely want a better viewing experience, which the NASL has yet to show.
I didn't hint at anything. I meant simply what I said.
I honestly wouldn't worry about people only watching the NASL. While the NASL offers a crap ton of content, it's not fair to compare it with the content GSL and MLG offers.
I'm not familiar with all the details, but I'm guessing most of the NASL games will be played online as opposed to on location like MLG and GSL. This offers a completely different spectator experience(crowd and player emotion for example), and together with the casters and production, makes the content very different.
NASL offers more games, while GSL+MLG offers a more immersive viewer experience. I think the NASL at its early stages will take on the "filler" role while on location tournaments like the GSL, MLG, and Dreamhack will be take on the "main event" role.
I don't know about this. NASL is going to cast their games live but then they are going to edit everything before it's actually aired. I think because of that you can expect a really high level of production value and we'll end up watching a really quality product. Even when the NASL isn't in it's final on site stage I think the quality will be greater than what we can expect from a live tournament like MLG which has very little editing/etc and at the very least equal quality to the production of the GSL.
No amount of editing can replace the excitement of the crowd, the quality of the casters, and the emotions of the players.
On April 07 2011 00:20 syllogism wrote: It shouldn't come as a surprise as Tyler plays protoss and mostly watches games involving protoss, but I'm struggling to see this "level of refinement and execution" protosses allegedly have. Protoss players aren't exactly utilizing all their units either and aren't all over the map with pylons, DTs and warp prisms.
Yeah, as a Protoss player I agree with this 100%.
Protoss gameplay in SC2 is currently the most primitive. It looks like something out of the dawn of competitive RTS era. One or two bases, one passive big army sitting in the base without ever being in danger or really having to defend a lot (god forbid on more than one front), you get it to the best size and composition relative to the timing you want and then just go kill your opponent or die trying. That's not how Starcraft is supposed to work.
It's only being used because it works at the moment, but I really don't feel that anything that Protoss currently do in terms of builds and strategies is actually any good. I'm just hoping it won't stay standard for long and that it will figured out (because I don't think it's a balance issue at all) and made obsolete.
I mean obviously I'm doing all the same builds on the ladder, and obviously they work, but then you rewatch this (as I did recently):
(actually commentated by Tyler and Sean so I definitely recommend watching the whole series, especially for people who haven't seen it yet).
.,.and you feel that everything you've seen and done as Protoss so far has been wrong. You can't tell me it doesn't. I'm sure people will be quick to point out all the differences between games, but I'm not really convinced that's the case here. RTS gameplay is based on heavy multitasking, awareness and constant fast paced action, which is really what makes the genre so awesome when it comes to competing and spectating.
If that's not happening, either the players are doing it wrong, or the game is doing it wrong, and I don't want to believe that the game is doing it wrong... at least not yet.
@Talin: Actually it is because of balance. How do we know that? Because most of these builds have been here almost from the beginning of SC2 and they worked then and they work now. Why should toss play a more multitask heavy or a more complicated game when they do not need it to win?
Until the balance is such that these builds that are easy to do and execute do not bring so many victories we will not see anything more or better.
I would love to see Idra as a regular on the show, he's so straightforward with his opinions. If someone is good, he'll say that they're good. If someone is terrible, he'll say they're terrible. Same with race balance and the metagame: he calls it like he sees it based on tons of high-level experience.
On April 06 2011 19:41 Novalisk wrote: I didn't like the part where Tyler hinted that the NASL will give you your money's worth more than the GSL.
More games=/=more quality content. As a player you might want more games to study, but a spectator(majority of the viewerbase judging by a recent poll) will likely want a better viewing experience, which the NASL has yet to show.
I didn't hint at anything. I meant simply what I said.
I honestly wouldn't worry about people only watching the NASL. While the NASL offers a crap ton of content, it's not fair to compare it with the content GSL and MLG offers.
I'm not familiar with all the details, but I'm guessing most of the NASL games will be played online as opposed to on location like MLG and GSL. This offers a completely different spectator experience(crowd and player emotion for example), and together with the casters and production, makes the content very different.
NASL offers more games, while GSL+MLG offers a more immersive viewer experience. I think the NASL at its early stages will take on the "filler" role while on location tournaments like the GSL, MLG, and Dreamhack will be take on the "main event" role.
I don't know about this. NASL is going to cast their games live but then they are going to edit everything before it's actually aired. I think because of that you can expect a really high level of production value and we'll end up watching a really quality product. Even when the NASL isn't in it's final on site stage I think the quality will be greater than what we can expect from a live tournament like MLG which has very little editing/etc and at the very least equal quality to the production of the GSL.
No amount of editing can replace the excitement of the crowd, the quality of the casters, and the emotions of the players.
I agree that it's nice to see the players reactions after games in the GSL and to hear to crowd cheer at MLG but at the same time the trade off is that you get poor editing and delays due to technical problems.
As far as the quality of the casters go well that is yet to be determined so we'll just have to wait and see how good it's going to be. Though with incontrol and gretorp casting I think we can expect both high level analysis and a thorough dash of humor and entertainment.
I still disagree that NASL will be filler - the caliber of players and the expected production value can't let me think anything else until I've actually watched the matches.
I think they talked enough about the MLG, Idra adressed some stuff that we, watching streams, cant notice, about the schedule of the games. Everything is MLG fault, but there is no point on hammering this subject. If you hate MLG that much just dont acesses the MLG site or watch the stream. I stopped watching after day 2, 1.5 games for the day was stupid and by leaving the stream they are loosing.
Lets just hope the next one is better, since most of the streamers were in dallas and it was hard to find some good stuff to watch.
BTW, there is only one point that i really hate about MLG, its the gaps between games, why no cast replays? 40 minutes of random talk is really bad.
On April 06 2011 20:15 Cuddle wrote: Just wonderful to have IdrA on. I love it and support the addition of the IdrA-Pillar.
I love that he aint afraid to discuss balance. Others doesnt even wanna tuch the subject and the show is called "STATE OF THE GAME". Everything now is down to promoting tournaments and talking about players, and theres allmost no talk about strategies and balance. Show has become SC center v2.
I love the show, but please dont be so afraid to talk about it. Maby its because they all play protoss and doesnt have anything to complain about atm, but dont just lol at idra when he wants to utter his opinion.
balance talk is counter productive in the sense that when you lose you don't blame yourself for the loss, but blame the developers of the game. Idra's w/l ratio against Protoss is significantly low not due to balance but due to his strong belief that he doesn't have a fair chance to take games of Protoss players. That exact attitude is the center of balance talk, assuming that the game is broken and nothing can be done you don't have any motivation to play your best because you believe that the only way to win is to completely outplay your opponent, or to let your opponent completely fuck up. People whined excessively about Terran, now since it has been nerfed (or people learned how to deal with Terran) people whine about Protoss (mind you not that many changes were done to that race -most of the changes were nerfs since the release). Maybe Zerg is currently slightly more difficult to win with at a pro level play, but it is not by any means impossible and unrealistic.
I completely agree with you that blaming your losses on 'balance' is counterproductive. You have to play the game as it is, and within the current state of the game aim to play your race as effectively as possible. Trying to play as well as you possibly can should always be the goal, independent of whether the game is balanced or not. Idra is certainly at times guilty of this, though given the somewhat different style he showed at MLG compared to his previous play I think it's harsh to say he's given up trying to find ways to win against toss. I love the burrow-move response to 5/6 gate pushes for example.
However, just because bitching about balance is unproductive and doesn't help you win more doesn't mean the game is balanced. Zerg may not be playing optimally at the moment and there are almost certainly new strats and builds that will help zerg win more games. However, it is possible that if all races are played optimally then win-loss ratios aren't going to be 50-50. Of course, we'll never know for sure what playing optimally is - we have to try and infer the true balance of the game (assuming optimal play from all races) from our flawed and limited observations. Anyone who has a background in science or statistics should be familiar with problems like this. I'd argue that the recent (well, fairly long-running really) lack of Z highly placed in majors tourneys does indicate a bias against zerg in the underlying balance of the game, but it's still early days and I'm biased as a zerg player anyway.
I think there should be two entirely separate conversations. 1) How can zerg (and the other two races of course) play better and 2) Assuming optimal play, do all three races have equal chance of winning each matchup. There are of course two other things to talk about, 3) Is playing optimally (whatever that may be) harder for one race vs. the others and 4) do gameplay that leads to winning make for fun games for both the players and the eSports audience.
On April 07 2011 01:09 -Archangel- wrote: @Talin: Actually it is because of balance. How do we know that? Because most of these builds have been here almost from the beginning of SC2 and they worked then and they work now. Why should toss play a more multitask heavy or a more complicated game when they do not need it to win?
Until the balance is such that these builds that are easy to do and execute do not bring so many victories we will not see anything more or better.
"almost from the beginning of SC2" isn't a very long time at all, which is why I'm still willing to give SC2 a benefit of the doubt on this.
It's up to the Zergs to figure out how to defeat the current P style so they would force P into strategy that requires higher level refinement and execution. Nobody wants to see that happen more than I do (at least as a spectator because it'll obviously make it harder for me in the game =p) but at the end of the day somebody just needs to step it up and be the Zerg's own Revolutionist.
If the game really stagnates on current state of PvZ, I'm pretty sure it will get slowly patched out of the game. I just prefer that players come up with solutions to things like these because that will genuinely make Starcraft a better and richer game, while balance patching will never do that. Quite honestly, players these days (in general, not speaking of pros) seem to be a lot more spoiled than they used to be back in the BW days. I'm glad Blizzard isn't crumbling under pressure and rushing to fix anything that may well not be broken in the first place.
On April 06 2011 20:15 Cuddle wrote: Just wonderful to have IdrA on. I love it and support the addition of the IdrA-Pillar.
I love that he aint afraid to discuss balance. Others doesnt even wanna tuch the subject and the show is called "STATE OF THE GAME". Everything now is down to promoting tournaments and talking about players, and theres allmost no talk about strategies and balance. Show has become SC center v2.
I love the show, but please dont be so afraid to talk about it. Maby its because they all play protoss and doesnt have anything to complain about atm, but dont just lol at idra when he wants to utter his opinion.
No one's "afraid" to talk about balance.
The fact is that some people are too sensible to believe that their views on balance now are correct. Don't make this out to be some zerg-screwing conspiracy theory because they do this for any idea of "imbalance". Day9 did the same eyeroll when someone claimed roaches were imbalanced, calling them "75/25 stalkers". The reason they end up in opposition with Idra is because Idra is the most incessant progamer with regard to balance complaints (and that's probably not going to change).
The fact that they didn't stick on the topic long was the same reason they didn't point out that GSL 2 was less than 6 months ago: out of respect for Idra (because they know they all disagree with him and because a three-on-one screaming match isn't professional or productive).
On April 06 2011 19:41 Novalisk wrote: I didn't like the part where Tyler hinted that the NASL will give you your money's worth more than the GSL.
More games=/=more quality content. As a player you might want more games to study, but a spectator(majority of the viewerbase judging by a recent poll) will likely want a better viewing experience, which the NASL has yet to show.
I didn't hint at anything. I meant simply what I said.
I honestly wouldn't worry about people only watching the NASL. While the NASL offers a crap ton of content, it's not fair to compare it with the content GSL and MLG offers.
I'm not familiar with all the details, but I'm guessing most of the NASL games will be played online as opposed to on location like MLG and GSL. This offers a completely different spectator experience(crowd and player emotion for example), and together with the casters and production, makes the content very different.
NASL offers more games, while GSL+MLG offers a more immersive viewer experience. I think the NASL at its early stages will take on the "filler" role while on location tournaments like the GSL, MLG, and Dreamhack will be take on the "main event" role.
I don't know about this. NASL is going to cast their games live but then they are going to edit everything before it's actually aired. I think because of that you can expect a really high level of production value and we'll end up watching a really quality product. Even when the NASL isn't in it's final on site stage I think the quality will be greater than what we can expect from a live tournament like MLG which has very little editing/etc and at the very least equal quality to the production of the GSL.
No amount of editing can replace the excitement of the crowd, the quality of the casters, and the emotions of the players.
I agree that it's nice to see the players reactions after games in the GSL and to hear to crowd cheer at MLG but at the same time the trade off is that you get poor editing and delays due to technical problems.
As far as the quality of the casters go well that is yet to be determined so we'll just have to wait and see how good it's going to be. Though with incontrol and gretorp casting I think we can expect both high level analysis and a thorough dash of humor and entertainment.
I still disagree that NASL will be filler - the caliber of players and the expected production value can't let me think anything else until I've actually watched the matches.
I love Incontrol and Gretorp, they are really good casters. However, they are not on the level of Day9, Tasteless and Artosis. Not yet anyway.
NASL at its online stages will be comparable with other online tournaments, and easily crush them. NASL at its on-site stages will be comparable with the GSL and MLG, but at that point the amount of games will be about the same as well.
As for MLG's issues, I trust they will get taken care of judging by MLG's track record prior to the Dallas debacle.
On April 07 2011 01:11 Nakas wrote: I would love to see Idra as a regular on the show, he's so straightforward with his opinions. If someone is good, he'll say that they're good. If someone is terrible, he'll say they're terrible. Same with race balance and the metagame: he calls it like he sees it based on tons of high-level experience.
Na... he speaks with a heavy pair of zerg glasses on and often calls players who are actually good bad etc... hell he even said nestea was bad lol.
Just a couple things. First off talking balance with Day[9] is like trying to discuss the many possibilities when it comes to the origins of life and the universe with a religious zealot. Day[9] refuses to talk about possible imbalance simply out of principle. Back in the day of 5rax reaper, when it was obvious to just about everyone even top Terran players, he was still arguing that Zerg hadn't "figured it out yet". And he will keep spouting that line until a balance patch comes and will probably still claim that it wasn't imbalanced and we just didn't give it enough time. When you think about it, it makes sense for his casting career, because he wants to work with Blizzard sanctioned tournaments and being known for balance complaints is a form of controversy that he probably just doesn't want to be a part of.
And all of that would be just fine and dandy, if he could just say he "doesn't want to comment on it" instead of trolling and/or making plain BS statements, as if there was a bajillion options that the pros haven't figured out yet in Zerg's weak early game. Ok Day[9], why don't you show us your revolutionary Zerg openings and midgame transitions that none of the pros have figured out yet and that actually work above silver league?
As for Tyler I don't know what kind of chill pipe he's smoking but honestly talking about the refinement of protoss play when the whole race is mostly based on warpgate timing attacks negating defender's advantage then turtling into deathball in some way shape or form and all of this with very minimal risk is a little funny to me. Maybe I'm missing something but atm Protoss is definitely the race I find the most boring to watch, mirror or not. Why is that? Because it's where the least risk is involved, except maybe when it comes to mirror BO losses. I feel both Zerg and Terran have to work harder for most of their wins atm. Protoss never looks like it's really endangered unless their opponent is outplaying them significantly. And yes Tyler, Zerg players will tend do make more mistakes when there is about a hundred forms of pressure and timing attacks they can insta-lose to and need different responses to. I know it's something that seems very hard to grasp when you play a race that can safely pressure expand and tech at the same time and not really get punished for it, but it's pretty obvious to most everyone else.
The bottom line is, no matter how much sugarcoating Day[9] or Tyler do, I know thanks to my Xray vision that when Day[9] spawns as Zerg, he knows just like any semi-competent player who picks random just for shits and giggles that he's got an uphill battle ahead of him. Unless he's dropped in bronze lately... but if he's in diamond or anywhere above, he knows just as well as Idra the amount of pressure, allins and other fun stuff he has to deal with in order to get into the midgame on equal footing.
When it comes to MLG it's obvious Day[9] and JP don't really want to talk about it because it doesn't really look good to stir up drama for people who are your employers once in a while? As for how to handle it, someone else put it pretty well: if you have to lie / sugarcoat, do it by omission, aka just don't comment too much on it and move on. But going out of your way to say it's not really MLG's fault, that's just overdoing it. Not like they've had major stream issues in the past right? Yeah, ok. How many times are we going to make excuses for them? 2,3,4 more tournaments down the line? When does it stop being ok that a major player like MLG can't get their shit together? I don't know, but not early enough apparently.
In any case, it's definitely refreshing to hear IdrA in the middle of a lot of political correctness, both when it comes to balance discussions and MLG. Too much PC can quickly make a good show rather boring. So thanks IdrA for saving the day.
I really don't agree with Tyler's evaluations at all.
Kas beating Nada is NOT the biggest upset, are you kidding me? Americans still underestimating europeans? TLO took a map of Nada and Kas is like twice as good as TLO at the moment.
Also Adel.Scott is a lot better than what QXC has shown lately.
On April 07 2011 01:01 -Archangel- wrote: I think Idra could use some personal coaching with Day9.
Idra believes zerg is broken. He always has believed this, he probably always will believe this. The only one who can change his attitude about this is Idra. Day9's got some good experience dealing with this attitude within himself, but that doesn't make the guy a therapist.
Idra definitely doesn't need Day9's help with gameplay - the guy's a beast in terms of mechanics.
EPT
