On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
I like how you deleted this part from my post
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: In my opinion the answer lies somewhere in the middle, I think people should practice moderation, a healthy combination of training and bitching. That is why I can't sympathize with Day9's and Tyler's position at all, because they give shit to Idra for practicing this moderation that I find healthy (he trains a lot -when he is not too frustrated- and he bitches in his relax time -interviews being relax time-, IMHO this is perfect and if everybody did this we would have the same quality in games and Blizzard would patch more drastically, which we need IMHO. Developers are creatures of inertia ("If it ain't broken, don't fix it" is the number one rule of commercial development) and public reaction is the best kind of feedback they have to determine if something is slightly defective or just broken. Personally I'm sure the conformity of some community leads is encouraging Blizzard to patch slower from day one. Some people may find this last statement idiotic but no matter how big and self-sufficient a corporation is, a continuous pat in the back from a huge community has to affect you.
Idra tries to come up with new stuff *and* bitches = moderate PoV. Day9 only tries to come up with new stuff, always disregards people that bitches (even with pre-patch mass reapers) = absolute PoV.
Usually in life, things aren't black and white, this is one of those situations.
On April 08 2011 01:43 Barrin wrote: Well, if you ask me (and apparently Day[9]), hell the fuck NO. But I do understand the factors that could lead a reasonable person to believe that most of them have been tested thoroughly. It only seems that way. You are normal for believing that if you do. But you are wrong. I do not need to support this claim with evidence, because time will do it for me (which is how I'm sure Day[9] feels which is why he is happy to just laugh it off).
Which is precisely why Day[9] is so obnoxious on the subject and should just refrain from participating if he is against balance discussion in itself.
You "don't need evidence" because "it happened in BW" (and so it will again evidently), so we have to believe. Hence my first post on this thread comparing him to a religious zealot. For Day[9] and others on the same position, it's a matter of dogma and faith. Which doesn't sit well with the idea of just having an open discussion about the "state of the game".
Here's an analogy: You are regularly presented with a set of 5 doors. The only way you ever get food is by opening the doors. Every time that you opened 5 doors, you got food from at least one of them. You've currently opened 2 doors, but can't figure out how to open any more. Are you going to spend your time trying to open a 3rd door, or are you gonna ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food? How much time will you spend trying to open the 3rd door, and how much time will you spend checking the two opened doors again and again?
Day[9] thinks StarCraft players' only job is to open doors. There is nothing else. Perhaps on your lunch break you can engage in some idle conversation about the metaphysics of the doors and the morality of opening them. But it's just idle conversation. 99% of the time it's just this: open doors, open doors, open doors.
The real argument that would happen between Day[9] and IdrA is about whether or not all 5 doors have been opened. Day[9] thinks they're not all opened. He can see them. Maybe one is cracked, and no one is sure whether food can be smelt on the other side, but it's certainly not open and clear to everyone. This isn't faith or belief or any kind of "balance zealotry." Perhaps people have interacted with the closed doors, but they haven't picked the lock and turned the handle and swung it wide open. Faith comes in if he says "I know you guys worked your asses off to open 4 doors only to be disappointed. And you've spent months trying to open the 5th door. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT rebel against your circumstances!!! TRUST me. Keep working on opening the last door. When you do, you will get food." Such opinions would certainly constitute faith of a sort. But like we've said at the start, every time that all the doors have been opened, food was in at least one. There's just never been a way to prove that food is guaranteed. Faith would also come in when Day[9] says "Hey, there's definitely a 6th door out there somewhere. It's nowhere in sight, but let's try all sorts of crazy things and see if we come upon it."
IdrA would say he's opened all the doors, or at least inspected the unopen ones well enough to know there's no food behind them. Or he's gonna say how it's easier for his Protoss friend to open his doors.
That's the gist of things. And we can't very well be experts on things that aren't in the open and clear. So that's all Day[9] can say is "hey try getting a ton of infestors in this specific way and see how that works" and I can say "hey, balance your resources toward gas as heavily as possible without dying and see how that works" because those kinds of things are unopened doors to us. And IdrA would have to spend many hours of practice to open them and perhaps find no food behind them, which would be doubly frustrating when that was his suspicion the whole time. But damn it, that's StarCraft. Opening doors is what we do. Being the first to find food is the greatest pleasure a player can have!
The actual balance is the balance of the efforts of each race to open all the five doors. And Zergs have been starving for so long while the Protoss and Terran are enjoying the sweetness of whatever is behind the magic door...
I personally think the game is broken by design and I don't think it can easily be fixed. In BroodWar all three races were similar to one another and the game more discrete so it was easier to balance. In WoL they pushed the races further apart (but actually Protoss and Terran are very similar) and now the Zerg plays too differently from the others and is too fragile to balanced with ease.
One can draw a big directed graph with a lot of nodes each representing a race at a point in game. Then draw arrows representing damage that can be dealt from one race to other between two points. A thick arrow means lots of damage, a long arrow means high risk. We will see then the arrows between P and T balanced. But arrows towards Z short and think and from Z long and sometimes thick but some times thin.
I was quoting the appropriate part, nothing sinister. The analogy can work both ways.
Anyway, that's by the by. I think we can all agree that developing strategy is the most exciting thing about this game and whining should be kept to a minimum.
On April 08 2011 15:03 dtz wrote: Other than the fact that balance discussions are boring longwinded and sometimes pointless, the fact that tyler and day9 were quite dismissive of IdrA's argument is probably influenced heavily by IdrA's history as well.
They have known IdrA for a very long time now and know that whining comes naturally from him ( and Artosis). A trip down the TL memory lane will show us various threads and arguments that points to this fact. Had it been someone like Morrow or some other cool headed zergs making that argument, pretty sure that they would be happy to entertain it to a certain extent.
That said, considering the lifespan of SC2, it's pretty safe to say that many doors remain to be opened ( zvp in bw was imbalanced for years, Terran was the weakest race for the longest time). It is just the fact that there are so much money floating around that people(pros) are hasty to make conclusion and generalization because it affects their livelihood.
you realize morrow too says zerg is fucking terrible? especially zvp as does just about every other high level zerg
some Korean zergs said at the GSL group drawing show, the prefer ZvP over ZvT. How can u explain that? or was it trolling?^^
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
No, the other way is it's someone else's fault. Key difference.
On April 08 2011 20:14 Zeon0 wrote: some Korean zergs said at the GSL group drawing show, the prefer ZvP over ZvT. How can u explain that? or was it trolling?^^
On April 08 2011 07:00 Tachion wrote: Zerg picked Protoss - 2 Zerg picked Terran - 3
On April 08 2011 15:03 dtz wrote: Other than the fact that balance discussions are boring longwinded and sometimes pointless, the fact that tyler and day9 were quite dismissive of IdrA's argument is probably influenced heavily by IdrA's history as well.
They have known IdrA for a very long time now and know that whining comes naturally from him ( and Artosis). A trip down the TL memory lane will show us various threads and arguments that points to this fact. Had it been someone like Morrow or some other cool headed zergs making that argument, pretty sure that they would be happy to entertain it to a certain extent.
That said, considering the lifespan of SC2, it's pretty safe to say that many doors remain to be opened ( zvp in bw was imbalanced for years, Terran was the weakest race for the longest time). It is just the fact that there are so much money floating around that people(pros) are hasty to make conclusion and generalization because it affects their livelihood.
you realize morrow too says zerg is fucking terrible? especially zvp as does just about every other high level zerg
some Korean zergs said at the GSL group drawing show, the prefer ZvP over ZvT. How can u explain that? or was it trolling?^^
some people just really really hate playing against siege tanks
On April 08 2011 15:03 dtz wrote: Other than the fact that balance discussions are boring longwinded and sometimes pointless, the fact that tyler and day9 were quite dismissive of IdrA's argument is probably influenced heavily by IdrA's history as well.
They have known IdrA for a very long time now and know that whining comes naturally from him ( and Artosis). A trip down the TL memory lane will show us various threads and arguments that points to this fact. Had it been someone like Morrow or some other cool headed zergs making that argument, pretty sure that they would be happy to entertain it to a certain extent.
That said, considering the lifespan of SC2, it's pretty safe to say that many doors remain to be opened ( zvp in bw was imbalanced for years, Terran was the weakest race for the longest time). It is just the fact that there are so much money floating around that people(pros) are hasty to make conclusion and generalization because it affects their livelihood.
I don't get why Idra has always been associated with irrational and impartial complaining. He speaks through emotion when he loses, yes, but on a forum or open discussion (like SotG) or interview he's always presented his points clearly and logically and made a good argument for his case. It just happens that he's the most vocal about something that clearly exists, whereas other Zergs tend not to be as vocal about it. The idea that Idra dogmatically defends his own race is based on bias and knee-jerk reaction more than anything else. In the first month of beta Idra said Zerg was too strong lategame vs Protoss (he actually said Zerg was "unbeatable"). Before the roach supply nerf Idra said ZvT had a slight imbalance for Zerg. In Brood War Idra said Terran held a minor advantage against Z. And Artosis? He also says Zerg sucks and P>>Z....and he's switched to Protoss for months now.
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
No, the other way is it's someone else's fault. Key difference.
Again with the false dichotomy. It can be the fault of both, you know. Idra blames his loses on bad play sometimes. Day9 always blames some else's loses on bad play. Key difference.
On April 08 2011 01:43 Barrin wrote: Well, if you ask me (and apparently Day[9]), hell the fuck NO. But I do understand the factors that could lead a reasonable person to believe that most of them have been tested thoroughly. It only seems that way. You are normal for believing that if you do. But you are wrong. I do not need to support this claim with evidence, because time will do it for me (which is how I'm sure Day[9] feels which is why he is happy to just laugh it off).
Which is precisely why Day[9] is so obnoxious on the subject and should just refrain from participating if he is against balance discussion in itself.
You "don't need evidence" because "it happened in BW" (and so it will again evidently), so we have to believe. Hence my first post on this thread comparing him to a religious zealot. For Day[9] and others on the same position, it's a matter of dogma and faith. Which doesn't sit well with the idea of just having an open discussion about the "state of the game".
Here's an analogy: You are regularly presented with a set of 5 doors. The only way you ever get food is by opening the doors. Every time that you opened 5 doors, you got food from at least one of them. You've currently opened 2 doors, but can't figure out how to open any more. Are you going to spend your time trying to open a 3rd door, or are you gonna ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food? How much time will you spend trying to open the 3rd door, and how much time will you spend checking the two opened doors again and again?
Day[9] thinks StarCraft players' only job is to open doors. There is nothing else. Perhaps on your lunch break you can engage in some idle conversation about the metaphysics of the doors and the morality of opening them. But it's just idle conversation. 99% of the time it's just this: open doors, open doors, open doors.
The real argument that would happen between Day[9] and IdrA is about whether or not all 5 doors have been opened. Day[9] thinks they're not all opened. He can see them. Maybe one is cracked, and no one is sure whether food can be smelt on the other side, but it's certainly not open and clear to everyone. This isn't faith or belief or any kind of "balance zealotry." Perhaps people have interacted with the closed doors, but they haven't picked the lock and turned the handle and swung it wide open. Faith comes in if he says "I know you guys worked your asses off to open 4 doors only to be disappointed. And you've spent months trying to open the 5th door. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT rebel against your circumstances!!! TRUST me. Keep working on opening the last door. When you do, you will get food." Such opinions would certainly constitute faith of a sort. But like we've said at the start, every time that all the doors have been opened, food was in at least one. There's just never been a way to prove that food is guaranteed. Faith would also come in when Day[9] says "Hey, there's definitely a 6th door out there somewhere. It's nowhere in sight, but let's try all sorts of crazy things and see if we come upon it."
IdrA would say he's opened all the doors, or at least inspected the unopen ones well enough to know there's no food behind them. Or he's gonna say how it's easier for his Protoss friend to open his doors.
That's the gist of things. And we can't very well be experts on things that aren't in the open and clear. So that's all Day[9] can say is "hey try getting a ton of infestors in this specific way and see how that works" and I can say "hey, balance your resources toward gas as heavily as possible without dying and see how that works" because those kinds of things are unopened doors to us. And IdrA would have to spend many hours of practice to open them and perhaps find no food behind them, which would be doubly frustrating when that was his suspicion the whole time. But damn it, that's StarCraft. Opening doors is what we do. Being the first to find food is the greatest pleasure a player can have!
The actual balance is the balance of the efforts of each race to open all the five doors. And Zergs have been starving for so long while the Protoss and Terran are enjoying the sweetness of whatever is behind the magic door...
I personally think the game is broken by design and I don't think it can easily be fixed. In BroodWar all three races were similar to one another and the game more discrete so it was easier to balance. In WoL they pushed the races further apart (but actually Protoss and Terran are very similar) and now the Zerg plays too differently from the others and is too fragile to balanced with ease.
One can draw a big directed graph with a lot of nodes each representing a race at a point in game. Then draw arrows representing damage that can be dealt from one race to other between two points. A thick arrow means lots of damage, a long arrow means high risk. We will see then the arrows between P and T balanced. But arrows towards Z short and think and from Z long and sometimes thick but some times thin.
Just imagine that Protoss has opened 2 doors, Terran has opened 1, and Zerg has opened 3 (I'm making these up). Behind Terran's door, there is something tasty, like an orange. Behind Protoss's, there's ice cream. Zerg has nothing. If, however, Zerg opens door 4 and suddenly has rich Swiss Chocolate covering a high-quality cake, suddenly the effort Zerg had to put to open the door seems a lot more reasonable.
In real terms, if Zerg seems UP at all times, but then finds a strategy that makes it OP in all matchups and completely unbalanced, you could argue that Zerg was overpowered from release, even if it took the most effort to find. For all you know, this is as powerful as Protoss will ever get, which is the analogy that Tyler was making.
Don't forget the example of the Bisu Build - Zerg had a very low-energy way to beat Protoss in Brood War. Protoss had to find the 4th door, which caused Protoss to be evenly matched(? I believe) against Zerg.
On April 08 2011 01:43 Barrin wrote: Well, if you ask me (and apparently Day[9]), hell the fuck NO. But I do understand the factors that could lead a reasonable person to believe that most of them have been tested thoroughly. It only seems that way. You are normal for believing that if you do. But you are wrong. I do not need to support this claim with evidence, because time will do it for me (which is how I'm sure Day[9] feels which is why he is happy to just laugh it off).
Which is precisely why Day[9] is so obnoxious on the subject and should just refrain from participating if he is against balance discussion in itself.
You "don't need evidence" because "it happened in BW" (and so it will again evidently), so we have to believe. Hence my first post on this thread comparing him to a religious zealot. For Day[9] and others on the same position, it's a matter of dogma and faith. Which doesn't sit well with the idea of just having an open discussion about the "state of the game".
Here's an analogy: You are regularly presented with a set of 5 doors. The only way you ever get food is by opening the doors. Every time that you opened 5 doors, you got food from at least one of them. You've currently opened 2 doors, but can't figure out how to open any more. Are you going to spend your time trying to open a 3rd door, or are you gonna ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food? How much time will you spend trying to open the 3rd door, and how much time will you spend checking the two opened doors again and again?
Day[9] thinks StarCraft players' only job is to open doors. There is nothing else. Perhaps on your lunch break you can engage in some idle conversation about the metaphysics of the doors and the morality of opening them. But it's just idle conversation. 99% of the time it's just this: open doors, open doors, open doors.
The real argument that would happen between Day[9] and IdrA is about whether or not all 5 doors have been opened. Day[9] thinks they're not all opened. He can see them. Maybe one is cracked, and no one is sure whether food can be smelt on the other side, but it's certainly not open and clear to everyone. This isn't faith or belief or any kind of "balance zealotry." Perhaps people have interacted with the closed doors, but they haven't picked the lock and turned the handle and swung it wide open. Faith comes in if he says "I know you guys worked your asses off to open 4 doors only to be disappointed. And you've spent months trying to open the 5th door. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT rebel against your circumstances!!! TRUST me. Keep working on opening the last door. When you do, you will get food." Such opinions would certainly constitute faith of a sort. But like we've said at the start, every time that all the doors have been opened, food was in at least one. There's just never been a way to prove that food is guaranteed. Faith would also come in when Day[9] says "Hey, there's definitely a 6th door out there somewhere. It's nowhere in sight, but let's try all sorts of crazy things and see if we come upon it."
IdrA would say he's opened all the doors, or at least inspected the unopen ones well enough to know there's no food behind them. Or he's gonna say how it's easier for his Protoss friend to open his doors.
That's the gist of things. And we can't very well be experts on things that aren't in the open and clear. So that's all Day[9] can say is "hey try getting a ton of infestors in this specific way and see how that works" and I can say "hey, balance your resources toward gas as heavily as possible without dying and see how that works" because those kinds of things are unopened doors to us. And IdrA would have to spend many hours of practice to open them and perhaps find no food behind them, which would be doubly frustrating when that was his suspicion the whole time. But damn it, that's StarCraft. Opening doors is what we do. Being the first to find food is the greatest pleasure a player can have!
The actual balance is the balance of the efforts of each race to open all the five doors. And Zergs have been starving for so long while the Protoss and Terran are enjoying the sweetness of whatever is behind the magic door...
I personally think the game is broken by design and I don't think it can easily be fixed. In BroodWar all three races were similar to one another and the game more discrete so it was easier to balance. In WoL they pushed the races further apart (but actually Protoss and Terran are very similar) and now the Zerg plays too differently from the others and is too fragile to balanced with ease.
One can draw a big directed graph with a lot of nodes each representing a race at a point in game. Then draw arrows representing damage that can be dealt from one race to other between two points. A thick arrow means lots of damage, a long arrow means high risk. We will see then the arrows between P and T balanced. But arrows towards Z short and think and from Z long and sometimes thick but some times thin.
Just imagine that Protoss has opened 2 doors, Terran has opened 1, and Zerg has opened 3 (I'm making these up). Behind Terran's door, there is something tasty, like an orange. Behind Protoss's, there's ice cream. Zerg has nothing. If, however, Zerg opens door 4 and suddenly has rich Swiss Chocolate covering a high-quality cake, suddenly the effort Zerg had to put to open the door seems a lot more reasonable.
In real terms, if Zerg seems UP at all times, but then finds a strategy that makes it OP in all matchups and completely unbalanced, you could argue that Zerg was overpowered from release, even if it took the most effort to find. For all you know, this is as powerful as Protoss will ever get, which is the analogy that Tyler was making.
Don't forget the example of the Bisu Build - Zerg had a very low-energy way to beat Protoss in Brood War. Protoss had to find the 4th door, which caused Protoss to be evenly matched(? I believe) against Zerg.
I think another analogy is two people with the same degree of skill and knowledge being told to build a house. Only difference is one person is supplied with top of the line building supplies and machinery while the other person has sticks, stones, and fishing wire. Yes the sticks and stones person can get quite creative and tehres probably a ton of things you could do with those if you get creative but it still doesn't change the fact that the other guy just has much better tools to work with and an easier time (machinery...aka easy protoss mechanics) using the tools he's supplied with. Zerg has the worst early game scouting despite being the most dependent on it and having the most fragile early game (yes its fine in the midgame but thats really not where the scouting problem is), worst defensive options, one dimensional midgame units except for a spellcaster that dies when you look at it funny, easy to nullify pressure unless you have a huge advantage, and weak lategame units.
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
No, the other way is it's someone else's fault. Key difference.
Again with the false dichotomy. It can be the fault of both, you know. Idra blames his loses on bad play sometimes. Day9 always blames some else's loses on bad play. Key difference.
To me it was a key difference because when he says "will" it basically implies that in believing in imbalance Zergs are just resigning themselves and not even trying to do anything because they feel theres no point with the imbalance, which is far from true.
It's pretty funny how the discussion started around balance in ZvP, slowly moved to "doors", and then about "how to break a wall".
So if I understand well, if I follow Tyler's advice, to be a better zerg I should just use LSD and open the doors of perception like Aldous Huxley... ?
On April 08 2011 01:43 Barrin wrote: Well, if you ask me (and apparently Day[9]), hell the fuck NO. But I do understand the factors that could lead a reasonable person to believe that most of them have been tested thoroughly. It only seems that way. You are normal for believing that if you do. But you are wrong. I do not need to support this claim with evidence, because time will do it for me (which is how I'm sure Day[9] feels which is why he is happy to just laugh it off).
Which is precisely why Day[9] is so obnoxious on the subject and should just refrain from participating if he is against balance discussion in itself.
You "don't need evidence" because "it happened in BW" (and so it will again evidently), so we have to believe. Hence my first post on this thread comparing him to a religious zealot. For Day[9] and others on the same position, it's a matter of dogma and faith. Which doesn't sit well with the idea of just having an open discussion about the "state of the game".
Here's an analogy: You are regularly presented with a set of 5 doors. The only way you ever get food is by opening the doors. Every time that you opened 5 doors, you got food from at least one of them. You've currently opened 2 doors, but can't figure out how to open any more. Are you going to spend your time trying to open a 3rd door, or are you gonna ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food? How much time will you spend trying to open the 3rd door, and how much time will you spend checking the two opened doors again and again?
Day[9] thinks StarCraft players' only job is to open doors. There is nothing else. Perhaps on your lunch break you can engage in some idle conversation about the metaphysics of the doors and the morality of opening them. But it's just idle conversation. 99% of the time it's just this: open doors, open doors, open doors.
The real argument that would happen between Day[9] and IdrA is about whether or not all 5 doors have been opened. Day[9] thinks they're not all opened. He can see them. Maybe one is cracked, and no one is sure whether food can be smelt on the other side, but it's certainly not open and clear to everyone. This isn't faith or belief or any kind of "balance zealotry." Perhaps people have interacted with the closed doors, but they haven't picked the lock and turned the handle and swung it wide open. Faith comes in if he says "I know you guys worked your asses off to open 4 doors only to be disappointed. And you've spent months trying to open the 5th door. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT rebel against your circumstances!!! TRUST me. Keep working on opening the last door. When you do, you will get food." Such opinions would certainly constitute faith of a sort. But like we've said at the start, every time that all the doors have been opened, food was in at least one. There's just never been a way to prove that food is guaranteed. Faith would also come in when Day[9] says "Hey, there's definitely a 6th door out there somewhere. It's nowhere in sight, but let's try all sorts of crazy things and see if we come upon it."
IdrA would say he's opened all the doors, or at least inspected the unopen ones well enough to know there's no food behind them. Or he's gonna say how it's easier for his Protoss friend to open his doors.
That's the gist of things. And we can't very well be experts on things that aren't in the open and clear. So that's all Day[9] can say is "hey try getting a ton of infestors in this specific way and see how that works" and I can say "hey, balance your resources toward gas as heavily as possible without dying and see how that works" because those kinds of things are unopened doors to us. And IdrA would have to spend many hours of practice to open them and perhaps find no food behind them, which would be doubly frustrating when that was his suspicion the whole time. But damn it, that's StarCraft. Opening doors is what we do. Being the first to find food is the greatest pleasure a player can have!
The actual balance is the balance of the efforts of each race to open all the five doors. And Zergs have been starving for so long while the Protoss and Terran are enjoying the sweetness of whatever is behind the magic door...
I personally think the game is broken by design and I don't think it can easily be fixed. In BroodWar all three races were similar to one another and the game more discrete so it was easier to balance. In WoL they pushed the races further apart (but actually Protoss and Terran are very similar) and now the Zerg plays too differently from the others and is too fragile to balanced with ease.
One can draw a big directed graph with a lot of nodes each representing a race at a point in game. Then draw arrows representing damage that can be dealt from one race to other between two points. A thick arrow means lots of damage, a long arrow means high risk. We will see then the arrows between P and T balanced. But arrows towards Z short and think and from Z long and sometimes thick but some times thin.
Just imagine that Protoss has opened 2 doors, Terran has opened 1, and Zerg has opened 3 (I'm making these up). Behind Terran's door, there is something tasty, like an orange. Behind Protoss's, there's ice cream. Zerg has nothing. If, however, Zerg opens door 4 and suddenly has rich Swiss Chocolate covering a high-quality cake, suddenly the effort Zerg had to put to open the door seems a lot more reasonable.
In real terms, if Zerg seems UP at all times, but then finds a strategy that makes it OP in all matchups and completely unbalanced, you could argue that Zerg was overpowered from release, even if it took the most effort to find. For all you know, this is as powerful as Protoss will ever get, which is the analogy that Tyler was making.
Don't forget the example of the Bisu Build - Zerg had a very low-energy way to beat Protoss in Brood War. Protoss had to find the 4th door, which caused Protoss to be evenly matched(? I believe) against Zerg.
I think another analogy is two people with the same degree of skill and knowledge being told to build a house. Only difference is one person is supplied with top of the line building supplies and machinery while the other person has sticks, stones, and fishing wire. Yes the sticks and stones person can get quite creative and tehres probably a ton of things you could do with those if you get creative but it still doesn't change the fact that the other guy just has much better tools to work with and an easier time (machinery...aka easy protoss mechanics) using the tools he's supplied with. Zerg has the worst early game scouting despite being the most dependent on it and having the most fragile early game (yes its fine in the midgame but thats really not where the scouting problem is), worst defensive options, one dimensional midgame units except for a spellcaster that dies when you look at it funny, easy to nullify pressure unless you have a huge advantage, and weak lategame units.
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
No, the other way is it's someone else's fault. Key difference.
Again with the false dichotomy. It can be the fault of both, you know. Idra blames his loses on bad play sometimes. Day9 always blames some else's loses on bad play. Key difference.
To me it was a key difference because when he says "will" it basically implies that in believing in imbalance Zergs are just resigning themselves and not even trying to do anything because they feel theres no point with the imbalance, which is far from true.
The problem with this viewpoint is that I interpret it as meaning that you believe Zerg is fundamentally weaker. I really don't agree with this. In the current metagame, Zerg plays reactively against both Terran and Protoss. Does this mean it is the only way to play? Not really. It's just the best way the Pro's and players have found to play it at this time.
If we're continue your analogy, I'd say it'd be more like being asked to construct a piece of art. One person has sticks and stones, one person has high tech building equipment. But you can get quality art out of either (and people have made it out of both). Does it take more effort for the sticks and stones to build something? If you're both making houses, yes. But not if you're both making art.
The simple truth of the matter is that no one, not even the pros, have explored every dynamic of their race. As I said in my post, the Bisu Build showed up VERY late in SC:BW. Do you honestly think that no one was trying things during this time, and instead just sat around declaring Zerg was unbeatable? Of course not, it's contrary to human nature. But only one person was able to come up with a workable strategy.
On April 08 2011 01:43 Barrin wrote: Well, if you ask me (and apparently Day[9]), hell the fuck NO. But I do understand the factors that could lead a reasonable person to believe that most of them have been tested thoroughly. It only seems that way. You are normal for believing that if you do. But you are wrong. I do not need to support this claim with evidence, because time will do it for me (which is how I'm sure Day[9] feels which is why he is happy to just laugh it off).
Which is precisely why Day[9] is so obnoxious on the subject and should just refrain from participating if he is against balance discussion in itself.
You "don't need evidence" because "it happened in BW" (and so it will again evidently), so we have to believe. Hence my first post on this thread comparing him to a religious zealot. For Day[9] and others on the same position, it's a matter of dogma and faith. Which doesn't sit well with the idea of just having an open discussion about the "state of the game".
Here's an analogy: You are regularly presented with a set of 5 doors. The only way you ever get food is by opening the doors. Every time that you opened 5 doors, you got food from at least one of them. You've currently opened 2 doors, but can't figure out how to open any more. Are you going to spend your time trying to open a 3rd door, or are you gonna ponder whether opening all 5 doors guarantees food? How much time will you spend trying to open the 3rd door, and how much time will you spend checking the two opened doors again and again?
Day[9] thinks StarCraft players' only job is to open doors. There is nothing else. Perhaps on your lunch break you can engage in some idle conversation about the metaphysics of the doors and the morality of opening them. But it's just idle conversation. 99% of the time it's just this: open doors, open doors, open doors.
The real argument that would happen between Day[9] and IdrA is about whether or not all 5 doors have been opened. Day[9] thinks they're not all opened. He can see them. Maybe one is cracked, and no one is sure whether food can be smelt on the other side, but it's certainly not open and clear to everyone. This isn't faith or belief or any kind of "balance zealotry." Perhaps people have interacted with the closed doors, but they haven't picked the lock and turned the handle and swung it wide open. Faith comes in if he says "I know you guys worked your asses off to open 4 doors only to be disappointed. And you've spent months trying to open the 5th door. DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT rebel against your circumstances!!! TRUST me. Keep working on opening the last door. When you do, you will get food." Such opinions would certainly constitute faith of a sort. But like we've said at the start, every time that all the doors have been opened, food was in at least one. There's just never been a way to prove that food is guaranteed. Faith would also come in when Day[9] says "Hey, there's definitely a 6th door out there somewhere. It's nowhere in sight, but let's try all sorts of crazy things and see if we come upon it."
IdrA would say he's opened all the doors, or at least inspected the unopen ones well enough to know there's no food behind them. Or he's gonna say how it's easier for his Protoss friend to open his doors.
That's the gist of things. And we can't very well be experts on things that aren't in the open and clear. So that's all Day[9] can say is "hey try getting a ton of infestors in this specific way and see how that works" and I can say "hey, balance your resources toward gas as heavily as possible without dying and see how that works" because those kinds of things are unopened doors to us. And IdrA would have to spend many hours of practice to open them and perhaps find no food behind them, which would be doubly frustrating when that was his suspicion the whole time. But damn it, that's StarCraft. Opening doors is what we do. Being the first to find food is the greatest pleasure a player can have!
The actual balance is the balance of the efforts of each race to open all the five doors. And Zergs have been starving for so long while the Protoss and Terran are enjoying the sweetness of whatever is behind the magic door...
I personally think the game is broken by design and I don't think it can easily be fixed. In BroodWar all three races were similar to one another and the game more discrete so it was easier to balance. In WoL they pushed the races further apart (but actually Protoss and Terran are very similar) and now the Zerg plays too differently from the others and is too fragile to balanced with ease.
One can draw a big directed graph with a lot of nodes each representing a race at a point in game. Then draw arrows representing damage that can be dealt from one race to other between two points. A thick arrow means lots of damage, a long arrow means high risk. We will see then the arrows between P and T balanced. But arrows towards Z short and think and from Z long and sometimes thick but some times thin.
Just imagine that Protoss has opened 2 doors, Terran has opened 1, and Zerg has opened 3 (I'm making these up). Behind Terran's door, there is something tasty, like an orange. Behind Protoss's, there's ice cream. Zerg has nothing. If, however, Zerg opens door 4 and suddenly has rich Swiss Chocolate covering a high-quality cake, suddenly the effort Zerg had to put to open the door seems a lot more reasonable.
In real terms, if Zerg seems UP at all times, but then finds a strategy that makes it OP in all matchups and completely unbalanced, you could argue that Zerg was overpowered from release, even if it took the most effort to find. For all you know, this is as powerful as Protoss will ever get, which is the analogy that Tyler was making.
Don't forget the example of the Bisu Build - Zerg had a very low-energy way to beat Protoss in Brood War. Protoss had to find the 4th door, which caused Protoss to be evenly matched(? I believe) against Zerg.
I think another analogy is two people with the same degree of skill and knowledge being told to build a house. Only difference is one person is supplied with top of the line building supplies and machinery while the other person has sticks, stones, and fishing wire. Yes the sticks and stones person can get quite creative and tehres probably a ton of things you could do with those if you get creative but it still doesn't change the fact that the other guy just has much better tools to work with and an easier time (machinery...aka easy protoss mechanics) using the tools he's supplied with. Zerg has the worst early game scouting despite being the most dependent on it and having the most fragile early game (yes its fine in the midgame but thats really not where the scouting problem is), worst defensive options, one dimensional midgame units except for a spellcaster that dies when you look at it funny, easy to nullify pressure unless you have a huge advantage, and weak lategame units.
On April 08 2011 20:37 Shen_ wrote:
On April 08 2011 20:30 loveeholicce wrote:
On April 08 2011 19:20 kidleader wrote:
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
No, the other way is it's someone else's fault. Key difference.
Again with the false dichotomy. It can be the fault of both, you know. Idra blames his loses on bad play sometimes. Day9 always blames some else's loses on bad play. Key difference.
To me it was a key difference because when he says "will" it basically implies that in believing in imbalance Zergs are just resigning themselves and not even trying to do anything because they feel theres no point with the imbalance, which is far from true.
The problem with this viewpoint is that I interpret it as meaning that you believe Zerg is fundamentally weaker. I really don't agree with this. In the current metagame, Zerg plays reactively against both Terran and Protoss. Does this mean it is the only way to play? Not really. It's just the best way the Pro's and players have found to play it at this time.
If we're continue your analogy, I'd say it'd be more like being asked to construct a piece of art. One person has sticks and stones, one person has high tech building equipment. But you can get quality art out of either (and people have made it out of both). Does it take more effort for the sticks and stones to build something? If you're both making houses, yes. But not if you're both making art.
The simple truth of the matter is that no one, not even the pros, have explored every dynamic of their race. As I said in my post, the Bisu Build showed up VERY late in SC:BW. Do you honestly think that no one was trying things during this time, and instead just sat around declaring Zerg was unbeatable? Of course not, it's contrary to human nature. But only one person was able to come up with a workable strategy.
Can we stop with all the analogy ? Art / Building house, some abstraction is good but seriously, try to touch the ground then try to touch the sky, good luck have fun. Zerg feels weak, pros try to explain why, non zerg try to defend their point of view, it's legit. But stop with all that nonsense about mass spinecrawler mass infestor like "there is a door out there that will lead you into a wonderful realm, have faith you little zerg"... lol, can we be serious please ? We all understood day9's point of view, let's give it more time, but everybody must consider that SC1 and SC2 are not the same games and they did not blossom in the same environment: SC1 came at a time where competitiv gaming was almost non existent, so SC2 growth should be (and is obviously) way, way quicker than SC2. Also, try to not forget how much money there is in the scene already. At the moment, half the games are actually disregarded as "non fair", "imbalanced", and that's certainly not good for esport. In the long run, IdrA's behavior could be really detrimental for esport: systematically showing how imbalanced the game "is" should lead viewers into thinking the competition is somehow rigged and worthless.
On April 08 2011 20:14 Zeon0 wrote: some Korean zergs said at the GSL group drawing show, the prefer ZvP over ZvT. How can u explain that? or was it trolling?^^
On April 08 2011 07:00 Tachion wrote: Zerg picked Protoss - 2 Zerg picked Terran - 3
Zenio and Check were the only zergs who picked protoss, but there were only protosses left when Check picked and Zenio's only other alternative was ZvZ against Nestea...
On April 08 2011 22:07 WhiteDog wrote: Also, try to not forget how much money there is in the scene already. At the moment, half the games are actually disregarded as "non fair", "imbalanced", and that's certainly not good for esport. In the long run, IdrA's behavior could be really detrimental for esport: systematically showing how imbalanced the game "is" should lead viewers into thinking the competition is somehow rigged and worthless.
This is exactly why I don't want pros to talk about balance in public in front of thousands of people, it's not going to help anyone that everyone thinks PvZ is imbalanced. It's only going to create low level players that blame their losses on imbalance. Pros should definitely talk with Blizzard about their view on balance but they're hurting Starcraft 2 as an esport by complaining loudly in public.
On April 08 2011 14:49 Shen_ wrote: It's funny because I've always also made the religious analogy to Day9's mantra but in other sense.
The attitude (which I find offensive btw) reminds me too much of the worst aspects of religion. Religion traditionally told you to always blame yourself, and never blame the system. When an overworked dark ages peasant had a bad crop some year he would still be screwed over by the king taxes, then a priest would come and tell him that he probably didn't work or pray hard enough to deserve good crops and if for some reason you didn't sin at all, then there's original sin as an universal fall-back. He should also not complain about the king's decisions, because he is, after all, God's chosen; so the problem must be on your side buddy, because God is all seeing and he is regulating everything up there in the sky, even though you don't hear from him. The system is balanced by categorical imperative so blame yourself. And while this attitude may be useful for personal improvement at some level, sometimes you have to get an angry crowd, storm the castle and behead the king, or you are a sucker and have wasted your life. I find it specially offensive when nerds are the ones doing this because I hold them to a higher standard of critical thinking.
This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
No, the other way is it's someone else's fault. Key difference.
Sorry. I apologise sincerely.
Fixed: This works the other way around too: it's not my fault the (crops/strat) failed, it's someone else's will/fault (Deity/Blizzard). Whereas Day9 is saying the answer/resourcefulness comes from individuals.
(this has nothing to do with my view on things, the analogy works both ways, and well, someone is wrong on the internet!!!)
I'm just going to ignore the balance discussion and say I laughed my ass off when Day[9] compared making a website to getting a girl pregnant, starts bursting out laughing, and then Tyler asks Day[9] to form a website together as if he was asking him to have a baby, while both of them are dying of laughter. That was the highlight of the SotG for me.
Tyler and Day[9] are definitely two of my all time favorite people online, beyond even the Starcraft community.
EPT
