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On April 08 2011 21:29 Aequos wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 20:56 loveeholicce wrote:On April 08 2011 20:46 Aequos wrote:On April 08 2011 19:44 ForgottenOne wrote:On April 08 2011 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On April 08 2011 01:51 Swarmed wrote: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.
I like the building houses analogy because it feels more grounded and practical. Your art analogy is just kind of a "head in the clouds" thing. I mean what is good art supposed to be anyway? It differs from person to person and is about as far from objective as you can get, which IMO doesn't make a good analogy.
Anyway, the analogy was just to help explain a point. Yes, I believe Zerg is fundamentally underpowered against the other races. We have 9 units.... I highly doubt Zerg players are going to magically have a revelation about some completely unexpected strategy that blows everything before it out of the water. I mean what exactly is your expectation. Like I said, there are 9 units, not an endless supply, and Zergs have spent months trying out different combinations but nothing is fucking working in ZvP. Infestor Ultra, early broodlords, infestor baneling drop, muta ling, hydra / ling --> muta. Feel free to disagree (this is just my opinion after all) but I feel it always just boils down to the inherent problem that Zerg units in any combination simply can not stack up against a Protoss with a good unit composition in the late game. Its just too weak and hive tech sucks for anything other than catching a player off guard. In theory Zerg has an easier time expanding and replenishing, so it should play the "economy over strength" game but as Idra pointed out its so hard to do that when your supply basically limits you to ~80 drones, which is like 3, 3 and a half base saturation.
Btw it keeps being referenced a lot so just to clarify:
The bisu build was the idea of using corsairs to kill overlords and DTs to kill drones once those overlords are gone. It worked extremely well because the standard ZvP build back then was 4 hatch --> lair. Basically toss would get instant air superiority with large corsair numbers and zerg could do nothing about it because the build didn't get scourge out in time. After about 3 months, Zerg adapted and the 3 hatch --> lair --> 5 hatch --> hydra build became standard. After those 3 months the bisu build saw much less play because Zergs now knew how to deal with it. Flash forward to 2011 and its basically obsolete.
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On April 08 2011 22:19 Seronei wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Talking about it in public = people thinking blizzard is failing due to making an imbalanced game = less people buying HotS.
Remember, kids; the best way to get a company to listen to you, is to kick them in the pocketbook. I think that it's the perfect way to get your opinion heard. Blizzard will be alot more quick about changes if you're hurting their reputation publicly.
But I agree with what tyler said, anyway. It really is up to the swarm to figure out new stuff. In my opinion, you shouldn't rely on patching.
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On April 08 2011 22:29 goiflin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 22:19 Seronei wrote: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. Talking about it in public = people thinking blizzard is failing due to making an imbalanced game = less people buying HotS. Remember, kids; the best way to get a company to listen to you, is to kick them in the pocketbook. I think that it's the perfect way to get your opinion heard. Blizzard will be alot more quick about changes if you're hurting their reputation publicly. But I agree with what tyler said, anyway. It really is up to the swarm to figure out new stuff. You can't rely on patching.
The problem with this is the same as why gas consumption is high. When people are told to start being more economic with driving (ie, more gas efficient cars, less "i need one thing in town" trips, or taking bus/riding a bike ect). People generally say to themselves "oh ill let others do that" as they hop into their ridiculious vehicle that gets 8 mpg. The same is gonna happen here. Most will let others do "hold out" if thats even necessary, and I hope it doesnt come to that.
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On April 08 2011 19:28 Shen_ wrote:Show nested quote +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. I like how you deleted this part from my post  Show nested quote +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.
Imo it's just about how you view things. Either you bitch about balance or you don't. That's completely binary. Imo if everyone spent the time trying to come up with new stuff instead of complaining we'd have a better world in general.
It's also interesting how protoss became *overpowered* instead of terran (which by the way was satan, not too long ago), while the only difference was that protoss players started to become better with forcefields, and use better compositions, while recieving nerf after nerf (void ray, HT, fungal blink).
You can always be better at the game, and focusing on that will help you alot more than going infant mode everywhere.
I realize I'm whining on the whiners so that'll be that from me ^^
pz. 
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On April 08 2011 22:32 DyEnasTy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 22:29 goiflin wrote:On April 08 2011 22:19 Seronei wrote: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. Talking about it in public = people thinking blizzard is failing due to making an imbalanced game = less people buying HotS. Remember, kids; the best way to get a company to listen to you, is to kick them in the pocketbook. I think that it's the perfect way to get your opinion heard. Blizzard will be alot more quick about changes if you're hurting their reputation publicly. But I agree with what tyler said, anyway. It really is up to the swarm to figure out new stuff. You can't rely on patching. The problem with this is the same as why gas consumption is high. When people are told to start being more economic with driving (ie, more gas efficient cars, less "i need one thing in town" trips, or taking bus/riding a bike ect). People generally say to themselves "oh ill let others do that" as they hop into their ridiculious vehicle that gets 8 mpg. The same is gonna happen here. Most will let others do "hold out" if thats even necessary, and I hope it doesnt come to that.
I think you're not giving the gaming community enough credit. We're pretty darn creative, people are trying new builds/timings (dumb or not) all the time.
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On April 08 2011 22:29 goiflin wrote:
Remember, kids; the best way to get a company to listen to you, is to kick them in the pocketbook. I think that it's the perfect way to get your opinion heard. Blizzard will be alot more quick about changes if you're hurting their reputation publicly.
If Blizzard would change the game quickly the game would never reach proper balance though. Blizzard knows this, they aren't going to patch it too quickly because the game needs stability to be a successful esport and changing the game constantly would be very bad for the game for multiple reasons.
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Sorry for bringing this up but I didn't think good enough arguments were made ^_^
Here's why I think extended series is flawed:
You play a single series to determine a winner of that series, just like you play a single map to determine the winner of that map (duh). When a map has been played nothing matters except who won, what specifically doesn't matter is how the winner won; it doesn't matter he won with a 100 supply lead, or if he won an elimination race with 50 hp left on his last building.
When you win a map you get one point, and when you win a series you get to advance in the bracket and that's that. In the next round it doesn't matter how decisively you won your maps or the whole series, or even your group. When you play in the WB it doesn't matter if you win your group 3-1 or 4-0. You wipe the slate clean after each map and each series. Having extended series is inconsistent with this concept, which otherwise permeates the tournament. It doesn't matter how you won, except in the one scenario where it does. Even in the group play the total number of map wins is only used as a tie breaker, not as the primary way of determining the winner.
Even when the tournament decides to take how you won into account it's extremely selective, since it's only how you played against one particular player. You cannot make the fairness argument, because you can't determine what's more fair. Take TLO vs Incontrol this last MLG, TLO had a better record than Incontrol and arguably beat better players than Incontrol did, but Incontrol had a lead going into the series. What's more fair, letting TLO start off in the lead because of the overall record, or Incontrol because of their individual record? That doesn't have a right or wrong answer, which is why tournaments aren't about fairness and trying enforce fairness in the format only screws things up, because from one perspective you're actively incorporating unfairness.
Without extended series you will get situations where one player gets knocked out by another player even though he had a better record individually, and then you get the complaints about it being unfair, but that's still better because the tournament doesn't make a judgement about whether or not it's unfair. The rules are the same for EVERY game for EVERY player. Trying to account for fairness only intervenes with true competition, just think about the things you can try to justify with a fairness argument. "He cheesed you so that win only give half a point" or "Huk is jet lagged so he starts off with a 1-0 lead". Those would of course be absurd rules, but they're rules based on the same principle of fairness as extended series which demonstrates that it's not a good principle to base tournament rules on.
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On April 08 2011 22:58 Seronei wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 22:29 goiflin wrote:
Remember, kids; the best way to get a company to listen to you, is to kick them in the pocketbook. I think that it's the perfect way to get your opinion heard. Blizzard will be alot more quick about changes if you're hurting their reputation publicly.
If Blizzard would change the game quickly the game would never reach proper balance though. Blizzard knows this, they aren't going to patch it too quickly because the game needs stability to be a successful esport and changing the game constantly would be very bad for the game for multiple reasons.
Oh, and people would whine about imbalance with or without idra anyway. That's just the way people are, and blizzard is still changing the game at the same (appropriate) pace that they do now. Who's to say they wouldn't change the game even slower if no pros were talking publicly about imbalance?
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would love IdrA to be a pillar on the show, he is very informed and isn't afraid to voice his own opinions, plus day9 + idra combination is hilarious : ]
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On April 08 2011 16:28 Defacer wrote:
On the subject of MarineKing being emo ... am I the only one that thinks he might be gay?
i'm pretty sure huk said he has a hot girlfriend
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On April 08 2011 22:32 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 19:28 Shen_ 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. 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. Imo it's just about how you view things. Either you bitch about balance or you don't. That's completely binary. Imo if everyone spent the time trying to come up with new stuff instead of complaining we'd have a better world in general. It's also interesting how protoss became *overpowered* instead of terran (which by the way was satan, not too long ago), while the only difference was that protoss players started to become better with forcefields, and use better compositions, while recieving nerf after nerf (void ray, HT, fungal blink). You can always be better at the game, and focusing on that will help you alot more than going infant mode everywhere. I realize I'm whining on the whiners so that'll be that from me ^^ pz.
It's always been Protoss among people in the know. Fruitdealer back before he won GSL1 commented about Protoss being the harder matchup. The difference is T had some super abusive builds that caught a lot of attention while Protoss has just beaten zerg by this more overall feeling of being stronger. P builds also were really really underdeveloped for a long time, probably in part because of the zealot train time which more or less shattered a lot of the existing PvZ openings as well as the constant VR changes and phoenix bug which greatly affected the viability of Stargate. Protoss were also the most affected by the Roach range buff (well I mean over T) which further sent their build orders into more of a flux state. Then there was also a faulty assumption that Zerg was better late-game which led many Protoss' to cut corners (like cannons) and try to do mid-game timing attacks 100% of the time which we now know to generally bad idea because it's in Protoss' best interest to keep the game going and to rely on more positional or harassment play until their army is so strong it can't lose.
Also for a long long time P's didn't put much effort into stopping Z hatch first builds which makes a huge difference. Even today ZvP feels a lot closer if you can hatch first without having to jump through crazy hoops to get the hatch down and to not die to cannons (though with better P builds in general it feels like less of a benefit).
The problem is you're asking a LOT for Zerg players to stay positive and stay focused on improving what they can. I, and I'm sure every Zerg, sits down every day with that very same idea. I never sit down thinking, "Let's see what imbalanced thing is going to kill me today." That's just dumb, I wouldn't play at all if I started out like that. Yet almost every day results in tilt because that's just the way zerg is. I can stop the proxy pylon 90-95% of the time, but that still means every other day I get a really stupid loss because a P reactively goes 4-gate/5-gate allin with the proxy pylon down. Is it my fault? Totally. Does that make it feel any less horrible? Not at all. And that's just one of many many examples that zerg face every single game. You also have the stuff like spawning close positions metal/ST (which is less often now fortunately), misreading a 4-gate (again I can have like a 80-90% success rate on reading P all-ins, but that's still a stupid instant loss every other day), missing the window on stopping a gold-base expo vs T or an uncontested 3rd vs P, etc. All this stuff you can get to like an 80-90% success rate against fairly easily as Z, but it still means you have all these small %s of just stupid losses that adds up to a high # of losses overall. And getting to complete 100% success rate is incredibly hard/impossible (even pros commonly drop a game because they miss some of this stuff). Pretty much every game, win or lose, tends to chip away at your positive attitude because it tends to just feel horrible whether it's you losing to cheese or having to play a fairly long game because your opponent turtles up even though you've out macroed, out microed, and out composition-ed him.
I know personally I try again and again to stay positive, but each and every day it gets harder and harder as stuff just continues to feel worse and worse even as I see parts of my play improving more and more.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 08 2011 09:36 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 07:30 debasers wrote:
Tyler, the big problem with your analogy and the reason why it doesnt prove or have any relevance at all, is that even if the game was imbalanced (presuming it isn't now), your arguments would still make sense, so what you're saying is always valid, but the game might be really imbalanced and in the end it really does not matter. Then I think my analogy worked perfectly on convincing you of my position. Part of the reason I posted it is to help people understand why I wouldn't want to talk about balance. It's not an argument for the game being balanced. It's primarily an argument against the idea that Day[9]'s position is faith-based. He sees closed doors that need to be opened. That doesn't require faith. If you've opened 2 doors out of 5 and haven't found food, it's sort of a ridiculous question to ask "do you really think there's any food at all?" The only thing to do is open the rest of the doors. It's not cool when someone says "I've opened half the doors and haven't found my food yet, so I'm beginning to think there isn't any food behind this set of doors, so I'm gonna start complaining and stop trying to open doors. And rather than trying to open these other doors, I'm just going to keep going through the ones I've opened until one day food miraculously appears (Blizzard patch, lol)." Nothing good comes out of players using tournament interviews as opportunities to opine on balance. When Blizzard wants opinions on balance, they ask privately. Blizzard can see the games. They can see the statistics. Some people wanted a general discussion about ZvP balance on SOTG? I don't want to do that. Give me a specific game and I'll discuss it. But I'm not gonna listen to a bunch of shit I already know, like what builds and compositions are going on when Zergs lose games to Protosses, when the punch line never comes -- "this is why we lose 51% of the time instead of 50% of the time" -- because no one is capable of making that argument. No zerg is consistently doing the things I think a zerg ought to be doing so I don't want to listen to their complaints. And then what, people are gonna say "well what are those things" and again it comes down to specifics. I can look at a game where a "lesser skilled" protoss beats a "more skilled" zerg and point out how the zerg could have won without doing anything excessively risky. It's different every game. And seriously wtf, like I'm gonna start brainstorming with every zerg on how to play zvp better. What if there was only one player with a high win rate vs zerg. Is it reasonable to ask him how zergs can beat him? No, of course not. Protosses figure shit out and then copy each other, so we're all like clones of the best possible protoss player. So what if we all had a high win rate vs zerg? There's nothing about that phenomenon which makes it ok to ask us how to beat us. No protoss is going to enthusiastically enter such a debate because every argument he makes to win the debate is bad for his game. The zerg has already laid all his cards on the table in the games that he has played. And even when we're really kind and explain how a zerg fucked up, they fall back to this notion of "well you're expecting us to play way better than you are. that's not balance" Well, first of all, we're usually pointing out how you can win the game. Not how you can win 50% of the time, which is what would be balanced. We're pointing out what you could have done to win that game. If you do that move well, you win like 90-99% of the time. So yes, it should involve you outplaying your opponent. A lot of the time it doesn't even involve that. It just involves you being smart and knowing all your options. Second of all, this is really funny for me in the case of idra. Cuz as far as I can gather about what the reasoning was between him and artosis picking zerg, it was that if you are a really good player mechanically (someone who doesn't fuck up a gameplan when you've got a good gameplan) then zerg is the best race to play. Sure it might be hard as fuck to play zerg in such a way, but idra has those mechanics, so he can be equal to that challenge, and have a great win rate without ever taking risks. Well gee golly they might have been right. But such a gameplan has been too hard to make. And the mechanics are too difficult. Too unforgiving. Or maybe it's just imbalanced. But at this point if you ask me if you double the current skill level and have a zerg and protoss play each other, my true inclination is to think that zerg would seem overpowered. So I think they were right, but it just hasn't settled the right way so far. Or maybe they just didn't understand that saturating 4 bases is arguably a worse position than saturating 3 bases, because of supply issues, and it's imbalanced.... In any case, I think they wanted to have a race like sc1 terran, that is beautiful and super strong when played well, but can fall apart terribly and lose games due to one error. It's just that no one has been able to break that threshold and show the strength. The potential is still there, and zergs admit it when they say "you expect us to play better than you." The most mechanically demanding race is the one with the most "potential" but the one that looks the worst when not crossing the current skill threshold.
what the fuck..why did i find this on the 716th site in a podcast thread?!
this clearly deserves it's own thread..or even it's own forum?!
rly awesome post..love your thoughts tyler <3
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On April 08 2011 23:27 hugman wrote:
Sorry for bringing this up but I didn't think good enough arguments were made ^_^
Here's why I think extended series is flawed:
......
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On April 08 2011 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 01:51 Swarmed wrote: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!
Digging this analogy.
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After listening to some Bod Dylan I found out he made both a song for day9 and for IdrA.
Bob Dylans - Day9
+ Show Spoiler +
Bob Dylan - IdrA (cover, cant find original :s)
+ Show Spoiler +
Makes me think he maybe also made songs for the other pilars :p
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On April 08 2011 18:32 Assirra wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 16:28 Defacer wrote:
On the subject of MarineKing being emo ... am I the only one that thinks he might be gay?
Koreans don't show much emotions = they are all just robots a korean shows emotion = he is gay guys seriously....?
It' not just that he's emotional, it's his body language and the way he carries himself that made me wonder.
Dimaga, Huk and IdrA can get emotional or passionate about the game, but no one thinks that they're gay.
Well, Huk might be half-gay. 
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On April 09 2011 00:50 HollowLord wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2011 02:39 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On April 08 2011 01:51 Swarmed wrote: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! Digging this analogy.
I've got a feeling Tyler was not 100% serious when he wrote that.
The cynical side of me says it's actually a beautifully disguised troll.
For the sake of fun I'm going to expand further on the analogy.
Incontrol is a unique type of player who opens many doors. He is able to carefully dictate and predict what doors his opponents have previously opened and therefore keep one step ahead of them.
In this way he gets access to lots of food before his opponent.
However having secured so much food he is now unable to fit through any one door. By dipping his hand into so many doors he has made himself unable to fully fit through any of the smaller, more difficult doors. He's also slowed his overall pace down, meaning he struggles to now move from one door to another.
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I've been watching Jinro's stream. You guys should try to get him him on, I'd love to hear his take on things.
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Balance or not I'm not commenting on the baalnce of the game. But it REALLLY pisses me off when people bring up the first two GSL's and claim the game is perfectly fine because Zergs won those. Really? The fact two former profession Starcraft I players won a tournament two months after the game was released is any indication? Idra is 100% right and I don't understand how the fact the only tournaments people CAN name are the ones that took place 9 months ago. The fact that hundreds of tournaments have passed since then and those are the only two ones people can bring up?
No you Absolutely can't use them in examples.
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On April 09 2011 01:28 Stiver wrote:
Balance or not I'm not commenting on the baalnce of the game. But it REALLLY pisses me off when people bring up the first two GSL's and claim the game is perfectly fine because Zergs won those. Really? The fact two former profession Starcraft I players won a tournament two months after the game was released is any indication? Idra is 100% right and I don't understand how the fact the only tournaments people CAN name are the ones that took place 9 months ago. The fact that hundreds of tournaments have passed since then and those are the only two ones people can bring up?
No you Absolutely can't use them in examples.
Hmm... something seems strange here.
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EPT
