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On April 21 2011 06:49 Liquid`Tyler wrote:If you took a test with 100 questions, all of about the same difficulty, and you got 90 of them correct, you would probably say you did better than the guy who got 80 of them correct. But let's say the test is scored in a weird way. 1 of the questions determines 95% of the score and the other 99 questions determine the remaining 5% of the score. You got that one question wrong and the other guy got that one question right. So he scored higher than you -- he won. That is the basic idea of what is going on when people say the loser played better, or outplayed the winner. I refused to say whether or not I thought Mondragon outplayed Cruncher. Without attempting to answer the question of who played better, I just wanted to say that what Cruncher did to win the Shakuras game was not being fully appreciated by the viewers.
To add to what Treehead said above, the problem with your analogy is that every decision in SC is related to another. So it's more like a house of cards. One player can knock down 4 cards off the very top and not do too much damage. The other player can knock down one card from the bottom and topple the whole house of cards. Not all mistakes are of the same proportion. Ultimately, it's the magnitude of the mistakes that counts, not the absolute number of mistakes.
Obviously, the loser will always be the one who had made the more costly mistakes. That's all that matters in terms of saying who outplayed who.
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On April 21 2011 06:49 Liquid`Tyler wrote:If you took a test with 100 questions, all of about the same difficulty, and you got 90 of them correct, you would probably say you did better than the guy who got 80 of them correct. But let's say the test is scored in a weird way. 1 of the questions determines 95% of the score and the other 99 questions determine the remaining 5% of the score. You got that one question wrong and the other guy got that one question right. So he scored higher than you -- he won. That is the basic idea of what is going on when people say the loser played better, or outplayed the winner. I refused to say whether or not I thought Mondragon outplayed Cruncher. Without attempting to answer the question of who played better, I just wanted to say that what Cruncher did to win the Shakuras game was not being fully appreciated by the viewers.
haha I love your answers here, I didn't understand what did you guys mean there, but now I understand it. thank you.
so, do you think P should be nerfed? I mean, you guys only need to answer one question properly and win... lol
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Hey guys, awesome show this week.
I used to be really against Idra being a pillar on the show because he's always very negative, but last night he seemed pretty amicable. 
So yea, Idra: As long as you refrain from saying "zerg if broken", you have my vote for being a full-time pillar :D ...you can still say that zerg is weak, or that protoss is overpowered, or that the game is imbalanced, but it seems like everytime you say that "zerg is broken" all your fanboys come in here and shit all over the thread.
Keep up the good work guys.
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On April 21 2011 07:38 ilbh wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 06:49 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On April 21 2011 05:56 AndAgain wrote:
How would one define "outplaying"? If you took a test with 100 questions, all of about the same difficulty, and you got 90 of them correct, you would probably say you did better than the guy who got 80 of them correct. But let's say the test is scored in a weird way. 1 of the questions determines 95% of the score and the other 99 questions determine the remaining 5% of the score. You got that one question wrong and the other guy got that one question right. So he scored higher than you -- he won. That is the basic idea of what is going on when people say the loser played better, or outplayed the winner. I refused to say whether or not I thought Mondragon outplayed Cruncher. Without attempting to answer the question of who played better, I just wanted to say that what Cruncher did to win the Shakuras game was not being fully appreciated by the viewers. haha I love your answers here, I didn't understand what did you guys mean there, but now I understand it. thank you. so, do you think P should be nerfed? I mean, you guys only need to answer one question properly and win... lol
I think his point is more that the decision we have to make is far more important than the one(s) Zerg are making. If, as an example, you know how to deal with 2-rax pressure, reaper harass, dropship harass, banshees, etc - those could all be lesser questions. They aren't, however, questions that help you beat a Protoss, as Protoss don't use those strategies.
To be more precise - As a Protoss player, I don't have to know how to beat a Zerg's economy, how to drop, how to harass, etc - because I know how to flat up win the game. In this way, you could argue that I'm outplaying my opponents - because I beat them. The Zerg may have better mechanics, macro, etc - but if he doesn't know how to beat the army I know how to assemble, or prevent me from assembling it - I outplayed him. Ultimately, the game is about winning - the question of how to win is, at this point, more important than being strong at macroing or taking tiny risks.
Hmm...when I phrase it that way, Protoss does sound overpowered - but then again, Protoss did have a period where their attempts to cheese Zerg lost 95% of the time, and playing for the lategame seemed foolish. As a result, Protoss players were being outplayed by their Zerg brethren, if solely because the Zerg knew outlasting the cheese would guarantee a victory.
This isn't precisely Tyler's point, as I am nowhere near as articulate and creative as he is - and I can't quite phrase what he means without using another metaphor - but hopefully it helps you get the idea behind it.
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On April 21 2011 07:37 AndAgain wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 06:49 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On April 21 2011 05:56 AndAgain wrote:
How would one define "outplaying"? If you took a test with 100 questions, all of about the same difficulty, and you got 90 of them correct, you would probably say you did better than the guy who got 80 of them correct. But let's say the test is scored in a weird way. 1 of the questions determines 95% of the score and the other 99 questions determine the remaining 5% of the score. You got that one question wrong and the other guy got that one question right. So he scored higher than you -- he won. That is the basic idea of what is going on when people say the loser played better, or outplayed the winner. I refused to say whether or not I thought Mondragon outplayed Cruncher. Without attempting to answer the question of who played better, I just wanted to say that what Cruncher did to win the Shakuras game was not being fully appreciated by the viewers. To add to what Treehead said above, the problem with your analogy is that every decision in SC is related to another. So it's more like a house of cards. One player can knock down 4 cards off the very top and not do too much damage. The other player can knock down one card from the bottom and topple the whole house of cards. Not all mistakes are of the same proportion. Ultimately, it's the magnitude of the mistakes that counts, not the absolute number of mistakes. Obviously, the loser will always be the one who had made the more costly mistakes. That's all that matters in terms of saying who outplayed who.
The problem with this is that winning doesn't necessarily mean you made better decisions. There is unknown information in sc2, which introduces luck. Was Cruncher's decision to cannon rush in Game 3 the best decision he could've made? We'll never know--just because it worked doesn't mean it was a good call. This means that you can make more costly mistakes, yet have made better decisions, and I don't think any definition of outplaying someone which doesn't require you to make better decisions than them can be correct.
Second, (and more to the point) imagine a race that could never make a mistake. Maybe you pick a 4th race, and suddenly your opponent has to play some single player game instead. If you win this game, did you outplay your opponent? I think not, considering you didn't do anything. Similarly, a race in Starcraft could require you to avoid fewer mistakes than another race. This isn't totally similar, but if you are racing on a bike vs a car, it would be silly to say that the person in the car outraced the guy on the bike, right?
In Starcraft, the two races are never trying to accomplish the exact same task. They are both trying to win the game obviously, but you go about this differently as Protoss than as Zerg. If a Protoss does 95% of what is required to play a perfect P game, and Zerg only does 50% of what is required to play a perfect Z game, yet the Z still wins, I think it's easy to make the case the Protoss played better and lost. The difficulty of the tasks needs to be taken into account before we determine who played better, and just looking at the winner doesn't really do that.
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lol, those are glorious
more please :D
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On April 21 2011 06:49 Liquid`Tyler wrote:If you took a test with 100 questions, all of about the same difficulty, and you got 90 of them correct, you would probably say you did better than the guy who got 80 of them correct. But let's say the test is scored in a weird way. 1 of the questions determines 95% of the score and the other 99 questions determine the remaining 5% of the score. You got that one question wrong and the other guy got that one question right. So he scored higher than you -- he won. That is the basic idea of what is going on when people say the loser played better, or outplayed the winner. I refused to say whether or not I thought Mondragon outplayed Cruncher. Without attempting to answer the question of who played better, I just wanted to say that what Cruncher did to win the Shakuras game was not being fully appreciated by the viewers.
Wow, that was worded so well. Do you mind if I steal that analogy? :p
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On April 21 2011 07:37 AndAgain wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 06:49 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On April 21 2011 05:56 AndAgain wrote:
How would one define "outplaying"? If you took a test with 100 questions, all of about the same difficulty, and you got 90 of them correct, you would probably say you did better than the guy who got 80 of them correct. But let's say the test is scored in a weird way. 1 of the questions determines 95% of the score and the other 99 questions determine the remaining 5% of the score. You got that one question wrong and the other guy got that one question right. So he scored higher than you -- he won. That is the basic idea of what is going on when people say the loser played better, or outplayed the winner. I refused to say whether or not I thought Mondragon outplayed Cruncher. Without attempting to answer the question of who played better, I just wanted to say that what Cruncher did to win the Shakuras game was not being fully appreciated by the viewers. To add to what Treehead said above, the problem with your analogy is that every decision in SC is related to another. So it's more like a house of cards. One player can knock down 4 cards off the very top and not do too much damage. The other player can knock down one card from the bottom and topple the whole house of cards. Not all mistakes are of the same proportion. Ultimately, it's the magnitude of the mistakes that counts, not the absolute number of mistakes. Obviously, the loser will always be the one who had made the more costly mistakes. That's all that matters in terms of saying who outplayed who.
Mondi basically lost that game because he had too many corruptors in the end, thats about it. That was his 1 fatal mistake, but saying cruncher played better because he made less mistakes is a bit silly. Why? Because its just as easy to make that mistake as any other, it just happens that Zerg is a little more unforgiving. Tyler's analogy is really good because it highlights the idea of all questions being equal difficulty, but by random design from the test writer one question is worth more. So yes, mondragon made a more fatal mistake. Still you can't say cruncher made several very high level mistakes, while mondi made 1 noob mistake and thus cruncher played better (which would be true in that case). Mondragon's mistake is just as easy to make, so when assessing who actually played better the magnitude is kind of irrelevant. It's all that counts when determining a winner, but not when trying to conclude who was the better player.
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8751 Posts
Treehead and freetgy and AndAgain, you guys go way beyond my scope. I have no interest in arguing about whether or not the loser can outplay the winner in a game of SC2. I give an analogy to explain how it would work if it's the case. You act like the analogy is my attempt at giving evidence that it is the case.
It's an analogy as a way of explanation, not an analogy as a way of argument.
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Here's a question:
If your opponent is making mistakes or bad decisions, and you as a player fail to recognize or capitalize on those bad decisions, can you honestly say that you're making better decisions and outplaying your opponent?
I think the problem with Tyler's analogy is that it separates the competitor's decisions, as if they are made in isolation of one another be judged independently. I certainly understand what he's getting at, but I'm not sure if it fits.
It might be easier to define 'outplaying someone' to another sport. Like a basketball team can defend their opponent extremely well, crash the boards, shoot high-percentage shots, get to the foul line consistently, execute their plays and do everything right. Then a player like Kobe Bryant hits a 27-footer while fading out-of-bounds and the team loses.
Basically, the team lost not because of any terrible mistake, but because an opposing team had enough talent and luck to get away with playing poorly.
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On April 21 2011 08:54 Defacer wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Here's a question:
If your opponent is making mistakes or bad decisions, and you as a player fail to recognize or capitalize on those bad decisions, can you honestly say that you're making better decisions and outplaying your opponent?
I think the problem with Tyler's analogy is that it separates the competitor's decisions, as if they are made in isolation of one another be judged independently. I certainly understand what he's getting at, but I'm not sure if it fits.
It might be easier to define 'outplaying someone' to another sport. Like a basketball team can defend their opponent extremely well, crash the boards, shoot high-percentage shots, get to the foul line consistently, execute their plays and do everything right. Then a player like Kobe Bryant hits a 27-footer while fading out-of-bounds and the team loses.
Basically, the team lost not because of any terrible mistake, but because an opposing team had enough talent and luck to get away with playing poorly.
When you listen to his description about how unforgiving SC2 is, his analogy on "outplay" does also answer your question.
Your example involving Kobe Bryant includes a commonly shared understanding on the difficulty/unlikeliness to excecute such a shot.
Indeed, the evaluation of actions/decisions is a subjective one, which is both done by the specific ruleset and each viewers perception. Tyler only explains how the mental construct of "outplaying" can be assembled- in a somewhat metaphorical sense.
Application of his explaination into a concrete scenario heavily involves an underlying system of values. Tyler's observation is that not every action/decision is rewarded/punished equally (edit: by the game), which in addition to everybody's personal set of evaluation may lead to the conclusion of someone loosing, yet outplaying - or not.
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8751 Posts
On April 21 2011 08:54 Defacer wrote:
Here's a question:
If your opponent is making mistakes or bad decisions, and you as a player fail to recognize or capitalize on those bad decisions, can you honestly say that you're making better decisions and outplaying your opponent?
If it was chess, then you have full information, and the player who fails to capitalize is 100% at fault. SC2 is a game of limited information. And there are definitely times when there's no way to efficiently scout. There are times when you can't safely punish the opponent.
So this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that IdrA and I like to play a safe style that prepares for everything. Either you go through great expense to get the information you need (like me rushing to obs in PvT or hallucinate in PvZ) or you judge that there's no efficient way to get information so you have to sit back and prepare for everything, while not optimally preparing for anything. If your opponent isn't also preparing for everything, then you're most likely behind. Is that what people consider "outplaying" someone is? Having a risk pay off and then playing it out "good enough" to not lose? If the guy playing safe reacts perfectly to all the information he has, and he does a good job of obtaining information, and his micro and macro are superior, and he has a better game plan, etc, but all of that isn't enough to catch up to the guy who's like "well I guess I'd automatically lose to strategies A, B and C, let's hope he's doing D" and then just barely wins against D, then who outplayed whom?
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I just wanted to let you know LiquidTyler, because of your excellent and lighthearted sponsorship plug of stride gum in the state of the game yesterday, I bought a pack of stride gum today. hopefully the .002 cents you gained because of me will come in handy for years to come
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On April 21 2011 09:18 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 08:54 Defacer wrote:
Here's a question:
If your opponent is making mistakes or bad decisions, and you as a player fail to recognize or capitalize on those bad decisions, can you honestly say that you're making better decisions and outplaying your opponent? If it was chess, then you have full information, and the player who fails to capitalize is 100% at fault. SC2 is a game of limited information. And there are definitely times when there's no way to efficiently scout. There are times when you can't safely punish the opponent. So this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that IdrA and I like to play a safe style that prepares for everything. Either you go through great expense to get the information you need (like me rushing to obs in PvT or hallucinate in PvZ) or you judge that there's no efficient way to get information so you have to sit back and prepare for everything, while not optimally preparing for anything. If your opponent isn't also preparing for everything, then you're most likely behind. Is that what people consider "outplaying" someone is? Having a risk pay off and then playing it out "good enough" to not lose? If the guy playing safe reacts perfectly to all the information he has, and he does a good job of obtaining information, and his micro and macro are superior, and he has a better game plan, etc, but all of that isn't enough to catch up to the guy who's like "well I guess I'd automatically lose to strategies A, B and C, let's hope he's doing D" and then just barely wins against D, then who outplayed whom?
Fist-pump for proper use of accusative and nominative relative pronouns!
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On April 21 2011 09:18 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 08:54 Defacer wrote:
Here's a question:
If your opponent is making mistakes or bad decisions, and you as a player fail to recognize or capitalize on those bad decisions, can you honestly say that you're making better decisions and outplaying your opponent? If it was chess, then you have full information, and the player who fails to capitalize is 100% at fault. SC2 is a game of limited information. And there are definitely times when there's no way to efficiently scout. There are times when you can't safely punish the opponent. So this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that IdrA and I like to play a safe style that prepares for everything. Either you go through great expense to get the information you need (like me rushing to obs in PvT or hallucinate in PvZ) or you judge that there's no efficient way to get information so you have to sit back and prepare for everything, while not optimally preparing for anything. If your opponent isn't also preparing for everything, then you're most likely behind. Is that what people consider "outplaying" someone is? Having a risk pay off and then playing it out "good enough" to not lose? If the guy playing safe reacts perfectly to all the information he has, and he does a good job of obtaining information, and his micro and macro are superior, and he has a better game plan, etc, but all of that isn't enough to catch up to the guy who's like "well I guess I'd automatically lose to strategies A, B and C, let's hope he's doing D" and then just barely wins against D, then who outplayed whom?
you sir need to be hired right away to replace the oldest non-republican on the supreme court right now.
@Tyler, what was your major at duke? your use of language and logic is superb.
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Oh man, I almost forgot my favorite part of SotG this week...
So on Monday I was heading home from work and stopped at the convenience store to pick up an energy drink. I was in there and decided, hmmm I also want some gum to chew while playing Starcraft.
So I'm standing there looking at the gum and think... "Hmmm well I don't really give a shit about what I chew so long as it lasts a while. I guess I'll get Stride because why not, and hey they sponsored Tyler"
Fast forward to me listening to SotG and I just died laughing when they brought up that exact situation. Marketing success!
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On April 21 2011 09:59 kaileah wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 09:18 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On April 21 2011 08:54 Defacer wrote:
Here's a question:
If your opponent is making mistakes or bad decisions, and you as a player fail to recognize or capitalize on those bad decisions, can you honestly say that you're making better decisions and outplaying your opponent? If it was chess, then you have full information, and the player who fails to capitalize is 100% at fault. SC2 is a game of limited information. And there are definitely times when there's no way to efficiently scout. There are times when you can't safely punish the opponent. So this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that IdrA and I like to play a safe style that prepares for everything. Either you go through great expense to get the information you need (like me rushing to obs in PvT or hallucinate in PvZ) or you judge that there's no efficient way to get information so you have to sit back and prepare for everything, while not optimally preparing for anything. If your opponent isn't also preparing for everything, then you're most likely behind. Is that what people consider "outplaying" someone is? Having a risk pay off and then playing it out "good enough" to not lose? If the guy playing safe reacts perfectly to all the information he has, and he does a good job of obtaining information, and his micro and macro are superior, and he has a better game plan, etc, but all of that isn't enough to catch up to the guy who's like "well I guess I'd automatically lose to strategies A, B and C, let's hope he's doing D" and then just barely wins against D, then who outplayed whom? @Tyler, what was your major at duke? your use of language and logic is superb.
I think it was philosophy. Which is indeed mostly about use of language and logic.
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On April 21 2011 09:18 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 08:54 Defacer wrote:
Here's a question:
If your opponent is making mistakes or bad decisions, and you as a player fail to recognize or capitalize on those bad decisions, can you honestly say that you're making better decisions and outplaying your opponent? If it was chess, then you have full information, and the player who fails to capitalize is 100% at fault. SC2 is a game of limited information. And there are definitely times when there's no way to efficiently scout. There are times when you can't safely punish the opponent. So this is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that IdrA and I like to play a safe style that prepares for everything. Either you go through great expense to get the information you need (like me rushing to obs in PvT or hallucinate in PvZ) or you judge that there's no efficient way to get information so you have to sit back and prepare for everything, while not optimally preparing for anything. If your opponent isn't also preparing for everything, then you're most likely behind. Is that what people consider "outplaying" someone is? Having a risk pay off and then playing it out "good enough" to not lose? If the guy playing safe reacts perfectly to all the information he has, and he does a good job of obtaining information, and his micro and macro are superior, and he has a better game plan, etc, but all of that isn't enough to catch up to the guy who's like "well I guess I'd automatically lose to strategies A, B and C, let's hope he's doing D" and then just barely wins against D, then who outplayed whom?
Ahhhh, makes sense.
The truth is that there is really no good analogy for 'outplaying' another player in Starcraft because Starcraft is a unique game, and what constitutes 'good play' in Starcraft is very different from Chess, or basketball, or doing an exam.
I'd be really interested in someone like you or Sean or IdrA defining what qualities, principles or habits constitute a 'good' Starcraft player. In a sense, that is what Sean does for a living -- teaching people what a good Starcraft 2 player is -- but it would interesting to see what a player's personal philosophy or 'manifesto' might look like.
But I'm into 'big idea', abstract discussions like that.
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On April 21 2011 07:37 AndAgain wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2011 06:49 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On April 21 2011 05:56 AndAgain wrote:
How would one define "outplaying"? If you took a test with 100 questions, all of about the same difficulty, and you got 90 of them correct, you would probably say you did better than the guy who got 80 of them correct. But let's say the test is scored in a weird way. 1 of the questions determines 95% of the score and the other 99 questions determine the remaining 5% of the score. You got that one question wrong and the other guy got that one question right. So he scored higher than you -- he won. That is the basic idea of what is going on when people say the loser played better, or outplayed the winner. I refused to say whether or not I thought Mondragon outplayed Cruncher. Without attempting to answer the question of who played better, I just wanted to say that what Cruncher did to win the Shakuras game was not being fully appreciated by the viewers. To add to what Treehead said above, the problem with your analogy is that every decision in SC is related to another. So it's more like a house of cards. One player can knock down 4 cards off the very top and not do too much damage. The other player can knock down one card from the bottom and topple the whole house of cards. Not all mistakes are of the same proportion. Ultimately, it's the magnitude of the mistakes that counts, not the absolute number of mistakes. Obviously, the loser will always be the one who had made the more costly mistakes. That's all that matters in terms of saying who outplayed who.
It should also been said though that a player has picked their initial build order prior to the game so not every house of cards has the same surface it is being built on. Some have more friction than others. This could also be said that not all card houses are built the same so that even if you take out 1 bottom card, a large part of the house could remain. I agree with you that it isn't as simple as how many cards are knocked down, but it's not as if the 2 players are building identical card houses.
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Hilarious to see incontrol and nony defending protoss with as much vigor as possible while denying what is pretty obvious to everyone else.
Forcefields
Colossus (moving siege tanks)
....
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3dhF9.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jlW6d.png)
