On January 21 2011 02:55 jdseemoreglass wrote: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a well-known theory of quantum mechanics which states that it is not possible to precisely measure a pair of inequalities, such as the position and momentum of a particle. Because the pair of inequalities are dependent upon eachother, they cannot be simultaneously derived. The more precise that one property is measured, the less precise the other becomes.
What does this have to do with Starcraft? The answer can be found in this video of Blizzard discussing game balance, and their methods and strategies for balancing the game.
The pair of inequalities in this situation is "skill" and "game balance." Blizzard is failing to recognize that it is simply impossible to determine one mathematically without also knowing the other in advance. You cannot determine the skill of a player using winrate statistics, without FIRST knowing the degree of balance in the game being tested. Likewise, it is impossible to determine the balance of a game using winrate statistics with FIRST knowing the relative skill of the players. The two variables are mutually dependent upon eachother, making it impossible to determine one without the other.
im amused about your comparison, but does not really match up to your opinion about blizz` analysis.
Dont worry about the general gamebalance, blizzard`s got this easily, they are easily able to balance 99.9% of sc2. I guess you personally will never really encounter REAL inbalances.
The problem lies with a fast changing, map specific metagame of the pros. This will have to be balanced with mappools (huge change coming up in gsl btw) and i think blizzard should look into which maps are on the ladder (Look at steps or blistering for example..horrible maps). Gamebreaking things have and will ofc be changed by blizz, when discovered (1 food roach, bugs +co).
On January 21 2011 03:16 mierin wrote: Seriously...I saw balance and quantum mechanics in the same sentence and facepalmed
The uncertainty principle means that the more certain you are what the principle means the less you actually understand it, right? ^_^
Balance and skill aren't complementary variables, so the analogy doesn't really work. I think the reason people are mad about this is that they don't like seeing "sciencey" concepts evoked when they don't apply. You could just as well have used the theory of relativity (which would probably be a better analogy since what really lacks here is a universal frame of refrence, though it would still be annoying to people who actually care what these things mean).
As for the content, I have a big long post agreeing with the basic idea.
What annoys me most of all, and the asian guy stated this in the interview, is that blizzard look at korea as the "better" players, and thus balance the game thereafter. Now what kind of evidence do they have to support that idea? Sure there arent many international players in the GSL, but there is not a lot of korean players in the MLG either.
Can anyone who has actually played on both EU, NA and Korea server please point your viewpoints about this?
EDIT: did they just say that stimmed Marauders are borderline useless?
EDIT2: And then the same guy stated 2 minutes later that they are going to look at stim that tend to be too powerful early on..
1. You make comparisons between completely unrelated things. 2. Maths is a very powerful tool. If statistics of 10000s of games shows a balance improvement, its a balance improvement. Much better than the opinions of players as it is free from bias and missunderstanding. 3. You can tell skill by relative comparison. You have a very large population of players of a chosen race and can see their win percentages. Assumptions have to be made between races but these are reasonable with such a large population.
Blizzard's stated methodology of balance information is fine. It just seems that they don't realise how the maps are susceptable to balance issues. If a zerg can see a push and then make sunkens in time, thats a gigantic advantage compared to having to have sunks in preparation for a push that might come.
The game can NEVER be balanced, no matter what. There are too many styles, too many levels of play, etc. etc. As balanced as you might have thought brood war was, I don't need to know anything about it to know that it was imbalanced in some way.
So Blizzard's brilliant idea is flawed... but how can they fix it? They can't. What else are they supposed to do?
On January 21 2011 03:51 Excludos wrote: What annoys me most of all, and the asian guy stated this in the interview, is that blizzard look at korea as the "better" players, and thus balance the game thereafter. Now what kind of evidence do they have to support that idea? Sure there arent many international players in the GSL, but there is not a lot of korean players in the MLG either.
Can anyone who has actually played on both EU, NA and Korea server please point your viewpoints about this?
EDIT: did they just say that stimmed Marauders are borderline useless?
EDIT2: And then the same guy stated 2 minutes later that they are going to look at stim that tend to be too powerful early on..
no. they said if they nerf stim on marauders then stimming marauders becomes even harmfull in some situations.
On January 21 2011 07:12 Muff2n wrote: 2. Maths is a very powerful tool. If statistics of 10000s of games shows a balance improvement, its a balance improvement. Much better than the opinions of players as it is free from bias and missunderstanding. 3. You can tell skill by relative comparison. You have a very large population of players of a chosen race and can see their win percentages. Assumptions have to be made between races but these are reasonable with such a large population.
Maybe it's just my ignorance speaking, but I just don't see how this can be possible. If you want to measure balance, you have to consider the win rates for each race while adjusting for player skill, but to measure player skill you have to consider the win rates while adjusting for balance.
You cannot do both so if you want to measure balance through win rates you have to make the assumption that player skill is equal at any MMR level, which is only a sensible assumption if the game is balanced, thus invalidating the whole approach.
I don't mean to be a troll, but I'm getting a bit tired of undergrad Maths students or whatever coming in here and saying "Hey Blizzard, let me show you how to balance!" and start busting out these elementary formulas/theories/whatever.
Blizzard has access to an enormous amount of stats, they have top-level players, and gosu mathematicians and formulas all trying to calculate this shit. And they're doing a pretty good job so far.
I'm sorry but I don't think any random Tl.net poster, who doesn't have access to the things Blizzard does, and is most likely way less qualified, can teach them about balancing.
On January 21 2011 07:12 Muff2n wrote: 2. Maths is a very powerful tool. If statistics of 10000s of games shows a balance improvement, its a balance improvement. Much better than the opinions of players as it is free from bias and missunderstanding. 3. You can tell skill by relative comparison. You have a very large population of players of a chosen race and can see their win percentages. Assumptions have to be made between races but these are reasonable with such a large population.
Maybe it's just my ignorance speaking, but I just don't see how this can be possible. If you want to measure balance, you have to consider the win rates for each race while adjusting for player skill, but to measure player skill you have to consider the win rates while adjusting for balance.
You cannot do both so if you want to measure balance through win rates you have to make the assumption that player skill is equal at any MMR level, which is only a sensible assumption if the game is balanced, thus invalidating the whole approach.
Actual balance discussion can't come from "MMR" and ladder...it's pointless, it's like Blizzard looking at your average D+/C- bnet games and making changes about balance. The only real stuff that needs to be looked at is the highest of the high level play...like PL and individual leagues in BW, and GSL / top western tournaments (eh maybe not), and so on in SC2.
On January 21 2011 02:55 jdseemoreglass wrote: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a well-known theory of quantum mechanics which states that it is not possible to precisely measure a pair of inequalities, such as the position and momentum of a particle. Because the pair of inequalities are dependent upon eachother, they cannot be simultaneously derived. The more precise that one property is measured, the less precise the other becomes.
What does this have to do with Starcraft? The answer can be found in this video of Blizzard discussing game balance, and their methods and strategies for balancing the game.
The pair of inequalities in this situation is "skill" and "game balance." Blizzard is failing to recognize that it is simply impossible to determine one mathematically without also knowing the other in advance. You cannot determine the skill of a player using winrate statistics, without FIRST knowing the degree of balance in the game being tested. Likewise, it is impossible to determine the balance of a game using winrate statistics with FIRST knowing the relative skill of the players. The two variables are mutually dependent upon eachother, making it impossible to determine one without the other.
Blizzard claims to understand this problem, and they claim to fix it by factoring skill into the equation. But how is the skill of the player known? Well, by their winrate statistics! They tried to solve the problem and ended up falling right back in! How Blizzard failed to see this common sense error before they began parading their fancy formulas on stage puzzles me. Perhaps they know only too well that their mathematical attempts at balance are impossible, but they hope not enough people recognize why.
The simple truth of the matter is that skill level can never be determined by winrate without the assumption of game balance. Perhaps it is possible for players to recognize skill in other factors... Multi-tasking, decision making, micro, economy management, and so on. The problem is, most of these things cannot be scientifically measured. Blizzard doesn't even try. For this reason, the communities assessment of a player's skill, and therefore the balance of the game, will always have a more rational and accurate foundation than the one that Blizzard is using.
You're idea is faulty because you only take into account pure statistics. However, we (and Blizzard) have the ability to watch people play and see how they play, so even if they lose, we can see if someone is good at a game but just lost due to something being ridiculously imbalanced or if they actually messed up or whatnot. Statistics can't tell you that.
What annoys me most of all, and the asian guy stated this in the interview, is that blizzard look at korea as the "better" players, and thus balance the game thereafter. Now what kind of evidence do they have to support that idea? Sure there arent many international players in the GSL, but there is not a lot of korean players in the MLG either.
Can anyone who has actually played on both EU, NA and Korea server please point your viewpoints about this?
EDIT: did they just say that stimmed Marauders are borderline useless?
EDIT2: And then the same guy stated 2 minutes later that they are going to look at stim that tend to be too powerful early on..
It's not that difficult to come to the conclusion that Koreans, in general, are better at Starcraft. Their entire culture idolizes it - professional Starcraft players are as popular as sports athletes. You say that you play Starcraft in the west, and many people will just give you a weird look. This promotes a lot more Koreans to play and get better at it compared to western players.
I'm pretty sure that when I lose it's because I did something wrong, not because the game isn't balanced. The vast majority of players have several areas that can be greatly improved before balance even becomes an issue.
That being said blizz seems to have done a pretty good job of balancing the game in a relatively short period of time.
On balance I think most of the crazy imba early game strats have been fixed at this point.
On January 21 2011 03:21 Hittegods wrote: Skill could be measured from mirror matchups?
Which will help Blizzard so much on finally balancing mirror matchups!
...
Wait what?
If someone needs an explanation why this is so funny: mirror matchups of course are perfectly balanced. So when you let MVP play 1000 games against Jinro, you maybe know which one of these players is more skilled. But it doesn't matter, since mirror matchups are already balanced. How are you going to determine who's more skilled: Nestea or Jinro? Let them play 1000 TvTs and then say Jinro is more skilled? or 1000 ZvZs and then say Nestea has more skill?
On January 21 2011 03:00 darmousseh wrote: They can find the correlation between skill and balance by looking at results of random players, unfortunately none of these exist at the top level. Some math guy there probably knows this, but doesn't say anything because then their entire idea of balance would be destroyed.
Statistically, you can find correlation. The hard part is determining causation. You seem to gloss over this point. Let's say we do some statistical analysis and find that in PvZs, Z tends to win more, and their win rate has been climbing since 1.1.3. What can we derive from that? Well, as it turns out, all that stats can tell us is that this is happening - you can't really calculate that it absoultely MUST be because of zergling's speed. That just isn't possible. Now, if zerglings with speed were cost effective against all protoss units with sufficient micro, regardless of tactics/strategy chosen by the protoss, then math/theorycraft can tell you that, provided you are able to generate an absolutely exhaustive list of tactics/strategies somehow.
But really, you'd have to be able to teach a computer to play SC2 as well as a top level player, teach it to learn, teach it to vary up it strategies, and then have it play itself a million times. Even then, I think you'd find that the computer's decision making (e.g. what units to make in response to scouting a particular tactic/composition) became cyclical as time went on, since I have generally found there is at least one unit each race has available which is at least slightly cost effective against a particular tactic.
Also, a slight quibble on semantics - this is more like statistics than it is like math. Mathematics is much more abstract, much less applicable and much, much cooler. I'm just saying, as someone with a graduate degree in math, that some mathematicians will bristle at being expected to know statistics and vice versa.
The two variables are mutually dependent upon eachother, making it impossible to determine one without the other.
Very wrong, these kinds of equations are still solvable. Example:
x = (y + 4)/2 y = (x + 8)/2
You can use substitution or an iterative method to get x = 5.33 and y = 6.67.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a well-known theory of quantum mechanics which states that it is not possible to precisely measure a pair of inequalities, such as the position and momentum of a particle. Because the pair of inequalities are dependent upon eachother, they cannot be simultaneously derived. The more precise that one property is measured, the less precise the other becomes.
That's nice but we're talking about equations, not inequalities, so this applies instead:
I would like to introduce the team liquid certainty principle:
in any thread discussing balance on team liquid, there will be at least one person who insists that anyone who wants to discuss balance is only doing so in order that they may blame every single loss they have ever earned in starcraft on balance.
OK, what? I'm sorry but just because you failed 8th grade algebra or never went to college does not qualify you to go "herp derp blizzard basic algebra is actually imposible!!! gotcha!!! herp derp ur numbers r fukkked!!!! heisenberg uncertainty principle!!!"
Follow me to the learning rainbow, quick!
OK so 10 players enter Blizzard SC2 Ladder. Every player starts with a "skill" rating of 50 out of 100. The first five, well, let's call them "placement matches," award one "skill" point each. From that point on players are awarded skill points in proportion to the skill points of their opponents.
EPT
