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Haha yes, I really do have to agree with all your statements after playing loads of FFA's myself. Love it and would love for it to be ranked also :D
On the zerg part, I have somewhat of a different analysis though. I feel that it's not that hard to kill one opponent no matter when in the game. The trouble starts after that, you have lost much of your army and are in no place to defend the next attack from another player. You as zerg ALWAYS has to adapt to the player close to you, ie if it's a toss maybe mass roach to kill him quickly and get good economy. If not he attacks you and you will be able to fend it off. BUT the problem is now that a 3rd player, even a bad one is going mass void rays and you have no ways to defend a 4 gate and void rays directly after, there are also cloaked banshees, dts, drops etc. All these stuff fucks up for zerg since you just can't adapt to 2 strats at once and I feel that even though my win FFA with zerg is 50% plus that it is difficult, here is where the 5-8 player maps actually are good.
Terran is easily the best with protoss quite close to 2nd as you say. Very fun read thank you, so sad it isn't more competitive would love to play vs players like you.
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I loved playing FFA in bw on those crazy huge 8 player blizzard maps like killing fields. I've only done a handful of them on sc2 so far, but I feel like mass void ray might own it up?
I really only like playing FFAs with people who I know, it makes it much more interesting. Sucked though because one guy was always so patient. He'd turtle with dark archons and that stuff was so annoying...
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Yeah Yttrasil, that's another problem with Zerg - they can't handle multiple enemies with different unit compositions. You can -possibly- counter that void ray fleet, but the force you used to do it is absolutely 100% useless vs the dozen thors running at you afterward. The same works in reverse. Because of this I usually play zerg as an expansion denial race - rather than attempting to attack bases directly I only go after the 3rd expansions (gold expos etc) while expanding, building lots of static defense, and relying on infestors -alot-. This gives me the cash advantage I need to have a shot at winning. It's still hard and picking T or P up front is a better solution  .
Terran and toss can build force compositions at 200/200 that can play jack-of-all-trades (and the raven is one of the biggest example of this mulit-role capability). That alone is a big reason zerg loses hard in FFA even vs relatively weak opponents. It's frustrating.
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Thats a great writeup.
I feel everytime I play FFA, and i go 3 dropships with marines and stim as fast as I can, the game is basically won right there and then. Terran is so strong if you can play the game at above silver level in FFA
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On March 16 2011 04:45 Masq wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 03:44 Chill wrote:
Really interesting. Thank you for writing this up. I'm always interested in hearing about different aspects of the game that I don't myself experience.
I agree that FFA should be ranked. There's no reason (except maybe not being able to get a consistent algorithm?) for it not to be ranked. How many people actually play FFA? I Imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to play at some off-hour with some friends queuing at the same time, and basically turning it into a 3v1 or something. I would assume its not ranked due to being easily abused.
Well you can already abuse this right now, you just aren't rewarded a rank for doing so, and you also get to queue FFA as diamond/masters and abuse bronze players trying to FFA, so I don't see how this is a good thing for anyone.
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i love playing ffa's too, but let's be honest. Not that many good people play FFA. usually when I play there's maybe one good person so it's not that hard to win
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1v1 would be the same way though if it was unranked, by default only 2% of the 1v1 players are master so proportionally not that many good people play 1v1 either it's just that the ranking system keeps it competitive...
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I think the OP never faced infestors^^ Raven are kinda useless vs infestors.
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^^^ This.
Making FFA a ranked game type would solve these issues. It would expand the player pool significantly, and make it easier to get a "good" ffa going. It would also honestly be nice to see how I'm doing vs other players.
Ranking them would mean nothing to anyone other than the FFA player pool. It's not like blizz is going to balance SPECIFICALLY for ffa, and we're not talking about giant prize pools or tournaments. It's just a way for blizzard to support players like myself who enjoy FFA, and they could do it with almost zero effort thanks to the algorithms they have already developed for team games. It would make me extremely happy.
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On March 16 2011 05:51 Cosmos wrote:
I think the OP never faced infestors^^ Raven are kinda useless vs infestors.
I specifically mentioned infestors as one of the only things zerg can do to stay semi-viable late in an FFA.
Unfortunately, they do not currently possess enough power to stop an enemy singlehandedly, and their presence won't solve the problem of ravens sitting over/behind a 200/200 terran army about to totally smash anything you can build. They are also ground based, which seriously reduces their mobility so it's fairly easy to catch them out of position. One mistake and you lose your whole infestor force. Your infestors are strong, but a 200/200 terran army with raven support will walk right straight over them - even if the enemy forgets he has ghosts/emp.
Even if you -do- manage to stall/hold the terran, you'll take so much damage that you're dead to anyone else on the map. Same goes if you're up against a toss army (and as I said, a toss using a fleet + good mothership recall use renders fungal growth and infestors completely useless).
If you -do- play zerg and have infestors, your best chance of winning as I've said again and again, is utilizing your forces to deny enemy expansions (specifically into gold patches). Infested terrans are great for this role, but one mistake and your infestors go pop, then your whole base gets demolished.
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I have about 650 FFA games and I too wish they we're ranked, just because it's fun to play them and having a ladder would be an extra incentive.
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interesting how you say that terran lategame > protoss lategame as i would get laughed at if i said that. 12 ravens is a ton of gas but terran has map control in standard pvt and the trend could turn towards terran getting a death ball instead of protoss. It is not unusual to see a zerg player with 24 mutas lategame tvz and thats the same amount of gas.
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On March 16 2011 04:13 magha wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 03:44 Chill wrote:
Really interesting. Thank you for writing this up. I'm always interested in hearing about different aspects of the game that I don't myself experience.
I agree that FFA should be ranked. There's no reason (except maybe not being able to get a consistent algorithm?) for it not to be ranked. Iirc it was ranked in WC3, but people kept abusing it by teaming up etc. So then Blizzard made it so you couldn't see peoples names, just "Player1" through 4, but that didnt help anything.
It helped immensely. Wc3 FFA is still the best constructed RTS FFA playing platform I've seen to date. The matching system mixed with how WC3 usually played out in FFA-format (Where hero levels played a HUGE role, together with a lot of other interesting tactics) it made for a perfect combination.
After the glorious days, I dont think my FFA experience can ever top that : (
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I find it funny how most people say they get ranked with good opponents in FFA since I normally just crush through 2-3 of my opponents every game. The turtling player just scans my army and sometimes just says wow. I'm not even a good player.
I find it fun that FFA is not ranked since we have custom games for pratice games and it lets bad players play games without thinking about winning or loosing. Since most people in custom games are gold/platinum and above. It's no fun playing custom games and stomping people in 1v1 that are bronze silver.
And you can't really just joke around in custom games since some people are actually looking to practice.
For me FFA is really just to go and mess around with people and loose to mass voidrays, or get nuked at my main and natural while fighting another player.
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I didn't read the entire thing, but skimming through it quickly, I think #5 (rushing) is very important and often neglected. People who don't play or think much about FFA will just go "Oh FFA sucks, just turtle and win with 200/200" neglecting your point in #5. It's IMO one of the keys to winning on Meta and LT (I guess Shattered now), and whenever someone not on my side leaves/dies, I get scared and pretty much assume I've lost unless my guy dies in the next minute.
If you successfully rush, and your 2 opponents on the other side don't rush at all, the only way you can lose is if they both realize what is going on and try to take you out. Like hell that's gonna happen. If one of them recognizes the situation and attacks you, the fourth guy will just kill him and you'll win. It's so unlikely for them both to recognize what's going on and kill you
I think holding this sort of an advantage can overcome your thought that zerg is underpowered
Point 10 about ~6 player maps ties into the rush point. If I'm sandwiched between two guys, I just go in expecting to lose. Otherwise, I'll go for the guy on the outside that is free to expand and just try to not die against whoever is close to me
Quicksand is just plain awesome for FFA
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On March 16 2011 06:15 MuTT wrote:
interesting how you say that terran lategame > protoss lategame as i would get laughed at if i said that. 12 ravens is a ton of gas but terran has map control in standard pvt and the trend could turn towards terran getting a death ball instead of protoss. It is not unusual to see a zerg player with 24 mutas lategame tvz and thats the same amount of gas.
12 ravens are a -huge- threat on the map.
24 mutas are mulch for a couple thors (or just about anything that flies). Mutas have their moments, but it's usually through the mid/early lategame. Once enemy death balls are out there, mutas may as well not exist. And don't even get me started on mutas vs infestors - I had a game recently where I was sporting a nearly 40 strong muta fleet late in an FFA for the hell of it, and watched the -whole- thing pop to a couple infestors and bad management  .
Stupid me, of course, but it has to be said. Mutas just aren't that good late in an FFA. Their weakness in the lategame means they are generally a poor unit to build in the midgame - you need units that can last you all game and be a viable part of your force and mutas just aren't, in an FFA anyway.
As for the whole terran lategame>toss lategame argument, FFA and 1v1's biggest difference here is that in 1v1 you're going to be trading forces all game. Because of the dynamic flow in 1v1, you never really see the kind of 200/200 I'm talking about. In -that- instance, a toss lategame is strong as hell. In FFA the terran is going to almost always max out fairly unmolested, and a proper 200/200 terran force can rip apart a toss 200/200 with almost no casualties with proper raven usage. EMP does TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE vs toss late in a game. Heat seeker missile will pop a 200/200 void ray fleet like it doesnt exist (and if it tries to run it does so under whithering fire from a crapton of vikings or thors depending on what else the terran built). Stalker forces are completely invalid once you can drop 12 PDD's over your army.
I'm not saying a -good- toss can't fight it, but it's going to take some serious work, micro, feedback, and cash.
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Good to see that you can have an open mind and open to discussion, I've never had a fondness for FFAs. Getting 2-3v1 is never fun
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This was an awesome write up. I feel like playing some ffa's now. The thought of diplomacy in ffa never occured to me for some reason, and now i suddenly feel like ffa is much deeper than i had previously thought.
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Over all you said correct things but I think P is VERY good to play FFA as well, you can warp in storms here and there while defending.. and LOTS of void rays + phoenixes are really good late game
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Solid writeup, I always tend to find FFA being a big mess so don't participate in it myself. However I'm really curious as to why its not ranked. I guess the only thing I can think of is it would be fairly easy to exploit to give your friend a win.
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EPT
