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On March 16 2011 17:12 Meldrath wrote:
FFA is so garbage anything above 1v1 makes me wanna suck start a shot gun.
I don't particularly see it that way.
1v1 has it's up sides, certainly, but it's largely rush dominated with a small advantage gained, then pressed relentlessly until the enemy gives up. There's no crazy comebacks, no wacky wildcards, no "other" threat to divert their attention. Games rarely progress to 200/200 armies (unless it's a one-sided slaughter), and there's rarely a true lategame. It's nice to have something tight paced and challenging, but it's fun to take a break from all that and enjoy a longer game where tier 3 isn't a pipedream, and you can actually SEE some of the theoretical force compositions most people can only armchair quarterback about.
It's also fun to be able to try out some wacky strategies and improvise a win. I've pulled off wins with everything from mass ghost to pure-infestors. You can't get that kind of variety in a 1v1. It's either you run your drilled-in build order for the match-up or you die. No time to be creative, there's an army at your doorstep.
My guess is that you've never really played FFA, and never given them a fair shake. They can be a -lot- of fun.
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While having this discussion I came across one particularly interesting player:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/378200/1/TommyLove/
800 FFA wins, 1003 games played, basically an 80% win rate. He claims it's legit, which is a pretty incredible claim. I've been pulling that kind of win-rate with T and P lately, but doing it over 1000 games is pretty amazing.
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On March 16 2011 17:28 Ncinerate wrote:While having this discussion I came across one particularly interesting player: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/378200/1/TommyLove/800 FFA wins, 1003 games played, basically an 80% win rate. He claims it's legit, which is a pretty incredible claim. I've been pulling that kind of win-rate with T and P lately, but doing it over 1000 games is pretty amazing.
WOW, thats a sick win rate in FFA!
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For the naysayers about zerg in FFA or Raven's abusiveness, I present to you exhibit A:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/150623-ffa-terran-zerg-metalopolis
In this game, I face off against a couple -bad- players, and one masters-level 1v1 zerg by the name of Errol.
Despite bad play (it was 3:00 AM at the time) and bad luck, I manage to get the ravens flying then overcome Errol's nearly 50,000 resource advantage to win the game. I say again, in this game I overcome a master-level 1v1 zerg who has a -50,000- resource advantage because of raven's ability to invalidate anything a zerg can do late in an FFA. He loses 922 units and the kitchen sink at me while mining out almost the whole map trying to kill me.
Ravens are stupid strong late in an FFA.
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On March 16 2011 20:14 Ncinerate wrote:For the naysayers about zerg in FFA or Raven's abusiveness, I present to you exhibit A: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/150623-ffa-terran-zerg-metalopolisIn this game, I face off against a couple -bad- players, and one masters-level 1v1 zerg by the name of Errol. Despite bad play (it was 3:00 AM at the time) and bad luck, I manage to get the ravens flying then overcome Errol's nearly 50,000 resource advantage to win the game. I say again, in this game I overcome a master-level 1v1 zerg who has a -50,000- resource advantage because of raven's ability to invalidate anything a zerg can do late in an FFA. He loses 922 units and the kitchen sink at me while mining out almost the whole map trying to kill me. Ravens are stupid strong late in an FFA.
Holy CRAP. I had NO idea :S
Mind = blown. Going ravens in FFA! Haha.
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On March 16 2011 20:14 Ncinerate wrote:For the naysayers about zerg in FFA or Raven's abusiveness, I present to you exhibit A: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/150623-ffa-terran-zerg-metalopolisIn this game, I face off against a couple -bad- players, and one masters-level 1v1 zerg by the name of Errol. Despite bad play (it was 3:00 AM at the time) and bad luck, I manage to get the ravens flying then overcome Errol's nearly 50,000 resource advantage to win the game. I say again, in this game I overcome a master-level 1v1 zerg who has a -50,000- resource advantage because of raven's ability to invalidate anything a zerg can do late in an FFA. He loses 922 units and the kitchen sink at me while mining out almost the whole map trying to kill me. Ravens are stupid strong late in an FFA.
Sadly, this is SOOOOOO true. I hate to bring balance into this but I really don't see how Blizzard can be so oblivious to the problem with Zerg units. I recently started playing zerg instead of Toss, and its so ridiculous. With Toss I could literally build nothing but carriers/void rays/blink stalkers/etc, and just 1a to victory with maybe just a little blink micro thrown in. Terrans have BCs, Thors, MMM, what have you. Zerg has....................? Wtf do they have? Mass mutas die in seconds vs any decent lategame number of thors or even marines. Broodlords can't hit air and corruptors suck balls vs any decent number of ANYTHING that can hit air. Ultras.....again, can't hit air, and are completely invalidated by any other races T3 units. I don't understand what exactly Blizzarrd is thinking with zerg units and abilities. They are just so underwhelming in almost every possible way. Every single unit has a significant drawback to it.
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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.
Huh? There will still be one winner. Unless it makes you feel good to roflstomp an actual player before whacking your friends I suggest you make a custom FFA and throw in an insane AI to spice things up.
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On March 16 2011 20:52 Maynarde wrote:Holy CRAP. I had NO idea :S Mind = blown. Going ravens in FFA! Haha.
Yeah, thats the response I usually get when I abuse the hell out of ravens late in an FFA. People try literally everything they can think of, fail completely, and ask questions like "wtf am I supposed to do about that?".
Ravens are -stupid- strong. Perhaps this could even bleed over into 1v1 if games lasted long enough to really abuse them (unfortunately, most 1v1's end before a raven fleet like this could be reasonably lofted).
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Very nice post. This reminds me of what Day9 told everyone to go look at in his last monday funday. He brought up his episode #65 which is a 2v2v2v2 on BGH in BW. Where using a lot of little things like the diplomacy. Pretty much the 5-9 points that you brought up. Excellent read and i lost a FFA the other day because of mass ravens  only one i lost that day lol.
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Can't you just mass feedback mass raven?
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I played 3 FFAs and won them all. I really like FFAs since it requires diplomacy based decision making on top of the usual gameplay ones. I find it's really easily just to cheese the person in close positions, take half the map, and then kill both remaining opponents using 200 supply timing push. I also find massing voids, BCs, or carriers to be very ineffective. They're only effective in large numbers, and are really slow to mass. When I push with my 200/200 army, they have like a dozen voids max.
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On March 17 2011 00:28 butchji wrote:
Can't you just mass feedback mass raven?
If you're protoss, you can certainly try. If you're zerg - no.
 .
Even toss has a difficult time, because a toss presenting templar for feedback support needs to catch the ravens away from their 200/200 death ball. In these instances I usually add in tanks and a small spattering of ghosts to emp the hell out of things, and smash them with my forces. Tough to get the templar anywhere close to in-range with tanks pounding 13 spaces out. Templar are squishy.
Also, feedback is limited by terrain because the templar is grounded. You're going to have a hard time supporting your attacking void rays with feedback, for example, and failure to do so means a viking/raven fleet will absolutely torch them. Again, a problem you might be able to solve, but terran can whip out some ghosts and everything is A-O-K.
Ravens aren't quite -as- abusive VS toss as they are VS zerg though. Although I still use them in TvP FFA, they don't completely invalidate protoss they way they invalidate zerg. For anyone wondering, they work like gangbusters vs terran as well. A terran with modest raven fleet + forces > a terran without one.
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Hydras and Mutas, meet PDD.
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Good write up mate. I always enjoy FFA, the only problem I seem to have is that ive still not had a 8 player match. Like you said, when theres 4 players on an 8 player map one player usually has a massive advantage. Wish the matchmaking was a bit better for ffa
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On March 17 2011 00:50 Mofisto wrote:
Good write up mate. I always enjoy FFA, the only problem I seem to have is that ive still not had a 8 player match. Like you said, when theres 4 players on an 8 player map one player usually has a massive advantage. Wish the matchmaking was a bit better for ffa
Matchmaking will only match 4 players - never 5-8. Blizzard hasn't opened up the ability to have a 5-8 player FFA through matchmaking, they simply added big maps and only allowed for 4 player games.
The only way to get a 5-8 player FFA is to arrange it in a custom match.
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On March 17 2011 00:55 Ncinerate wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 00:50 Mofisto wrote:
Good write up mate. I always enjoy FFA, the only problem I seem to have is that ive still not had a 8 player match. Like you said, when theres 4 players on an 8 player map one player usually has a massive advantage. Wish the matchmaking was a bit better for ffa Matchmaking will only match 4 players - never 5-8. Blizzard hasn't opened up the ability to have a 5-8 player FFA through matchmaking, they simply added big maps and only allowed for 4 player games. The only way to get a 5-8 player FFA is to arrange it in a custom match.
aha, that would explain it then. Maybe if spawnpoints always had 1 gap between them it would be better (what i mean by this is player a spawnpoint, then empty spawn, then player b spawn etc). Its just annoying having a cluster of three, and then one guy with half the map.
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On March 17 2011 01:06 Mofisto wrote:
aha, that would explain it then. Maybe if spawnpoints always had 1 gap between them it would be better (what i mean by this is player a spawnpoint, then empty spawn, then player b spawn etc). Its just annoying having a cluster of three, and then one guy with half the map.
That would certainly help, although I personally believe no map should be set up for FFA that isn't full of players in every start position. Without this level of on-map mining, the game devolves into BIG GAME HUNTERS with a bazillion resources everywhere. Hard to win a battle of attrition when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of minerals/gas floating around to be mined.
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Whenever I do FFA I dedicate most of my robo time to observers. Its so critical to know who's attacking who, and when you can backstab someone.
Also, Immortals+voidrays are a very fun combo. It destroys 90% of unit combos, and adding Storm takes out the other 10%.
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yo theres nothing luck based abuot 4v4. I'm a fucking beast when I do random 4s. Absolutely no luck involved.
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On March 16 2011 17:28 Ncinerate wrote:While having this discussion I came across one particularly interesting player: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/378200/1/TommyLove/800 FFA wins, 1003 games played, basically an 80% win rate. He claims it's legit, which is a pretty incredible claim. I've been pulling that kind of win-rate with T and P lately, but doing it over 1000 games is pretty amazing.
Yeah its real.
I have about a 80% ratio in ffa with P. Its really not hard. There are very few masters in FFA and you can straight up out macro most other players.
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EPT
