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SORRY - 11 thoughts, lol!
So I'll readily admit FFA is my favorite gametype in RTS, and starcraft 2 is no exception to this. As I am about to play my 700th FFA (348 wins 698 total played, about 50% win rate), I had a few thoughts about the state of FFA.
1: Zerg sucks in FFA.
I feel uniquely qualified to say this, since a lot of my wins, and most of my losses, come from playing as Zerg in FFA. It's a sad fact, but in the lategame situations FFA put you in, zerg just can't handle the 200/200 Terran and Protoss armies that are fielded. This may change with 1.3 and improved infestors (as it sits, infestors are one of the few things that keep you somewhat viable in lategame FFA today, so improvements should help). If you are a die hard zerg and want to play FFA, my best advice to you is to focus your attention on keeping all enemies off gold expos at almost all costs, and make sure you have a dozen or more infestors late in the game as they become a versatile way to do damage around the map at low cost, and can save you from REALLY nasty enemy force compositions. In short, if you want to -win- in FFA, your best bet is playing as Protoss and Terran.
2: Terran is ridiculous.
Terran is flat out purpose built for FFA. My winning percentages as Terran are borderline disgusting (80%+ at least, I go on 10-20 game win-streaks playing as T in FFA). When I'm playing Terran and hit the lategame, I can effectively completely ignore any zerg still in the game because they pose literally ZERO threat to my unit composition (6-12 ravens with PDD/HSM+200/200 terran army = zerg can't crack you even with a massive resource advantage). Hellion drops make for -incredible- ways to do mass damage in the midgame, reapers can out-right kill an early opponent, and there are half a dozen other fun ways to attack or defend at low cost. I can turtle like a beast and hold 1-2 expos, and thats all I need to put together a game-ending force. My units are strong by themselves, but what really makes Terran FFA lategame shine is Ravens.
3: Protoss are pretty nicely equipped for FFA.
Good strong rushes combined with great lategame units really make protoss shine in FFA. While I'd still say Terran is the strongest FFA race, Protoss certainly takes up a close #2 position. Early on a quick 4-gate can eliminate a close opponent (who is likely to be macro'ing) and allow for a reasonably fast expansion - and similarly the 4 gate can fend off any enemies who were attempting to rush -you- instead.
Lategame you have a good variety of composition to draw from, and some nice spellcasters (don't forget the usefulness of FEEDBACK, especially against a raven-abusing Terran). Void rays are still one of the best lategame units to mass in an FFA, possessing remarkable power, versatility, and mobility. This is especially true once you utilize a mothership properly (and by properly, I mean by keeping it at home, and utilizing it as an EMERGENCY ESCAPE button - put her on a hotkey and if your fleet gets in trouble you simply hit the hotkey and recall the whole fleet out). There is rarely an instance where bringing a mothership to the front line is a good idea in an FFA. It's far better to use her to keep your existing forces alive and well as they buzz around the map slamming expos and mains. Abuse this and KEEP YOUR FORCES ALIVE. You don't want to trade armies - engage on your terms when you have a clear advantage until you're the last person on the map with a fleet still flying. This also goes for carrier fleets and even stalker armies to a lesser extent. If you -do- stay ground, remember to utilize feedback, as it can help manage the enemy forces most likely to do damage to your forces.
4: Ravens are the single most abusive unit in SC2.
UPDATE: An example FFA where I use ravens to absolutely abuse a master-level Zerg who has a 50,000 resource advantage.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/150623-ffa-terran-zerg-metalopolis
Although you don't see them in great numbers flying around in 1v1, in FFA ravens become destroyers of worlds. 6-12 ravens flying around totally change the dynamic of the game. PDD completely invalidates zerg as a race late in an FFA. HSM + your forces either scatters your enemy for easy kills, or completely obliterates them if they stay clumped. This is especially true vs the typical lategame unit compositions (it's very fleet-heavy in FFA, and HSM obliterates fleets). Autoturrets are just icing on the cake, giving you a quick harass option to stop the occasional expo or hold a cliff from light attack without spending cash.
5: Rushes are still a big part of FFA.
One of the most effective winning strategies for FFA is to kill your gold-sharing opponent early and take over half the map while the other 2 enemies are squabbling. That said, don't be afraid to abandon a rush and macro up if the enemy is properly defending. Also remember, rushing can create an unreasonable enemy who will hound you for the rest of the game. If your rush fails it is very important to balance this risk. A few words can help immensely here. Compliment them on their hold ("nice defense purple, seriously") and then try to divert them to a new threat ("oh crap, protoss has mass voids and is expanding everywhere"). You might only get your enemy's attention diverted half the time, but as the saying goes, you miss 100% of the shots you never take. And that brings us to....
6: Diplomacy is important.
I'll give you a good example.
I mentioned above that taking out a gold-sharing opponent raises your chances to win massively. To this end, if you notice one of your opponents manage to take out HIS gold-sharing opponent, the smart move is to try and organize some kind of tenative cease-fire with the opponent on your side of the map, at least until player 3 is knocked down a notch. During this cease fire, remember that while backstabbing can be fun, it will likely turn this enemy against you for the rest of the game, regardless of what is happing elsewhere on the map. For this reason, only backstab when you're clearly in a position to hold both remaining enemy players in a weakened state. Also remember, there can only be -one- winner in an FFA, so your newfound friend WILL attempt to backstab you eventually. Try to be the stabber and not the stabbee.
7: Always remember the FFA metagame.
Just because a couple players are clearly stronger than you on the map doesn't mean all hope is lost. Keep your scouting up and be smart with your diplomacy. Gain support of the weaker of the two players and launch attacks against the clearly stronger enemy. Kill his expos, attack when he's out of position. Don't be afraid to assist a weaker player, especially if he is a buffer enemy between you and the really strong opponent. Often times when your enemy finally pushes through this buffer opponent, he will be weak enough for you to finish off. Plenty of my games have been won from a remarkable disadvantage simply due to smart play of the metagame.
8: Don't be singleminded.
In the same way, don't be SINGLEMINDED! There are 3 enemies on the map, focusing every ounce of your energy into just one of them is a surefire way to lose. If your enemy proves to be a tough nut to crack, you're far smarter to pull back and macro up rather than continuing a long drawn out war of attrition. This ISN'T 1v1 where you push a tiny advantage all the way to victory. If you can't kill them easily, it's better to wait until the situation changes. Engage on -your- terms.
9: Holding grudges loses you games.
I know it's tempting to launch everything you have against the guy who crippled you early, but holding that grudge when there's a clearly stronger enemy elsewhere on the map is just going to get both of you killed. I respect that it feels good to cost someone the game (and sometimes, even I partake in this ritual), but
10: 5-8 player maps SUCK when you don't have 5-8 players.
The massive maps almost always set someone away from the rest of the pack and allows them to expand vigorously into the open space. It takes away the strategy and fun of an FFA and provides far too many resources for 4 players to mine down. Veto these pieces of garbage unless blizz decides to give us 5-8 player matchmaking.
11: I really wish FFA was ranked.
They rank 4v4, a gametype that is absolutely soaked in pure luck and completely imbalanced, it makes no sense that I can't have some sort of ranking for my FFA play. I would love to look and see how I stack up against other FFA players, and I feel it would bring more players into the FFA fold. I'm not asking for too much here. I want warcraft 3 style FFA, blizz knows how to do it, why have they forsaken me? 
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Interesting insights since i dont think very many people play ffa. Im surprised that ravens are so good in ffa and that protoss isnt the best given how powerful it is late game -_-
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You can't trick me with your double 3s! That's 11 thoughts!
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FFA can be really fun if not frustrating when you play zerg. I see no reason why there shouldn't be a ranked option. I used to think you didn't have much control over the outcome and therefor it shouldn't be ranked but 4v4 is like 100% worse.
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my only problem with ffa is that hordes of low-leaguers play them and not many good players. i've played like 50 ffa's and i'm pretty sure i've won 80-90% of them, just by being way better than the other players. i agree that some kind of ladder system would make it more fun for everyone involved.
also, i've never had diplomacy work, ever. if you try to make an alliance with someone they assume you're trying to rusht them lol.
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wow thats crazy, didn't know so much was in FFA. I've never played a game of FFA.
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Nice post, FFA was my favorite way to play WC3, I miss ranked FFA.  The games can be just so much more epic, nothing like having to go through all three opponents to win or coming back from a huge disadvantage by manipulating others.
I'm not sure how it does the matchmaking but it feels like there are always 1-2 terrible people in the game and it turns into more of a 1v1 or 1v2 because the skill level isn't balanced.
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Good insights. Agree a lot with the zerg ones. As a zerg I like those 5-8 player maps when I'm alone - gives me a chance to macro insanely and maybe win.=) Of course then the other players let one guy get 200/200 voids.....
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lol i love playing ffas. when i feel like fuckin around, i go random, play an ffa and proceed to kill every single other player (like 90% of the time). im trying to get all the ffa achievements but the only one i dont have is the wins (800 ffa wins? WTF T_T)
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FFA players average skill is probably below platinum - if you join on of these as a master level player you should be able to win them as long they dont gang up on you - regardless what race you use.
Bigger maps are good for good players - if you are good you will be able to secure 3-4 bases easily, on a "small FFA map like meta" (used to be in the pool not sure if it still is) its very annoying that you have to kill one opponent before you can take more bases. On small maps zerg was probably the best because you could just baneling bust 1 opponent take half the map and go for mass mutas and due to larva mechanics you could saturate bases the fastest.
Protoss is probably the strongest in FFAs because its easy to turtle on most maps and once you hit 200/200 with toss you are invincible.
The only reason why i play these? If iam to tired for a real game or on a heavy losing streak in 1v1s i jump in these and hulksmash the poor noobies to feel good about myself.
/E fixed my post because it probably was a misleading first sentence
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^^ Unless you get a game full of master's players. The skill ceiling in FFA is pretty much the same as 1v1 if not higher because you have the same mechanics + increased strategy and mental aspect to worry about.
It seems to have a lower skill ceiling right now because it is unranked but it doesn't inherently have a low ceiling.
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Interesting, I always find FFAs silly easy. By being aggressive and still macroing, it's very easy for a terran to win.
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I enjoy playing FFA a lot as well, it really shows what strats can be abused and is pretty fun to "relax" with a FFA game from time to time. The only problem I have is people usually go AFK instead of leaving, so I have to literally clear the whole map if I win...or I get 6 pooled by 2 players ganging up on me XD
good points though, and agree on raven's being pretty good in FFAs
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I agree with most of what you've said here. I'm a Z player but I play T in FFA and win pretty often. I usually just do a marine/tank push and take out the guy next to me quickly, then try to hold 3 bases while turtling my face off with PF/Tank/Viking (yes I wall off every entrance to my base with ~6 PFs to block for my tanks). Then I max out on BC/Viking while I wait for the other 2 guys to fight it out for their half of the map (I only play 4 player maps like you, for the same reasons). Once it's just me and another guy I go faceroll him (BC/Viking with full Yamato Cannon energy is pretty hard to stop).
I also build about 12 Barracks with Reactors so that if my BC army dies I can constantly stream marines to his base to keep the pressure on while I rebuild my BCs. I always end up with a TON of minerals with this build so marines are free damage.
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Pretty good writeup.. its kind of hard to take FFA seriously because you are matched with simply just other people who want to play FFA not based around skill level. FFA was a pretty big deal in WC3 and the players that played FFA exclusively seemed to have a good level of respect and I think that could be brought into Star2.
I think we may eventually see a ranked system for FFA. Here's to hoping for this.
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Calgary25996 Posts
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.
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I FFA a ton myself too and I agree with all your advices. Most FFA relies on killing the opponent sharing the gold so you can take your half of the map as quickily as possible while the other 2 are battling it out.
Usually the first one to get rid of his close spot opponent secures the win.
Another strong advice : You can push, harras but NEVER KILL AN OPPONENT TOO EARLY. if he quits, the other players will know what's going on. You want to crush the players just enough so they don't quit. They' ll make good diversion for you. but be sure to keep them under controle.
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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.
I'm pretty sure you could come up with a consistent algorithm for it, it'd just be alot more complicated. It should basically be like the 1v1 ranking system, but ranking players into four tiers instead of two. It's probably just laziness, not wanting to change the UI, not wanting to do the code, etc.
Edit: But I'm in total agreement on the, it should be ranked, line of thought. I'm not sure why this wasn't done in the first place. FFA is still a little luck based, but it's not terrible like 4v4.
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Wow, I had forgotten how much I loved FFA in RoC, bring ranked FFA back! Nice insight!
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On March 16 2011 03:30 Uranium wrote:(yes I wall off every entrance to my base with ~6 PFs to block for my tanks).
You know, that sounds horribly inefficient, but on the other hand, I can imagine an FFA player walking up to a wall of PFs and tanks and saying, "uh, nevermind" and walking off to go kill someone else instead.
Now, if they fly in with mutas or VRs or something, that's a different story.
Speaking of VRs, I wonder if the ridiculous VR+Carrier fleet is as good in FFA as it is in 4v4...
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This was really interesting. Normally i just dismiss FFA as a noobs playground, i never really thought of it as competitive. Although when you put it like that i can see how maybe FFA should be ranked. After all you're by yourself, unlike 4v4 where it's about 75% luck.
As long as blizzard doesnt balance around team games or FFA i feel they should have the same "rights" as 1v1 and be ranked, and not spawn 3 players on an 8 player map etc.
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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.
random 4v4 is ranked too, I don't think FFA is very different (well, it is very different ofc, but not in the way you play with random players). So indeed, it should be ranked.
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Btw 11 thoughts... and its nice to see what other people think bout FFA, it isn't insanely popular but its nice to see that its got its supporters
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I win literally half the FFAs I play in by going double expand before Gateway. If I get attacked at all before I get 8 Carriers, I just auto-leave. Then again, I've only played about 180 or so.
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As a FFA lover, I feel bad for the current state of the FFA matches, you almost always see one or two bronze or silver in an FFA match up. When you are in diamond or master.
You rarely hit a strong opponent, and winning against cannoning protoss going to carriers just aint that rewarding.
However, I agree with most of the things the OP says, especially rush and killing your close spawn opponent-- this is how I win most of my games as zerg.
Kill him, then immediately mass expand.
Also, i found as a zerg, the only sure way to push your economic advantage is early drone up, and mass banelings, hit terren in the mid game with your banelings to all his buildings, and immediately max out with other units.
However, like I said, most of the opponent i get matched with are low tier players. Where this strategy works because they let me mass expand as zerg.
And in this case, the diplomatic-- best part about any FFA, just doesn't come to play as much, because the raw skill difference between each players, and you just can't seem to know how good one opponent is until mid game.
Allying with a bronze player just aint going to give you that much of an edge.
I really miss the ranked FFA too, at least they can match us with more competent players, and then diplomacy will really come into play.
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Very nice and detailed analysis of FFA.
I agree with you on the ranked FFA sentiment, I play FFAs when I'm bored and want some casual/epic games. Because it's not ranked though, you routinely get a huge range of player skill in one game, making only one in four or so FFA games actually a good game.
I am very surprised terran hasn't started using ravens vs zerg more in 1v1, it's something I've been glad for as a zerg so far, but I fear that it's just that terran isn't being forced to innovate as much in that matchup, as they have a number of strats that already do them well. It may just be the initial build-up-time required to get that raven force mobilized, when they can spend the gas on tanks/medivacs instead.
With ranked FFA, you would need to accept you will be losing 75% of your games though, and they would need to make a modified point system to accommodate for that 25% win-rate.
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I definitely agree. Most FFA players are terrible (bronze/silver) so it's not that hard to beat them due to the huge skill difference, but back when I was at that level FFA games as Zerg were pretty much impossible. Infestors are really good, because typically the 200/200 armies will either be full of tier 1 or full of tier 3 units, not really a solid mix.
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I think I have to write something here, being likely the first 800win ffa player in the world.
I played first 400 wins as random with 70% win, then mostly terran and ended up having 80% @ 800win, aka 90% the last 400. This was purely because of zerg, I don't think I had much more than 50-60% win with it and finally realized it was no worth the trouble. There are just too many problems with it - even maxed corruptor armies can't beat all air compositions, and even if you get resources and chance to do that army, you'll die if anyone else hits you once. Well, pretty much as it's in any gametype: zerg only does good if it has 200pop while opponents don't. In FFA everyone are bound to get 200pop.
About terran and ravens... well sure they're damn annoying, but definately not the way to play if you want to grind ffa wins As mentioned I got 90% win% as T, but my avg game length was 20min and it was almost always pure mmm, sometimes tanks/vikings if bio just couldn't cut it. Going ravens means you have to ecowhore way more. Anyway, playing bio feels like you actually do something instead of randomly clicking around with 20apm like with many other ball-compositions
I also noted the neighbour rushing to be good option often. It's very common to always have to be killed your closepos neighbour, thus if you rush yours, you drop a bit in eco compared to others if they expand, but they're forced to fight each others most of the time before they get to you, allowing you to expand freely without making any units after the rushforce. It didn't seem like anyone else understood this when I played in fall :p
Diplomacy = crap. You don't need such if you're the better player. If I know someone else rushed someone, I feel it's common courtesy to let him show he can beat me fair by not going after him instantly  The best "backstabbing" I did was catching 6pool lings running around my scout around my base - well 6poolers are often pretty bad players in FFA so they just follow the scout. I take the probe to some opponent's base and 6 lings become his prob 
Grudgeholding definately loses games. Afterwards thinking, I'm still happy I sometimes lost games "on purpose" when there were complete egoistic retards who played lame abuse every game. 1basing them down often made me lose the whole game, but it's still worth it because I hate if I lose to these lamers in lategame thinking I could've done different. Typical example of lamers are ppl who mass cannon and did pure speed VRs, that couldn't be caught. They just killed your base if you tried to attack anywhere, which really made the playing idiotic. Good think speed VR got removed
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Thanks for making the post. It was very interesting. I enjoy FFAs to as they are pretty relaxing. As masters, I pretty much dont have to work to win the games, but its also fun to crush the noobies.
I think blizzard would be able to make a FFA ladder (they had one for War3), I dont really see why they haven't yet.
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FFA in war3 was really fun, I don't see who it would hurt to have it ranked. People know it's going to be imbalanced and that the game is focused around 1v1.
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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.
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FFA bores me to tears. I always got put against 3 unbreakable turtles, who mass t3 units behind the safety of their wall. They decide to push out at the 30 minute mark. The player you harassed the least ends up winning. Feels like a game of chance
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Nice thread
When I play FFAs I try to do insane stuff, I can relate to your view that Ravens are amazing because I played a game where I only made ravens. I almost took out an entire massive fleet of BCCs with only hunter seeker missiles O_O
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interesting read, and btw 348 wins in 698 games is EXACTLY 50% not about 50% ;p
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I like to do FFA's now and again as a warm-up before I ladder, and I agree that zerg is weak in late game. It comes down to the inability to turtle up. You can throw down spine crawlers, however it's really not in in a zergs interest to turtle, because they dont really have a late game unit composition that can defeat the typical P and T late game comps (mass voidray/carrier and mass bc respectively). what you can do however is eco cheese your way to a piss easy midgame victory. If you get rushed by a terran you're going to die, but if theyre all busy turtling up you can be on 4 base and getting mutas out so early that there really is no counter. take a ball of 30 mutas and wipe out two people in mid game, then you can play the typical Z lategame to finish off the last opponent.
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Oh man I had a lot of heavy macro dominance in FFA's 2 days ago on Slag Pits, Bio/Mech both work really well if you scout everywhere and can stay on top of what everyone is doing.
I do agree with you that only 4P on 5-8P maps suck and tbh it doesn't really feel like a true FFA unless you play on small maps like quicksand which can be pretty fun.
I'd still like the option of choosing between 4P or 8P FFA's, I guess it would be harder to find players but 8P would be like utter madness that crashes your computer!!!
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On March 16 2011 04:23 emythrel wrote:
interesting read, and btw 348 wins in 698 games is EXACTLY 50% not about 50% ;p
348/698 = ??
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Thanks to everyone for replying, I'm actually surprised at the level of support here for ranked ladder! I hope to see all of you trying out a few FFAs, they can be really fun. Anyway, onward to a few responses!
On March 16 2011 04:12 Ouga wrote:
I think I have to write something here, being likely the first 800win ffa player in the world.
I'm glad you posted Ouga - I hadn't run into anyone with more FFA's than myself, so I am impressed to see someone with 800 wins .
Zerg is -absolutely- the reason my win percentage is only 50% - many of those games from back when the void ray had STUPID STUPID STUPID damage capacity and super high speed. Hard to beat that as zerg. I've pretty much given up on playing as zerg lately, which has pulled my win rate back up strong (I'd say my win-rates are similar to yours nowadays when playing as T or P, looking at my last 25-30 I'm above 80%). You're just absolutely right here - zerg air can't compete, zerg ground can't compete, and there's a few units out there that totally screw you (thors, ravens, properly used voids, etc).
Hearing your average game length is 20 minutes is pretty surprising though. MMM with tanks/vikings if bio doesn't cut it is a fine strategy, but I usually find going for this sort of straight aggression usually lets one person get to a wreck-face unit composition that beats it. I suppose I didn't take it as strongly as I could have (I tend to play longer FFA games) so I'll take your judgement at face value. If you -do- go into lategame, ravens are stupid powerful. I usually handle my midgame with harassments to keep me busy/entertained (blue flame hellion drops are a personal favorite - last game I had 4 hellions in a dropship at the end of the game that EACH had 30+ kills, over 120 kills in that dropship, lol).
I also noted the neighbour rushing to be good option often..... It didn't seem like anyone else understood this when I played in fall :p
Yeah, plenty of people don't understand FFA mechanics. You see this when they attack a cross-map opponent early, or don't focus on the guy who just killed his neighbor - who is clearly in the lead. This would be more commonly known if we had a ranked ladder system letting better players compete (or giving them reason -to- compete).
Diplomacy = crap. You don't need such if you're the better player. If I know someone else rushed someone, I feel it's common courtesy to let him show he can beat me fair by not going after him instantly The best "backstabbing" I did was catching 6pool lings running around my scout around my base - well 6poolers are often pretty bad players in FFA so they just follow the scout. I take the probe to some opponent's base and 6 lings become his prob
Eh, I still say diplomacy is worth utilizing. I'm not saying you need to team up every game, but I've had plenty of games where a few words at the right moment changed the whole course of events . It's silly, but the occasional beg for mercy, or directive to attack someone else, or mentioning an opponents gold expansion, can make or break a win. Also, when I mention diplomacy I didn't mean it in an always verbal way. Sometimes you directly help an opponent even without a verbal agreement, simply because it helps you in the long run. I've saved opponents from BIG attacks because they were a buffer between me and the enemy I really wanted dead. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as it were.
Grudgeholding definately loses games. Afterwards thinking, I'm still happy I sometimes lost games "on purpose" when there were complete egoistic retards who played lame abuse every game. 1basing them down often made me lose the whole game, but it's still worth it...
Yeah, I know, I've lost my fair share of games where I spent my dying breaths completely screwing someone over that pissed me off. It's not the best way to win, but it can be satisfying .
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On March 16 2011 04:28 _Darwin_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 04:23 emythrel wrote:
interesting read, and btw 348 wins in 698 games is EXACTLY 50% not about 50% ;p 348/698 = ??
0.498567335
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On March 16 2011 03:10 Ponyo wrote:
wow thats crazy, didn't know so much was in FFA. I've never played a game of FFA.
You should, it's a nice break from 1v1 because FFA is so different.
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i dont think its a fair sample size to talk about "balance" because there is no ranking system, 99% of the people that you play are going to be really weak opponents. To mention some of your points, yeah you probably dont have to worry about zergs because their macro is poor and their scouting is poor and they dont have the right unit compositions. Also saying that hellion drops are massively strong is probably true because the people you are playing cant react in time and end up losing their entire worker line almost every time.
I agree with most of your other points though about FFA strategy and its good insight because 99% of people here probably dont play it regularly.
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On March 16 2011 03:08 bqzg wrote:
my only problem with ffa is that hordes of low-leaguers play them and not many good players.
On March 16 2011 04:10 oOOoOphidian wrote:
I definitely agree. Most FFA players are terrible (bronze/silver) so it's not that hard to beat them due to the huge skill difference.
If FFAs become ranked, which is what the OP is ultimately asking for, then you won't be matched against lower skilled players.
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Your article is exactly what I'm thinking about FFA right now. I don't have that many wins but I have already realised all points you made.GL and happy backstabing
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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.
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I played some FFA games lately with random to relax. I think you can't read to much in FFA games because most players are pretty bad because FFA aren't ranked. I played overall 15 games and won 12 by simply playing safe.
I agree that Zerg sucks in FFA, you have to scout and take out the best opponent with 2-3 base and then expand at his side of the map.
I have like 6-0 with protoss, because you can play pretty safe against everything and when you reach lategame you are unbeatable.
The most important rule in FFA: Don't attack anyone if you aren't sure if you can take him out -> Don't drop and harass. Try to scout the greediest or the best player and attack at a good timing.
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nice write up, havent really paid any attention to FFA but it sure seems crazy at times. Also seems like there is much more to it than what you get in a 1v1. If I had more time over this piece actually would have gotten me started. Very interesting stuff in here.
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common sense. zerg want to take multiple expos. their need for larva depends on it. obviously if you have an opponent thats on 5 bases you kill him first. thats why everyone picks on the zerg. if they stay on 2 bases then they are no threat.
terran are best at ffa because they have the best static d. tanks, bunkers, turrets, planetary fortresses, pdd's. all designed as great defensive tools. when you have 4 people battling it out do you attack the 15 siege tanks behind bunkers? hellllllll no
protoss have very versatile units. colossus cover ground quickly. stalkers with blink can be anywhere on the map in seconds. voids do tons of damage. dts wreak havoc to players who refuse to make observers. duh they are good in meta game.
ravens are good because they are flying energy based units. pdd's allow for nice retreats. imagine if high templar could fly, do damage to structures, and retreat at well. thats a raven for you
rushes work well because most players tend to be greedy. best strat as a zerg is actually to 6/8 pool your opponent, hopefully kill him off, and then take as many expos as you can get while the other two hopefully duel.
i could go on and on, but basically you just make common sense arguments so i thought i'd analyze your points
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Zerg was always bad at this kind of thing in BW too, it's just not suited for them.
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Race doesn't matter in FFA. It's all about diplomacy.
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You really can't complain about FFA balance, I mean it favors turtling more than anything else 100% of the time. Why not sit back for a bit, build a "death army" while your opponents kill each other and then move out and win. FFA isn't ranked for a reason, because it's terrible and a waste of time.
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On March 16 2011 04:58 KillerPlague wrote:
rushes work well because most players tend to be greedy. best strat as a zerg is actually to 6/8 pool your opponent, hopefully kill him off, and then take as many expos as you can get while the other two hopefully duel.
No no no no no.
Well, to a 6 pool at least. A 6 pool puts you massively behind on economy and will get you killed almost every time (even if it does kill your close-opponent). It's nowhere near the ideal strategy for FFA. If you're dead-bent on killing someone super early you'd be better off with a strong early roach rush that leads into a quick expand or two. 6 pool wont give you the cash to expo. An 8 pool would be a bit better, but I'd still say you're better off with a slightly later attack and stronger economy.
Even then though, zerg is awful in FFA. The problem isn't their expansions or early strength, it's the fact that when money is no object (late in an FFA with 200/200 armies), zerg can't really compete. As I said, 1.3 might fix this with better fungal growth, hard to say.
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On March 16 2011 05:00 frozt_ wrote:
You really can't complain about FFA balance, I mean it favors turtling more than anything else 100% of the time. Why not sit back for a bit, build a "death army" while your opponents kill each other and then move out and win. FFA isn't ranked for a reason, because it's terrible and a waste of time.
Actually, hard turtling is almost as bad as 6 pooling . It is a terrible way to win.
You need to be aggressive to an extent or you will find yourself facing down a 20,000-50,000 resource disadvantage and be absolutely obliterated.
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My last FFA was about buildings mass OCs and mine every mineral patch available, even mass dropping mules on enemy patches, I won. (I trained units only a few minutes before game ended)
I starved my ennemies and it worked.
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On March 16 2011 05:00 neobowman wrote:
Race doesn't matter in FFA. It's all about diplomacy.
Diplomacy doesn't matter in FFA. It's all about manipulation.
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I think there must be some overflow of MMR from your solo to FFA.. because everytime I join a FFA, I play good players. At the very minimum, 2000+ diamond, but most are masters solo. Its not just a "mass and kill all 3" type game ever..
Ive even matched against top 200 solo players in FFA more than a handful of times. (I check the stats of at least 1 or 2 players from every FFA I play, rarely do I ever see below diamond)
so I dunno how you guys all get matched vs bronze/silver players.. That'd make it so easy lol
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bring back ffa and add heroes =P
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Thanks for the insight, I played ffa only for achievements but it really sounds a lot of fun
//tx
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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.
Well there are reasons why it's not ranked. The main one would be that it would be very easy to abuse in various ways, for example making agreements ingame with opponents, synchronizing with mates/clanmates, not competitive enough, huge balance issues etc etc. On the other hand, if 4v4 is ranked - so could FFA.
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Race matters, and manipulation matters .
Picking T or P will raise your winning percentages significantly, simple as that. Being good at diplomacy and manipulation will do the same.
Any other problems FFA faces are mostly due to it's unranked status. Even if rankings could be abused, the ranking process would ensure games are played against similarly skilled players more often, and would drive more players to play FFA (many people don't bother because "it's unranked").
As it sits, most FFA are like 1v1's with "complications". You almost always have ONE other player who is skilled, it's a matter of identifying that player and figuring out the best way to counter him while surviving the other less skilled. The nice thing is, FFA played -well- can also be a great equalizer. A lower skill player (mechanically) can win an FFA if he's creative and good at the FFA metagame (mind). In any event, the lack of any sort of rankings is just a slap in the face to anyone like myself who enjoys FFA and -loved- FFA in warcraft 3.
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On March 16 2011 05:14 NotSupporting 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. Well there are reasons why it's not ranked. The main one would be that it would be very easy to abuse in various ways, for example making agreements ingame with opponents, synchronizing with mates/clanmates, not competitive enough etc etc.
Why does this matter?
There's no money in having your name on top of a list. Who -cares- if it's ranked.
It randomly picks from the player pool. Rankings would give you a larger player pool and make it unlikely to get multiple players who know each other/preset alliances. In the end, the player pool that DOES exist would be ranked according to skill and you'd be more likely to get a game with more generally skilled players around your level of ability. Warcraft 3 also utilized a system where players got PLAYER 1-PLAYER 4 names in-game to discourage gamers ganging up on someone due to their known ability due to their name.
And the idea that FFA isn't competitive enough? You're playing against 3 other people competing for the win. How is that not competitive? Skill is involved, and luck is a far smaller part of any FFA than it is for something like a random 4v4 which can -also- be abused. What's the point in holding back rankings?
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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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I played some FFA here and there, mostly in the beta, but I treat it as change of pace from 1v1.
But... I really enjoyed reading your post! I liked the diplomacy aspects you pointed out, I've never chatted or observed chatter in FFA. Your musings make me want to play it out and try that angle!
Also, void rays seem to pop up in >2player games to devastating effect, so good when they power up. I play Zerg 1v1 but maybe I'll FFA as toss
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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.
The most likely reasons are that it's not as popular and it has potential for abuse by teaming.
Remember what happened if you were in a top 2v2 team in beta? You would often win 0 points per game, because it can't find suitable opponents to match you with and players got really frustrated with that.
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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.
I don't know why people are under the assumption that terrans late-game is weak. It's weak if you go MMM vs 200 pop colossus stalker deathball but then again you have a whole lot of other units which most terrans seem to neglect.
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As someone who likes to win FFA, i reached some of the (others like which race is best i hadn't really thought of) conclusions as OP independently of him.
Since i want to make this more competitive, i'll give away some more tips, even though it's basically impossible to win 100% even if you are the best player all the time, because sometimes, you'll get double teamed:
1) Go 1v1 with the one closest and ignore the rest for now. Try to win it as fast as possible, you'll see why. People will usually attack whoever is closest, because they pose the most threat.
2) Having won the first 1v1, and assuming no one else lost yet besides the one you took out, you should immediately scout what the other 2 are doing, if you haven't done so, but winning the 1st 1v1 faster takes precedence over scouting them anyway. Scouting with phoenix hallucinations is good specially on large maps, have the xelnagas with zerglings, and see their army composition and who do you think will win based on what they have. Make an army to counter it.
3) As soon as one of the others leave, just go win the game. Don't engage them before that. Just let your army idle on your base, and try to go under the radar as much as possible, scout as little as possible so they don't think too much about you, yet get all the information you need. Don't attack them. After a battle, the winner of the other two is in no condition to win a 2ª battle with someone that has basically been macro for some time, and that's more true the sooner you won your closest opponent, hence why it's important to win it fast. If you get to 200/200 you might want to make lots more military buildings, keep upgrades going, and if necessary sacrifice some weaker units, to have the strongest 200/200 you can aggainst the one you think will win, or a composition good aggainst both if possible - if you can't predict the outcome.
4) If one of them (far away opponent) loses first, it's not good for you. You can try to kill the winner right away, but that leaves you vulnerable to the closest opponent. One thing you can do is go to your opponent and try to bait him into the winner's base, try to force a confrontation between the two. I've won some times because of that. One time, it was very late game and i had been unlucky. One had mass voids and the other carriers. The carrier one went to me, my blink stalkers + colossus weren't enough so i went in direction to the void ray guy. I had colossus and stalkers because i had just won a zerg, and needed that composition. This is one of those situations, where there's not much you can do. Still, reaching his base i turned south, and his carriers on attack move, attacked some of void ray guy buildings, he came to defend and killed all his carriers. I liked how the carrier guy even said "wp" to me after he lost haha ^^ Well, I then killed the leftover void rays and won the game.
Another thing you can do in that situation is playing so defensive, that the closest will be discouraged to attack you, and will try to win the other one first. One problem this has is that the farthest one may also decide to attack you with a overwhelming army, because he has been left alone since he won his closest. Still if they do attack each other as they see you are too well defended with cannons, AA turrets, spines, the farthest one will probably win for the same reason, and that's who you should think of when making your army composition.
5) Taking the gold base is risky, because sometimes even further away opponents will get agressive to stop you from taking that great advantage, and impossible to win later on. It will be less risky if the the further away opponents are still busy with each other. Nonetheless, generally go for non-gold expansions, unless your closest opponent left, and you already have a good advantage over each of the other two.
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agreed, if 4v4 RT has masters league FFA should be ranked (and I don't even play either that much -_-)/
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agreed, if 4v4 RT has masters league FFA should be ranked (and I don't even play either that much -_-).
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This was actually a pretty interesting read ^_^
As a terran player, i can see why you would think they are imba in FFA, turtling probably comes in very handy
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Man how I wish people in SEA queued for FFAs. Would love it if Blizz makes FFA ranked as it would get more people queuing for the FFAs. As it is, I usually have to queue for around an hour before I get into a game.
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I would play more FFA's if it were ranked... As of now, it's really pointless I think unless you really enjoy the specific FFA environment.
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I completely agree, Blizzard should rank FFA matches. I would be a lot more inclined to treat FFA more seriously if it was ranked, and overall it would be more enjoyable to play. I usually just play FFA matches as a kind of warm up before I start laddering.
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Really nice post. I'll have to play some FFA games myself to have some fun.
I guess the reason FFA is not reanked it's so you don't play it with the thought of winning and getting promotion. It's something where you go with the thought of fun , no matter win or lose.
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I've only played FFAs as a way to learn zerg and toss, mostly toss. My first games apart from campaign (which isn't real toss) were FFA. Get the hang of macro, try out different units so I can use them in team games and eventually 1v1.
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Haha, agree with the 11th, 4v4 sucks and FFA require more skills than that.
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I win 95% of my ffa by forge fast expanding, massing voidrays on 2 bases and thne killing all 3 players. I lost once cause i stacked all my voids over 4 thors but that's it.
It gets kinda boring.
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If ffa was ranked wouldn't you're expected win rate be 25% that is assuming you're playing people of your own level. This doesn't really seem very appealing. But then again, ffas are extremely random.
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Can fungalgrowthed protoss units be recalled by the mothership?
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On March 16 2011 10:08 a4bisu wrote:
Can fungalgrowthed protoss units be recalled by the mothership?
Yes.
And it's really really nasty. Void rays + recall vs zerg is almost unstoppable late in an FFA, as he can just run from expo to expo slaughtering your things before your army can arrive to save it. Every zerg I've done this to immediately techs fungal growth thinking they are smarter than the average bear.
Every one is a little disappointed when the entire fungaled void ray fleet disappears .
The only real option for zerg is to bring the fight to protoss, forcing a direct confrontation. Easier said than done.
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This post combined with a mild desire to achievement hunt has me wanting to play a few FFA's tonight...
Thanks for the motivation
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So glad to see a Terran that actually realises the potential of Ravens, especially in TvZ where they are almost completely unused.
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On March 16 2011 03:01 Ncinerate wrote:
1: Zerg sucks in FFA.
I feel uniquely qualified to say this While you might be have more concrete experience, I think a hell of a lot of people could say this themselves — at least I'd say I could. I hardly played any FFAs in SC2 but understand perfectly how they work from SC1.
Ever since beta I quite easily both theoretically found out that zerg are UP in FFAs, as well as in practice.
The issue is a joke and partially stems from zergs overall underpoweredness, but also that hardly any units are good at attacking both air and ground, making their armies essentially 50% strength vs all-air or all-ground.
On March 16 2011 05:00 infinity2k9 wrote:
Zerg was always bad at this kind of thing in BW too, it's just not suited for them. Zerg are probably disadvantaged in FFAs in SC1, but the difference in SC2 is huge.
One person mentioned for example, that maxed zerg air armies can't deal with another's maxed air army for instance (like corruptors vs VR or muta vs VR). So not only are their unique ground-only or air-only units a problem because of their effectiveness vs only air or only ground (or other specialization), but their armies are STILL weaker even if the opponents force is 100% air based or such, which makes their overall effectiveness even less than 50%.
Zerg in SC1 had good abilities for FFA (or in general) like dark swarm, plague, ensnare, aside from the better units like hydralisk, lurker, ultralisk, and devourer. In SC2 all they have that's decent is fungal growth. ITs can just be run away from or splattered from a far with masses of units (siege tank, colossus, planetary). NP is a problem due to the sheer number of units one would need to control, as well as army you'd need to send along with the infestors to prevent the infestors from dying— of course that's also ignoring the insa-gib feedback or snipe/EMP does to infestors. Banelings are trash for FFA, or even vs non-FFA deathballs (storm, forcefield, hallucination, colossus, siege tank, hellion, seeker missile, auto turrets). Corruptors can't even deal with an equal investment of air units like void rays or viking-raven even though they can't attack ground at all, which is quite a sick joke on blizzard's part.
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On March 16 2011 04:34 Ncinerate wrote:
Hearing your average game length is 20 minutes is pretty surprising though. MMM with tanks/vikings if bio doesn't cut it is a fine strategy, but I usually find going for this sort of straight aggression usually lets one person get to a wreck-face unit composition that beats it.
I didn't say I did it because it was the best strat :p Games where I camped to carriers I had pretty much 99% winratio, but that takes too long. On avg I get the most wins by averaging 20min games, and as said bio is fun to play - big air isn't. 90% 20min wins is better than 99% 30min games
Eh, I still say diplomacy is worth utilizing. I'm not saying you need to team up every game, but I've had plenty of games where a few words at the right moment changed the whole course of events .
Yeah that's bshit. FFA shouldn't have chat enabled even, it can't add anything to fairness, just make it even more imbalanced (and lame).
Anyhow, FFA to be ranked, without games showing players' names would've been nice. There's no sense to have names attached, everyone just team the active good players (if there are any) who any of the players in game know beforehand. Of course people can still abuse the system even if it's WC3-like "Player1, Player2, etc) with voicecoms, friendlists etc. but it helps some.
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To the OP:
Thank you very much for posting this thread. You opened my eyes to the joy of FFA, and I just won my first two FFA games. We FFA fans should work together on posting guides and replays here on TL to encourage more people to play FFA.
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On March 16 2011 03:08 bqzg wrote:
my only problem with ffa is that hordes of low-leaguers play them and not many good players. i've played like 50 ffa's and i'm pretty sure i've won 80-90% of them, just by being way better than the other players.
I remember playing some FFA on LT where I just progressively built a roach army and just attacked everyone while I was doing it and then I just killed one guy at a time. They never engaged anyone but me and I still won...
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On March 16 2011 05:02 Ncinerate wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 04:58 KillerPlague wrote:
rushes work well because most players tend to be greedy. best strat as a zerg is actually to 6/8 pool your opponent, hopefully kill him off, and then take as many expos as you can get while the other two hopefully duel.
No no no no no. Well, to a 6 pool at least. A 6 pool puts you massively behind on economy and will get you killed almost every time (even if it does kill your close-opponent). It's nowhere near the ideal strategy for FFA. If you're dead-bent on killing someone super early you'd be better off with a strong early roach rush that leads into a quick expand or two. 6 pool wont give you the cash to expo. An 8 pool would be a bit better, but I'd still say you're better off with a slightly later attack and stronger economy. Even then though, zerg is awful in FFA. The problem isn't their expansions or early strength, it's the fact that when money is no object (late in an FFA with 200/200 armies), zerg can't really compete. As I said, 1.3 might fix this with better fungal growth, hard to say.
i tend to 8 pool, but i notice a lot of people 6 pool. but in my experience the 8 pool works great. you get an early queen, which generates more larva, which generates more cash. the only problem is you're commited to drones more so than tech so you will be behind if an opponent does something cheese like fast dts or banshees :/
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On March 16 2011 14:19 KillerPlague wrote:
i tend to 8 pool, but i notice a lot of people 6 pool. but in my experience the 8 pool works great. you get an early queen, which generates more larva, which generates more cash. the only problem is you're commited to drones more so than tech so you will be behind if an opponent does something cheese like fast dts or banshees :/
Yeah, 8 pool isn't toooooo terrible, if it kills your opponent it's successful, but it's very much a pass/fail in many cases...
That tech rush will get you ever time too . One thing that's really annoying about tech rushes (like a void rush or banshee rush for example) is the enemy almost always hits his close-by-air opponent (who is technically cross-map and -not- his primary enemy). So it makes life a bit more difficult. It's a good reason to try and scout your close-by-air enemy if at all possible.
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Well, I finally hit 700 FFA's played, and I won my last 2, so 350/700 - exactly 50% .
Onward and upward. The slow climb to 800 wins continues. Last game was actually pretty ugly, I was fooling around with mass banshees and -almost- got my rear handed to me by the fourth player who was massing thors. His mistake? He choose to walk through my initial expo/main instead of immediately splitting his forces and wiping out expos etc when he killed my banshee fleet (my ravens had survived, they were at super-low energy because of a battle I had just won to kill the 3rd player). I tossed down a dozen factories and started mass production of tanks at one of my expos, and by the time he finished my main the high ground was littered with siege tanks and better charged ravens in support - game over.
For future knowledge, PDD is very ineffective vs thors (unless you're using it for a quick in-out HSM rush). Not smart to throw 20 banshees into a 15+ thor force even with 15+ PDD's laid out - those thors shoot 4 missiles apiece and will eat through PDD screen almost instantly. Who knew?
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awesome read ! im gonna go play some ffa now
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i personally like protoss over terran in ffa because of the damage carriers do with upgrades
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Yep FFA should be ranked! I would play FFAs much more! An FFA is neither a serious 1v1 or a fun 4v4; you're playing against more than one opponent, but it is serious at the same time.
Thanks for writing this guide xD I guess it's a good thing Blizz doesn't balance regarding FFA (or do they? haha jk).
Also, congratz on 700 FFAs. I'm guessing you've played your 700th by the time I post this.
I wonder about the diplomacy part, however. I like that kind of stuff, diplomacy, where mindgames and social strategy are involved. However there is the downside that it takes away the fun of being completely individual players in a match, and the outcome of the game may be determined too heavily by diplomacy.
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Really cool post; I enjoyed reading it.
I wonder whether you are/would be good at KDice.
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While I agree that FFA is more competitive then 4v4, I do like the fact that it's unranked.
I like to play FFA sometimes for the lulz. And I like that if one person attacks me, I can make him pay for it without caring about my rank.
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I like FFA's to get into the grove before a run of ladder matches, or even to just take a break and have some fun just playing without thinking about stats or numbers. It's excellent build order practice, imo.
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Cool insights. Especially nice to hear from someone who is obviously qualified to speak.
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On March 16 2011 15:54 Widar wrote:
While I agree that FFA is more competitive then 4v4, I do like the fact that it's unranked.
I like to play FFA sometimes for the lulz. And I like that if one person attacks me, I can make him pay for it without caring about my rank.
Kinda this.
I've never played FFA, and I've historically despised the randomness of it in just about every other game, but the OP made me think about playing for the helluvit every now and then.
I probably wouldn't do that if it was ranked; one of the most attractive things about it to me is the freedom. Sure, it's possible that all three bad guys will 4gate me at the same time, but it doesn't count, so who cares?
Feeling like I'm being judged on my performance in 4v4s is the main thing that stops me enjoying such a spastic gametype. Now I well and truly sound like a rank whore, though, and I appreciate that for people who do FFA semi-seriously, a ranking system would be nice.
Genuine question; why does FFA always end up at 200/200?
My instinct always suggested it would be an all-in fest, with people getting smashed left and right by multiple players at once. That's what always seemed to happen in other RTS games I've ventured into ffa for. Is it just because people are scared of the one guy who might get left alone to deathball everything?
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4v4 is mainly ranked so that player which only play 4v4 can fell good for being in diamond/master even if they couldn't get past bronze in 1v1.As for FFA on the other hand, you probably know how to handle yourself in a 1v1 if you win a lot in FFA, so blizzrd didn't felt the need to rank those, even tho i agree thy should be ranked .
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On March 16 2011 03:08 bqzg wrote:
my only problem with ffa is that hordes of low-leaguers play them and not many good players. i've played like 50 ffa's and i'm pretty sure i've won 80-90% of them, just by being way better than the other players. i agree that some kind of ladder system would make it more fun for everyone involved.
also, i've never had diplomacy work, ever. if you try to make an alliance with someone they assume you're trying to rusht them lol.
When I decided to start playing team games as random, I did a bunch of FFAs just to get used to the hotkeys and whatnot. I had the exact same experience. It's not unusual to enter a FFA and simply roll over 3 other players. I'm not particularly good, but it's pretty unusual to have a single opponent in the game ranked Gold or higher.
On March 16 2011 08:39 Quasimoto3000 wrote:
This was actually a pretty interesting read ^_^
As a terran player, i can see why you would think they are imba in FFA, turtling probably comes in very handy
I think it has more to do with the amount of options Terrans have. You can turtle up, sure, but you can also kill off a couple opponents early with MM and then expand across the whole map.
I think it would be a lot more interesting if there was some sort of ranking system. The number of asymmetric matches in FFA is ridiculous.
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I still don't understand why there are commonly people that leave at the start of the map. (This prompts me to leave also because I am not interested in a 3FFA)
The only reasons I can think of are.. it is a bot chasing some sort of weird achievement, or it is a guy trying to get into a FFA with his buddy so they can be lame and team up. I have seen this happen once in a game before. Either way it can be pretty aggravating.
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On March 16 2011 16:17 Belisarius wrote:
I've never played FFA, and I've historically despised the randomness of it in just about every other game, but the OP made me think about playing for the helluvit every now and then.
Genuine question; why does FFA always end up at 200/200?
My instinct always suggested it would be an all-in fest, with people getting smashed left and right by multiple players at once. That's what always seemed to happen in other RTS games I've ventured into ffa for. Is it just because people are scared of the one guy who might get left alone to deathball everything?
You know, I've found that the "randomness" people perceive is almost always a lack of FFA meta-game ability.
If it was purely random I'd be sitting on a 25% win percentage instead of 50% - and don't even get me started on my win percentages with T or P (hell, look at my recent win/loss history, I think I'm 85-90% over my last 50 games+ just to give you a small sample).
People bring up the idea of 3v1, with everyone attacking you, but in 700 games I could count the amount of times this legitimately happened on two hands (all 3 enemies focusing DIRECTLY on me). All but a couple of those games happened during day9's funday monday week where he told people to kill FFA players alphabetically (as an I, I was often the low man on the totem pole).
Late in a game you might get 3v1, but only if you deserve it (take every expo available, or harass the hell out of all 3 players - you bring it upon yourself). Oh, also, using nukes tends to piss -everyone- off. Don't know why, it's just some fundamental rule that anyone who nukes deserves to be obliterated. Same goes for spreading creep across the map - you're better off as zerg WITHOUT creep spread in an FFA. Don't know why, but there it is.
To answer your second question - FFA almost always ends up at 200/200 death balls. The game is -not- an all-in fest with multiple players attacking you. Because of the map flow and mechanics of FFA, it's more like 2 side-by-side 1v1s, with the wildcard of another extra player or two that you need to keep in mind all the time. This means if you can't crush your gold-sharing opponent early, it's better to hold back and max out/expand - because a drag out knock down battle of attrition with one player will leave you powerless to stop the guy who's built a death ball on the other side of the map. It's something you have to experience I guess. Take a chance, let go of your preconceptions, it's -not- the way you imagine it to be .
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FFA is so garbage anything above 1v1 makes me wanna suck start a shot gun.
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ffa should be ranked. and it is skill. having a background in poker you would understand implicit alliances.
anyways the op is most part right. from the games i've played the 200/200 armies are hard to deal with. infesters should do trick in the new patch.
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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.
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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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Damn it, OP! I've run into a good number of Diamond/Master-level players in FFA, some of them TeamLiquid.net posters or lurkers. My win rate is somewhere around 25%, so I guess it's safe to assume that FFA players are getting better on average due to an influx of decent players.
There goes my noob-crushing ego trip... 
Don't mind me while I cry myself to sleep tonight.
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Well I certainly hope some TL regulars are trying a bit of FFA. It's nice to see diamond/masters players in my games!
Honestly though, if you're running 25% it's probably because you haven't figured out the flow of an FFA just yet - it takes a bit of practice and it's considerably different than playing a 1v1. Stick with it for 20-50 games and you'll hit your groove.
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Ravens are indeed very good against zerg, but can't you neural parasite and then HSM the blob or fungal them?
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I don't really play FFA in SC2 but i used to in WC3.
Ye there should be a ranked FFA with some icons and all. Don't see the harm in it.
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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.
Yes and the zerg was lucky that you didn't even have that many ravens, imagine what you could do with more.
Mass ravens was used in a gsl game in a tvz on Delta Quadrant if I recall, but I don't remember what season.
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+10000 dude I miss the diplomatic aspect of the game, maybe I should give a try :D
btw Im also targeting 800 win, dont you guys know if they will add a reward in the near future ? can someone ask on US forum ? Because dev dont red EU forums
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EPT
