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On August 14 2014 04:03 johnbongham wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 04:00 DinoMight wrote:On August 14 2014 03:56 Luolis wrote:On August 14 2014 03:51 DinoMight wrote:On August 14 2014 03:45 Grumbels wrote:
Even blizz said it's difficult for high level protoss players to truly set themselves apart.
Mind you it's near impossible to distinguish between two chess players just from a set of games, even though you can easily set yourself apart skillwise in chess. Maybe the latter is difficult for protoss, but they can manage to develop unique styles, so that's at least something. What the hell is MVP doing these days? Losing to Morrow. I dont get why you even mention this part. Its like you just want to diss Mvp for no reason lol. My point is that every race has had a period when it was strong (Terran early, Zerg end of Wings, Protoss HotS) and during that period, "random" winners emerged. Sure MVP was really good, but he's a nobody now. His builds are just awful every time I see him play. MVP quite obviously isnt training as hard as he once was and it is a result of his physical inability to play the game at the same level he once did. Using MVP for your argument while tons of former terran champions such as MMA, Bomber, Taeja, Polt are still competing at the top is a pretty shitty way to cherrypick examples.
Okay, okay, fine.
But there are a lot of Protoss who have been good for a while. Sure, every period of racial dominance creates some "randoms."
We have MKP, Sniper, Seed (won GSL, didn't advance in AM this week). But there are still plenty of guys who have been good for a long time in every race. "ZOMG look at Dear" isn't really saying anything that can't be said about players from the other races.
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On August 13 2014 14:11 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2014 05:18 Morbidius wrote:On August 13 2014 05:07 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 04:49 Salient wrote:On August 13 2014 04:31 Reaper9 wrote:
I don't usually post in this section of here forums, but Flash with his Golden Mouse begs to differ. He's not a patch Terran. Did he win that in SC2? If not, it's just as irrelevant as Grubby's victories in WC3. Anyway, I'm not saying Flash or TY is a Patch Terran. Sorry and Reality might be. The goal of the patch was to buff Terrans. I would say it succeeded. Blizzard can dial it back if it becomes apparent that they went overboard. But, even then, I really wonder if it is even theoretically possible to balance a game with 3 distinct factions when that game has professional teams and coaches trying to solve it. Even Chess isn't perfectly balanced, and both players have the exact same pieces. At the higher levels, Black typically hopes for a tie game and white plays for a win, and that's in a game with identical pieces and only a 1 tempo difference. I'm pretty confident that it is actually impossible to balance SC2. Depends on how restrictive you define balance. ;-) As far as you ask me, the game has been balanced (or close to) in the last 3years (end WoL TvZ being the exception, when the winrates really went down the toilet). The winrates were rarely outside of a 45-55 window at the highest level and all races have shown that they can win tournaments in those periods of time. That's good enough for me to call the game fair. That does however not imply that there cannot be changes and improvements. A superrestrictive 50:50 criterium will obviously never be fullfilled in a game with such complexity. Winrates tend to balance to close to 50 percent, tournament representation is usually a better metric. Proof for that? I have (at least) two counterexamples: BL/Infestor, the winrates started to slowly drop further down in TvZ. (from values between 45-50 to values around 40) PvT has been back and forth swinging between 20-50% for multiple months in Korea. The winrates didn't stabilize at all. Show nested quote +On August 13 2014 08:18 Mojito99 wrote:On August 13 2014 05:07 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 04:49 Salient wrote:On August 13 2014 04:31 Reaper9 wrote:
I don't usually post in this section of here forums, but Flash with his Golden Mouse begs to differ. He's not a patch Terran. Did he win that in SC2? If not, it's just as irrelevant as Grubby's victories in WC3. Anyway, I'm not saying Flash or TY is a Patch Terran. Sorry and Reality might be. The goal of the patch was to buff Terrans. I would say it succeeded. Blizzard can dial it back if it becomes apparent that they went overboard. But, even then, I really wonder if it is even theoretically possible to balance a game with 3 distinct factions when that game has professional teams and coaches trying to solve it. Even Chess isn't perfectly balanced, and both players have the exact same pieces. At the higher levels, Black typically hopes for a tie game and white plays for a win, and that's in a game with identical pieces and only a 1 tempo difference. I'm pretty confident that it is actually impossible to balance SC2. Depends on how restrictive you define balance. ;-) As far as you ask me, the game has been balanced (or close to) in the last 3years (end WoL TvZ being the exception, when the winrates really went down the toilet). The winrates were rarely outside of a 45-55 window at the highest level and all races have shown that they can win tournaments in those periods of time. That's good enough for me to call the game fair. That does however not imply that there cannot be changes and improvements. A superrestrictive 50:50 criterium will obviously never be fullfilled in a game with such complexity. The initial chess comparison is lacking one very distinct feature. At the end of the game, the other person gets white. At the end of a starcraft game, people don´t switch races. NEW IDEA TO INSTANTLY BALANCE THE GAME: every match you need to change your race! done, it is now 100% balanced. With regards to win rates: There is an inherent flaw in this metric. If i tell you that 10000 games pvt can result in 50:50 win rates would it be balanced? A: yes What if i told you that these win rates are the product of every protoss winning every game that ends before 12 min and terran winning every game longer than 12 min. Still balanced? - most likely you would disagree. Next balance problem: Widow mines were extremely strong at the start of Hots. TvZ was very good for the terran. Then mines were nerfed. Meanwhile zerg got extremely good at dealing with the mines. You are now buffing mines again. - Did you not just "balance" away the development in skill zerg players have undergone? What is the incentive to improve your play if loosing a lot and dragging down the win rates of your race will just provoke a patch to level win rates again? Obviously this is an exaggeration. But i have yet to see an official definition of the term "balance". Considering 50:50 win rates as "balance" is an inherently flawed concept, not only mathematically. The initial chess comparison is not lacking. It's focusing on a single game of chess, for which it holds. But if you want to argue that way, then I could also say that (at least in a lot of tournaments) you could just always mirror your opponents racepick, even in a single game. So anytime a tournament allows raceswitching, the game is immidiatly balanced under the asumption of taking the picking process into account as well. As said, 50:50 winrates is a very restrictive metric. But it is an excellent metric mathematically. Every statistical test is held by these kinds of standards. Even physics since Heisenberg is more or less built upon the principle "what we can experience is true". If Zerg wins 55% vs Terran, implying that this is the balance of the matchup at that particular point in time is a natural principle in science. The remaining questions are: - Where to look at the winrates, with choices such as: ladder, tournaments, specific tournaments, examples... - How restrictive are we with the term "balance": do we need 50:50 or is +/-5% still OK? Maybe we can still experience fairness with +/-10%? Or maybe 55:45 already puts us into a desastrous situation at the highest level and we rather want 52:48... Show nested quote +On August 13 2014 11:41 Socup wrote:On August 13 2014 08:18 Mojito99 wrote:On August 13 2014 05:07 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 04:49 Salient wrote:On August 13 2014 04:31 Reaper9 wrote:
I don't usually post in this section of here forums, but Flash with his Golden Mouse begs to differ. He's not a patch Terran. Did he win that in SC2? If not, it's just as irrelevant as Grubby's victories in WC3. Anyway, I'm not saying Flash or TY is a Patch Terran. Sorry and Reality might be. The goal of the patch was to buff Terrans. I would say it succeeded. Blizzard can dial it back if it becomes apparent that they went overboard. But, even then, I really wonder if it is even theoretically possible to balance a game with 3 distinct factions when that game has professional teams and coaches trying to solve it. Even Chess isn't perfectly balanced, and both players have the exact same pieces. At the higher levels, Black typically hopes for a tie game and white plays for a win, and that's in a game with identical pieces and only a 1 tempo difference. I'm pretty confident that it is actually impossible to balance SC2. Depends on how restrictive you define balance. ;-) As far as you ask me, the game has been balanced (or close to) in the last 3years (end WoL TvZ being the exception, when the winrates really went down the toilet). The winrates were rarely outside of a 45-55 window at the highest level and all races have shown that they can win tournaments in those periods of time. That's good enough for me to call the game fair. That does however not imply that there cannot be changes and improvements. A superrestrictive 50:50 criterium will obviously never be fullfilled in a game with such complexity. The initial chess comparison is lacking one very distinct feature. At the end of the game, the other person gets white. At the end of a starcraft game, people don´t switch races. NEW IDEA TO INSTANTLY BALANCE THE GAME: every match you need to change your race! done, it is now 100% balanced. With regards to win rates: There is an inherent flaw in this metric. If i tell you that 10000 games pvt can result in 50:50 win rates would it be balanced? A: yes What if i told you that these win rates are the product of every protoss winning every game that ends before 12 min and terran winning every game longer than 12 min. Still balanced? - most likely you would disagree. Next balance problem: Widow mines were extremely strong at the start of Hots. TvZ was very good for the terran. Then mines were nerfed. Meanwhile zerg got extremely good at dealing with the mines. You are now buffing mines again. - Did you not just "balance" away the development in skill zerg players have undergone? What is the incentive to improve your play if loosing a lot and dragging down the win rates of your race will just provoke a patch to level win rates again? Obviously this is an exaggeration. But i have yet to see an official definition of the term "balance". Considering 50:50 win rates as "balance" is an inherently flawed concept, not only mathematically. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4838104108Terran is supposed to be weak to protoss' late game. Its by design, although the asymmetricality of the races comes from their different units and advantages/disadvantages in fighting ability as well. Nope, that is not what they said. They said that Terran has the tools to play a fair game in the lategame.
I'm sorry that you can't read.
After reading the responses to the recently posted balance update, we’ve seen that a lot of players wanted us to elaborate on the current state of the terran versus protoss late game
We do agree that if both sides take few to no losses going into the late game, protoss can have an advantage. That said, we also know that terran players have a lot of offensive capability and harassment options at their fingertips in the mid-game. If terran players press that mid-game advantage, then protoss can’t necessarily get into the late game at their full potential, which can nullify any advantage they might have had. So, pressing that mid-game advantage is important (just as it would be important for protoss players to mitigate mid-game damage so they can to move into the late game in the strongest possible position). Ultimately, each game plays out differently, and depending on how the two races enter the late game, each side has a fair chance to win.
. That does mean that at different stages of the game, one race might have tools which represent an advantage against the others
On August 14 2014 03:50 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 03:44 DinoMight wrote:On August 14 2014 03:40 Wombat_NI wrote:I don't really feel it's an issue with any of the races in particular, but SC2 as a whole. The feeling that you play extremely well for a long game and just melt through one mistake with no subsequent chance to recover. It's not limited to SC2 mind, probably a natural thing when you're playing vs evenly skilled players who know what they're doing, doesn't stop being annoying though  Agree, but I think a lot of Terran players think that it's something just limited to them. Protoss and, to a lesser extent, Zerg experience that too. I played a game the other day where I forgot my Lair for about 10-15 seconds and Banshees showed up and killed everything immediately before my Overseers spawned. This is a result of the "terrible terrible damage" motto blizzard used when designing the game. It happens to all races, quite frequently in fact. Protoss can lose to being half a second late on a forcefield, and has no choice but to look away to warp in more units. Look away for a moment, and bam EMP on your whole army, or a key fungal hits your phoenix. Terran looks away for half a second and banelings roll in or storms land. Zerg looks away for half a second and their army gets trapped with forcefields. The damage output and speed at which damage is dealt is extremely high.
Something to agree with. After all, Dustin Browder wanted to make the game "exciting back and forth like football with huge upsets possible".
On August 14 2014 03:50 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 03:44 DinoMight wrote:On August 14 2014 03:40 Wombat_NI wrote:I don't really feel it's an issue with any of the races in particular, but SC2 as a whole. The feeling that you play extremely well for a long game and just melt through one mistake with no subsequent chance to recover. It's not limited to SC2 mind, probably a natural thing when you're playing vs evenly skilled players who know what they're doing, doesn't stop being annoying though Agree, but I think a lot of Terran players think that it's something just limited to them. Protoss and, to a lesser extent, Zerg experience that too. I played a game the other day where I forgot my Lair for about 10-15 seconds and Banshees showed up and killed everything immediately before my Overseers spawned. This is a result of the "terrible terrible damage" motto blizzard used when designing the game. It happens to all races, quite frequently in fact. Protoss can lose to being half a second late on a forcefield, and has no choice but to look away to warp in more units. Look away for a moment, and bam EMP on your whole army, or a key fungal hits your phoenix. Terran looks away for half a second and banelings roll in or storms land. Zerg looks away for half a second and their army gets trapped with forcefields. The damage output and speed at which damage is dealt is extremely high.
Something to agree with. After all, Dustin Browder wanted to make the game "exciting back and forth like football with huge upsets possible".
On August 14 2014 03:50 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 03:44 DinoMight wrote:On August 14 2014 03:40 Wombat_NI wrote:I don't really feel it's an issue with any of the races in particular, but SC2 as a whole. The feeling that you play extremely well for a long game and just melt through one mistake with no subsequent chance to recover. It's not limited to SC2 mind, probably a natural thing when you're playing vs evenly skilled players who know what they're doing, doesn't stop being annoying though Agree, but I think a lot of Terran players think that it's something just limited to them. Protoss and, to a lesser extent, Zerg experience that too. I played a game the other day where I forgot my Lair for about 10-15 seconds and Banshees showed up and killed everything immediately before my Overseers spawned. This is a result of the "terrible terrible damage" motto blizzard used when designing the game. It happens to all races, quite frequently in fact. Protoss can lose to being half a second late on a forcefield, and has no choice but to look away to warp in more units. Look away for a moment, and bam EMP on your whole army, or a key fungal hits your phoenix. Terran looks away for half a second and banelings roll in or storms land. Zerg looks away for half a second and their army gets trapped with forcefields. The damage output and speed at which damage is dealt is extremely high.
Something to agree with. After all, Dustin Browder wanted to make the game "exciting back and forth like football with huge upsets possible".
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014488/The-Game-Design-of-STARCRAFT
Video link to the design philosophy behind why Timings and Terrible terrible damage exist based on inherent game mechanics rather than player strategizing (e.g. hard timings for banes or colossus, etc).
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/04/08/an-extensive-interview-with-starcraft-ii-design-director.aspx
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On August 14 2014 04:19 Socup wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2014 14:11 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 05:18 Morbidius wrote:On August 13 2014 05:07 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 04:49 Salient wrote:On August 13 2014 04:31 Reaper9 wrote:
I don't usually post in this section of here forums, but Flash with his Golden Mouse begs to differ. He's not a patch Terran. Did he win that in SC2? If not, it's just as irrelevant as Grubby's victories in WC3. Anyway, I'm not saying Flash or TY is a Patch Terran. Sorry and Reality might be. The goal of the patch was to buff Terrans. I would say it succeeded. Blizzard can dial it back if it becomes apparent that they went overboard. But, even then, I really wonder if it is even theoretically possible to balance a game with 3 distinct factions when that game has professional teams and coaches trying to solve it. Even Chess isn't perfectly balanced, and both players have the exact same pieces. At the higher levels, Black typically hopes for a tie game and white plays for a win, and that's in a game with identical pieces and only a 1 tempo difference. I'm pretty confident that it is actually impossible to balance SC2. Depends on how restrictive you define balance. ;-) As far as you ask me, the game has been balanced (or close to) in the last 3years (end WoL TvZ being the exception, when the winrates really went down the toilet). The winrates were rarely outside of a 45-55 window at the highest level and all races have shown that they can win tournaments in those periods of time. That's good enough for me to call the game fair. That does however not imply that there cannot be changes and improvements. A superrestrictive 50:50 criterium will obviously never be fullfilled in a game with such complexity. Winrates tend to balance to close to 50 percent, tournament representation is usually a better metric. Proof for that? I have (at least) two counterexamples: BL/Infestor, the winrates started to slowly drop further down in TvZ. (from values between 45-50 to values around 40) PvT has been back and forth swinging between 20-50% for multiple months in Korea. The winrates didn't stabilize at all. On August 13 2014 08:18 Mojito99 wrote:On August 13 2014 05:07 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 04:49 Salient wrote:On August 13 2014 04:31 Reaper9 wrote:
I don't usually post in this section of here forums, but Flash with his Golden Mouse begs to differ. He's not a patch Terran. Did he win that in SC2? If not, it's just as irrelevant as Grubby's victories in WC3. Anyway, I'm not saying Flash or TY is a Patch Terran. Sorry and Reality might be. The goal of the patch was to buff Terrans. I would say it succeeded. Blizzard can dial it back if it becomes apparent that they went overboard. But, even then, I really wonder if it is even theoretically possible to balance a game with 3 distinct factions when that game has professional teams and coaches trying to solve it. Even Chess isn't perfectly balanced, and both players have the exact same pieces. At the higher levels, Black typically hopes for a tie game and white plays for a win, and that's in a game with identical pieces and only a 1 tempo difference. I'm pretty confident that it is actually impossible to balance SC2. Depends on how restrictive you define balance. ;-) As far as you ask me, the game has been balanced (or close to) in the last 3years (end WoL TvZ being the exception, when the winrates really went down the toilet). The winrates were rarely outside of a 45-55 window at the highest level and all races have shown that they can win tournaments in those periods of time. That's good enough for me to call the game fair. That does however not imply that there cannot be changes and improvements. A superrestrictive 50:50 criterium will obviously never be fullfilled in a game with such complexity. The initial chess comparison is lacking one very distinct feature. At the end of the game, the other person gets white. At the end of a starcraft game, people don´t switch races. NEW IDEA TO INSTANTLY BALANCE THE GAME: every match you need to change your race! done, it is now 100% balanced. With regards to win rates: There is an inherent flaw in this metric. If i tell you that 10000 games pvt can result in 50:50 win rates would it be balanced? A: yes What if i told you that these win rates are the product of every protoss winning every game that ends before 12 min and terran winning every game longer than 12 min. Still balanced? - most likely you would disagree. Next balance problem: Widow mines were extremely strong at the start of Hots. TvZ was very good for the terran. Then mines were nerfed. Meanwhile zerg got extremely good at dealing with the mines. You are now buffing mines again. - Did you not just "balance" away the development in skill zerg players have undergone? What is the incentive to improve your play if loosing a lot and dragging down the win rates of your race will just provoke a patch to level win rates again? Obviously this is an exaggeration. But i have yet to see an official definition of the term "balance". Considering 50:50 win rates as "balance" is an inherently flawed concept, not only mathematically. The initial chess comparison is not lacking. It's focusing on a single game of chess, for which it holds. But if you want to argue that way, then I could also say that (at least in a lot of tournaments) you could just always mirror your opponents racepick, even in a single game. So anytime a tournament allows raceswitching, the game is immidiatly balanced under the asumption of taking the picking process into account as well. As said, 50:50 winrates is a very restrictive metric. But it is an excellent metric mathematically. Every statistical test is held by these kinds of standards. Even physics since Heisenberg is more or less built upon the principle "what we can experience is true". If Zerg wins 55% vs Terran, implying that this is the balance of the matchup at that particular point in time is a natural principle in science. The remaining questions are: - Where to look at the winrates, with choices such as: ladder, tournaments, specific tournaments, examples... - How restrictive are we with the term "balance": do we need 50:50 or is +/-5% still OK? Maybe we can still experience fairness with +/-10%? Or maybe 55:45 already puts us into a desastrous situation at the highest level and we rather want 52:48... On August 13 2014 11:41 Socup wrote:On August 13 2014 08:18 Mojito99 wrote:On August 13 2014 05:07 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 04:49 Salient wrote:On August 13 2014 04:31 Reaper9 wrote:
I don't usually post in this section of here forums, but Flash with his Golden Mouse begs to differ. He's not a patch Terran. Did he win that in SC2? If not, it's just as irrelevant as Grubby's victories in WC3. Anyway, I'm not saying Flash or TY is a Patch Terran. Sorry and Reality might be. The goal of the patch was to buff Terrans. I would say it succeeded. Blizzard can dial it back if it becomes apparent that they went overboard. But, even then, I really wonder if it is even theoretically possible to balance a game with 3 distinct factions when that game has professional teams and coaches trying to solve it. Even Chess isn't perfectly balanced, and both players have the exact same pieces. At the higher levels, Black typically hopes for a tie game and white plays for a win, and that's in a game with identical pieces and only a 1 tempo difference. I'm pretty confident that it is actually impossible to balance SC2. Depends on how restrictive you define balance. ;-) As far as you ask me, the game has been balanced (or close to) in the last 3years (end WoL TvZ being the exception, when the winrates really went down the toilet). The winrates were rarely outside of a 45-55 window at the highest level and all races have shown that they can win tournaments in those periods of time. That's good enough for me to call the game fair. That does however not imply that there cannot be changes and improvements. A superrestrictive 50:50 criterium will obviously never be fullfilled in a game with such complexity. The initial chess comparison is lacking one very distinct feature. At the end of the game, the other person gets white. At the end of a starcraft game, people don´t switch races. NEW IDEA TO INSTANTLY BALANCE THE GAME: every match you need to change your race! done, it is now 100% balanced. With regards to win rates: There is an inherent flaw in this metric. If i tell you that 10000 games pvt can result in 50:50 win rates would it be balanced? A: yes What if i told you that these win rates are the product of every protoss winning every game that ends before 12 min and terran winning every game longer than 12 min. Still balanced? - most likely you would disagree. Next balance problem: Widow mines were extremely strong at the start of Hots. TvZ was very good for the terran. Then mines were nerfed. Meanwhile zerg got extremely good at dealing with the mines. You are now buffing mines again. - Did you not just "balance" away the development in skill zerg players have undergone? What is the incentive to improve your play if loosing a lot and dragging down the win rates of your race will just provoke a patch to level win rates again? Obviously this is an exaggeration. But i have yet to see an official definition of the term "balance". Considering 50:50 win rates as "balance" is an inherently flawed concept, not only mathematically. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4838104108Terran is supposed to be weak to protoss' late game. Its by design, although the asymmetricality of the races comes from their different units and advantages/disadvantages in fighting ability as well. Nope, that is not what they said. They said that Terran has the tools to play a fair game in the lategame. I'm sorry that you can't read. Show nested quote +
After reading the responses to the recently posted balance update, we’ve seen that a lot of players wanted us to elaborate on the current state of the terran versus protoss late game
We do agree that if both sides take few to no losses going into the late game, protoss can have an advantage. That said, we also know that terran players have a lot of offensive capability and harassment options at their fingertips in the mid-game. If terran players press that mid-game advantage, then protoss can’t necessarily get into the late game at their full potential, which can nullify any advantage they might have had. So, pressing that mid-game advantage is important (just as it would be important for protoss players to mitigate mid-game damage so they can to move into the late game in the strongest possible position). Ultimately, each game plays out differently, and depending on how the two races enter the late game, each side has a fair chance to win.
. That does mean that at different stages of the game, one race might have tools which represent an advantage against the others
No need to be rude mate. David Kim DID say that he believes Terran has the tools it needs to win in the late game. It was in a separate post. Players like Polt and Taeja are comfortable playing long TvPs and they do just fine.
The point DK was making was that if Protoss goes into the late game with an advantage, it can be hard for Terran to win. So the patch is aimed at helping Terran catch up in the mid-game so that they can go into late game on even footing (where DK believes skilled players on both sides have the necessary tools at their disposal).
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They said that if Terran does no damage to Protoss in the midgame, Protoss has the advantage, and this is true. Those Terrans you see playing longer TvPs are doing lots of damage and harass in the midgame in order to create that "even" lategame playfield.
You're getting tangled up in the feelgood mitigation language rather than looking at the fundamental underlying ideas. It's easy to say "terran has the tools it needs to win in the late game" if what you mean by that is "Terran needs to do damage in early to midgame in order to win late game". Tools = Midgame damage = Lategame win.
Let me ask you if you can play a No Rush 20 min game vs Protoss and beat a Protoss army with a Terran army. In fact, I'd be interested in seeing any pro players try this and see the resulting APM as well as aftermath for the armies.
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Northern Ireland23768 Posts
If it's genuine NR20 you'd be able to get some of the Terran über comps. Good luck getting to SkyTerran/mass ghost with many PFs in chokes in a normal game though
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On August 14 2014 04:39 Socup wrote:
They said that if Terran does no damage to Protoss in the midgame, Protoss has the advantage, and this is true. Those Terrans you see playing longer TvPs are doing lots of damage and harass in the midgame in order to create that "even" lategame playfield.
You're getting tangled up in the feelgood mitigation language rather than looking at the fundamental underlying ideas. It's easy to say "terran has the tools it needs to win in the late game" if what you mean by that is "Terran needs to do damage in early to midgame in order to win late game". Tools = Midgame damage = Lategame win.
Let me ask you if you can play a No Rush 20 min game vs Protoss and beat a Protoss army with a Terran army. In fact, I'd be interested in seeing any pro players try this and see the resulting APM as well as aftermath for the armies.
NR 20 TvP I'd go Mech every single game.
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On August 14 2014 05:27 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 04:39 Socup wrote:
They said that if Terran does no damage to Protoss in the midgame, Protoss has the advantage, and this is true. Those Terrans you see playing longer TvPs are doing lots of damage and harass in the midgame in order to create that "even" lategame playfield.
You're getting tangled up in the feelgood mitigation language rather than looking at the fundamental underlying ideas. It's easy to say "terran has the tools it needs to win in the late game" if what you mean by that is "Terran needs to do damage in early to midgame in order to win late game". Tools = Midgame damage = Lategame win.
Let me ask you if you can play a No Rush 20 min game vs Protoss and beat a Protoss army with a Terran army. In fact, I'd be interested in seeing any pro players try this and see the resulting APM as well as aftermath for the armies. NR 20 TvP I'd go Mech every single game.
You'd lose every single game.
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On August 14 2014 02:09 Mojito99 wrote:
Can you provide an argument as to why double starport does not counter colossus play?
Well, the whole TvP match-up since 3 years? You used the word "hardcounter" the first time, now you use a word with a weaker meaning. You can't change your argument like that. At any rate if simply massing Vikings on 2 Starports was enough to win against Colossus play, we would know it in 2014.
Any reactionary tech transition to double starport will most likely run into either an 1/1 2 base SCV pull for which the transition will come to late.
1. It doesn't necessarily have to be a reaction in individual games, it can also be a "blind switch" to metagame the way the majority of Terrans play (= exactly like Terrans don't do those 5 rax 2 port all-ins reactively).
2. Depends when the 5 rax + second Starport is scouted anyway. Plus keep in mind that the Archives does not unlock only Storm (160 seconds minus chronos), but Archons as well; and they're available as soon as the building is done.
The other option of a 3 base SCV pull are specifically designed to counter the 3 colossus into storm transition.
Depends on Protoss' build. Today Bbyong pulled SCVs on 3 bases vs Stats, who started searching Storm during his 4th colo and held. I don't remember if he went 3 colos → Storm → 4th colo or 4th colo → Storm but he can have 4 colos when the SCV pull hits in both cases.
Again i feel you are cherry picking. An example you claim the most recent EPS Heromarine vs Showtime games cannot be used as an example because of essentially bad protoss play. You ignore the fact that for example on King Sejong, the Terran pulled SCVs 45 seconds after his 1/1 was done only do waste his entire SCV train in a chokepoint between nexus and ramp where they evaporated in a single colossus volley. I understand that there can be an argument made for why these games are a bad example, but you cannot blindly present only one side of the facts.
?? heroMarine lost exactly 4 SCVs before the fight happened. Please don't make things up. And as a matter of fact, even if what you describe had actually occurred, this would be an argument… against you: if Terran wins the fight despite throwing all his SCVs, then it means the army alone would have likely prevailed, so the game would not have been won because of the SCV pull.
(As for "Terran pulled SCVs 45 seconds after 1/1 is done": no Armory SCV pulls are not particularly designed to hit exactly when +1 armor completes, so it's not a mistake.)
The fact that SCV pulls are to powerful vs colossus openings is evident in almost every scenario. I am not saying that they provide an imbalanced game. I am saying they are an all in for every situation:
Ahead? SCV pull
Behind? SCV pull
Tech transition of opponent? SCV pull
3 base protoss SCV pull
It is the best option in every scenario.
Ahead? SCV pull. → If players have a reliable way to materialize their lead, they will use it.
Behind? SCV pull. → So? Desperation move that generally does not work.
Tech transition of opponent? SCV pull. → Only against certain Colossi into Storm builds, and you better hit the perfect timing or you will likely lose to Storms.
3 base protoss SCV pull. → No idea what you mean here that is not covered by the above options.
It is the best option in every scenario. → 1. If so, then why certain top TvP players like Maru, Polt or TaeJa never pull SCVs? 2. Against certain Protoss builds, like the one Hush played vs Reality on King Sejong, pulling SCVs is 100% the incorrect option as you will be crushed by the mere mass of units.
Another possible symptom that SCV pulls need to be adjusted would be that the answer to SCV pulls turned out to be a playstyle that terran had difficulty dealing with: The HT opening with mass zealots.
Ironically enough, the SCV pull all in gave rise to a playstyle that gave terran so much trouble with that it was significantly nerfed.
Arguably going HT again to avoid the SCV pull is not the way to go.
No, I was talking about solutions to SCV pulls when opening with Colossi. Templar first openings are exterior to that.
Out of the 31 TvPs played in Code S so far, SCV pulls were used 4 times, with a 1-3 record. So far that's hardly evidence that they dominate everything...
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On August 13 2014 17:50 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2014 17:38 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 17:29 Mojito99 wrote:On August 13 2014 17:25 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 17:06 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 17:00 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 16:11 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 14:11 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 05:18 Morbidius wrote:On August 13 2014 05:07 Big J wrote:
[quote]
Depends on how restrictive you define balance. ;-)
As far as you ask me, the game has been balanced (or close to) in the last 3years (end WoL TvZ being the exception, when the winrates really went down the toilet). The winrates were rarely outside of a 45-55 window at the highest level and all races have shown that they can win tournaments in those periods of time. That's good enough for me to call the game fair.
That does however not imply that there cannot be changes and improvements.
A superrestrictive 50:50 criterium will obviously never be fullfilled in a game with such complexity. Winrates tend to balance to close to 50 percent, tournament representation is usually a better metric. Proof for that? I have (at least) two counterexamples: BL/Infestor, the winrates started to slowly drop further down in TvZ. (from values between 45-50 to values around 40) PvT has been back and forth swinging between 20-50% for multiple months in Korea. The winrates didn't stabilize at all. Let us enter for a moment into the realm of the hypothetical. Imagine that we revert back to the previous patch, which just about everybody will agree was still a terrible place for Terrans. Now imagine on top of that that every single Terran except Maru simply stops playing. Taeja's wrists catch on fire and he suffers second-degree burns, Polt is too busy filming The Avengers 2, Bomber goes into the military where he becomes a four-star general, Innovation joins Byun on his pilgrimage in the mountains of China, and every other Terran just straight up quits in frustration. Maru is literally the only Terran left in existence. With me so far? Now imagine that Maru plays in every single premier tournament. For every single loss "Terran" (Maru) suffers, they will win 10, maybe 20 times as much. He won't win every single tournament, but he'll place within the top 8 of anything loaded with Koreans and in the top 1 of everything that isn't. Do you see the problem? Maru is so good that he was doing really, really, really well even when Terran was underpowered. Not only do the winrates not indicate imbalance, in this hypothetical they are actually outright lying and telling us that Terran is the best race in the history of all RTS games ever made, when in fact it's just Maru (or, in reality, a slew of top-tier Koreans) who are simply that damn good. The hypothetical I drew is a gross exaggeration of the reality, but the fact that it's physically possible automatically dismisses your theory that winrates are a reliable source of information on balance. I'm not going to get into specifics of when they've misled us and to what degree and how and why, I'm just debunking the idea that just because they possibly lined up with our perceptions of balance at some times in SC2's history, that means they ALWAYS line up with ACTUAL balance. Is it a mysterious, magical coincidence that top Terran players are that damn good? No. They've been honing their mechanical skills for years because they've had NO CHOICE. More often than not, Terrans have had no other reliable ways to win games. Zerg and Protoss regularly find ways to avoid engaging in 30-minute long, multitask/micro-heavy slugfests, or units enter the meta that make micro relatively irrelevant (Roach vs Roach instead of B/Ling vs B/Ling), and the inevitable happens. Those players don't push themselves as hard, either because they simply don't need to, or pushing themselves harder will yield diminishing returns (there's only so much micro you can do in Roach vs Roach. Maru wouldn't magically play it better). Could the best P/Zs be as mechanically good as the best Ts? Some of them, absolutely. (Parting and Zest are two immediate and easy choices for Protoss; of Zerg I'm sure some combination of soO, Soulkey, Life, DRG, and Jaedong would rise to the challenge.) Some of them (probably a longer list) would crash and burn if they had to split their units ten times in every single engagement. And that's awful.Terran, Protoss, and Zerg can have different units, abilities, racial mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses, but the tactical, strategic, mechanical, and multitasking requirements of playing every race absolutely must be as close to equal as is humanly possible to design. It's not OK for PvT Protoss to be strategically harder but mechanically simpler. If that's the case right now, then Terran has to be made strategically harder (which sounds more like a buff than a nerf, honestly) and Protoss has to be made mechanically more demanding. I guess your are assuming that terran is in the first place the mechanically hardest race to play. I simply cannot agree to this point of view. I used to play terran in WOL and now after big break(2 years), i am back and playing protoss. From my perspective it's about the same mechanic vise. I am asking myself same "questions" durring the games, am i building workers -> am i close to suply block -> am i building army -> etc... So, what i would like to hear from anyone that is claiming that terran is mechanically harder to play, or if anyone is claiming that any of the other 2 races is harder to play, to support this kind of statement with some kind of proof, othervise this is just another argument without evidence. Would you agree that Zest is renowned for his mechanical prowess amongst Protoss? He's one of the most intensive battle microers around? If so, I've already done what you ask. You can find it here. The TLDR version is that I took a random game of Maru vs Zest and counted up all of their mechanical actions during the pivotal, big engagements in the game. Although the game picked was random, Zest was obviously microing much harder than most Protoss would have in his situation, Blinking away from WMs and using Warp Prisms in combat. Being as generous as possible to Zest in my estimations, Maru still had over twice as many distinct, separate actions performed in the fights. And, again, Zest is the guy to go to for impressive things happening in fights as far as Protoss players go. I look forward to seeing what you think of my evidence, such as it is. Yes, i agree with this compleatly, thats why Maru won in the end, cause when all this was happening, he was able to macro up at home durring this kind of micro intensive battle and zest wasnt able to. So yea, Maru is better at macro than Zest i would then conclude from your post. I didnt see the game so i am compleatly dependant on your post that you provided link to. From your post i can read that bassicly in the end Maru won cause he did have more units, and while Zest did take the 2 engagements cause of maybe better unit compossition or better possition or w/e the reasson was, he had nothing at home produced to fall back to after the battles. Am i correct? But those extra actions are the result of (a) splitting and (b) kitting yes? or do they involve (c) macro during the fights as well. Because a and b are not even available to protoss and c will always be double for terran because they produce close to double the amount of units in general. I agree, but you would need to get answer from the guy which post i quoted originally, since i am from start assuming that all 3 races tequire about same skill to play on that high level as KR pros are performing. I simply cannot agree to any sort of elitism. What the evidence was provided was simply that in that game, Maru played better and won in the end, thats it. It doesnt show any sort of imbalance from my perspective. Zest won two fights by performing less than half of Maru's mechanical actions. Zest looked like he was doing great micro that no other Protoss bother to do against Terrans. If you watch the game, you'll see Zest doing cool stuff like Blinking in the nick of time to avoid WM damage, and using Storm Drops in combat - basically the equivalent of EMP drops. Very impressive stuff. But when you take all of that into account, it's still less than half of what Maru is doing mechanically. Did Zest win? No. But that doesn't matter. We're not arguing about balance (right now), but mechanical requirement for playing the races. Terran can be more mechanically demanding and overpowered, or less mechanically demanding and underpowered, or any other combination of the four. If you want me to believe that this game is an outlier, the burden of proof is now on you to point me to a game where, regardless of the outcome, win or lose, the Protoss was played with more mechanical skill than Zest's P in that game. Apart from maybe Rain and maybe Parting, you won't find one. This is as mechanically tough as Protoss gets. And it's less than half as tough as Terran by my count.
If in-combat micro is all you care about then I think we're talking about two different game genres.
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Didn't Innovation win like 4 games in a row with SCV pulls?
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On August 14 2014 05:41 DinoMight wrote:
Didn't Innovation win like 4 games in a row with SCV pulls?
It was in Code A.
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On August 14 2014 05:47 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 05:41 DinoMight wrote:
Didn't Innovation win like 4 games in a row with SCV pulls? It was in Code A.
Ah okay.
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I think SCV pulls are hardly imbalanced. They're strong against specific things.
I think it's a bit more annoying now because Templar openings are a lot less viable. So you have to open Colossus and if you skimp out on gateway units you can get SCV pulled. So SCV pulls force you to play in a certain way where you open Colossus then add a lot of gateway units before taking your third.
It puts Protoss into the late game less comfortably than they have been in the past. Much like the Hellbat change impacted TvZ. But I don't think it's game breaking at all.
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On August 14 2014 03:49 Defenestrator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 03:35 DinoMight wrote:
My perspective, as a Protoss player who's spent a LOT of time playing Terran and Zerg lately:
Zerg is hard as fuck mechanically. Terrans talk about how their race is the hardest all the time, but I don't know how many of them have actually tried Zerg. You have to spread creep on every tumor, inject larva at each hatch, and constantly spread overlords ON TOP of everything you would normally do. Just managing your queens and making sure one doesn't fuck off to a different Hatchery by accident is difficult.
Seriously, people who play other races often ignore this =/ I suspect this is why we see less micro from pro Z players than pro P's and T's (who generally micro much better). Very nice post, it's very true that the micro required by protoss during actual engagements is hardly ever trivial vs an equally-skilled opponent.
Terran rewards accuracy whereas zerg rewards speed more.
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I would rather have a fair matchup rather than being forced to SCV pull every single game.
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I think that many people here are ignoring the fact that the mechanical requirements are differently "hard" at different levels and that the trend is not even monotonous.
I am a terrible player (never got past platinum, mostly because I am lazy to really practice and just mass games if I feel like it, also because I am just a terrible human being and a piece of shit, I know) and I consider Zerg by far the easiest. At my level, the crucial thing is making more workers and more units and that is just light years simpler to do as Zerg than any other race. If I slack on injects, I just built more hatches, 300 minerals is not gamebreaking price for a redemption of bad mechanics in gold league. Even when I mained Protoss, I used to go 50:50 with twice my APM (no matter their race) and it's even more prononouced when I play Zerg - I just beat people who are mechanically on completely different level just because I know when to drone and when to build army. On the other hand, I never managed to get anywhere near that level with Terran just because the sheer amount of attention needed to build and use infrastructure, leaving me with too little actions to do anything with the army.
Now when I watch pro games, I see a completely different pattern. On the top level, everyone is supposed to be able to macro no matter what. Yes, we still see players floating money during fights and doing BO mistakes, but on the very top level, that's quite rare and readily punished. If this level was achieved perfectly, it shouldn't matter which race has the hardest "macro" . Yet, if we include more than just building stuff, we see obvious differences - the easiest to see is creep spread, where some players are just better and it's clearly visible, but there are more subtle differences for all the races. Anyway, when the macro is close, the mechanics gets more focused on 1. battle micro and 2. multitasking (harass, dealing with harass). My impression from watching loads of games at the top level is that it is pretty hard on any race and that it is pretty difficult to tell, which one is easier and which is harder, but I would be slightly inclined to say the Zerg is either the easiest or maybe rather the least developed in the mechanical sense (if this conjecture is true, we may see a period of Zerg dominance, if some players take it really far).
And then there is the "middle" level of masters and around, where you can't win just by building stuff and running it butthead into the other guy, but the players don't have near-flawless macro. On this level, for Zerg, injects and creepspread and general base management take significant amount of attention while any micro mistakes partiuclarly for ZvT with mines) can be gameending - I can see that Zerg could be actually the hardest race here. If this assesment is correct, then Zerg goes from easy, to hard and back to "maybe a little easier" over a large span of skill levels, illustrating how flawed the idea of "easy/hard" races is.
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On August 14 2014 05:41 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2014 17:50 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 17:38 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 17:29 Mojito99 wrote:On August 13 2014 17:25 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 17:06 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 17:00 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 16:11 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 14:11 Big J wrote:On August 13 2014 05:18 Morbidius wrote:
[quote]
Winrates tend to balance to close to 50 percent, tournament representation is usually a better metric. Proof for that? I have (at least) two counterexamples: BL/Infestor, the winrates started to slowly drop further down in TvZ. (from values between 45-50 to values around 40) PvT has been back and forth swinging between 20-50% for multiple months in Korea. The winrates didn't stabilize at all. Let us enter for a moment into the realm of the hypothetical. Imagine that we revert back to the previous patch, which just about everybody will agree was still a terrible place for Terrans. Now imagine on top of that that every single Terran except Maru simply stops playing. Taeja's wrists catch on fire and he suffers second-degree burns, Polt is too busy filming The Avengers 2, Bomber goes into the military where he becomes a four-star general, Innovation joins Byun on his pilgrimage in the mountains of China, and every other Terran just straight up quits in frustration. Maru is literally the only Terran left in existence. With me so far? Now imagine that Maru plays in every single premier tournament. For every single loss "Terran" (Maru) suffers, they will win 10, maybe 20 times as much. He won't win every single tournament, but he'll place within the top 8 of anything loaded with Koreans and in the top 1 of everything that isn't. Do you see the problem? Maru is so good that he was doing really, really, really well even when Terran was underpowered. Not only do the winrates not indicate imbalance, in this hypothetical they are actually outright lying and telling us that Terran is the best race in the history of all RTS games ever made, when in fact it's just Maru (or, in reality, a slew of top-tier Koreans) who are simply that damn good. The hypothetical I drew is a gross exaggeration of the reality, but the fact that it's physically possible automatically dismisses your theory that winrates are a reliable source of information on balance. I'm not going to get into specifics of when they've misled us and to what degree and how and why, I'm just debunking the idea that just because they possibly lined up with our perceptions of balance at some times in SC2's history, that means they ALWAYS line up with ACTUAL balance. Is it a mysterious, magical coincidence that top Terran players are that damn good? No. They've been honing their mechanical skills for years because they've had NO CHOICE. More often than not, Terrans have had no other reliable ways to win games. Zerg and Protoss regularly find ways to avoid engaging in 30-minute long, multitask/micro-heavy slugfests, or units enter the meta that make micro relatively irrelevant (Roach vs Roach instead of B/Ling vs B/Ling), and the inevitable happens. Those players don't push themselves as hard, either because they simply don't need to, or pushing themselves harder will yield diminishing returns (there's only so much micro you can do in Roach vs Roach. Maru wouldn't magically play it better). Could the best P/Zs be as mechanically good as the best Ts? Some of them, absolutely. (Parting and Zest are two immediate and easy choices for Protoss; of Zerg I'm sure some combination of soO, Soulkey, Life, DRG, and Jaedong would rise to the challenge.) Some of them (probably a longer list) would crash and burn if they had to split their units ten times in every single engagement. And that's awful.Terran, Protoss, and Zerg can have different units, abilities, racial mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses, but the tactical, strategic, mechanical, and multitasking requirements of playing every race absolutely must be as close to equal as is humanly possible to design. It's not OK for PvT Protoss to be strategically harder but mechanically simpler. If that's the case right now, then Terran has to be made strategically harder (which sounds more like a buff than a nerf, honestly) and Protoss has to be made mechanically more demanding. I guess your are assuming that terran is in the first place the mechanically hardest race to play. I simply cannot agree to this point of view. I used to play terran in WOL and now after big break(2 years), i am back and playing protoss. From my perspective it's about the same mechanic vise. I am asking myself same "questions" durring the games, am i building workers -> am i close to suply block -> am i building army -> etc... So, what i would like to hear from anyone that is claiming that terran is mechanically harder to play, or if anyone is claiming that any of the other 2 races is harder to play, to support this kind of statement with some kind of proof, othervise this is just another argument without evidence. Would you agree that Zest is renowned for his mechanical prowess amongst Protoss? He's one of the most intensive battle microers around? If so, I've already done what you ask. You can find it here. The TLDR version is that I took a random game of Maru vs Zest and counted up all of their mechanical actions during the pivotal, big engagements in the game. Although the game picked was random, Zest was obviously microing much harder than most Protoss would have in his situation, Blinking away from WMs and using Warp Prisms in combat. Being as generous as possible to Zest in my estimations, Maru still had over twice as many distinct, separate actions performed in the fights. And, again, Zest is the guy to go to for impressive things happening in fights as far as Protoss players go. I look forward to seeing what you think of my evidence, such as it is. Yes, i agree with this compleatly, thats why Maru won in the end, cause when all this was happening, he was able to macro up at home durring this kind of micro intensive battle and zest wasnt able to. So yea, Maru is better at macro than Zest i would then conclude from your post. I didnt see the game so i am compleatly dependant on your post that you provided link to. From your post i can read that bassicly in the end Maru won cause he did have more units, and while Zest did take the 2 engagements cause of maybe better unit compossition or better possition or w/e the reasson was, he had nothing at home produced to fall back to after the battles. Am i correct? But those extra actions are the result of (a) splitting and (b) kitting yes? or do they involve (c) macro during the fights as well. Because a and b are not even available to protoss and c will always be double for terran because they produce close to double the amount of units in general. I agree, but you would need to get answer from the guy which post i quoted originally, since i am from start assuming that all 3 races tequire about same skill to play on that high level as KR pros are performing. I simply cannot agree to any sort of elitism. What the evidence was provided was simply that in that game, Maru played better and won in the end, thats it. It doesnt show any sort of imbalance from my perspective. Zest won two fights by performing less than half of Maru's mechanical actions. Zest looked like he was doing great micro that no other Protoss bother to do against Terrans. If you watch the game, you'll see Zest doing cool stuff like Blinking in the nick of time to avoid WM damage, and using Storm Drops in combat - basically the equivalent of EMP drops. Very impressive stuff. But when you take all of that into account, it's still less than half of what Maru is doing mechanically. Did Zest win? No. But that doesn't matter. We're not arguing about balance (right now), but mechanical requirement for playing the races. Terran can be more mechanically demanding and overpowered, or less mechanically demanding and underpowered, or any other combination of the four. If you want me to believe that this game is an outlier, the burden of proof is now on you to point me to a game where, regardless of the outcome, win or lose, the Protoss was played with more mechanical skill than Zest's P in that game. Apart from maybe Rain and maybe Parting, you won't find one. This is as mechanically tough as Protoss gets. And it's less than half as tough as Terran by my count. If in-combat micro is all you care about then I think we're talking about two different game genres.
How did you get "in-combat micro is the only thing that matters" from statements like:
Terran, Protoss, and Zerg can have different units, abilities, racial mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses, but the tactical, strategic, mechanical, and multitasking requirements of playing every race absolutely must be as close to equal as is humanly possible to design. It's not OK for PvT Protoss to be strategically harder but mechanically simpler. If that's the case right now, then Terran has to be made strategically harder (which sounds more like a buff than a nerf, honestly) and Protoss has to be made mechanically more demanding.
And this:
It is NOT OK for one race to be significantly more mechanically demanding while another race is significantly more strategically demanding (whatever that is; I'm still convinced it means "I have the freedom to do basically anything" and is actually an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage). Every race should be equally demanding mechanically, tactically, strategically, and in terms of multi-tasking. Obviously having total parity is impossible, but the standards for what passes for "good enough" have to be MUCH, MUCH higher than what Blizzard have set for themselves.
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On August 14 2014 07:10 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2014 05:41 Thieving Magpie wrote:On August 13 2014 17:50 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 17:38 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 17:29 Mojito99 wrote:On August 13 2014 17:25 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 17:06 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 17:00 Svizcy wrote:On August 13 2014 16:11 pure.Wasted wrote:On August 13 2014 14:11 Big J wrote:
[quote]
Proof for that?
I have (at least) two counterexamples:
BL/Infestor, the winrates started to slowly drop further down in TvZ. (from values between 45-50 to values around 40)
PvT has been back and forth swinging between 20-50% for multiple months in Korea. The winrates didn't stabilize at all. Let us enter for a moment into the realm of the hypothetical. Imagine that we revert back to the previous patch, which just about everybody will agree was still a terrible place for Terrans. Now imagine on top of that that every single Terran except Maru simply stops playing. Taeja's wrists catch on fire and he suffers second-degree burns, Polt is too busy filming The Avengers 2, Bomber goes into the military where he becomes a four-star general, Innovation joins Byun on his pilgrimage in the mountains of China, and every other Terran just straight up quits in frustration. Maru is literally the only Terran left in existence. With me so far? Now imagine that Maru plays in every single premier tournament. For every single loss "Terran" (Maru) suffers, they will win 10, maybe 20 times as much. He won't win every single tournament, but he'll place within the top 8 of anything loaded with Koreans and in the top 1 of everything that isn't. Do you see the problem? Maru is so good that he was doing really, really, really well even when Terran was underpowered. Not only do the winrates not indicate imbalance, in this hypothetical they are actually outright lying and telling us that Terran is the best race in the history of all RTS games ever made, when in fact it's just Maru (or, in reality, a slew of top-tier Koreans) who are simply that damn good. The hypothetical I drew is a gross exaggeration of the reality, but the fact that it's physically possible automatically dismisses your theory that winrates are a reliable source of information on balance. I'm not going to get into specifics of when they've misled us and to what degree and how and why, I'm just debunking the idea that just because they possibly lined up with our perceptions of balance at some times in SC2's history, that means they ALWAYS line up with ACTUAL balance. Is it a mysterious, magical coincidence that top Terran players are that damn good? No. They've been honing their mechanical skills for years because they've had NO CHOICE. More often than not, Terrans have had no other reliable ways to win games. Zerg and Protoss regularly find ways to avoid engaging in 30-minute long, multitask/micro-heavy slugfests, or units enter the meta that make micro relatively irrelevant (Roach vs Roach instead of B/Ling vs B/Ling), and the inevitable happens. Those players don't push themselves as hard, either because they simply don't need to, or pushing themselves harder will yield diminishing returns (there's only so much micro you can do in Roach vs Roach. Maru wouldn't magically play it better). Could the best P/Zs be as mechanically good as the best Ts? Some of them, absolutely. (Parting and Zest are two immediate and easy choices for Protoss; of Zerg I'm sure some combination of soO, Soulkey, Life, DRG, and Jaedong would rise to the challenge.) Some of them (probably a longer list) would crash and burn if they had to split their units ten times in every single engagement. And that's awful.Terran, Protoss, and Zerg can have different units, abilities, racial mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses, but the tactical, strategic, mechanical, and multitasking requirements of playing every race absolutely must be as close to equal as is humanly possible to design. It's not OK for PvT Protoss to be strategically harder but mechanically simpler. If that's the case right now, then Terran has to be made strategically harder (which sounds more like a buff than a nerf, honestly) and Protoss has to be made mechanically more demanding. I guess your are assuming that terran is in the first place the mechanically hardest race to play. I simply cannot agree to this point of view. I used to play terran in WOL and now after big break(2 years), i am back and playing protoss. From my perspective it's about the same mechanic vise. I am asking myself same "questions" durring the games, am i building workers -> am i close to suply block -> am i building army -> etc... So, what i would like to hear from anyone that is claiming that terran is mechanically harder to play, or if anyone is claiming that any of the other 2 races is harder to play, to support this kind of statement with some kind of proof, othervise this is just another argument without evidence. Would you agree that Zest is renowned for his mechanical prowess amongst Protoss? He's one of the most intensive battle microers around? If so, I've already done what you ask. You can find it here. The TLDR version is that I took a random game of Maru vs Zest and counted up all of their mechanical actions during the pivotal, big engagements in the game. Although the game picked was random, Zest was obviously microing much harder than most Protoss would have in his situation, Blinking away from WMs and using Warp Prisms in combat. Being as generous as possible to Zest in my estimations, Maru still had over twice as many distinct, separate actions performed in the fights. And, again, Zest is the guy to go to for impressive things happening in fights as far as Protoss players go. I look forward to seeing what you think of my evidence, such as it is. Yes, i agree with this compleatly, thats why Maru won in the end, cause when all this was happening, he was able to macro up at home durring this kind of micro intensive battle and zest wasnt able to. So yea, Maru is better at macro than Zest i would then conclude from your post. I didnt see the game so i am compleatly dependant on your post that you provided link to. From your post i can read that bassicly in the end Maru won cause he did have more units, and while Zest did take the 2 engagements cause of maybe better unit compossition or better possition or w/e the reasson was, he had nothing at home produced to fall back to after the battles. Am i correct? But those extra actions are the result of (a) splitting and (b) kitting yes? or do they involve (c) macro during the fights as well. Because a and b are not even available to protoss and c will always be double for terran because they produce close to double the amount of units in general. I agree, but you would need to get answer from the guy which post i quoted originally, since i am from start assuming that all 3 races tequire about same skill to play on that high level as KR pros are performing. I simply cannot agree to any sort of elitism. What the evidence was provided was simply that in that game, Maru played better and won in the end, thats it. It doesnt show any sort of imbalance from my perspective. Zest won two fights by performing less than half of Maru's mechanical actions. Zest looked like he was doing great micro that no other Protoss bother to do against Terrans. If you watch the game, you'll see Zest doing cool stuff like Blinking in the nick of time to avoid WM damage, and using Storm Drops in combat - basically the equivalent of EMP drops. Very impressive stuff. But when you take all of that into account, it's still less than half of what Maru is doing mechanically. Did Zest win? No. But that doesn't matter. We're not arguing about balance (right now), but mechanical requirement for playing the races. Terran can be more mechanically demanding and overpowered, or less mechanically demanding and underpowered, or any other combination of the four. If you want me to believe that this game is an outlier, the burden of proof is now on you to point me to a game where, regardless of the outcome, win or lose, the Protoss was played with more mechanical skill than Zest's P in that game. Apart from maybe Rain and maybe Parting, you won't find one. This is as mechanically tough as Protoss gets. And it's less than half as tough as Terran by my count. If in-combat micro is all you care about then I think we're talking about two different game genres. How did you get "in-combat micro is the only thing that matters" from statements like: Terran, Protoss, and Zerg can have different units, abilities, racial mechanics, strengths, and weaknesses, but the tactical, strategic, mechanical, and multitasking requirements of playing every race absolutely must be as close to equal as is humanly possible to design. It's not OK for PvT Protoss to be strategically harder but mechanically simpler. If that's the case right now, then Terran has to be made strategically harder (which sounds more like a buff than a nerf, honestly) and Protoss has to be made mechanically more demanding. And this: It is NOT OK for one race to be significantly more mechanically demanding while another race is significantly more strategically demanding (whatever that is; I'm still convinced it means "I have the freedom to do basically anything" and is actually an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage). Every race should be equally demanding mechanically, tactically, strategically, and in terms of multi-tasking. Obviously having total parity is impossible, but the standards for what passes for "good enough" have to be MUCH, MUCH higher than what Blizzard have set for themselves.
I disagree with you completely. I think it's fine for the races to emphasize different kinds of skill. Besides it's not like one race is playing Contra 2 and the others are playing Mario 64... all three races at the pro level require an insane amount of mechanical skill.
I think you overestimate how much mehcanical skill Terran requires (you and almost every other Terran on here).
Some soccer teams win with great passing. Others win by playing really physical. And some have a couple of players who are so technically talented that they can just carry the whole team. You see this in Dota2 as well. Some teams rely on aggressive play and multitasking while others rely on Dendi (kekeke). Different ways of winning exist in every sport and StarCraft is no exception.
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Also I feel like Maru's success at a time where Terrans were struggling has inspired a lot of Terrans to try and emulate him even though they just don't have his mechanics. The kid is gifted. I feel like with all the patches that have hit recently if more people embraced Taeja's style they'd do better. Not getting Ghosts and Vikings is pretty much an allin...
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Northern Ireland23768 Posts
It's hard to say really, I'd like to see Taeja vs the Kespa Protoss players more often to see how that style stacks up vs Maru's hyper-aggression which even he is doing less of these days.
I find Maru's at lower levels definitely easier, controlling MMMVG competently is incredibly tough, whereas microing MMM is tough on the reflexes but a bit more mindless.
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EPT
