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Gimmicky as it relates to SC2
1. A build that relies on your opponent not knowing what is coming, either through hidden choices or trickery.
Examples: Proxy buildings, Zergs who transfer most their drones to their natural to appear greedy, placing buildings in odd locations. Taking a hidden fast expand to an odd location.
2. A build that exploits an opponents tendency to do X, that would not work against most other opponents or again.
Examples: Going 3 cc because your know your opponent plays greedy (usually), early/late all ins, timings that are not solid timings but specifically chosen for the opponents tendency. Cancelling a fast expand because you know your opponent only scouts once.
3. Exploiting some known or unknown flaw in game mechanics or map design.
Examples: The pylon behind the mineral line on daybreak, the bunker location on XNC, the old bottom of the ramp pylon/bunker wall. Dropping siege tanks into the abyss on metalopolis.
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Technically almost every build designed to be a step ahead of the meta game (such as partings forge in base --> nexus first) are gimmicky. People just say it to make them feel better about losing to it, when in reality its a strategy designed to attack a certain players tendencies or the most frequent tendencies of a matchup in the metagame.
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On November 24 2012 19:51 SolidMoose wrote:
I define gimmicky as something that relies almost purely on surprise factor to work. If someone is even remotely aware it's coming, it will fail.
Something becomes standard when it isn't instantly destroyed by scouting it.
Exactly.
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Many of you confuse the term with cheese and all-ins. Gimmicky is none of these.
Being gimmicky is to rely heavily on something that when used once, shouldn't be useful again. It can be useful, but it has such extreme weaknesses that it'll flat out fail against the appropriate response. I guess you could say there has to be a norm for something to be gimmicky. If the norm in TvZ is marine/tank, then playing mech every game would be gimmicky, the same could be said about playing mass air every game too.
There are situations/maps where it's useful, but as standard play it's easily exploitable and thus once the gimmick is "figured out" your play is so much weaker. That's why people are being called "gimmicky" players. When they are figured out, they'll lose. (I hate to use real people as an example but I think GoOdy illustrates this to some extent.)
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Gimmicky = Floating the CC to the Gold Base on Metropolis at the beginning.
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On November 29 2012 04:29 aintthatfunny wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2012 19:51 SolidMoose wrote:
I define gimmicky as something that relies almost purely on surprise factor to work. If someone is even remotely aware it's coming, it will fail.
Something becomes standard when it isn't instantly destroyed by scouting it. Exactly.
Well, does that mean that drops (overlord, warp prism, medivac) are gimmicks?
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On November 24 2012 19:48 BlackPanther wrote:
Gimmicky is a one trick pony. It's cheesy but it specifically exploits something about the player, map, current meta (etc.).
Example: The proxy pylon location at the back of the base on Daybreak that is occasionally exploited in PvZ
I think doing certain things that abuse the metagame are also considered gimmicky. They work now on the ladder cause when you can play 100 games there are certain builds that come out more than others and your build counters them so overall you 'win' but I find that a strategy that relies on your opponent playing a certain way is 'gimmicky'
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Gimmicky play is usually pretty similar to cheese, but in my opinion it goes beyond that. I consider extremely greedy and/or risky play gimmicky as well.
If your strat works really well when your opponent doesn't realize its coming, but fails miserably if he reads your play correctly, that's gimmicky play.
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From the definitions people are coming up with on the first page, gimmicky is synonymous with cheesy.
Cheese, which has a pretty set in stone definition (despite all the newcoming SC2 players that never played BW and develop their own meaning of the word which is simply nonsense), has been for quite a while "a strategy that relies on being unscouted to work."
It's been that way for YEARS before SC2 was released. Most allins are cheeses, although not all are (ie. 1-1-1 allin TvP is not a cheese, it can be fully scouted and still incredibly powerful).
Allin is merely something that if you don't do substantial damage with an attack, you will lose (for example you decide you're not going to engage - simply not engaging results in you losing). You cannot recover unless a certain amount of damage is dealt.
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The term in sc2 really is overused though to the point where alot of clever play is labelled gimicky, just becuase is it unexpected. I think quite alot of robot type players in sc2 just want the same play every game and then a-move into each other in the middle of the map, that would get boring pretty damn fast imo. Need creative and different strats so the game does not get uber stale.
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United States13143 Posts
On November 24 2012 20:09 kafkaesque wrote:
HSD (honest Starcraft 2 dictionary) defines gimmicky play as:
"gimmicky (adj.) - a term used by angry players to justify their losses in a pathetic attempt to deligitimize their opponent's success"
In my experience, this is really the correct answer.
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Many different things define a gimmick.
A risky play that is not guaranteed to pay off and is probably negative expectation in the long run against good opponents, but will occasionally win. For example, burrowed banelings.
A play that is simplistic in nature and intended to win in only a single way. For example, a 4gate all in.
A play that relies on some single mechanic or characteristic to win. For example, blink or cloak.
Basically it means the opposite of solid all-around play. It seeks to maximize a single aspect of the game to win instead of developing a general skill set, which affords a player numerous compositions, spells, tactics, strategies, and can win in numerous phases of the game.
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a gimmick in relation to competitive sports, or esports, requires a meta-breaking-strategy. for it to work, it depends on your opponent to either make a mistake or not achieve their full potential
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To me gimmicky play can be a number of things. It can be single actions or entire strategies. The primary component though is relying on your opponent either not scouting it or having not seen it before, or anything that strongly deviates from the norm.
A prime example of a gimmicky build would be the nexus cancel 4gate where you make it look like you are 1gate expoing and you cancel your nexus and 4gate. If the opponent sees the cancel, they should be able to prepare to hold it off. And chances are if you win against someone once with it they will make sure to scout it every other time you play them, causing it to never work again.
Heck I would define my own PvZ play as gimmicky because it deviates from the norm since I do Nony's 2gate expand as I like the positives associated with it (faster warpgate, more opportunities to pressure the Zerg, much faster tech. All in exchanges for a slightly slower nexus. It also seldom dies to early pools unless you screw up severely or don't put your second pylon near the ramp to make sure the gate stays powered). Have I won a lot of PvZs purely because the Zerg had no idea how to handle this build? Probably. Does that mean this build is bad? Absolutely not.
Other things I would rank as gimmicks would be taking dangerous expands that you have no chance of holding unless the opponent doesn't scout it (be it regular expand locations earlier than you normally can, or ninja expands that you would have no way of holding), DT builds that rely solely on the opponent not having detection, 4gating while hiding a probe in the opponent's base hoping they won't find it, blind roach/ling all-in (again, 2gate expo demolishes those but if you scout it, you can easily with any PvZ opener). Really, blind all-ins in general seen to fit the theme. Also, cutesy micro that is either over the top, or completely unnecessary (we've all played those Terrans who over-micro their bio and end up worse off because of it).
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Bly. Watch his playstyle and you'll get a definition what "gimmick" style means.
He has build his sc2 career around it.
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On November 29 2012 06:48 Bill Murray wrote:
a gimmick in relation to competitive sports, or esports, requires a meta-breaking-strategy. for it to work, it depends on your opponent to either make a mistake or not achieve their full potential
Not necessarily. You seem to be obvious to the fact that SCII is a game of imperfect information.
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A gimmick is something that has a hard counter, and if that hard counter is employed, the tactic is shut down, at least for the time being.
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On November 29 2012 07:22 monkybone wrote:
Whether it's a gimmick depends on the situation. What is cheesy play for professional players isn't necessarily cheesy for lower level players, as different principles apply. Depending on skill, players play and react differently and with varying effectiveness. And similarly the "gimmick" tag must be applied differently. You can't say that if a professional player performs a so-called gimmicky strategy, then the strategy is gimmicky no matter who does it, and in no matter the situation.
For example, 1 base DT rush might just be a reliable and effective strategy below some certain skill level, almost no matter what your opponent are doing. You can't call it a gimmicky strategy in this case. For others, it is extremely gimmicky play and involves a whole lot of specific assumptions of what your opponent will be doing.
What characterizes gimmicky play is that it's surprising, and therefore it can never be a consistent part of the metagame. It is effective because of heavy abuse of the metagame It involves a very specific guess of what your opponent is doing without you knowing it. As a strategy it will quickly lose its effectiveness as soon as people are made aware of it, as it is in principle has an easy solution. Normal strategies on the other hand may stay effective despite "solutions", and will work to some extent across the whole spectrum of common metagame strategies, and beyond, whereas gimmicky strategies does not.
Whether an opening is reliable or effective has nothing to do with being gimmicky or not.
Gimmicky is when something will only work because opponent is unaware of whats happening or because it's not blocked/dealt with appropriately.
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EPT
