In 2013, often the predicted favorites didn't win the big SC2 tournaments. Many (at the time) underdogs went on to win the title, e.g. Maru, Bomber, Dear, sOs etc.. In addition, many previous champions were unable to repeat their feats. It seems that nowadays, as a top level player, it is a lot harder to get an edge over your opponents. There is a pool of something like 30 players that could all be potential WCS champions.
In other sports there seems to be much more dominance and consistence of single individuals. e.g.: Vitali Klitschko, Novak Djokovic, Magnus Carlsen, Usain Bolt, etc...
- Whoever wins the first big fight tend to win the game - comebacks are virtually non existent
- Units die too fast so it doesn't matter if you are Flash/Jaedong/Soulkey. If you happen to not pay attention for a sec enough units can be killed so that you more or less already have lost
- Games reach max limits very fast. Macro is easy and not rewarding so players like Flash "can't outmacro" the opponent just as easy because the difference between the worst pro and best pro at macro isn't that big
So I guess it's a combination of not enough depth and the volalite units vs too much dps.
You'll probably get a load of different responses about the nature of the game, but in part it's simply because series are so short. BO3s and BO5s are really incredibly volatile things.
It's kinda like playing only one set in tennis.
In chess, you get tournaments where it's all play all (usually) so everyone has the whole tournament to perform. In FIDE's short knockout world championships in the 90s and 2000s, there were a lot of "random" chess 'world champions' - Khalifman, Ponamariov, Khazimdzhanov (spelling) - random, quite strong GMs, but not actually world class. These tournaments are a pretty good equivalent of how SC2 tournaments are structured tbh, and the outcome is STILL really unpredictable, even though chess is a game of perfect information/much less (if any) luck.
Rather than just stating the retarded mechanics and unit synergies that are present in the game, i'll share some insight. 95% of match ups in Starcraft 2 resemble rock paper scissor more than Brood War.
It's really simple: There is a lot of randomness in the game. The build order plays a huge part in any game, and obviously you cannot know the opening of your opponent.
So you end up with either an advantage or a disadvantage right from the start. And the longer the game goes on, the more time you have to get things (further) into your favor with your skill.
If you know what your opponent will do, and your skill is roughly equal to his, you have already won. That's why EG/TL kept losing in Proleague, and that's why Korean teams (Kespa especially) are all about figuring out how you play.
On December 11 2013 21:48 sMi.SyMPhOnY wrote: Rather than just stating the retarded mechanics and unit synergies that are present in the game, i'll share some insight. 95% of match ups in Starcraft 2 resemble rock paper scissor more than Brood War.
you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
How come thread quality on Teamliquid is so unpredictable?
I don't want to come of as an asshole, but there are literally a myriad of other threads discussing the same topic, we don't need another one. Only causea unnecessary BW vs SC2 drama.
I think the control utilized over the game by David kim has a direct relation to this issue. It seems when someone is dominating races get Buffs or units get Nerfed....Then it sets back the player that is dominating and basically resets everyone so they have to relearn major parts of strategy never allowing anyone to get to that Bonjwa State that Jaedong and Flash were....
You are comparing SC2 to singles sports with tournament structures different from SC2. The tournaments in SC2 are more akin to Basketball playoffs or the Champions League. If you look at the list of champions from those tournaments you'll see that it's actually not that random. It is a ridiculous comparison.
If you look at the winrates between the best teams within sports with similar tournament structures and the best players in SC2 you will also see that they compare favorably.
I'd say we got plenty of consistency, the best players place highly in more tournaments. Take JD and Soulkey for example, JD practically top 2 in any tour he plays, Soulkey never below top 8.
One player doesn't have to win everything in order to show the skill ceiling is high in this game, and with multiple top performers it keeps things interesting.
Besides there's still patches and an expansion coming up to shake things up, after this it will most likely become a bit more stable.
On December 11 2013 22:00 lichter wrote: You are comparing SC2 to singles sports with tournament structures different from SC2. The tournaments in SC2 are more akin to Basketball playoffs or the Champions League. If you look at the list of champions from those tournaments you'll see that it's actually not that random. It is a ridiculous comparison.
If you look at the winrates between the best teams within sports with similar tournament structures and the best players in SC2 you will also see that they compare favorably.
Honestly the "fan favorites" tend to get way overhyped resulting into a so called upset. Also, cause of the different playstyles some players got an inherent advantage compared to others (teaja's super solid defence against Life who uses a lot of counterattacks" If anything the first year or so with Mvp,Nestea and MC on top actually proved the game isn't as volatile as people want to belive.
Part of it is that it seems the short-term condition a player is in matters a lot, and there are a lot of players who practice really seriously for a while, then get distracted by life and don't keep it up uniformly. Since that's kept private, it looks like randomness to the public.
But also, it's really not that random. At most tournaments there are 2-3 clear favorites and often one of them wins, almost always one or two of them are in finals. It's more random than tennis, but less random than lots of other sports.
There is no unpredictability, at least at the top in korea. We have a small pool of constant top finishers for HotS now, with Dear, Soulkey, Rain and Maru. look at the last big korean events. Those are the names you will read there in later rounds over and over again. Ofc from time to time, you have surprises amongst them. That´s what makes the game fun and exciting to watch. But those 4 are nearly allways around top4/top8. Pretty constant to me.
On one hand I think it's the other way around, the skill cap is so high and that's why it's hard for the pros to stay on top. On the other hand, I don't really agree that the results are that unpredictable. Like someone else pointed out, several players have been playing very consistently.
The game is dynamic. You cannot compare it with sports that have had more or less static rules for decades.
You have 3 MU, how the best players do in those varies with the meta and practice. In each MU there are several builds and styles that you are good and worse against.
Then you have maps that can be good for you or your opponents style, map trends that change from year to year etc.
Then you have tournament structure that can for example have one player getting his best MU over and over again while another gets his worst.
So many variables that can be enough to make a "favorite" drop maps or games. But overall I think there is a pretty clear elite of players that keep winning and getting good results against the best, and they arent 30 of them.
I don't think it is too unpredictable. For example Maru placing high frequently and winning osl wasn't that unpredictable tbh. He has been very long time one of the top players. Even though casters tend to "criticize" him for cheesy play that is not the truth he was and still is more than capable to win anyone in the world with macro game. And like TeeTS said there are usually same players in top 8 GSL/OSL just look at Innovation, Maru, Soulkey for example I can't even remember when wasn't Soulkey top 8 GSL since his debut...
Too many options in the beginning and to little in the lategame. That way the early game advantage can go to everyone, while the lategame doesn't allow to change up much. It is only a small factor for me and if players aren't equally strong an early game advantage easily turns around. Also too many tournaments. I find it rather consistent that the current "will win everything" Star goes everywhere and you can literally see the player burn out due to the traveling and missing training while everyone adapts to him.
marvellosity pointed out the most important point I would say though. Especially since in Sc2 tournaments you can dodge opponents and player styles are often weak or strong against different opponents.
- Is the skill level required for Starcraft 2 too low? No, the amount of skill required is perfectly fine. However the amount of units required is to much. Currently any protoss can build a deathball and a move the map. If your terran opponent did not scout the HT's in that ball you can basicly auto-gg the game. I play protoss myself, unless I die to earlygame pressure (I play defensive econ) I will almost always outmacro my opponent. This because Protoss can easily defend and gives Terran a hardtime microing it's units in order to deal damage. While good macro can give you a clear edge, micro has a very small impact on the game.
For example. This for the otherside of things. A Protoss opens with ProxyOracle harrass. As soon as the Missle Turret finishes the Oracle harrasment requires insane micro to avoid a clear kill on it. What does it give the Protoss? Maybe 1 or 2 SCV kills. Stupid suggestion: remove autoattack on static defense, giving the Terran extra APM / attention to defend against Oracle, give Oracle extra opportunity to deal damage / harras even in lategame. There are so much more things that could be changed to make the game more micro-intensive and thus more rewarding to the better player.
- Do the players that win tournaments relax too much after the win? No. We have so little insight in this, how can we make up a subject for this.
- Are the random elements of the game (fog of war) the reason for random results? How would the game be when there is no fog of war. I think it would be intresting to experiment with the game like that. Back when I played RA2 a lot there was no fog of war, but you could build a special building to block your enemy's vision once scouted.
- Is the skill level of the top players too even because of the same training regimes? No idea. Not enough intel
On December 11 2013 21:47 marvellosity wrote: You'll probably get a load of different responses about the nature of the game, but in part it's simply because series are so short. BO3s and BO5s are really incredibly volatile things.
It's kinda like playing only one set in tennis.
In chess, you get tournaments where it's all play all (usually) so everyone has the whole tournament to perform. In FIDE's short knockout world championships in the 90s and 2000s, there were a lot of "random" chess 'world champions' - Khalifman, Ponamariov, Khazimdzhanov (spelling) - random, quite strong GMs, but not actually world class. These tournaments are a pretty good equivalent of how SC2 tournaments are structured tbh, and the outcome is STILL really unpredictable, even though chess is a game of perfect information/much less (if any) luck.
Ponomariov not world class??? what are you smoking??? he was an absolute prodigy with easily the potential to become the undisputed world champion, so sad that FIDE and Kasparov screw him over this bad, he could never recover psychologically.
otherwise, I agree in principle, yet BW had the same system as SC2 and there were definitely a dominance of the top 3 (flash-jaedong-bisu), so it's probably a combination of the volatile nature of knock out tournaments and not enough depth / too much randomness in the game itself.
EDIT: there are about 600 million people who know how to play chess, around 200 million who actively play it online, 2 million registered, competitive players... so being in the top 100 at any time in your career is definitely world class status I would say, and Ponomariov has been there constantly for the past 10 years
The game has so much turnover because it's a macro game with a replay system + millions of VODs/streams/tourneys. There is a giant pool of adequately skilled Korean players. The really top players are just the ones who have found temporary macro/timing exploits. Inevitably the community catches up to what they are doing and it's back to the drawing board for them.
I have a feeling that this will be the last major 1v1 RTS. Balance games for 4v4 team play and it will be less about technical exploitations and more about instinctual decision making and cooperation.
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
well, it takes not just "a bit", but a shitload of effort to get good at chess, and even then not just anyone can do it. years and years of dedication to get to CM level, which is the lowest class, maybe like code B. well, chess has no mechanics, so why is it so hard? exactly the thing that sc2 doesn't have: strategic depth.
First of all, there is great variance even in other sports. This year, a much lower team in the Champions League beat Barcelona 2-0, at the World Cup a few years ago, Serbia beat Germany. So randomness just kinda 'happens'.
Furthermore, Starcraft is an individual sport, meaning that having an off-day, bad sleep, or whatever has a BIG influence. As a team there can be compensation for this, but it is much more pronounced in individual sports. Starcraft is also incredibly unforgiving - even a top-tier tennis player will not lose a match because of a double-fault, but a Starcraft player WILL lose a match due to a lowered supply depot, unseen banelings, unscouted pylon, missed dropships, etc etc.
These factors kinda determine the 'randomness' of the game. However, I think that the amount of randomness is not that great. Sure, you had Hitman beating Scarlett, but Maru, Bomber SoS and Dear are just really very good players. Maybe you don't know them that well because they're Korean, but people like Bomber actually have quite a legacy...
On December 11 2013 21:46 papaz wrote: My opinions:
- Depth of micro is not enough
- Whoever wins the first big fight tend to win the game - comebacks are virtually non existent
- Units die too fast so it doesn't matter if you are Flash/Jaedong/Soulkey. If you happen to not pay attention for a sec enough units can be killed so that you more or less already have lost
- Games reach max limits very fast. Macro is easy and not rewarding so players like Flash "can't outmacro" the opponent just as easy because the difference between the worst pro and best pro at macro isn't that big
So I guess it's a combination of not enough depth and the volalite units vs too much dps.
I would go with the above.
Any player making it to the last 4 is having a good tournament imho. The best players regularly get there ie Taeja, Life, Dear so skill does matter its just the days of 1 player dominating are long gone
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
well, it takes not just "a bit", but a shitload of effort to get good at chess, and even then not just anyone can do it. years and years of dedication to get to CM level, which is the lowest class, maybe like code B. well, chess has no mechanics, so why is it so hard? exactly the thing that sc2 doesn't have: strategic depth.
i was obviously exaggerating. will put in winking smiley next time.
Look, let me bring some common sense into this thread. I have a 71% accuracy rating on Liquibets, and I am FAR from the best at picking winners. In fact when I started using Liquibet I would randomly pick broodwar players and even SC2 players I hadn't heard of, so nowadays my SC2 accuracy rating is probably closer to ~80%. 80% predictability is not low in my opinion (especially since I am not up on all the players quirks, like say Apollo is). We need to get some Liquibet masters in here to explain how SC2 winners are actually pretty predictable.
Have you ever asked yourself if the winners are hard for you to predict because you don't know enough about the players, game, and maps?
Who is the most accurate SC2 Liquibetter and what is their accuracy percentage? Because in my mind, that is a good way to determine how predictable this game is. I'll bet they're shooting 90%+
edit: And stop talking about always knowing who will win a tournament as if it would be a good thing.
This thread hovers between flamebait and starting the usual BW > SC2 bullshit-bingo. Your thesis, that SC2 has unpredictable results is just a general unsolidified claim, to start a pointles discussion. Can we just finally let that go?
I disagree that starcraft has that unpredictable results. But the game is balanced around the fact that scouting is not available all the time and that creates some randomness,.
I don't care what is the reason and I am very happy that noone seems to be sure about it. Beause that way, noone can find the reason and break it, because I like the "volatility" exactl how it is. There are so many surprises, so much unexpected is happening every tournament. It makes it so much more fun.
Yes, it's different than many convenctional sports. Why do so many people always care about conventional sports? Why should SC2 be like them? If you want to watch physical sport, go and watch one, there is an endless amoutn of content for you to watch.
-Because there are a lot of factors affecting the result of a match other than skill.
-A lot of Koreans have almost reached the skill ceiling and the only way to achieve dominance for long periods of time is by keep changing your strategy.
-Don't bring up tennis or chess, these are perfectly balanced and skill is all that matters.You can play your "standard macro" in tennis(yeah I know...) and win because you are better but you can't do that in sc2.
oh god ... a thread full of whiners and "blizzard so bad sc2 so bad" posts god save us all
for my part, i always see the same guys in top and simply winning if they hit their good matchup and loosing if they hit their bad matchup (like inno just lose if he hits a tvt ... simply as that)
also some of the players are extremly close what skill means, so its always 3-2 2-3 2-3 3-2 etc not meaning its to easy they simply very similar ...
as for alot wcs tournaments, the players who won the first really seems to take it easier the next tournaments, because of the points they already gained, while the others trained even harder ... which makes it pretty obvious ...
in the main tournaments of the year, we have what ? jaedong 5 times 2nd now winning ? taeja winning like so many of them ? i really see the same big names who train always on the top ...
the only difference to broodwar is, that there are simply so much more players in the pool of that caliber and we have not even reached the 3rd add on ... you guys EVER watched broodwar in the early years ? you act like we have every month another top20 and thats not the fact, and in broodwar the guys from 2002 was all retired or bad in 2005 ... and same for 2008 ... themarine or gorush was fast bad and then there was iloveoov and nada and later we had savior (aka idiot you throw your career away) and then jaedong and flash ... it wasnt always the same ...
AALSO we had alot t and z there and only 8 good protoss guys and they did not win much so even the win balance for races is better in sc2 ..
everything nowadays is so hyped about the past which WASNT always blue and clear ... and all the whines are just incredible hard to read every week again
i know some people having an 85+% accuracy for win betting in tournaments ... if its so unpredictable why can they ? because it simply isnt if you know more then the names and the last games ... you have to know more details, you cant predict soccer games just by knowing results too you need to know who is injured what form etc
On December 11 2013 22:44 Psychobabas wrote: - Is the skill level required for Starcraft 2 too low?
Yes, there is nothing that a top progamer can do that cant be done by a masters league player. Allins are also way too strong in this game.
The above just was unimaginable in Brood War.
oh thank god i take this bad post as example: like i ever saw a top grandmaster would ever lose in a tournament bo5 etc to a master ... it will happen like NEVER EVER ... the skill gap between a high master and a high grandmaster is so extremly high its like bronce vs diamond ...
and all ins make game fun and comes to alot good games and you tell me that wasnt possible in sc1 ? in broodwar ?
dude i was a B- in broodwar on iccup who only went b- by winning a god damn tournament (c+ average) and i did win clanwars vs A- and even i beat a god damn 73-5 A+ progamer in a god damn tournament on iccup ... by fuckn 4pooling him ... i did dt rush, dt sair rushs, offgate dragons, offgate zealots, and won SO many games on bwcl vs A- B+ by only cheesing ... sorry i even tell you that cheesing in broodwar was easier then it is in sc2, because when you did it right in broodwar there was NO coming back for the better player possible
... as i said, looking in the past and see the blue sky, not mentioning the bombers flying trough it
also in bw there was like a handfull of tournaments a year for the progamers and that was it ... and in proleagues they had nearly all 40-60% winratios which was not really predictable ... there are just 10 times as much tournaments now
edit: sry if i offend anyone with this long post i am just so tired of all the whine threads every week again and again
I think it's a good thing that there is a group of players that are capable of winning any tournament. The game is so dynamic and fast that it creates spectacular play that ranges from brilliant to head-scratching, but you get head-scratching moments in any sport, in my opinion.
Taeja has won 5 tournaments this year, including the last 3 major ones he has been to. Jaedong was near the top all of 2013, could have easily won 4-5 tournaments. So, I think there is a degree of predictability already.
The top koreans are just way to good for this game and there is alot of them, so when you put all of them in the same tournament they will all place high but its pretty unpredictable who wins the whole thing.
There's just a lot that can go wrong even if you are a good player: you can get your worst matchup often, someone counters your style or prepares a cheese, unfavorable maps for the matchup, conflicting schedules with other tournaments cutting into your preparation time, jetlag, the metagame making your style obsolete, build order losses, being blind countered, getting unlucky any number of ways in a game, drawing a hard tournament bracket or simply having a bad day. All of this results in even a great player on a hot streak losing about a third of his games.
On December 11 2013 21:46 papaz wrote: My opinions:
- Depth of micro is not enough
- Whoever wins the first big fight tend to win the game - comebacks are virtually non existent
- Units die too fast so it doesn't matter if you are Flash/Jaedong/Soulkey. If you happen to not pay attention for a sec enough units can be killed so that you more or less already have lost
- Games reach max limits very fast. Macro is easy and not rewarding so players like Flash "can't outmacro" the opponent just as easy because the difference between the worst pro and best pro at macro isn't that big
So I guess it's a combination of not enough depth and the volalite units vs too much dps.
I think this guy answered the question pretty well. The first 3 points i've been saying for years. Not only is that bad for players but for spectators. How many times have we watched a 15min game of nothing but small pokes, everyone with anticipation of that battle (nothing more exciting after all) end in 10s, with no hope of comeback ?
I would just say, however, that a lot of the automation that SC2 brough is good. I wouldn't want to have to do a lot of things that are nothing but mechanical boring actions like taking a probe when it spawns and putting it to mine. In that regard, SC2 is pretty good. However, the developers, i find, didn't find a balance between easy and hard. In SC2 there are things that are much easier than BW (rally points, shortcut keys, etc), but also much harder (1second distraction = gg because units die too fast). It makes SC2 a very volatile game, because, on the one hand, all the top players master the easy things to perfection, but the super hard ones, are actually too hard for them to be consistently good at.
I always loved the potential of this game, but the developers' arrogance in thinking they know what they're doing, and fuck what we gamers think, is driving me, and i know for experience, many others away.
It is very hard to change the way someone think, and in these years since Wings of Liberty came out, little did the developers change theirs. If i was Activision / Blizzard, i would consider hiring a new developer crew for the sake of this game.
OP says unpredictable. I say it isn't that unpredictable and what do you know. I win a lot of money off making bets. It is true many players can win on any given Sunday; however, considering a lot of the tournaments are Western style LANs it's very easy to separate the contenders by looking for the guys that run hot and then you apply following criteria:
- match-up/map - who are they playing and what's their history? - consistencies - where does the player normally finished? (Look back at the last several events) - consider patch notes and other changes - how do they normally lose if they were to lose?
Anyway, there are a lot of players out there who are very consistent when it comes down to where they finish and how they lose. That's the most important thing to take away from this.
On December 11 2013 21:35 urboss wrote:What do you think is the reason for this unpredictability of results?
- Is the skill level required for Starcraft 2 too low?
- Do the players that win tournaments relax too much after the win?
- Are the random elements of the game (fog of war) the reason for random results?
- Is the skill level of the top players too even because of the same training regimes?
1 | Whether mechanics influence the outcome of a match enough to allow superior players to overcome build order disadvantages against inferior players is subject to opinion.
2 | Everyone has off-days, everyone experiences ebb and flow in motivation, etc.
3 | Imperfect information obviously leads to randomness.
4 | Too even? What kind of wording of a question is this.
That said, I'm not sure why you would mind unpredictability. I mean, I wouldn't mind if Flash played well, but I'd rather a noname won with amazing play than Flash or whoever won with mediocre play. For instance, the tournament Jaedong won recently. It's hard to get excited about that when his opponent managed to fucking lose with an enormous bo-advantage (JD 9 Pool 8 ling vs 10 Pool 6 ling), but that's slightly off-topic I guess - just my personal rant.
- Working really hard doesn't pay of as much as broodwar since the skill cap is lower in sc2 due to lesser oppotunity to micro your heart out if your units are not named "marines" or "marauders".
- Planning a series is incredibly important since you can outstrategies opponents with build orders who may be better than you.
- Or maybe i am wrong and its just that there is kinda too many top players that i think the competition in the TOP is way too fierce and too close to call one player so dominating.
- Mirror matches that is not tvt is kinda coinflippy.
- It could be the never ending beta patch style of sc2 may hurt at times. Not saying that some of the patches are not needed like hellbat-nerf.
- The meta game is still too young or still evolving unlike broodwar who had a decade of time for meta game to evolve.
In Short: - The skill ceiling in Sc2 is too low, so on top level everyone can beat everyone. Victories are determined by daily form, small advantages and luck. - Lack of scouting possibilities in early game leads to more all-in-play and build order wins/losses. - Lack of defender high ground advantage leads to more static game play and one-battle-takes-it-all games. You win one battle and your opponent needs to gg because there are barely possibilities to defend with fewer units against far more units.
So, that's it. There cannot be something like a Bonjwa in SC2.
I haven't used liquibet in a long time. Like I said, I like winning money bets so can someone enlighten me on the percentages in the top 100? I'd believe there are guys who are running at around 70% at the very least.
I wouldn't call the game young, the patches just speed-up the process of evolving and the patches in BW dried up ages ago man lol. Blizzard could keep making changes and the game would just go in cycles forever.
Anyway, like I said there are a lot of guys who are consistent especially at the top result wise and when a player does start to falter it's easy to make connections as to why. Reality is if you know your Starcraft you will make good predictions most of the time.
Why would they be predictable in the first place? They are more predictable that professional sports. Or Dota 2 for that matter. If the outcome of a series is not what we expect, why would it be anything more than one player came more prepared that the other.
On December 11 2013 21:47 marvellosity wrote: You'll probably get a load of different responses about the nature of the game, but in part it's simply because series are so short. BO3s and BO5s are really incredibly volatile things.
It's kinda like playing only one set in tennis.
In chess, you get tournaments where it's all play all (usually) so everyone has the whole tournament to perform. In FIDE's short knockout world championships in the 90s and 2000s, there were a lot of "random" chess 'world champions' - Khalifman, Ponamariov, Khazimdzhanov (spelling) - random, quite strong GMs, but not actually world class. These tournaments are a pretty good equivalent of how SC2 tournaments are structured tbh, and the outcome is STILL really unpredictable, even though chess is a game of perfect information/much less (if any) luck.
Ponomariov not world class??? what are you smoking??? he was an absolute prodigy with easily the potential to become the undisputed world champion, so sad that FIDE and Kasparov screw him over this bad, he could never recover psychologically.
otherwise, I agree in principle, yet BW had the same system as SC2 and there were definitely a dominance of the top 3 (flash-jaedong-bisu), so it's probably a combination of the volatile nature of knock out tournaments and not enough depth / too much randomness in the game itself.
EDIT: there are about 600 million people who know how to play chess, around 200 million who actively play it online, 2 million registered, competitive players... so being in the top 100 at any time in your career is definitely world class status I would say, and Ponomariov has been there constantly for the past 10 years
With regards to the italics, this is somewhat false if we look at the most recent turn of events regarding the Individual Leagues. I've told people many times over that Bisu became irrelevant in Individual Leagues a long time ago. He hasn't qualified for a OSL/MSL since 2010 and guess what he died to in back-to-back prelims? Hydra busts. To this day, he still struggles against hydra busts. Flash didn't win the last few majors either. Fantasy and JangBi overrode the system. Jaedong is another character who kept getting knocked out in the late rounds for the MSL/OSL as well. In other words, they weren't really the dominant forces everyone knew in the end when it came to individual leagues. They still did well in Pro League, but their results were below expectations near the end of those leagues for BW.
On December 11 2013 23:43 opterown wrote: i find the thinly veiled BW elitism in some of these posts rather amusing
I love the totally flawed argument: results not predictable = skill level on the game must be to low.
Like people could predict Alliance being knocked out of MLG or Speed winning over DK, even with a stand in. Clearly Dota 2 is a low skill game because of these unpredictable outcomes.
On December 11 2013 23:43 opterown wrote: i find the thinly veiled BW elitism in some of these posts rather amusing
I love the totally flawed argument: results not predictable = skill level on the game must be to low.
Like people could predict Alliance being knocked out of MLG or Speed winning over DK, even with a stand in. Clearly Dota 2 is a low skill game because of these unpredictable outcomes.
ha ha ha. For me, Dota has so many moving pieces and try to watch what I can solemnly.
On December 11 2013 23:52 TheDougler wrote: My opinion is that Soulkey and Alive aren't actually bad. I mean, Alive won one of the most stacked tournaments of all time.
IGN most stacked? Maybe for it's time lol and who in the blue hell would call SoulKey bad? Terrible example to use especially considering he's one of the most consistent players in the scene today. He's what I call easy money to make off of.
We have had periods of consitency though take Life Mvp or Innovation as examplle of periods of dominance. Hell JD Soulkey and Innovation have all been consistent all year long.
On December 11 2013 23:57 GumBa wrote: We have had periods of consitency though take Life Mvp or Innovation as examplle of periods of dominance. Hell JD Soulkey and Innovation have all been consistent all year long.
He would get my vote if he closed this 1000th installment of the same bs thread.
It's only value is people mocking the topic and showing how silly the idea that predictable outcomes somehow show that a game has a high skill cap. It's like the OP thinks that robots control the armies in SC2.
On December 11 2013 21:47 marvellosity wrote: You'll probably get a load of different responses about the nature of the game, but in part it's simply because series are so short. BO3s and BO5s are really incredibly volatile things.
It's kinda like playing only one set in tennis.
In chess, you get tournaments where it's all play all (usually) so everyone has the whole tournament to perform. In FIDE's short knockout world championships in the 90s and 2000s, there were a lot of "random" chess 'world champions' - Khalifman, Ponamariov, Khazimdzhanov (spelling) - random, quite strong GMs, but not actually world class. These tournaments are a pretty good equivalent of how SC2 tournaments are structured tbh, and the outcome is STILL really unpredictable, even though chess is a game of perfect information/much less (if any) luck.
BW in general had shorter series than SC2, a Bo7 more or less never happened. SC2 just does not reward mechanical skill and multitasking in the same way, the game does not allow for the same separation of good players and great players.
All ins and timings are incredibly strong, a player who does not want to play macro vs a stronger opponent does not have to, look at the proliferation of protoss players who are known for doing nothing but all-ins and timings. MC for a long time built his entire career on that kind of playstyle. That would never have worked in BW.
People will retort that SC2 and BW are different games, and that's fine, but if we are going to accept that SC2 is never going to live up to BW in certain respects, we also have to accept that some good things from BW are never going to exist in SC2. Consistency is one of these things. Running battles and truly game-changing micro are some other things.
There will never be an SC2 Bonjwa, the closest we've ever come and are ever likely to come is MVP, and that was back when terran had an enormous toolbox to use in every match-up.
On December 11 2013 23:35 Caladan wrote: That's like the 500th thread about this topic.
In Short: - The skill ceiling in Sc2 is too low, so on top level everyone can beat everyone. Victories are determined by daily form, small advantages and luck. - Lack of scouting possibilities in early game leads to more all-in-play and build order wins/losses. - Lack of defender high ground advantage leads to more static game play and one-battle-takes-it-all games. You win one battle and your opponent needs to gg because there are barely possibilities to defend with fewer units against far more units.
So, that's it. There cannot be something like a Bonjwa in SC2.
Except Taeja who won 5 tournaments this year and destroyed everyone's face in the last three tournaments he played in. And Jaedong who took 5 2nd places and 1 st place this year. Or MVP who was undisputed king of the world for quite some time.
People need to realize that even in BW these "bonjwas" had their ups and their downs.
I've enjoyed watching broodwar and I enjoy watching Hots. And if I take off the nostalgia googles I can clearly see that BW was "random" too. For example the oh soo dominant NaDa needed 4 YEARS to win his 3 OSL trophies. Was he consistent? yes! was he able to win every tournament he entered? no! When people think back to BW they just often seem to only see the "big picture". If you look back at the early stages of WoL, Mvp,Nestea and MC all have been very dominant but they also lost games. Mvp often got knocked out quite early in the GSL and suddenly next season he looked so dominant and made to the finals. In the big picture he is also one of the most consistent pro gamers ever but he still cannot win ever series.
Maybe it's just that the top koreans are just closer in skill that most people want to realise. How come we never see a random foreigner win a tournament? (or a foreigner at all...) How come one of these open online qualifiers for big tournaments are won by top pros 99% of the time? because the game is soo random? I don't think so. Top players are just much closer in skill than people want to admit because they want to cheer for this one hero no one can beat.
On December 11 2013 22:40 BrieFanFiction wrote: Look, let me bring some common sense into this thread. I have a 71% accuracy rating on Liquibets, and I am FAR from the best at picking winners. In fact when I started using Liquibet I would randomly pick broodwar players and even SC2 players I hadn't heard of, so nowadays my SC2 accuracy rating is probably closer to ~80%. 80% predictability is not low in my opinion (especially since I am not up on all the players quirks, like say Apollo is). We need to get some Liquibet masters in here to explain how SC2 winners are actually pretty predictable.
Have you ever asked yourself if the winners are hard for you to predict because you don't know enough about the players, game, and maps?
Who is the most accurate SC2 Liquibetter and what is their accuracy percentage? Because in my mind, that is a good way to determine how predictable this game is. I'll bet they're shooting 90%+
edit: And stop talking about always knowing who will win a tournament as if it would be a good thing.
I actually haven't found it difficult to predict winners at all. I was #1 for a good portion of this season (until I missed a week's worth of picks because I was traveling; i have around an 80% win percentage currently). I don't find it difficult at all to sort between the players. People have to remember when you're picking it's not just is this player better than this player -- it's is this player better than this player at this particular match up and is there any reason that this player is not going to perform up to expectations? You can look at a bunch of other factors too but I think there are diminishing returns. Because of the way matchups change, and because of the constant balance patches, it's amazing that there is as much consistency as there is but it's clearly there.
The fact that SC2 doesn't simply seed most tournaments based solely on past results or Elo contributes to randomness as well. It always seems like in WCS Korea one of the groups is a "group of death" and the strongest players are knocking each other out. If one player has suffered more than anyone from that it has to be Flash.
On December 11 2013 22:40 BrieFanFiction wrote: Look, let me bring some common sense into this thread. I have a 71% accuracy rating on Liquibets, and I am FAR from the best at picking winners. In fact when I started using Liquibet I would randomly pick broodwar players and even SC2 players I hadn't heard of, so nowadays my SC2 accuracy rating is probably closer to ~80%. 80% predictability is not low in my opinion (especially since I am not up on all the players quirks, like say Apollo is). We need to get some Liquibet masters in here to explain how SC2 winners are actually pretty predictable.
Have you ever asked yourself if the winners are hard for you to predict because you don't know enough about the players, game, and maps?
Who is the most accurate SC2 Liquibetter and what is their accuracy percentage? Because in my mind, that is a good way to determine how predictable this game is. I'll bet they're shooting 90%+
edit: And stop talking about always knowing who will win a tournament as if it would be a good thing.
I actually haven't found it difficult to predict winners at all. I was #1 for a good portion of this season (until I missed a week's worth of picks because I was traveling; i have around an 80% win percentage currently). I don't find it difficult at all to sort between the players. People have to remember when you're picking it's not just is this player better than this player -- it's is this player better than this player at this particular match up and is there any reason that this player is not going to perform up to expectations? You can look at a bunch of other factors too but I think there are diminishing returns. Because of the way matchups change, and because of the constant balance patches, it's amazing that there is as much consistency as there is but it's clearly there.
The fact that SC2 doesn't simply seed most tournaments based solely on past results or Elo contributes to randomness as well. It always seems like in WCS Korea one of the groups is a "group of death" and the strongest players are knocking each other out. If one player has suffered more than anyone from that it has to be Flash.
On December 12 2013 00:37 urboss wrote: I believe that this issue is quite important for any sport in general. If the results become random, people just stop caring.
The question is what there can be done about it.
I think the first step is making posts on TL. When doing that, it is of importance not to react to any counterarguments and facts disproving the statement.
A ton of players who won major tournaments this year were repeat winners or in JD's case very high placers (or he's a repeat winner, obviously, if you count BW). That speaks of consistency, at least among a group. Flash in BW never got that 4th OSL; even the GOAT had very stiff competition at the top.
On December 12 2013 00:37 urboss wrote: I believe that this issue is quite important for any sport in general. If the results become random, people just stop caring.
The question is what there can be done about it.
Nothing, because the results are not random. The better player wins on the give day. That's why the NFL has the phrase "Any given Sunday". Also people care more if there is a chance of an upset. No one likes knowing the outcome before hand.
In BW, players got to prepare for every match, basically. Every starleague, you prepared for your opponents and match-ups. You played at a familiar PC in the same place, very close to where you live.LANs make it much harder for the best players to consistently win. Excess travel, poor tournament conditions, and lack of practice all hamper the best players.
At the same time, I think Sc2 progresses too quickly. In BW, a more technically skilled player could suffer an early deficit, but storm back with better macro. In Sc2, there is no real difference between the macro abilities of MaNa and Rain. In BW, by.Sun would probably be beat MaNa to 150/200 every time. Micro is a more nuanced issue, but I think it's similarly a valid concern.
In Sc2 the reason why the results aren't completely random is that the top tier pros have an understanding of the game that few others have. TaeJa frequently makes all kinds of reads based on very little information. Top players can do that, lesser players can't.
On December 12 2013 00:37 urboss wrote: I believe that this issue is quite important for any sport in general. If the results become random, people just stop caring.
The question is what there can be done about it.
I think the first step is making posts on TL. When doing that, it is of importance not to react to any counterarguments and facts disproving the statement.
Also it is key I woke real vague statements with out proof like "when results are random people stop caring". Then make more vague statements. The key is to make sure you provide no solid position for people to argue against and prove zero evidence. Then you win every argument.
On December 12 2013 00:37 urboss wrote: I believe that this issue is quite important for any sport in general. If the results become random, people just stop caring.
The question is what there can be done about it.
I would say its completely opposite. If this same person always win, why would you even watch anymore?
If we take the last 10 terran premier tournament wins we have : Taeja x 5 Polt x 3 Bomber x 1 MMA x 1
Looks like the same terran are winning.
However if we take the last 10 protoss tournament wins we have : Rain herO Parting sOs Dear x 2 duckdeok StarDust x 2 (with Fragbite Masters) HerO
What does this mean? well for one, it means that 5 terran are always winning while the others don't, and protoss doesn't seem to be able to win on a regular basis (due to the randomness of PvP? :D)
You probably haven't read the op spoiler so I'll post it here again:
Here are the Ro8 players for the three WCS season finals of 2013:
Season 1 finals: Innovation sOs Soulkey Mvp Roro Alicia ForGG aLive
Season 2 finals: Bomber Jaedong Taeja First Scarlett Rain NaNiwa aLive
Season 3 finals: Dear Soulkey Maru Trap ByuL Oz MC MMA
The only two players that made it twice to the Ro8 are Soulkey and aLive. The rest is a mix of completely random players. I'm gonna be so bold and predict that we are gonna see 6-7 new names in the Ro8 season 1 of 2014.
On December 12 2013 00:54 urboss wrote: You probably haven't read the op spoiler so I'll post it here again:
Here are the Ro8 players for the three WCS season finals of 2013:
Season 1 finals: Innovation sOs Soulkey Mvp Roro Alicia ForGG aLive
Season 2 finals: Bomber Jaedong Taeja First Scarlett Rain NaNiwa aLive
Season 3 finals: Dear Soulkey Maru Trap ByuL Oz MC MMA
The only two players that made it twice to the Ro8 are Soulkey and aLive. The rest is a mix of completely random players. I'm gonna be so bold and predict that we are gonna see 6-7 new names in the Ro8 season 1 of 2014.
Can you see my point?
Please prove the results were random and not based on one player being better than the other. You keep claiming that the results are random, but provide nothing but a list of players that did well, which says nothing.
You probably haven't read the op spoiler so I'll post it here again:
Here are the Ro8 players for the three WCS season finals of 2013:
Season 1 finals: Innovation sOs Soulkey Mvp Roro Alicia ForGG aLive
Season 2 finals: Bomber Jaedong Taeja First Scarlett Rain NaNiwa aLive
Season 3 finals: Dear Soulkey Maru Trap ByuL Oz MC MMA
The only two players that made it twice to the Ro8 are Soulkey and aLive. The rest is a mix of completely random players. I'm gonna be so bold and predict that we are gonna see 6-7 new names in the Ro8 season 1 of 2014.
Can you see my point?
Is your point that aLive is really good and doesn't get enough credit? Because I totally feel you on that one.
The vast majority of answers on the first two pages plain explain why the edge (possible % win rates) of the players is relatively small and does not directly explain the "random results".
The "randomness" is mostly because the win rates of top players are a) relatively small (against other top players) b) they differ a lot due to different win rates against different races. a) makes the number of games in a best of ridiculously high to really determinate a "better player" b) introduces bracket luck simply in getting good match ups for you. Of course there are other way smaller factors (win rate deviation on multiple games and maps). The plain math is very simple and just the fact that aligulac has different elo ratings for different match ups makes it waaay better than pure elo. Seriously aligulac is so good in determinating the outcome of a game and it shows you pretty good how random results are. I would guess if you would just mindlessly take +ev bets (within a small threshold) based on aligulac on an online betting site you would make profit.
The first good post that touches more of that is from Fjodorov.
On December 12 2013 00:54 urboss wrote: You probably haven't read the op spoiler so I'll post it here again:
Here are the Ro8 players for the three WCS season finals of 2013:
Season 1 finals: Innovation sOs Soulkey Mvp Roro Alicia ForGG aLive
Season 2 finals: Bomber Jaedong Taeja First Scarlett Rain NaNiwa aLive
Season 3 finals: Dear Soulkey Maru Trap ByuL Oz MC MMA
The only two players that made it twice to the Ro8 are Soulkey and aLive. The rest is a mix of completely random players. I'm gonna be so bold and predict that we are gonna see 6-7 new names in the Ro8 season 1 of 2014.
Can you see my point?
The season finals are based on 3 groups of winners from 3 different regions. So there is much more variance than there would be if you just ran one tournament. If you put all those players in the same tournament and ran it three times, chances are the lists would be much closer.
Placing anything less than first in tournaments means you are out of form, a bad player etc. The SC2 community is extremely elitist, and you are only as good as your last tournament win. It doesn't help that in BW that you had players like Flash and Jaedong that were so far ahead of the curve, which you don't have in SC2.
Try and look at results in an unbiased way, and if the 'best player in the world' was eliminated early in a tourney, look at who knocked them out, and don't assume that they are out of touch or the game design is bad. Look at why they won certain tournaments, did they genuinely outplay everyone? Or were they simply ahead of the metagame?
Don't let yourself get swept up in the hype regarding volatility, and don't expect a player to win a tournament just because he won the last one you saw him in.
I think its mostly Artosis rooting for the players we want to see in the finals, and they are hit by the curse. On a more serious note, I think that having top 8s constantly changing is actually good, its showing that the skill of the players is not an absolute thing, there is no "best SC2 player" that dominates all tournaments and takes a really high share of yearly prize money, we had it in WoL, and I think HotS helped a lot of players advance, I mean, I never heard about Innovation before he destroyed everybody in HotS. So I think its a really positive thing to not have a dominating personality, its healthy for the competition. But still, its mostly Artosis.
On December 12 2013 01:16 HystericaLaughter wrote: Placing anything less than first in tournaments means you are out of form, a bad player etc. The SC2 community is extremely elitist, and you are only as good as your last tournament win. It doesn't help that in BW that you had players like Flash and Jaedong that were so far ahead of the curve, which you don't have in SC2.
Try and look at results in an unbiased way, and if the 'best player in the world' was eliminated early in a tourney, look at who knocked them out, and don't assume that they are out of touch or the game design is bad. Look at why they won certain tournaments, did they genuinely outplay everyone? Or were they simply ahead of the metagame?
Don't let yourself get swept up in the hype regarding volatility, and don't expect a player to win a tournament just because he won the last one you saw him in.
I already wrote off those two players if you read my earlier post with regards to BW.
Well we got Aligulac or this kind of tool to estimate the position of the player. This allow you give probabilities on results, as we had this nice thread here for WCS (though I don't think monte carlo was the best way to proceed). It is commonly used in other sports (baseball, soccer...).
A real estimation of the volatility of the game would be based on comparing this prediction to actual results. It is a statistical test as there is obviously a variance, so it is based on many, many, many matches.
It's useless to discuss this volatility before estimating it for real, mathematically.
On December 12 2013 01:23 TheFlexN wrote: I think its mostly Artosis rooting for the players we want to see in the finals, and they are hit by the curse. On a more serious note, I think that having top 8s constantly changing is actually good, its showing that the skill of the players is not an absolute thing, there is no "best SC2 player" that dominates all tournaments and takes a really high share of yearly prize money, we had it in WoL, and I think HotS helped a lot of players advance, I mean, I never heard about Innovation before he destroyed everybody in HotS. So I think its a really positive thing to not have a dominating personality, its healthy for the competition. But still, its mostly Artosis.
go watch some of the last WOL GSL. Innovation was showing a new level before HOTS.
Because most top players are around the same level, so most of them can take each other out any given day.
Something that actually means there is a good and healthy competition running. I will never understand this "bonjwa" thing. I hate spanish football because of the same teams winning everything while ravaging the others.
Yeah, I'm gonna go with that is isn't unpredictable. No foreigner wins, Soulkey, Jaedonng.. etc. And you example of non-favourite players winning is like, wut. All those guys have proven themself to be super good, so are we going to discredit the legitimacy because there are alot of good players? :o
On December 12 2013 01:23 TheFlexN wrote: I think its mostly Artosis rooting for the players we want to see in the finals, and they are hit by the curse. On a more serious note, I think that having top 8s constantly changing is actually good, its showing that the skill of the players is not an absolute thing, there is no "best SC2 player" that dominates all tournaments and takes a really high share of yearly prize money, we had it in WoL, and I think HotS helped a lot of players advance, I mean, I never heard about Innovation before he destroyed everybody in HotS. So I think its a really positive thing to not have a dominating personality, its healthy for the competition. But still, its mostly Artosis.
go watch some of the last WOL GSL. Innovation was showing a new level before HOTS.
So I probably missed those , I personally saw him for the 1st time in HotS.
they are not more unpredictable than in soccer. every very good player can beat each other, as in an other Sport daily Form plays a role as well. koreans take Most of the tourneys so skill plays enough of a role.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
The time it takes to maintain mechanics vs traveling and having a life make it really hard to sustain the top level. That's why we usually get players winning or placing top 3 in spurts.
For the last 5-6 tourneys that close this season the play was really good all around and made it hard to get a real champion. Well, at least for Koreans.
because sc2 is a extremely volatile game. it's a hard game, but not hard in the mechanics way, but hard in the unforgivingness of 1 small mistake or unalertness. players aren't able to showcase their skill in many cases.
and even if sc2 doesn't have many RNG factors other then lucky map spawns, it still has many build order wins which makes dota 2 (with many RNG mods like crit%, miss% etc.) seem like the better player/team would win on a more regular basis. just think about blind nexus first, blind hatch first, blind 6 pool, build X having an advantage over build Y.
that said, i think all those factors combined make sc2 unpredictable and not fun to play.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Golf has the exact same issue as SC2.
Tiger Woods is clearly the best player in the world. He rarely wins a tournament. Phil Mickelson clearly a top 5 golfer took forever to win just 1 major.
Do you really think the 1980 Team USA was better than the 1980 Team USSR in the Olympics?
Did Canada really prove it was 'the best hockey nation on earth' in 2010 because of 1 lousy over time goal where the referee interfered in the play?
Do we now redesign hockey and golf because the "truly best" does not win? Do we now question the validity of Golf and Hockey as sports?
95% of 6... makes so much sense xD Part of it is that the game is new and changing. It probably needs years of being solid (no major balance patch), in order for mastery to overcome trickery.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
On December 11 2013 23:04 Drake wrote: oh god ... a thread full of whiners and "blizzard so bad sc2 so bad" posts god save us all
for my part, i always see the same guys in top and simply winning if they hit their good matchup and loosing if they hit their bad matchup (like inno just lose if he hits a tvt ... simply as that)
also some of the players are extremly close what skill means, so its always 3-2 2-3 2-3 3-2 etc not meaning its to easy they simply very similar ...
as for alot wcs tournaments, the players who won the first really seems to take it easier the next tournaments, because of the points they already gained, while the others trained even harder ... which makes it pretty obvious ...
in the main tournaments of the year, we have what ? jaedong 5 times 2nd now winning ? taeja winning like so many of them ? i really see the same big names who train always on the top ...
the only difference to broodwar is, that there are simply so much more players in the pool of that caliber and we have not even reached the 3rd add on ... you guys EVER watched broodwar in the early years ? you act like we have every month another top20 and thats not the fact, and in broodwar the guys from 2002 was all retired or bad in 2005 ... and same for 2008 ... themarine or gorush was fast bad and then there was iloveoov and nada and later we had savior (aka idiot you throw your career away) and then jaedong and flash ... it wasnt always the same ...
AALSO we had alot t and z there and only 8 good protoss guys and they did not win much so even the win balance for races is better in sc2 ..
everything nowadays is so hyped about the past which WASNT always blue and clear ... and all the whines are just incredible hard to read every week again
i know some people having an 85+% accuracy for win betting in tournaments ... if its so unpredictable why can they ? because it simply isnt if you know more then the names and the last games ... you have to know more details, you cant predict soccer games just by knowing results too you need to know who is injured what form etc
On December 11 2013 22:44 Psychobabas wrote: - Is the skill level required for Starcraft 2 too low?
Yes, there is nothing that a top progamer can do that cant be done by a masters league player. Allins are also way too strong in this game.
The above just was unimaginable in Brood War.
oh thank god i take this bad post as example: like i ever saw a top grandmaster would ever lose in a tournament bo5 etc to a master ... it will happen like NEVER EVER ... the skill gap between a high master and a high grandmaster is so extremly high its like bronce vs diamond ...
and all ins make game fun and comes to alot good games and you tell me that wasnt possible in sc1 ? in broodwar ?
dude i was a B- in broodwar on iccup who only went b- by winning a god damn tournament (c+ average) and i did win clanwars vs A- and even i beat a god damn 73-5 A+ progamer in a god damn tournament on iccup ... by fuckn 4pooling him ... i did dt rush, dt sair rushs, offgate dragons, offgate zealots, and won SO many games on bwcl vs A- B+ by only cheesing ... sorry i even tell you that cheesing in broodwar was easier then it is in sc2, because when you did it right in broodwar there was NO coming back for the better player possible
... as i said, looking in the past and see the blue sky, not mentioning the bombers flying trough it
also in bw there was like a handfull of tournaments a year for the progamers and that was it ... and in proleagues they had nearly all 40-60% winratios which was not really predictable ... there are just 10 times as much tournaments now
edit: sry if i offend anyone with this long post i am just so tired of all the whine threads every week again and again
Read my post again please. I said there is nothing that SC2 progamers do that can't be done by a masters player. I never said anything about beating X and Y. There is no such thing here such as mutalisk micro, marine spread vs lurkers, reaver micro, defiler + dark swarm etc etc. It's all pretty much amove with one or two spells. But since you mention it, I would believe that a SC2 progamer can lose games easier to random allins by random players than Brood War progamers.
I love how Urboss responds to no criticism or counter arguments and just keeps posting numbers that "support" his point. Like posting cherry picked data is somehow a valid way to argue.
Once again, by his argument dota 2 has problems because Alliance and Navi don't gave 05% win rates at events.
On December 11 2013 23:04 Drake wrote: oh god ... a thread full of whiners and "blizzard so bad sc2 so bad" posts god save us all
for my part, i always see the same guys in top and simply winning if they hit their good matchup and loosing if they hit their bad matchup (like inno just lose if he hits a tvt ... simply as that)
also some of the players are extremly close what skill means, so its always 3-2 2-3 2-3 3-2 etc not meaning its to easy they simply very similar ...
as for alot wcs tournaments, the players who won the first really seems to take it easier the next tournaments, because of the points they already gained, while the others trained even harder ... which makes it pretty obvious ...
in the main tournaments of the year, we have what ? jaedong 5 times 2nd now winning ? taeja winning like so many of them ? i really see the same big names who train always on the top ...
the only difference to broodwar is, that there are simply so much more players in the pool of that caliber and we have not even reached the 3rd add on ... you guys EVER watched broodwar in the early years ? you act like we have every month another top20 and thats not the fact, and in broodwar the guys from 2002 was all retired or bad in 2005 ... and same for 2008 ... themarine or gorush was fast bad and then there was iloveoov and nada and later we had savior (aka idiot you throw your career away) and then jaedong and flash ... it wasnt always the same ...
AALSO we had alot t and z there and only 8 good protoss guys and they did not win much so even the win balance for races is better in sc2 ..
everything nowadays is so hyped about the past which WASNT always blue and clear ... and all the whines are just incredible hard to read every week again
i know some people having an 85+% accuracy for win betting in tournaments ... if its so unpredictable why can they ? because it simply isnt if you know more then the names and the last games ... you have to know more details, you cant predict soccer games just by knowing results too you need to know who is injured what form etc
On December 11 2013 22:44 Psychobabas wrote: - Is the skill level required for Starcraft 2 too low?
Yes, there is nothing that a top progamer can do that cant be done by a masters league player. Allins are also way too strong in this game.
The above just was unimaginable in Brood War.
oh thank god i take this bad post as example: like i ever saw a top grandmaster would ever lose in a tournament bo5 etc to a master ... it will happen like NEVER EVER ... the skill gap between a high master and a high grandmaster is so extremly high its like bronce vs diamond ...
and all ins make game fun and comes to alot good games and you tell me that wasnt possible in sc1 ? in broodwar ?
dude i was a B- in broodwar on iccup who only went b- by winning a god damn tournament (c+ average) and i did win clanwars vs A- and even i beat a god damn 73-5 A+ progamer in a god damn tournament on iccup ... by fuckn 4pooling him ... i did dt rush, dt sair rushs, offgate dragons, offgate zealots, and won SO many games on bwcl vs A- B+ by only cheesing ... sorry i even tell you that cheesing in broodwar was easier then it is in sc2, because when you did it right in broodwar there was NO coming back for the better player possible
... as i said, looking in the past and see the blue sky, not mentioning the bombers flying trough it
also in bw there was like a handfull of tournaments a year for the progamers and that was it ... and in proleagues they had nearly all 40-60% winratios which was not really predictable ... there are just 10 times as much tournaments now
edit: sry if i offend anyone with this long post i am just so tired of all the whine threads every week again and again
Read my post again please. I said there is nothing that SC2 progamers do that can't be done by a masters player. I never said anything about beating X and Y. There is no such thing here such as mutalisk micro, marine spread vs lurkers, reaver micro, defiler + dark swarm etc etc. It's all pretty much amove with one or two spells. But since you mention it, I would believe that a SC2 progamer can lose games easier to random allins by random players than Brood War progamers.
Decent players could do that stuff in bw as well. Just not as well. A masters player in sc2 has some of the skills of a pro but none of them are on the same level and he can't do as many at once.
On December 11 2013 23:35 Caladan wrote: That's like the 500th thread about this topic.
In Short: - The skill ceiling in Sc2 is too low, so on top level everyone can beat everyone. Victories are determined by daily form, small advantages and luck. - Lack of scouting possibilities in early game leads to more all-in-play and build order wins/losses. - Lack of defender high ground advantage leads to more static game play and one-battle-takes-it-all games. You win one battle and your opponent needs to gg because there are barely possibilities to defend with fewer units against far more units.
So, that's it. There cannot be something like a Bonjwa in SC2.
Except Taeja who won 5 tournaments this year and destroyed everyone's face in the last three tournaments he played in. And Jaedong who took 5 2nd places and 1 st place this year. Or MVP who was undisputed king of the world for quite some time.
People need to realize that even in BW these "bonjwas" had their ups and their downs.
So, why are you quoting me, when you disagree with the whole thread? You should rather quote OP. I'm not trying to prove OP's point (that should be obvious for everyone who watched both BW and SC2 for years) but rather trying to give an explanation for why is that.
Edit: Just to clarify: The thread is "Why are sc2 results so unpredicatable" but your post is "Are sc2 results really unpredictable?". So you should make a new thread for this, if you want to take a step back.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
urboss, is that per match win, or per game win?
The SC2 percentages are per game win from TLPD. Per match win might be a better predictor. Does anyone have that info?
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
urboss, is that per match win, or per game win?
The SC2 percentages are per game win from TLPD. Per match win might be a better predictor. Does anyone have that info?
Just to throw a couple of things to think about at you.
Let's say Djokovic won 100% of his matches by a score of 6-3 6-3 He would still only have a 66.7% game-win percentage. Kinda in the SC2 ballpark! Obviously that's pretty silly, but if you average it out, he probably actually wins less games than that (given he does lose, given he loses sets). If you look at points won in any single match, even in quite one-sided matches, 55-45% is really lopsided in a tennis match for points. 52-48% usually translates into a really convincing victory.
During the most recent Dreamhack, I believe it was mentioned (and not disputed?) that Life had not previously lost an offline BO5+ series in his career (of course he then lost to Taeja). So while Life may have a 60-70% game win ratio, he clearly has an extremely high set-winning ratio in BO5+ matches.
This all ties in to my original post about length of series as well.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Are you using their match win rates or their game win rates? I feel like match win rates would be more appropriate. Imagine if Tennis was played only to a single set. The game would be considerably more random and even small mistakes could cost you the game- or even something outside of your control, like a bad wind or the sun in your eyes. A single game of SC2 is like that as well; a moment of lag screw up your ling bling micro? Get a build order loss on Star Station? Wasn't watching your army and it got fungalled, so now you can only watch as it dies?
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
urboss, is that per match win, or per game win?
The SC2 percentages are per game win from TLPD. Per match win might be a better predictor. Does anyone have that info?
Just to throw a couple of things to think about at you.
Let's say Djokovic won 100% of his matches by a score of 6-3 6-3 He would still only have a 66.7% game-win percentage. Kinda in the SC2 ballpark! Obviously that's pretty silly, but if you average it out, he probably actually wins less games than that (given he does lose, given he loses sets). If you look at points won in any single match, even in quite one-sided matches, 55-45% is really lopsided in a tennis match for points. 52-48% usually translates into a really convincing victory.
During the most recent Dreamhack, I believe it was mentioned (and not disputed?) that Life had not previously lost an offline BO5+ series in his career (of course he then lost to Taeja). So while Life may have a 60-70% game win ratio, he clearly has an extremely high set-winning ratio in BO5+ matches.
This all ties in to my original post about length of series as well.
If you we want to compare SC2 and tennis then one game of SC2 equals one set in tennis (both are bo3, or bo5 mostly). Counting only sets, then Novak Djokovic's win percentage shrinks to 81.5%.
You are right, when we compare the matches it's not so clear anymore. It would be interesting to see some statistics on that.
One of the best first posts that I have read in a long time, very clean and pretty much spot on:
On December 11 2013 21:46 papaz wrote: My opinions:
- Depth of micro is not enough
- Whoever wins the first big fight tend to win the game - comebacks are virtually non existent
- Units die too fast so it doesn't matter if you are Flash/Jaedong/Soulkey. If you happen to not pay attention for a sec enough units can be killed so that you more or less already have lost
- Games reach max limits very fast. Macro is easy and not rewarding so players like Flash "can't outmacro" the opponent just as easy because the difference between the worst pro and best pro at macro isn't that big
So I guess it's a combination of not enough depth and the volalite units vs too much dps.
What is interesting to note is that Magnus Carlsen's win percentage for 2012 was only 54.1%. Still, he did win almost every tournament he entered.
The reason for this is that the tournament structure in chess is different than the one for SC2.
In chess, they have one giant group stage and everyone plays against everyone else. In the end, the one with the most points wins the tournament. SC2 has a single elimination format after an early group stage.
What would you think of the idea of having round-robin tournaments in SC2?
This would ascertain that the best player also wins the most tournaments.
On December 12 2013 03:30 Big J wrote: Point 1: It's not more unpredictable than other sports in general. Point 2: Kespa switch shook up 2013. Point 3: HotS shook up 2013.
Reading this post made me realize how far we've come in a year, so awesome. 2014 is hopefully going to be super stable.
On December 12 2013 03:31 urboss wrote: What is interesting to note is that Magnus Carlsen's win percentage for 2012 was only 54.1%. Still, he did win almost every tournament he entered.
The reason for this is that the tournament structure in chess is different than the one for SC2.
In chess, they have one giant group stage and everyone plays against everyone else. In the end, the one with the most points wins the tournament. SC2 has a single elimination format after an early group stage.
What would you think of the idea of having round-robin tournaments in SC2?
This would ascertain that the best player also wins the most tournaments.
The difference between chess and sc2 matches is that there are a lot of ties in chess, so 54% win rate is actually really really good if you tie about 1/3 of your games.
Games can be build-order wins because scouting is too ineffective. That's one.
Games can be decided by instant, terrible, terrible damage like single baneling hits. That's two. (See Jaedong vs Scarlett for some great examples, ASUS ROG)
Games can be decided by weird metagame stuff, again a scouting issue mostly, but also strategic. That's three.
...
The only really really consistent players are Jaedong (6 top-2 finishes in a year) and Soulkey.
On December 12 2013 03:31 urboss wrote: What is interesting to note is that Magnus Carlsen's win percentage for 2012 was only 54.1%. Still, he did win almost every tournament he entered.
The reason for this is that the tournament structure in chess is different than the one for SC2.
In chess, they have one giant group stage and everyone plays against everyone else. In the end, the one with the most points wins the tournament. SC2 has a single elimination format after an early group stage.
What would you think of the idea of having round-robin tournaments in SC2?
This would ascertain that the best player also wins the most tournaments.
The difference between chess and sc2 matches is that there are a lot of ties in chess, so 54% win rate is actually really really good if you tie about 1/3 of your games.
The 54% win rate of Magnus Carlsen is calculated without the ties: 39 wins 33 losses
On December 12 2013 03:31 urboss wrote: What is interesting to note is that Magnus Carlsen's win percentage for 2012 was only 54.1%. Still, he did win almost every tournament he entered.
The reason for this is that the tournament structure in chess is different than the one for SC2.
In chess, they have one giant group stage and everyone plays against everyone else. In the end, the one with the most points wins the tournament. SC2 has a single elimination format after an early group stage.
What would you think of the idea of having round-robin tournaments in SC2?
This would ascertain that the best player also wins the most tournaments.
The difference between chess and sc2 matches is that there are a lot of ties in chess, so 54% win rate is actually really really good if you tie about 1/3 of your games.
The 54% win rate of Magnus Carlsen is calculated without the ties: 39 wins 33 losses
? Something is wrong, there's no way Carlsen's record is 39-33. Like, not a chance. My e-money says you're misreading some stat or something :/
Don't see why you'd make a set of tennis into a game of SC2 either, that's a funny analogy. A set of tennis contains a further subset of games, which contains a further subset of points, whereas an SC2 game has no such breakdown of competition. (ergo, once you win a point in a game of tennis, you have a new one, you start over)
Seems pretty obvious to me that a BO5 tennis match is WAY more rigorous than a BO5 SC2 match.
If we take tennis from the point of view of the "favourite" - If you fuck up once, you lose a point. Fuck up a few times and you lose a game. You have to fuck up a load of times to lose a set, and then you have to repeat that massive fuckup repeatedly to actually lose a match.
You only have to fuck up a few times in a BO5 SC2 series and you've lost the whole match. The margin for error is much much lower...
On December 12 2013 03:31 urboss wrote: What is interesting to note is that Magnus Carlsen's win percentage for 2012 was only 54.1%. Still, he did win almost every tournament he entered.
The reason for this is that the tournament structure in chess is different than the one for SC2.
In chess, they have one giant group stage and everyone plays against everyone else. In the end, the one with the most points wins the tournament. SC2 has a single elimination format after an early group stage.
What would you think of the idea of having round-robin tournaments in SC2?
This would ascertain that the best player also wins the most tournaments.
The difference between chess and sc2 matches is that there are a lot of ties in chess, so 54% win rate is actually really really good if you tie about 1/3 of your games.
The 54% win rate of Magnus Carlsen is calculated without the ties: 39 wins 33 losses
? Something is wrong, there's no way Carlsen's record is 39-33. Like, not a chance. My e-money says you're misreading some stat or something :/
Don't see why you'd make a set of tennis into a game of SC2 either, that's a funny analogy. A set of tennis contains a further subset of games, which contains a further subset of points, whereas an SC2 game has no such breakdown of competition. (ergo, once you win a point in a game of tennis, you have a new one, you start over)
Seems pretty obvious to me that a BO5 tennis match is WAY more rigorous than a BO5 SC2 match.
If we take tennis from the point of view of the "favourite" - If you fuck up once, you lose a point. Fuck up a few times and you lose a game. You have to fuck up a load of times to lose a set, and then you have to repeat that massive fuckup repeatedly to actually lose a match.
You only have to fuck up a few times in a BO5 SC2 series and you've lost the whole match. The margin for error is much much lower...
yeah, hell, he went 4-0-7 or something in the world championship, does that mean he got in with a 35-33 record?
I'd say it's because of cheese. It can end the game in the first five minutes. In a game like tennis, we can safely bet that Djokovic will win because some noob can't beat him by winning the first point.
Look at Djokovic's record for instance. In 2013 he went 24 - 3 (88.89%) in head to head match. But each head to head consists of sets which he went 75 - 19 (79.79%), and each set consists of games which he went 543 - 360 (60.13%). This is even before considering each points in any given game.
So you see, Taeja is much more dominant in SC2 than Djokovic is in tennis.
Edit: For the sake of an argument, one SC2 game most closely resembles one point in tennis game, imo.
On December 12 2013 03:31 urboss wrote: What is interesting to note is that Magnus Carlsen's win percentage for 2012 was only 54.1%. Still, he did win almost every tournament he entered.
The reason for this is that the tournament structure in chess is different than the one for SC2.
In chess, they have one giant group stage and everyone plays against everyone else. In the end, the one with the most points wins the tournament. SC2 has a single elimination format after an early group stage.
What would you think of the idea of having round-robin tournaments in SC2?
This would ascertain that the best player also wins the most tournaments.
The difference between chess and sc2 matches is that there are a lot of ties in chess, so 54% win rate is actually really really good if you tie about 1/3 of your games.
The 54% win rate of Magnus Carlsen is calculated without the ties: 39 wins 33 losses
? Something is wrong, there's no way Carlsen's record is 39-33. Like, not a chance. My e-money says you're misreading some stat or something :/
Don't see why you'd make a set of tennis into a game of SC2 either, that's a funny analogy. A set of tennis contains a further subset of games, which contains a further subset of points, whereas an SC2 game has no such breakdown of competition. (ergo, once you win a point in a game of tennis, you have a new one, you start over)
Seems pretty obvious to me that a BO5 tennis match is WAY more rigorous than a BO5 SC2 match.
If we take tennis from the point of view of the "favourite" - If you fuck up once, you lose a point. Fuck up a few times and you lose a game. You have to fuck up a load of times to lose a set, and then you have to repeat that massive fuckup repeatedly to actually lose a match.
You only have to fuck up a few times in a BO5 SC2 series and you've lost the whole match. The margin for error is much much lower...
You are right, the 54% win rate of Magnus Carlsen includes rapid and blitz games. For classical games his win rate is 57.8%.
For statistic's sake you need to take the common divisor, i.e. in a bo5 one match equals 3 won SC2 games or 3 won tennis sets.
On December 11 2013 21:47 marvellosity wrote: You'll probably get a load of different responses about the nature of the game, but in part it's simply because series are so short. BO3s and BO5s are really incredibly volatile things.
It's kinda like playing only one set in tennis.
In chess, you get tournaments where it's all play all (usually) so everyone has the whole tournament to perform. In FIDE's short knockout world championships in the 90s and 2000s, there were a lot of "random" chess 'world champions' - Khalifman, Ponamariov, Khazimdzhanov (spelling) - random, quite strong GMs, but not actually world class. These tournaments are a pretty good equivalent of how SC2 tournaments are structured tbh, and the outcome is STILL really unpredictable, even though chess is a game of perfect information/much less (if any) luck.
Yeah, this is probably the best answer. Again, it would be interesting to have SC2 round robin tournaments to counteract this randomness. The question is, does anyone wanna watch that?
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
EDIT - Also,
In other major sports, all the top pros travel to every event. In e-Sports this isn't always the case as budgets are a lot more limited. So sometimes this is a factor too. Not everyone is always competing with each other because of the WCS system as well.
If we had just 5 tournaments a year that every single pro went to, and the entrants were seeded based on perceived skill ahead of time, I think you'd find a lot more consistency in the top 3-4 finishers.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Because we like our finals sucking for the most part, so when we watch one that is good we call it the match up of the century.
On a more serious note, it is because it´s just unfair (since there is no system on sc2 to handle this seeding).
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Because there is no global regulating organization that assigns fair points to all events. And all events are not completely open to every single player (mainly because of travel costs).
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Well, with WCS in place, I think we could move in a direction to do that. The problem is in order to have seeding you need to have universally accepted standards. So prior to WCS and WCS points you couldn't really do it.
Now with most "major" events having WCS pts attributed to them and Blizzard keeping tally of everyone's WCS points, you could seed people.
Tennis has been around forever and most tournaments played are on the ATP World Tour standard.. so its much easier.
EDIT - Ninja'd by the guy before me..
Also because there is more money in other sports its much easier to make sure everyone important goes to every event. But even some top StarCraft players can not make it to certain events because of costs. SO i think there is a fear that if you seed you're unfairly giving points to players whose teams can afford to send them everyone (like Jaedong, for example).
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
You could do it by WCS points, the same way they did it at the global finals at Blizzcon. But for every tournament.
So for example if Naniwa has to play Soulkey every time in the first round, he doesn't go as far on average vs. if he had to play someone like Alive or Revival.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Well, with WCS in place, I think we could move in a direction to do that. The problem is in order to have seeding you need to have universally accepted standards. So prior to WCS and WCS points you couldn't really do it.
Now with most "major" events having WCS pts attributed to them and Blizzard keeping tally of everyone's WCS points, you could seed people.
Tennis has been around forever and most tournaments played are on the ATP World Tour standard.. so its much easier.
EDIT - Ninja'd by the guy before me..
Also because there is more money in other sports its much easier to make sure everyone important goes to every event. But even some top StarCraft players can not make it to certain events because of costs. SO i think there is a fear that if you seed you're unfairly giving points to players whose teams can afford to send them everyone (like Jaedong, for example).
Seeds were handed out at Blizzcon, and I believe 6 out of the 8 higher seeded players won their initial matches.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
You could do it by WCS points, the same way they did it at the global finals at Blizzcon. But for every tournament.
So for example if Naniwa has to play Soulkey every time in the first round, he doesn't go as far on average vs. if he had to play someone like Alive or Revival.
The issue with seeding by WCS points is that higher seeded players would, on average, take all the top spots since they will have an easier time reaching the elimination stages. I'm not a fan of WCS seeding in tournaments like Dreamhack because to me those are the tournaments that give those eliminated from WCS second chances when the WCS seasons are still ongoing. Given the easier paths to those already in prime position to reach the Global Finals would make it even harder to reach the Global Finals from non-WCS tournaments, and I don't think that's the point.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Well, with WCS in place, I think we could move in a direction to do that. The problem is in order to have seeding you need to have universally accepted standards. So prior to WCS and WCS points you couldn't really do it.
Now with most "major" events having WCS pts attributed to them and Blizzard keeping tally of everyone's WCS points, you could seed people.
Tennis has been around forever and most tournaments played are on the ATP World Tour standard.. so its much easier.
EDIT - Ninja'd by the guy before me..
Also because there is more money in other sports its much easier to make sure everyone important goes to every event. But even some top StarCraft players can not make it to certain events because of costs. SO i think there is a fear that if you seed you're unfairly giving points to players whose teams can afford to send them everyone (like Jaedong, for example).
Seeds were handed out at Blizzcon, and I believe 6 out of the 8 higher seeded players won their initial matches.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
You could do it by WCS points, the same way they did it at the global finals at Blizzcon. But for every tournament.
So for example if Naniwa has to play Soulkey every time in the first round, he doesn't go as far on average vs. if he had to play someone like Alive or Revival.
The issue with seeding by WCS points is that higher seeded players would, on average, take all the top spots since they will have an easier time reaching the elimination stages. I'm not a fan of WCS seeding in tournaments like Dreamhack because to me those are the tournaments that give those eliminated from WCS second chances when the WCS seasons are still ongoing. Given the easier paths to those already in prime position to reach the Global Finals would make it even harder to reach the Global Finals from non-WCS tournaments, and I don't think that's the point.
Well, I'm not saying it's a fair and all around better way to run a tournament.
I'm just saying that it will yield much more consistent results such as the ones seen in other sports.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Well, with WCS in place, I think we could move in a direction to do that. The problem is in order to have seeding you need to have universally accepted standards. So prior to WCS and WCS points you couldn't really do it.
Now with most "major" events having WCS pts attributed to them and Blizzard keeping tally of everyone's WCS points, you could seed people.
Tennis has been around forever and most tournaments played are on the ATP World Tour standard.. so its much easier.
EDIT - Ninja'd by the guy before me..
Also because there is more money in other sports its much easier to make sure everyone important goes to every event. But even some top StarCraft players can not make it to certain events because of costs. SO i think there is a fear that if you seed you're unfairly giving points to players whose teams can afford to send them everyone (like Jaedong, for example).
Seeds were handed out at Blizzcon, and I believe 6 out of the 8 higher seeded players won their initial matches.
On December 12 2013 04:14 DinoMight wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:12 Zealously wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:06 urboss wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:04 DinoMight wrote:
On December 12 2013 02:21 urboss wrote: Just to put it into perspective:
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
You could do it by WCS points, the same way they did it at the global finals at Blizzcon. But for every tournament.
So for example if Naniwa has to play Soulkey every time in the first round, he doesn't go as far on average vs. if he had to play someone like Alive or Revival.
The issue with seeding by WCS points is that higher seeded players would, on average, take all the top spots since they will have an easier time reaching the elimination stages. I'm not a fan of WCS seeding in tournaments like Dreamhack because to me those are the tournaments that give those eliminated from WCS second chances when the WCS seasons are still ongoing. Given the easier paths to those already in prime position to reach the Global Finals would make it even harder to reach the Global Finals from non-WCS tournaments, and I don't think that's the point.
Well, I'm not saying it's a fair and all around better way to run a tournament.
I'm just saying that it will yield much more consistent results such as the ones seen in other sports.
Well, yes, but I just don't think we should value artificially created consistency (and I think it's been established that SC2 actually isn't that volatile if you take a good look at it) that highly.
There is volatility in the game sure but I think it mostly has to do with a constantly changing metagame that gets patched as soon as its starting to settle a little bit. You can still see the better player having more tournament wins and win rates anyway. You just can't look at single tourmament but instead have to look at the bigger picture right now.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Well, with WCS in place, I think we could move in a direction to do that. The problem is in order to have seeding you need to have universally accepted standards. So prior to WCS and WCS points you couldn't really do it.
Now with most "major" events having WCS pts attributed to them and Blizzard keeping tally of everyone's WCS points, you could seed people.
Tennis has been around forever and most tournaments played are on the ATP World Tour standard.. so its much easier.
EDIT - Ninja'd by the guy before me..
Also because there is more money in other sports its much easier to make sure everyone important goes to every event. But even some top StarCraft players can not make it to certain events because of costs. SO i think there is a fear that if you seed you're unfairly giving points to players whose teams can afford to send them everyone (like Jaedong, for example).
Seeds were handed out at Blizzcon, and I believe 6 out of the 8 higher seeded players won their initial matches.
On December 12 2013 04:14 DinoMight wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:12 Zealously wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:06 urboss wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:04 DinoMight wrote:
On December 12 2013 02:21 urboss wrote: Just to put it into perspective:
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
You could do it by WCS points, the same way they did it at the global finals at Blizzcon. But for every tournament.
So for example if Naniwa has to play Soulkey every time in the first round, he doesn't go as far on average vs. if he had to play someone like Alive or Revival.
The issue with seeding by WCS points is that higher seeded players would, on average, take all the top spots since they will have an easier time reaching the elimination stages. I'm not a fan of WCS seeding in tournaments like Dreamhack because to me those are the tournaments that give those eliminated from WCS second chances when the WCS seasons are still ongoing. Given the easier paths to those already in prime position to reach the Global Finals would make it even harder to reach the Global Finals from non-WCS tournaments, and I don't think that's the point.
Well, I'm not saying it's a fair and all around better way to run a tournament.
I'm just saying that it will yield much more consistent results such as the ones seen in other sports.
Well, yes, but I just don't think we should value artificially created consistency (and I think it's been established that SC2 actually isn't that volatile if you take a good look at it) that highly.
I agree with you. I don't think there NEEDS to be consistency. Just pointing out why it's different from other sports.
Besides, I think it's pretty easy to tell who the top few players are anyway...
Soulkey, Jaedong, Taeja, Innovation, Maru, sOs, Dear are showing up at the top consistently at every event they attend.
Top 2 foreigners are obviously Scarlett and Naniwa (not in any particular order).
But it's not that different from other sports. Golf has huge variance and team sports don't have the same champion every season. Or even the same teams in the play offs every season. Even dota 2 has good variance in who wins.
If there is going to be a constant champion, I want it to be because thy are just that good, rather them because the league favors last seasons champions.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
Well, with WCS in place, I think we could move in a direction to do that. The problem is in order to have seeding you need to have universally accepted standards. So prior to WCS and WCS points you couldn't really do it.
Now with most "major" events having WCS pts attributed to them and Blizzard keeping tally of everyone's WCS points, you could seed people.
Tennis has been around forever and most tournaments played are on the ATP World Tour standard.. so its much easier.
EDIT - Ninja'd by the guy before me..
Also because there is more money in other sports its much easier to make sure everyone important goes to every event. But even some top StarCraft players can not make it to certain events because of costs. SO i think there is a fear that if you seed you're unfairly giving points to players whose teams can afford to send them everyone (like Jaedong, for example).
Seeds were handed out at Blizzcon, and I believe 6 out of the 8 higher seeded players won their initial matches.
On December 12 2013 04:14 DinoMight wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:12 Zealously wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:06 urboss wrote:
On December 12 2013 04:04 DinoMight wrote:
On December 12 2013 02:21 urboss wrote: Just to put it into perspective:
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
You could do it by WCS points, the same way they did it at the global finals at Blizzcon. But for every tournament.
So for example if Naniwa has to play Soulkey every time in the first round, he doesn't go as far on average vs. if he had to play someone like Alive or Revival.
The issue with seeding by WCS points is that higher seeded players would, on average, take all the top spots since they will have an easier time reaching the elimination stages. I'm not a fan of WCS seeding in tournaments like Dreamhack because to me those are the tournaments that give those eliminated from WCS second chances when the WCS seasons are still ongoing. Given the easier paths to those already in prime position to reach the Global Finals would make it even harder to reach the Global Finals from non-WCS tournaments, and I don't think that's the point.
Well, I'm not saying it's a fair and all around better way to run a tournament.
I'm just saying that it will yield much more consistent results such as the ones seen in other sports.
Well, yes, but I just don't think we should value artificially created consistency (and I think it's been established that SC2 actually isn't that volatile if you take a good look at it) that highly.
Fully agree with that. In particular, when we take the GSL as an example, who are the guys that made the finals: 2011-2012 - the first and second generation of topplayers (Mvp, Nestea, Mvp, DRG, MMA) - the usual suspects of consistent players when they had a good run (e.g Genius, July, Squirtle, Leenock) 2012-2013 - some from the 2011-2012 section - young upcomers when they had their breakthroughs (e.g. Life, Maru, Dear) - the new Kespa elite (INnoVation, Soulkey, Rain...)
apart from that, how many real upsets have there been? Players with only one strong performance. Jjakji, Seed, Sniper. And even of those you could discuss Jjakji and to a certain degree Seed.
First of all, e-sport and sport can't be compared.
That being said, you have to look not only on the sc2 side. You take for example Novak Djokovic. Yes, there's many surfaces (clay, grass, hard, indoor) many styles (lefthanded, kick, slice, volley...) but it's not the entire story.
With his impressiv win ratio, Novak is still "only" world number 2.
In tournaments, tennismen are protected by their rank. It means that Novak will NEVER play a top 4 player before the semi-final. It's like saying that soulkey can't meet dear before the final in any tournament and get some easy foreigners for start If you look more into it, you will see that Novak, very often, starts badly a tournament and plays the final at far higher level. This sport is taking into consideration the adaptation time of a player who travel and have to adapt to the tournament. There's also at least one night between two matches, this helps to prepare.
You see, you can't compare things but you can improve one by knowing the other...
Ex: Houston Texans this year were starting out as favorites for making it deep into the playoffs. Now they are 2-11.
EDIT: The fact that people like soulkey, JD, innovation and mvp exist basically rules out that SC2 isn't consistent. You can't have 5 2nd place finishes and a win under your belt and say the game is not consistent.
On December 12 2013 04:55 The_Templar wrote: I'm just wondering, what is the OP's intention of putting all the reasons in the OP? Some of them contradict others
It is an unbiased collection of all the answers so far. This way, everyone can form his opinion at a glance and avoids posting duplicates.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
By having a reliable world ranking. Like in every other individual sport.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
By having a reliable world ranking. Like in every other individual sport.
It's hard to create a reliable world ranking with a good point system when tournament attendance isn't as fixed as it is in other individual sports. Should Dreamhack Winter and IEM New York award an equal amount of points toward seeding? If not, how big should the difference be? How do we decide which tournaments are worth X points when sometimes there won't be as many good players as there were on another tournament in the same tournament circuit. Like, should DH: Valencia and DH: Bucharest award the same amount of points, even if one only has three elite players while the other has ten? Although WCS is a step on the way toward a more unified system, we're still far away from a solid way to determine the significance of X event vs Y event, and no ranking can be even nearly as reliable as the one you're asking for until that's in place. A major problem here is that it isn't always a guarantee that elite players will attend your tournament. Look at IEM Singapore, for example.
On December 12 2013 05:06 MCXD wrote: The game isn't as "inconsistent" as some people think it is.
People try way too hard to find more excuses to hate SC2.
Pretty much.
"Oh we have a different champion again? INCONSISTENT GAME!" but lets completely ignore the fact that they have placed in the top 8 for seasons in a row. Lets ignore that the nestea award exists (top 32 in the world [basically] for 10 seasons in a row? How much more consistent can you get?)
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
By having a reliable world ranking. Like in every other individual sport.
It's hard to create a reliable world ranking with a good point system when tournament attendance isn't as fixed as it is in other individual sports. Should Dreamhack Winter and IEM New York award an equal amount of points toward seeding? If not, how big should the difference be? How do we decide which tournaments are worth X points when sometimes there won't be as many good players as there were on another tournament in the same tournament circuit. Like, should DH: Valencia and DH: Bucharest award the same amount of points, even if one only has three elite players while the other has ten? Although WCS is a step on the way toward a more unified system, we're still far away from a solid way to determine the significance of X event vs Y event, and no ranking can be even nearly as reliable as the one you're asking for until that's in place. A major problem here is that it isn't always a guarantee that elite players will attend your tournament. Look at IEM Singapore, for example.
You could make the point allocation dynamic: The number of points a tournament awards depends on the top-level players that are actually attending. That means, if there are more top level players at Dreamhack, then Dreamhack will award more points than IEM and the other way around.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
By having a reliable world ranking. Like in every other individual sport.
It's hard to create a reliable world ranking with a good point system when tournament attendance isn't as fixed as it is in other individual sports. Should Dreamhack Winter and IEM New York award an equal amount of points toward seeding? If not, how big should the difference be? How do we decide which tournaments are worth X points when sometimes there won't be as many good players as there were on another tournament in the same tournament circuit. Like, should DH: Valencia and DH: Bucharest award the same amount of points, even if one only has three elite players while the other has ten? Although WCS is a step on the way toward a more unified system, we're still far away from a solid way to determine the significance of X event vs Y event, and no ranking can be even nearly as reliable as the one you're asking for until that's in place. A major problem here is that it isn't always a guarantee that elite players will attend your tournament. Look at IEM Singapore, for example.
You could make the point allocation dynamic: The number of points a tournament awards depends on the top-level players that are actually attending. That means, if there are more top level players at Dreamhack, then Dreamhack will award more points than IEM and the other way around.
Which naturally raises another annoying question: how do we define "top player"? If we were to define it as "top 16 WCS point earners", there are a few issues that come with that as well. Of course, even if we were to adapt Aligulac-based seeding or whatever, it would reduce the the chances players have at making an underdog run and, however much the community complains about inconsistency and volatility, those are always appreciated. Would you be in favor of essentially killing of the chances of any player outside the top earners in order to create a more consistent format where players who win, win more? While it would doubtlessly bring more consistency, I think it sounds beyond horrible.
Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
So you don't know SC2 as well as you knew BW, therefore game design and balance are to blame?
Heart of the Swarm has been out for less than a year compared to Brood War, which has been out for like 14 or 15 years and chess which has been around for like 1000 years. Let's at least wait a year or two until we start analyzing trends in tournament winners (besides racial imbalance, obviously).
i'd argue boxing is an extremely bad example, because opponents are chosen in a special kind of way. barely ever do "the top2 fighters" meet each other.
look at soccer for example. its unpredictability is similar to SC2. same with sc:bw.
ps: sad thing if you guys argued 9 pages about SC2 and its mechanics while everyone overlooked this truth. look at your sad bias
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
By having a reliable world ranking. Like in every other individual sport.
It's hard to create a reliable world ranking with a good point system when tournament attendance isn't as fixed as it is in other individual sports. Should Dreamhack Winter and IEM New York award an equal amount of points toward seeding? If not, how big should the difference be? How do we decide which tournaments are worth X points when sometimes there won't be as many good players as there were on another tournament in the same tournament circuit. Like, should DH: Valencia and DH: Bucharest award the same amount of points, even if one only has three elite players while the other has ten? Although WCS is a step on the way toward a more unified system, we're still far away from a solid way to determine the significance of X event vs Y event, and no ranking can be even nearly as reliable as the one you're asking for until that's in place. A major problem here is that it isn't always a guarantee that elite players will attend your tournament. Look at IEM Singapore, for example.
You could make the point allocation dynamic: The number of points a tournament awards depends on the top-level players that are actually attending. That means, if there are more top level players at Dreamhack, then Dreamhack will award more points than IEM and the other way around.
Which naturally raises another annoying question: how do we define "top player"? If we were to define it as "top 16 WCS point earners", there are a few issues that come with that as well. Of course, even if we were to adapt Aligulac-based seeding or whatever, it would reduce the the chances players have at making an underdog run and, however much the community complains about inconsistency and volatility, those are always appreciated. Would you be in favor of essentially killing of the chances of any player outside the top earners in order to create a more consistent format where players who win, win more? While it would doubtlessly bring more consistency, I think it sounds beyond horrible.
I could imagine the following system: Players get seeded similar to the current GSL format, where previous Ro8 finalists are getting an advantage. Except that instead of previous finalists we are seeding based on a worldwide Elo ranking system. The tournament itself is a round-robin format where everyone plays everyone else. This would definitely decrease the variance while outsiders would still have a reliable chance to make it.
id say just because of the general way the game plays and he fact that games can be incredibly different based on whether a player all ins or not, what style they play, the map, etc. Plus 1 mistake completely can cause you to loose. in tennis every game is pretty much the same and one mistake just means you lose a point.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
SC2 is so inconsistent that, say, Asha finished top 50 for three liquidbet seasons straight even after he switched to Dota 2?
For the Korean scene everyone plays on barcodes and Code A is not broadcast, so it's possible to not hear about a player for 3-4 months and then have them own everyone, and yes I'm referring to Rain in the Hot6 cup.
The foreign scene is pretty predictable, since most big names stream and everything is broadcast.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
I blame David Kim and Dustin Browder for my lack of liquibet wins as well.
Honestly, I've had little problems with predicting outcomes in tournaments. Add in potential Artosis Curse situations and it becomes absurdly easy sometimes..
Oh my god I rarely say this but this really is just an excuse to "remake the game," sort of thread. Thinking about it, have you ever even considered:
1. That the tournament structure of SC2 makes it hard for players to maintain consistent long term results; 2. That the kind of player capable of DOMINATING the scene really is THAT RARE?
Seriously, holy shit.
Another thing I would also agree with is yes, access to shittons of competitive VODs does make a progamer's builds less secure. Of course this should be offset by mechanical difficulty, but with some races or strategies this is not always the case...
- NVM, OP is just compiling what bunches of people are saying, lol. Still a bit sad, though -_-.
I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
Flash actually has a retarded 72% (457-180) CAREER win rate so I don't even dare to guess his win rate when he was the most dominant but I get your point and agree with you. Flash is the exception.
Most top level SC2 players have win percentages between 60 and 70 %. If all have more or less the same win ratio then the results will be random when they play each other. There is no one player that is standing out. I guess Innovation came closest to that before the patch.
Guys, very important.
In other sports, namely Tennis, there is SEEDING. Meaning the best players play against the worst players in the first few rounds of a bracket.
In StarCraft, there is no seeding. So we frequently end up with "groups of death" (Taeja, Innovation, sOs ForGG in one group at DH Winter, for example).
If we had seeding, more of the best players would advance further in each tournament, giving them a higher chance of winning it all in the end.
In Tennis, The Joker rarely has to play anyone good until the quarter finals at least. In StarCraft, it's not uncommon for top players at a tournament to end up in the group stage together and eliminate each other early, freeing up spots for other players to take.
Interesting point! The next question would be: Why is there no seeding?
How would you decide seeding when tournaments are considered equally important? Arbitrarly?
By having a reliable world ranking. Like in every other individual sport.
It's hard to create a reliable world ranking with a good point system when tournament attendance isn't as fixed as it is in other individual sports. Should Dreamhack Winter and IEM New York award an equal amount of points toward seeding? If not, how big should the difference be? How do we decide which tournaments are worth X points when sometimes there won't be as many good players as there were on another tournament in the same tournament circuit. Like, should DH: Valencia and DH: Bucharest award the same amount of points, even if one only has three elite players while the other has ten? Although WCS is a step on the way toward a more unified system, we're still far away from a solid way to determine the significance of X event vs Y event, and no ranking can be even nearly as reliable as the one you're asking for until that's in place. A major problem here is that it isn't always a guarantee that elite players will attend your tournament. Look at IEM Singapore, for example.
You could make the point allocation dynamic: The number of points a tournament awards depends on the top-level players that are actually attending. That means, if there are more top level players at Dreamhack, then Dreamhack will award more points than IEM and the other way around.
Which naturally raises another annoying question: how do we define "top player"? If we were to define it as "top 16 WCS point earners", there are a few issues that come with that as well. Of course, even if we were to adapt Aligulac-based seeding or whatever, it would reduce the the chances players have at making an underdog run and, however much the community complains about inconsistency and volatility, those are always appreciated. Would you be in favor of essentially killing of the chances of any player outside the top earners in order to create a more consistent format where players who win, win more? While it would doubtlessly bring more consistency, I think it sounds beyond horrible.
I'll one up you by adding what people list as majors and premier tournaments. Some things just need to be written in stone.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
I've gotten top 25 liquibet in BW the past 2 years and I haven't watched BW in like 3 years hehehe... I do miss it though
Though I would say a lot of the inconsistency seasonally is just that the game is patched far more frequently and that will surely settle a few years into LOTV.
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
Partings Winrate is so high because he coinflips. When I am struggling with a matchup, I try to learn off the best. For Pvp I studied Parting because of his win/ratio and I see that he favors coinflips rather then solid by mostly going blink all in. This is why CombatEX was able to take a game off parting because he coinflipped with blink all in and got blind countered. This also goes for top pvpers such as Oz and Dear. I try to do same builds they do on ladder but sometimes it doesnt workout. There is also JD who had 80 % winrate in zvz but managed to get 2-0ed by an NA mid master(NrGQuasar).
There is just way too much randomness that there's too many things to account for. For example; Scarlett beating Bomber was completely random at the end. If Bomber were to be aware of the burrowwd banelings, which is almost impossible, he would have won but the banelings hit and he lost. There's also way more factors then just randomness but that is just the main reason for me.
The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
On December 12 2013 06:34 Qwyn wrote: Oh my god I rarely say this but this really is just an excuse to "remake the game," sort of thread. Thinking about it, have you ever even considered:
1. That the tournament structure of SC2 makes it hard for players to maintain consistent long term results; 2. That the kind of player capable of DOMINATING the scene really is THAT RARE?
Seriously, holy shit.
Another thing I would also agree with is yes, access to shittons of competitive VODs does make a progamer's builds less secure. Of course this should be offset by mechanical difficulty, but with some races or strategies this is not always the case...
- NVM, OP is just compiling what bunches of people are saying, lol. Still a bit sad, though -_-.
I've seen numerous refutations of this unpredictability before. It's a trojan horse to complain about all aspects of SC2.
In addition, the comparison with BW is a bit, off to me. What tournaments for the top Koreans were there apart from OSL/MSL and Proleague + the yearly WCG?
Their equivalents exist nowadays, but they're not essentially the [i]only/i] tournaments. Tons of weekend events, run by different organisations, many of which are overseas etc has an impact in terms of this. In BW, you made big cash by being the best and playing in the premiere tournaments, in SC2, you can (especially with foreign backing) go abroad consistently and make cash, at the expense perhaps of preparing you properly for the likes of the GSL
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
Partings Winrate is so high because he coinflips. When I am struggling with a matchup, I try to learn off the best. For Pvp I studied Parting because of his win/ratio and I see that he favors coinflips rather then solid by mostly going blink all in. This is why CombatEX was able to take a game off parting because he coinflipped with blink all in and got blind countered. This also goes for top pvpers such as Oz and Dear. I try to do same builds they do on ladder but sometimes it doesnt workout. There is also JD who had 80 % winrate in zvz but managed to get 2-0ed by an NA mid master(NrGQuasar).
There is just way too much randomness that there's too many things to account for. For example; Scarlett beating Bomber was completely random at the end. If Bomber were to be aware of the burrowwd banelings, which is almost impossible, he would have won but the banelings hit and he lost. There's also way more factors then just randomness but that is just the main reason for me.
If you are coinflipping, how do you get a winrate appreciably above 50%?
Demuslim was streaming a few minutes ago. He watched the replay after beating a zerg, following the zerg's perspective.
First, he lost an army because he was looking away for one second doing a drop. Banelings got it. Oops!
Second, which ended the game, the zerg wasn't able to see the terran army, saw a few units starting to poke a hatchery, went in to defend with mutalisks and lost 17 mutalisks in about 2 seconds to a thor volley and 2 widow mines. Then the entire terran army ran in.
GG.
Any people ask why the game is volatile? Sure, its a matter of skill to deal with these things but is it not a little perverse that so many games come down to less than a second of gameplay? In cases like this, even if you're Flash or Jaedong or MC, its still impossible to play perfectly enough to avoid these scenarios, so in a sense is it not slightly random how a game will end?
All three of those players commonly lose huge numbers of units to some 1-second oversight. And god help the rest of us.
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
Partings Winrate is so high because he coinflips. When I am struggling with a matchup, I try to learn off the best. For Pvp I studied Parting because of his win/ratio and I see that he favors coinflips rather then solid by mostly going blink all in. This is why CombatEX was able to take a game off parting because he coinflipped with blink all in and got blind countered. This also goes for top pvpers such as Oz and Dear. I try to do same builds they do on ladder but sometimes it doesnt workout. There is also JD who had 80 % winrate in zvz but managed to get 2-0ed by an NA mid master(NrGQuasar).
There is just way too much randomness that there's too many things to account for. For example; Scarlett beating Bomber was completely random at the end. If Bomber were to be aware of the burrowwd banelings, which is almost impossible, he would have won but the banelings hit and he lost. There's also way more factors then just randomness but that is just the main reason for me.
If you are coinflipping, how do you get a winrate appreciably above 50%?
He doesn't account for proper scouting or star sense.
On December 11 2013 21:48 sMi.SyMPhOnY wrote: Rather than just stating the retarded mechanics and unit synergies that are present in the game, i'll share some insight. 95% of match ups in Starcraft 2 resemble rock paper scissor more than Brood War.
#sadtimes
User was warned for this post
This is more likely to be the truth. Ofc this truth is the result of mechanics and unit synergies.
The warning is more about damaging SC2 scene than being a false statement. TL lives on SC2 scene, not truth.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
Sorry, what are these stats of? Your personal best? or are they of the current #1? I have a 79% win rate on matches voted on this season and am pretty sure I was well over 70% last season as well. I've missed about 16 votes (about 15% of the total votes) so I'm in 57th place at present. I've found it pretty easy to predict winners for SC2. Sure, there are upsets but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The players at the top are fairly evenly matched so it's very difficult for any one person to win everything unless he enjoys a massive advantage over just about everyone else. If your odds of winning a best of 3 are 80% and you need to win 5 best of 3s to win a tournament (e.g.) even in that circumstance, which nearly never arises (unless a top tier Korean is in an all foreign tournament, without Scarlett or Naniwa) you would only have a 33% chance of winning the tournament, so I don't know how any one could look at 10 or so tournaments and say whether SC2 results are inconsistent. You need to look at the data over a period of years IMO. The fact that I and others can reliably and correctly select who will win a match far better than 50% implies that there is a fair amount of consistency in SC2.
To truly be comparable in format to a sport like Tennis you'd have to lengthen the set and repeat maps.
For example instead of a best of 7 on 7 different maps; you would have 7 sets that are each a best of 5 on each of 7 maps.
This would allow for a maximum of 35 games to determine a single matchup, you'd get way more consistent results, some top guys would have 90%+ win rates in all matchups. A player like JD would have some ridiculous 99% ZvZ win rate in full matches. Foreigners would never win anything unless they practiced to get the stamina of top Koreans. Some players like MC would straight outlast people because he's grinded through so many tournaments he doesn't fatigue as fast.
A single finals match would last a full day XD
An easy real world comparison is College basketball vs. NBA, where even though the gap in talent in College teams is far greater than the NBA, you can't predict who will win march madness, ever (Single elimination). But its pretty rare in the NBA that the heavy favorite loses (see Miami Heat, LA Lakers in the early 2000's, Bulls in 90's, Boston before that, etc.). A single finals series in the NBA is played out over weeks, in SC2 its played out in a couple hours.
On December 12 2013 09:59 Wombat_NI wrote: If you are coinflipping, how do you get a winrate appreciably above 50%?
If you are coinflipping, it doesn't mean you will always go 50/50.
For example I flip a coin 8 times and luckily get tails 6 times which is 75%. This is a bad analagy but just in general. There's still other factors like Pvp is more of rock paper scissors then 50 50 and other things like micro.
Hell I'm only high master and I once beat Hyun on ladder with 7 gate 1 gas all in on ohana a year and beat tslragnarok with proxy 2 gate vs hatch first in playhem awhile back. I am nowhere near there skill level and I manage to beat them. If I were to play them again then I am be certain that I would lose
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
different conditions. for example flashs competition was the most competetive esport of all time by far, mvp had a bunch of bteamers and new proffesionals.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
its not close at all and different conditions too so cant straight up compare it anyway
On December 12 2013 09:47 _SpiRaL_ wrote: The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
how far away you are from a skill ceiling always matters. and obviously for something gfluid and not turnbased its impossible to reach the absolute ceiling as it would require making actions completely simultaniously
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
Sorry, what are these stats of? Your personal best? or are they of the current #1? I have a 79% win rate on matches voted on this season and am pretty sure I was well over 70% last season as well. I've missed about 16 votes (about 15% of the total votes) so I'm in 57th place at present. I've found it pretty easy to predict winners for SC2. Sure, there are upsets but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The players at the top are fairly evenly matched so it's very difficult for any one person to win everything unless he enjoys a massive advantage over just about everyone else. If your odds of winning a best of 3 are 80% and you need to win 5 best of 3s to win a tournament (e.g.) even in that circumstance, which nearly never arises (unless a top tier Korean is in an all foreign tournament, without Scarlett or Naniwa) you would only have a 33% chance of winning the tournament, so I don't know how any one could look at 10 or so tournaments and say whether SC2 results are inconsistent. You need to look at the data over a period of years IMO. The fact that I and others can reliably and correctly select who will win a match far better than 50% implies that there is a fair amount of consistency in SC2.
They are the #1 ranks of each game. You couldve easily checked instead of asking. I didn't seek out the person with the best rates, just the #1 person.
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
different conditions. for example flashs competition was the most competetive esport of all time by far, mvp had a bunch of bteamers and new proffesionals.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
its not close at all and different conditions too so cant straight up compare it anyway
On December 12 2013 09:47 _SpiRaL_ wrote: The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
how far away you are from a skill ceiling always matters. and obviously for something gfluid and not turnbased its impossible to reach the absolute ceiling as it would require making actions completely simultaniously
A 7% difference is pretty damned close in gambling.
Also, in regards to flash's competition vs mvp's competition: No. The level of competition was the same. People played SC2 worse, but that is because everybody was figuring it out along with patches, map changes, and new meta discoveries.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
Sorry, what are these stats of? Your personal best? or are they of the current #1? I have a 79% win rate on matches voted on this season and am pretty sure I was well over 70% last season as well. I've missed about 16 votes (about 15% of the total votes) so I'm in 57th place at present. I've found it pretty easy to predict winners for SC2. Sure, there are upsets but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The players at the top are fairly evenly matched so it's very difficult for any one person to win everything unless he enjoys a massive advantage over just about everyone else. If your odds of winning a best of 3 are 80% and you need to win 5 best of 3s to win a tournament (e.g.) even in that circumstance, which nearly never arises (unless a top tier Korean is in an all foreign tournament, without Scarlett or Naniwa) you would only have a 33% chance of winning the tournament, so I don't know how any one could look at 10 or so tournaments and say whether SC2 results are inconsistent. You need to look at the data over a period of years IMO. The fact that I and others can reliably and correctly select who will win a match far better than 50% implies that there is a fair amount of consistency in SC2.
They are the #1 ranks of each game. You couldve easily checked instead of asking. I didn't seek out the person with the best rates, just the #1 person.
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
different conditions. for example flashs competition was the most competetive esport of all time by far, mvp had a bunch of bteamers and new proffesionals.
On December 12 2013 05:55 TheRabidDeer wrote:
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
its not close at all and different conditions too so cant straight up compare it anyway
On December 12 2013 09:47 _SpiRaL_ wrote: The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
how far away you are from a skill ceiling always matters. and obviously for something gfluid and not turnbased its impossible to reach the absolute ceiling as it would require making actions completely simultaniously
A 7% difference is pretty damned close in gambling.
Also, in regards to flash's competition vs mvp's competition: No. The level of competition was the same. People played SC2 worse, but that is because everybody was figuring it out along with patches, map changes, and new meta discoveries.
72-79 is a 10% increase. and the cap is 100, so the difference is better represented as 25%. and how is the difference between 72 and 79% small anywhere, ESPECIALLY in gambling i would have thought? and yes, like you said, the competetion wasnt the same, which is part of the reason the difference isnt even bigger because of the much larger variance in sc2
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
Partings Winrate is so high because he coinflips. When I am struggling with a matchup, I try to learn off the best. For Pvp I studied Parting because of his win/ratio and I see that he favors coinflips rather then solid by mostly going blink all in. This is why CombatEX was able to take a game off parting because he coinflipped with blink all in and got blind countered. This also goes for top pvpers such as Oz and Dear. I try to do same builds they do on ladder but sometimes it doesnt workout. There is also JD who had 80 % winrate in zvz but managed to get 2-0ed by an NA mid master(NrGQuasar).
There is just way too much randomness that there's too many things to account for. For example; Scarlett beating Bomber was completely random at the end. If Bomber were to be aware of the burrowwd banelings, which is almost impossible, he would have won but the banelings hit and he lost. There's also way more factors then just randomness but that is just the main reason for me.
If you are coinflipping, how do you get a winrate appreciably above 50%?
Coin flipping isn't a perfect comparison, as it implies a build is a 50/50 chance. Often, a particular all-in is more like 60-40 or 70-30 given the trend of playstyles, map architecture, or player tendencies.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
Sorry, what are these stats of? Your personal best? or are they of the current #1? I have a 79% win rate on matches voted on this season and am pretty sure I was well over 70% last season as well. I've missed about 16 votes (about 15% of the total votes) so I'm in 57th place at present. I've found it pretty easy to predict winners for SC2. Sure, there are upsets but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The players at the top are fairly evenly matched so it's very difficult for any one person to win everything unless he enjoys a massive advantage over just about everyone else. If your odds of winning a best of 3 are 80% and you need to win 5 best of 3s to win a tournament (e.g.) even in that circumstance, which nearly never arises (unless a top tier Korean is in an all foreign tournament, without Scarlett or Naniwa) you would only have a 33% chance of winning the tournament, so I don't know how any one could look at 10 or so tournaments and say whether SC2 results are inconsistent. You need to look at the data over a period of years IMO. The fact that I and others can reliably and correctly select who will win a match far better than 50% implies that there is a fair amount of consistency in SC2.
They are the #1 ranks of each game. You couldve easily checked instead of asking. I didn't seek out the person with the best rates, just the #1 person.
On December 12 2013 11:50 Veroleg wrote:
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
different conditions. for example flashs competition was the most competetive esport of all time by far, mvp had a bunch of bteamers and new proffesionals.
On December 12 2013 05:55 TheRabidDeer wrote:
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
its not close at all and different conditions too so cant straight up compare it anyway
On December 12 2013 09:47 _SpiRaL_ wrote: The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
how far away you are from a skill ceiling always matters. and obviously for something gfluid and not turnbased its impossible to reach the absolute ceiling as it would require making actions completely simultaniously
A 7% difference is pretty damned close in gambling.
Also, in regards to flash's competition vs mvp's competition: No. The level of competition was the same. People played SC2 worse, but that is because everybody was figuring it out along with patches, map changes, and new meta discoveries.
72-79 is a 10% increase. and the cap is 100, so the difference is better represented as 25%. and how is the difference between 72 and 79% small anywhere, ESPECIALLY in gambling i would have thought? and yes, like you said, the competetion wasnt the same, which is part of the reason the difference isnt even bigger because of the much larger variance in sc2
What do you think of the BW variance that saw most OSL champions, bonjwa or not, eliminated in the ro16 of the following season?
On December 11 2013 22:00 lichter wrote: You are comparing SC2 to singles sports with tournament structures different from SC2. The tournaments in SC2 are more akin to Basketball playoffs or the Champions League. If you look at the list of champions from those tournaments you'll see that it's actually not that random. It is a ridiculous comparison.
If you look at the winrates between the best teams within sports with similar tournament structures and the best players in SC2 you will also see that they compare favorably.
I think what is missing here, is the winrates of Flash from the BW era. Comparing Flash in BW to MVP in WOL is a much more telling comparison.
On December 12 2013 15:31 bduddy wrote: More tournaments than BW -> more winners -> more perceived unpredictability.
This would indeed be true if the top BW players had roughly the same winrate as the top SC2 players today.
On December 11 2013 22:00 lichter wrote: You are comparing SC2 to singles sports with tournament structures different from SC2. The tournaments in SC2 are more akin to Basketball playoffs or the Champions League. If you look at the list of champions from those tournaments you'll see that it's actually not that random. It is a ridiculous comparison.
If you look at the winrates between the best teams within sports with similar tournament structures and the best players in SC2 you will also see that they compare favorably.
I think what is missing here, is the winrates of Flash from the BW era. Comparing Flash in BW to MVP in WOL is a much more telling comparison.
On December 12 2013 15:31 bduddy wrote: More tournaments than BW -> more winners -> more perceived unpredictability.
This would indeed be true if the top BW players had roughly the same winrate as the top SC2 players today.
You also have to keep in mind that in SC2, it's not difficult at all to play twice as many games on average as a top BW pro. Maintaining a high win rate in between travel across the globe and dozens upon dozens of Bo1s, Bo3s, Bo5s and what have you, that's really difficult and I don't think we can compare it to BW fairly.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
Sorry, what are these stats of? Your personal best? or are they of the current #1? I have a 79% win rate on matches voted on this season and am pretty sure I was well over 70% last season as well. I've missed about 16 votes (about 15% of the total votes) so I'm in 57th place at present. I've found it pretty easy to predict winners for SC2. Sure, there are upsets but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The players at the top are fairly evenly matched so it's very difficult for any one person to win everything unless he enjoys a massive advantage over just about everyone else. If your odds of winning a best of 3 are 80% and you need to win 5 best of 3s to win a tournament (e.g.) even in that circumstance, which nearly never arises (unless a top tier Korean is in an all foreign tournament, without Scarlett or Naniwa) you would only have a 33% chance of winning the tournament, so I don't know how any one could look at 10 or so tournaments and say whether SC2 results are inconsistent. You need to look at the data over a period of years IMO. The fact that I and others can reliably and correctly select who will win a match far better than 50% implies that there is a fair amount of consistency in SC2.
They are the #1 ranks of each game. You couldve easily checked instead of asking. I didn't seek out the person with the best rates, just the #1 person.
On December 12 2013 11:50 Veroleg wrote:
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
different conditions. for example flashs competition was the most competetive esport of all time by far, mvp had a bunch of bteamers and new proffesionals.
On December 12 2013 05:55 TheRabidDeer wrote:
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
its not close at all and different conditions too so cant straight up compare it anyway
On December 12 2013 09:47 _SpiRaL_ wrote: The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
how far away you are from a skill ceiling always matters. and obviously for something gfluid and not turnbased its impossible to reach the absolute ceiling as it would require making actions completely simultaniously
A 7% difference is pretty damned close in gambling.
Also, in regards to flash's competition vs mvp's competition: No. The level of competition was the same. People played SC2 worse, but that is because everybody was figuring it out along with patches, map changes, and new meta discoveries.
72-79 is a 10% increase. and the cap is 100, so the difference is better represented as 25%. and how is the difference between 72 and 79% small anywhere, ESPECIALLY in gambling i would have thought? and yes, like you said, the competetion wasnt the same, which is part of the reason the difference isnt even bigger because of the much larger variance in sc2
I said difference, which means subtraction. Had I said 7% lower or 7% higher or 7% increase you would be right as that is 9.7%. I dont quite follow how 25% is a better representation. That is like ignoring the other 71% that is possible. It is like saying the difference between a 99% and a 100% is 100%.
And I don't know true gambling values, but given the concept that a single bad week of picks (and that they are picks, each of which relying on a bit of luck) can completely tarnish your record it is pretty even. Also, as others have said there exist better rates out there, I just picked the top one for each in points.
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
skill required to play chess is pretty low?
Physical skill is low. Anyone can move the pieces.
On December 13 2013 01:56 DinoMight wrote: Physical skill is low. Anyone can move the pieces.
Strategy is very difficult.
The physical skill required for playing sc2 is the same.. even if you just play with 1 APM, you're still playing, right?
???
In chess, if you want to attack one piece with another, you need only to lift the piece and move it. Everyone can do this (unless they have a disability of some kind, but this is not really the point).
In StarCraft, you can have a strategy, to attack a certain base with a unit composition at a given time, but it still has to be executed correctly. If you accidentally move command you will lose your whole army, for example. If your forcefields are bad Immortal/Sentry won't work. If your EMPs are bad you will lose against Protoss. Etc.
So in Chess, one only worries about strategy and execution is not a concern.
In StarCraft, players have to have strategies AND be able to properly execute those strategies.
You're not starting from scratch, you have BW's legacy it's not the same.
Fundamental ideas of macro management and micro are largely figured out. You don't have people like Maynard coming along and figuring out the more efficient worker transfer that bears his name,because it's already been done.
In terms of base mechanical innovation, the only thing I can think of that's distinct in developing from BW is splitting to mitigate AoE damage, a necessity with the combo of unlimited selection and clumping.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
Sorry, what are these stats of? Your personal best? or are they of the current #1? I have a 79% win rate on matches voted on this season and am pretty sure I was well over 70% last season as well. I've missed about 16 votes (about 15% of the total votes) so I'm in 57th place at present. I've found it pretty easy to predict winners for SC2. Sure, there are upsets but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The players at the top are fairly evenly matched so it's very difficult for any one person to win everything unless he enjoys a massive advantage over just about everyone else. If your odds of winning a best of 3 are 80% and you need to win 5 best of 3s to win a tournament (e.g.) even in that circumstance, which nearly never arises (unless a top tier Korean is in an all foreign tournament, without Scarlett or Naniwa) you would only have a 33% chance of winning the tournament, so I don't know how any one could look at 10 or so tournaments and say whether SC2 results are inconsistent. You need to look at the data over a period of years IMO. The fact that I and others can reliably and correctly select who will win a match far better than 50% implies that there is a fair amount of consistency in SC2.
They are the #1 ranks of each game. You couldve easily checked instead of asking. I didn't seek out the person with the best rates, just the #1 person.
On December 12 2013 11:50 Veroleg wrote:
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
different conditions. for example flashs competition was the most competetive esport of all time by far, mvp had a bunch of bteamers and new proffesionals.
On December 12 2013 05:55 TheRabidDeer wrote:
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
its not close at all and different conditions too so cant straight up compare it anyway
On December 12 2013 09:47 _SpiRaL_ wrote: The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
how far away you are from a skill ceiling always matters. and obviously for something gfluid and not turnbased its impossible to reach the absolute ceiling as it would require making actions completely simultaniously
A 7% difference is pretty damned close in gambling.
Also, in regards to flash's competition vs mvp's competition: No. The level of competition was the same. People played SC2 worse, but that is because everybody was figuring it out along with patches, map changes, and new meta discoveries.
72-79 is a 10% increase. and the cap is 100, so the difference is better represented as 25%. and how is the difference between 72 and 79% small anywhere, ESPECIALLY in gambling i would have thought? and yes, like you said, the competetion wasnt the same, which is part of the reason the difference isnt even bigger because of the much larger variance in sc2
What do you think of the BW variance that saw most OSL champions, bonjwa or not, eliminated in the ro16 of the following season?
i doubt you even have the complete numbers for that. it wouldnt be a big enough sample size either and it sounds very much like youre handpicking a sample that had an unproportionally big amount of upsets.
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
Sorry, what are these stats of? Your personal best? or are they of the current #1? I have a 79% win rate on matches voted on this season and am pretty sure I was well over 70% last season as well. I've missed about 16 votes (about 15% of the total votes) so I'm in 57th place at present. I've found it pretty easy to predict winners for SC2. Sure, there are upsets but it's not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. The players at the top are fairly evenly matched so it's very difficult for any one person to win everything unless he enjoys a massive advantage over just about everyone else. If your odds of winning a best of 3 are 80% and you need to win 5 best of 3s to win a tournament (e.g.) even in that circumstance, which nearly never arises (unless a top tier Korean is in an all foreign tournament, without Scarlett or Naniwa) you would only have a 33% chance of winning the tournament, so I don't know how any one could look at 10 or so tournaments and say whether SC2 results are inconsistent. You need to look at the data over a period of years IMO. The fact that I and others can reliably and correctly select who will win a match far better than 50% implies that there is a fair amount of consistency in SC2.
They are the #1 ranks of each game. You couldve easily checked instead of asking. I didn't seek out the person with the best rates, just the #1 person.
On December 12 2013 11:50 Veroleg wrote:
On December 12 2013 07:04 MrCon wrote: I don't think sc2 results are that unpredictable and I don't think it's a fair assessment to say they are. Actually in dota, top teams have the same winrate as top sc2 players (around 70%). When flash was dominating, he had 70% winrate I think, perhaps 75% at best. When MVP dominated he has the same winrate. Except Flash had 3 tourneys a year to play in and never traveled, it's a lot easier to be stable in those conditions (that + being a genius).
different conditions. for example flashs competition was the most competetive esport of all time by far, mvp had a bunch of bteamers and new proffesionals.
On December 12 2013 05:55 TheRabidDeer wrote:
On December 12 2013 05:40 Arco wrote: Nearly won a Liquibet Season in BW but couldn't get close in SC2 despite having some good predictions once in a while. Game design is responsible for the inconsistency. The more skilled player doesn't win nearly enough. Faulty game design and probably some balance issues are the reasons for this.
#1 for SC2 liquibet: 170/237 71.7% #1 for BW liquibet: 356/452 78.7%
That is relatively close, especially when you consider that (AFAIK) there havent been any meta shifts in BW in recent times.
its not close at all and different conditions too so cant straight up compare it anyway
On December 12 2013 09:47 _SpiRaL_ wrote: The difference in win rates in SC2 compared to BW are a couple of percent for the top players at most and they are not particularly unpredictable compared to other games. The skill ceiling is so far away from what anyone has achieved or will ever achieve it essentially doesn't matter. Depth of micro however is a slightly different thing and might make the difference to bring win rates in line with BW all by themselves.
how far away you are from a skill ceiling always matters. and obviously for something gfluid and not turnbased its impossible to reach the absolute ceiling as it would require making actions completely simultaniously
A 7% difference is pretty damned close in gambling.
Also, in regards to flash's competition vs mvp's competition: No. The level of competition was the same. People played SC2 worse, but that is because everybody was figuring it out along with patches, map changes, and new meta discoveries.
72-79 is a 10% increase. and the cap is 100, so the difference is better represented as 25%. and how is the difference between 72 and 79% small anywhere, ESPECIALLY in gambling i would have thought? and yes, like you said, the competetion wasnt the same, which is part of the reason the difference isnt even bigger because of the much larger variance in sc2
I said difference, which means subtraction. Had I said 7% lower or 7% higher or 7% increase you would be right as that is 9.7%. I dont quite follow how 25% is a better representation. That is like ignoring the other 71% that is possible. It is like saying the difference between a 99% and a 100% is 100%.
And I don't know true gambling values, but given the concept that a single bad week of picks (and that they are picks, each of which relying on a bit of luck) can completely tarnish your record it is pretty even. Also, as others have said there exist better rates out there, I just picked the top one for each in points.
you saying difference means subtraction? because the difference between 72 and 79 is huge.
we arent comparing a sample size of 1 person in each game, were comparing the top two "predictors" that has gotten there in a huge pool of people. its a solid number in that sense. 7% is silly huge. a bettor with 0 breaks even and someone with 7% roi is like the best bettor in the world
- sc2 is still "new" compared to bw. it took at least 3 years for bw's first bonjwa to develop, then far and few in between then and 2012. we wont see a bw flash or jaedong in sc2 until like 10 years from now.
On December 11 2013 21:57 qotsager wrote: you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though. and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before) there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt. maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
skill required to play chess is pretty low?
skill floor is low as hell - just have to understand that when the big piece in the other color is ded, you win
1. Larvae injects giving the ability to either build insane numbers of drones or units at once 2. Mules giving burst income 3. Warp gate being able to accelerate quick bursts of units or focus on econ. Specifically when used on warpgates for timings
All of these make things happen incredibly quickly, meaning if you didn't scout it, there are more significant repercussions. Even early game vs a Zerg on 2 hatches, when the first two larvae injects pop, that's around 8 larvae that usually will be built for drones, but can be used to go from zero lings to 16 lings at a moment's notice.
On December 11 2013 23:57 GumBa wrote: We have had periods of consitency though take Life Mvp or Innovation as examplle of periods of dominance. Hell JD Soulkey and Innovation have all been consistent all year long.
That is true, Life, Mvp and Innovation were showing dominance over some time. But as you say, these were periods of consistency. Their dominance ended comparatively fast. Compare this to the dominance of e.g. Roger Federer, Garry Kasparov or Michael Schumacher that went on for years. How do we explain the fact that someone is the highest skilled in the world and then loses that skill within months? It's hard to believe that the actual skill, i.e. the cognitive function of the players is deteriorating so fast.
Take a look at the last couple of power ranks: August: Innovation September: Bomber October: ? November: Dear? December: Taeja The best player in the world changes every month.
Patching doesnt help, it can mitigate the strengths of a dominant player.
I don't think I've seen a player quite as dominant as Innovation pre hellbat-nerf, maybe not since the original summer of Taeja. I think they both showed a high level for ages, and would have done better in the last few WoL GSLs if not for the state of TvZ at the time (plus Taeja's wrists)
If you're comparing to BW it's not hard to see why SC2 results seem inconsistent (apart from a combination of all the reasons already stated). Kespa managed BW by controlling who got progamer licences, who was accepted to a team, what their role on the team was based on skill and marketability in addition to controlling the form and frequency of the tournaments they ran (which was basically all of them). Plus a stagnant metagame.
The difference in micro and macro between the strongest players in bw was huge. In sc2 I don't see any big differences between the top players. We probably have 5-6 guys who are "locked in" in kespa teams who are more or less as good as Taeja or Jaedong.
Half health would equal everything melting faster and the game being more volatile.
By 'unpredictable' people seem to be desiring a truly dominant player, a bonjwa as being the only acceptable metric by which volatility is judged.
We have a clear hierarchy of consistent top tier players, who play across different tournaments and regions as it is. I don't see the inconsistency in level. 'Random' results are often due to a player clearly playing below their level, often attributed to jetlag and whatnot.
Terrans: Taeja, Maru, Innovation, Bomber. The latter has always been inconsistent, it's his charm!
Protoss: SoS, Dear, Rain
Zergs: Soulkey, Jaedong, a resurgent Life too.
IF these guys all played in the same region, focusing on ONE tournament I think they'd consistently be at the top end of said tournament. All of them showed good results in Proleague relative to the shape they were in, Jaedong now is a different beast to Jaedong back then.
On December 13 2013 21:26 Wombat_NI wrote: Half health would equal everything melting faster and the game being more volatile.
By 'unpredictable' people seem to be desiring a truly dominant player, a bonjwa as being the only acceptable metric by which volatility is judged.
We have a clear hierarchy of consistent top tier players, who play across different tournaments and regions as it is. I don't see the inconsistency in level. 'Random' results are often due to a player clearly playing below their level, often attributed to jetlag and whatnot.
Terrans: Taeja, Maru, Innovation, Bomber. The latter has always been inconsistent, it's his charm!
Protoss: SoS, Dear, Rain
Zergs: Soulkey, Jaedong, a resurgent Life too.
IF these guys all played in the same region, focusing on ONE tournament I think they'd consistently be at the top end of said tournament. All of them showed good results in Proleague relative to the shape they were in, Jaedong now is a different beast to Jaedong back then.
You are just picking the players that have won some tournaments in the last couple of months. That itself doesn't make the players consistent. 4 months ago, Bomber, sOs, Dear, Maru, Jaedong and Life wouldn't have been on your list at all. If the players change every couple of months, then they are not consistent.
I agree that there doesn't need to be one dominant player, it can also be a group of dominant players. But then these players should at least consistently show good results for every tournament they enter. Consistently over the range of seasons or even years, that is.
Check out the current London Classic Super Sixteen Chess tournament: http://www.chessvibes.com/favourites-qualify-for-quarter-finals-in-london This is a rapid tournament, so you would expect some upsets. However, the top 8 ranked players also made it to the round of 8. This is something that is unthinkable in SC2. Quoting from the site: "The tournament has had a number of surprise individual results but in the end the double-cycle all-play-all format has ensured that the consistent performers have come through."
So to reiterate, there are two issues in SC2: - There is no world wide accepted Elo ranking system. - The knockout format in addition to the lack of seeding almost guarantees random results
Blizzard mentioned in the interview that they prefer the knockout system because it allows the underdogs to win. However, if the underdogs win every time, it kind of defeats the purpose.
Many people here are claiming that the game itself is the reason for the inconsistency. It is true that there are many situations in the game where one mistake or oversight can lose it all. However, this can also be said for chess: The best player is the one who makes the least mistakes. Likewise in SC2, the top players are the ones that know best how to avoid those game ending mistakes.
On December 13 2013 17:55 DaftFunk wrote: - sc2 is still "new" compared to bw. it took at least 3 years for bw's first bonjwa to develop, then far and few in between then and 2012. we wont see a bw flash or jaedong in sc2 until like 10 years from now.
I think the game hasn't been fully figured out yet. Code S at least has a small amount of de facto seeding in that the previous season's semi finalists are each placed in their own group and get to pick one person in their group. Game strategies are still evolving, the things people did in season 1 or WoL almost never work now.
I don't think chess is a good parallel to SC2. IMO tennis and car/motorcycle racing are probably the best analogies. Men's tennis is only consistent for guys named Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, and Murray. Everyone else varies widely. But women's tennis has much more variation. Li Na can win the championship or get eliminated in the 2nd round and neither is a surprising result, depending on how she looks. Formula 1 racing is also consistent for guys named Sebastian Vettel, not so much for everyone else.
Brood War took a few years to get properly consistent champions. It will happen sooner or later, when the amount of time put I to the game allows people to differentiate themselves a lot, even in Korea.
"Matches are too short; BO3 and BO5 are too volatile"¨ Dumbest statement imo, how the hell can they play bo5/7 all the time, lol. Learn from BW instead, only bo5 in semi and final.
On December 13 2013 17:55 DaftFunk wrote: - sc2 is still "new" compared to bw. it took at least 3 years for bw's first bonjwa to develop, then far and few in between then and 2012. we wont see a bw flash or jaedong in sc2 until like 10 years from now.
We already saw MvP.
Yeah, that tournament sure was great, but I guess you are talking about Mvp.
Mvp = Player MVP = Team MvP = Weird MLG tournament.
Even when people scout, pros can swap builds so fast that it doesn't really matter. It's really just luck nowadays. If you throw down something that counters your opponents build you win. You get lucky by doing that if you weren't scouting the whole game.
On December 15 2013 18:29 urboss wrote: Many people here are claiming that the game itself is the reason for the inconsistency. It is true that there are many situations in the game where one mistake or oversight can lose it all. However, this can also be said for chess: The best player is the one who makes the least mistakes. Likewise in SC2, the top players are the ones that know best how to avoid those game ending mistakes.
Yes except you're leaving out the crucial factor that in SC2 there is a massive fog of war that cloaks your enemy's movements and decisions the vast majority of the time, which means its very easy to make that mistake and lose due to build order choice or cheese. This is impossible in chess, which is why its so much more consistent. How many times have we seen in tournaments the crucial importance of a player scouting some tech structure as the casters freak out over whether he/she will see it or not?
Even if you scout your opponent, it still isn't a guarantee. We saw this clearly from SoS in the championships as all the casters noted that his unpredictability made him very dangerous. To some extent the matchups are well-understood and stale in that the unit compositions tend to be identical game after game, but its the timings that can really throw pro-gamers off.
When you watch tournaments you clearly see people losing because they aren't aware that their opponent is gearing up for a massive assault. How can this be interpreted as not having figured out the game yet? It comes down purely to scouting information which is unreliable for more than a minute. The game can never be 'figured out' so long as this fog of war persists and scouting is erratic or denied, people will constantly be blind-sided by things they did not expect as there is no universal build order.
It's because the game's so volatile. You cannot really micro / manage your way out of a bad engagement because the initial concave and the first shots determine so, so much. In addition, macro is comparably easy so it's much more difficult to make a difference in that way. Furthermore, all in builds are still very effective in SC2 in comparison to SCBW and allow the worse player to defeat the better ones. In addition, most of the games aren't Bo5 but Bo3 which furthermore gives more of a chance for upsets .
Apart from that, the differences in skill really aren't huge in the first place.
On December 15 2013 18:29 urboss wrote: Many people here are claiming that the game itself is the reason for the inconsistency. It is true that there are many situations in the game where one mistake or oversight can lose it all. However, this can also be said for chess: The best player is the one who makes the least mistakes. Likewise in SC2, the top players are the ones that know best how to avoid those game ending mistakes.
Yes except you're leaving out the crucial factor that in SC2 there is a massive fog of war that cloaks your enemy's movements and decisions the vast majority of the time, which means its very easy to make that mistake and lose due to build order choice or cheese. This is impossible in chess, which is why its so much more consistent. How many times have we seen in tournaments the crucial importance of a player scouting some tech structure as the casters freak out over whether he/she will see it or not?
Even if you scout your opponent, it still isn't a guarantee. We saw this clearly from SoS in the championships as all the casters noted that his unpredictability made him very dangerous. To some extent the matchups are well-understood and stale in that the unit compositions tend to be identical game after game, but its the timings that can really throw pro-gamers off.
When you watch tournaments you clearly see people losing because they aren't aware that their opponent is gearing up for a massive assault. How can this be interpreted as not having figured out the game yet? It comes down purely to scouting information which is unreliable for more than a minute. The game can never be 'figured out' so long as this fog of war persists and scouting is erratic or denied, people will constantly be blind-sided by things they did not expect as there is no universal build order.
Agreed, but here's the thing:
Both players have to deal with the ramifications the fog of war brings about. And the one player who deals better with the circumstances is the better player. This may not become apparent in one game or one match or even one tournament. But in the long run, this should be reflected in the results.
Single SC2 games are susceptible to random results, due to the various reasons already mentioned. It follows that the win of one game might not necessarily reflect the win of the better player. This is not a big deal, because in the long run, we should see the better players win. However, now we are introducing even more randomness into the system by having knock-out tournaments without seeding:
Some Random + Some Random = Very Random
As a result, it is now even harder to see top players win consistently.
The tournament structure would be an easy thing to fix, while it would be pointless to all of a sudden change core aspects of the game.
[QUOTE]On December 15 2013 18:55 Figgy wrote: [QUOTE]On December 13 2013 17:55 DaftFunk wrote: - sc2 is still "new" compared to bw. it took at least 3 years for bw's first bonjwa to develop, then far and few in between then and 2012. we wont see a bw flash or jaedong in sc2 until like 10 years from now.[/QUOTE]
On December 12 2013 15:31 bduddy wrote: More tournaments than BW -> more winners -> more perceived unpredictability.
This would indeed be true if the top BW players had roughly the same winrate as the top SC2 players today.
With all other things equal, more games played leads to winrates closer to 50% for outliers, i.e. the top (and bottom) players. Basic statistics, man...
On December 11 2013 21:46 papaz wrote: My opinions:
- Depth of micro is not enough
- Whoever wins the first big fight tend to win the game - comebacks are virtually non existent
- Units die too fast so it doesn't matter if you are Flash/Jaedong/Soulkey. If you happen to not pay attention for a sec enough units can be killed so that you more or less already have lost
- Games reach max limits very fast. Macro is easy and not rewarding so players like Flash "can't outmacro" the opponent just as easy because the difference between the worst pro and best pro at macro isn't that big
So I guess it's a combination of not enough depth and the volalite units vs too much dps.
Ya these are all very strong points and I believe the DPS is the major fault in the game because its really high and makes it really difficult to come back from any game when you can lose your units faster then you can react and replenish.
On December 12 2013 17:17 ArcadeR wrote: Wait for LotV..then wait three more years (at least..lets say five+++)...then start complaining. Thx.
Sc2 will be so dead if they wait 5 years to fix the issues people have been complaining since early-WoL
*Woosh*
Name your "consistent" player from BW. Then figure out how many years after BW's release that player started winning tournaments.
I would name Nada, although I cant tell you how many years after the games release it took. Its an unfair comparison to measure it in time because the broodwar pro scene developed slowly and with much effort, whereas when sc2 came out the infrastructure and acceptability of "esports" was largely in place. Lets not compare Sc2 vs Bw again. In this thread the two games are unrelated and it makes no sense to compare. The only factors you can look at for this sort of thing are in Starcraft 2 and I think the OP did a reasonable job stating the more obvious reasons. such as the speed of the game, battles and the unforgivable nature of the game.
Although it can be frustrating when your idols lose, lets recognize the fact that nearly anyone can win tournaments keeps the game, in its own regard, exciting.
I think it's because the game is actually balanced. THe winrates are equally distributed right now aren't they? Also, Blizzard is quick to address problems so it keeps esports alive.
On December 19 2013 19:52 tshi wrote: I think it's because the game is actually balanced. THe winrates are equally distributed right now aren't they? Also, Blizzard is quick to address problems so it keeps esports alive.
But what about in a situation where someone makes an innovating strategy that skyrockets their race's win percentage? It's not right if Blizzard intervenes and says "Nope, everything must be even" and makes a patch concerning that. I don't think Blizzard will ever learn.
Let's compare the GSLs as these are the only tournaments with steady player pools:
Mvp, NesTea and MC were the only real consistent ones, as they made it 3 or more times to the GSL finals.
Of the recent players, Innovation is looking strong with making it 3 times to the GSL/OSL Ro4. Also, Soulkey is very consistent with 5 times in a row in the Ro8.
A whopping 69% (36 players out of 52) made it to the Ro4 only once, never to return again. For the last 11 GSL/OSL finals, we had every time a different winner.
These things will be interesting to follow in 2014:
Can Soulkey and Innovation stay consistent performers?
Can the new contenders like Maru, Bomber, Dear, soO and sOs make it consistently to the Ro4?
On December 20 2013 19:59 Zealously wrote: And more importantly, how many players that aren't actually "new faces" will be considered surprises by the community?
Everyone who wasn't atleast in a semifinal i would consider a surprise i think
On December 11 2013 21:46 papaz wrote: My opinions:
- Depth of micro is not enough
- Whoever wins the first big fight tend to win the game - comebacks are virtually non existent
- Units die too fast so it doesn't matter if you are Flash/Jaedong/Soulkey. If you happen to not pay attention for a sec enough units can be killed so that you more or less already have lost
- Games reach max limits very fast. Macro is easy and not rewarding so players like Flash "can't outmacro" the opponent just as easy because the difference between the worst pro and best pro at macro isn't that big
So I guess it's a combination of not enough depth and the volalite units vs too much dps.
This pretty much covers everything wrong with this game.
If this game was more like SC:BW except with the current max units per control group (buildings included) this game would be better off. Macro would still be easy because of this but you could also have something like the manual mining feature of workers (having to manually send them to mine after they are made). This could make macro more challenging having to actually screen capture locations to send workers to mine instead of just hitting sd, s, e.
I think a big reason is starcraft 2 skill isn't like other sports. It decays very, very quickly. Think of tennis, Roger Federer has been elite for 10 years, sure he has worked very hard to get to that point, but starcraft 2 players kinda fall of the face of the earth. Think of MKP who was elite for a long period of time, now he is retired. Starcraft 2 has unpredictability built in to it via cheeses and allins, which makes the games exciting to watch, but also means the most skillful people don't always win.
On December 21 2013 12:05 Supert0fu wrote: I think a big reason is starcraft 2 skill isn't like other sports. It decays very, very quickly. Think of tennis, Roger Federer has been elite for 10 years, sure he has worked very hard to get to that point, but starcraft 2 players kinda fall of the face of the earth. Think of MKP who was elite for a long period of time, now he is retired. Starcraft 2 has unpredictability built in to it via cheeses and allins, which makes the games exciting to watch, but also means the most skillful people don't always win.
BW had the same all in's and cheeses but there were some really dominant players for a long time. Maybe not 10 years but relatively to how long the game has been played, a pretty long time
In other sports there seems to be much more dominance and consistence of single individuals. e.g.: Vitali Klitschko, Novak Djokovic, Magnus Carlsen, Usain Bolt, etc...
Can we get some actual win rates for top players in other 1v1 games for comparison? I'd like to see Go, Chess, Tennis, MMA, and/or fencing. I wasn't able to find good enough stats, but some exact numbers would be helpful. Saying that "there seems to be much more dominance..." doesn't mean much without some numbers to back it up. Otherwise we can just say that "MKP seemed to dominate for a while," or "MC dominated for a while," and not need to prove it.
I sort of agree with a lot of the problems that have been outlined here. I am ok with the powering in 10 or so minutes, the accelerated macro mechanics and such, what I can agree with is that it does feel easier to the point you can't really distinguish from the absolute greats. Bomber, Flash, Innovation, Mvp, MMA when you look at them, all have fantastic macro to the point that if one or more of them executed the same build on the same map and you'd blur out the names you couldn't tell who was playing. Good macro is kind of a standard, not a distinction, which is a bit sad.
I am not happy with is battles being so quick and deciding so much, its often anti-climatic and not as rewarding because you don't feel like the player has much input on how the battle will go because it will end so soon, very little time to micro.
Its also often frustrating to watch a player build up a big lead over exploiting many small mistakes from his opponent and then losing that lead because he made one big mistake (not looking at his army for one second and getting it stormed/fungaled), it just feels wrong, especially since the other guy had already done many mistakes like that but didn't get punished quite as hard.
I think those 3 points mainly added up probably explain why its now impossible to remain dominant and consistent in SC2 as you can in Tennis.
BW also had its curses and cheeses, short series and all-ins, fog of war and what not and yet you had players that dominated for years like NaDa, BoxeR, iloveoov, sAviOr, Bisu, Jaedong, Flash.
In SC2 the closest we ever got to that was 2011 with Mvp.
And yes, we do need some dominant players, they are there to show everybody else that, trough hard work and dedication you can become the absolute best and stay that way for a long time. If the top 30 in the world can all beat any of each other on a given good day it stops feeling like a real skill based game and more on gambling.
Yeah its probably impossible or close to it to win everything on in one year, but having a dominant player that can win 5+ tournaments per year, including the likes of WCS, Blizzcon and DH Winter would do the scene more good then harm. And of course if someone does manage to win all the tournaments he attends during a year that in and of itself would be such an epic storyline that we'd be admiring the guy and praising him to no end for years to come.
In other sports there seems to be much more dominance and consistence of single individuals. e.g.: Vitali Klitschko, Novak Djokovic, Magnus Carlsen, Usain Bolt, etc...
Can we get some actual win rates for top players in other 1v1 games for comparison? I'd like to see Go, Chess, Tennis, MMA, and/or fencing. I wasn't able to find good enough stats, but some exact numbers would be helpful. Saying that "there seems to be much more dominance..." doesn't mean much without some numbers to back it up. Otherwise we can just say that "MKP seemed to dominate for a while," or "MC dominated for a while," and not need to prove it.
To give you an idea about tennis, here is the comparison of all Grand Slam tournaments since 2003:
Roger Federer was just ridiculously consistent for more than a decade. He made it into the Ro4 of the Grand Slams almost every single time over a period of 9 years. The same goes for Rafael Nadal on sand, he won the French Open every time except for 2009.
Novak Djokovic is the new dominator. As previously mentioned, he had a win rate of 90.2% in 2013 (80% counting sets).
In other sports there seems to be much more dominance and consistence of single individuals. e.g.: Vitali Klitschko, Novak Djokovic, Magnus Carlsen, Usain Bolt, etc...
Can we get some actual win rates for top players in other 1v1 games for comparison? I'd like to see Go, Chess, Tennis, MMA, and/or fencing. I wasn't able to find good enough stats, but some exact numbers would be helpful. Saying that "there seems to be much more dominance..." doesn't mean much without some numbers to back it up. Otherwise we can just say that "MKP seemed to dominate for a while," or "MC dominated for a while," and not need to prove it.
To give you an idea about tennis, here is the comparison of all Grand Slam tournaments since 2003:
Roger Federer was just ridiculously consistent for more than a decade. He made it into the Ro4 of the Grand Slams almost every single time over a period of 9 years. The same goes for Rafael Nadal on sand, he won the French Open every time except for 2009.
Novak Djokovic is the new dominator. As previously mentioned, he had a win rate of 90.2% in 2013 (80% counting sets).
Because you always can hardcounter things. If someone is too greedy and gets countered he just loses no matter who much worse his opponent is. If you always had to play a Standard macrogame in SC2, the results would probably be more consistent. And don't forget all the Traveling that makes it hard for the Pros to always be in topform.
I don't think that micro depth or an overreliance on pure strategy per se is the main problem. Just let me play the devil's advocate here, chess is a game of 100% strategy and mental resilience, and correspondingly, chess results are also quite consistent. I do not think that there has been a recent tournament that carlsen has not won or placed high in. Realistically, although chess has many tournaments in a year, what are the chances that some 2500 elo upstart can dispatch carlsen? I'd say close to zero.
I think the problem is that scouting is harder and more unpredictable than before, leading to much higher volatility, and strategic depth is simply not there. I hesitate to call sc2 a strategy game any longer as it has been a while since we've seen a cool strategy (cough, not proxy oracles) emerge and redefine the metagame. The last cool thing I saw was shy's tempest-storm combo against innovation.
In other sports there seems to be much more dominance and consistence of single individuals. e.g.: Vitali Klitschko, Novak Djokovic, Magnus Carlsen, Usain Bolt, etc...
Can we get some actual win rates for top players in other 1v1 games for comparison? I'd like to see Go, Chess, Tennis, MMA, and/or fencing. I wasn't able to find good enough stats, but some exact numbers would be helpful. Saying that "there seems to be much more dominance..." doesn't mean much without some numbers to back it up. Otherwise we can just say that "MKP seemed to dominate for a while," or "MC dominated for a while," and not need to prove it.
To give you an idea about tennis, here is the comparison of all Grand Slam tournaments since 2003:
Roger Federer was just ridiculously consistent for more than a decade. He made it into the Ro4 of the Grand Slams almost every single time over a period of 9 years. The same goes for Rafael Nadal on sand, he won the French Open every time except for 2009.
Novak Djokovic is the new dominator. As previously mentioned, he had a win rate of 90.2% in 2013 (80% counting sets).
Each Tennis set consists of a BO11 (or 13) games. Each game consists of a BO7+ points.
If SC2 players played matches consisting of that many points, games, and sets, you would find just as much consistency.
On December 22 2013 09:34 Esoterikk wrote: Sc2 isn't a strategy game anymore, it's muscle memory and build orders. strategy died with blobs.
Odd, from what I hear, BW had an even higher requirement of muscle memory, and it was the "greatest game ever". So you're saying BW was less strategic than SC2?
On December 22 2013 09:34 Esoterikk wrote: Sc2 isn't a strategy game anymore, it's muscle memory and build orders. strategy died with blobs.
Odd, from what I hear, BW had an even higher requirement of muscle memory, and it was the "greatest game ever". So you're saying BW was less strategic than SC2?
Incorrect, BW had more strategical option than SC2 AND w/ a higher requirement of muscle memory.
Having higher requirement of muscle memory and more strategical options aren't mutually exclusive.
On December 22 2013 09:34 Esoterikk wrote: Sc2 isn't a strategy game anymore, it's muscle memory and build orders. strategy died with blobs.
Odd, from what I hear, BW had an even higher requirement of muscle memory, and it was the "greatest game ever". So you're saying BW was less strategic than SC2?
Mechanical difficulty and strategic depth aren't mutually exclusive.
the top 8 in the season finals is kinda a bad sample size... u should look at tpo 8 in all wcs in the regions to be honest which just off the top of my head i know alot of names will be repeated
On December 22 2013 13:21 Mvrio wrote: can someone explain the "Artosis curse"? I'm pretty sure its a funny story but just don't recall
There was no singular incident to jumpstart it, if that's what you mean. Artosis just has a way of making very bold - and very incorrect - pronouncements about who will win in a given series. He's probably no more wrong than any other caster on average, but confirmation bias has seen fit to strike fear into the hearts of SC fans any time Artosis predicts a fan favorite to win.
During WCS finals for example, there was about a page of 'gg jaedong' comments the moment Artosis said he expected Jaedong to beat sOs going into the match.
Matches are too short; BO3 and BO5 are too volatile
BW had Bo1 group stages both in KeSPA-sanctioned leagues and in WCG back when it was considered a totally serious tournament. Short series are not too volatile. WCG was also entirely Bo3 series beyond the group stage; even the semis and grand-finals were Bo3. AFAIK, MSL and OSL only had Bo5 series past the playoff stage anyway.
So no, short series are not the problem.
Knockout vs. round-robin format: The knockout format greatly increases elements of luck
Valid point but there were dominant players at the top level in individual MSL/OSL tournaments, even five bonjwas; BoxeR, iloveoov, NaDa, He Who Must Not Be Named and Flash. In fact, Proleague was the only real test of skill within a round robin setting.
There is no world wide accepted Elo ranking system
It's just a way of measuring skill. That should not affect tournament results at all.
On December 22 2013 13:21 Mvrio wrote: can someone explain the "Artosis curse"? I'm pretty sure its a funny story but just don't recall
There was no singular incident to jumpstart it, if that's what you mean. Artosis just has a way of making very bold - and very incorrect - pronouncements about who will win in a given series. He's probably no more wrong than any other caster on average, but confirmation bias has seen fit to strike fear into the hearts of SC fans any time Artosis predicts a fan favorite to win.
During WCS finals for example, there was about a page of 'gg jaedong' comments the moment Artosis said he expected Jaedong to beat sOs going into the match.
In 2012 and 2013, he's actually been spot-on when cursing players. The most notable incident was when he tweeted "GOGOGOGOGOGOGO @SKMC" in Game 7 of the WCS Europe S2 finals when he faced Duckdeok.
On December 22 2013 13:11 psychotics wrote: the top 8 in the season finals is kinda a bad sample size... u should look at tpo 8 in all wcs in the regions to be honest which just off the top of my head i know alot of names will be repeated
Making stats of WCS EU or WCS America doesn't make much sense since there are a handful of Koreans and the majority is foreigners. We already know that Koreans are consistently better than most foreigners. This thread is about comparing the cream of the crop.
That said, I already did compare the WCS Korea region, which is probably the only thing worth comparing because of the steady player pool:
The score represents the number of times they made it to the Ro4 compared to the total number of tournaments they played in and should give an indication of how consistent the player is.
The number of tournaments is the sum of all premier tournaments they played in, starting from the first time they made it the Ro4. The info was taken from the player pages: e.g.: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Maru/Results
A few things to note: - This includes any premier tournaments, so that the player pools are not everywhere the same - If we did the same thing with GSLs only, scores would look much worse. - It is much harder to be consistent over a longer period of time
That said, Maru, Soulkey and Dear do look quite impressive over a short period of time. Let's see if they can prove themselves in the next year as well.
These are the tennis scores for comparison. Mind that this is only counting Grand Slams!
I feel like there are three factors in play to explain the unpredictability of results:
1. Constant balance changes:
Brood War had no balance changes for over a decade. The game is so complex and deep that even years after its release, people have found new strategies and some of said strategies (i.e. sAviOr's TvZ) have revolutionized the metagame and reversed Terran vs Zerg winrates at a time when people QQ'd for balance adjustments.
If David Kim buffed Oracles to the point where every Terran now has to build an Engineering Bay just in case their opponent gets bored of opening 2 base double forge Colossus and makes a proxy Stargate, since not having turrets will result in you outright losing the game to an air unit that can obliterate Marines and SCVs with absolute ease; is it not surprising that we are seeing lots of Terran balance whine and an imbalance in terms of Protoss winrates on ladder?
2. Racial Imbalance/Lowered Skill Ceiling:
This sounds like a contradiction of point #1 but let me explain my point thoroughly and highlight why SC2 is the way it is.
This is not wholly due to the simplification of mechanics between BW and SC2. Improving game mechanics to make playing a game less frustrating is a good thing provided you have a variety of playstyles that are viable and high amounts of micromanagement are rewarded rather than mandated. League of Legends is a great example of how Riot Games have managed to both do this wrong and right compared to DOTA 2. The swing delay in LoL is far less prevalent meaning that last hitting is far easier which makes the game far less frustrating but at the same time mechanics and game design have been too simplified causing a stagnant metagame, one specific team formation (AP mid, bruiser top, ganker as jungler, support and ADC, all in very specific parts of the map) and composition required to win and a lack of ability to really reverse a game after it's been snowballed in one team's favor. I won't go into too much detail but the lack of denying and the wide homogenization of item stats and runes contributes a lot to this.
The only units currently used in the SC2 metagame that really reward high levels of micromanagement are Terran bio units, hellions, zerglings, banelings, mutalisks and to a lesser extent, Phoenixes and Stalkers which are considered quite weak for Protoss in the later game.
Protoss units have the greatest imbalance in terms of skill ceiling. With just 3 - 5 actions, Sentries can entrap or divide entire armies. Colossi are highly powerful, require only half-decent positioning and an attack-move command to really utilize to their fullest extent and unlike Reavers, their movement speed and ability to walk up cliffs is so good that drop micro is actually discouraged rather than necessary because that Warp Prism you made and speed upgrade you researched could have been an extra Colossus in an actual engagement and the difference between narrowly losing said engagement and curb stomping your opponent.
Now compare this to the Terran composition which mainly consists of Marines, Marauders, Medivacs (and either Hellbats in TvP or Widow Mines in TvZ) in the non-mirror matchups. MMMM and MMMH require very high levels of micromanagement to even trade with midgame armies, and the requirements to trade with 3-3 deathballs in terms of flanks, micromanagement and pure reaction time are impossibly high to the point where even Terran pros like Bomber, TaeJa, Kas and Qxc have expressed pure hatred for Protoss.
Why is this the case? Because Terran low-micro units especially are heavily punished.
Siege Tanks are extremely immobile yet Protoss and Zerg late game armies are so tanky against the Siege Tank that they can attack-move into a huge cluster of Siege Tanks and still trade really well. If they perform so well versus a huge cluster of tanks, imagine how badly they sodomize small amounts of tanks and a planetary fortress holding a key position. Tanks also take a long time to siege up, are expensive relative to their actual power, supply intensive and this is the reason the Widow Mine has completely phased out the tank in TvZ even post-nerf.
Hellbats have been heavily nerfed and don't even remotely fulfill the role they were originally meant to (a meatshield designed to thwart light units) They perform badly versus Zealots and Zerglings, REALLY badly versus Psistorms and Banelings and don't even get me started on them vs Armored units...
And finally... the Thor. It's too expensive and despite being listed as a counter to the Mutalisk, a simple micro trick executed through one or two actions reverses the odds and makes mass Mutalisks the hard counter to the Thor.
Spellcasters are also where this imbalance remains prevalent although their flaws lie in the inconsistency of their design rather than the level of micromanagement required to utilize them. What I mean is that:
High Templar can deal 80 damage over 4 seconds, instant cast. They also cost 50 Minerals and 150 Gas
Infestors can deal 30 (40 vs Armored) damage over 4 seconds to a clump of units through a fast moving projectile. They cost 100 Minerals and 150 Gas. Despite their higher resource cost to High Templar, their value is still worthwhile. The unit was even considered overpowered in Wings back when Fungal Growth had an instant effect.
Sentries can impede movement through a single forcefield. Just one forcefield is enough to entirely block a ramp, making certain cheese strategies highly effective
The Mothership Core and Photon Overcharge can hold virtually any 1 or 2 base push in PvT. It's the sole reason why 3-Rax and 2-Rax Concussive expand are dead builds.
The Oracle is a walking contradiction of itself. Whereas Hellbats were nerfed heavily because they could quickly kill mineral lines if your opponent did nothing to prepare for them, Oracles have such high DPS vs Light that they can slaughter entire mineral lines in split seconds unless you already have static defences up. This isn't a problem for the Zerg because Spore Crawlers only cost 75 Minerals, no longer require an Evolution Pit, are made from an easily amassed Drone, and detection is always good. For Terrans? They can only produce 1 SCV at a time and going Engineering Bay early is often a huge but mandatory build order deviation to prevent an outright build order counter vs Proxy Stargate.
Ghosts can deplete 100 Shields instantly in a small area or 100 Energy, making them only useful against spellcasters and Protoss units. They cost 200 Minerals and 100 Gas, already making them far more mineral intensive than other spellcasters.
Ravens used to be and are still trash. They cost 100 Minerals and 200 Gas, making them the most gas-intensive spellcaster in the game. Unlike Fungal Growth and Psionic Storm, Seeker Missile is also highly inconsistent. Whereas you have to instantly split or pre-split your army in anticipation of a game-ending storm or money fungal, Seeker Missile gives the opponent way too much breathing room to either retreat and make the missile fizzle out or move red units away from the deathball, either way nullifying the Raven's actual damage potential.
If this is too much and actually balance whine, I'm sorry. I will actually try and find hard evidence to back this shit up. In the meantime, just understand that the weaknesses of Mech are the reason why we see bio-mine or pure-bio in every game and a total stagnation of the metagame.
This is the best explanation I can muster to explain why every Korean Terran goes biomine in TvZ or bio in TvP.
3. Too many tournaments:
In 2011 and 2012 we had ludicrous amounts of international tournaments and at least five GSLs in a year while we'd have at best 3 Korean Starleagues a year and even in 2013 we had far more international tournaments than were ever hosted in BW.
If you have loads of tournaments and if you fly out entire rosters from Korea to America/Europe all the time, you are going to get a lot of problems in terms of competition, new playstyles and just pure underperformance due to jet-lag.
I would love that they implement what's shown in Depth of Micro.
Has David Kim even watched the video? These are very simple to implement (heh, if they're in the StarEdit, or w/e the SC2 version is called ), and achieve much without adding a huge complexity to the game (which seems to be the pest according to Blizzard, as shown by the over simplification of everything they released for quite some time now).
EPT
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god save us all
and they did not win much so even the win balance for races is better in sc2 ..
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, I personally saw him for the 1st time in HotS.
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