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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37118 Posts
On April 06 2016 13:52 Heyoka wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2016 08:05 NonY wrote:On April 06 2016 05:30 -NegativeZero- wrote:
there is nothing wrong with favoring experimental maps over "standard" maps, whatever your definition of that may be - that is one of the ways the game develops.
the problem is that blizzard's idea of experimental maps revolves around gimmicks rather than well thought out concepts. There's no way to "think out" what experimental map will work or be good for the game. When a player analyzes a map before playing it, they're thinking "can the strategies I know be done on this map?" and "what old maps have features like this map and what did I think of those features on those older maps?" There's no way to figure out what new things are going to work until the whole progaming scene is forced to play on it. And even then we don't know what new things might work on it because the players might not even be trying to play the map the best they can. They may judge that the best use of their time is to play the map sub-optimally with strats they already know because figuring out a new strategy for just one map and just one matchup is not worth it. Or even if they do try to figure out new strats, they might not succeed in time before the map is considered a disaster. I think the problem is that the game mechanics that changed with LotV were already a big enough upheaval to unsettle players. Combining that with experimental maps was too much for a lot of people to handle. As an addendum to this, Brood War maps were constantly trying out new experiment things and as late as 2009 occasionally a total shit idea would be unleashed on proleague or what have you. And that was 10 years on in a game where KeSPA was getting playtesting from progamers to help improve concepts before release (or at least claimed to). The community always had big discussions when new maps were unveiled and it was incredibly rare for them to play out as people expected based on design ideas (in particular I remember IdrA , then playing for CJ Entus, saying Battle Royale was hard for Zerg - turns out that map was absolutely unplayable for T or P).
...How the hell did you find an IdrA post from 2009?
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On April 06 2016 13:52 Heyoka wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2016 08:05 NonY wrote:On April 06 2016 05:30 -NegativeZero- wrote:
there is nothing wrong with favoring experimental maps over "standard" maps, whatever your definition of that may be - that is one of the ways the game develops.
the problem is that blizzard's idea of experimental maps revolves around gimmicks rather than well thought out concepts. There's no way to "think out" what experimental map will work or be good for the game. When a player analyzes a map before playing it, they're thinking "can the strategies I know be done on this map?" and "what old maps have features like this map and what did I think of those features on those older maps?" There's no way to figure out what new things are going to work until the whole progaming scene is forced to play on it. And even then we don't know what new things might work on it because the players might not even be trying to play the map the best they can. They may judge that the best use of their time is to play the map sub-optimally with strats they already know because figuring out a new strategy for just one map and just one matchup is not worth it. Or even if they do try to figure out new strats, they might not succeed in time before the map is considered a disaster. I think the problem is that the game mechanics that changed with LotV were already a big enough upheaval to unsettle players. Combining that with experimental maps was too much for a lot of people to handle. As an addendum to this, Brood War maps were constantly trying out new experiment things and as late as 2009 occasionally a total shit idea would be unleashed on proleague or what have you. And that was 10 years on in a game where KeSPA was getting playtesting from progamers to help improve concepts before release (or at least claimed to). The community always had big discussions when new maps were unveiled and it was incredibly rare for them to play out as people expected based on design ideas (in particular I remember IdrA , then playing for CJ Entus, saying Battle Royale was hard for Zerg - turns out that map was absolutely unplayable for T or P).
Thus the need to have non-WCS/GSL tournaments using no ladder maps at all, to test new maps.
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WTH! Seriously... TL ESports writers should all be fired.
Nazgul, punish them for their lack of respect and irreverance. The fact that they failed to mention you ending Idra's MLG Dallas run by personally blink stalkering him to death on Kulas Ravine is unacceptable. This was YOUR moment to be a part of the "memorable games" and they denied you. End them.
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On April 06 2016 16:01 Joedaddy wrote:
WTH! Seriously... TL ESports writers should all be fired.
Nazgul, punish them for their lack of respect and irreverance. The fact that they failed to mention you ending Idra's MLG Dallas run by personally blink stalkering him to death on Kulas Ravine is unacceptable. This was YOUR moment to be a part of the "memorable games" and they denied you. End them.
That was super brutal to watch. I remember just knowing idra was going to die. Nazgul frodo'd him super hard.
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Czech Republic12133 Posts
On April 06 2016 06:32 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2016 05:30 -NegativeZero- wrote:+ Show Spoiler +there is nothing wrong with favoring experimental maps over "standard" maps, whatever your definition of that may be - that is one of the ways the game develops.
the problem is that blizzard's idea of experimental maps revolves around gimmicks rather than well thought out concepts. I think the rest of the problem is that Blizzard is forcing them, rather than offering the experimental maps as an option for play. But they know that if they offer them as an option, players simply don't like them and will veto them (as they stated in their own damn message). So rather than giving a damn about the way players enjoy to play, they force these maps on people... Like force feeding is going to make people start enjoying them one day... But their statement that players will veto them and you won't see them commonly, should send a big message in flashing lights to Blizzard. I would say "They just don't get it"... but they DO get it. They have to if they are aware of it if they are commenting on them being veto'ed. + Show Spoiler +
Its completely mind boggling as to why they choose situations like this to completely insist on NOT caring what the community wants and sticking to their guns. Yet in situations where the community supports a change they are making, they scrap the plans due to a minor portion of the community complaining...
It seems like intentional sabotage. But they are a business, they must have some bigger reasons. And they have all these lengthy PR statements every week... To what end? What is the point of dragging the community onward like this??
I'm becoming more and more convinced that they are already working on, or planning work on, another RTS. Keep people watching, but unhappy... just so you can then offer them something to fill the void with... It's like making people starve in preparation for offering them an amazing meal, just to make the meal taste that much better in the end
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No, they don't get it. When community was saying LotV is too fast hey offered us slowing the GAME SPEED. Everyone was talking about the pace of the game and they are offering us lower the speed of the game in lower leagues? Either they offered us something unacceptable to say "look, we tried, you refused" and then they are pure evil, or they are that stupid. I'm sorry but I cannot see anything in between. And I honestly don't think they are that evil, but what do I know? 
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Nice Job!!!!!! Great read! Keep it up!
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I miss the daybreak times. 
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On April 06 2016 21:31 boxerfred wrote:I miss the daybreak times.
I second this, as Terran in fact...
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On April 06 2016 00:04 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2016 00:00 FFW_Rude wrote:
I'm a third in there and i see you missed Fruitland (it was a GSL map so it should be there). i was waiting to see how you would describe it.
Also you listed Ohana as standard but Belshir beach as non standard. I thought they were almost exactly the same map but it's been a long time . Show nested quote +The standard maps from this pool include: Tal'darim Altar (TDA), Bel'shir Beach, Antiga Shipyard and Daybreak. he has listed belshir beach as standard
Think i missread
Finally finished it. Good article. Not a fan of different map pool by players. But i like your proposition of having the maps before the game starts. Like players gives veto and order before and they know which map in which order they will play. It could create even more crazy games.
But the "standard" word is too vague for me to have this article make sense.
Arkanoid is not standard. Ulrena is standard for me.
Or if Ulrena is not standard because gimmicks with the bridge then KSS not standard because rocks behind the natural.
it's apple and oranges but this is covered in the article as well so.. not quite sure what to make of this.
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On April 06 2016 07:32 Big J wrote:
That said, the general direction with maps would be pretty good, if David Kim just balanced and designed the game around a varied mappool. But he and his team are way too afraid that Korean pros and broodwar elitists would revolt when blizzard would actually take a role as caring father instead of "letting the meta settle" and the game die for anyone who doesn't have the time or endurance to train for 15 hours every week.
On April 06 2016 08:03 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's not so easy to balance (and design) three unique races around a varied map pool though. If we really wanna do that then we probably get to the point where each race gets more similar to each other.
Lets be real here, it's not really possible to balance around such a varied map pool.
On one hand there's all the strategic and combative aspects of the map that will favor one races playstyle or the other. Beyond that, these maps also influence the economy. Those are too many dynamic variables to ever reach a meaningful balance. They can't adjust unit strength based aroudn the maps, because the changes would only work properly on a few maps. They can't adjust the maps based around 1 race without inadvertently affecting other races or their economies.
That's why standard maps began to exist for RTS's in the first place. Because there needed to be a TOURNAMENT standard of map style that would work as intended for each race. Hell, maps are how they kept BW in balance.
It's like they are disregarding the entire history of lessons already learned. But they are doing it intentionally, and I do not believe at all that they are unaware. So if this is intentional... they have other motives.
On April 06 2016 17:19 deacon.frost wrote:No, they don't get it. When community was saying LotV is too fast hey offered us slowing the GAME SPEED. Everyone was talking about the pace of the game and they are offering us lower the speed of the game in lower leagues? Either they offered us something unacceptable to say "look, we tried, you refused" and then they are pure evil, or they are that stupid. I'm sorry but I cannot see anything in between. And I honestly don't think they are that evil, but what do I know?
Do you really think they didn't know what the community was talking about?
The truth of the situation you mentioned... It's not that their stupid or didn't know. You have to realize, what they post to us public? That's straight up PR. It's easier for them to ACT like game speed is what is being talked about. It's easier to explain why they aren't doing a damn thing then. Just like right now, it's easier for them to bring up a highly debated subject like maps (even though its clear the majority doesn't like them, even from Blizzards own comments), and discuss it for months on end, without having to pull the trigger and actually do anything. It's a distraction.
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On April 07 2016 00:22 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2016 07:32 Big J wrote:
That said, the general direction with maps would be pretty good, if David Kim just balanced and designed the game around a varied mappool. But he and his team are way too afraid that Korean pros and broodwar elitists would revolt when blizzard would actually take a role as caring father instead of "letting the meta settle" and the game die for anyone who doesn't have the time or endurance to train for 15 hours every week. Show nested quote +On April 06 2016 08:03 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's not so easy to balance (and design) three unique races around a varied map pool though. If we really wanna do that then we probably get to the point where each race gets more similar to each other.
Lets be real here, it's not really possible to balance around such a varied map pool. On one hand there's all the strategic and combative aspects of the map that will favor one races playstyle or the other. Beyond that, these maps also influence the economy. Those are too many dynamic variables to ever reach a meaningful balance. They can't adjust unit strength based aroudn the maps, because the changes would only work properly on a few maps. They can't adjust the maps based around 1 race without inadvertently affecting other races or their economies. That's why standard maps began to exist for RTS's in the first place. Because there needed to be a TOURNAMENT standard of map style that would work as intended for each race. Hell, maps are how they kept BW in balance. It's like they are disregarding the entire history of lessons already learned. But they are doing it intentionally, and I do not believe at all that they are unaware. So if this is intentional... they have other motives.
We found standard restrictions that work for 3 asymetrical matchups. Why shouldn't it be possible to loosen those restrictions by clever designing and balancing? The current mappool isn't even very varied. The difference is that instead of 95% correlation between features some of the maps only use 90%. We still play with the same natural expansions, same main base ramps, similar rush distances (even on Ulrena; play some SupCom if you want to see actual big differences between rush distances on small and big maps), standardized base layouts, standardized dynamic features (rocks, other rocks and XNWT), similar amounts of realistically and theoretically grabable resources that are arranged in bases (no random minerals around the map, everywhere where there are resources you have enough space to build headquarters) and so on and so on. I'm not even advocating to drastically change the game to overthrow these things, but I believe there are certain map features that shouldn't inherently feature a race as they do now. Examples for that would be size, openness and small variations in expansion layouts as we see them in the LotV maps. It's called good/robust design.
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I was maybe the first one to point out how garbage and poorly written your Hots GOAT ranking was (not counting PL, sOs, taeja and stuff).
But i read this whole article (took me almost 30 mins :O ) and ill be the first to admit that this one was a master piece.
Really well written, great explanation, way more hardwork and knowledgeable than the GOAT article.
Good job stuchiu, one of your best, if not your best article.
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On April 07 2016 00:45 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2016 00:22 Spyridon wrote:On April 06 2016 07:32 Big J wrote:
That said, the general direction with maps would be pretty good, if David Kim just balanced and designed the game around a varied mappool. But he and his team are way too afraid that Korean pros and broodwar elitists would revolt when blizzard would actually take a role as caring father instead of "letting the meta settle" and the game die for anyone who doesn't have the time or endurance to train for 15 hours every week. On April 06 2016 08:03 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's not so easy to balance (and design) three unique races around a varied map pool though. If we really wanna do that then we probably get to the point where each race gets more similar to each other.
Lets be real here, it's not really possible to balance around such a varied map pool. On one hand there's all the strategic and combative aspects of the map that will favor one races playstyle or the other. Beyond that, these maps also influence the economy. Those are too many dynamic variables to ever reach a meaningful balance. They can't adjust unit strength based aroudn the maps, because the changes would only work properly on a few maps. They can't adjust the maps based around 1 race without inadvertently affecting other races or their economies. That's why standard maps began to exist for RTS's in the first place. Because there needed to be a TOURNAMENT standard of map style that would work as intended for each race. Hell, maps are how they kept BW in balance. It's like they are disregarding the entire history of lessons already learned. But they are doing it intentionally, and I do not believe at all that they are unaware. So if this is intentional... they have other motives. We found standard restrictions that work for 3 asymetrical matchups. Why shouldn't it be possible to loosen those restrictions by clever designing and balancing? The current mappool isn't even very varied. The difference is that instead of 95% correlation between features some of the maps only use 90%. We still play with the same natural expansions, same main base ramps, similar rush distances (even on Ulrena; play some SupCom if you want to see actual big differences between rush distances on small and big maps), standardized base layouts, standardized dynamic features (rocks, other rocks and XNWT), similar amounts of realistically and theoretically grabable resources that are arranged in bases (no random minerals around the map, everywhere where there are resources you have enough space to build headquarters) and so on and so on. I'm not even advocating to drastically change the game to overthrow these things, but I believe there are certain map features that shouldn't inherently feature a race as they do now. Examples for that would be size, openness and small variations in expansion layouts as we see them in the LotV maps. It's called good/robust design.
Good/robust design requires consistent results. Maps design is inherently linked to unit balance, racial balance, economical balance, and so on.
The more you loosen restrictions, the less consistent the data becomes, and the inconsistencies are different for EACH of the asymmetrical races. Each races unit, racial, and economic balances get more skewed on each map style. No matter how good your games design is, map design is linked to that, which means your map design approach must be balanced for all races. You loosen those restrictions, you are also allowing more variance in the acceptable balance statistics.
What happens if one races data becomes too inconsistent and you have to fix it? You have to either change the racial balance, or the map balance. Racial balance is out of the question because that would affect all the other maps/matchups. So the way to repair it is to change the map balance. How do you do that? You give the map more standard features. Their "creative" maps, and "standard" maps, are inherently contradictory. You can call it "good design" if you want, but that's just using a different word to describe "standard". That's why standard became a standard - because it was well designed and well balanced. So what does that make non-standard...?
Blizzard posted a couple months back supporting the gif someone made on Reddit with NINE different map types, separated on a grid like a tic tac toe board. There's no way in hell the data will be consistent enough for all 3 races on 9 different map types. Its straight up not possible. Which means the style of balance completely changes...
Instead of balancing style being "all 3 races have a chance on this map", it becomes "Terran might have a 52% chance of winning on this map, but 48% on this map, and that's okay". In my opinion, that's not balance... That's RNG based upon which map you get.
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You lose me with this:
There has been some hoo-hah about having more varied unit compositions in each matchup. But for my money, I consider WoL TvT the best matchup to spectate because of its inherent value in positioning and its large potential for aggression.
not saying a person cant feel that, of course you can, but to me this is boring. It's like a "pitchers dual" in baseball where there are little no no hits, lots of strike-outs, and hardly no one gets on base. Is there drama in that? Of course, who will break through? But is it "exciting"? Of course not! It's much more exciting when teams are scoring, stealing, shifting the outfield, etc etc.
It is fine to argue you enjoyed WoL style more than LotV. But I think it not valid to say it had a "large potential for aggresion". heck, just adding medivac boost upped the aggression a ton. Hellbats upped the agreesion.
I also disagree with the approach of this article. Pulling out some example games that show some varied strats on standard maps does not disprove the general premise. For example, if you find 5 amazing games on a standard map, but there are 3000 "standard games" on that map, what have you proven?
Having non-standard maps, and I mean truly non-standard, does force players to think. It does force them to innovate strats specific to that map. Either that, or lose games.
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Bot edit.
User was banned for this post.
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Nice article with very good points on the topic. Well done!
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On April 07 2016 03:08 rigginssc2 wrote:You lose me with this: Show nested quote +There has been some hoo-hah about having more varied unit compositions in each matchup. But for my money, I consider WoL TvT the best matchup to spectate because of its inherent value in positioning and its large potential for aggression. not saying a person cant feel that, of course you can, but to me this is boring. It's like a "pitchers dual" in baseball where there are little no no hits, lots of strike-outs, and hardly no one gets on base. Is there drama in that? Of course, who will break through? But is it "exciting"? Of course not! It's much more exciting when teams are scoring, stealing, shifting the outfield, etc etc.
Hey now pitcher duels are the shit. definitely the best part of baseball for me. home runs are boring
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On April 07 2016 02:53 Spyridon wrote:
Good/robust design requires consistent results. Maps design is inherently linked to unit balance, racial balance, economical balance, and so on.
The more you loosen restrictions, the less consistent the data becomes, and the inconsistencies are different for EACH of the asymmetrical races. Each races unit, racial, and economic balances get more skewed on each map style. No matter how good your games design is, map design is linked to that, which means your map design approach must be balanced for all races. You loosen those restrictions, you are also allowing more variance in the acceptable balance statistics.
What happens if one races data becomes too inconsistent and you have to fix it? You have to either change the racial balance, or the map balance. Racial balance is out of the question because that would affect all the other maps/matchups. So the way to repair it is to change the map balance. How do you do that? You give the map more standard features. Their "creative" maps, and "standard" maps, are inherently contradictory. You can call it "good design" if you want, but that's just using a different word to describe "standard". That's why standard became a standard - because it was well designed and well balanced. So what does that make non-standard...?
Blizzard posted a couple months back supporting the gif someone made on Reddit with NINE different map types, separated on a grid like a tic tac toe board. There's no way in hell the data will be consistent enough for all 3 races on 9 different map types. Its straight up not possible. Which means the style of balance completely changes...
Instead of balancing style being "all 3 races have a chance on this map", it becomes "Terran might have a 52% chance of winning on this map, but 48% on this map, and that's okay". In my opinion, that's not balance... That's RNG based upon which map you get.
I understand where you're coming from Spyridon, but I would have to side with Big J on this regard. It's true that looser restriction does lead to more varied data, and map design does directly affect the win rates of the three races, but the issue I have with your argument is that, none of that makes it bad for balance statistics. It makes it harder for sure, but not bad.
Let's look at the question you raise: What happens if one races data becomes too inconsistent and you have to fix it? The way you phase your logical step, it makes it seem like all you're focus on is simply just balancing the match-up. A more thoughtful design team should instead ask: Why is this race performing inconsistently? What is causing these inconsistently? Does the player and/or the opponent already have the means in place to combat these issue? If they are already in place, why aren't they performing what they were designed to do? If there isn't, is it acceptable design that we leave it as an obvious weakness? If it's not acceptable, what can we change to reduce that weakness for this situation and future possible situations? Just on my thoughts on the dev team and how they balance, they always choose to leave those obvious weaknesses so this forces maps to cover them up.
Instead of calling it 'good design', I'm going to say, "something that is better designed increases the possible variance in the game. Is it possible for a great design to encompass all possible maps (even the extreme ones) and strategies with asymmetrical design and still be within acceptable balance, probable not. But is it possible for the current design of SC2 to be improved to encompass a large variety of maps & strategies while still retaining asymmetrical design and acceptable balance. My money says, yes all the way.
Asymmetrical does not mean lacking the proper tools to deal with the differences. That's poor game design, and SC2 has obvious areas of those type of design that has forced maps to cover it up. If Blizzard really wanted a more robust 1v1 multiplayer community, then expanding on the possible map pools is the only direction they can go since they're not going to be adding new races or units.
And for the last statement you made about 'all 3 races having a chance on a map'. My question to you is, what is more important to you?
Why & how you win/lose a match? or. Match-ups being 50/50 win ratio.
I ask this because, if a game has a well designed game with all aspects of the game being taken account, these win ratios should be near 50/50 win ratio. Because the hard task of designing is comparing two different intangible aspects and designing them so feel and play on equal footing. Making something hit 50/50 is the easy step since you have the data & numbers to compare to them at that point to adjust.
But what I should really question is, what range of win ratio do you believe that yourself and everyone else is willing to tolerate. Because apparently in your non-exaggerated example and the way it comes off to me, having a 2% variance from perfect balance, a 48% chance of winning is not a good enough shot for you to win a game.
And lastly, in regards to pro-league. It's a good thing pro-matches are based off of best of 3/5/7 series because slight variances in win ratios for each map should ideally offset each other. If they aren't, there's a sign that one of the races is not designed well in regards to the other 2 races.
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Bisutopia19387 Posts
Really impressive amount of effort put into this article. Great job SC2 team.
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United Kingdom20344 Posts
On April 06 2016 15:05 Seeker wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2016 13:52 Heyoka wrote:On April 06 2016 08:05 NonY wrote:On April 06 2016 05:30 -NegativeZero- wrote:
there is nothing wrong with favoring experimental maps over "standard" maps, whatever your definition of that may be - that is one of the ways the game develops.
the problem is that blizzard's idea of experimental maps revolves around gimmicks rather than well thought out concepts. There's no way to "think out" what experimental map will work or be good for the game. When a player analyzes a map before playing it, they're thinking "can the strategies I know be done on this map?" and "what old maps have features like this map and what did I think of those features on those older maps?" There's no way to figure out what new things are going to work until the whole progaming scene is forced to play on it. And even then we don't know what new things might work on it because the players might not even be trying to play the map the best they can. They may judge that the best use of their time is to play the map sub-optimally with strats they already know because figuring out a new strategy for just one map and just one matchup is not worth it. Or even if they do try to figure out new strats, they might not succeed in time before the map is considered a disaster. I think the problem is that the game mechanics that changed with LotV were already a big enough upheaval to unsettle players. Combining that with experimental maps was too much for a lot of people to handle. As an addendum to this, Brood War maps were constantly trying out new experiment things and as late as 2009 occasionally a total shit idea would be unleashed on proleague or what have you. And that was 10 years on in a game where KeSPA was getting playtesting from progamers to help improve concepts before release (or at least claimed to). The community always had big discussions when new maps were unveiled and it was incredibly rare for them to play out as people expected based on design ideas (in particular I remember IdrA , then playing for CJ Entus, saying Battle Royale was hard for Zerg - turns out that map was absolutely unplayable for T or P). ...How the hell did you find an IdrA post from 2009?
Oh boy.
Race Stats (non-mirrors):
TvZ: 4-10 (28.6%) [ Games ]
ZvP: 4-5 (44.4%) [ Games ]
PvT: 0-0 (0%) [ Games ]
Mirrors: 0 TvT | 71 ZvZ | 1 PvP
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EPT
