|
Stats did well this tournament, but if you look at his recent performance against the top terrans he loses quite a bit more than he wins. Besides your argument is flawed. Fruitdealer winning the first GSL didn't mean that zerg wasn't woefully underpowered, and Taeja doing well during the blink stalker era didn't mean that TvP was balanced at all back then.
I don't think you are giving enough credit to Stats's learning curve. From getting stomped by Inno 0-4 in December to beating him 3-2 in GSL two weeks ago is huge. His performance at IEM reflects just how far his TvP has come in a few months.
My point was that at the skill ceiling, that is, the very top of balance, Protoss is balanced. This is not necessarily true for all levels. Stats has shown he is more than capable of defeating top-tier Terran players.
|
On March 06 2017 09:43 pvsnp wrote:
Casting != balance. Not saying the balance is perfect, but using the words of people who are speaking unscripted, who have their own subjective opinions, whose job it is to entertain, as an imbalance justification is really crappy evidence.
The evidence is really in the statistics surrounding PvT.
However, if Tasteosis (and others) are correct that there are far more "best terrans" than "best Xs", then that does point to a balance issue, given that one would naturally assume that players' skill is relatively evenly distributed across races at the top.
On March 06 2017 09:43 pvsnp wrote:
On the issue of TvP at the very highest levels, it seems to be just fine actually. Stats, the best Protoss in the world, beat INnoVation 3-2, ByuN 3-1, and lost to TY 3-4. He gives at least as good as he gets against the top Terrans. Saying that 4 > 1 is a specious argument, because if Stats can stand at that level of skill it means that it is possible for a Protoss player to stand at the very highest level of Starcraft. Meaning the race's skill ceiling is balanced.
You're assuming a lot here. A single player winning does not a balance argument make.
Maybe Innovation and Byun had a bad day. What about all the other PvTs that you so immediately discard because the Protoss lost? Why did they lose? Was it because they played like Stats, but their opponents had a better plan against the play? Was it because of imbalance? Was it because of something else entirely?
The stats for the tournament are 31.4% of PvTs won. If that's not indicative of a problem, then someone has a lot of explaining to do to show how this is the case. As it is, we have some of the best Protoss players (Zest, herO, Stats, Patience [more up and down than the others, one must admit]) losing, obviously, in PvT. The variety of builds is extremely limited, the actual win-rates are very low, and the players are being eliminated from tournaments by this match-up.
Stats got to the finals (to be eliminated by a Terran). That's a long ways from the claim that "PvT is just fine".
But, hey, since it would appear that the WM change is going in soon, we'll easily be able to test your hypothesis that PvT is balanced currently -- if balance doesn't swing wildly in Protoss' favor after the change, then it would seem that the change did not affect the purported balance, or that the game isn't currently balanced.
|
300 grand in 2017 so far and its only March. Keep it up, TY!
|
You're assuming a lot here. A single player winning does not a balance argument make.
Maybe Innovation and Byun had a bad day. What about all the other PvTs that you so immediately discard because the Protoss lost? Why did they lose? Was it because they played like Stats, but their opponents had a better plan against the play? Was it because of imbalance? Was it because of something else entirely?
The stats for the tournament are 31.4% of PvTs won. If that's not indicative of a problem, then someone has a lot of explaining to do to show how this is the case. As it is, we have some of the best Protoss players (Zest, herO, Stats, Patience [more up and down than the others, one must admit]) losing, obviously, in PvT. The variety of builds is extremely limited, the actual win-rates are very low, and the players are being eliminated from tournaments by this match-up.
Stats got to the finals (to be eliminated by a Terran). That's a long ways from the claim that "PvT is just fine".
But, hey, since it would appear that the WM change is going in soon, we'll easily be able to test your hypothesis that PvT is balanced currently -- if balance doesn't swing wildly in Protoss' favor after the change, then it would seem that the change did not affect the purported balance, or that the game isn't currently balanced.
You are completely missing my point. I didn't say that PvT was perfectly balanced at all levels. I said that their skill ceilings were balanced (balanced at the very highest level). The highest potential of a Protoss player is approximately equal to that of a Terran one.
Everything you mentioned about winrates, about other players, about Terrans, and about widow mines is irrelevant to my point. I'm not talking about winrates or pro performances. I'm talking about potential, the theoretical maximum (that we currently know of) level of skill possible for any player to achieve with a particular race.
Sorry if I confused you because I think you were originally speaking about balance, and I commented about potential, so you may have missed the change of subject in my post.
Bottom line being, I'm not talking about "balance" (in the way people typically do around here), so perhaps I should have used another word like "equal" or something..
|
On March 06 2017 09:33 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2017 09:21 Edowyth wrote:
Then there's the entire casting of the finals. Everything was "can Stats stand up to the awesomeness of TY???", "TY getting so much damage done!!!" (Stats killed more workers during that period and is ahead in economy and army ...), "TY is so good! But Stats is rebuffing him well!" I have mad respect for both Artosis and Tasteless but the casting was so blatantly favoring TY that I had a hard time listening to it during that series. I just had to watch the actual numbers and games themselves to judge for myself how things were going. And, well, if Tastetosis thinks that (by their own mouths) the "best Protoss in the world" has so little chance versus one of only 4 "best Terrans in the world", that speaks for itself regarding the actual balance at the top.
Tbh I thought it was way worse during the match vs ByuN. Alchemik, very fittingly, said in the LR thread that if you only had audio for the series, you would have gotten the impression ByuN was destroying Stats. Frankly this points more to an issue with the casting than anything to do with balance.
Tastosis have always been biased in their casting. IEM Final was quite mild, actually (I didn't watch Byun v Stats). I can understand how annoying it can be. Artosis most guilty of hyperbolic fanboyism.
But interestingly enough, I believe they did liken Stats to Rain at the start of the series. Which is a great compliment, as far as Artosis is concerned (he's a big Rain fan). Rain has never been deeply loved by the Western community (not sure about Korean), so his fanboyism isn't just fixated on populism.
That said, I'm sure hyping up fan favourites is a big part of casting. That's what gets viewers hooked. Not just for SC2, but all sports in general (e.g. Messi will get more mentions in any Barcelona game, regardless of performance).
|
Austria24420 Posts
I watched CSGO as well and there was no hint of that. When TY distracted Stats' MSC with his reaper and dropped his mines at the same time, Artosis said "nobody can do this". Now at that point you're really going too far. Diamond level players can do that and it's actually almost offensive to all these other amazing players.
Meanwhile in CSGO when dupreeh aced with a deagle, casters pointed out how awesome it was but never went further than that, and it felt so much more natural.
If everything or everyone is the best X in history or in the world, then that loses all meaning.
|
Congratulations to TY!
As fan of Terran players I am really happy to see him win 
That being said, I didn't enjoy watching this IEM. In my opinion the commentators were often too enthusiastic to the point of being silly and unprofessional - one example is what Olli mentions in his post right above this one. During this whole tournament I heard that everything they see is "the best", "seen for the first time" or commentators/experts were barely stopping themselves from saying so quickly adding "almost".
In my opinion most of the games were chaotic, so many long and stupid ZvPs. TY vs Stats finals had exciting games, but games which where leaving me wondering "what a hell just happened?" - especially last game which IMO was more Stats loosing that TY winning.
And finally the formula of his IEM - more specifically, the 6-players group. Because of this solution we couldn't see most of the games. So much talking and analyzing and so many games played somewhere in the background.
For me SC2 at this moment is in some ridiculous place where most players don't know what they're doing. Chaos, experimenting, frustration because of balance state.
|
Italy3452 Posts
On March 06 2017 16:44 Olli wrote:
I watched CSGO as well and there was no hint of that. When TY distracted Stats' MSC with his reaper and dropped his mines at the same time, Artosis said "nobody can do this". Now at that point you're really going too far. Diamond level players can do that and it's actually almost offensive to all these other amazing players.
Meanwhile in CSGO when dupreeh aced with a deagle, casters pointed out how awesome it was but never went further than that, and it felt so much more natural.
If everything or everyone is the best X in history or in the world, then that loses all meaning.
^that!
...I usually love Tasteosis commenting archon but hearing the words "best of the world" every 3 sentences was kinda dumb and really killed the hype imo... I was watching it with my wife (who does not follow the scene at all) and after a while she said to me "are they going to say that forever?"... I know thay maybe it's not their "usual background" and commenting outside Korea, for such an important tournament, should make hype reach stellar levels but that got a bit annoying... you have to hype something when it is to be hyped, if you hype everything in every moment it's like not hyping anything (and it sounds dumb)...
On March 06 2017 17:06 Asturas wrote:
And finally the formula of his IEM - more specifically, the 6-players group. Because of this solution we couldn't see most of the games. So much talking and analyzing and so many games played somewhere in the background.
...I liked the formula but they definitely needed another eng stream to cover at least 2 out of 3 games each time...
|
Finally, baby!
|
Yeah it's silly.
Everyone knows Byun is the most mechanically gifted player of all time. Anything TY can do he can do whilst also focus firing banes.
|
For biased casting look up Apollo&Artosis casting SoO vs TaejA
|
On March 06 2017 09:47 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2017 09:33 Elentos wrote:On March 06 2017 09:21 Edowyth wrote:
Then there's the entire casting of the finals. Everything was "can Stats stand up to the awesomeness of TY???", "TY getting so much damage done!!!" (Stats killed more workers during that period and is ahead in economy and army ...), "TY is so good! But Stats is rebuffing him well!" I have mad respect for both Artosis and Tasteless but the casting was so blatantly favoring TY that I had a hard time listening to it during that series. I just had to watch the actual numbers and games themselves to judge for myself how things were going. And, well, if Tastetosis thinks that (by their own mouths) the "best Protoss in the world" has so little chance versus one of only 4 "best Terrans in the world", that speaks for itself regarding the actual balance at the top.
Tbh I thought it was way worse during the match vs ByuN. Alchemik, very fittingly, said in the LR thread that if you only had audio for the series, you would have gotten the impression ByuN was destroying Stats. Frankly this points more to an issue with the casting than anything to do with balance. I don't think it's only bias tbf. Casters will almost always hype-up the aggressor more than the defender and in TvP the aggressor is usually the terran.
I noticed this as well during TY's TvT games. TY generally went for a more defensive posture, with more tech, and especially more air units. Every time the casters would hype his opponents more, even though TY was working up to a more solid army overall. It makes sense, the aggressor is the one making the most moves that people can talk about, but that does not necessarily make them the superior player.
On March 06 2017 18:07 ejozl wrote:For biased casting look up Apollo&Artosis casting SoO vs TaejA
That was amazing. The entire cast felt like Artosis over-hyping everything soO does, while Apollo tried to make his idol not forget about TaeJa about once every 10 minutes. Still an extraordinary series, though.
|
On March 06 2017 18:56 Neemi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2017 18:07 ejozl wrote:For biased casting look up Apollo&Artosis casting SoO vs TaejA That was amazing. The entire cast felt like Artosis over-hyping everything soO does, while Apollo tried to make his idol not forget about TaeJa about once every 10 minutes. Still an extraordinary series, though.
That was the funniest cast ever imo...
"Whoever thinks soO is not winning Blizzcon is a fool" - eliminated 5 minutes later
|
On March 06 2017 18:07 ejozl wrote:For biased casting look up Apollo&Artosis casting SoO vs TaejA
hahaha, that one was glorious. Made Taeja's victory that much sweeter.
Games were fantastic as well.
|
On March 06 2017 19:03 Sakat wrote:
That was the funniest cast ever imo...
"Whoever thinks soO is not winning Blizzcon is a fool" - eliminated 5 minutes later
doesnt count, it wasnt a GSL tournament 
|
On March 06 2017 16:44 Olli wrote:
I watched CSGO as well and there was no hint of that. When TY distracted Stats' MSC with his reaper and dropped his mines at the same time, Artosis said "nobody can do this". Now at that point you're really going too far. Diamond level players can do that and it's actually almost offensive to all these other amazing players.
Meanwhile in CSGO when dupreeh aced with a deagle, casters pointed out how awesome it was but never went further than that, and it felt so much more natural.
If everything or everyone is the best X in history or in the world, then that loses all meaning.
Tasteless kept saying player X is in the best form he ever has been in his career in this tournament :D
|
gee gee gee gee baby baby baby, gee gee gee gee baby baby baby!
|
France12904 Posts
On March 06 2017 11:24 Edowyth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2017 09:43 pvsnp wrote:
Casting != balance. Not saying the balance is perfect, but using the words of people who are speaking unscripted, who have their own subjective opinions, whose job it is to entertain, as an imbalance justification is really crappy evidence.
The evidence is really in the statistics surrounding PvT. However, if Tasteosis (and others) are correct that there are far more "best terrans" than "best Xs", then that does point to a balance issue, given that one would naturally assume that players' skill is relatively evenly distributed across races at the top. Show nested quote +On March 06 2017 09:43 pvsnp wrote:
On the issue of TvP at the very highest levels, it seems to be just fine actually. Stats, the best Protoss in the world, beat INnoVation 3-2, ByuN 3-1, and lost to TY 3-4. He gives at least as good as he gets against the top Terrans. Saying that 4 > 1 is a specious argument, because if Stats can stand at that level of skill it means that it is possible for a Protoss player to stand at the very highest level of Starcraft. Meaning the race's skill ceiling is balanced. You're assuming a lot here. A single player winning does not a balance argument make. Maybe Innovation and Byun had a bad day. What about all the other PvTs that you so immediately discard because the Protoss lost? Why did they lose? Was it because they played like Stats, but their opponents had a better plan against the play? Was it because of imbalance? Was it because of something else entirely? The stats for the tournament are 31.4% of PvTs won. If that's not indicative of a problem, then someone has a lot of explaining to do to show how this is the case. As it is, we have some of the best Protoss players (Zest, herO, Stats, Patience [more up and down than the others, one must admit]) losing, obviously, in PvT. The variety of builds is extremely limited, the actual win-rates are very low, and the players are being eliminated from tournaments by this match-up. Stats got to the finals (to be eliminated by a Terran). That's a long ways from the claim that "PvT is just fine". But, hey, since it would appear that the WM change is going in soon, we'll easily be able to test your hypothesis that PvT is balanced currently -- if balance doesn't swing wildly in Protoss' favor after the change, then it would seem that the change did not affect the purported balance, or that the game isn't currently balanced.
TY/INno/ByuN
Maru/Ryung/aLive
Stats/herO/sOs/Zest
Classic/Trap
Dark/sOo/ByuL/Solar
Losira/Leenock
There are as many top and subtop players for each race.
|
I felt a lot of terrans play tvp these days with bio + widowmines + some liberators later on to counter heavy phoenix+adept combo of protosses.
Stats countered that play with his more technical unit combo with sometimes Robo units and nice transitioning, basically never getting stuck to phoenix+adept. His play vs Byun was quite convincing.
This is when TY's very technical push with tanks, bunker, turrets and ravens of all units was a very smart play of countering Stats and Stats did not find an immediate answer to that.
|
On March 06 2017 11:24 Edowyth wrote:
However, if Tasteosis (and others) are correct that there are far more "best terrans" than "best Xs", then that does point to a balance issue, given that one would naturally assume that players' skill is relatively evenly distributed across races at the top.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with anything else you said, but I think this is a terrible assumption to make. Given the vary small sample size of Korean pros, I don't think it's that unlikely for the distribution of the best players to be uneven among the races. This is clearly a thing in the foreign scene, with a disproportionate number of the top players being zerg.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
