EPTRandom is more fun for some people.
Random Race - Page 3
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Phredxor
New Zealand15076 Posts
Random is more fun for some people. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On April 13 2017 08:48 Phredxor wrote: I play random and I've only ever cheesed once that I can recall. Am i doing it wrong? Random is more fun for some people. Just by giving your opponent pause when he considers his strategy, you injure him. The long and short of it is: there's not enough injury or advantage to merit a change. | ||
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Garuga
49 Posts
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
The very existence of this thread alone comforts me in my belief that I can safely continue to play random like this and consistently annoy more people. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
Only if people continue to play greedy. If people get scared of cheese people start to play super safe. When people start to play super safe people get greedy. When people get greedy then cheese returns. The only reason people complain about "cheese" is because they see their opponent's race and then immediately have a preconceived idea of how the first 15 minutes of the game plays out. Then canons show up and they freak out like "Don't you know you're supposed to play like how I want you to play???" Get rid of the knowledge and people would simply play as safe as possible all the time. It'd be great. | ||
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paralleluniverse
4065 Posts
On April 12 2017 14:08 lunareaping wrote: I understand people enjoy playing random, but why can't we have it so the chosen race is depicted during load screen so the other player can open accordingly As a random player, I think race should be visible and that games should affect both random and race MMR. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3188 Posts
It's a bit different now, though, because race MMR is separate now, isn't it? So to go back to Cascade's 5 point breakdown, point 1) doesn't really apply any more. However good you are with the race you spawn as, that's about how good your opponent is with theirs, or else your MMR's wouldn't be similar so you wouldn't get matched. So you should be about as good as your opponent with the race you rolled, but if you are, you have an information advantage thst will slightly inflate your winrate, making you face better opponents than you should be facing for your skill with that race. In the process you don't really learn how to defend early aggression because most cheeses are race specific and must be chosen before a scout could reach you, so your learning on all three races is impaired. Honestly the only reason I can see for keeping random advantage at this point is just "i like it the way it is," either because you play random and like the advantage or because you don't play random but like the interesting strategy around facing random players. The latter of these is, I think, extremely rare. Edit: as a quick qualifier, I don't know how random MMR currently works. Possibly it gives you a unique "random MMR" and matches based on that. Thinking about it now, that's probably the case because it doesn't seem to resolve what race you are until after you've found an opponent. But if that's the case, it shouldn't be. It must suck for random players to have different skill levels with different races, but keep matching opponents somewhere in the middle. Like, if you're really good with Terran, okay with Zerg, and terrible with Protoss, your MMR will settle somewhere in the middle. So you'll win nearly every game as Terran, lose nearly every game as Protoss, and only your Zerg games will be remotely competitive (and, by the usual logic of MMR) interesting and fun). | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On April 13 2017 14:50 ChristianS wrote: I made a big thread about this during LotV beta. I thought I laid out pretty nicely why it is against the spirit of competition for one player to start out with an information advantage, but people didn't seem to agree, and mostly I got flamed by a bunch of random players and little productive conversation came of it. It's a bit different now, though, because race MMR is separate now, isn't it? So to go back to Cascade's 5 point breakdown, point 1) doesn't really apply any more. However good you are with the race you spawn as, that's about how good your opponent is with theirs, or else your MMR's wouldn't be similar so you wouldn't get matched. So you should be about as good as your opponent with the race you rolled, but if you are, you have an information advantage thst will slightly inflate your winrate, making you face better opponents than you should be facing for your skill with that race. In the process you don't really learn how to defend early aggression because most cheeses are race specific and must be chosen before a scout could reach you, so your learning on all three races is impaired. Honestly the only reason I can see for keeping random advantage at this point is just "i like it the way it is," either because you play random and like the advantage or because you don't play random but like the interesting strategy around facing random players. The latter of these is, I think, extremely rare. Edit: as a quick qualifier, I don't know how random MMR currently works. Possibly it gives you a unique "random MMR" and matches based on that. Thinking about it now, that's probably the case because it doesn't seem to resolve what race you are until after you've found an opponent. But if that's the case, it shouldn't be. It must suck for random players to have different skill levels with different races, but keep matching opponents somewhere in the middle. Like, if you're really good with Terran, okay with Zerg, and terrible with Protoss, your MMR will settle somewhere in the middle. So you'll win nearly every game as Terran, lose nearly every game as Protoss, and only your Zerg games will be remotely competitive (and, by the usual logic of MMR) interesting and fun). Random is treated like a fourth race in terms of by-race MMR: us.battle.net. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On April 13 2017 14:50 ChristianS wrote: I made a big thread about this during LotV beta. I thought I laid out pretty nicely why it is against the spirit of competition for one player to start out with an information advantage, but people didn't seem to agree, and mostly I got flamed by a bunch of random players and little productive conversation came of it. It's a bit different now, though, because race MMR is separate now, isn't it? So to go back to Cascade's 5 point breakdown, point 1) doesn't really apply any more. However good you are with the race you spawn as, that's about how good your opponent is with theirs, or else your MMR's wouldn't be similar so you wouldn't get matched. So you should be about as good as your opponent with the race you rolled, but if you are, you have an information advantage thst will slightly inflate your winrate, making you face better opponents than you should be facing for your skill with that race. In the process you don't really learn how to defend early aggression because most cheeses are race specific and must be chosen before a scout could reach you, so your learning on all three races is impaired. Honestly the only reason I can see for keeping random advantage at this point is just "i like it the way it is," either because you play random and like the advantage or because you don't play random but like the interesting strategy around facing random players. The latter of these is, I think, extremely rare. Edit: as a quick qualifier, I don't know how random MMR currently works. Possibly it gives you a unique "random MMR" and matches based on that. Thinking about it now, that's probably the case because it doesn't seem to resolve what race you are until after you've found an opponent. But if that's the case, it shouldn't be. It must suck for random players to have different skill levels with different races, but keep matching opponents somewhere in the middle. Like, if you're really good with Terran, okay with Zerg, and terrible with Protoss, your MMR will settle somewhere in the middle. So you'll win nearly every game as Terran, lose nearly every game as Protoss, and only your Zerg games will be remotely competitive (and, by the usual logic of MMR) interesting and fun). Its not even that complicated. Players like not having to think. If they know the opponent, then they can autopilot the "build" for that matchup. People who are okay with random do so because the enjoy the idea of playing without that rigid structure in mind. Things are exploratory, and about flowing through the rhythm of the match based on exploration and the generation of new information affecting your decisions. | ||
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Tyrhanius
France947 Posts
On April 13 2017 15:20 Thieving Magpie wrote: Its not even that complicated. Players like not having to think. If they know the opponent, then they can autopilot the "build" for that matchup. People who are okay with random do so because the enjoy the idea of playing without that rigid structure in mind. Things are exploratory, and about flowing through the rhythm of the match based on exploration and the generation of new information affecting your decisions. No, it's just playing vs random is playing from behind, because the other knows your race and you don't, so you can't find an optimal build, while he can ever cheese you or get a better macro opener knowing your race. And of course scouting really early put you behind. But you have the fact you master your race more than the other, so the random often compensate that cheesing you (which don't require to master your race like a macro game), so that's why no one like to play vs random. | ||
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VHbb
689 Posts
And no, playing random is not like selecting one race before the match (or flipping a coin.. please), sometimes I like the idea of now knowing what I'm going to play next... it's fun and this is a game after all.. Look at your win-rate vs random, compare it to your win-rate vs other races, and calculate the impact of the number of games you play vs random on your ladder placement.. it's likely super small considering the very small number of games you get vs randoms.. | ||
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nanaoei
3358 Posts
second, I thought a lot of us as a community established that LotV as it is, loses the little early game shenanigans that it once had in WoL and HotS iterations. no more 6 pools, etc. correct me if I am wrong, but there are now very few builds that can get to your base and win without you having first scouted it. if they are playing random, and they are cheesing, this positively incentivizes you to scout it and later win. of course, the downside of this is that you're forced to play to their tune. yes and no. you take a risk (not scout a couple supply count earlier), they also take risks. you are always somewhat forced to play to your opponent, especially if playing from behind, and this is regardless of what race, matchup or setting is being played. I had played random from the start of WoL up until 6 months back in LotV, while previously I played and only knew how to play protoss in scbw. why the big change? because once I tried the other two races, I decided that I wanted to be at a good level at them too. if i love the game and the depth in the strategy, why can't i study the game further and develop myself to be able to fit in some more muscle memory and some more game knowledge? on top of that, there are certain things, certain playstyles that are much better suited to one race than another. 1. an example is mass production and tech switching as zerg, eventually adopting playstyle #2 2. creating a medium tier mobile army and moving groups of army everywhere, as terran 3. delicately teching up to a mass ball, using stalling tactics and special mobility units to pull an opponent slightly, protoss. each style plays different in each other race's hands and it just felt like another race had an easier route or a more enjoyable pacing or tactile feel to it in that process. that was initially. later on, it felt like each race was very similar in concept but simply had different tools and ways to go about pacing. there is no need to change hotkeys drastically when you can use the same hotkey method for all three races, easily. the game's default hotkeys were made quite well for situations like that. but in order to improve my own random skills, I went and race picked for a while to practice specific races, styles, or general matchups until it went back up to a reasonable good level, then back to random again. it's just the freedom of being able to do anything, and when you queue ladder? well guess what, you now have to adapt further, and you don't get to have one preference. however, for the ladder to display which race the random user is going to be, that is the same as race picking for their opponent, while for them it is a matchup laid before them. I can understand and agree that this seems fair in the eyes of many, but my opinion isn't the same as each random player out there, therefore again, I disagree with the OP. some actually want a tiny bit of advantage, an extra layer of fun. maybe they do have a preference, but for 2 of 3 races, however, willing to go through with his third race and potentially learn to enjoy it in the process as well. this harps back to when people call either Softcore vs Hardcore in Diablo games to be pointless or a waste of time. I will just say that it comes back to your mentality on handling the situations and what you come out of it with. for me, I learned to love the game and better accept some of the details of the game. I also had a bearing for whether a player was playing particularly well on their race, and that let me make decisions based on what I could see of the other player and their tiny nuances. that stuff is beautiful to me. it is really not that complicated. you are either going to scout the random player because you are scared or think it is the right play, or proceed to exceptionally cut corners and play the blind-mindgame. I think that if you are the player to think that you need to do something special to draw the gap closer to the innate advantages of not knowing their race, you are the one beginning to defeat yourself. to scout, one worker missing out on 5 mining trips earlier on, is potentially outweighed by one worker idling and missing out x amount of trips. you think it is going to make or break the game, that one maneuver? versus not reacting well to your opponent or having the right solution to their problem? | ||
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ChristianS
United States3188 Posts
On April 13 2017 14:58 Cascade wrote: Random is treated like a fourth race in terms of by-race MMR: us.battle.net. Alright then. Random players out there: would you not prefer to get matched based on the MMR of the race you roll? I think a lot more people (myself included) would be interested in playing random if the MMR did this, because otherwise the fear is that if you roll your good race you'll demolish them, and if you roll your bad race you'll get demolished, neither of which is a particularly interesting game. | ||
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esReveR
United States567 Posts
On April 13 2017 21:37 ChristianS wrote: Alright then. Random players out there: would you not prefer to get matched based on the MMR of the race you roll? I think a lot more people (myself included) would be interested in playing random if the MMR did this, because otherwise the fear is that if you roll your good race you'll demolish them, and if you roll your bad race you'll get demolished, neither of which is a particularly interesting game. If the system was capable of doing this, then it would be fair to reveal the race we (random players) got. I'm not sure how the game is programmed as far as when it actually chooses our race. I know that sometimes the game bugs and it gives you your race's mouse pointer on the load screen so you know what race you have early (though that bug is very rare), so it has to be chosen by the time the load screen pops up. But, it might already have your opponent matched before it chooses your race. The change you propose to the MMR system might drive a nightmare of a coding change for Blizzard that they probably wouldn't want to do. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3188 Posts
On April 13 2017 22:12 esReveR wrote: If the system was capable of doing this, then it would be fair to reveal the race we (random players) got. I'm not sure how the game is programmed as far as when it actually chooses our race. I know that sometimes the game bugs and it gives you your race's mouse pointer on the load screen so you know what race you have early (though that bug is very rare), so it has to be chosen by the time the load screen pops up. But, it might already have your opponent matched before it chooses your race. The change you propose to the MMR system might drive a nightmare of a coding change for Blizzard that they probably wouldn't want to do. It couldn't be that hard to change, could it? On hitting the "find match" button you have it randomly generate a number 1-3, and pass that number to the variable that stores your race before it starts looking for a match. The game can handle having any of the races in that variable already, and random number generation isn't hard. It might take a little more work to stop your race from displaying while you're waiting for a match, but still not that much work. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On April 13 2017 16:30 Tyrhanius wrote: No, it's just playing vs random is playing from behind, because the other knows your race and you don't, so you can't find an optimal build, while he can ever cheese you or get a better macro opener knowing your race. And of course scouting really early put you behind. But you have the fact you master your race more than the other, so the random often compensate that cheesing you (which don't require to master your race like a macro game), so that's why no one like to play vs random. Which is why on page 1 I stated my preference that no race should be shared at the loading screen. Treat all opponents as random. | ||
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Lssfs234
United States9 Posts
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On April 13 2017 08:48 Phredxor wrote: I play random and I've only ever cheesed once that I can recall. Am i doing it wrong? Random is more fun for some people. If my opponent is random I always cheese them 100% of the time. | ||
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Arghmyliver
United States1077 Posts
On April 13 2017 21:37 ChristianS wrote: Alright then. Random players out there: would you not prefer to get matched based on the MMR of the race you roll? I think a lot more people (myself included) would be interested in playing random if the MMR did this, because otherwise the fear is that if you roll your good race you'll demolish them, and if you roll your bad race you'll get demolished, neither of which is a particularly interesting game. As someone who used to play random - I didn't find myself horribly outmatched. While it is true that there is some discrepancy in skill between the races (I was terrible at Terran and about even P/Z), it honestly just incentivized me to practice Terran more. Also, your races might be slightly different in terms of skill, but you also have to take match-ups into account. My PvZ and ZvP were way better than the respective mirror match-ups. As for practice value, I think it was incredibly helpful to start out as a random player. I learned so much in terms of match-up dynamics, timings and just how the game 'felt' from different perspectives at different points in the game. This was back in the WoL days so I don't know how much has changed now, but I got cheesed a LOT playing random. Proxy rax and 4gate were relatively standard. When I worked as a Barista in my little hometown coffee shop, I liked the rainy days the best. Something about those days seemed to make everyone behave a little differently. A tiny little change in routine that made the day feel a little more unrehearsed. It was just rain. You can plan for rain (although it doesn't always show up when you expect it to), you can carry an umbrella or a jacket to be safe or you can decide you don't mind getting a little wet. The coffee didn't cost any more on rainy days, and the shop would still open and close at the same time. I didn't like these days because I'm evil and I like to see everyone miserable. It wasn't because coffee shops probably get slightly more business on rainy days. I still had to walk in the rain after my shift, and I still got paid the same regardless of the weather. I had no malevolent or selfishly greedy ulterior motive, I just liked the little mix-up. The point is it's easy to make sweeping generalizations or assume the worst, but the truth, like the game itself, is often way more complicated (and probably a lot more benign). | ||
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nanaoei
3358 Posts
On April 14 2017 11:33 Arghmyliver wrote: When I worked as a Barista in my little hometown coffee shop, I liked the rainy days the best. Something about those days seemed to make everyone behave a little differently. A tiny little change in routine that made the day feel a little more unrehearsed. It was just rain. You can plan for rain (although it doesn't always show up when you expect it to), you can carry an umbrella or a jacket to be safe or you can decide you don't mind getting a little wet. The coffee didn't cost any more on rainy days, and the shop would still open and close at the same time. I didn't like these days because I'm evil and I like to see everyone miserable. It wasn't because coffee shops probably get slightly more business on rainy days. I still had to walk in the rain after my shift, and I still got paid the same regardless of the weather. I had no malevolent or selfishly greedy ulterior motive, I just liked the little mix-up. beautiful little anecdote. I think the advantage is overstated. I have race picked as a normally random player and hit other randomers. my reaction is always that it's just nothing special. when the loading screen ends, you're ready to hover 's/d', 'e', or 's' and then figure out what you need to do like any other person. if I have race picked, I know that they are undergoing a burden of knowledge also. for example, 'am I going to get cheesed? on a 4p map?' the extra little mindgames might not be fun for some, but by now it's part of the game. extra game modes would be fun, but we really don't have enough players to support that very well, let alone have a ladder for it. I think it just stays the way it is. | ||
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