EPTso we're mad about this right?
No reason to be mad about it, it is just unreasonable from a competition point of view. Results will be more random. Perhaps it is better for viewers, but with huge disrespect for players preparation.
WCS Leipzig Map Pool Controversy - Page 5
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Kafka777
361 Posts
No reason to be mad about it, it is just unreasonable from a competition point of view. Results will be more random. Perhaps it is better for viewers, but with huge disrespect for players preparation. | ||
Waxangel
United States33479 Posts
On January 19 2018 05:41 Shellshock wrote: so we're mad about this right? if you believe being mad can affect change, then sure | ||
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Solar424
United States4001 Posts
Scheduled a few days after IEM Katowice qualifiers, giving players barely any time to get to the venue: ✓ Mess up qualifier brackets: ✓ Tournament on maps that people have only played a few times, if ever: ✓ This might be one of the worst run SC2 tournaments in recent memory. The fact that this is a WCS Championship event shows that Blizzard have realized they can put in minimum effort because there's nothing players can do about it; they have to play in these conditions or else there's no chance to qualify for Blizzcon. | ||
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-NegativeZero-
United States2142 Posts
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Kafka777
361 Posts
i like how there wasn't even a thread to discuss the new maps, instead we've just gone straight to complaining about them Its is not a problem of whether maps are good or bad, but rather whether players are able to figure out their strategies and timings down to 1 second essentially not being able to play them before the tournament. | ||
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LongShot27
United States2084 Posts
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FrkFrJss
Canada1205 Posts
On January 19 2018 06:06 Solar424 wrote: Tournament announced with 1 month's notice: ✓ Scheduled a few days after IEM Katowice qualifiers, giving players barely any time to get to the venue: ✓ Mess up qualifier brackets: ✓ Tournament on maps that people have only played a few times, if ever: ✓ This might be one of the worst run SC2 tournaments in recent memory. The fact that this is a WCS Championship event shows that Blizzard have realized they can put in minimum effort because there's nothing players can do about it; they have to play in these conditions or else there's no chance to qualify for Blizzcon. Blizzard messed up for sure, but you realize that at least one of these wasn't Blizzard's fault. The qualifier bracket mix up was due to Dreamhack. | ||
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blunderfulguy
United States1415 Posts
"It is best for maps to be tested in tournament play before testing them in ladder play." Absolutely wrong. It is best, after testing changes in a small, closed and controlled environment by the designers, to test things in the wild (public ladder) before moving those changes to tournament play. If you decide on any change, then test the change yourself, the next best step to test how competitive the change will be is to have it tested on ladder before pushing it into competitions where players will be competing for real money. Look at the majority of other successful esports for comparison, as mentioned by others in this thread. Pushing the changes out this soon before a tournament starts, requiring players to suddenly need to practice for both the old set of changes and the new set of changes for the same tournament and on short notice is the opposite of what has been proven to work, and is known to cause small and large issues. You can beat around the bush all you want, but the possible upsides are massively outweighed by everything else. And even if later on it turns out to work fine or even great, it just isn't a smart decision. Potential upsides of pushing out the changes in this manner: - The changes prove to make the game more competitive overall. (Good for players in the tournament.) - The changes prove to make the game more fun for spectators. (Depends on a lot of factors.) - Competitors welcome changes on short notice. (This didn't happen except for, um, two players? Three?) - Other players and spectators welcome changes on short notice. (Also didn't really happen.) Potential downsides of pushing out the changes in this manner: - You piss off your competitors by adding new variables to the game on short notice. (This happened for the most part.) - You piss off your competitors by adding to the growing pile of bullshit surrounding WCS. (This also happened. No matter who's at fault for making the changes in the way that they have or who was at fault for other nonsense, Blizzard and tournament organizers should be aware of these things and should be expected to make decisions accordingly so similar things stop happening.) - You piss off your spectators by adding to the growing pile of bullshit surrounding WCS. (This also happened.) - The changes make the tournament less competitive overall. (Bad for players in the tournament.) - The changes prove to make the game less fun for spectators. (Players veto new maps, leaving only a few to play on, or poor games are shown on the new maps. Depends on a lot of factors.) Other garbage: "It's fair for everyone since everyone is affected equally." Possibly true in theory, but false in practice. Travel, etc. mentioned by others in this thread. "Blizzard and/or tournament organizers are the ones keeping the game and the competitive scene "alive", they are putting in the money so they can do whatever they want." Flat out wrong. It's the players, the competitors, the spectators; this community is what is keeping the game alive more than anything else. This proves again that communication is an issue lately and, regardless of how it all turns out during the event, it needs to be addressed. I don't expect things to fix themselves overnight, but dude for crying out loud it's only January and I'm tired of seeing this kind of news. WCS Rules and prize pools were updated. Cool but it doesn't fix all the other problems. The way I kept thinking about it last night (not exact, but whatever): + Show Spoiler + It's like if sprinters were told that a week before their next race the standard material on the track was being replaced by a new material that has been untested with the public, and that the track will only be open a few days before race day. All after having to reschedule multiple times already just to make it to the track by race day. | ||
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pvsnp
7676 Posts
That doesn't mean it is the correct move, though. | ||
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scoo2r
Canada91 Posts
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fronkschnonk
Germany622 Posts
On January 19 2018 11:30 pvsnp wrote: Blizzard pushing new maps on such short notice is fair by definition, in that every player has equal time to prepare on the new maps. That doesn't mean it is the correct move, though. How often has this to be made clear: it's not fair by definition because: - the players who already played custom games on those maps have an unforeseen advantage - players with tight schedule (planned before the change was announced) can't prepare as much on these maps - players with longer travel distances can't prepare as much - the possibility of discovering small advantageous tweaks is massively random because it depends highly on what your opponent does if you detect such a thing. So, with a short time of preparation, detecting such an advantage is quite big without the player being actually somehow more clever than the others - it's just luck then. | ||
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ZigguratOfUr
Iraq16955 Posts
On January 19 2018 16:50 fronkschnonk wrote: How often has this to be made clear: it's not fair by definition because: - the players who already played custom games on those maps have an unforeseen advantage - players with tight schedule (planned before the change was announced) can't prepare as much on these maps - players with longer travel distances can't prepare as much - the possibility of discovering small advantageous tweaks is massively random because it depends highly on what your opponent does if you detect such a thing. So, with a short time of preparation, detecting such an advantage is quite big without the player being actually somehow more clever than the others - it's just luck then. Everyone always has their own circumstances. Even without a map pool change would you call things unfair because one player had a more open schedule than another and got more practice done? And random luck is the fairest of things. This change is applied by Dreamhack and Blizzard without favouritism or discrimination towards any particular player, and so it's 'fair'. It's not 'even' and it's not 'good', but it's 'fair'. | ||
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fronkschnonk
Germany622 Posts
On January 19 2018 17:23 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Everyone always has their own circumstances. Even without a map pool change would you call things unfair because one player had a more open schedule than another and got more practice done? And random luck is the fairest of things. This change is applied by Dreamhack and Blizzard without favouritism or discrimination towards any particular player, and so it's 'fair'. It's not 'even' and it's not 'good', but it's 'fair'. I strongly disagree  The short amount of time is, what makes all these factors unfair. The differences in schedule and travel time get more irrelevant the more time is given for preparation. Two blocked days due to schedule aren't a big problem if you can prepare three weeks. But if you can only prepare 3 days, then locals will be able to prepare three times more than you. Also randomness equals out over time: if some people roll a dice 10 times, their results will alter heavily. Let them roll the dice 1000 times and their results will get quite even. Let's assume now, that after every roll they have to run 100 metres but have to wait some seconds before they can roll the dice again according to their last dice roll. Probably you'd agree that the scenario with 1000 dice-rolls would be much fairer. | ||
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blunderfulguy
United States1415 Posts
On January 19 2018 17:23 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Everyone always has their own circumstances. Even without a map pool change would you call things unfair because one player had a more open schedule than another and got more practice done? And random luck is the fairest of things. This change is applied by Dreamhack and Blizzard without favouritism or discrimination towards any particular player, and so it's 'fair'. It's not 'even' and it's not 'good', but it's 'fair'. The majority of your reasoning ignores the majority of the context surrounding the change and you also make the claim that "random luck is fair" which isn't a good thing for competition nor a good thing for spectatorship, so I'm gonna call bullshit again on the "it's fair" stance. | ||
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Kafka777
361 Posts
Everyone always has their own circumstances. Even without a map pool change would you call things unfair because one player had a more open schedule than another and got more practice done? And random luck is the fairest of things. This change is applied by Dreamhack and Blizzard without favouritism or discrimination towards any particular player, and so it's 'fair'. It's not 'even' and it's not 'good', but it's 'fair'. Now lets look at the ambitious players potential schedule. Map pool appears on ladder Monday. About 12 WCS players have to play Katowice EU qualifier all evening. If they fail monday/tuesday night they will probably try to play the American qualifier till early morning. If they succeed they have play tuesday/wednesday night the second day of America qualifier. They finish wednesday morning - on wednesday they have to travel to Leipzig, not the easiest place to get to even from Europe as most players will have to take 2 flights or travel by car/train. They will have first opportunity to practice new maps on thursday morning during warm up for the tournament. | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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pvsnp
7676 Posts
On January 19 2018 20:45 blunderfulguy wrote: The majority of your reasoning ignores the majority of the context surrounding the change and you also make the claim that "random luck is fair" which isn't a good thing for competition nor a good thing for spectatorship, so I'm gonna call bullshit again on the "it's fair" stance. Random luck is literally the only thing in the entire world that is actually fair. It might not be good for competition or spectators, but it is the fairest thing you will ever experience. Players don't live in a vacuum, tournaments don't exist in a vacuum. No matter what, there would always be some level of inherent advantage or disadvantage associated with new maps. I don't think this was a smart choice, but it is most certainly a fair one. To put that into context, it would be perfectly fair for Blizzard for force all the progamers to run a 5k before they start playing. That would be utterly ridiculous and totally pointless, but it would still be perfectly fair. "Fair" is not a very high standard of quality. | ||
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Kafka777
361 Posts
Random luck is literally the only thing in the entire world that is actually fair. It might not be good for competition or spectators, but it is the fairest thing you will ever experience. Players don't live in a vacuum, tournaments don't exist in a vacuum. No matter what, there would always be some level of inherent advantage or disadvantage associated with new maps. I don't think this was a smart choice, but it is most certainly a fair one. To put that into context, it would be perfectly fair for Blizzard for force all the progamers to run a 5k before they start playing. That would be utterly ridiculous and totally pointless, but it would still be perfectly fair. "Fair" is not a very high standard of quality. Random luck may be fair, ok. I would love to see Blizzard force progamers to run 5k before the tournament. - if you think that would be fair then I think Blizzard would go bankrupt after such a move. Introducing new maps for Leipzig is just stupid and has nothing to do with fairness. | ||
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pvsnp
7676 Posts
On January 20 2018 09:10 Kafka777 wrote: Random luck may be fair, ok. I would love to see Blizzard force progamers to run 5k before the tournament. - if you think that would be fair then I think Blizzard would go bankrupt after such a move. Introducing new maps for Leipzig is just stupid and has nothing to do with fairness. I agree, it is a stupid move. But that wasn't my point. Stupid or not, it is still a fair decision. | ||
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Kafka777
361 Posts
I agree, it is a stupid move. But that wasn't my point. Stupid or not, it is still a fair decision. I suppose its a problem with what is fair or not. If something is stupid it is not fair by definition in my opinion. | ||
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