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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
I suppose it was about a year ago when I first interacted with Chromatic.
A mutual friend introduced us. At the time, he was a Gold League Zerg player, and I was a Diamond Terran with dreams of Master League. He quickly became notorious amongst the PEJ practice group for his horrible internet-speak (no leetspeak, but everything short of it was employed in shortening and modifying his words) and his aggressive play.
He'd often open with early pools, quick banelings and roaches, or even spinecrawler rushes in ZvZ or against a FFE in ZvP. People always knew to be an guard for cheese in matches against Chromatic. His entire match history from the ladder was pure 7 pool-- every matchup, every map. He reached platinum league, and he refined his mechanics, but always stuck to his 7 pool. He was a fixture of our group.
In time, he came to believe (as was par for the course with zerg players at the time), that Protoss was overpowered. After a long series of practice games which he lost, he said "Portss op" and exited battle.net. At the time I was rather tied up with IRL things, and wasn't online for about a week, and didn't see what came from his race imba rage.
I logged back on a week later and noticed two things. One, Chromatic was now in Diamond League. Two, he was now a Protoss player. When I congratulated him for his accomplishment and asked about his race change, he said something to the effect of: "I switched to Protoss because it is the strongest race. That's why I'm in Diamond. It's a lot more fun when you play the strongest race."
I disagree with him, of course, on the state of balance in the game. I think Sc2 is fundamentally balanced, especially if you're playing at like Diamond or Platinum levels. I do think that he has a much healthier attitude about imbalance than most people, though. When I hear my fellow terrans at my skill level and below complaining about balance, it's pretty clear their problems could be solved by simply becoming better at the game-- but it's also clear that, given that you observe or believe to observe an imbalance in the game, you're not really allowed to complain when you could just switch races.
I suppose the easiest analogy is fighting games. If you pick a Tier C character and lose to a Tier S character, you're not allowed to complain about imbalance-- you should have just picked a Tier S character if you intend on playing competitively. We are lucky, though. Sc2 is balanced -- all this is moot because the races are even. However... I often wonder at the cognitive dissonance someone has to experience to think their race is legitimately less powerful than the other two races, and at the same time not switch races.
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You can think that one race is more powerful than the race you play, but you stick with the race that you play because you find it more fun and challenging.
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
On March 11 2012 15:38 scarper65 wrote:
You can think that one race is more powerful than the race you play, but you stick with the race that you play because you find it more fun and challenging.
Yeah, but you're still actively making a choice to use a less powerful race in that case-- and if you're choosing to play a less powerful race, you can't complain about it. You might as well complain about Protoss being underfun rather than Terran being underpowered. You make the decision, you should own it.
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I've switched races at least like 6 times..............
I totally agree though. Why, when people think the game is legitimately imbalanced, do they keep playing the same race? Especially when they're like, not even close to pro-level, so they can't say "oh i spent so much time at this one race" because in reality, it's not *that* much of a skill jump to get back up on another race.
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It depends on your goals. If you play SC2 to be a Terran/Zerg/Protoss at Bronze/Silver/Gold/Diamond/Master/GM level, then just stick to your race and don't bother complaining about imbalance. If your goal is to win more and you feel that a race is imbalanced, by all means you should switch races instead of being whiny and hypocritical (e.g. Idra).
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Being a Diamond leaguer myself I can confidently say that everyone that is below masters is there because they need to improve their mechanics, meaing what race is "easy" below masters doesn't really matter because of this, they all eventually have to improve on the same shit regardless.
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On March 11 2012 15:42 Vod.kaholic wrote:
It depends on your goals. If you play SC2 to be a Terran/Zerg/Protoss at Bronze/Silver/Gold/Diamond/Master/GM level, then just stick to your race and don't bother complaining about imbalance. If your goal is to win more and you feel that a race is imbalanced, by all means you should switch races instead of being whiny and hypocritical (e.g. Idra).
Ehh I feel like it's a bit different with progamers. That was pretty adorable with the "e.g. Idra" thing though, intentional or not.
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You can't even take anything a player like says that seriously. Even if protoss were to be over powered, it's completely irrelevant when he uses terrible strategies every game, where balance has 0 significance-- or at least in the games he's playing.
EDIT: typo
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On March 11 2012 15:54 Bibbit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2012 15:42 Vod.kaholic wrote:
It depends on your goals. If you play SC2 to be a Terran/Zerg/Protoss at Bronze/Silver/Gold/Diamond/Master/GM level, then just stick to your race and don't bother complaining about imbalance. If your goal is to win more and you feel that a race is imbalanced, by all means you should switch races instead of being whiny and hypocritical (e.g. Idra). Ehh I feel like it's a bit different with progamers. That was pretty adorable with the "e.g. Idra" thing though, intentional or not.
At first I was going to say "like Idra" but then the stroke of inspiration hit me.
Well, when you look at progamer interviews, Koreans tend to take the "game is balanced, and the better player wins" approach (example: recent zenio and Hero interviews if I'm not mistaken). Even though some will complain about perceived imbalances like when everyone was whining about 1/1/1 and about Terran being easier in Korea, you never see it get to the level of whine that regular players and some pros show because then they start playing and figure shit out. If you ask me that's a much better attitude to have towards SC2 and life in general as opposed to complaining fruitlessly about obstacles. I think too many people take the whining too seriously from both sides (the whiners and the people observing the whine), and we end up with blogs like this that have to reinforce the point that sc2 is balanced.
The way I see it, whining is like a double edged sword: It can have short term benefits for your psyche by discharging your frustration at a loss or some other upset, but if you take your own whining too seriously or do nothing to overcome the cause of it, it's going to take you down a dark path and block your self-improvement. So, the complains we saw from Koreans at the height of the 1/1/1s strength and anti-Terran attitude leading up to the GSL format changes sort of had to happen before anything changed in terms of strategic adaptation from Protosses and format changes respectively. But the main point is that behind this, the Koreans were actively working to change things, and it showed. However that can't be said of all foreign pros and regular players who tend to complain, and honestly it shows why the majority of them aren't on the same level as Korean.
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Yea I agree. I mean even TLO switched races, and he's played far more games to be "invested" in x race than anyone below GM. When people complain about balance to me in game (which is more like raging than an honest balance complaint) I always just respond "I like winning so i picked terran". Usually they something to the effect that playing terran would cost them dignity or some garbage, and I just say, well if you're playing more for dignity than winning, then don't complain about it.
props to those who put their money where their mouth is and play "the imba race"
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I loved using christie and the tea drinking blonde brit in DoA4. they had my most enjoyable fighting styles. both below grade B tho... Although I like to think that their drawbacks can be overcome with better fighting sense and higher skill at being unpredictable. Like how high kicks really aernt viable in real hand t hand combat.... unless you get them off balance or feint.
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it's just a game. switch races, have fun, don't take it too serious. Do not aim to become a pro.
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Well, races can be easier than others (at certain levels) and still be balanced. I personally believe that Protoss IS the easiest race to achieve Diamond with, but this isn't relevant at all to professional-level play.
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I'm starting out this season as random but probably TvT will make me switch back to toss.
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On March 11 2012 15:38 scarper65 wrote:
You can think that one race is more powerful than the race you play, but you stick with the race that you play because you find it more fun and challenging.
Yes. I had far more success as protoss but swapped to terran because I enjoy it far more. And I don't need to win because I'm a casual player.
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On March 11 2012 19:13 3clipse wrote:
Well, races can be easier than others (at certain levels) and still be balanced. I personally believe that Protoss IS the easiest race to achieve Diamond with, but this isn't relevant at all to professional-level play.
here's what I actually like about the terran mechanics. its true, mules and supply calldown are forgiving, but, at least for calldown, the rate of its usefulness declines in exact proportions to the rise in your own personal skill. once your macro and army production reaches a certain point, you NEED to produce depots constantly, and then you learn to do this by second nature. because of this, you eventually reach a point where supply calldown is actually reducing your effectiveness, if your play becomes that good.
In short, it helps bad players while harming good players to use it. i believe there's a way for any mechanic to help weaker players while be a neutral or even slightly detrimental affect for better players. terran has one, although the detrimental aspect of the higher player's game is so high as to render it useless except for cheeses. Zerg, and to some extent protoss, have mechanics that only get better with skill, or rather, are much worse with bad skill compared to terran mechanics, and to use them perfectly is actually the best value for zerg and protoss. whereas to use supply depot perfectly is a detractor for the best terrans, while for poor terrans it is a highly valuable mechanic.
P/Z =< inject, chrono.
T => supply calldown.
if you take logic or know what these symbols mean in math or programming, it makes sense.
if we really want to start ripping off warammer40k (behyond zerg being tyranid, space marines, reaper being a flying unit with dual pistols that has a building bomb just like assault marines in WH40k), etc etc), supply calldown could be changed to something like 4 marine calldown, and could be used to call 4 marines down anywhere on the map. Or maybe even a special unit that has use vs late gme units like carrier/archon/brood lord, but is generally weaker in early game. then the calldown could supplement an attack immediately, at the cost of minerals later. maybe that makes all ins too powerful. who knows.
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EPT
