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opterown
Australia54666 Posts
On February 22 2013 15:49 Kennigit wrote:Show nested quote +Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now. haha idra
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On February 22 2013 15:56 Popkiller wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would. if it was just one good player who won everything and everyone else sucked, it'd be boring. But if there were 3-4 players (or even two) who were at the top of the game and constantly battling for trophies, everyone would love it, like what we've had in tennis over the past years. But those players can't be having 90% win rates no longer, since they will battle each other, rather often.
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I also don't think that increasing the game's skill cap would resolve the issue. There is just a point beyond which a person cannot become more skilled, and since people don't play anywhere near perfectly in either SC2 or BW, it's reasonable to say that the game's skill cap is not the issue.
Instead, the issue is that the top players all play a lot and improve at roughly the same rate, which prevents any one player from getting a ridiculous 90% winrate against other players.
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On February 22 2013 15:54 inSeason wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2013 15:49 Kennigit wrote: Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now. Why doesn't this change? Why aren't we seeing steps taken for this to improve?
Who says it needs improvement? Maybe being unpredictable is a good thing.
One of the main reasons the NFL is so popular is because teams can do well after having a bad year, and the "best" teams can fail to make the playoffs. Almost everybody feels like they have a chance when the season starts. Baseball on the other hand has about 12 teams that have a chance at the title.
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On February 22 2013 15:58 achan1058 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2013 15:56 Popkiller wrote:On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would. if it was just one good player who won everything and everyone else sucked, it'd be boring. But if there were 3-4 players (or even two) who were at the top of the game and constantly battling for trophies, everyone would love it, like what we've had in tennis over the past years. But those players can't be having 90% win rates no longer, since they will battle each other, rather often.
okay, I don't really care about a player's win percentage, that number doesn't do anything for me. strong rivalries do.
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I think it may boil down to a possible lack of mechanical skill based outlets. The type of skills that while in no way are required to play the game well, can be used to distinguish the better players from the best. The trick is not making mechanical godliness be a prerequisite for competitiveness, but not making streamlined type game play inherently the best or most efficient method possible. If you can master and utilized the streamlined features, you're good enough, while if you can master the subtle yet complex mechanical features you could be the best.
Maximum efficiency in most if not all aspects of the game should require mastery, but those aspects should also be efficient enough such that basic game play is not a chore.
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Another thing is, while it may seem somewhat random if you pick player X to win/lose, if you look at the statistics of say Aligulac, it's actually pretty accurate on a person's chance of winning the game/series, up until ~80%.
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Yeah like Kennigit said this has been brought up this the very first games of sc2. by making the game UI more efficient to fit into modern gaming it basically lowered the skill ceiling and the ability for naturally gifted dexterity to win all the time. it has made the game more fun to play, because i can do more stuff and control more things compared to something like BW, but has also made the game less fun to watch imo, because the stuff the pros do is not mind blowing insane and physically impossible looking like it was to watch a korean pro micro and macro in BW.
i think the game should have 2 modes. "casual mode", like we have now. and something like the SC2BW mod as a "hardcore mode" which is used for tournaments.
edit: the game is already very much rock paper scissors already, and by listening to artosis on state of the game, it looks like HotS is even worse. the game will be based completely on scouting and denying scouting because the build orders counter each other so much more now with such a wider variety of units and strategies.
i also want to throw out there that imo the top 100 players (completely arbitrary number) in the game are fairly equal and can take games off each other with around 50% win rate. for example, anyone in Code A, and even a lot of people in Code B, are good enough to beat anyone in Code S and win the GSL. the kespa players are not going to get any better at sc2 imo than they are now. they have already pretty much figured the game out and it just comes down to preparing build orders to counter the other guy.
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we can go on and on about the relationships between the units and how they fare against in each other in a million situations but the random factor of the game is the fact that it revolves around incomplete information. You can't know the opponents intentions the whole time, nor can you make the correct responses every single time. The maps are so big and your usually depending on a single ability or unit to scout the correct information. If the opponent really wants to hide a tech/proxy, it will most likely not be scouted. Also we are dealing with hundreds of different pieces at once. Assuming you enter an engagement with your opponent, you cannot simply make each unit efficiently attack the perfect target. On some engagements you will attack better than others. That's why its just simply insane for a sc2 player to even have a 70% win ratio. The only way is if they are significantly faster and some insane game sense to "feel" what the opponent is trying to do.
edit: and also as stated above, we have so many replays/vods of other players, its not difficult to gain information on your opponent. There's really no offseason like in modern sports where teams can just lock down on training for a few months for creating new strategies or just training really hard on weaknesses in one's play.
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On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
Think about every sport where there has been a team or player that has been that dominant. Did it play out like you described? No, people love champions. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, The Yankees, The Lakers, people love it when there's a dominant force in a game. Or even if there are 2 guys at the top, like Federer and Nadal, who just keep playing each other in the finals of every tournament. People don't get "bored" of the "obvious" outcome, they are excited to see a storyline being played out before their eyes.
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United States22883 Posts
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you? No. Even regardless of balance, take a look at the numbers for professional sports betters. They usually post 55-58% win rates and occasionally 60%, but not for very long. DRG's highest matchup is 70% but his average is 66%, and he's your most reliable player (besides the really bad ones, who don't play much.)
http://www.professionalgambler.com/Winperct.html
We'll ignore money line bets here for the sake of clarity, and address only those bets wherein the player must risk as much as 11 to win 10; - pointspreads and over/under bets. Against this type of bet, anyone at all can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers' profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent.
Now's a good chance to learn about binomials and how you only have a 54% chance of winning 65 or more out of 100, on a 65% bet.
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On February 22 2013 15:49 Kennigit wrote:Show nested quote + Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
I think this has to be the case.
SC2 is not a bad game but the way it is designed it makes it so that even "inferior" players have a good shot against more talented folks.
There was a good topic (maybe the rise of the patchzergs one) that pointed out how each race has very different skill ceilings, and for instance, the skill that it takes a Zerg player to cast a fungal is absolutely nothing compared to the skill that a T player has to have in order to survive a swarm A-move, or for instance, how a group of Terran units can easily die if you do not watch for a sec, or for instance that if you miss by half a second a force field it makes the difference between surviving or maybe dying. m
Many of the game-design elements - regardless of the balance of the game which at times has been terrible (just look at it now) - make it so that it's extremely "luck" based or much more coin-flippy than it should be.
It's pretty sad as I really wish extremely talented players as MVP and co to utterly dominate against players who are not as good as them. I think this is a much bigger issue than people think as creating "Star" players is a key element in marketing E-sports. (look at Stephano) By having such a volatile game where a player is hot only for couple months at the time is not very good at all. Not to mention that because of this I know people (including myself) have lost interest for the game.
Reason: I feel hopeless rooting for my favorite player cause it's almost an even match every time they play. I once watched MVP player on the US server against some random patchzerg and he had to put so much effort, this guy - who also happened to be SUPER BM - was ALMOST giving MVP a run for his money. There were couple of moments were unless MVP wasn't MVP, he would have lost, so many moments were the game was so close or MVP was even behind. Eventually his multi-tasking brought him back and he ended up winning, but I had to stay there watch a 4 FREAKING TIME GSL CHAMPION having trouble vs a nobody.
Unfortunately I have no idea how Blizzard could fix the design of the races to make it so that every one has a good high ceiling and some are not easier than the others, but they MUST do it. Terran I think everyone can agree is the best designed race, I think Zerg and Protoss need a lot of work. Zerg at the current state needs some re-working and Protoss in particular, needs some SERIOUS design work.
My 2 cents from a very die-hard fan who is slowly but surely watching less and less and less SC2 - and this one being one of the biggest reasons.
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On February 22 2013 15:41 Sea_Food wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong. another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent. Yeah I really don't like this either. Artosis has never struck me as anything but average. He is perhaps the most popular guy in all of Sc2 though. I'd go as far as saying all casters have less knowledge than the player/casters who have less knowledge than the (top) players. It doesn't take a genius to memorize the openings in tvz and then say oh yeahhh here we go! Exactly what I thought, it's reactor hellions after he takes gas, builds reactor on rax, makes factory beside it. Anyways, Volatile = sc2 = revolving door of winners
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Extremely strong mechanics and reaching skill caps can only take you so far in a game of strategy. Part of the fun of this game for me is when player's do their homework, find out how a player likes to play, and then construct strategies to counter their play style.
I think there's a certain level of skill you have to have in the game--whether it be in straightforward mechanics, ability to control the game, creativity, or a mixture of these and more--to remain competitive. For example, A GSL Code S player will have a 100% win rate against, for example, me.
However, once a player has developed the level of skill required to be competitive, I think as others have mentioned the variance develops in what risks the players take, what information they do not gather, and how the map factors into unit engagements.
I don't think this variance is a bad thing; personally I would be quite bored if in top play you could predict the winner 90% of the time.
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I don't know if there is anything wrong with the game or what to fix but the game is definetely too volatile.
I dare to say, without having any statistics to back my claim up, that in most of the games one single fight will decide the outcome of the game.
You hardly see any comebacks. After the first successful attack the game is pretty much over for the other player. Even if casters are trying to tell the viewers how the other player can comeback it rarely ever happens.
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The best season ever in baseball history in terms of wins was only a 71.6% win percentage. A very good season would have a win percentage of almost 62%. Is baseball considered too low of a skill ceiling because top teams lose to very bad teams occasionally? It could be debated for every sport what a high enough skill ceiling is and if they meet it, but the only thing that matters is if the games are fair. If each player has an equal opportunity at the beginning to win, then the better player, whether that be in terms of strategy or mechanics, will usually win. Remember, a 66% win percentage sounds good, but if you said that player was winning games twice as much as the competition, that would sound a lot better
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On February 22 2013 16:09 papaz wrote: I don't know if there is anything wrong with the game or what to fix but the game is definetely too volatile.
I dare to say, without having any statistics to back my claim up, that in most of the games one single fight will decide the outcome of the game.
You hardly see any comebacks. After the first successful attack the game is pretty much over for the other player. Even if casters are trying to tell the viewers how the other player can comeback it rarely ever happens.
Somehow I think your statements are contradicting each other. Having a single battle is indeed volatile, but not allowing for comebacks isn't. In fact, I feel that the more often comebacks can occur, the more volatile the game is, since the superior players should not be in an inferior position often to start with.
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I guess golf and poker have a low skill ceiling too
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On February 22 2013 15:45 Onlinejaguar wrote: As much as people want it to be that the game doesn't have this imbalance factor. It simply does. Unlike games such as tennis where both players have the same things, their bodies and a racquet. Sc2 is not that simple with 3 unique races using different units.
Skill does still play a huge factor. If it was completely RNG how would you explain Nestea or MvP's run in the GSL winning 3 and 4 titles respectively.
I don't think Starcraft can ever be as balanced and 'fair' as other traditional sports. Its just the way it is really.
I disagree. Brood War was arguably more imbalanced, and the balance was more similar to Rock Paper Scissor (P > T > Z > P) and highly dependent on maps. I mean these days in SC2 if a map isn't within 45%-55% for any matchup people will start flipping tables and shitting up forums, but for BW it was just a factor to consider when practicing or choosing who to send out from your roster of players. And yet in BW we've had far, far more consistency at the top levels. That is why we look back on glorious legacies of Bonjwas and TaekBangLeeSsang, players that rarely ever lost to anyone but one another in their periods of dominance, players that destroyed everyone else even more consistently than Mvp in SC2.
The reason why SC2 is so volatile lies in the game design. In their quest of both making the game more accessible and making it unique and significantly different from its predecessor (although it degenerated into a miserably pathetic mentality of "we won't even look at what made BW great, stop asking, we just do whatever we want") they've managed to get rid of a lot of the depth and intricacy that allowed a better player to distance himself from the crowd, that allowed him to shine and wipe the floor with his opponents even in unfavourable match-ups or maps.
The high skill ceiling wasn't only mechanical, it allowed players to experiment and come up with their own strategies, it allowed them to innovate. The "metagame" shifted not because of monthly patches released by people who don't even follow the latest tournaments, but thanks to the players' and coaches' creativity and innovative spirit. This is why we remember people like BoxeR, people like sAviOr, people like Bisu, people who managed to overcome extreme odds and carve their names into the stone monolith of BW history, people who single-handedly and irrevocably changed the way BW would be played in the future.
But alas, SC2 does not have that potential. And with Blizzard's attitude, do not expect that to change.
On February 22 2013 15:54 inSeason wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2013 15:49 Kennigit wrote: Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now. Why doesn't this change? Why aren't we seeing steps taken for this to improve?
Because Blizzard doesn't want SC2 to be BW 2.0. Which somehow implies that they are to not even look at the good synergies and game design and implement it in a different way in SC2. It's funny, because at the same time they copy units from CnC... lol
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All that said, I have to echo OP's thoughts. I too have been an avid follower of the SC2 tournament scene for the most part, and it's generally extremely unpredictable, with very few exceptions that didn't last long anyway. It's sad.
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On February 22 2013 16:04 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you? No. Even regardless of balance, take a look at the numbers for professional sports betters. They usually post 55-58% win rates and occasionally 60%, but not for very long. DRG's highest matchup is 70% but his average is 66%, and he's your most reliable player (besides the really bad ones, who don't play much.) http://www.professionalgambler.com/Winperct.htmlShow nested quote +We'll ignore money line bets here for the sake of clarity, and address only those bets wherein the player must risk as much as 11 to win 10; - pointspreads and over/under bets. Against this type of bet, anyone at all can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers' profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent. Now's a good chance to learn about binomials and how you only have a 54% chance of winning 65 or more out of 100, on a 65% bet. This is really interesting, I haven't heard of any of this stuff before.
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