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Disclaimer: This is my opinion, this is all subjective, this does not invalidate your own opinion if you have a different one. If I can convince you that is great (for me), if I can't that doesn't make you wrong. You like Leonardo, I like Michelangelo. I am to some extend placing it here so that I can link it to people when they ask things.
Hard wallable naturals
Essentially, a natural is considered hard wallable if you can conceivably wall it completely tight with buildings at an early enough stage of the game. Typically this happens with 3-4 3x3 buildings. Something I'm against for the following reasons:
It makes stopping counter attacks too easy: This leads to being able to effortlessly move out with your entire army not being mindful of leaving stuff at home (deathball). After the introduction of hard wallable naturals, we saw a massive influx in PvZ of FFE into 2base all ins where you wall your natural completely tight and move out with your entire army for one push. Because the natural is completely tight you can stop a lot of counter attacks as you move with your entire army by warping in a sentry and forcefielding. In earlier stages of move outs you actually had to zone out your opponents army correctly or leave stuff at home lest a counter attack did substantial damage.
Promotes FE: I believe that fast expand is fundamentally bad for the game. It doesn't even lead to 'epic macro games', note how many FE's just lead to 2base all ins. A more important factor is that FE's lead to passivity in the early game, this has two major consequences. A) Obviously spectator value, as entertaining Tastosis is, I'd still rather hear them talk about the game than 'Ask me a question Artosis since we have downtime.', however far more importantly B) The vaunted skill ceiling (I said it, I win). Lesser players can actually macro very comparably to better players if that is all they can focus their attention on. FE's lead to a period of time where both players ca focus only on macro. Platinum league players actually execute build orders comparably to master league players often, their macro just goes to shit comparably when they have to multitask and micro and macro at the same time. Things like marauder pressure expand or sentry expand or speedling expand lead to interaction between both players, you now have to do your build while microing, everyone can put a CC down at exactly 400 minerals give or take 15. However putting your CC down at that time while you are kiting zealots or conversely focusing down marauders and forcefielding becomes more of a challenge and starts to differentiate the better player. Surely I have nothing against expand, but pressure expands are always better than FE's in my opinion for the quality of this game.
Promotes 2base all ins rather than 1base all ins: People like to say that harder to take naturals promote 1base all ins. And this is true, but easier to take naturals promote 2base all ins. I'd rather watch a 4gate than an 8gate truth be told. Both games come down to 1 giant attack, but in the case of the 4gate there is less downtime before it starts. If the entire game is going to come down to 1 attack, best just get it over with.
Unharassable mains
Maps have basically seen more and more of a design where the main or even the natural is completely unharassable by a variaty of means such as removing blink-in surface area or airspace. I don't get this at all. Especially airspace.
Airspace is a form of terrain that provides a positional advantage: Airspace is terran that some units can use and others can't. Take for instance you can park air units such as medivacs and oracles behind someone's main. This is a positional advantage at a risk. For the moment if the opponent only has ground units, they cannot be hit. And they threaten two locations, the main and the natural. Meaning that the opponent has to tie up supply to guard both. This serves to break up the death ball and provides an advantage for the player who gets units in that position. The other player has to still allow units to get there since they have to travel there over land. However it presents a risk because if a single air unit is made the units cannot escape. If you just park 2 medivacs in there with the idea 'He has to die up more supply to be safe against the threat the mediacs represent' and he just makes an air unit and kills it, you lose it and you can't escape. Its a textbook example of positional play and strategic choice.
Why would you limit the potential of blink stalkers and reapers?: I know why, blink all-ins. This brings us back to the FE part. On older maps like say shattered temple or XNC, I would often blink into the T main, snipe a depot, an add on, blink out in the midgame, certainly we can agree that being able to perform harass and multitasking is good for the game. Nowadays you can't do that on most maps any more because they'd supposedly make blink all ins too strong. Why were blink all ins not common at all at that time? Becaue FE's weren't common. Blink all ins completely rely on FE's to work. They rely on T not having the marauders yet needed to stop it, and they rely on T not excerting any pressure because while you tech to blink you are quite vulnerable. Many maps have taken concessions which put down harass because they also allow 1-base all ins because those 1-base all ins work because FE's have become the norm.
Absolutist thinking
A very common cry about maps is 'You cannot ever use this feature because it's bad for race X[/big], leading to all maps being kind of similar and stale. Truth of the matter is that maps will always contain features which are overtly bad or good for one race. The issue is compensating it with other features which go in the inverse. It would be perfectly possible to create a map which is balanced in ZvT where Z cannot possibly hatch first due to a ridiculously abusive bunker spot. Simply by compensating the rest of the map so that even though Z goes into the midgame with disadvantage, the layout of the map compensates. TDA was a prime example of this, even though it was quite balanced, rocks on the third hampered Zerg, which was ultimately needed because Z had such an advantage in the lategame due to the open spaces and largeness of the map they needed to go into it with a disadvantage to compensate. I'd go so far that designs like this are actually good because they inspire variety and different strats while retaining balance. Z couldn't go quick three base on TDA so they invented ways around it on that map while still being balanced.
Lack of circle Syndrome
There's a concept in maps going on which is hotly debated called Circle Syndrome, I won't explain it in full detail, there's quite a lot of literature on that. Just take it that Metropolis/Shakuras are maps with the lowest amount of CS and Dual Site and Abyssal City have some of the highest. Essentially circle syndrome comes down to that it is very easy for two armies to go past each other and that you are eventually forced to take basis close to your opponent and that it's often not clear which base belongs to which player.
Circle syndrome is good: Many people would disagree, in fact, the term was originally obviously introduced to point out that it is bad but I feel that it encourages multitasking, lack of circle syndrome means you can hold most of your bases by keeping a deathball in one position. In CS maps your bases are typically forced to be spread apart and you have to anticipate army movements and split your army better to defend them all. Maps with high CS tend to lead to more action packed bases and small hitsquads being sent out to take out bases because it's more rewarding to send a small army out to try to snipe a base. Not so much on maps with low CS, which also tend to lead to turtlish stalemate games in the lategame.
Many small attack paths is good: On a related note to circle syndrome. Many small chokes is always better I feel than one big choke because it forces more mindful engagements. With one big choke there really isn't much to mind where you engage, the one large path of course. Take Bel'Shir Vestige, the nat/third area has many choked entrances into it. If you just send your army into one of those entrances you get forcefielded and lasered to death. However the correct way to approach is split your army into three groups and attack through all three chokes at the same time after which your attack becomes more potent, forcing people to be mindful of such positioning is always good in my opinion. On Bel'Shir Vestige it becomes quite important to be mindful not only what base to attack, but through what route to it.
Lack of scouting
The game actually is in an awkward spot where certain forms of scouting are largely random, this includes scans and ovies, they just have to happen to find the tech or not. Hallucination and oracles can typically get a view of the entire base though. While I don't believe per se in making certain races stronger, I feel scouting luck should be avoided at all costs.
Scouting is more important for Z than Rush distances: People often talk about rush distances for Z, but being able to scout the gasses at the natural with an overlord is so much more important than Rush distance. Rush distance gives you 10-15 seconds if not less before an attack starts from P,afterwards the attack isn't even weaker because of warpins. Being able to scout gasses gives you so much more time to prepare. If you see P isn't taking more than 1-2 gases at the appropriate time you know a warpgate all in is coming if there is no third because there's no gas to tech. Making geysers visible for overlords at both the main and natural is I feel an essential thing that most maps should have. Apart from that, in ZvZ it is paramount to be able to see drone saturation at the natural with overlords which is often the only way to scout out certain all ins. No drones means those larvae went to lings.
Give the reaper some love: The reaper is often the only way to reliably scout for T. As indicated above, in general harass is cool.
Watchtowers: I seriously don't get this new aversion with watchtowers since HuK said he didn't like them. Watchtowers do not only provide scouting, they provide a positional advantage. The same people who so hate high ground advantage being reduced also seem to hate watchtowers for a large extend while they do a similar thing, in TvT, the person who is sieged up at the tower has an advantage over the player who is sieged up without a tower. Especially when there are bushes around towers, they provide an advantage, to claim that position you have to accept that you take free fire until you get into the bushes allowing 3 marines to hold that position against a stalker simply because they got there first, a positional advantage which is used quite often in competitive play. In major engagements, the person who has the tower simply has an advantage which I think is a good idea of towers are placed at the right spots.
Big 4 player rotational maps: 4 player rotatoinal maps, especially when they are used creates a form of scouting luck. If T goes CC first in TvP and you scout him right away you can do things to punish it, or take an earlier expo yourself. Otherwise not so much and you take a build order loss because you scouted the wrong direction which is arbitrary. I don't believe in large 4 player rotational maps for this reason.
A note on planned strategies
I'm going to be honest, I don't like to see 'planned strategies', I also think games at weekend tournaments like IPL where typically half of code S was to be found are actually more entertaining than code S itself. Planned strategies tend to come down to very specific cheeses and timings to snipe a perceived weekness while if both players couldn't plan for each other you tend to see 'epic macro' games. IPL finals tend to be far more epic than GSL finals, which are often super one sided ad often see an underdog havng caused a couple of upsets to reach a finals simply due to planned strats being able to snipe better players.
Planned strats also steer away from the 'Bonjwa' people want to see. Solid mechanial play is a constant factor, planned straSince the context of this thread is for esports broadcasts to establish "legitimacy in the eyes of the world", I genuinely wonder if TV broadcasts - presumably the standard esports broadcasts are measured against - use the "a lot of [plural] is" variant.
ts aren't, typically planned strats can be used only once. At the height of Leenock and Life you typically saw them both in finals like 4 tournaments in a row except code S. You could say code S is more difficult, but many of the tournaments they reached finals from had all the best code S players in them. Leenock at the height of his skill was one of the best 'raw skill' players in the world. That doesn't mean it only comes from emchanics, but also on the fly thinking which often helped him to salvage games. Raw skill is much more a constant factor than planning and it showed.
FE builds again serve to make planned strats more viable, the sooner interraction starts, the harder it becomes to plan a strategy. you can generally only plan a build up to the interaction starts, when interaction starts you are forced to adapt on the fly.
Subjectivity
To get back to the disclaimer, people really need to stop thinking that a map is objectively bad because they dislike it personally. Art is subjective, if someone likes different maps than you, that doesn't make them wrong, and that most certainly doesn't mean they don't 'understand' the game.
  
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United States4883 Posts
Hmm, this is interesting. For the most part, I wholly disagree with the first half of this and agree with most of the last half.
Hard wallable naturals: The biggest problem here is simply zerg. As both a protoss player and a terran player, I can say from experience that expanding in general is just much much harder with a wide wall. Right now in PvZ that's a huge deal on 2-player maps like Bel'Shir and Akilon; 6pools OWN FFE, but you can't place your forge in your main because you can't have a wall up in time to deal with gas openings, etc., etc. It makes builds kind of coinflippy. (NOTE: this is more than just a problem with FAST expanding, this is a problem with expanding at all.) HOWEVER, some of the newer maps have some clever solutions. For instance, back door expansions with collapsible rocks in the front on Anaconda and (alternate spawns) on Sky Island, etc. These are some cool ideas and worth exploring instead of forcing protoss players to guess.
Unharassable mains: I have mixed feelings on this. The primary reason is again zergy: mutas. Muta harass is SO powerful in HotS. Like, unbelievably powerful. With a bunch of dead space around the main, it's practically impossible to defend against mutas because then you have to protect EVERY ANGLE. At this point, you're no longer "splitting your army and avoiding the deathball syndrome", you're just sitting your deathball at home because you can't move anywhere else. A feature that I think IS strong is the offset 3rd base on maps such as Newkirk, Whirlwind, and Akilon. These offset 3rds give you 2 choices of a 3rd and how you want to play so it's a good feature. Korhol Sky Island also does this to some degree in both spawn locations.
Absolutist thinking: Lol. I understand what you're trying to say here, but TDA is the worst example possible. By "Z couldn't go quick three base on TDA so they invented ways around it on that map while still being balanced", I think you're just referring to how zerg players would either all-in or just die because it was impossible to play on that map. THAT IS BAD. I actually didn't dislike that map, especially after they removed the rocks on the 3rd, but it still had so many unbalancable flaws to it that it could never be a "good map". However, if we compare Neo Planet S, Whirlwind, Korhol Sky Island, and Anaconda, we get a huge variety of maps and playstyles. These are all the best maps out currently and the more innovation and creativity we see from mapmakers, the better our map pools are going to get with high-quality, well-balanced, but also varied maps.
Lack of CS: Yes, absolutely. Neo Planet S is like the best map to come out in a long time. I would like to see something similar and maybe a little bigger. Dual Sight was way too small and I don't know about Abyssal City. But yes, circular maps are awesome, we need more of them.
Scouting Luck: I don't know about this. I feel like scouting is pretty easy in HotS. I think we're just on the edge of the next step of meta, so things like "scouting luck" seem stronger than they actually are.
Planned Strategies: Planned strategies are incredibly INCREDIBLY important to the game. Some people may think it's more fun to watch a 10-minute action packed back and forth fight between biomine and ling/bane/muta, but I honestly find a lot more enjoyment in just watching incredibly well-planned strategies. For instance, Life vs. Sjow G3 is a bad, uninteresting game. Perhaps the only highlight of it is that everyone thought Sjow was going to lose, but he managed to do really good splits and somehow magically pull out a win. However, compare that to Maru vs. Innovation and we see a HUGE difference in the quality of the play and strategy. G1 of Maru vs. Innovation had Maru using cloaked banshees to pull all of Innovation's units back while controlling the front with a widow mine. After denying scouting and keeping Innovation defensive all game, he chose to attack with a marine/tank push instead of expanding, knowing that his opponent wouldn't be able scout it or stop it. That being said, Maru has also been playing with mechanics that rival Innovation in the last few weeks, so I don't think Maru "just got lucky".
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United Kingdom3685 Posts
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ALLEYCAT BLUES49484 Posts
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On August 03 2013 00:31 SC2John wrote:
Hmm, this is interesting. For the most part, I wholly disagree with the first half of this and agree with most of the last half.
Hard wallable naturals: The biggest problem here is simply zerg. As both a protoss player and a terran player, I can say from experience that expanding in general is just much much harder with a wide wall. Right now in PvZ that's a huge deal on 2-player maps like Bel'Shir and Akilon; 6pools OWN FFE, but you can't place your forge in your main because you can't have a wall up in time to deal with gas openings, etc., etc. It makes builds kind of coinflippy. (NOTE: this is more than just a problem with FAST expanding, this is a problem with expanding at all.) HOWEVER, some of the newer maps have some clever solutions. For instance, back door expansions with collapsible rocks in the front on Anaconda and (alternate spawns) on Sky Island, etc. These are some cool ideas and worth exploring instead of forcing protoss players to guess. Well, like I said, one of the reason I don't believe in hard walls is because I don't like FE's as a norm. I think sentry expands were more exciting than forge FE's. At the height of ZvP's reputation as an intensely boring matchup. Z would literally take a third before any amount of interaction between both players. That's pretty silly in my opinion. In fact, Z would often take a third blindly because of how common FFE is.
Unharassable mains: I have mixed feelings on this. The primary reason is again zergy: mutas. Muta harass is SO powerful in HotS. Like, unbelievably powerful. With a bunch of dead space around the main, it's practically impossible to defend against mutas because then you have to protect EVERY ANGLE. At this point, you're no longer "splitting your army and avoiding the deathball syndrome", you're just sitting your deathball at home because you can't move anywhere else. A feature that I think IS strong is the offset 3rd base on maps such as Newkirk, Whirlwind, and Akilon. These offset 3rds give you 2 choices of a 3rd and how you want to play so it's a good feature. Korhol Sky Island also does this to some degree in both spawn locations. Well, you are splitting your deathball up at home. I also don't think mutas are that overpowered. Like, there are many maps in the HotS pool which have adequate deadspace like Star Station and it's not like we only see mutas there or see them being broken there or Akilon. This was especially shown with TLO vs Taeja today, TLO was bouncing between baces and Taeja trapped him in dead space, the mutas were stuck and Taeja immediately went for a drop. TLO basically all inned at that point to draw Taeja's army away and let his mutas participate in the attack. That's some cool positional decisions you have there then.
Absolutist thinking: Lol. I understand what you're trying to say here, but TDA is the worst example possible. By "Z couldn't go quick three base on TDA so they invented ways around it on that map while still being balanced", I think you're just referring to how zerg players would either all-in or just die because it was impossible to play on that map. THAT IS BAD. I actually didn't dislike that map, especially after they removed the rocks on the 3rd, but it still had so many unbalancable flaws to it that it could never be a "good map". However, if we compare Neo Planet S, Whirlwind, Korhol Sky Island, and Anaconda, we get a huge variety of maps and playstyles. These are all the best maps out currently and the more innovation and creativity we see from mapmakers, the better our map pools are going to get with high-quality, well-balanced, but also varied maps. Since when did Zergs all in on TDA? TDA gave a lot of macro games. Z's rarely all inned on TDA, it was too large to all in anyway.
Scouting Luck: I don't know about this. I feel like scouting is pretty easy in HotS. I think we're just on the edge of the next step of meta, so things like "scouting luck" seem stronger than they actually are. Depends on the map, if you can't check gasses or minerals as Z you have to gamble your ovie flies in at the right point to see the tech. T scouting is always gambling with scans. P is the race in HotS though which can pretty much for 100 sentry energy get almost always a full few of the base.
Planned Strategies: Planned strategies are incredibly INCREDIBLY important to the game. Some people may think it's more fun to watch a 10-minute action packed back and forth fight between biomine and ling/bane/muta, but I honestly find a lot more enjoyment in just watching incredibly well-planned strategies. For instance, Life vs. Sjow G3 is a bad, uninteresting game. Perhaps the only highlight of it is that everyone thought Sjow was going to lose, but he managed to do really good splits and somehow magically pull out a win. However, compare that to Maru vs. Innovation and we see a HUGE difference in the quality of the play and strategy. G1 of Maru vs. Innovation had Maru using cloaked banshees to pull all of Innovation's units back while controlling the front with a widow mine. After denying scouting and keeping Innovation defensive all game, he chose to attack with a marine/tank push instead of expanding, knowing that his opponent wouldn't be able scout it or stop it. That being said, Maru has also been playing with mechanics that rival Innovation in the last few weeks, so I don't think Maru "just got lucky". We're going to have to agree to disagree here I think, I thought Sjow vs Life was way more exciting and listening to the crowd many people agreed.
It's just a bit weird to constantly have GSL champions that fall off immediately afterwards like Seed, Jjakji and Sniper because they used a couple of tricks to win a GSL which they obviously can't repeat because you can only use it once.
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on which map is scouting the nat impossible?
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On August 03 2013 01:11 a176 wrote:
on which map is scouting the nat impossible? Icarus, Entombed vally are good examples where you can't overlord spy on the map, some versions of Planet S also have the mienral line on the wrong side, they actually cahnged it in proleague, probably for this very reason, but never did so on the ladder version. Derelict watcher also makes it pretty much impossible to check the mienral line and gasses without the overlord being killed before reaching it.
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Honestly it wouldn't be to hard to just decrease the life of the rocks by 500hp or something. Prevents zerg from taking a 3rd base before interaction or at least forces him to get some lings out.
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United States4883 Posts
On August 03 2013 00:53 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Well, like I said, one of the reason I don't believe in hard walls is because I don't like FE's as a norm. I think sentry expands were more exciting than forge FE's. At the height of ZvP's reputation as an intensely boring matchup. Z would literally take a third before any amount of interaction between both players. That's pretty silly in my opinion. In fact, Z would often take a third blindly because of how common FFE is.
Zerg can actually take a pretty safe 3rd behind early agression. Ling speed forces protoss to have a certain amount of sentries and get a REALLY late expand vs. 3 hatch. Before FFE became the norm, PvZ was basically an insta-lose (I would be so bold to say that it's historically the most lop-sided matchup in SC2). Again, it's not a question of getting an expand QUICKLY, it's a question of getting an expansion AT ALL.
Well, you are splitting your deathball up at home. I also don't think mutas are that overpowered. Like, there are many maps in the HotS pool which have adequate deadspace like Star Station and it's not like we only see mutas there or see them being broken there or Akilon. This was especially shown with TLO vs Taeja today, TLO was bouncing between baces and Taeja trapped him in dead space, the mutas were stuck and Taeja immediately went for a drop. TLO basically all inned at that point to draw Taeja's army away and let his mutas participate in the attack. That's some cool positional decisions you have there then.
I think mutas were balanced for ZvT in HotS. That's as much as I can say on that subject.
Since when did Zergs all in on TDA? TDA gave a lot of macro games. Z's rarely all inned on TDA, it was too large to all in anyway.
Yes, there wasn't a lot of cheese because the rush distances were so huge. And the large majority of the time they were just losing on 2.5 bases.
Depends on the map, if you can't check gasses or minerals as Z you have to gamble your ovie flies in at the right point to see the tech. T scouting is always gambling with scans. P is the race in HotS though which can pretty much for 100 sentry energy get almost always a full few of the base.
I believe checking gases and mineral saturation MIGHT be important. But I think you're underestimating what scouting is in HotS. If terran scouting was all based on lucky scans, TvT would be a 100% coinflip. In the current PvP metagame, a lot of players aren't scouting AT ALL until like ~7:00.
We're going to have to agree to disagree here I think, I thought Sjow vs Life was way more exciting and listening to the crowd many people agreed.
It's just a bit weird to constantly have GSL champions that fall off immediately afterwards like Seed, Jjakji and Sniper because they used a couple of tricks to win a GSL which they obviously can't repeat because you can only use it once.
Again, I don't understand why you pick some of the worst examples. I don't know about Seed, but Jjakji played some of the best macro ZvT games up to that time against Leenock and Sniper just played THE BEST BL/infestor at that period (which, I suppose, isn't saying much). Both of those players were really good at the particular meta at the time and both deserved to win. A better example of champions or runner-ups that didn't really deserve it is Polt or Squirtle or InCa or (terran) Rain, etc. Squirtle was never a great player, he just had really good 2-base PvT all-ins. Polt played against an MMA who played the worst games in his life, and even won 2 of the games with a cheesy ghost rush. InCa and Rain, no explanation necessary.
It's so much better to see champions use their brain and outsmart their opponent than to watch 2 players continually clash and micro while staying on 2-3 bases all game. (Although it would certainly be better if skill played into the game more, which again, is an improvement in HotS so far).
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All in all, the point I want to make is that some specific map features that allow for AN ACTUAL ECONOMY are good. I think that map features somewhere in the middle of your opinion and your anti-opinion are good. I've provided many examples of good maps including Neo Planet S, Korhol Sky Island, Whirlwind, Anaconda, and Bel'Shir Vestige. Those types of maps, while still having generally accessible naturals and some features like a fairly safe main remain varied and give players a chance to play many different styles. We've moved on from the days of Daybreak and Cloud Kingdom, etc., (which were great maps when they came out), and we've moved into a period of map-making that's making a lot of compromises. So while I think that what you're saying, to some degree, is important, I still think the general rules of map-making MUST be adhered to so we don't get an overly imbalanced map pool.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On August 03 2013 00:41 Sayle wrote:I was hoping for a thread about Manifesto 
This is exactly what I was looking for too.
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On August 03 2013 02:17 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2013 00:53 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Well, like I said, one of the reason I don't believe in hard walls is because I don't like FE's as a norm. I think sentry expands were more exciting than forge FE's. At the height of ZvP's reputation as an intensely boring matchup. Z would literally take a third before any amount of interaction between both players. That's pretty silly in my opinion. In fact, Z would often take a third blindly because of how common FFE is. Zerg can actually take a pretty safe 3rd behind early agression. Ling speed forces protoss to have a certain amount of sentries and get a REALLY late expand vs. 3 hatch. Before FFE became the norm, PvZ was basically an insta-lose (I would be so bold to say that it's historically the most lop-sided matchup in SC2). Again, it's not a question of getting an expand QUICKLY, it's a question of getting an expansion AT ALL. Surely you do not actually believe that PvZ was an insta-lose before FFE became the norm because that is blatantly and demonstratively false? And people also got an expansion back when maps like Metalopolis and XNC were still in the pool. Both of whom being very balanced in the PvZ matchup. Sc2 existed for a loooong time before FFE became the norm.
I think mutas were balanced for ZvT in HotS. That's as much as I can say on that subject. Truth be told, at this point together with your prior remarks, I am going to have to call in question your objectivity. It seems that you play Protoss but I could be wrong here and you have troubles in pvZ.
Yes, there wasn't a lot of cheese because the rush distances were so huge. And the large majority of the time they were just losing on 2.5 bases.
So you say they would lose or all in, but they wouldn't all in a lot. And yet how do you explain the very balanced winrates of TDA then?
I believe checking gases and mineral saturation MIGHT be important. But I think you're underestimating what scouting is in HotS. If terran scouting was all based on lucky scans, TvT would be a 100% coinflip. In the current PvP metagame, a lot of players aren't scouting AT ALL until like ~7:00.
I think everyone can agree that scouting is more important for Z than it is for P and and T, and PvP is commonly held to be quite coinflippy.
Again, I don't understand why you pick some of the worst examples. I don't know about Seed, but Jjakji played some of the best macro ZvT games up to that time against Leenock and Sniper just played THE BEST BL/infestor at that period (which, I suppose, isn't saying much). Both of those players were really good at the particular meta at the time and both deserved to win. A better example of champions or runner-ups that didn't really deserve it is Polt or Squirtle or InCa or (terran) Rain, etc. Squirtle was never a great player, he just had really good 2-base PvT all-ins. Polt played against an MMA who played the worst games in his life, and even won 2 of the games with a cheesy ghost rush. InCa and Rain, no explanation necessary.
Jjakji used a lot of clever tricks against Leenock like a CC behind the mineral line which really work only once. What I'm saying is that with the exception of Mvp, Nestea and MC, many GSL champions are champions only once, whereas you saw Leenock, Taeja, Puma and what not win championship after championship in raw skill tournaments at their periods of dominance. And these were often 128-man brackets. If the same player traverses a 128 man bracket to the top twice that surely says a lot. In the GSL, the former champion often goes out in the first round.
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Creativity of maps is poor because blizzard chooses the maps. Blizzard should make a poll. Select 20 maps the top 8 make ladder.
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On August 03 2013 04:30 reps)squishy wrote:
Creativity of maps is poor because blizzard chooses the maps. Blizzard should make a poll. Select 20 maps the top 8 make ladder. Wouldn't like that honestly. People have a tendency to in mob mentality really like something that is super untested. Like everonye was super excited for the ideas of OneGoal for a while back when it was super untested even and even theorycrafting.
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EPT
