SCW season 6 1VS1 Playoffs: Information, discussion & updates

[LivE.SworD]

Next rule will be “no probe glitch recalls” I bet. Noobs (no offence but it’s true) making rules about what way you can use units is just crazy and is eventually gonna ruin the game.

can you name one person other than yourself who wants to keep mc part of the game? bet you can't. ive asked brain who's a bw player and even he agreed that its unfair. it wasn't designed for a map where you have infinite resources and psi is the only real limit on army size

[LivE.SworD]

....still looking for anyone else who wants to keep mc part of the game

[RJBTV]

If you guys in any way thinks it fair to take away a units ability in the game then you’re beyond retarded. Live.sword you are a fool for letting premier ruin this league. There’s no one even good enough to use mc besides me THATS y they will say “no mc” .... it’s funny how a bunch of bench warmers make these stupid rules up. And cole if p is so ez then why do I rape you pvp all the time?? This league is now a joke..

Can you convince us mind control does not break the balance of the game more than protoss itself on FMP already does?

For how easy it is to MC an enemy worker, the pay-off is just way too big. You get to play a form of 2v1 with it. You as an avid 2s player should know the implications of this.

[koN]

All of this coming from a 20 year Protoss player doesn’t sound biased at all

[Swagnificent]

I personally am not into having any rules on how players can play. I think all of this effort around 2.0 maps and trying to prove imbalances exist could have been put towards figuring out how to spot these strategies and prevent them ahead of time. It feels to me like players want to be able to play the same set of strategies over and over and never be in a situation where they are forced to react a certain way. It just doesn't seem logical to me.

I've been around for 20 years on here and know every one of the imbalance arguments. I'm not ignorant, I'm just biased towards individual liberty. I've seen players come out and go 70-5 in leagues vs pros playing only terran whenever it was "obvious" that protoss was OP. Think about how often zerg lost before dr.cheese. Think about how disadvantaged terran was until aifam.

Every strategy has a counter somewhere. Especially for how rarely the MC strategy occurs, I think we should incentivize innovating around it rather than regulating it out of existence.

[sNipEr.ScopE]

If you guys in any way thinks it fair to take away a units ability in the game then you’re beyond retarded. Live.sword you are a fool for letting premier ruin this league. There’s no one even good enough to use mc besides me THATS y they will say “no mc” .... it’s funny how a bunch of bench warmers make these stupid rules up. And cole if p is so ez then why do I rape you pvp all the time?? This league is now a joke..

Can you convince us mind control does not break the balance of the game more than protoss itself on FMP already does?

For how easy it is to MC an enemy worker, the pay-off is just way too big. You get to play a form of 2v1 with it. You as an avid 2s player should know the implications of this.

Yup

[DryFly]

well i'm done argueing with you idiots. its pointless u noobs r just gonna do what u wanna do and ruin the game but w/e. Sword your statment just proves that you're singleing me out by removing mc because no one else is good enough to use it in games... why should it matter if I'M the only one who uses it? because you single me out. plain and simple. This league is a fucking joke and i won't be playing 1's in this trashy ass run league anymore. gl fucking the whole game up idiots.. PCE

Cry loser

[RJBTV]

well i'm done argueing with you idiots. its pointless u noobs r just gonna do what u wanna do and ruin the game but w/e. Sword your statment just proves that you're singleing me out by removing mc because no one else is good enough to use it in games... why should it matter if I'M the only one who uses it? because you single me out. plain and simple. This league is a fucking joke and i won't be playing 1's in this trashy ass run league anymore. gl fucking the whole game up idiots.. PCE

You were doing just fine when the League was on Original. You never begged us to switch to BW so you could use MC. You weren't even a subject in the discussion we had when we decided against MC.

[LivE.SworD]

I personally am not into having any rules on how players can play. I think all of this effort around 2.0 maps and trying to prove imbalances exist could have been put towards figuring out how to spot these strategies and prevent them ahead of time. It feels to me like players want to be able to play the same set of strategies over and over and never be in a situation where they are forced to react a certain way. It just doesn't seem logical to me.

I've been around for 20 years on here and know every one of the imbalance arguments. I'm not ignorant, I'm just biased towards individual liberty. I've seen players come out and go 70-5 in leagues vs pros playing only terran whenever it was "obvious" that protoss was OP. Think about how often zerg lost before dr.cheese. Think about how disadvantaged terran was until aifam.

Every strategy has a counter somewhere. Especially for how rarely the MC strategy occurs, I think we should incentivize innovating around it rather than regulating it out of existence.

99.999% of the time I would exactly agree with this. But I think this is an exception for several reasons:
1) the disadvantage created by this technique is exclusive to FMP only (to the extent that it is in FMP), so we should not assume it must somehow be balanced or that there must necessary be a strategy against it, especially given that it favors an already overpowered race
2) its a discrete action that you have to deliberately plan to do, and in some cases even build your gameplay around - for example, in contrast, banning lurker swarm wouldn't make sense because in some cases a player might accidentally or habitually burrow a set of units that happens to include a lurker under a swarm, etc..
3) it contradicts the very nature of StarCraft that creates a delicate balance of macro and micro. In general, no unit is so powerful that having 1 of it will change the outcome of a game. In contrast, having ONE extra unit (an SCV or a Drone) will generate 200 extra psi for your army (that does not need to be backed by workers, mind you - so it actually more than doubles your army size)
4) the possibility of mind control disrupts gameplay and strategy even when it is not used. for example, terrans can not build turrets around the map when fighting carriers; zergs cannot position hatches in the middle, due to the possibility of having the worker stolen. More generally, these races have to restrict where they can build in order to avoid having a worker stolen. So rather than promoting innovation and skill, it hampers it

[Swagnificent]

I personally am not into having any rules on how players can play. I think all of this effort around 2.0 maps and trying to prove imbalances exist could have been put towards figuring out how to spot these strategies and prevent them ahead of time. It feels to me like players want to be able to play the same set of strategies over and over and never be in a situation where they are forced to react a certain way. It just doesn't seem logical to me.

I've been around for 20 years on here and know every one of the imbalance arguments. I'm not ignorant, I'm just biased towards individual liberty. I've seen players come out and go 70-5 in leagues vs pros playing only terran whenever it was "obvious" that protoss was OP. Think about how often zerg lost before dr.cheese. Think about how disadvantaged terran was until aifam.

Every strategy has a counter somewhere. Especially for how rarely the MC strategy occurs, I think we should incentivize innovating around it rather than regulating it out of existence.

99.999% of the time I would exactly agree with this. But I think this is an exception for several reasons:
1) the disadvantage created by this technique is exclusive to FMP only (to the extent that it is in FMP), so we should not assume it must somehow be balanced or that there must necessary be a strategy against it, especially given that it favors an already overpowered race
2) its a discrete action that you have to deliberately plan to do, and in some cases even build your gameplay around - for example, in contrast, banning lurker swarm wouldn't make sense because in some cases a player might accidentally or habitually burrow a set of units that happens to include a lurker under a swarm, etc..
3) it contradicts the very nature of StarCraft that creates a delicate balance of macro and micro. In general, no unit is so powerful that having 1 of it will change the outcome of a game. In contrast, having ONE extra unit (an SCV or a Drone) will generate 200 extra psi for your army (that does not need to be backed by workers, mind you - so it actually more than doubles your army size)
4) the possibility of mind control disrupts gameplay and strategy even when it is not used. for example, terrans can not build turrets around the map when fighting carriers; zergs cannot position hatches in the middle, due to the possibility of having the worker stolen. More generally, these races have to restrict where they can build in order to avoid having a worker stolen. So rather than promoting innovation and skill, it hampers it

1. I disagree that protoss is overpowered. I believe it to be the weakest of the 3 in late game when such a strategy is viable. The reason some people believe it to be weak and others believe it to be strong, in my humble opinion, is evidence that the power of the race is up to the individual. It definitely has an early game advantage vs a lot of the popular strategies, but there are decent hard and soft counters to these strategies that we have an archive of replays of pros executing at a high level.

2. Not sure what this one has to do with anything. Lurk swarm is more often than not (by far) a deliberate technique and is also a fine one imo, like every technique.

3. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it only doubles your PSI without any extra effort if you're the same race. Otherwise you gotta build t/z production buildings in order to take advantage of the gains. If you're trying to macro 400 psi of units, you'll need more resources, so it's not entirely true you won't have to back it up with extra workers or a base.

In the case where it's PvP and it does double your army, killing the probe (correct me if I'm wrong) eliminates this. It makes sense to me that if you know such a play is possible, you shouldn't be lazy with leaving probes around to be picked up. An easy enough solution would be to keep them by cannons always like if they're outside your base so when they get MC they just die quickly. Not to mention in the mirror m/u, the same strategy is viable for both sides and you could stage a double recall to get you an enemy probe as well.

4. Always occupy expos with defensive structures or offensive unites (few rines/dras/lurks/mutas/gols) should do it, especially if you scout the possibility of an MC threat. I respectfully disagree that this constitutes hampering innovation. Massing turrets over the map isn't innovation. It's been around for a minute. Keeping a ghost near your scvs to lockdown a dark archon or one of your SCVs when it gets MCd is, in contrast, innovative in this context. It sounds like a lot of these use cases could be prevented by just keeping track of your army.

IMO, the threat of MC only increases the importance that you know what your opponent is doing and that you have control/visibility of the map. These are things that are imperative to compete at a high level anyway.

[LivE.SworD]

I personally am not into having any rules on how players can play. I think all of this effort around 2.0 maps and trying to prove imbalances exist could have been put towards figuring out how to spot these strategies and prevent them ahead of time. It feels to me like players want to be able to play the same set of strategies over and over and never be in a situation where they are forced to react a certain way. It just doesn't seem logical to me.

I've been around for 20 years on here and know every one of the imbalance arguments. I'm not ignorant, I'm just biased towards individual liberty. I've seen players come out and go 70-5 in leagues vs pros playing only terran whenever it was "obvious" that protoss was OP. Think about how often zerg lost before dr.cheese. Think about how disadvantaged terran was until aifam.

Every strategy has a counter somewhere. Especially for how rarely the MC strategy occurs, I think we should incentivize innovating around it rather than regulating it out of existence.

99.999% of the time I would exactly agree with this. But I think this is an exception for several reasons:
1) the disadvantage created by this technique is exclusive to FMP only (to the extent that it is in FMP), so we should not assume it must somehow be balanced or that there must necessary be a strategy against it, especially given that it favors an already overpowered race
2) its a discrete action that you have to deliberately plan to do, and in some cases even build your gameplay around - for example, in contrast, banning lurker swarm wouldn't make sense because in some cases a player might accidentally or habitually burrow a set of units that happens to include a lurker under a swarm, etc..
3) it contradicts the very nature of StarCraft that creates a delicate balance of macro and micro. In general, no unit is so powerful that having 1 of it will change the outcome of a game. In contrast, having ONE extra unit (an SCV or a Drone) will generate 200 extra psi for your army (that does not need to be backed by workers, mind you - so it actually more than doubles your army size)
4) the possibility of mind control disrupts gameplay and strategy even when it is not used. for example, terrans can not build turrets around the map when fighting carriers; zergs cannot position hatches in the middle, due to the possibility of having the worker stolen. More generally, these races have to restrict where they can build in order to avoid having a worker stolen. So rather than promoting innovation and skill, it hampers it

1. I disagree that protoss is overpowered. I believe it to be the weakest of the 3 in late game when such a strategy is viable. The reason some people believe it to be weak and others believe it to be strong, in my humble opinion, is evidence that the power of the race is up to the individual. It definitely has an early game advantage vs a lot of the popular strategies, but there are decent hard and soft counters to these strategies that we have an archive of replays of pros executing at a high level.

2. Not sure what this one has to do with anything. Lurk swarm is more often than not (by far) a deliberate technique and is also a fine one imo, like every technique.

3. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it only doubles your PSI without any extra effort if you're the same race. Otherwise you gotta build t/z production buildings in order to take advantage of the gains. If you're trying to macro 400 psi of units, you'll need more resources, so it's not entirely true you won't have to back it up with extra workers or a base.

In the case where it's PvP and it does double your army, killing the probe (correct me if I'm wrong) eliminates this. It makes sense to me that if you know such a play is possible, you shouldn't be lazy with leaving probes around to be picked up. An easy enough solution would be to keep them by cannons always like if they're outside your base so when they get MC they just die quickly. Not to mention in the mirror m/u, the same strategy is viable for both sides and you could stage a double recall to get you an enemy probe as well.

4. Always occupy expos with defensive structures or offensive unites (few rines/dras/lurks/mutas/gols) should do it, especially if you scout the possibility of an MC threat. I respectfully disagree that this constitutes hampering innovation. Massing turrets over the map isn't innovation. It's been around for a minute. Keeping a ghost near your scvs to lockdown a dark archon or one of your SCVs when it gets MCd is, in contrast, innovative in this context. It sounds like a lot of these use cases could be prevented by just keeping track of your army.

IMO, the threat of MC only increases the importance that you know what your opponent is doing and that you have control/visibility of the map. These are things that are imperative to compete at a high level anyway.

Race stats from last season:
PvZ:
65.188% vs 34.811%

PvT:
66.987% vs 33.012%

Protoss is clearly advantaged no matter how we might try to spin it. That doesn't mean that anyone's protoss is unbeatable by a better player, but when you get protoss, you start with a lead that the other player will need to play extra hard in order to make up for. Allowing mind control will only perpetuate this advantage.

2. Not sure what this one has to do with anything. Lurk swarm is more often than not (by far) a deliberate technique and is also a fine one imo, like every technique.

It has to do with it that it is easy to avoid. Its not a gameplay restriction in the sense that you have to go out of your way to ensure you are within the restriction. Just don't build a second race and youre fine. Everything else is fair game.

4. Always occupy expos with defensive structures or offensive unites (few rines/dras/lurks/mutas/gols) should do it, especially if you scout the possibility of an MC threat. I respectfully disagree that this constitutes hampering innovation. Massing turrets over the map isn't innovation. It's been around for a minute. Keeping a ghost near your scvs to lockdown a dark archon or one of your SCVs when it gets MCd is, in contrast, innovative in this context. It sounds like a lot of these use cases could be prevented by just keeping track of your army.

The difference with this strategy is that you only need to succeed once, and this binary outcome is what causes the imbalance. The thing that makes the game great is that every action has a benefit and a cost, and you need to weigh your options accordingly based on quality and quantity. For example, if I attempt 10 templar drops but my opponent puts effort into stopping them such that only 1 or 2 succeed, they paid an investment in drop defense but prevented damage to their economy due to the fact that most of the drops failed. In contrast, in order to get 400 psi, I only need to succeed once. If I really insist on taking an SCV, unless my opponent doesn't build outside of their base at all, as long as the game lasts long enough, and I try enough times, I will get one. Your suggestion of putting defense around the SCVs may appear to work in theory, but the fact is that the logistics of the situation favor the SCV thief, and not you. Its simply not practical. They can fail 99 out of 100 times to take an SCV, succeed once, and reap the same benefits as though you didn't put in any defense at all. And regardless of what it cost, it doesn't matter, they will still get the extra 200 psi. This not only encourages really long games and turtling, but it disrupts the cost/benefit balance of relevant strategies.

3. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it only doubles your PSI without any extra effort if you're the same race. Otherwise you gotta build t/z production buildings in order to take advantage of the gains. If you're trying to macro 400 psi of units, you'll need more resources, so it's not entirely true you won't have to back it up with extra workers or a base.

At that stage in the game, money is generally not an issue, its about the combination of 200 units that you choose to make and how you use them. Having the extra 200 revokes any chance the opponent has of competing. No game has ever lasted longer than 10-15 minutes after the opponent has built the new race

[Swagnificent]

Great dialogue.

Race stats from last season:
PvZ:
65.188% vs 34.811%

PvT:
66.987% vs 33.012%

Protoss is clearly advantaged no matter how we might try to spin it. That doesn't mean that anyone's protoss is unbeatable by a better player, but when you get protoss, you start with a lead that the other player will need to play extra hard in order to make up for. Allowing mind control will only perpetuate this advantage.

I'm not sure this is sufficient evidence. For instance, in the old pro scene, terran had a statistical disadvantage such as you pointed out. But Flash and others innovated the various matchups to the point where now it's statistically advantageous to play as terran if you use those strategies. I think it's entirely plausible and likely that such strategies will be found for z and t that give them statistically significant gains in the future. I think our community is small enough that homogenous gameplay from users can contribute to a lot of that.

I think this is a vanity metric, in that it lacks substance to really get anything useful out of. It'd be really interesting if we got more granular with our analytics. I bet that is the key to z and t overcoming this deficit.

The difference with this strategy is that you only need to succeed once, and this binary outcome is what causes the imbalance. The thing that makes the game great is that every action has a benefit and a cost, and you need to weigh your options accordingly based on quality and quantity. For example, if I attempt 10 templar drops but my opponent puts effort into stopping them such that only 1 or 2 succeed, they paid an investment in drop defense but prevented damage to their economy due to the fact that most of the drops failed. In contrast, in order to get 400 psi, I only need to succeed once. If I really insist on taking an SCV, unless my opponent doesn't build outside of their base at all, as long as the game lasts long enough, and I try enough times, I will get one. Your suggestion of putting defense around the SCVs may appear to work in theory, but the fact is that the logistics of the situation favor the SCV thief, and not you. Its simply not practical. They can fail 99 out of 100 times to take an SCV, succeed once, and reap the same benefits as though you didn't put in any defense at all. And regardless of what it cost, it doesn't matter, they will still get the extra 200 psi. This not only encourages really long games and turtling, but it disrupts the cost/benefit balance of relevant strategies.

I'm pretty sure that terran MC units need terran food, like supply depots. Please correct me if I'm wrong. This alone is a huge obstacle for someone using this MC strategy to overcome, especially when your opponent isn't just sitting around. Not to mention if you create a focused attack on the location where the MC "infestation" has occurred, you can eliminate the threat. It's simply a tactic that manufactures a sense of urgency, just like a doom drop but over a longer scope of time.

At that stage in the game, money is generally not an issue, its about the combination of 200 units that you choose to make and how you use them. Having the extra 200 revokes any chance the opponent has of competing. No game has ever lasted longer than 10-15 minutes after the opponent has built the new race

We can't really be making assumptions about which stage of the game it's happening. We see really effective DT rushes before 7 minutes. Money would be an issue here, not to mention you'd need to fill out the tech tree of a non-mirror race to be effective with them. Also this argument is based off the presumption that they automatically get an extra 200 food, and I don't believe that's the case. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they have to build out enough food in a non-mirror matchup to make use of it, and they can't do it with pylons.

[LivE.SworD]

I'm not sure this is sufficient evidence. For instance, in the old pro scene, terran had a statistical disadvantage such as you pointed out. But Flash and others innovated the various matchups to the point where now it's statistically advantageous to play as terran if you use those strategies. I think it's entirely plausible and likely that such strategies will be found for z and t that give them statistically significant gains in the future. I think our community is small enough that homogenous gameplay from users can contribute to a lot of that.

I think this is a vanity metric, in that it lacks substance to really get anything useful out of. It'd be really interesting if we got more granular with our analytics. I bet that is the key to z and t overcoming this deficit.

I'm not intimately familiar with these events you mentioned, but based on what I know, the balance was always close to even, and merely shifted one way or another. It would take a lot more to shift a 2:1 ratio of wins:losses. These statistics are from players who have played the game for a long time, some approaching 20 years; they have seen and tried every strategy and trick in the book, and yet the race statistics persist as they do. I could quote you similar statistics not just from this season but from all the seasons for the past several leagues, and the result would be the same. I don't see how you can call it vanity statistics, when it comes to how often one race wins and loses, especially given a vast pool of games at all levels of the league, what you see is what you get.

Also, even if you discount this particular body of evidence, you still don't have a basis for assuming that the races would be even - with three totally separate sets of units and abilities, the only thing that could ensure such an equality is intentional design and balancing by Blizzard. But they did not have FMP in mind at all when designing the races, and this map clearly changes the mechanics of the game to a large degree. So what we have is 3 races with unknown degrees of competitiveness, and it doesn't make logical sense to assume that they would be even - in general, there is no a-priori reason to think that 3 arbitrary quantities would be equal, no matter how much we might wish it to be so.

I'm pretty sure that terran MC units need terran food, like supply depots. Please correct me if I'm wrong. This alone is a huge obstacle for someone using this MC strategy to overcome, especially when your opponent isn't just sitting around. Not to mention if you create a focused attack on the location where the MC "infestation" has occurred, you can eliminate the threat. It's simply a tactic that manufactures a sense of urgency, just like a doom drop but over a longer scope of time.

We can't really be making assumptions about which stage of the game it's happening. We see really effective DT rushes before 7 minutes. Money would be an issue here, not to mention you'd need to fill out the tech tree of a non-mirror race to be effective with them. Also this argument is based off the presumption that they automatically get an extra 200 food, and I don't believe that's the case. Again, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they have to build out enough food in a non-mirror matchup to make use of it, and they can't do it with pylons.

I suppose its true that it can be executed earlier in the game, but that's besides the point - the point is that, when executed late in the game, it is an imbalance because constructing all of those things you mentioned is not difficult, given the supply of minerals that is available at the time.

[VvnJustin]

MC on workers should definately be banned, but you definately shouldn't be race locked as R. people should be allowed to pick what race they think they'd have the greatest chance winning, ESPECIALLY since there is prize money

edit: i think race locking people as R defeats the purpose of evening things out for other races by banning MC

[RJBTV]

MC on workers should definately be banned, but you definately shouldn't be race locked as R. people should be allowed to pick what race they think they'd have the greatest chance winning, ESPECIALLY since there is prize money

edit: i think race locking people as R defeats the purpose of evening things out for other races by banning MC

being able to succeed in a RvR setting is what determines the best. Hence the bo7 and bo9.