FFA Masters League
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Dovekie on June 16, 2016, 12:05:32 AM
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I've spent ~40-50 hours the last few weeks trying to learn Orc. This is just a monologue of some statistics of my games and things I learned—coming from a Night Elf main, and Human/Undead secondary.
Here's the account I took slightly serious, keep in mind I played quite a few more games scattered around accounts and a ton on my main random accounts a couple months ago. Posting this now because I don't know how much more I'll play of it at the moment, I realize its not too many games. http://ffarena.lunaghost.com/?u=dralchsh
This account in particular is something like this:
1) 5-5 is using DR/TC/SH or DR/Alch/SH.
2) 4-2 Random Hero
3) 15-3 Blade/SH/TC
Of those 3 different hero combos/modes, here are my thoughts
1) DR combos felt very "sit and kick" combos. I.e. I'm not strong enough to win a fight without a huge army, so I'm just gonna chill in my base till I get strong enough. It felt very reactive as opposed to proactive, or luck based on whether I could safely mine enough gold. It also felt much clumsier as it gravitated my army composition to ground more often than I would have liked and left me, while strong in combat, less mobile.
2) Orc seems pretty strong in Random Heroes, having a good MU against Human and Undead, and goes even against Elf if you have a good bank and good scouting, and extremely disadvantaged if you don't. Every hero seems to synergize well with spirit link + blood lust + heal ward, save maybe the tinker. I dominated a game with multiple solos and teaming on Polska with FS/CL/FL, the combo felt strong rather than weak.
3) Blade Master combos seemed the most powerful in every imaginable way. The damage, mobility, purge, and blade storm carried most my wins.
And here is a giant list of random stuff:
-When using the Blade Master, I always went SH 2nd, and rushed level 3 asap.
-I learned you can stack the blade anytime on any map. Sometimes you just have to settle for 4 circlets, orb, invul, and Kodo + Bloodlust + Endurance, and whatever tomes you picked up. I was prioritizing this over units at times, and to say it didn't win me multiple games would be a lie. Blade Master dps and blade storm + stomp won me many games.
-Multiple games I had to harass workers while in a weak position just to get blade storm to be able to comeback with stomp + storm.
-I prioritized blade levels unless it would give me an odd level on TC/SH.
-TC I prioritized circlets and SH I prioritized Periapts.
-My Blade Master and SH never used boots in a single game, while my TC used them every game.
-I straight Wyvern teched every single Blade first and Random hero game, zero grunts, hh, or mercs.
-During tech I built 0-3 towers, and almost always bought 2 circlets even with Random Heroes. On maps like Sanctuary, if I spawned next to a Human or Undead I would build 3 towers before starting my tech due to paranoia.
-Most if not all my losses came from a poor performance or bad luck during the minutes 10 through 20.
-I think I only lost one game after the 30 minute mark, and it was my fault for poor performance against Elf and I probably a bad 10-20 minute period.
-I was angrier while playing Orc than any other race, and felt cheated all the time. Everything felt like other people’s fault and I was a true sociopath on more than one occasion. It’s hard to relax in a losing game when the race makes you feel like you deserve to win no matter what.
-I delayed my casters probably a little longer than most Orcs, feeling 65 food of Wyvern + Spirit Link + a few towers was more than enough to accomplish what I needed.
-I gladly creep-jacked people, stealing items and killing hero’s early game against random people without discrimination.
-Elf was always by far the hardest match up, but I definitely still felt advantaged assuming I had 100 food and enough money to lose 30-40 food and go again. This was the most punishing MU for me and I need to make more bats and be better with gold.
-I never felt like I needed gold to beat Undead and Human players. Just enough gold for 1.5 armies was always enough.
-I was super aggressive with my hexes before fights started to shut out a key enemy hero. This is why Elf might have been the hardest because they have 3 key heroes. 1 that takes mana, 1 that kills army, 1 that stops my hit and run. Which to hex? Usually the DH then stomp both Panda and DH was the best.
-Any item that wasn't circlet/periapt/tp on my SH/TC felt like a burden because they didn't help my cause and prevented me from buying scrolls, which I felt were more important. The exception was high level, spirit linked TC who will never die anyway.
-Observer Ward feels almost as broken as stomp.
-I felt with Bloodlust any extra move speed was overrated, but TC aura was still great anyway, legion doom horn not necessary. Only command/brilliance and maybe trueshot/legion I would keep.
-Silence is strong against Orc, but really only if used from Elf. I fought ~10 DR/TC/SH users and they were always a pushover with my higher heroes and greater damage, which I should have, mind you, using a stronger early game hero.
-I built tauren totems in only maybe a third of my games, even against Orc. I was so stubborn about this, but I think it was often a good decision to not invest the 600 lumber into tauren for the first 35 minutes of a game, especially on shredderless map. I am a polarizing player and I don’t like to play fair, even though Orc has a nice balanced army.
-My upgraded Kodo was more for my Blade Master than anything else, however I usually only used one over 80 food or late game with low worker count.
-Wyverns + higher level heroes still won against Tauren Caster Bat HH if I scrolled well with spirit link and utilized good stomps + disenchants + blade storms or BBVoodoo.
-In at least a third of my games I waited till tier 3 to expand. I did this because I felt like I only needed to have access to 1.5 armies to win any game and hero levels were the most important. I could insta-tower expand later and build an army. Defending with high level heroes, spirit link, some towers, and wyverns is a breeze. No one can kill a level 4-5 blade master with 4 circlets, spirit link, and level 2 heal wave support at that point in the game.
-Whereas with Human and Night Elf gold is a necessary evil, with Orc it felt like an after-thought, an unneeded luxury. Losing too many units when you have 70% faster move speed than the enemy, spirit link, healward, stomp, BBVoodoo, and healwave, is a bad habit.
-I didn't use Ancestral Spirit once (I forgot it existed)
-The Demon Hunters weaknesses tend to drive me crazy, i.e. he is the best hero in the game at standing still, and that’s about it. Tanking, Autoattack, etc. The Blade Master was so refreshing to use because he did double the Damage of the Demon Hunter, had triple the mobility, and had spirit link making him just as tanky, and stomp hex to allow him to actually kill things, not to mention being able to purge anything he hits to guarantee a kill. The Demon Hunter has none of these things.
-If Blade was MVP the most, SH was MVP the second most and TC MVP the least, which is the opposite order I would have expected. I think stacking the BM makes the SH more valuable and thus this is why.
So here we have Northshire. I feel like there are 3 choices I have when the game starts:
-Blade + Grunt + quick expo
-Blade + Merc + slightly slower quick expo
-Blade + Item Hunt + late expo
(https://s31.postimg.org/yktpizcvv/4x_Circ.png)
It feels like a crime to not immediately take your expo here but I always chose the 3rd option. Say I spawned at the X, then I will go to 1, 2 in that order, then both 4 and 3. 1 and 2 drop a level 2 item (circlet, ring +2, glove, claw +6), and the wizard at 3 and 4 drop a level 2 tome. So say I get a circlet and a ring +2 from the greens, then I get a tome +2 str and a tome of knowledge from the wizards. And I sell the ring and get my circlets. Now I have a level 2/3 blade with +11 str, + 9 agi, + 9 int, making me like a level 7 blade master before tier 2, and a level 10 blade master by tier 3. There are different advantages to having a level 7 blade master during tech versus having 1250 gold 2 minutes earlier.
I just want to reiterate my biggest issue with playing Orc, and that is the humungous variance that can occur during minutes 10 through 20. I am a glass cannon at this point in the game, and losing a single battle or getting slightly teamed or getting an expo killed can set everything back so far and cause a loss more so than Elf or Human. There are 6 caster upgrades, and I have to get them out quickly, and decide which order to get them, and set aside A TON of lumber for this, with the slowest lumber harvesting race (to be fair I don't need final walker upgrade for a while). During this I need to get at least 2-2 or 2-1 on my Wyverns WITH envenomed spears. My SH needs at least one periapt, my TC needs boots, my Blade needs orb. I need at least 3-4 towers if a good Elf or Undead is going to push me because I will literally be throwing the game if I waste all my early game gold on bats to defend. I need 200 lumber burrow/tower upgrade. I also need at least one expansion to have been mining for a while with prospects of getting a 3rd mine sometime soon. Literally all these things need to occur to secure a game, and when they do, it's a total breeze. When they don't, this race is suuuuuuuuper annoying to play. Getting teamed early hurts so bad. Getting expos harassed, bats blown up on you, having your TP hero slept while gargs kill your wyverns with Frost Nova support, making a single mistake, etc. etc. can just screw this race over so hard.
However, it's like the exact opposite of Undead, as you are SO strong once game reaches late game. If you make it through that tunnel of death, or just get lucky, or you play on point, then you are a literally GOD in the later game. And this "late game" can start as early as minute 15 on shredder maps, which is INSANE. I've had multiple sub 18 or 25 minute games if my early game went right. You put everyone on a clock and guess what, there is no answer to hexabloodluststomp BLADEFOCUSMYHEROESAREHIGHERTHANYOURS.
Also one last thing I paid a lot of attention to was my base build, and how strong it was early game, mid game, and late game. Some rules I generally had were having at least 2 beastiaries safely in the back for bats, protected Altar, having an open base, and having 2 sets of towers, the first clumped and the 2nd set randomly spread out. This is because close together is good against Orc and Undead (as long as its not too many for Death and Decay value), and spread out is better against Elf and Human. 2 sets could only mean 5 towers, but I felt like at least 5 was necessary in case of teaming or scouting fail, things that happen to me every game.
Here are 2 examples:
Low - moderate gold base: https://s32.postimg.org/xlhn1bxp1/Lower_Gold.png
Moderate - high gold base: https://s32.postimg.org/nlfy4mx3p/Moderate_Gold_Orc_Base.png
Anyways. I am no expert with Orc. I already knew a lot about this race but these are just a lot of things that I figured out myself that I thought might help some of you if you are interested. I am better now at Orc mechanically and believe they are a very strong race. It bothers me when I can get a better record with an off race than with my original mains of Elf/Undead, but hey, what can you do.
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I love this post because I had a similar experience when I did the opposite as you and began learning NE for FFA as a predominantly orc player. (I wanted to be able to play NE as an alternative for FML games against 2+ players who would likely rush me out as orc, like htrt and Maga, as well hopefully control and win games more quickly against players who preferred to hoard as much as possible - I didn't have time for 2+ hour games). Like you, I had some funny shifts in perspective given the different strengths and limitations. It was funny to go from fearing DK/lich/fiend rushes as orc to laughing them off once I got a level 3 DH with 1-2 circlets and boots.
I'm surprised you did as well as you did with wyv tech because my experiences were always the opposite. When I played orc in FFA, I felt like as soon as the game started there was a fuse that was lit and when it ran out, I would be teamed for being a reputable orc player during the part of the game where orc becomes one of the strongest races. For me the early game was about maximizing efficiency in creeping and expanding to secure every possible advantage to better combat the impending teaming. Wyv tech was never effective for me in accomplishing this. When I did try getting into FFA again once the FML bot went up, I actually gave up on orc for big games with lots of players and very few mines. I felt orc was limited without a bank for countering chippo with bats. I'm surprised you won more as orc than your main races when someone who mostly played orc like myself had the opposite experience during the 1.5-2 weeks I played bot games for.
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I think the biggest difference is people don't get to hoard up lots of gold anymore with many mines. Or at least a lot of the people who do are often 50%~ winrate or worse, or the good players only do it in a smaller percentage of games. If I were to fight an elf with over double my gold, I would have triple the hero levels, and I think I would win anyway, because a spirit linked blade master that is too high a level cannot be killed by elf.
Wyvern tech just seemed like a clean and consistent way to play. You say I will have more gold and levels if I didn't (in the other thread), but I would argue I am much more effective with my gold. Say I build a barracks + 2-3 grunts. That's 780 gold and 50 lumber I need to spend that becomes obsolete in 5 minutes. Now say I buy 2-3 circlets and sell tp (which is what I usually do), I only spent 175-350 total gold, and zero lumber, which means I have 430-605 more gold at tier 2, and my blade master is just as strong as having 2 grunts would have given me. That extra gold allows me to both expand and get Wyverns out minutes earlier in order to take key camps that would normally be taken at a later point. I also expanded just as quickly as grunts would have allowed me to by tower creeping the expo on certain maps. Maybe some maps I would need to make grunts, and Sanctuary comes to my mind as a good choice, but I just wanted to play consistent and ended up straight teching so I can stack my Blade early.
And who knows, I haven't made an Elf or Undead only account in years, I might do really well.
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If I still had the game, I'd do a time table to show the difference because I can't exactly remember how long it takes for wyv tech and grunt builds to expand. Even with 780-980 gold spent on rax and grunts, a grunt build only needs to expand 80-100 seconds faster than a wyv build to cover that cost. I don't remember the exact timings but I think wyv tech expos came up 1-3 minutes slower on maps with easy natural camps, (Silverpine, Twilight, etc.) about 4-5 minutes slower on maps with harder naturals (Market Square, Murgul Oasis, etc.).
In a bigger game, I'd be more reluctant to wyv tech as orc. If I spawn near a human and I wyv tech, I'm a level 3 AM and defend footmen rush away from dying or being crippled (as long as they also cancel my expo once during the early game). I think what you've really highlighted is for games with more early skirmishes and less hoarded gold overall, a stacked BM is Orc's biggest advantage and best way to win consistently. Grunts allow a faster expo, they make it more possible for preventing other players from cancelling that expo, and this earlier boost in income makes it easier to purchase boots and more circlets to help carry us toward and even during parts of the late game.
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I am definitely not the best orc player, but I am probably better then average and have played my fair share of games.
I actually think orc takes more skill/is harder to play then most people think. IMO a mediocre/bad orc player is among the easiest of tomes in FFA games and even a good orc player caught in a bad spot dies quickly. I agree with a lot of your points, esp about DR orc. I've played the combo countless times, and while powerful I feel much more confident using a BM. IMO orc actually has a difficult army to play, as every unit does very easily (esp before 5 SH) and really only once you reach 6/6/5+ does the true power of orc heroes kick in. I enjoy orc in bot games though, I think you can dominate against mid-level and even decent players with fast aggression and fast high levels. Against top players of course you will get put in your place much faster.
I've always found human to be by far the toughest opponent. Orc probably beats elf in an "even" playing field, and certainly has a lot of advantages against undead (if you can make it to full tech army which is really tough if you are in a game with a player like Maga).
Its definitely a lot of fun to play though... and its natural to want to creep jack and kill everything even early game with a BM. I guess its what orc players do lol
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a grunt build only needs to expand 80-100 seconds faster than a wyv build to cover that cost.
But that gold is still lost forever. I always mine out my natural and main completely so I am going to be up ~1k gold in the long run. I'm not one to really look at things like this usually but it has definitely played a role in my games if I didn't get to expo as aggressively as I would have liked.
In a bigger game, I'd be more reluctant to wyv tech as orc. If I spawn near a human and I wyv tech, I'm a level 3 AM and defend footmen rush away from dying or being crippled (as long as they also cancel my expo once during the early game)
Yeah maybe.. Many maps I can buy 2 mercs real quick and purchase a Panda from the tavern, and will have 3 towers and lots of available peons to help repair, whilst my beastiaries go up in the back, or even maybe a rax for demos, during this my towers + stacked blade can really hurt his army, not to mention enough gold for infinite health pots. If he expo'd he will not win the push. He might prevent me from expo'ing and beat me ~8 minutes in the future, but I don't think so, as I can tower up an expo right at tier 3 pretty well.
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Re: gold mines - i fast tech with BM but often use mirror image to secure a fast expo at the same time, putting me ahead in both tech AND keeping me even in gold. On maps where you cant solo BM expo, it can be useful to grunt expo depending on your enemy matchup. Dovekie keeps writing from an experience of pubstomping ffarena bot games where he rarely combats the level of skill, intelligence, and preparation that goes into FML games. In the FML finals two seasons ago, I was playing a nearly perfect orc game, getting my fast tech, fast expo, shredder and wyvs + lust, but I spawned next to Tyrant as UD and his perfectly timed rush proved impossible to defend against for too long. Youre not gonna face that in bot games. Same thing with the HTRT rush on Ostone posted here recently.
And then at the other end of the game, the reason Orc has had little success in winning FML, is that everyone and their mother is happy to team the orc. Everyone knows that an Orc wins hero arena and late game battles, UD especially fears it, so people will team you out for your strength. Fetta and dinamo just did it to me in my last FML game, it happens to NLIne in half his games.
And lastly, about the DR, it can be really powerful, it just may not fit Dovekies aesthetic. It has possibly the fastest creep in the game putting you leagues ahead in levels, items, and securing 1-2 expos easily. Once you have level 6 DR, its nearly impossible to lose any fight against any race. You have to do significantly worse than your opponent to lose a battle. Silence shuts down heroes and casters (and completely negates whole armies like necrowagon), Charm gives you a ten food swing at the start of any battle, stealing a kodo a bear or making a UD give up on wyrms completely is a gamechanger, and then the superior orc power coupled with stomp and hex annihilates their army. Yes you dont have a shitty little bladestorm to kill towers but you can just retrain to shockwave to siege. Usually you dominated their army and can freely snipe towers anyway. AND on top of all that you can charm a worker and dual race, getting chims or staffs or tanks
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Dovekie keeps writing from an experience of pubstomping ffarena bot games where he rarely combats the level of skill, intelligence, and preparation that goes into FML games.
You, and mostly you alone keep saying this untrue statement. Other than maybe ~5-6 players that you find in the FML games, ladder provides a very similar experience minus the coordinated teaming (at least as much) and the artificial extra hour long inflation on games to decide a random winner as opposed to the best player. I don't want to name names, but generally the average FML player is a 50% ladder player, and I fight them, and other 50%'rs all the time. There are also really good smurfs around where I fight incredible players on new accounts, or just solid players, period. Yesterday I played 2 games and there was a 13-2 guy in it who I've never heard of, who played better than most of the FML guys you praise, you know, the ones with this really high level of intelligence, skill, and preperation (which I completely disagree with talking about the average FML player). But even a lot of these good FML players can't even go above 60% on ladder, which a lot of us think is a much more true form of FFA anyway.
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Dovekie youre just so good
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Ugh ill take the bait a little bit - to clarify, not every player in FML is better than smurf pros you see on bot, but the level of the game as a whole is higher. You have 4-6 experienced players, who know FFA and who their opponents are, and who know that if someone like Dovekie is going rambo pubstomp mode and toming someone, that he is an easy target to team down. Thats why in the rare cases where you have a stomp game in FML its usually due to two idiots who decided to tunnel vision solo each other while someone else tomed and cleaned up. If eyes are kept open, which they usually are especially in later rounds, then you can't swag your way to victory. Also, aside from a few like you, nobody is trying in botgames. I say that even as a player who will stay to the bitter end to get a win, but I am not playing with near the focus or intention as I could. I mean half these games are random hero games for gods sake. I commonly will show up a min or two after game start cause I was alt tabbed while waiting in lobby or im trying a new strat, and Im always playing random - which is not usually the case in FML, most players are focused.
All of this is to say that my main point was: going no expo BM aggression is fruitful in bot games, and everyone knows its a terrific hero combo, but youre not gonna win FML games with nearly the same % doing that
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I mean I actually agree with plush, I think grunt + blade is better. I'm just saying what I did and had success with, and I don't think it's as weak as he makes it out.
I usually don't give my best in ladder games at all, so I don't know what you mean by that. I will play a hard solo in the first half but I don't scout nor do I try and expand or macro late game at all. The extent of my try-harding was sticking to a set strategy and using blade/sh/tc to try and more familiarize myself with standard Orc.
Give me a type of strategy that can give you a good % win rate in FML. There doesn't exist one, because the better you play the more you get teamed. Say I do come up with an incredible strategy, it will only work for 1-2 games before people know to team me harder to create the perpetual balance of power, or they will team me out regardless because they think they won't beat me, which I've seen happen and its something that continues to happen. The smarter the players are, the more the game will be decided on chance rather than skill, which is great for the Elves and Undeads.
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The smarter the players are, the more the game will be decided on chance rather than skill, which is great for the Elves and Undeads.
This makes no sense, please explain. It only takes one retard in a game and it can be decided purely by chance because of stupid decision making and unintentional suicides (tunnel vision, rushing into surround, poor gold estimation etc).
Bot games -> bulldoze your way to victory
"FML games" or other tournaments with only good players -> outsmart your opponents, good micro helps in all stages of the game but it's worth jack if you don't "play the game" and manipulate/team when you need to
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Because so-called "smart" players create a perpetual balance of power by teaming each other down in really long games. Often when you put a bunch of good people in games, they are usually longer than 2 hours, the map is mined out, and everyone is ultimately super weak, usually running around with just heroes. Players like this don't let others hide armies. Players like this don't let one person keep a full base when they don't personally have one. But, guess what, it's actually smart to be passive at points like this, which is why you see people like tyrant and maga at the highest skill level, so everyone might still have gold and base and armies at 2 hours in the game, instead of just heroes, which is insane. If smart people are playing, stronger players are teamed harder and weaker players are teamed lighter. You think the smartest player wins during this purge? If the smartest player wins, then why is there absolutely no consistency from game to game? Because there is a whole lot of luck, and arrogating yourself into thinking it is intelligence that wins you these things is absurd, among "smart" players it is so much more random.
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You think the smartest player wins during this purge?
Isn't that exactly what's implied? The smartest player who made the best decisions will end up winning in the 3-way wheel.
Not saying there isn't luck involved (in fact luck is an important factor in FFA at all stages, from the beginning to the end), but I think you're grasping at straws here, buddy.
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You think the smartest player wins during this purge?
Isn't that exactly what's implied?
That is indeed whats implied and ideally that's what would happen, except for the fact that it doesn't. And if it does, can you get away with it 2 games in a row? And if you manage that, which shouldn't happen, what group of idiots will let you win your 3rd game in a row?
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Uh yeah i think the smarter player usually wins yes. Dovekie talks about "skill" by which he means "ability to kill stuff"
He says skilled players lose, and the smarter the players in a game, the more its left up to chance
But there is only one skill in ffa: increasing your chances.
I dont have the best micro but i got 1st or 2nd in all my games this season (including my stupid semi loss)
Which is why it annoys me that soso, who is of course a good player, lucked his way into finals with 1 win all season
But dovekie i think we should table this topic until you actually play in FML. I dont doubt youll do well, but right now youre speaking from a very clear experiential bias
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Small note: of course there are games when a dumb player wins simply because he was underestimated or because two people suicided or whatever, but overall i think the smarter player with the best decision making and great micro wins FFAs. When a player with clearly superior micro is allowed to tome someone and dominate a game, then that is a dumb mistake by one of the remaining players.
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That is indeed whats implied and ideally that's what would happen, except for the fact that it doesn't. And if it does, can you get away with it 2 games in a row? And if you manage that, which shouldn't happen, what group of idiots will let you win your 3rd game in a row?
It does happen though. There is always luck in FFA yes, but if you rewatch any 3 way you will find key moments where players could have easily won if they did this and that. Usually though players lack information to act upon or are too scared to fully commit to say eliminating a player even though it would have meant victory. Players who manage to identify these key moments and have the micro and guts to pull off a deciding move, almost always win.
Also finding and using a fail safe strategy is not allowed for long in any sport/game. You need to change up your play style as soon as it becomes predictable, again outsmarting your opponents.
I'm also curious to what you suggest Dovekie to promote your definition of skillful play in FML. I don't think anyone disagrees with the fact that long games are boring, especially from an observers point of view. But we are all hypocrites prone to hoard if we benefit from it, even you.
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The ideal form of competitive FFA is imo like Seksi suggested:
- A larger number of skilled players that play in a tournament or ladder on anonymous accounts (the dream). However, this is just an ideal. We don't have a large FFA player base to make a strong competitive anonymous ladder. FML is the stronghold of competitive FFA and has been for a long time. That does not mean ladder cannot be fun/challenging.
I think it would be cool to experiment with the timer again because FFA games take way to long with relatively little action. This is my personal view of things because I think it would be great for attracting viewers/players to FFA as well as making FML games more action packed and fun to play for the players. I am not against base race scenarios and games up to 2 hours, but I do have a problem with sitting and waiting in one’s base for 2½ hours -4 hours. With the current format sitting and waiting is rational because sometimes sitting in your main is the best choice in a 3-way. At the same time, it would be good to make a format where FFA games develop at its own pace with room for strategic decision making and hoarding, which are important strategic elements in FFA that has to be preserved.
Too long games could perhaps be solved by making more 6-ways and 8-ways if one can somehow come up with a solution to the scheduling problem. I think all initiatives that make FFA more action packed and "unforgiving" if one plays passively and sits in main for a long time without hoarding or mining, are welcome. FFA is after all not primarily about fighting skills and micro/macro, it is about playing smart to win and seizing opportunities. Why is that? Because skilled players will always make sure their chances of winning are good, which means more coordinated teaming and balancing in case one player is about to dominate.
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I'm also curious to what you suggest Dovekie to promote your definition of skillful play in FML. I don't think anyone disagrees with the fact that long games are boring, especially from an observers point of view. But we are all hypocrites prone to hoard if we benefit from it, even you.
I don't think it can truly exist. A smart player wont let another smart player win twice in a row. You can't "outsmart" someone in an FFA multiple games in a row, you will see through their deceit or even believe they are deceiving when they are not, and team them anyway. Say we have a player just so much smarter than everyone—who is going to let him win? No one is going to let him win, he will rarely win anything because people won't let him win. Because he is so good, he would be better off pressing random buttons on the tavern when choosing heroes in order that he play worse.
Look at the last 10 FML championships, 9 different champions, 1 smurf (which is practically cheating). The only one who won 2 was magadansky. Shouldn't there be more consistency? Shouldn't a player like tyrant win like 5 seasons? He is smarter than most of you guys, micros much better, macros much better, gets more gold, plays much better. Where are his many championships? Why doesn't he have more? Because a good player isn't going to let him win.
Here is a prime example of what I am saying. Guess who hasn't won a game with me in it in like the last 2.5 years? Maga. When I first played FFA like 3 years ago, Maga lied and won because of his lies and manip his first 3 games I played with him. Why would I ever let him win through chat again? Maybe if we played more and he kept losing then I would start to underestimate him again and he could possibly win, but it illustrates my example perfectly. You can be the smartest person in the world but people will not let you get away with it more than a couple times in a row. Because the better you get mechanically, the more you get teamed, so the worse you need to play to compensate. The better you manipulate, the more people ignore and disbelieve you, the more it screws your chances of winning. (maybe you can find some games, idk, but every single one I remember had him lose in it, but you know, that might have a lot to do with him playing Undead)
I'm not new to FFA games. My friends and I, multiple times a week, would play ~8 hours of SSBM on weekends during late highschool/early college. 4 player FFA. Mechanically the game was completely different, but the FFA part was (almost) the same, a difference in Warcraft 3 is you gain a little more from being aggressive (hero levels). We had to place rules on how to play because there is absolutely zero, or extremely little skill, in winning FFA games. By letting other people fight instead of yourself, you would end up with more stocks at the end, and then people would just team you down anyway so the game would be decided in a few, critical key moves at the end, instead of everything that happened before (Hey, doesn't this sound familiar?). You could say those few, critical moves at the end are what defines the intelligence and skill of the player, but that is completely bogus and we all knew it was bogus as well. Only 1v1 were a true match of skill, or if we placed more rules on the game it showed our skill more, such as counting kills at the end to prevent passiveness (i.e. no one would consider someone a winner with only 1-2 kills). Our FFA has almost zero rules that actively affect gameplay. Sometimes you will get an extra point if you kill more heroes, but of all the points handed out at the end of the game, these little objectives are worth like 2-5% of the total points max, instead of 80-100%.
Yeah I think some rules would help (and a time-limit should exist regardless, people have lives), but in my opinion, as long as you are playing against people you know, in only a relatively few number of games, where everyone is legitimately trying to win, arrogating the winner as most skilled player is just a giant circlejerk among you guys. The reality is: he may be, but more likely he isn't. Those "few, key moments in a 3-way" deciding a game being what defines skill is more lack of intelligence OR patience of your enemies, rather than your own brilliance 9 out of 10 times, if not completely random.
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Dovekie just equated intelligence to using deceit and manip
And "skill" to killing shit again
I respect peoples opinion's but when someone suggests putting rules like counting kills then it becomes immediately clear to me that the person is biased towards a very aggressive solo style of play
Go stick to solo if you dont think FFA requires skill. A guy like Camp_and_Spank who went solo AM and tried to mass tp everyone out of the game is as legitimate a player as anyone else. The beauty of FFA lies in the outrageous number of strategies and outcomes in any given game. When guys like Dove (and hes not the first person who has done this) argues that the game needs to be played a certain way, he is trying to kill the randomness, chaos, and variability that makes FFA beautiful.
Retarded arguments like "why didnt tyrant win 5 championships?" when the guy only played a couple FML seasons wont get you anywhere and make me LOL. Very few of the best champions in FML history (Fly, Htrt, Tyrant, Target) played in many seasons. And the ones who did, like Maga or Wreck HAVE won multiple times. The fact that Maga and Wreck have won 3 titles in a game that mathematically has a 18-25% chance to win (4-6 players) is a testament to their SKILL in FFA.
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Yeah what kind of sports have rules? What a stupid idea—completely absurd really. When games are played without rules, only then is true skill is shown due to the beauty of randomness, chaos, and variability. -Eshan
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Lol @ using Tyrant as an example when he played ONE season of FML. You need to refine your sampling Dove.
FML does have rules, but please this is getting retarded.
If you think FFA ladder actually rewards skill more than FML you are just deluded bro. I mean, why the fuck are we arguing about this? FFA of all types is very random, and adding SHITTY rules like counting kills won't make it better. We play FFA because we enjoy it (it's the only type of game where you consistently get to run around with 100 food armies in wc3), not because it's the epitome of skillfull battle.
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Yeah you and Eshan are getting really worked up over nothing. I literally agreed with what you are saying twice laxu. I said in organized FFA, especially as it stands, it is too random to reward skill in any meaningful way. Nowhere did I say rewarding hero kills would show skill better (that's a way we did it in a fighter game, it's called an example or comparison). If tyrant hasn't played much that only furthers my point. Throw 3 people of laxu's skill level and tyrant in a game now and tyrant will likely lose if the other 3 players play to win. Saying wreck won 3 is another prime example. He won 2, then lied about who he was to get rid of what everybody thought about him, giving him beyond a massive advantage as a high level FFA player, and THEN he won. I mean, it was a great, smart idea, don't get me wrong, but gave him so much more of an advantage than you think. In a playFFA cup nooblex did the same thing and won, but that was just obviously coincidence.
But if we are talking about what takes more skill, then yeah, I completely agree that DV's 84% run on ladder is much more impressive than cumulo winning last FML.
as far as rules, what was really on my mind was what soso thinks:
-Some form of Anonminity
-Some type of limiting factor to the keep the games from being longer than it takes people to run marathons
-A larger amount of games played.
Not actually anything that affects gameplay unless it contributes to the limiting factor.
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Ffa is a psychological marathon, if you don't like boring 3 way games, just stop playing ffa, those long games are beautiful because you don't see the outcome and it reflects people character, putting a timer would be the worst idea in whole w3 history. who would like to obs a game`? when the game cannot be finished. It is like putting a timer in tennis, it would just be overly stupid
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Yeah you and Eshan are getting really worked up over nothing. I literally agreed with what you are saying twice laxu. I said in organized FFA, especially as it stands, it is too random to reward skill in any meaningful way. Nowhere did I say rewarding hero kills would show skill better (that's a way we did it in a fighter game, it's called an example or comparison). If tyrant hasn't played much that only furthers my point. Throw 3 people of laxu's skill level and tyrant in a game now and tyrant will likely lose if the other 3 players play to win.
Lol @ the amount of backtracking here. Actually I think Tyrant might've played more than one FML season, because I remember him doing a nice rush on Ludix a while back.
Anyway I don't even know how you would make a tournament work with anonymous participants. Like, PBM would have to send a private message to everybody saying "Congratulations, you are now anonymous number #35. Please save this message and remember your number" and people would have to message an admin before every game confirming their number. Sounds fucking awful.
I don't even know why you're pushing for anonymous, I think you're in the category that benefits from names being known.
But if we are talking about what takes more skill, then yeah, I completely agree that DV's 84% run on ladder is much more impressive than cumulo winning last FML.
Of course you do, because you are biased. Fucking scrub. DV's solo games are impressive though.
I do agree that a larger number of games would be nice though.
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I think Eshan and Laxu are conservative when it comes to changing rules and the format of FML. The way it is now an average FML game takes almost three hours. It is often boring to watch it through - even at 8x speed. If we want to attract more people to FFA and make FFA casts more enjoyable, we have to think in terms of action and implement some rules to avoid long boring 3 ways. 3 ways are rarely beautiful - most of the time three players sit in their main and discuss who to team next for an hour before something happens.
Another thing: show Dovekie some respect. He is a tough opponent and a skilled player. In my opinion his skills in combat surpases both of you (Eshan and laxu). He also has a point about the coordinated teaming that less skilled players benefit from. I can't even believe you are arguing about this. Seksi already made clear points about this. He also said medium skilled players have a better shot of winning fml games. I consider seksi to be one of the toughest players I ever faced in all aspects but he never won FML.
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Some points:
Regarding rules: Every sport has rules. In basketball you can't dribble the ball out of bounds, run with the ball, or kick it.
In soccer you cant touch it with your hands, in tennis you must use a raquet and wear ugly shorts, in american football you have 4 downs before you turn it over.
In WC3 FFA, you must kill your opponents buildings to win, you cannot go over 100 food, you are taxed 60% of your income over 80 food, your heroes max at level 10, you can team, you can chat, you can build whatever units you want, and use whatever strategy to achieve the aforementioned goal of killing your opponents buildings.
Those are rules. What you are suggesting is a specific version of FFA played by the organization known as FML. Much like FIBA, the NBA, and the NCAA all have slightly different rules when it comes to basketball, you are suggesting imposing an FML set of rules on FFA.
FML already imposes rules: no PM chat, no preteam, 25-10-10-5 point system, no unfair colors, etc
Moreover, this season, Maga implemented some extra rules: bonus points, malus points, random heroes, a PM teaming round.
Most of these affected the original core game of FFA very very slightly. The changes you mention would affect it greatly, and I am opposed to most of them.
Re: "I think DV getting 84% winrate on bot is more impressive than cumulo's FML win"
So you just took the very best bot achievement, and compared it to one of the luckier easy finals games in FML. K. Fine lets examine that:
DV himself admitted he got his record by carefully choosing which maps and games to play, by going UD and overwhelming opponents in pubstomp bot games, and he is an enormously skilled player who has beaten grubby and is a top FFA player. Suddenly his 84% doesn't look that impressive at all. IDK if I could get 84% but playing with that kind of focus and discretion, I'm sure I could get 75% atleast.
Meanwhile, Cumulo might have gotten an ez win that game, but he played well - and also had to play well all season to even be in that position against top players. On top of that, he was basically unknown and flew under the radar the whole time (which, in your comments about Wreck's smurf, you admit to being extremely important)
All of this fun jibberjabber aside, can we get this Finals underway so the next season can start soon and Dovekie can just play in FML
Why do people keep saying FML games run 3 hrs when we just provided graphs that show the average game was around 1 hr 20 mins.
Even if FML games averaged almost TWO hrs, I would be happy to play a two-hour game once every week or two for FML. I think thats totally fine.
Finally - "If we want to attract more people to FFA and make FFA casts more enjoyable" - LOL, this is not the point of FFA. I don't give a shit about obs or casts, I dont play FFA for them. I play FFA for myself, for the game itself, and you're not gonna turn FFA into some huge phenomenon. So dont ruin the game just cause ur trying to make it more exciting for observers lol. FFA is not a spectator sport, its a video game type for the people who play it. And regarding casts, its easy to make casts more interesting - just don't do it live. Instead, cast a replay at 2x or 3x and suddenly it becomes extremely fast paced and exciting with tons to talk about.
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Some points:
Regarding rules: Every sport has rules. In basketball you can't dribble the ball out of bounds, run with the ball, or kick it.
In soccer you cant touch it with your hands, in tennis you must use a raquet and wear ugly shorts, in american football you have 4 downs before you turn it over.
In WC3 FFA, you must kill your opponents buildings to win, you cannot go over 100 food, you are taxed 60% of your income over 80 food, your heroes max at level 10, you can team, you can chat, you can build whatever units you want, and use whatever strategy to achieve the aforementioned goal of killing your opponents buildings.
Those aren't rules in FFA. Warcraft 3 already supplies those things as absolutes. They exist in the same way a basketball falls at 11ft per second per second once it reaches its highest point. Level 10 heroes is like saying a human being can only jump 5 feet off the ground, but in the the majority of cases, only 3 feet (level 6 heroes).
Rules are "no private chat", or "no preteaming", or "no suiciding with no intention of winning". What you are giving are not rules in anyway.
Also, that is partly DV being modest. Htrt did him much better with 91% win rate on totally fair maps never choosing anything but normal heroes. I would be extremely surprised if you could go 75% for 100 games, Eshan, extremely surprised.
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I think Eshan and Laxu are conservative when it comes to changing rules and the format of FML. The way it is now an average FML game takes almost three hours. It is often boring to watch it through - even at 8x speed. If we want to attract more people to FFA and make FFA casts more enjoyable, we have to think in terms of action and implement some rules to avoid long boring 3 ways. 3 ways are rarely beautiful - most of the time three players sit in their main and discuss who to team next for an hour before something happens.
Another thing: show Dovekie some respect. He is a tough opponent and a skilled player. In my opinion his skills in combat surpases both of you (Eshan and laxu). He also has a point about the coordinated teaming that less skilled players benefit from. I can't even believe you are arguing about this. Seksi already made clear points about this. He also said medium skilled players have a better shot of winning fml games. I consider seksi to be one of the toughest players I ever faced in all aspects but he never won FML.
I am not really conservative, I'm just opposed to implementing rules that change the game in shitty ways. Anonymous just sucks ass. I can see why it's required for bot to avoid having trolls, pre-teamers and hackers (unless their hacks also reveal names) ruin the games for legit players trying to climb the ladder every single game, but for FML? Fuck no. I don't care if there is indeed a slight correlation between being unknown and being underestimated. Playing against anonymous 1, 2 and 3 simply isn't fun.
Also, timers would suck too. If games are decided by score, you might say that players will be incentivized to fight, but they might as well be incentivized to hoard for the first 1 hour and 45 minutes (assuming a 2h timer) and build huge bases with 100 towers so they can't get eliminated.
Also, imagine if a game went to a really close 3 way or 1v1 like in that game where Maga had one destroyer left and there was one farm left or something. Wouldn't it suck ASS if such a game was decided by a timer instead of the moves by the players?
Lastly, I do agree that many games are boring and needlessly long. This is a mentality problem, not something you simply rule yourself out of.
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I am not really conservative, I'm just opposed to implementing rules that change the game in shitty ways. Anonymous just sucks ass. I can see why it's required for bot to avoid having trolls, pre-teamers and hackers (unless their hacks also reveal names) ruin the games for legit players trying to climb the ladder every single game, but for FML? Fuck no. I don't care if there is indeed a slight correlation between being unknown and being underestimated. Playing against anonymous 1, 2 and 3 simply isn't fun.
Also, timers would suck too. If games are decided by score, you might say that players will be incentivized to fight, but they might as well be incentivized to hoard for the first 1 hour and 45 minutes (assuming a 2h timer) and build huge bases with 100 towers so they can't get eliminated.
Also, imagine if a game went to a really close 3 way or 1v1 like in that game where Maga had one destroyer left and there was one farm left or something. Wouldn't it suck ASS if such a game was decided by a timer instead of the moves by the players?
Lastly, I do agree that many games are boring and needlessly long. This is a mentality problem, not something you simply rule yourself out of.
I used to be really opposed to anonymity too, like really opposed, but now I think otherwise.
Close games like that would probably happen more often with timers than without (maybe a little too often), so I really doubt that would be an issue. I don't think it is a mentality problem, the way Warcraft 3 is designed, you gain much more advantage by sitting around at a certain point than you do by attacking, usually once you already have high enough heroes for your respective race and could use more gold. I.e. attacking people once you already have 7/6/6 heroes gives you relatively nothing. You get much less gold, getting your heroes to 8/7/7 is a small percentage increase, and you also raise your likelyhood of getting teamed.
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I think eshan could have 75% easily if he was trying and wanted to. Then it's just my opinion but about 50% or more of fml player could have 75% on bot
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When the bot was new(ish), I almost won 75% of my bot games with NE after not having played for years. I think I was around 70-35 when I stopped while being ~25-18 with Orc and ~45-17 with NE. Back then Seksi was like 70-10 with doing mostly greedy DR/archer openings and Renaud was ~60-12 with generally playing fast low upkeep with griff/tank. Most FML players should win more often than not just by being able to understand what can and should be done when left alone early on. The problem we generally seemed to have (and probably still have) was managing any kind of chaos that was different from what regularly happened in a 4-man FFA. I was a huge example of this.
I switched to NE because I had no answer for mid-game pressure when playing Orc like I always had in ladder FFA and FML. (IMO to play Orc in bot games and win as often as the other races, Orc players need lots of solo experience playing windwalk BM and using raiders/spirit walkers for rushing/rushes. All my solo experience as Orc was from before BM and spirit-link were discovered. I won my solo games with speed scrolling into bases and chainwaving workers and/or tower rushing. Funny fact: there's still an "advanced" strategy section for Orc on BNet with pics of me attempting a tower rush in the finals of one of the BNet solo tourneys: http://classic.battle.net/war3/orc/advanced.shtml). With NE, I actually had experience with doing what NE needs to do for winning in the mid-game, like playing bears, doing T2 archer/dott/merc pushes, and doing cheeky things with staff of tele/preservation on DH/PB.
tl;dr: I think most FML players can win 75% of their bot games provided they don't try to do it with Orc and they learn an early/mid-game strat for the games that require it.
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Maybe that was persuade that was 60-12, not renaud.
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They could've both had high winning %. I imagine I remember Seksi and Renaud specifically because Seksi had the highest winning percentage of anyone at the time and Renaud was one of the guys I played A LOT back in the day. Renaud was probably the single most improved player from '07-'08. It was cool to see he had stuck with the game type and just kept getting better.
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Dove - youre right about what u said about those being WC3 rules, but FFA does have its rules as well - finish your opponents buildings, and FML adds no PM and no preteam no hacking etc
I would actually be down with anon FML, atleast as an experiment, but nobody knows how to implement it correctly.
I could deff get 75% but we will never know because I have no time to play 100 games, i play maybe 1 game a week these days, but ill get back into it when the new season is announced
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What you learn from playing only orc is that Blademaster is a good hero!