Criticism to ffareplays

[Pinballmap]

This is not from me someone posted it on readmore.de. No idea who it is.

I don't know if it has been since forever or the last 10 years or so, but they have this ridiculously stupid, almost childish rule where players "natural expos" are "safe," and if you break the unwritten rule and attack it, you're considered bad mannered, ill mannered, or disrespectful and it is basically grounds for that player losing his "natural" expansion to suicide (they call it that) his army and make the both of them lose (I call this being a big fat baby but I guess they all support it).

It is disrespectful to the great game of Warcraft 3 to safeguard people's expansions; if a player sees an enemy's expansion 5 minutes into the game, then yeah, they should be able to kill it and cripple them in the FFA game if they choose to do so. This is HOW you play wc3, but not them. I've watched a few of their games over the years and they sometimes do "love taps" to the enemy expos to let them know they are letting it live and then just move their army away. Sometimes, they even do this in mid-late game. There is no doubt in my mind they look at this as some sort of sportsmanship, but it isn't, just childish and disrespectful to the game.

I know why the ffareplayers.com players do this. They won't admit this, but they think longer games=better games, which isn't true. Maybe a 10 year old believes this, but we're all semi adult here and them prolonging games just to give the perception that they are more exciting because they are 2 hour long games is kind of sad to WC3's legacy.

All of them are better than me, no doubt about it. But I feel like I'm being objective when I say they play like little snot nosed brats and hurt this great game's legacy like this. I really hope the true oldschool ffa players like Pencil/Rice (I think they're called this) didn't support this kind of play. There are 4v4rt players 200 games under 50% who have more respect for this game than that.

And please, if this thread doesn't get deleted because I'm voicing my honest opinion, don't bring up the whole manipulation thing. What they do isn't manipulating, it is just pouting enough to make another player hit someone else.

[Wrecktify]

Having played against Pencil and Rice a decade ago - yes, they kind of honored the not-rushing-a-natural-expansion unspoken pact.  I get the guys point (kind of) - but hes looking at it from a solo players lens.  Rushing out one players expansion doesn't put you at an advantage over the other two players - quite the opposite it puts you behind those other players.   This reads mostly like someone who has a very rosey/nostalgic view of FFA not based in reality.  Lulz.


8D

[FML|WorpeX]

There is no unspoken rule that safe guards natural expansions. No one in the community considers it bad manner to kill early expansions. We just consider you an idiot and a bad FFA player. Killing an opponents natural early game puts you in a poor situation to win the game. It creates unneeded early enemies, reduces creeping time (which costs you items and experience) and forces you to break upkeep very early in the game by having to create a larger army to defend against counter attacks. It isn't about safeguarding each others naturals, its about putting yourself in a better position to win a FFA game.

Plenty of players do early game rushes in FFA. It's a viable tactic. However, these players that do go all-in and try to force that player out of the game. They don't kill an expansion and run. Thats just poor strategy.

[zTsoso]

I would agree to the following criticism points:

1. FML games are often too long and boring to watch
2. FML games don't reward early aggression (and in many cases) winning your 1on1 convincingly.

Why?

1. Early aggression means you will put yourself behind. Yes, you might win your solo against player 2, but player 3 and player 4 will often times creep, expand and wait until you finish your solo. In this case you will be far behind, and not able to defend an attack from one of those players that will have a distinct macro advantage/hero advantage over you.

2. Winning your 1on1 convincingly will often lead to teaming if the other players have good FFA sense. Let us say you are fighting player 2 and you are having a significant lead. You are perhaps the strongest player on paper and the other players will indeed have an interest in balancing the game in their favor. In this case it will always be in player 3's and player 4's interest to peace and scout before you finish off player 2 because that allows them to control the pace of the game.

To prevent these situations from happening FML players find it advantageous to go for the long game where they can control the pace of the game. Simply because it allows for the best chances to win. Yet the longer games does not solve problems of teaming. If you are great in fights, and thus have an advantage, you will always find yourself being teamed more so than others. It does not mean that you have lesser chances to win the game, but often times you have the same chances as players with mediocre fighting skills or worse. In reality fighting skills does not matter so much compared to FFA sense and manipulation in FML - if you can somehow find a way to get an advantage that the other players are unaware about, it will in many cases lead to a victory.


The criticique adressed here points to what I have been saying for a long time: FML games are dull to watch and irritating to play for strong micro players and aggressive players (such as solo players) that are not rewarded for exceptional fighting skills. Some may say this is whine and refusing to adapt. Others will agree that better players should have a greater chance of winning - this is all up to taste. I prefer fighting and action while some prefer these long games where one can play awful in fights and still win due to the format.

My point of view is that this critique has merit to it, but the main reason why we see long dull games is not because of the players. It is the format of 4-player games that create stale games where manipulation and passiveness (sitting in main for long periods of time) is rewarded compared to taking an early advantage. The obvious explanation is that while it is most of the time advantageous to be aggressive in a 6-way or 8-way after you have taken your expansion (depending on the map of course), it usually never (or indeed never) is in 4-ways. So imo the fault is not the players, but the 4-way format, which favor some players with certain skills and certain playstyles if you play for win.

[Wrecktify]

Worpex can you do another chart of game lengths and stuff?  I feel like game length this season has been pretty short (around 60-75 minute average if I had to guess.)   There are outliers of course - yesterday's m44 was just north of 2 hours, and while there was a lot of armies marching doing nothing (Zzzzz....) there were a shit ton of epic 100 vs 100 fights, tri-bace race and a race to the finish ending, all unique to FFA. 

I get the impression you personally are burnt out on FFAs Soso, which I get (I think ive quit FFA 3 times, personally - the games are long and the seasons are becoming increasingly endless) and it might be time for you to take a break if long games really bother you that much.  FFA will, even with stupid rules like timers, breed long games from time to time.  Mexican standoffs tend to do that.   But FFA gives us all the fun stuff that you dont get in solo - tri hero every game, mammoth fights, macro battles, diplomacy, etc.   Thats what makes FFA compelling, though sometimes boring.

tl;dr: german guy is dumb, soso should take a season off from FFA to recharge the batteries, anyone can rush anyone but randomly killing an expansion is a stupid ass strategy, Worpex = Nerubian God

[Pinballmap]

I can do the average gametime list for each round. I remember that round 2 (Fountain of Manipulation) had an average gametime of sub 1 hour. Its really dependent on the map how long a game goes.

[Wrecktify]

I'd love if someone could (using some sort of computer wizardry) look at time averages over the course of like the past 10 seasons, and then also factor in players and who yields longer games.  METRICS, PEOPLE!   That would probably take forever though.

[Pinballmap]

Actually Redz7 did such a statistic and posted it here. Trying to find it.

[Dovekie]

There is no unspoken rule that safe guards natural expansions. No one in the community considers it bad manner to kill early expansions. We just consider you an idiot and a bad FFA player. Killing an opponents natural early game puts you in a poor situation to win the game. It creates unneeded early enemies, reduces creeping time (which costs you items and experience) and forces you to break upkeep very early in the game by having to create a larger army to defend against counter attacks. It isn't about safeguarding each others naturals, its about putting yourself in a better position to win a FFA game.

I disagree with pretty much everything you've said.  Canceling an expansion gives you more map room, costs no time at all really, can heavily screw over someones economy, and gives you a free expansion spot.  You just completely underline what this guy said he hates about "the people from ffareplays.com" when you think like that.  Htrt pushed me with double rax 60 food mass foots on Silverpine.  Who cares? What is bad about that?  He was tier 3, 4 gold mines, and good infrastructure 11 minutes into the game with strong heroes.  But I suppose he was an idiot. This anti-aggression is extremely residentsleeper and completely incorrect.

[ZsSuperCumulo]

doveki, would u sign up for season 23 ? U'd be a great addition to the league! :)

[Dovekie]

I've signed up for like 4 seasons and I never pull through and actually play. Busy with school, work, life, etc. and I always forget to check the site, mostly cause I am just not very interested. Plus the way it always works out is people can only play on Sunday and I HATE playing on Sunday, cause I usually spend it with my wife.  I think I want to play less FFA as well cause I get way too worked up, it brings out a bad side of me, and I find myself in a bad mood after long games (and FML games are long). I'd rather commentate, make videos, and have fun.  Its a possibility but I don't like committing to it.

[ZsSuperCumulo]

I most certainly understand where you are coming from, something similar happened to me during my years of solo in 08, 09 but it got worse as wc3 slowly died and more maphackers appeared on battle net. Personally I dont play FFA at all except on sundays when I have to play my game or maybe sub, but it's just one game lol, so no biggie. But yeah FFA can be very frustrating at times, specially at ladder I imagine since you are playing with people of 70 iQ, unlike FML where there is a bit more diaglogue and diplomatics to redeem your situation. In a nutshell, I'm glad you are making the right decisions and I would like to play with you at least one weekend :D

[FML|red7z7]

I think pinball you are referring to this thread I made a while back (season 19?) http://ffamasters.net/index.php?topic=1839.msg33300#msg33300

Unfortunately the images I linked in there are all broken now :/. I was actually thinking of redoing some of this analysis for this season when it's over if I have time.

I can relink the relevant game-length data here, but looking back on it I didn't make these graphs very well...

I scraped 362 FML replays for data. With a whopping total of 34,121 hours of FML gameplay. This includes all season finals, except S9, S11 and S19. Fragments of S7 and S8. And all of S10, and S12-19

First image is a histogram of game length buckets (x axis is gamelenth in minutes, y axis is the total number of games that fall into that bucket)

Second image is date played (x axis) plotted against game length minutes (y axis), with a regression line showing an average downward tilt of about 10-20 mins shorter games in 2014 than in 2008 (probably biased since pre-2010 data was mostly season finals which are usually longer than average season games).

[ZsSuperCumulo]

well yeah ofc it's expected that most games have an asymmetric distribution to the right with a mode of I'd say 65 mins.

[Peregrine]

this shows most games are <100 minutes, usually about 60-80 minutes. And almost 85% of games are <2 hrs.

Re: natural expansion argument - if you are playing a skilled opponent, and you take their natural expansion, even if you catch them off guard and destroy their chances to win - you are then vulnerable to a suicide by them, you are losing out on the map's creeping, you have probably overinvested in t1 + t2 units, and you have allowed the other two players to possibly gain huge advantages on you. So unless you can really take out your opponent quickly, you could be shooting yourself in the foot by going to early war. It can be useful but it can also often lead to your downfall. Playing with a level of 'respect' for natural expos can be in your own self interest to avoid a costly early war that leaves you behind the other 2 players

Dovekie - you are very opinionated and very vocal about your views and you seem like a good player - but it might be irritating to some players if you don't back it up in competitive games, so would love to see you next season!