for 1v1 is only shield fac

I dont like that in 1v1 you have only 1 choice. If players are about the same elo, and map not hilly or water, player that choose other fac then shields will loose every time. Its not fun at all. We need nerf shield fac. LV fac can do something against shields, only if its huge flat map, but those maps not for 1v1

I haven't played in some time, but last few weeks of when i still actively did, it was all shieldys. I'm not talking about actual motivations behind this, but i could repeatedly skip scouting simply because i would be sure the enemy was be shields.

Exceptions were there, but 5:1 in favor of shields, still.

Could be attributed to metagaming and shieldy-power propaganda, but from a glance, factory use statistics should be saying something wrong is happening.

>Every single game in this set was played by one of the top-10 1v1 players according to the list

for example, number 10 and number 1 has huge difference in elo. Need players with elo difference not more then 100. For this purpose nubs with both 1300elo more suitable then number 10 and number 1 from top 10 with difference of elo about 400

quote: for example, number 10 and number 1 has huge difference in elo.

Except #1 didn't play #10! In these cases, it was:

#2 (2030) vs #6 (1962) > Elo difference of 68 (and the lower Elo player won anyways).

#1 (2214) vs #3 (2008) > Elo difference of 206 (#1 won, but barely)

#5 (1980) vs #6 (1962) > Elo difference of 18

So you know what? Even if you throw out the middle games of Klon vs. Godde, my statistics stay roughly the same. The other games were very balanced with Elo differences of only 68 and 18.

Games are almost always balanced primarily at the top level of gameplay, because newbies don't know how to use all units properly. Letting newbies balance the game would analogous to putting someone who just earned their drivers license in a race car, and then asking them how to make the race car better.

That's not to say that it shouldn't be a goal to make the game balanced at all levels, but top-level gameplay should always come first. That's why no one is going to look at 1300 Elo replays and balance the game around it.

If shieldbots are genuinely overpowered in low level play but not in high level play this indicates one thing: That they are easier to use. That might be a problem insofar as it makes the game less interesting at that level, spider and jumpbots are good examples of 'pro' factories that few people can execute well.

There is another possibility, of course, that players at this skill level have simply seized on a set of strategies they have learned for this factory that they understand well how to execute, and have copied them from higher level players and eachother. Next week, some high level player will re-introduce people to the jack rush, or everyone will realise that ravager spam beats almost anything, or how dominant a plane start can be on a large map, and they'll be doing that. This is called the metagame and it changes even at high level play.

Though to determine which is the case we first need to establish that they are in fact the most popular and successful factory, which requires a LOT of voices all in agreement and/or a lot of examples.

Sniper is the perfect glass cannon, not only by how it works, but also by how it looks :D
^Invisible^ :)

>Come to think of it, that might be the case. If a factory is considerably easier to play than the others, why not play it? There is no point handicapping oneself when trying to win.

There is something in video games called a "skill cap", which is how much better you can get at part of a game until you cannot improve anymore. The example I like to use is in the real life game of basketball. What if I were to make the hoop 10 meters wide while leaving all other aspects of the game untouched? Well, basically ANYONE could be a basketball star in a game like that. 99% of the population could hit shots from anywhere on the court with a day of practice. This would be an example of a low skill cap game.

Now what if, at the same time, I added a second hoop. This hoop would be very small and very high, but if you make the shot you score 1000 points. Suddenly, only a tiny, tiny percentage of the population would be able to hit this shot reliably, but the payout would make it worth it. The teams with the players able to hit this shot would probably do better than those unable to hit the shots. This is an example of a high skill cap.

I say this because some labs and units are like this. Just because a lab is "easier" doesn't necessarily make it better - players willing to invest the time to increase their skills may get more out of other labs. Heavy Tanks come to mind - that is a lab that requires patience and a good understanding of momentum and response time. It's why Godde uses it so frequently - he's operating at a high-skill level that allows him to get much more out of Tanks than the average player.

So should some labs be "easy" to play with low skill caps, and some labs be harder? That's for the devs to decide. My gut feeling is yes - low skill cap labs make it easy for newbies to learn the game while high skill cap labs still offering incentives for pros to get better.

100 snipers lose to 100 fleas, although the fleas are only 20/750 (=1/32.5) metal.

Giving each unit the granted ability to defeat anything less than 1/10 of metal by giving each unit secondary and tertiary abilities would make balancing easer.
-> But it would also be "balancing toward average".

ZK isn't diverse enough early and in low metal games as factories cost many metal but diverse enough to make balance a hard thing.

Personally I would like to have basic and support facs, where support factories are only good as second factories or for team games.
But that would be a bit like "plop-able T2" because each downside need some upside.

In a absolutely perfect game with perfect choices, one factory would be OP and all others UP (map-specific ofc)

But because you never know when somewhere is a new defender or the enemy switch strategy unexpected, your strategy has a chance to fail.

The game of pros is not only about which unit is op or up, but how good you are in predicting the other one's moves or how you prepare for the unexpected/random while maintaining your strength against the current strategy of your opponent and prepare something unexpected (or expected/scouted if enemy is skilled+lucky).

quote: In a absolutely perfect game with perfect choices, one factory would be OP and all others UP

lol nope, you can win a game with absolutley any lab you want.

just consider this, the first 5 units you produce from a lab
you have ~10 units to chose from
~8 of those are valid start strategies
the first 5 units you make are usualy blind RPS style
ie your initial unit choice gives somwhere in the area of 1 billion posible start strategies, and counters. (8^10)

and thats not counting decisions of where to place llt, move com, what mex to cap, how many solars to make.

just in the first minute (before you have made contact with enemy via scouts) you have already eliminated trillions of posible pathways that the battle could take.

also there are 3 predominant playstyles in ZK(imo):
porcers (skirmishes with the enemy and tries to win by playing defencively)
piercers (do an "all in" attacks that break through defences and wins in a single move)
blufers (wins by making the enemy believe that they have more then they actualy do)

and mixes of the such that make up pretymuch all zk playstyles.
eg.
me and godde are bluffers/piercers
klon is the best example of a porcer in zk (skasi is anothere)
ana and google are piercers


tl|dr there is no "perfect" battle, and the simple idea that there could be is silly