I think it’s a very apt comparison because they are quite literally addicted in the same way people get addicted to the slot machines at casinos. I couldn’t wrap my head around how anyone found protoss entertaining to play, given how basic and slow paced it is, until I realized this. It’s a new manifestation of gambler’s addiction. You could substitute the slot machine for Protoss and this video still makes perfect sense.
Every build order gamble, every disruptor gamble, every zealot amove, it’s lighting up the addiction center of the brain like fireworks on new years eve in new york city.
Think about it. Loads of overlap between SC2 pro play and Poker pro play. Playa was going on and on about how he has a “higher than possible win-rate” in poker. Protoss is perfectly designed to take advantage of gambling addictions and this is why it can’t win premier tournaments. Slot machine behavior predicts protoss behavior right down to playing sc2 24/7 in a fugue state.
The only place blizzard screwed up is that they didn’t monetize this somehow. If they had monetized gambling with protoss, they’d be rolling in cash like ebeneezer scrooge.
This is also why you get so many people playing protoss who just don’t know anything about the game at all. 6300 mmr protoss don’t know how to micro zealots or setup a flank. Why? Because their brain is approaching the problem as a slot machine. You are gambling your mmr on a chargelot zealot amove. They aren’t approaching it as an optimization problem of getting maximal value for investment, they are approaching it as a game that has no user input and is completely random which is why it’s pointless to even try optimizing things. That’s how you get the best protoss on earth f2’ing his zealots back and forth, back and forth, when they could’ve wiped out an entire mineral line instead. In their brain, it’s not an optimization problem, it’s a game of chance.
This also explains why they are so incredibly bad at winning longer games as well as long series matches. The longer the game goes, the less random the outcome. The longer the series, the less random the winner. They are professional gamblers trying to gamble a premier tournament win with DTs and disruptor hits.
Have you ever seen protoss forward blink at random moments and throw games? It’s gambling.
To quote Lambo, “Does Protoss Have to Gamble to Win?!”
I was right years ago and remain correct to this day. Protoss performance is too consistent. The consistency clips it at higher performance levels. To make protoss competive in at the premier level, they buffed it which, combined with the consistency issue, means every toss under the sun moved up a rung in performance. That’s how you get toss dominating anything below the top 2 of tournaments (such as grandmaster) yet being unable to win tournaments. What they needed to do was change the consistency rather than the strength. A good example is that a zealot amove is basically the same regardless of who does it while the quality of stalker micro will vary radically from player to player. Over SC2’s history, they buffed zealots and nerfed stalkers. This reduced the variability & increased the average performance. Simultaneously they made protoss overpowered on the ladder and didn’t even achieve their goal of making protoss win premier tournaments. They killed 2 birds with 1 stone but they were the wrong birds.
It’s basic statistics, guys. You gotta know the difference between the mean and the variance. It’s mind boggling that the people running SC2 for all those years couldn’t tell this was a problem with the variance. You encounter this stuff day 1 of stats 101 in college. Protoss average performance is too high, but their variance is too low. High skill toss don’t have tools to differentiate themselves from the low skill toss because a zealot amove is the same whether it’s MaxPax or Joe-Schmoe from masters league.
Remove automation from protoss. Force protoss players to make decisions. Some protoss will make the wrong decisions and some will make the right. Then hit the right decisions with a slight buff.
The energy recharge ability is actually very good for this, so I applaud the balance counsel for that idea.
just compare late game no big difference between showtime/ maxpax/ herO and low GM, just that their feedback/ storm/ marco is better.
Then look at zerg late game: mid GM to SHIN/Elazer is already a difference and you can increase this even more if you compare him with reynor/ Dark.
