Is Seton's Clutch representative of FA as a whole?

[Eukanuba]

I ask this question in good faith and without any intention to cause divisions. Regular Seton's players often have ideas about stuff being unbalanced which is complete news to me, and I wonder if these imbalances are genuinely game-wide or if it's just a peculiarity of one specific map.

I can see the reason for Seton's popularity, it is designed in such a way that every unit in the game is viable, and the appeal of this is obvious.

It seems to me that this unit viability has been mistakenly extrapolated to tactical and strategic viability. Although Seton's is well-designed in terms of allowing any conceivable tactic to be used, it is not representative of the wider game in many ways. For example it has a central chokepoint: in other maps this sort of feature is considered bad design and not what FA should be about. I appreciate that Seton's is different and it has a whole metagame associated with it, but that in itself does not mean that the rest of FA should be changed to accommodate it.

Seton's has 'gentleman's agreements', for example no mixing naval stealth and shields, but the rest of FA has no need for these. There are two opposing arguments that I can see as the reason for this. On the Seton's side, they would argue that Seton's allows a huge number of iterations of high-tech unit interactions and therefore they are best placed to see how the balance should be. The opposing view would be that Seton's is not representative of the game as a whole and has numerous limiting factors that influence which units can be used and how.

I'm no FA expert, and I'm certainly no Seton's expert, but I think that this is an interesting area to discuss and I would like to hear others' viewpoints.

[-_V_-]

sorry but this will just be a trolling festival

[ZLO_RD]

to much eco on setons...

[Plasma_Wolf]

No game type is a representative of FA as a whole. Maps even less so.

[laPPen]

I am a classic setons player and my answer is: NO its not representative.

I played quite a lot of other maps for a long while and i have to say there are lots of aspects and units in the game that have no big role in setons. (For example pd creep is useless on setons/ or the use of t1 spamm is very limited.. and mutch more)

On the other hand the setons community has a great knowledge about aspects and unit balance (esp late game units and navybalance..airplay... mutch more aswell .. ) about what the normal (ranked) players have little expirience.

For that reason i would not argue with a ranked player about t1 landplay but i dont give mutch about a 1v1 players opinion about navybalance.

What i wanna say is all sides have their strong parts in terms of knowledge of the game and should be heard.

[Eukanuba]

Good points.

The main inspiration for starting this thread was the ongoing debate about teleport SCUs, and what it is about Seton's that causes such a obscure tactic to become a problem worth fixing. I suppose that it is a combination of the easy eco-whoring and the fact that other eco maps are less well-known and so much less of the game has been 'solved'. It's rare that I play eco maps so I may be very wrong, but it seems to me as if the tele-SCU is either only a problem on Seton's, or only Seton's players play enough to notice its dominance.

I'm very conscious that this might look like some attempt to stir up an argument but it really isn't, I'm just trying to get a wider understanding of the game and this stood out as an interesting subject.

EDIT: Note 'tele-SCU' is just an example. Please read it as any thing that is well-known to Seton's players but unheard-of in 1v1, including but not limited to HARMS creep, knocking over trees, and many other things that I probably don't know about.

[SeraphimLeftNut]

I am a classic setons player and my answer is: NO its not representative.

I played quite a lot of other maps for a long while and i have to say there are lots of aspects and units in the game that have no big role in setons. (For example pd creep is useless on setons/ or the use of t1 spamm is very limited.. and mutch more)

I disagree about pd creeps being useless: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnNUaf2cPzw many more examples

T1 spamm is very limited? Don't tell that to mid players

[ZLO_RD]

There are no fights for free expansions, only for this 5 mex island, wich you can only rich by air and it is mostly about who get it 1rst

T1 spam is so limited, you can only go one direction with it...
Only if you kill mid player base and spam more, but still use spam to kill mexes and raid, not sure, but you are not fighting like in ranked game...

[Culverin]

I think one thing Setons has highlighted is the need for every tactic to have a counter.

Nukes : Anti-Nukes
Artillery : Mass Shields

To me, SCU teleport is something that is broken that does become highlighted in a Setons game.
I think that "every tactic becomes possible on Setons" shows which things out of balance in FA as a whole.
If it's broken on Setons, you're pretty much saying it's broken elsewhere too.

[SC-Account]

Good points.

The main inspiration for starting this thread was the ongoing debate about teleport SCUs, and what it is about Seton's that causes such a obscure tactic to become a problem worth fixing. I suppose that it is a combination of the easy eco-whoring and the fact that other eco maps are less well-known and so much less of the game has been 'solved'. It's rare that I play eco maps so I may be very wrong, but it seems to me as if the tele-SCU is either only a problem on Seton's, or only Seton's players play enough to notice its dominance.

I'm very conscious that this might look like some attempt to stir up an argument but it really isn't, I'm just trying to get a wider understanding of the game and this stood out as an interesting subject.

EDIT: Note 'tele-SCU' is just an example. Please read it as any thing that is well-known to Seton's players but unheard-of in 1v1, including but not limited to HARMS creep, knocking over trees, and many other things that I probably don't know about.

If tele SCU's where ever OP Seton's is highly debatable and as far as I know such a consensus never even existed. It is mainly one player who can't handle it. I happen to play a lot of Seton's, but I never have been beaten or severely crippled by tele SCU's. One might argue that no one used it in the right way against me, but even if that was the case it kinda proofs that tele SCU's where far from being dominant on that map.
What I liked about tele SCU's and especially tele-snipes is that the success of it was mostly decided by the skill of the confronting players. There are a lot of possibilities for it to totally fail (transport, dodging, EXP's or air units nearby, PD's, torp launchers...).