The Mirror Problem

[FtXCommando]

So after the last LotS, one of the largest complaints I've received both from viewers and participants was the fact that FAF tournaments seem to converge to boring mirror matches. Obviously, this is (mostly) not the fault of anything on the participant side as playing games where you might not have the ability to respond to certain opponent actions is far more worrying when you are playing for high fund tournaments or even if you just have an incredible urge to be as competitive as you can get. So how can this problem be addressed?

The PROBLEM:
First, to recognize that this is in fact a problem, I took a look at the tournament games during the two days of LotS, and what I found was that only 18% of the games in the entire two-day span had nonmirrored games. That's 17 nonmirrored matches out of 82. Once you refine the range to only look at the RO8 games, it falls to 5%. The semifinal and final? 0%. That's a problem.

Whether you want to deflect the problem into an issue about balance or maps is besides the point here. In fact, I would argue that "solution" to this dilemma holds the possibility of being even more dangerous to FAF as a whole than this issue presently is. How can you make Seraphim not the dominate pick on Crossfire? How about Aeon on Theta? Cybran on Emerald Crater? Long story short, you're going to result in the situation of making all the factions into some gray mush that can't be differentiated between one another, and now not only are all tournaments functionally showing off 0% faction diversity, but all of FAF is. You could then argue that "well TD should just pick better maps" and to that I just refer to the above. A vast majority of "good" FAF maps have a dominate faction on them in high level gameplay, and trying to deflect the issue by arguing "just pick/make better maps" is a nonsolution.

Now am I arguing you need to play Cybran to win on Emerald Crater? Of course not, that would be stupid. But what playing Cybran does is give you a marginal advantage, and as a serious tournament participant, you want to whore any marginal advantage prior to the game that is possible. Whether it's watching enemy games, refining your own gameplay, or even just picking the "clear" dominate faction on a map.

There are, of course, other reasons for this mirror dilemma. One of them revolves around the security blanket aspect of having all the same tools as your opponent, meaning that you never feel the need to improvise and adapt to differences that you cannot simply solve by spamming more gooder of the same thing. This is certainly a factor, and while I have no idea what the breakdown is between "dominate faction" and "security blanket" in this problem, they both can be addressed at the same time.

THE SOLUTION:
So after having some talks and going through a couple ideas, I've decided that a suggestion by BH would be the most intuitive yet still effective way to address the problem. Basically, people will have the ability to "faction veto" similar in some fashions to a map veto. However, the difference here is that people will only be vetoing a faction for their opponent rather than for the whole game itself. An example will serve best to explain this idea.

Example:
It's the Group Stage in LotS 2020, BH and Nexus have gone through their vetos and Nexus has decided to pick Theta as the first map they would play. Alongside his pick, he informs the TD that he vetos Aeon and his faction picks are 1. Aeon and 2. Seraphim. BH informs the TD that he plans on vetoing Aeon and picks 1. Aeon 2. UEF. This means that the two will play a Theta game as UEF v Phim, and they will repeat the process for all their matchups in their round.

The theory involved here is that it certainly addresses 1 issue and should ideally address another. It very clearly prevents the "security blanket" facet of the problem as people will lock in factions prior to having certain knowledge on the faction of their opponent. Likewise, through conversations with high level players, I have personally come to the conclusion that there is a far smaller agreement on 2nd best faction on a map than on the most dominate faction. It is often a singular aspect of a singular faction that makes it particularly dominate in a certain type of mapstyle, and so removing that faction through faction veto will allow massively more diversity.

So overall, there will be an increase in diversity to some degree. Whether it's moving the percentage from 18% to 25% because everyone universally agrees on the 2nd dominant faction everywhere (they don't anecdotally), or moving it from 18% to like 70%, who knows. The point is that it should address the issue to some degree with minimal additional work for everyone, improving the experience for everyone in general.

Who Will Use This?
Well I've been trying to get someone motivated enough to try it out but no one is biting. I made this post in order to properly explain the issue that this solution is meant to address in the hopes that someone that hosts a tournament becomes interested in testing it out prior to LotS. But if they don't, I plan on using it in this year's LotS regardless. So I guess I will be using it as a minimum.

Comment below if you have any thoughts.

[keyser]

I already talked about it to ftx in private but i want to share that with other people.
I don't agree with the veto system in a tournament, and i would like very much that this get tested, so we can choose the best way to host the next lots.

There are several issues with vetoing :

- 1st : the most obvious is that the best faction on the map will be always / most of the time vetoed. Which means you won't see any aeon on theta for example. So you not only remove the aeon vs aeon match up, but the 4 match up including aeon. But i guess i can tolerate that, in the light of lowering the amount of mirrors.

- 2nd : You don't veto based on the map, but people will veto for other reason. The opponent has a main faction, and never play the others ? well just ban this faction and already take an advantage over him. That could lead to interesting 1v1 being won at the lobby stage, lowering the quality of the tourney overall.

- 3rd : you can also nerf depending of play style. You don't like opponent doing hover ? You can already ban 1 of the 2 hover faction. You are playing badland (afaik there is no favorite faction here), the map can be played in a turtle way, or you can see timing push. You are strong at eco, and don't want to see a big ACU timing push on you ? ban seraphim or UEF. You are good against aeon/uef/sera but struggle against mantis, just ban cybran and take an advantage. You want to go only air on roanoke ? veto sera or aeon, and remove one faction having floating flak. etc


What I propose, is to play in a similar way than the ladder, by selecting your faction without knowing the faction of your opponent. You can't biass the game by doing this way. Sure you will still see aeon vs aeon on theta, but it will lower the issue of players just copying their opponent just because they don't want to be surprised.

I think veto is detrimental for the tourney sake. Also if you look the game where you can veto opponent picks, those are MOBA (dota, lol) that have more than an hundred picks available, meanwhile on game like starcraft with limited amount of factions, you can't prevent your opponent to chose the faction he wants. The comparison might not be the best, but i think out case is closer to starcraft one than MOBA one, even if the faction in starcraft are way more diversified than in supcom, and skill is way more difficult to transfer from a faction to another.

[Morax]

I got an idea: don't choose maps that have an obvious faction advantage. There are legit 200+ maps to choose from now....

[FtXCommando]

Keyser's solution vs my solution devolves down to an argument of weights. I do not think that the security blanket problem is large enough to create any significant movement in the quantity of mirror matchups. There are plenty of matchups in LotS between two dudes that are either ambivalent or dislike mirror matchups, yet these matches were just about always mirrored. There is clearly an underlying root to the issue, and trimming the branches isn't enough to offset my problem here.

1) An acceptable loss to me for reasons mentioned in the OP. I'm willing to sacrifice optimization for diversification in this case. I even believe it leads to rewarding the "better" innovative FAF player.

2+3) These are not negatives but positives to me. Knowing yourself and knowing your opponent allow for interaction between players even before the game. It also creates an incentive for people "at the top" to continue improving. If you're top 10 and only play Cybran, well, you better work on that shit. It also introduces tradeoffs and I love tradeoffs. Do you veto the faction you know a player is strong on or do you veto the faction you know will be strong here. It's a question that depends on the player, the map, and the tourney situation. All of this, to me, raises the skill cap of the tourney and rewards smart tourney play as well as mechanic skill.

I also disagree on the comparison between sc2. FAF faction balance is a lot more like aoe2 where every faction is "pretty" similar aside from a couple unit differences that can be highly useful or even OP in certain situations. What does aoe2 do? It allows for faction vetos. But, of course it is a flawed example as aoe2 has like 3218947293874 factions.

I got an idea: don't choose maps that have an obvious faction advantage. There are legit 200+ maps to choose from now....

These would all (or 95%) be bad maps by this definition:

8 - Badlands_v4
Syrtis Major
Twin Rivers
Roanoke Abyss
Seton’s Clutch
Esgaroth’s Ruins
Abhor
hollow
Open Palms
Stella Maris 1v1
White Fire v2 (ladder)
The Bermuda Locket
desert arena
Red Rocks
Vya-3 Protectorate
Emerald Crater
Cobalt Valley
Theta Passage - FAF Version
Williamson’s Bridge
Arcane
The Cold Place
Daroza’s Sanctuary
Forbidden Pass v4
Loki
TAG_Craftious Maximus
Chiron
Crossfire Canal
The Ditch
Point of Reach v4

[Turinturambar]

actually, what about random? would it be the 25% bet to circumvent the veto? ))

[Blodir]

I agree with both keyser and morax.

Ftx what's up with your map list... those are pretty well balanced maps...
Just going down the list in order:
Badlands: weak aeon map, other factions even
Syrtis: weak aeon map, other factions even
Twin Rivers: pretty much even
Roanoke Abyss: strong cybran map imo but one could argue its strong for sera as well
Seton: honestly no idea it's such a total mess that nobody plays correctly (and has no meta) that faction differences play 0% role
Esgaroth: some would argue aeon favored, imo u can get hoplite/mongoose out early enough with reclime and whatnot that its balanced or even cyb/uef favored. Sera is useless on this map.
Abhor: even
hollow: aeon disadvantage
open palms: slight aeon disadvantage and cybran advantage
stella: faction diffs dont play a huge role here
white fire: sera and cyb advantage
...

Most of the time there isn't a faction that has a clear advantage over all the others. Also if someone wants to argue with my assessment they are proving the point x)

[FtXCommando]

actually, what about random? would it be the 25% bet to circumvent the veto? ))

If you random and get the veto'd faction, you re.

I agree with both keyser and morax.

Ftx what's up with your map list... those are pretty well balanced maps...

Your qualitative analysis does not conform with the quantitative reality of tournaments. Most of the maps on your list that you consider "even" still resulted in a Cybran or Aeon or Phim mirror match in just about every game. If you think it's theoretically even and the people in LotS are just too garbage to get away from the only faction they can play well, then my solution still moves people towards that expected theoretical balance.

[Lenkin]

nerf Mantis

[Se7ven]

I have no idea why mirror matchups should be an issue . It’s way nicer to watch and both teams have the same chances I love mirror matchups and find them way more interesting to watch . It’s about perfection and creativity! If you start with rules and vetos on factions you just limit the competitiveness of the tournament .

[MrTBSC]

"veto the opponents faction" i´m sorry but .. THE f***?? .. this is like the DUMBEST thing to do in any RTStournament EVER and i dissagree with this out of principle (and so should everyone else) .. if a player wants to play the faction he favors be it for a specific map or in general he friggin well be allowed to do so ... this is nothing but a copout method realy, instead of going for the more difficult approach of making factions equaly played to one another ..
i mean you seriously expect every topplayer to play every faction equaly well while denying them the one they actualy want to play ...

i mean how exactly is this any different forcing players to potentionaly play all factions to be then overall played the same from ballancing the factions with more gray areas? .... you say it will bring the most innovative players out .. i say you kill innovation on players who know how best to play a particular faction in a way only few to no one else does ...

will you mitigate mirrormatches? probably ... will it cause many factions to be played about the same? likely ..
will you mitigate mirrormatches to the level you want? i very much doubt this honestly ...


but hey the f*** do i know, right? i am merely watching from the sidelines ...