Monday, August 13, 2012

Starcraft Quickmatch Trolling

So this idea originates from the following funny image on Reddit:



So for some reason, the system matched a bronze player (the lowest rank, the last 20% players on the ladder) against a high master player (the highest rank except grand master, the top 2% players). Of course, the master won the match. But the funny part is, the bronze player's strategy confused the hell out the master player, since he has never seen such stupid builds in his rank.

If we dig deeper into this, we may find an interesting phenomena, that people have much difficulty judging the others who are either much better or much worse than they are. The reason is simple, people know too little about the ones who are far away from them in a scoring coordination. In order to make a comparison, we usually need the assistance of a reference. Most cases, ourselves can serve as a convenient reference. This explains why it may be easier for us to judge the players who are on a par with us, but much harder for the super good/bad players.

Another interesting phenomena we can derive from this, is that we find it easier to figure out who is a better player among a pair of similar skill level. To illustrate my point by an example, suppose a gold player (an average player on the ladder) is asked to watch a game for 5 minutes, and place a bet on the side he thinks would win. Then he may find it much easier to make the decision on a game between a master and a diamond player (one rank lower than the master) than one between a master and a bronze player. The diamond player and the master can serve as good references for each other, though they may be both much better than the observer. In the other case, all we have is just three far away data points (a bronze, a gold and a master). Thus it is harder to make the comparison.

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