Stalemate

Well I think this problem is two-fold.

1) What are the most accurate conditions for determining if the game is a stalemate?
2) What should be done in the case of a stalemate?

So what are some conditions we came up with:

A) Nothing has been built for some period of time. Bad condition because what if neither player is building anything, but you still have one viking that is slowly hunting down all the enemy floating buildings. That could take a very long time, especially if the enemy further annoys you by repeatedly lifting and landing their buildings, forcing you to waste time switching viking modes to keep up. A condition like this would declare the game a stalemate, even if the guy with the viking would actually eventually win.

B) Nothing has been attacked for some period of time. Bad condition because it wouldn't actually prevent some stalemates. Take this game for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDGyND8gIjM& It ends in a stalemate because the last reaper cannot attack the floating barracks. However, if this condition were in the game, the reaper would still be able to indefinitely prolong the game by hitting the unpowered gateway once, waiting for it to recharge shields, then attacking again, etc so that he can "attack" forever and the stalemate condition would never be fulfilled.

C) No mouse clicks for some period of time. Bad condition for the same reason as above, one player can endlessly click to prolong the game, hoping that the other guy will ragequit.

D) Nothing has been destroyed for some period of time. I think this one actually works, in the viking example, if you make the period of time long enough (10 minutes?) then clearly the guy with the viking should be able to find and destroy one building every 10 minutes. In the example with the reaper, he would be forced to destroy the gateways to avoid the stalemate, and eventually he would run out of buildings to destroy and the stalemate is unavoidable. You could also combine this with another condition like no minerals have been gained by any player for 10 minutes, to make sure that late games with 200/200 armies that are just avoiding each other for some reason don't auto-stalemate. HOWEVER this still is a rather bad solution, since even in genuine stalemates it could still take a VERY long time for one player to run out of attackable buildings, if only one is destroyed every 10 minutes.

After looking at these options in depth, it's becoming pretty clear to me why Blizzard didn't bother putting in an anti-stalemate of some sort, as it would just cause more trouble than it's worth. My recommendation: if this happens to you, do what the people in that video did, and do a best out of 3 rock-paper-scissors to determine the winner

 

I like your option D but change it to nothing has been killed or destroyed. And you hace a winner there.

 

that's an extremely rare example that's a minority. it requires a terran allied with a protoss or zerg to be on the "losing" side. given how rare stalemates are to begin with, this particular set of conditions would be exceptionally rare.

"nothing destroyed" can very easily happen, even for 10 minutes, in regular games or "no rush" games. 15 would probably have to be the minimum to be realistic. the problem with this is, if you have to wait 15 minutes before a stalemate is offered, someone will probably get bored and quit by then. it's not fun. forcing people to wait long enough so that they're bored before offering a stalemate is almost like Blizzard is forcing players to ragequit. on top of that, terrans can also exploit this with MULEs... land your CC, create a mule, lift off, let it die. repeat.

i picked "nothing damaged" instead of "nothing destroyed" because it would allow for quick skirmishes that don't result in unit losses to reset the "stalemate timer" without making the timer excessively long and boring. pairing with "nothing built" more or less prevents stalemates from being detected until lategame. 3-5 minutes should be more than enough time to find a unit or structure and at least shoot once.

sure, it's exploitable, but just about any system is. to keep the game fun, though, it needs to be quick. that's why buildings are revealed only a minute after the last CC is destroyed. nobody should be forced to sit out the length of an entire (normal) match just so they can receive a stalemate instead of a loss.

 

Exploiting with mules.
If you have an orbital command, you are in no kind of stalemate, as you can mine with the mule, unless you add some other rare reasons, such as fully mined, creep over everything and so on.
I think, if nothing has been destroyed, built and mined in 2 minutes, it should be offered to the players to make a stalemate. If one or both decline, it will be a forced stalemate after 10 minutes.

 

Well to me I think these are the facts we cal all agree on:

1. Haviing to wait for someone to surrender for hours on end in a stalemate is rather boring. And annoying at timees.
2. The current system Blizzard has for stalemates does not work. As it forces the above waiting to happen. No one in there right mind would surrender in a stalemate. Cause that's not a loss. It's a draw.
3. Something needs to be done about this stalemate that if fair to all involved and not exploitable.

But I think Blizzard are playing it like a sports ref would. In sports match as you all know the right decision is needed. But also a quick decision is needed. No point argueing for 20 minutes if the ball was out or not. Then the momentum of the game is ruined. And the fans just get really annoyed.

And I think SC2 is having the same philosophy attached to it. Try to get the decisions right. But if there is no real right decision as in stalemates, then the best decision is one that keeps the games running at a fast pace. Sure draws in all sports matches and SC2 get messy. But a quick solution tne move on to the next match is the best option in my opinion.

Sure the quick option might not be to every one's liking. But a long drawn out process in game would be hated by everyone even if it was right. "Hurry the **** up I just wanna play SC 2 and not have to put up with this bull**** " people would say. So quick and on to the next game is the best.

Mind you stalemates are pretty rare even SC2. So for the odd time you get a stalemate, it's not an issue. And if you are in a lot of stalemates, it just means get better at SC2 so you can actually win.

 

My point is, why should Blizzard take the time and effort to code up this stalemate checker, if it doesn't even completely fix the problem. It would make more sense just to leave it as is, given that it is already an extremely rare occurrence.

 

Define extremely rare. I'm sure it happens / will happen a few times each day.

 

Games able to end in a stalemate sounds like a good idea, and it can go in your profile's score.

Imagine how it could effect the esports community when famous players end hardcore matches with stalemates.

 

if you can't solve 100% of the problems, why solve any at all?

that's a pretty bad philosophy to live by.

 

Be realistic. Implementing some algorithm to determine whether the game is a stalemate or not would NOT be a walk in the park for Blizzard to do. So if said algorithm doesn't even fix some cases where it would try to be used, then why even bother?

At this point, the best Blizzard can do is to just add a "offer draw" option to players from the menu, in the case of a stalemate.

 

it wouldn't fix it... in one of the situations. let's go with my suggestion:

- no new units or buildings constructed for 3 minutes.
- no units or buildings damaged for 3 minutes.
- > stalemate warning
- conditions continue for 2 minutes. end game in stalemate.

seriously? i can probably code this with a couple triggers in the SC editor.

but no, let's try to figure out where it can fail.

so, it requires a person to
1. be able to construct units, but not win the game.
- if he can afford a single worker or base attacking unit, he can probably win the game if the other player can't. if he's zerg or protoss and can't get air-attackers, he can't kill flying terran buildings... and i'd call that a stalemate.

2. be able to damage an enemy unit/building, but not win the game.
- if he has the unit and is capable of damaging an enemy unit or building, but can't win the game. terran flying buildings are, once again, the problem. stalemate will be declared once he finishes killing all the non-flying buildings.

3. he is perfectly capable of 1&2, but doesn't want to stalemate (he wants the other player to ragequit)
- he needs to be able to hit a building or unit every 4 minutes or so, without killing it, but still unable to kill the other buildings to win the game. the opponent must be terran... and terran buildings don't regenerate. you'll be forced into stalemate eventually when the buildings burn down.
- so it's impossible for this to happen in 1v1. that's taken care of.

- 2v2 and up: this would only appear in games with a TP or TZ on the losing side (no units). out of the possibilities, TT, TP, PT, PP, TZ, ZT, ZZ, ZP, PZ... well, 4/9 of all permuations. the terran has to lift off his buildings, while the opponents attack the protoss or zerg building every few minutes just to reset the trigger. given how rare stalemates are on 1v1, they should be even rarer on larger games due to having resource sharing- every single player would have to be under 50/x (x being the # of players) to be unable to build new units.

So yeah, 5 minutes (max) worth of building default triggers into maps, vs. retooling the game menu- i think my solution is easier to implement. Secondly, the "offer draw" option still doesn't solve the problem that YOU presented: the player wants the other player to lose, not get a stalemate, and he will not accept the offer. on top of that, it can be abused in 1v1. that's even worse.

 

Yeah okay I was being dumb. Of course you are right, that stalemate checker wouldn't be that hard to code and it would solve almost every stalemate, and can only fail under an extremely rare circumstance and with one player actively trying to avoid the stalemate.

My incorrect thought process was that currently, players just stay in the game forever trying to make the other person leave, so I thought if they had the choice to undermine a stalemate checker to do the same thing they would do it. But I forgot that currently, players stay in the game because the alternative is to leave and get a LOSS, while with a stalemate checker, the alternative is waiting 5 minutes for a DRAW. Clearly, the people trying to avoid a stalemate would be a minority, in an already extremely rare case. I agree now that your solution is just so close to permanently fixing the problem, that it would be worth implementing.

 

Change that to:

- no new units or buildings constructed for 10 minutes.
- no units or buildings damaged for 10 minutes.
- > stalemate warning
- conditions continue for 10 (more) minutes. end game in stalemate.

my little edit + everything you said in your post would quite fix the issue I think. You should email Blizzard about it. It's a good idea.

 

i was thinking that 10 minutes each, 20 minutes total would be a pretty long time to wait. 3 minutes might be too short... who knows what the sweet spot is. in any case, it should be as short as possible, but without accidentally triggering.

or you could add one more condition, as an extra safety:
- no resources have been mined for 2 minutes (either player). (CC/nexus/hatch take 100 seconds to build)

throwing in that extra condition could probably let you lower all the conditions down to 2 minutes each, and the stalemate warning to 1 minute (3 minute wait total).

i can't think of a possible situation where a player is not mining, not building a new CC (or any other unit), and also not attacking the enemy other than an endgame stalemate. throughout the entire game, at least one player should be mining, so no chance of accidentally triggering a stalemate. even with a maxed out army, you're probably still mining. if both players' CCs are destroyed and neither can mine, there is probably going to be another one built ASAP, within a minute at most. if neither can afford a new one, they should be attacking the enemy with everything they have left.

again, the key is to keep the wait as short as possible without accidentally ending the game as a stalemate.

 

^ Just what I was thinking.

The only possible problem is that, what if one player has 0 minerals and no SCVs but several floating CCs, the other player has 0 minerals and no probes but still has a few buildings and 2 carriers. If the terran player hides his CCs well enough, it's possible that the protoss player won't find them in time to avoid the stalemate, even if they aren't flying! We definitely do NOT want to screw players out of a win because of this cheesy tactic.

Maybe to avoid this, the stalemate warning should also reveal every enemy building, even if some of those are CC's. And the warning state should last 3 minutes just to make sure you can get your battlecruisers across the map in time to shoot the last remaining building.

So combining everything together:

- If no resources have been mined for 2 minutes, and
- Nothing has been completely built for 2 minutes, and
- No units or structures have taken damage for 2 minutes,
Then a stalemate warning appears, and every building is revealed to every player. If these conditions continue for 3 more minutes OR all players agree to a draw via menu, then the game ends in a draw.

 

yeah, the largest maps might be a problem with the timing. how big do SC2 maps get, anyways?

 

The 4v4 map is the biggest so far I think. But on that map, even a battlecruiser is able to get from one corner of the map to the other in 3 minutes.

 

So do do a loop of the map and get to all 4 corners of the map is at least 9 minutes probably (using the above 3 min tiem frame) more with your SC2 BC. To look for that last enemy building. So a 10 minute timer on this thing might just work.

 

^ No no. See in post #35, I explained that once the stalemate warning appears, all buildings should be revealed, just to make sure you can find it in time. And in that case, 3 minutes is plenty, no need to draw it out even more.

 

No they should not be revealed with the stalemate warning. I disagree with you 100% on that point. How the buildings are revealed now when all the CC/H/N are destroyed is alright though.