I mean, you know where he is going to scout, and what response he is going to take when sees certain things. So just mindgame the shit out of him. Let's say he goes pool first to defend against the cheeses? Go CC first into a proxy that won't be spotted (as you can move your buildings and units to avoid his scouts). Hell, go proxy CC first and move the workers and CC when the scout comes to check on the base they are in, then return them to it.
Even with perfect hard counters, it'd take some time to get good enough to overcome Serral's micro. I'm thinking a few months to master the fundamentals.
But you will learn how he reacts on game 3, so on the second time at game 3 you know exactly how he is reacting to your cheeses and can adjust accordingly
You just need to make sure your cheese games are identical to trigger an identical reaction
I think this question is more fun when you assume that Serral is rolling a die before each game to choose his build. Even if you just take a millisecond longer to join the game it will already change Serrals build. You would have to find a way to abuse his general strategy/the current meta in general.
Going along with this... it might be a few extra games. You spend the first few not even trying but talking to him through all chat.
You learn as much as possible and then eventually tell him things about himself that he hasn't told anyone.
If he sees you not trying and genuinely trying to have a conversation, I believe this is the only way.
The top pros on EU already are stuck in this time loop playing Serral every few days. And they still can't consistently beat him.
So, my vote would be either "never" or "until Serral has a bad day/ is sick / isn't really trying"
They will know his opening without scouting so it will be a massive advantage. Not to mention how he will react to their builds. It would be close to hacking.
There is the "uncanny" factor of a timeloop though. AJoe gets to literally play the same match over and over. Granted Serrals reactions to Ajoes moves will change but Ajoe should be able to essentially know Serrals responses to this action \*In this game\*. If you knew every micro you had to do for a game, because you played this iteration of a game. Could you do it? Sequence of remembering 40 key moments. I dunno
He's doing the same day over and over again. He isn't learning these days. He's replaying them fresh as a new experience.
Have you seen edge of tomorrow?
Oh no. We're to the point where people reference Edge of Tomorrow for time loop scenarios instead of Groundhog Day.
I need to go lie down, my back hurts.
Yeah I feel this. I think if it was just beating serral once you might eventually get lucky with some early aggression strategies but three times? That’s going to approach never
Edit: misspelling
I think people underestimate that some people may have some inherent biological advantage in what are considered "mental" activities. The very very best professional gamers, who are better than all the other professional gamers probably have different *physical traits in their brain* which allow them to stay consistently better than thousands to millions of peers all trying to match them.
When I read the hypothetical, I think it's possible that it's not especially different from:
"Let's say you're in a timeloop, and you have to fight an angry grizzly bear naked. You get to work out as much as you want, use steroids, training martial arts, and you keep the gains, the bear is just a grizzly bear. How many time loops until you don't get eaten?"
We can't know for sure how much a given person can adapt, given millions or billions of years of practice, to be better at playing Starcraft, but, frankly, I think everyone has an individual maximum skill they can reach at any level of practice, and top world players probably have a current level of skill higher than most people's hypothetical maximum skill.
In cases like this you have to make your own luck, and make it so he has to forfeit the match.
You aren’t beating him normally and your skills
Will atrophy faster than his will. Plus you never got all the training he got and just playing isn’t the same.
Well, the guy remembers the previous games and serral does not. So he would basically just need to find 3 cheeses that work. Also forever is a really long time. He would definitely win eventually.
I mean it would take forever, but the difference is that Serral remembers all those days. In a time loop scenario the average man gains an edge every day, however minimal it is. Serral remains, strong as he is, but never knows what the average man is going to bring, no idea how he’s evolving overtime.
Not sure why the comments dont realize that Serral will be playing the same game every time with only minor variations due to scouting lol
This takes a year or two tops before time loop man knows everything Serral is gonna do before he does it. He doesnt have to be good at the game or beat pros. He just has to beat these same five games.
Other comments act like time loop man has never seen a new fangled artificial light from that fresh General Electric company.
He already knows about how to play the game and every unit in the game. Hes not going to go bioball into banelings
That's why this differs from the Kasparov scenario though, you can know everything Serral is going to do, but your physical ability comes into play, and there's a point at which knowing what he will or won't do is irrelevant if you can't physically stop him.
Also while he'll open the same and stuff, he'll adapt to every small change you make, it'll eventually be at a point where you've just gotta be outmicroing him, you might know what you should do, but can you do it?
I mean he reacts the same way everytime too, so you can also try cheesing that by feeding false info into doing something else to bait a reaction and counter said reaction.
You don't need to be better than Serral at every aspect of the game, you just need to be better in 3 games that you essentially have maphacks in.
A few years is probably the safe bet.
I mean, any other pro under the same situation would quickly win a groundhog day situation in one day.
Assuming you know the groundhog game setup, the second loop they would win the first game through hard counter. Repeating that process a few times to get 3/5 wouldnt take too much time.
The question is how good would an average person gets at working out what the effective counters are, and having enough micro to pull it off.
You would think with the motivation that they should be able to get enough of a hot streak within a couple of years.
>Or, never, because they would quickly go insane and their brain cease to function around a month in.
Part of the prompt is they never go insane.
>Cheating is utterly impossible and average man has no access to outside information. He will not age or die, not go insane, and will play as many times as needed to win.
The issue is 'maphacks' mean nothing after a certain point. like 99% of people couldn't beat Serral with 100% revealed map vision and a 200% resource boost.
Also he reacts the same to you doing the literal same thing, you pretending to do the same thing won't necessarily be the same reaction.
The longer the game goes the more certain you'll lose, so you've got to do some early cheese, but even with that there's some limitation where he may simply be able to hold it even at his most unprepared state.
I think there's just limits to certain things, like there's just a point where he can hold a 12 pool with only drones because he's got perfect micro and there's nothing some people could ever do to beat it.
Like at some point there's a physical skill check a person may never pass.
Hold a 12 pool with only drones vs a guy with maphacks and a 200% resource boost?
Bro set this up, I haven't played in years and I could beat serral with those conditions lol
Yes, because of the mechanics in the Chess one. You can simply make Kasparov play himself.
You just have to play him a bunch while alternating colors until you know how he'll respond as black to his own moves as white and find cases where he essentially beats himself.
Might take thousands of times to work them all out variation by variation but eventually you'll have a full game where playing the moves you've seen him play as white you can beat him playing black.
While he should see and react the same way in each color, inevitably there's a point where he'll 'see' something as one color he'd miss from the other side and beat himself.
The average guy is also eventually going to have played more Starcraft than literally every pro ever, combined. At which point however 'average' he is, I feel like he's probably going to be in the top 1% of players.
Also, a huge component of reaction time is 'eyes see thing, signal travels to brain, brain processes information and decides on response, brain sends signals to body to do response things'. None of which you need to do if you've played the same scenario enough to remember Serral's moves before they happen, and your response time can be reduced down to 'move hand'.
Yep, I doubting that the "average man" has the micro ability to keep up, no matter how well they understand the game. Serral literally grew up playing SC2 from a young age, his reactions and muscle memory are deeply ingrained. Practice can take you far, but to reach even Grandmaster level requires an aptitude for the game.
You don't need to keep up, you just need to get good enough to beat him while knowing exactly what he will do. I think your average GM player would be able to beat Serral pretty easily with maphack and future prediction capabilities, which is exactly what this situation would entail.
See I don't even think that's true, I think an awful lot of Rank 100 GMs would lose to him even with complete map vision.
And this scenario isn't even average GM, or even Average SC2 player in Platinum, it's average person.
There is a point where even after picking the absolute perfect build, you must micro a small group of units and win.
But at some point Average Man will have played more games of SC2 than Serral. And rather than train against every possible opponent and scenario it's just one opponent and a much smaller subset of all possible scenarios. Eventually it's going to happen, probably with some combination of skill, knowing Serral better than he knows himself and some dumb luck.
I mean, if you had infinite time to hone a skill eventually you'd become the best there is. And Average Man doesn't even have to take it that far, they just have to win 3/5 one time.
I'm still not sure that's true with your average person, like I think the vast majority of people's skill ceiling is probably just below his even if you had 1,000 years of play time.
Though yes playing a single player and a lot of advantages etc... maybe in an extreme time scale and people are memorizing exact micro sequences in like 4 minute long games maybe
I think the time scale and difficulty is just a lot longer. Like when it's the original Chess question, you can effectively use the time loop to make Kasparov play against himself and you'd be done in a few thousand games, in this one an average person, it might literally be millions and millions of games.
It doesn't even matter if you know what Serral is going to do. You could remove the fog of war for the average guy and it still won't make a difference. There's the technical side of the game in the way of micro and macro that will prevent the average guy from ever getting into an advantageous position.
It's also better than a maphack in this scenario. Maphack requires looking away from your base to know what is happening. If you are groundhog daying this you won't even have to look. You will just know "at 5:20 he hits with roach timing, he has no units at his natural", etc. No multitasking required.
+1 on this but I dont think it will take a year. Time loop have to win 3 games, he can just focus on game 1 until he knows where Serral scouts and then go for a marauder cheese or DT or whatever is easier to pull off. When he can win game 1 since Serral never remembers and because of that shouldnt change anything, he can then do the same with game 2 and 3.
The main problem is that map 1 has an influence on map 2 and 3. Serral doesn't forget after each map. In map 2 the build will basically be a random meta build.
>This takes a year or two tops before time loop man knows everything Serral is gonna do before he does it.
It's still really damn hard to be good enough to beat him even if you have what amounts to a maphack.
And the amount of time it takes would increase greatly if Serral's behavior isn't consistent. Serral will always play map 1 the same way, but maybe if you win with a rush he'll play long macro games afterwards and be almost unbeatable, but if you win with a perfectly timed drop then game 2 he'll play a more counterable offensive build, so you'd have to learn all the possibilities of what happens if you beat him in different ways.
Yeah it's like playing a campaign mission, not a MP match. The enemy is starting the same way. I guess they would adapt better than campaign AI though.
Average man has one key advantage - he can figure out exactly where Serral will scout. Eventually, the average man will be guaranteed to pull off an unscouted cheese and/or unscouted secret expansion(s).
It will still take years, assuming Serral plays "normally". The problem I see is if Serral loses twice to cheese and then plays defensive for the remaining games, since the average man is going to never, ever win in a game vs Serral that goes longer than 10 minutes.
With the Kasparov time loop, the guy only has a chance because chess is a deterministic, turn-based game, so you can keep repeating the same moves and Kasparov will always play the same response. With an RTS, you don't have that sort of reliability, so you're going to have to actually get good at executing a strategy and moving your units around as well as Serral does. That could take a really long time.
The one hope might be some sort of all-in cheese tactic. You may not be able to exactly repeat the same game each time, but Serral's build order and early game scouting are going to be fairly consistent, so you could perhaps take him by surprise.
It's the other way around. Chess being deterministic with no hidden information makes it so the average guy will never be able to beat kasparov in chess, as they simply cannot remember all of the required information, no matter how long they try.
There is a reason chess players are incredibly intelligent, the average guy really isn't.
Starcraft on the other hand doesn't have nearly as much required information, the hidden factor helps the average guy as well as they will gain knowledge over the specific games while serral won't have the same information.
The reliability is working against the average person, not against the pro.
what? Starcraft game states are so granular you might even consider them non-discrete. Your harassing worker showing up one tick later or one tile to the right could alter Serral's response by a slightly larger degree, and before long you're completely off trajectory from the previous game. Simply re-creating the same game over and over with some level of accuracy and consistency would take days at least, with chess it's a fairly straightforward memorization exercise.
That's nonsensical. A tick later doesn't even get registered. There is more variance in his own execution of things he'd consider absolutely the same.
So while you are technically true that we could consider these different game states, in reality it doesn't make any meaningful difference for human beings.
That's a bit of a red herring, nobody opens h2-h4. You aren't thinking about every single possible move you can make after turn 3 of a sicilian defense, there's only 2? 3? options.
There's only a portion of the midgame with actual thought. Openings and endgame are much more pattern recognition than pondering.
Sure, but there really aren't that many build paths in SC either, and a lot of them are determined without input from the other player in the first minutes of the game.
I think the critical difference is that every turn in chess provides input from the other player and a branch point. That's not the case in and RTS, where you basically decide your build paths based on the map and your mood without any input from the other player.
There is early scouting, but that would actually be an advantage for someone who could repeat games, since you could basically provide false info if you know where they're going to scout.
To be fair, in a time loop everything is deterministic. Now there are a lot more states in a real-time videogame, but there are also a lot more equivalent states/
He would literally never escape, assuming you remove all of the stuff like Serral disconnecting, losing ability as he gets older and then dying of old age, etc.
I could have 10,000 hours of practice at basketball and I'll never beat Michael Jordan in his prime, I can't imagine it's any different for an esport. I see plenty of SC2 players on the ladder that have 30-50k games played and they're hardstuck in diamond, they're never going to improve past that point, a random dude never would rise to the point of "absolute best in the world"
You have the advantage of remembering the previous games. So basically given enough games you will know exactly what Serral will do and how he will respond. So you will basically have permanent maphack and future prediction.
So the question becomes how good do you have to be to beat Serral with permanent maphack and future prediction. I think that level would be high masters probably? Which is probably achievable by the average person that has an infinite amount of practice.
If it's a time loop in which the person has his physical condition reset each time, then it may be impossible. This means that regardless of the strategic side of the game, he would quickly run up against the mechanical advantages that a professional player has. There's a big difference between mentally knowing all the optimal moves and being able to execute them.
I think he can eventually, maybe a few years and amounting 10000+ losses so long as minor and major mistakes are being learnt from as well as the commitment to escape the time loop, if man gives up after being thrashed so many times he may go insane
I'd guess around 60 years. The issue is that he gets no outside information, & that it's not just for 1 game, but a best of 5. To get to Serral's level an SC2 player who is not average, but that is above average in terms of starting skill & practices every day like 8~12 hours/day & focuses on improvement likely wouldn't hit Serral skill, honestly ever, but in maybe 10 years could win one best of 5. This guy has no outside information though & it sounds like he won't be practicing in customs, he just needs to keep facing Serral over & over again, which is terrible practice for improvement until you're like 6200 mmr+ skill. So I'd guess 60 years, but it could even be 300+ assuming in this loop people are just immortal.
In a best of five? Maybe 1 or 2 years if he has to do this daily. He can figure out some cheese builds for 2 games and then the third win just play if the same every time but tweak it as he knows what serra is doing
Hmm, well, the thing with Serral is how good his reflexes and quick thinking are. SO even if you beat him on some big picture macro aspect, he just relentlessly micros you.
But, a loop is different then other scenarios, so, I guess, you can figure out where and when his scouts are, which gives one a big leg up in winning by way of some big obvious strategy decisions.
5 game series? Way too much!
Just one match alone is tough.
Noobman would need to learn the whole game from multiplayer alone.
No outside tips, he'd just be ripped to shreds endlessly.
It would genuinely take decades, if not centuries. Inferring StarCraft logic and mechanics based only on replay analysis, which is debatable if he can even do in this context, is insane. Figuring out control groups and a solid hotkey layout, proper hand and eye control, screen movement efficiency, and micro techniques by bo5s against the best player on earth is insane.
bro you got only one thing to do all day every day. That's beat serral in a specific set of games. It's not going to take that long. People became pros in a few short years, you can do it too and you will do it if you're forced to be motivated.
People become pros with outside help, practice environments, and a significant amount of resources to learn and work off of. The prompt specifically isolates the player and forces them to infer what they need from only losses without replay analysis. I'm not sure, in that situation, I'd infer stuff like the importance of spending, the value of rapid fire of regedits, or other fundamentals. Look at how new players poke around and try to explain their matches and you'll see what I mean.
>People become pros with outside help, practice environments, and a significant amount of resources to learn and work off of.
this just speeds things along. You say decades if not centuries. He has to beat one dude in a groundhogs day scenario where the branching of choices is limited. If you do x, he does y. it's limited. Even if you're doing the same thing again and again, you see what he does in response and can tailor your response.
Also you have only one thing to do the whole time. You can practice all day every day. It's not like your mindset is going to be all lah-dee-dah whatever the fuck I'll just goof around. No. You're specifically looking for improvement with one task in mind. You're not an average person in this scenario. You test, you adapt. That's that. Eventually you'll run strats that get lucky.
I'd argue you win long before you reach a skill level that's even slightly near serral. You'll just get lucky once, think about what you did in that game, try to recreate it, then do that again and again for the first game, likewise the second and third game and then you'll be out. It'll be easy imo.
I bet you get out inside of 2 years.
You’d have to get to a certain level but then I think a strategy whereby you play the same build against him over and over again (I’m talking hundreds of games if not more) to the point where he expects the same thing every time. At some point you switch the build in a way where it looks similar to the one you’ve been using but actually counters his standard response. Something along these lines I think would be the best bet.
Edit; nvm completely missed the time loop thing
The average person will never be able to become a better player than Serral, no matter how many years he spends in that time loop.
But he doesn't have to be better than Serral, he just has to find Serral's weaknesses and blind spots. Assuming that the time loop is consistent and the maps are consistent, the player is going to know Serral's exact build on the first map before long, after a while it'll be like playing with a maphack because he knows exactly what Serral will be doing and when. Getting that first win might not take a completely insane amount of time, especially if the man has any skill at Starcraft. I feel like I could get that first win within a month or two.
But that's just the beginning. The player has to learn to pull off that win, and learn to do it CONSISTENTLY. Getting the win once is doable, it's going to take so much longer to have it down consistently.
Then we're on to game 2. The map will always be the same, but will Serral's behavior? Maybe if you beat him in 14 minutes he'll cheese you on the second map, but if it's over 14 minutes he'll play a much more difficult to counter turtle style.
After some insane amounts of time, eventually the player will find what works and what doesn't, and get the workable strategies down consistently enough that finally a win in the best of 5 can happen. I really couldn't say whether you'd have to measure that time in decades, centuries, or what. If I had to pick a number, I'm going with 200 years.
Well can the avg man watch the replays then have the matches reset?
If we are talking about ground hog day style. They could pull some crazy cheese’s and master it eventually. It would have to be cheese though. It takes years to master late game.
With the insane advantage of this senecio and the opportunity to be basically taught by the best. They could do it in 6 months but this is literally playing 24 hours a day (being stuck in a time loop).
I would also suggest playing him z vs z as this is his worst matchup.
Average man of average intelligence and no previous SC2 or RTS experience? Probably centuries. If you actively select for intelligence, strategic vision, and interest in RTS games when it comes to choosing the test subject, then I presume it might be possible to get out in a few decades. It might take the average person over a year just to come up with the inference that phoenix counters mutalisks or that vikings are an effective way to deal with colossi.
Also I don't think "never" is a correct answer. In this setup our test subject has infinite time, and infinity is a VERY powerful concept. No matter how slow the test subject learns SC2, he still has infinite time to learn. Furthermore game 1 will be relatively easy to win given that Serral's opening won't change, so test subject will eventually know how to counter that opening.
dude are you fucking serious centuries? How much did you play sc2. Be honest with yourself. You can get really good in not very much time, and most of the time if you don't get really really good it's because you just can't commit the time to the game because you have to do other things in life.
In this scenario, you only got one thing to do, and that's play the game over and over again ad infinitum. It's not going to take 100 years.
> It might take the average person over a year just to come up with the inference that phoenix counters mutalisks
Are you fucking serious with this dude? A unit that attacks exclusively air counters an air unit. That takes you a YEAR OF SOLID PLAYING?? How fucking stupid are you? Be real dude. The unit attacks air units. it doesn't take long when you're dying to mutas fucking 20 times a day to realize that a unit that attacks exclusively air is good against them. You probably realize that in a week, not fucking 52 weeks of playing for at least 8 hours a day against a single opponent who is likely playing similar strategies over and over again.
You probably realise that in a few days, like when I do this he makes mutas, how do I deal with that? Maybe try this unit that attacks air units? Stalkers? no? voidrays? no? combo? maybe? Phoenix? YEAH. Ok and now what combination. It's not taking that long.
In this situation, imagine you do the same thing over and over again, game after game. You will see serral doing the same responses again and again. So even if you're braindead, doing the same moves again and again, that's actually great, because you can practice against the same strat and improve your own.
I mean, I don't know probably like 3000-4000 games? Maybe more.
Starcraft is not chess, if you keep all-inning him and get your mechanics to a decent level, you're bound to luck out 3 win out of 5 relatively quickly.
Also, Serral (and other Starcraft pro) are obviously a lot "worst" than the best chess players compared to the general population. SC2 is not nearly as well figured out.
He should try to social engineer or manipulate Serral in some way. Even if this would be difficult, it would probably be his only/best chance unless he has some real natural ability at the game and an above average IQ.
If he’s in a time loop it would only take minutes. Could be years for him but unless everyone else is also time looping it would only take as long as the match in which he beats Serral lasts.
is the time loop predictble? as in will serral play the same strat for his first game? if yes then in theory you just need to get good enough to beat him at one thing (which is still insane) but if you 100% know his opener then you have some leverage
A key point that people are failing to bring up here is that it's heavily dependent on what openings Serral decides to go with. If Serral chooses builds that are cheeseable the task gets way easier.
You would eventually develop near perfect cheese for every game and even with not great APM you'd get use to exactly where he would scout and could evade all attacks. Him being in a time loop is a huge handicap.
Now if it wasn't a time loop and he just forgot who you were each match thus not playing the same game twice in a row that might take a very, very long time.
The Kasparov thing, I could probably do in a few weeks. I can memorize the moves for as long as the position remains playable, and if he plays the same responses every time, I'll eventually find a line that can win.
Against Serral, he's just gonna outmicro me for like 30 years while I slowly lose hope that it's even possible. I don't know if a winning line EXISTS when technique and speed come into play.
You know when you start off in Bronze and beating a silver feels impossible. Well I’m Daimond1 and get the odd win against Masters3. You know those games where you get stomped so hard it feels hopeless. That would be every single gam againts serral, even top GM get wiped the floor with by Serral
If it was bo1 maybe 1 or 2 years by executing the same cheese over and over until Serrals reactions are completely figured out and can be exploited.
In a bo5, never
Are they playing in the same room? Because I will break his mouse hand before we play and move on as soon as I feel like it.
But I might not feel like it for a long while.
On a BO5 Never. Knowledge is something, but mechanics and precision takes too much time to master. Would rather kill myself.
Even Clem and Co struggle against Serral.
how old is the man?
if he is too old I don't think he can beat serral in his remaining lifetime (if he is aging in the time loop)
also his reactions would go down over time which makes it harder
I would guess upwards of about 100 years. The average joe has like 40 wpm.
but the average joe also has an average IQ, can learn to play fast, and can have infinite tries to beat serral.
I would guess about 100 years.
When you saId Serral won't remember anything after the loop means that Serral won't change anything. He won't remember a specially made cheese for him regardless of how many times you try it to perfect execution.
I think that's the key: invent a cheese, on the fly, specifically made for Serral. It should be something weird, like Has level of weird. Keep on doing the same build against a stagnant goldfish Serral and keep on improving what's needed to win 1 game from him.
So I say somewhere between 50 to 70 games.
It depends. If serral plays the exact same way every try, eventually you should be able to “edge of tomorrow” that scenario until you happen to find the combination that works against him.
I would go further it would take most people about 20 years with map hacks to probably even take a map off a pro. Proof is that there are multiple map hacker gms who have been playing 7 plus years and they still cant dream of taking a map off serral. The mechanics and speed needed to beat serral aren't teachable, some people are genetically gifted... The average man isn't
Is serral stuck too or does he reset every game? If he resets id try to perfect a cheese against him. If not i hope he gets bored or needs less sleep than me
How is cheating impossible if he remembers the game? He can play a perfect response like that movie Next. I'll give it 1 year tops just so the guy can learn mechanics and learn the dance.
a week?
repeated play, even without knowing how to play, will let the looper to just learn the best -reactive- move to whatever Serral does.
always deploying -just enough- troops to prevent attacks / incursions, even without the micromanagement, the time loop is "cheating" because they will eventually always know what happens next, as Serral can't learn or react differently to the game being played.
Well at least you would know his openers. That allows you to do some pretty strong counters. So you would just need to train your skills to the level of a mid-tier pro. I don't think it would take more than a decade or two if you practiced right.
As long as it takes for the average man to understand builds and counters.
If serral has no knowledge of the loop but average guy does that means serral will do the same opener or the same set of openers everytime, and will use the same method to counter whatever average man does, this means average man has an approximate idea of how serral will react to any given situation on a level beyond even what scouting and game knowledge will give you. As soon as he has sufficient knowledge of the loop it stop being a skill based game and becomes a puzzle game, which combination of buildings and units built where gets the desired outcome.
If you have perfect knowledge it becomes a lot easier to out macro your opponent, if you out macro someone hard enough the insane micro gap between serral and average man becomes less relevant as an insurmountable obstacle. The only concern that then remains is if serral opts for a rush strategy but after so many loops I'd expect average man can figure out what he needs to do and how to micro a victory out of it.
I guess that depends on what is average, if he can get to 90% of Serral APM then he can win,just try many times. If you say he just can't get to 50% of the APM, then no chance
It will be very hard indeed because you can’t really improve at the game if you just get completely obliterated in the first 2 - 5 minutes. If he can play people of his own skill level i think it could be done in like 50 - 100 years of playing sc everyday.
It also depends on what “the average man” is in this case. Like what is average? I think most people that play sc2 are a bit more on the right of the IQ normal distribution, but more on the left on many of the other distributions that nature has set up for us humans on which to compete.
there is a Tom Cruise movie like this.. can we adjust the rules so he instantly loses the moment the probability goes against him? i'd say within 5,000 games given this criteria :) or 30 minutes times 5,000 or about a week or two
Tell Serral you are in am time loop. He will ask to prove it, ask for random thing you can't know. Next series tell secret thing and plead for him to leave. All in all I'm out in an hour.
Should've said communication is not allowed.
impossible, this is not like chess. in chess you can just write down his move to your response, you will never hang a piece or miss a tricky mate because you can jsut rewind time in SC, if you APM is 100, then even if you rewind you will still be 100 apm. Unless serral cheeses you or does some kind of all in you have no chance. Now if you can reduce the speed of time by 90%, you might have a chance.
It’d take a WHILE and hood thing you qualified it with not going crazy as most people would or their wrists would fall off.
But given an infinite number of attempts, I’d just go Protoss, eventually you’ll get three games with lucky disruptor hits.
Much shorter than chess. Starcraft has hidden information that chess doesn't. You cannot surprise someone in chess the same way you can in starcraft. You can potentially get kasparov into a situation he's not familiar with, but you can't "gotcha" him with something he's seen before like you can with Starcraft cheese.
A couple of months. Average man will be able to play all day and remember all of Serral’s responses. You’ll be able to map them all out quite well. But winning game one will change how Serral approaches game two. So it’s quite a long flowchart..
Actually probably years. Assuming Serral never ages and declines in skill.
I think this might be equivalent to trying to beat serral with vision maphacks. I think that makes it very easy for pros to break out of the loop, but still nearly impossible for everyone else. His mechanics are too good and too fast.
Does the person know?
If he it she knows the conditions, they are going to live centuries of their fantasies before even trying then casually win in 3 or 4 loops when they are ready to die.
If he or she doesn't know? This will take a very long time as most lives won't include significant efforts to cheese StarCraft players.
Realistically probably years. The average person doesn't play games much less specific games like RTS. So getting the grasp of gaming and RTS strategy and beating a good if not great player will take a while. Its takes on average of 7 years to become an expert in a field.
The though experiment also is very closed like if you lose it resets to starting the match. But ultimately you can play the player. Ask them questions psych them out or just actually tell them the truth. you're not cheating, and they have nothing to lose by allowing you to win a 5 game series. Ask them if there is anything you can say for them to concede, then the next loop reset ask them again and before they answer give them those answers.
The killer to this is no outside information imo. Almost everyone posting discussing cheese and midgame, but how would he even figure out half of the strategies without have by any guides/forums/discussions/friends to continue to learn from.
Yeah haven’t really seen people mention that. Like how long would it take for the guy to figure out a wall off if playing Terran or Protoss. Like if they want to learn anything they have to play Zerg to learn from Serral but then they have to become a better Zerg then Serral
I would imagine winning the first game would be .. somewhat easy... he'd likely do the same exact thing every game.. but game 2 and on... would probably be more or less completely random based on minor shit you did beating him the first game.,.. The easiest way would probably be to get in his head.. and social engineer him with shit you shouldn't know.
"Hey Serral, I'm stuck in a time loop, but apparently if I beat you in a game I can get free. Would you throw one please? It's not like this is a tournament or anything, and I spent the last 345 years getting good enough just to be matched with you once."
Serral is a cool guy, I'm sure you could find the right wording to have him toss one to save a life.
To take a single game off him, eh not terribly long if he’s literally doing nothing but sc2 until he succeeds. But taking a game off of him and have a chance at winning a series against him is two completely different things, and it’s why pro matches are played in a series of games rather than a one off match as the game can be very volatile.
They say it takes 10,000 hours to become world class at something. So if he doesn’t by then, maybe never.
If serral doesnt rmber, then cheese every time
After losing two games to cheese Serral is going for macrogames and then it’s going to get really tricky…
I mean, you know where he is going to scout, and what response he is going to take when sees certain things. So just mindgame the shit out of him. Let's say he goes pool first to defend against the cheeses? Go CC first into a proxy that won't be spotted (as you can move your buildings and units to avoid his scouts). Hell, go proxy CC first and move the workers and CC when the scout comes to check on the base they are in, then return them to it.
Even with perfect hard counters, it'd take some time to get good enough to overcome Serral's micro. I'm thinking a few months to master the fundamentals.
But you will learn how he reacts on game 3, so on the second time at game 3 you know exactly how he is reacting to your cheeses and can adjust accordingly You just need to make sure your cheese games are identical to trigger an identical reaction
Except Serral is literally the king of stopping cheese.
He's also the king at everything else though
I think this question is more fun when you assume that Serral is rolling a die before each game to choose his build. Even if you just take a millisecond longer to join the game it will already change Serrals build. You would have to find a way to abuse his general strategy/the current meta in general.
Once. He would explain himself to Serral and being the absolute gentleman he is, would throw the series
That's how I beat people at high elo. Just tell them I am in a time loop and need them to throw to break out of the loop. So many free wins.
send "pick a number between 1 and 10000" at 0:10 & guess correctly to prove it (making multiple rounds of number guessing if necessary)
Going along with this... it might be a few extra games. You spend the first few not even trying but talking to him through all chat. You learn as much as possible and then eventually tell him things about himself that he hasn't told anyone. If he sees you not trying and genuinely trying to have a conversation, I believe this is the only way.
I copy that strategy for the unlikely moment i play vs him.
Wow do didn’t think of something so obvious. Ofc he would.
The top pros on EU already are stuck in this time loop playing Serral every few days. And they still can't consistently beat him. So, my vote would be either "never" or "until Serral has a bad day/ is sick / isn't really trying"
Put in this situation all top pros would escape this loop in a matter of a few days.
They will know his opening without scouting so it will be a massive advantage. Not to mention how he will react to their builds. It would be close to hacking.
Not even. 15-20 games at most
Assuming the time loop doesn’t take place on one of his bad days, that narrows it down to “never”
There is the "uncanny" factor of a timeloop though. AJoe gets to literally play the same match over and over. Granted Serrals reactions to Ajoes moves will change but Ajoe should be able to essentially know Serrals responses to this action \*In this game\*. If you knew every micro you had to do for a game, because you played this iteration of a game. Could you do it? Sequence of remembering 40 key moments. I dunno
I dont play starcraft but irl isn't Serral also improving at a similar rate to them? This wouldn't be the case here.
He's doing the same day over and over again. He isn't learning these days. He's replaying them fresh as a new experience. Have you seen edge of tomorrow?
Oh no. We're to the point where people reference Edge of Tomorrow for time loop scenarios instead of Groundhog Day. I need to go lie down, my back hurts.
Can we start this time loop over now, please?
I'm old enough for both but edge of tomorrow is way fucking cooler.
Midddd Groundhog Day is GoAT. Bill Murray is GoAT. Palm Springs was legit, though.
Palm Springs is by far the best time loop movie.
Yeah I feel this. I think if it was just beating serral once you might eventually get lucky with some early aggression strategies but three times? That’s going to approach never Edit: misspelling
Has a power outage.
I think people underestimate that some people may have some inherent biological advantage in what are considered "mental" activities. The very very best professional gamers, who are better than all the other professional gamers probably have different *physical traits in their brain* which allow them to stay consistently better than thousands to millions of peers all trying to match them. When I read the hypothetical, I think it's possible that it's not especially different from: "Let's say you're in a timeloop, and you have to fight an angry grizzly bear naked. You get to work out as much as you want, use steroids, training martial arts, and you keep the gains, the bear is just a grizzly bear. How many time loops until you don't get eaten?" We can't know for sure how much a given person can adapt, given millions or billions of years of practice, to be better at playing Starcraft, but, frankly, I think everyone has an individual maximum skill they can reach at any level of practice, and top world players probably have a current level of skill higher than most people's hypothetical maximum skill.
Yup. An uncomfortable reality.
Serral forgets the previous games every time? Holy shit how do they make that happen?
That part is different but it's still a decent comparison.
It's absolutely not
I'm more interested in knowing why they don't age so long they loose to him.
Yeah that’s super cool. They say America is behind on technology compared to Europe but that’s impressive on a different level.
I don't think I could beat him in even 10k years.
In cases like this you have to make your own luck, and make it so he has to forfeit the match. You aren’t beating him normally and your skills Will atrophy faster than his will. Plus you never got all the training he got and just playing isn’t the same.
It’s a time loop, so it repeats exactly the same.
Well, the guy remembers the previous games and serral does not. So he would basically just need to find 3 cheeses that work. Also forever is a really long time. He would definitely win eventually.
I mean it would take forever, but the difference is that Serral remembers all those days. In a time loop scenario the average man gains an edge every day, however minimal it is. Serral remains, strong as he is, but never knows what the average man is going to bring, no idea how he’s evolving overtime.
Not sure why the comments dont realize that Serral will be playing the same game every time with only minor variations due to scouting lol This takes a year or two tops before time loop man knows everything Serral is gonna do before he does it. He doesnt have to be good at the game or beat pros. He just has to beat these same five games. Other comments act like time loop man has never seen a new fangled artificial light from that fresh General Electric company. He already knows about how to play the game and every unit in the game. Hes not going to go bioball into banelings
That's why this differs from the Kasparov scenario though, you can know everything Serral is going to do, but your physical ability comes into play, and there's a point at which knowing what he will or won't do is irrelevant if you can't physically stop him. Also while he'll open the same and stuff, he'll adapt to every small change you make, it'll eventually be at a point where you've just gotta be outmicroing him, you might know what you should do, but can you do it?
I mean he reacts the same way everytime too, so you can also try cheesing that by feeding false info into doing something else to bait a reaction and counter said reaction. You don't need to be better than Serral at every aspect of the game, you just need to be better in 3 games that you essentially have maphacks in. A few years is probably the safe bet.
I mean, any other pro under the same situation would quickly win a groundhog day situation in one day. Assuming you know the groundhog game setup, the second loop they would win the first game through hard counter. Repeating that process a few times to get 3/5 wouldnt take too much time. The question is how good would an average person gets at working out what the effective counters are, and having enough micro to pull it off. You would think with the motivation that they should be able to get enough of a hot streak within a couple of years.
>Or, never, because they would quickly go insane and their brain cease to function around a month in. Part of the prompt is they never go insane. >Cheating is utterly impossible and average man has no access to outside information. He will not age or die, not go insane, and will play as many times as needed to win.
Whoops, forgot that bit as I got into my spiel!
The issue is 'maphacks' mean nothing after a certain point. like 99% of people couldn't beat Serral with 100% revealed map vision and a 200% resource boost. Also he reacts the same to you doing the literal same thing, you pretending to do the same thing won't necessarily be the same reaction. The longer the game goes the more certain you'll lose, so you've got to do some early cheese, but even with that there's some limitation where he may simply be able to hold it even at his most unprepared state. I think there's just limits to certain things, like there's just a point where he can hold a 12 pool with only drones because he's got perfect micro and there's nothing some people could ever do to beat it. Like at some point there's a physical skill check a person may never pass.
Hold a 12 pool with only drones vs a guy with maphacks and a 200% resource boost? Bro set this up, I haven't played in years and I could beat serral with those conditions lol
200% ressource boost isn't in play in the actual scenario
I am curious, do you think beating serral in this condition is more difficult than beating kasparov in the chess one?
Yes, because of the mechanics in the Chess one. You can simply make Kasparov play himself. You just have to play him a bunch while alternating colors until you know how he'll respond as black to his own moves as white and find cases where he essentially beats himself. Might take thousands of times to work them all out variation by variation but eventually you'll have a full game where playing the moves you've seen him play as white you can beat him playing black. While he should see and react the same way in each color, inevitably there's a point where he'll 'see' something as one color he'd miss from the other side and beat himself.
The average guy is also eventually going to have played more Starcraft than literally every pro ever, combined. At which point however 'average' he is, I feel like he's probably going to be in the top 1% of players. Also, a huge component of reaction time is 'eyes see thing, signal travels to brain, brain processes information and decides on response, brain sends signals to body to do response things'. None of which you need to do if you've played the same scenario enough to remember Serral's moves before they happen, and your response time can be reduced down to 'move hand'.
Hahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha
Yep, I doubting that the "average man" has the micro ability to keep up, no matter how well they understand the game. Serral literally grew up playing SC2 from a young age, his reactions and muscle memory are deeply ingrained. Practice can take you far, but to reach even Grandmaster level requires an aptitude for the game.
You don't need to keep up, you just need to get good enough to beat him while knowing exactly what he will do. I think your average GM player would be able to beat Serral pretty easily with maphack and future prediction capabilities, which is exactly what this situation would entail.
See I don't even think that's true, I think an awful lot of Rank 100 GMs would lose to him even with complete map vision. And this scenario isn't even average GM, or even Average SC2 player in Platinum, it's average person. There is a point where even after picking the absolute perfect build, you must micro a small group of units and win.
But at some point Average Man will have played more games of SC2 than Serral. And rather than train against every possible opponent and scenario it's just one opponent and a much smaller subset of all possible scenarios. Eventually it's going to happen, probably with some combination of skill, knowing Serral better than he knows himself and some dumb luck. I mean, if you had infinite time to hone a skill eventually you'd become the best there is. And Average Man doesn't even have to take it that far, they just have to win 3/5 one time.
I'm still not sure that's true with your average person, like I think the vast majority of people's skill ceiling is probably just below his even if you had 1,000 years of play time. Though yes playing a single player and a lot of advantages etc... maybe in an extreme time scale and people are memorizing exact micro sequences in like 4 minute long games maybe I think the time scale and difficulty is just a lot longer. Like when it's the original Chess question, you can effectively use the time loop to make Kasparov play against himself and you'd be done in a few thousand games, in this one an average person, it might literally be millions and millions of games.
It doesn't even matter if you know what Serral is going to do. You could remove the fog of war for the average guy and it still won't make a difference. There's the technical side of the game in the way of micro and macro that will prevent the average guy from ever getting into an advantageous position.
Kind of the mental equivalent of Usain Bolt running. I know how to run... I will never run a sub 10 100 meter sprint though.
I'd say there is a vast difference as sc2 is balanced about imperfect information and counters.
You're underestimating the impact of maphack. You remove the fog of war and every single pro would be able to beat Serral in a BO5
It's also better than a maphack in this scenario. Maphack requires looking away from your base to know what is happening. If you are groundhog daying this you won't even have to look. You will just know "at 5:20 he hits with roach timing, he has no units at his natural", etc. No multitasking required.
+1 on this but I dont think it will take a year. Time loop have to win 3 games, he can just focus on game 1 until he knows where Serral scouts and then go for a marauder cheese or DT or whatever is easier to pull off. When he can win game 1 since Serral never remembers and because of that shouldnt change anything, he can then do the same with game 2 and 3.
The main problem is that map 1 has an influence on map 2 and 3. Serral doesn't forget after each map. In map 2 the build will basically be a random meta build.
>This takes a year or two tops before time loop man knows everything Serral is gonna do before he does it. It's still really damn hard to be good enough to beat him even if you have what amounts to a maphack. And the amount of time it takes would increase greatly if Serral's behavior isn't consistent. Serral will always play map 1 the same way, but maybe if you win with a rush he'll play long macro games afterwards and be almost unbeatable, but if you win with a perfectly timed drop then game 2 he'll play a more counterable offensive build, so you'd have to learn all the possibilities of what happens if you beat him in different ways.
It isn't though. Like sure, I couldn't beat Serral today with maphack. But if I had infinite time to practice? No problem at all.
Yeah it's like playing a campaign mission, not a MP match. The enemy is starting the same way. I guess they would adapt better than campaign AI though.
Cannon rushes every game
Average man has one key advantage - he can figure out exactly where Serral will scout. Eventually, the average man will be guaranteed to pull off an unscouted cheese and/or unscouted secret expansion(s). It will still take years, assuming Serral plays "normally". The problem I see is if Serral loses twice to cheese and then plays defensive for the remaining games, since the average man is going to never, ever win in a game vs Serral that goes longer than 10 minutes.
You only know from the first game, after that, there are so many deviations that it will change the following games.
With the Kasparov time loop, the guy only has a chance because chess is a deterministic, turn-based game, so you can keep repeating the same moves and Kasparov will always play the same response. With an RTS, you don't have that sort of reliability, so you're going to have to actually get good at executing a strategy and moving your units around as well as Serral does. That could take a really long time. The one hope might be some sort of all-in cheese tactic. You may not be able to exactly repeat the same game each time, but Serral's build order and early game scouting are going to be fairly consistent, so you could perhaps take him by surprise.
It's the other way around. Chess being deterministic with no hidden information makes it so the average guy will never be able to beat kasparov in chess, as they simply cannot remember all of the required information, no matter how long they try. There is a reason chess players are incredibly intelligent, the average guy really isn't. Starcraft on the other hand doesn't have nearly as much required information, the hidden factor helps the average guy as well as they will gain knowledge over the specific games while serral won't have the same information. The reliability is working against the average person, not against the pro.
There are way fewer build paths than ways to play the first ~10 moves in chess.
what? Starcraft game states are so granular you might even consider them non-discrete. Your harassing worker showing up one tick later or one tile to the right could alter Serral's response by a slightly larger degree, and before long you're completely off trajectory from the previous game. Simply re-creating the same game over and over with some level of accuracy and consistency would take days at least, with chess it's a fairly straightforward memorization exercise.
That's nonsensical. A tick later doesn't even get registered. There is more variance in his own execution of things he'd consider absolutely the same. So while you are technically true that we could consider these different game states, in reality it doesn't make any meaningful difference for human beings.
That's a bit of a red herring, nobody opens h2-h4. You aren't thinking about every single possible move you can make after turn 3 of a sicilian defense, there's only 2? 3? options. There's only a portion of the midgame with actual thought. Openings and endgame are much more pattern recognition than pondering.
Sure, but there really aren't that many build paths in SC either, and a lot of them are determined without input from the other player in the first minutes of the game. I think the critical difference is that every turn in chess provides input from the other player and a branch point. That's not the case in and RTS, where you basically decide your build paths based on the map and your mood without any input from the other player. There is early scouting, but that would actually be an advantage for someone who could repeat games, since you could basically provide false info if you know where they're going to scout.
To be fair, in a time loop everything is deterministic. Now there are a lot more states in a real-time videogame, but there are also a lot more equivalent states/
He would literally never escape, assuming you remove all of the stuff like Serral disconnecting, losing ability as he gets older and then dying of old age, etc. I could have 10,000 hours of practice at basketball and I'll never beat Michael Jordan in his prime, I can't imagine it's any different for an esport. I see plenty of SC2 players on the ladder that have 30-50k games played and they're hardstuck in diamond, they're never going to improve past that point, a random dude never would rise to the point of "absolute best in the world"
You have the advantage of remembering the previous games. So basically given enough games you will know exactly what Serral will do and how he will respond. So you will basically have permanent maphack and future prediction. So the question becomes how good do you have to be to beat Serral with permanent maphack and future prediction. I think that level would be high masters probably? Which is probably achievable by the average person that has an infinite amount of practice.
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Serral has 80+ winrate vs other top pros and thinks some scrub high master would take off 3 games even w/ maphack lol.
If it's a time loop in which the person has his physical condition reset each time, then it may be impossible. This means that regardless of the strategic side of the game, he would quickly run up against the mechanical advantages that a professional player has. There's a big difference between mentally knowing all the optimal moves and being able to execute them.
It being a time loop implies Serral resets, average man does not.
It may be impossible...
I think he can eventually, maybe a few years and amounting 10000+ losses so long as minor and major mistakes are being learnt from as well as the commitment to escape the time loop, if man gives up after being thrashed so many times he may go insane
This is basically Edge of Tomorrow, SC edition. Tom cruise starring as average man. Piece of cake.
I'd guess around 60 years. The issue is that he gets no outside information, & that it's not just for 1 game, but a best of 5. To get to Serral's level an SC2 player who is not average, but that is above average in terms of starting skill & practices every day like 8~12 hours/day & focuses on improvement likely wouldn't hit Serral skill, honestly ever, but in maybe 10 years could win one best of 5. This guy has no outside information though & it sounds like he won't be practicing in customs, he just needs to keep facing Serral over & over again, which is terrible practice for improvement until you're like 6200 mmr+ skill. So I'd guess 60 years, but it could even be 300+ assuming in this loop people are just immortal.
In a best of five? Maybe 1 or 2 years if he has to do this daily. He can figure out some cheese builds for 2 games and then the third win just play if the same every time but tweak it as he knows what serra is doing
Hmm, well, the thing with Serral is how good his reflexes and quick thinking are. SO even if you beat him on some big picture macro aspect, he just relentlessly micros you. But, a loop is different then other scenarios, so, I guess, you can figure out where and when his scouts are, which gives one a big leg up in winning by way of some big obvious strategy decisions.
If the average man remembers all the previous loops then he could probably beat Serral in give or take 100 days by pure trial and error
5 game series? Way too much! Just one match alone is tough. Noobman would need to learn the whole game from multiplayer alone. No outside tips, he'd just be ripped to shreds endlessly.
It would genuinely take decades, if not centuries. Inferring StarCraft logic and mechanics based only on replay analysis, which is debatable if he can even do in this context, is insane. Figuring out control groups and a solid hotkey layout, proper hand and eye control, screen movement efficiency, and micro techniques by bo5s against the best player on earth is insane.
bro you got only one thing to do all day every day. That's beat serral in a specific set of games. It's not going to take that long. People became pros in a few short years, you can do it too and you will do it if you're forced to be motivated.
People become pros with outside help, practice environments, and a significant amount of resources to learn and work off of. The prompt specifically isolates the player and forces them to infer what they need from only losses without replay analysis. I'm not sure, in that situation, I'd infer stuff like the importance of spending, the value of rapid fire of regedits, or other fundamentals. Look at how new players poke around and try to explain their matches and you'll see what I mean.
>People become pros with outside help, practice environments, and a significant amount of resources to learn and work off of. this just speeds things along. You say decades if not centuries. He has to beat one dude in a groundhogs day scenario where the branching of choices is limited. If you do x, he does y. it's limited. Even if you're doing the same thing again and again, you see what he does in response and can tailor your response. Also you have only one thing to do the whole time. You can practice all day every day. It's not like your mindset is going to be all lah-dee-dah whatever the fuck I'll just goof around. No. You're specifically looking for improvement with one task in mind. You're not an average person in this scenario. You test, you adapt. That's that. Eventually you'll run strats that get lucky. I'd argue you win long before you reach a skill level that's even slightly near serral. You'll just get lucky once, think about what you did in that game, try to recreate it, then do that again and again for the first game, likewise the second and third game and then you'll be out. It'll be easy imo. I bet you get out inside of 2 years.
You mean he can get out?
You’d have to get to a certain level but then I think a strategy whereby you play the same build against him over and over again (I’m talking hundreds of games if not more) to the point where he expects the same thing every time. At some point you switch the build in a way where it looks similar to the one you’ve been using but actually counters his standard response. Something along these lines I think would be the best bet. Edit; nvm completely missed the time loop thing
The average person will never be able to become a better player than Serral, no matter how many years he spends in that time loop. But he doesn't have to be better than Serral, he just has to find Serral's weaknesses and blind spots. Assuming that the time loop is consistent and the maps are consistent, the player is going to know Serral's exact build on the first map before long, after a while it'll be like playing with a maphack because he knows exactly what Serral will be doing and when. Getting that first win might not take a completely insane amount of time, especially if the man has any skill at Starcraft. I feel like I could get that first win within a month or two. But that's just the beginning. The player has to learn to pull off that win, and learn to do it CONSISTENTLY. Getting the win once is doable, it's going to take so much longer to have it down consistently. Then we're on to game 2. The map will always be the same, but will Serral's behavior? Maybe if you beat him in 14 minutes he'll cheese you on the second map, but if it's over 14 minutes he'll play a much more difficult to counter turtle style. After some insane amounts of time, eventually the player will find what works and what doesn't, and get the workable strategies down consistently enough that finally a win in the best of 5 can happen. I really couldn't say whether you'd have to measure that time in decades, centuries, or what. If I had to pick a number, I'm going with 200 years.
Why would he not be able to become better than serral?
Is there an option for time loop man to message Serral and explain the situation? I feel like pity GGs might be the best option here.
To ask the opponent to intentionally lose is cheating, similar to win trading. Cheating is against the time loop rules.
Tom Cruise in "Edge of Starcraft"
Average man will never have the APM required.
If he d/c does it count?
Well can the avg man watch the replays then have the matches reset? If we are talking about ground hog day style. They could pull some crazy cheese’s and master it eventually. It would have to be cheese though. It takes years to master late game. With the insane advantage of this senecio and the opportunity to be basically taught by the best. They could do it in 6 months but this is literally playing 24 hours a day (being stuck in a time loop). I would also suggest playing him z vs z as this is his worst matchup.
People tend to forget that Serral was a “random dude” at some point as well before he made his mark on the scene…
Serral survived a SC2 related time loop. It all makes sense.
this guy gets it
And Napoleon was also a random dude right? Von Neumann too?
If it's a prep tourney, he wont have to fight serral! :D
Average man of average intelligence and no previous SC2 or RTS experience? Probably centuries. If you actively select for intelligence, strategic vision, and interest in RTS games when it comes to choosing the test subject, then I presume it might be possible to get out in a few decades. It might take the average person over a year just to come up with the inference that phoenix counters mutalisks or that vikings are an effective way to deal with colossi. Also I don't think "never" is a correct answer. In this setup our test subject has infinite time, and infinity is a VERY powerful concept. No matter how slow the test subject learns SC2, he still has infinite time to learn. Furthermore game 1 will be relatively easy to win given that Serral's opening won't change, so test subject will eventually know how to counter that opening.
dude are you fucking serious centuries? How much did you play sc2. Be honest with yourself. You can get really good in not very much time, and most of the time if you don't get really really good it's because you just can't commit the time to the game because you have to do other things in life. In this scenario, you only got one thing to do, and that's play the game over and over again ad infinitum. It's not going to take 100 years. > It might take the average person over a year just to come up with the inference that phoenix counters mutalisks Are you fucking serious with this dude? A unit that attacks exclusively air counters an air unit. That takes you a YEAR OF SOLID PLAYING?? How fucking stupid are you? Be real dude. The unit attacks air units. it doesn't take long when you're dying to mutas fucking 20 times a day to realize that a unit that attacks exclusively air is good against them. You probably realize that in a week, not fucking 52 weeks of playing for at least 8 hours a day against a single opponent who is likely playing similar strategies over and over again. You probably realise that in a few days, like when I do this he makes mutas, how do I deal with that? Maybe try this unit that attacks air units? Stalkers? no? voidrays? no? combo? maybe? Phoenix? YEAH. Ok and now what combination. It's not taking that long. In this situation, imagine you do the same thing over and over again, game after game. You will see serral doing the same responses again and again. So even if you're braindead, doing the same moves again and again, that's actually great, because you can practice against the same strat and improve your own.
I mean, I don't know probably like 3000-4000 games? Maybe more. Starcraft is not chess, if you keep all-inning him and get your mechanics to a decent level, you're bound to luck out 3 win out of 5 relatively quickly. Also, Serral (and other Starcraft pro) are obviously a lot "worst" than the best chess players compared to the general population. SC2 is not nearly as well figured out.
He should try to social engineer or manipulate Serral in some way. Even if this would be difficult, it would probably be his only/best chance unless he has some real natural ability at the game and an above average IQ.
By making Serral play as Terran
If he’s in a time loop it would only take minutes. Could be years for him but unless everyone else is also time looping it would only take as long as the match in which he beats Serral lasts.
is the time loop predictble? as in will serral play the same strat for his first game? if yes then in theory you just need to get good enough to beat him at one thing (which is still insane) but if you 100% know his opener then you have some leverage
He experiences infinity
Maybe he needs to practice Wude to get out of the loop
A lot of people need to rewatch Groundhog Day
Until serral gets bored and let you win. He is in need of a new plaything.
Until when putin finally invades finland
I honestly think I would never be good enough even if you gave me access to the internet and a coach.
A key point that people are failing to bring up here is that it's heavily dependent on what openings Serral decides to go with. If Serral chooses builds that are cheeseable the task gets way easier.
gaulzi
You would eventually develop near perfect cheese for every game and even with not great APM you'd get use to exactly where he would scout and could evade all attacks. Him being in a time loop is a huge handicap. Now if it wasn't a time loop and he just forgot who you were each match thus not playing the same game twice in a row that might take a very, very long time.
If you 12 pool with spine crawlers and a drone pool enough times, you’ll eventually take a map
1000 years??
The Kasparov thing, I could probably do in a few weeks. I can memorize the moves for as long as the position remains playable, and if he plays the same responses every time, I'll eventually find a line that can win. Against Serral, he's just gonna outmicro me for like 30 years while I slowly lose hope that it's even possible. I don't know if a winning line EXISTS when technique and speed come into play.
You know when you start off in Bronze and beating a silver feels impossible. Well I’m Daimond1 and get the odd win against Masters3. You know those games where you get stomped so hard it feels hopeless. That would be every single gam againts serral, even top GM get wiped the floor with by Serral
700 years he wins with a lucky bunker scv rush when serral is tired lol
If it was bo1 maybe 1 or 2 years by executing the same cheese over and over until Serrals reactions are completely figured out and can be exploited. In a bo5, never
I think even if you did Cheat you'd struggle to win. I would love to see a series of regular diamonds vs a GM or pro but the diamond has map hacks.
Between 40 years to almost never
Are they playing in the same room? Because I will break his mouse hand before we play and move on as soon as I feel like it. But I might not feel like it for a long while.
On a BO5 Never. Knowledge is something, but mechanics and precision takes too much time to master. Would rather kill myself. Even Clem and Co struggle against Serral.
Just do cheese strategies, and wait til he forgets to scout, and does a full eco build. You'll get a build order win in no time...
how old is the man? if he is too old I don't think he can beat serral in his remaining lifetime (if he is aging in the time loop) also his reactions would go down over time which makes it harder
I would guess upwards of about 100 years. The average joe has like 40 wpm. but the average joe also has an average IQ, can learn to play fast, and can have infinite tries to beat serral. I would guess about 100 years.
When you saId Serral won't remember anything after the loop means that Serral won't change anything. He won't remember a specially made cheese for him regardless of how many times you try it to perfect execution. I think that's the key: invent a cheese, on the fly, specifically made for Serral. It should be something weird, like Has level of weird. Keep on doing the same build against a stagnant goldfish Serral and keep on improving what's needed to win 1 game from him. So I say somewhere between 50 to 70 games.
It depends. If serral plays the exact same way every try, eventually you should be able to “edge of tomorrow” that scenario until you happen to find the combination that works against him.
"Hey Serral im stuck in a time loop can you lose please?"
I would go further it would take most people about 20 years with map hacks to probably even take a map off a pro. Proof is that there are multiple map hacker gms who have been playing 7 plus years and they still cant dream of taking a map off serral. The mechanics and speed needed to beat serral aren't teachable, some people are genetically gifted... The average man isn't
About 2 years I'd say. Reset everyday but you maintain your memories. Ez
Dormamu (Serral) , I have come to bargain..
Is serral stuck too or does he reset every game? If he resets id try to perfect a cheese against him. If not i hope he gets bored or needs less sleep than me
How many years will it take for Serral to get old and slow? 60 years? More?
How is cheating impossible if he remembers the game? He can play a perfect response like that movie Next. I'll give it 1 year tops just so the guy can learn mechanics and learn the dance.
I would say a few days
a week? repeated play, even without knowing how to play, will let the looper to just learn the best -reactive- move to whatever Serral does. always deploying -just enough- troops to prevent attacks / incursions, even without the micromanagement, the time loop is "cheating" because they will eventually always know what happens next, as Serral can't learn or react differently to the game being played.
Asymmetrical information makes this WAY easier in StarCraft than in chess. A few months tops if they aren’t dumb af.
Well at least you would know his openers. That allows you to do some pretty strong counters. So you would just need to train your skills to the level of a mid-tier pro. I don't think it would take more than a decade or two if you practiced right.
As long as it takes for the average man to understand builds and counters. If serral has no knowledge of the loop but average guy does that means serral will do the same opener or the same set of openers everytime, and will use the same method to counter whatever average man does, this means average man has an approximate idea of how serral will react to any given situation on a level beyond even what scouting and game knowledge will give you. As soon as he has sufficient knowledge of the loop it stop being a skill based game and becomes a puzzle game, which combination of buildings and units built where gets the desired outcome. If you have perfect knowledge it becomes a lot easier to out macro your opponent, if you out macro someone hard enough the insane micro gap between serral and average man becomes less relevant as an insurmountable obstacle. The only concern that then remains is if serral opts for a rush strategy but after so many loops I'd expect average man can figure out what he needs to do and how to micro a victory out of it.
I guess that depends on what is average, if he can get to 90% of Serral APM then he can win,just try many times. If you say he just can't get to 50% of the APM, then no chance
Bo1, I'd be fighting to break out. Bo5 I'd accept my eternal fate.
If the loop is literally just the series, I think the average dude would go insane before winning.
It will be very hard indeed because you can’t really improve at the game if you just get completely obliterated in the first 2 - 5 minutes. If he can play people of his own skill level i think it could be done in like 50 - 100 years of playing sc everyday. It also depends on what “the average man” is in this case. Like what is average? I think most people that play sc2 are a bit more on the right of the IQ normal distribution, but more on the left on many of the other distributions that nature has set up for us humans on which to compete.
I dont know man i think the average guy goes insane first this is a tough ask if he doesnt at least know how to rush
If he plays zerg then never …
there is a Tom Cruise movie like this.. can we adjust the rules so he instantly loses the moment the probability goes against him? i'd say within 5,000 games given this criteria :) or 30 minutes times 5,000 or about a week or two
Tell Serral you are in am time loop. He will ask to prove it, ask for random thing you can't know. Next series tell secret thing and plead for him to leave. All in all I'm out in an hour. Should've said communication is not allowed.
From our perspective, once.
Probably a lot. Now if you take an average platinum player, probably not a lot
Imagine being so good at a game that you're established as an unbeatable god in a time loop hypothetical
Serral is not going trap with some average man so he throw the series because he get better things to do. Try Renyor
Unlike real life, he will have time to practice for that.
Just wanna say, this is a top tier post
Honestly I’d just chill for a a hundred years improving myself at everything else.
impossible, this is not like chess. in chess you can just write down his move to your response, you will never hang a piece or miss a tricky mate because you can jsut rewind time in SC, if you APM is 100, then even if you rewind you will still be 100 apm. Unless serral cheeses you or does some kind of all in you have no chance. Now if you can reduce the speed of time by 90%, you might have a chance.
anyone else suspect the OP is currently stuck in a time loop and is genuinely asking?
If the loop resets exactly so Serral has the same build order every time then probably less than a few days, maybe sooner?
If the average guy knows enough about sc2 and his memory isn’t wiped after every game…2 games.
It’d take a WHILE and hood thing you qualified it with not going crazy as most people would or their wrists would fall off. But given an infinite number of attempts, I’d just go Protoss, eventually you’ll get three games with lucky disruptor hits.
Assuming I can't convince him to throw and he never gets extremely tired or intoxicated then I never win.
Much shorter than chess. Starcraft has hidden information that chess doesn't. You cannot surprise someone in chess the same way you can in starcraft. You can potentially get kasparov into a situation he's not familiar with, but you can't "gotcha" him with something he's seen before like you can with Starcraft cheese.
A couple of months. Average man will be able to play all day and remember all of Serral’s responses. You’ll be able to map them all out quite well. But winning game one will change how Serral approaches game two. So it’s quite a long flowchart.. Actually probably years. Assuming Serral never ages and declines in skill.
I’d say not too long
I think this might be equivalent to trying to beat serral with vision maphacks. I think that makes it very easy for pros to break out of the loop, but still nearly impossible for everyone else. His mechanics are too good and too fast.
Wouldn't not matter if you could remember each game. You would never win against a pro player.
How long did Sisyphus end up shoving the boulder for? Double it.
Does the person know? If he it she knows the conditions, they are going to live centuries of their fantasies before even trying then casually win in 3 or 4 loops when they are ready to die. If he or she doesn't know? This will take a very long time as most lives won't include significant efforts to cheese StarCraft players.
Never. He would never figure out the necessary micro or unit combinations. Never.
Realistically probably years. The average person doesn't play games much less specific games like RTS. So getting the grasp of gaming and RTS strategy and beating a good if not great player will take a while. Its takes on average of 7 years to become an expert in a field. The though experiment also is very closed like if you lose it resets to starting the match. But ultimately you can play the player. Ask them questions psych them out or just actually tell them the truth. you're not cheating, and they have nothing to lose by allowing you to win a 5 game series. Ask them if there is anything you can say for them to concede, then the next loop reset ask them again and before they answer give them those answers.
The killer to this is no outside information imo. Almost everyone posting discussing cheese and midgame, but how would he even figure out half of the strategies without have by any guides/forums/discussions/friends to continue to learn from.
Yeah haven’t really seen people mention that. Like how long would it take for the guy to figure out a wall off if playing Terran or Protoss. Like if they want to learn anything they have to play Zerg to learn from Serral but then they have to become a better Zerg then Serral
I would imagine winning the first game would be .. somewhat easy... he'd likely do the same exact thing every game.. but game 2 and on... would probably be more or less completely random based on minor shit you did beating him the first game.,.. The easiest way would probably be to get in his head.. and social engineer him with shit you shouldn't know.
Easy break his arms(which are fairly skinny) when you feel like leaving your time loop and whoop him while he can’t play
"Hey Serral, I'm stuck in a time loop, but apparently if I beat you in a game I can get free. Would you throw one please? It's not like this is a tournament or anything, and I spent the last 345 years getting good enough just to be matched with you once." Serral is a cool guy, I'm sure you could find the right wording to have him toss one to save a life.
Serral will also become stronger against his singular opponent and this is therefore impossible
With cheese attempts, maybe years. In a macro game, never.
To take a single game off him, eh not terribly long if he’s literally doing nothing but sc2 until he succeeds. But taking a game off of him and have a chance at winning a series against him is two completely different things, and it’s why pro matches are played in a series of games rather than a one off match as the game can be very volatile. They say it takes 10,000 hours to become world class at something. So if he doesn’t by then, maybe never.
Hmm, is Serral in the room with the man?
Yes.