Is it me, or is racing unbalanced?

Almost every game in existence requires some ammount of skill. With the exception of games like: "two people roll a die randomly and the person who rolls higher wins".
Even rock-paper-scissors requires skill. The skill to predict what your opponent will pick.

As Mors said, "skill" in any game can be divided in two areas - knowledge and execution.

Some games only require knowledge and no execution whatsoever - most card games fall in this category.
You can gain game experience in what cards to put in your deck / what cards to play according to each game state you are faced with but you can't practice or improve your execution - unless you somehow are having trouble dropping a card in the middle of the table or dragging a pyroblast to your opponent's face.

When people talk about games with no skill, they usually mean the game has a low skill ceiling meaning that the difference between an unskilled player and a skilled player is not that big.
Of all the games i know, i would rate Stracraft:Brood War as the game with the highest skill ceiling i played/watched.

Skill ceiling correlates directly to the number of subtle mistakes its possible to make. Both mistakes as in not making the right decision (knowledge) or not having the motor ability to do something as perfectly as your brain tells you to (execution). Starcraft has A LOT of those moments where a skilled player will gain edges and eventually snowball into a win.

That's why i consider MtG more skilled than Hearthstone because you have more opportunities to make subtle mistakes and thus more opportunities to gain an edge when you make the right decisions.
Note that the word subtle is important. Having more opportunities to make blatantly stupid stuff doesn't make the skill ceiling higher, it makes the noob floor lower.

RNG works directly against the skill ceiling. The higher ammount and relevance of RNG in the game, the lower the skill ceiling will be.

Hearthstone has high RNG, you can be just a competent player, be given a good deck and you will have a good shot at beating skilled players around 40% of the time (for example).


PoE racing, in my opinion, has an average skill ceiling. It requires some ammount of game knowledge and proper execution but the RNG influence lowers the ceiling.

You can gain most of the game knowledge involved by watching streams of top racers. There are things that you won't "see" at first but with enough experience, you will notice the most important aspects of game knowledge.
Racers that don't stream have an edge of having access to the game knowledge they aquired on their own plus wathever is made available by the people that stream. Nothing wrong with that though, they worked for it.

Execution can only be gained by practicing.
Helman streams every race he does and he still gets #1 duelist all the time. That's a combination of few competent players racing as duelist and helman having amazing execution (at least as far as leap slamming goes). You can watch him and understand all the decisions he makes but when you try it yourself you are slower. You lack execution.

I think i have good game knowledge of PoE racing but there's still a ton of stuff i don't know for sure.

. if i get a transmute drop from hrake, should i trans my qs straight away or save ir for a jade?
. should i go out of my way and kill that pack of 4 mobs half a screen away based on my current lvl/zone?
. should i go out of my way and kill that pack of 6 mobs a screen away based on my current lvl/zone?
. what nodes and in what order should i get on the passive tree for a specific race? (hard to say on some classes)
. i have enough shit to craft my +1 at the end of pgate. should i tp out now? should i try and find ship grave wp? should i just do it on wrath wp? What if its a famine race and my qs doesnt recharge?
. do i want this wand with +10% spell dmg or this wand with +3% cast speed? Does the 10% spell damage actually makes a difference and allows me to cast less spells?

In terms of execution, i'm not very good. Constantly missclicking, being sloppy and killing stray mobs even when i know i shouldn't, wasting too much time in town, sometimes playing too defensively/running around too much and losing time, leaping to suboptimal places, etc.
I do think i have good inventory management tho :p

From just these examples (there are way more) you can see there are multiple opportunities to make subtle mistakes and a skilled racer will gain edges over others.

Then there's the RNG: currency, ms boots, extra qs, att speed, layouts, mob density...
In my oppinion, the RNG influece is very big and you only need to be a competent racer to beat a skilled/top racer if the RNG goes your way.

I think, in general, people don't care enough to actually try hard and put everything into being good poe racers because there's just no incentive for it.
We do some prac runs, test some things here and there, learn some layouts but overall just go with it and have fun.
If a "poe racing career" was actually a thing, im pretty sure the results the "top racers" achieve atm would be considered pathetic.

In order for a game to be entertaining, you need an extremely high level of execution so the audience is in awe when amazing things are achieved (starcraft) or high levels of RNG so the audience laughs (hearthstone). Game knowledge is mostly irrelevant as far as entertainment goes because it spreads too easily.

PoE racing would be more competitive if most RNG layers were removed or made less relevant but it would be a lot more boring. Its a hard thing to balance.

So yeah...i do consider PoE racing a skill. Not nearly as skilled as Stracraft but way more skilled than Hearthstone :^)