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More proof of the elephant? - Page 4

Blogs > BroodWarHD
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BroodWarHD
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
136 Posts
November 28 2011 12:33 GMT
#61
On November 28 2011 10:33 Teddyman wrote:
It's just inflation. When a player retires, his rating is removed from TLPD. If the rating of a retiring player is low enough, the average rating of the active player pool will increase with his retirement. As games are played, this extra rating will eventually end up in the hands of the top players. Naturally there are many more retired BW players than retired SC2 players, so the curve will be steeper in BW.

Isnt that a zero sum course of events? In order for someone to lose, someone else has to win. And in the end - both players will quit, the winners and the losers. The winners might have longer careers with more overall games, but to balance that off, there must be more losers than winners.

On November 28 2011 11:12 Primadog wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 28 2011 11:04 ShadeR wrote:
On November 28 2011 10:56 Takkara wrote:
One major variable that is not being adjusted for in this "analysis" is the effect of the different league styles on the data. For BW we have PL, MSL, and OSL. For SC2 we have mostly GSL. The structure of PL in particular is vastly different than anything that exists in SC2. Because the ways that the gamers are amassing ELO is different, we can't directly compare the relative values of high and low ELO and assume the two games will be the same if they are equally skilled.

There's so much noise in the "data" that you can't draw any conclusions at all from what you've presented. Not the least of which you need to prove that there is a connection between larger gaps in ELO between pro players and the skill required to play the game. There's so many other, logical explanations both for why such a gap would exist and why it would not exist that it doesn't clearly follow from your chart.

Secondly you need to find a way to normalize the ELO between the two games to turn your apples and oranges comparison into an apples to apples comparison. Of course, finding this normalization is probably not easy and may not even be solvable.

Thirdly, you'd be more intellectually honest to compare such ELO data 5-10 years ago for BW to see what, if any, effects time has had on such ELO graphs with just BW. It would be important to note if BW has gotten more distinguished, less, or stayed relatively the same.

There's other issues, but this is a good start if you honestly want to try to prove something with your numbers.

Oh please to do that was be purposely dishonest. Are you to say that SC2 began with no knowledge of all the modern BW management concepts? I'm sick and tired of people making the false equivalence between BW year 1 and SC2 year 1.

On November 28 2011 11:03 Primadog wrote:
If you also graphed the SC2 International Elos, it'll actually exceed the BW distribution. Does this mean SC2 have higher skill ceiling?

:D Of course not, you can't compare two set of Elo rankings that has zero interface.


The skill ceiling point is null and always has been... this isn't at all about skill "ceiling."


Plot:

[image loading]

The international SC2 ranking does appear to have what could be called ELO inflation, but if one normalizes the SC2 ranking data to the same range of SC2 korean/BW korean, then it could be comparable. The SC2 international appears to have an overall smaller dynamic range than both the other lists.
On November 28 2011 10:56 Takkara wrote:
One major variable that is not being adjusted for in this "analysis" is the effect of the different league styles on the data. For BW we have PL, MSL, and OSL. For SC2 we have mostly GSL. The structure of PL in particular is vastly different than anything that exists in SC2. Because the ways that the gamers are amassing ELO is different, we can't directly compare the relative values of high and low ELO and assume the two games will be the same if they are equally skilled.

There's so much noise in the "data" that you can't draw any conclusions at all from what you've presented. Not the least of which you need to prove that there is a connection between larger gaps in ELO between pro players and the skill required to play the game. There's so many other, logical explanations both for why such a gap would exist and why it would not exist that it doesn't clearly follow from your chart.

Secondly you need to find a way to normalize the ELO between the two games to turn your apples and oranges comparison into an apples to apples comparison. Of course, finding this normalization is probably not easy and may not even be solvable.

Thirdly, you'd be more intellectually honest to compare such ELO data 5-10 years ago for BW to see what, if any, effects time has had on such ELO graphs with just BW. It would be important to note if BW has gotten more distinguished, less, or stayed relatively the same.

There's other issues, but this is a good start if you honestly want to try to prove something with your numbers.

Doesnt the "noise" you describe actually define what we see in the games as skill? Because that is what the players have to do, their mission to play in the conditions that the league presents them. And those who are the most successful at that, could be described as being the most skillful. IE Bisu being very skillful as he plays superbly in proleague despite lackluster individual league games.

One can solve the normalization problem by looking at the actual dynamic range of the Elo rankings, rather than the absolute values. Nonetheless, this appears to not be an important issue as the BW and SC2 korean charts appear to be in the same range of absolute values.

The age of the game and metagame development differences may be a relevant argument, but it is so hard to quantify in numbers that i cant imagine how one would include it in the analysis
StarStruck
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
25339 Posts
November 28 2011 13:55 GMT
#62
On November 28 2011 10:44 ColdLava wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 28 2011 10:34 hifriend wrote:
On November 28 2011 10:29 bkrow wrote:
So a decade old game that has been picked over, discussed, played and strategised over for so many years provides more dominant players than a new, constantly patched, somewhat erratic and volatile game?

Shit. I should have majored in statistics

bw has almost always had dominant players, not one per week but consistently dominant ones

Plus I think it's pretty fair to say that sc2 has been more figured out in about a year than bw was for it's first 2-3 years at the very least. We have like 1000 pro's playing as a profession from the get go and more players overall, more discussion and more competitions.


Try more like 4 or 5 years. It took quite a while before players really started to realize how important macroing and multitasking was. It really wasn't until Nada that builds like fac-ccing became quite standard (it was a build used before Nada, but not used most games), and in TvZ, terrans often stayed on one base until the majority of their tech tree was filled out. Really, the way we think of SC2 now was far far far more advanced than even the way we thought of Sc1 when Boxer was the dominant player.

Anyone who played both SC1 and SC2 will tell you that the skill discrepancies between the highest end players, the mid end players, and even the lower end players was a lot bigger in SC1 than it is right now in SC2, but I don't think that has anything to do with whether one is the better game or not at all. I don't even see the point in discussing it, as there's no real meaningful conclusions that you can make from that.


CL nicely put.

I love how these threads keep popping up.
_awake_
Profile Joined August 2007
196 Posts
November 28 2011 16:28 GMT
#63
BW elitist here. Even I don't see the point of this thread. Who cares if there is or isn't a greater relative difference between the ELO of these two games? You've got to be shitting me if this is a reason why you think BW is better.
SeaSwift
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Scotland4486 Posts
November 28 2011 17:47 GMT
#64
I find it really funny that the elephant was originally used (IIRC) to "show" how terrible a game SC2 was compared to BW, but the TL staff managed to commandeer it into being a far cuter, far nicer "Elly the ESPORTS elephant", and it now shows on the website every time the server goes down xD

I think the whole elephant thing is getting old: now it is just used as a signpost to say "this is going to devolve into a BW vs SC2 shitfest".

As so many others have said, I don't get what your objectives are: if you're trying to convince us all that BW is superior, you're going the wrong way about it. If you're trying to stir up a clusterfuck of a thread, you spent way too long with those statistics.
BroodWarHD
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
136 Posts
November 28 2011 18:04 GMT
#65
relax, there doesnt need to be any agenda or hate/prejudice targeted toward either game in discussion. all that is necessary is to talk about the subject matter - the statistical data of Elo scores and the causal relations that are behind what we can observe, and why they are there. No need to get fired up about the somewhat provocative title
Klonere
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Ireland4123 Posts
November 28 2011 18:06 GMT
#66
Oh well I guess I'd better stop playing SC2 then!

Thanks for this BroodWarHD!!
itsjustatank
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
Hong Kong9153 Posts
November 28 2011 18:34 GMT
#67
On November 29 2011 03:04 BroodWarHD wrote:
relax, there doesnt need to be any agenda or hate/prejudice targeted toward either game in discussion. all that is necessary is to talk about the subject matter - the statistical data of Elo scores and the causal relations that are behind what we can observe, and why they are there. No need to get fired up about the somewhat provocative title


It's a cop-out to make a blog like this with a title like this and then tell people not to get "fired up" about it, ending your post with a smiley.
Photographer"nosotros estamos backamos" - setsuko
PrinceXizor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States17713 Posts
November 29 2011 00:34 GMT
#68
Yeah i guess i get to make blogs "proof of the death of BW" and have it be perfectly acceptable? nah i don't.
gondolin
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
France332 Posts
December 05 2011 09:26 GMT
#69
On November 28 2011 09:37 BroodWarHD wrote:

gondolin, isnt that argument only relevant in very low sample sizes? given the 100s of games both league players have played, it should no longer be relevant, would it?


I am sorry for resurecting this thread, but I forgot to look at the answers.

So to reply: the answer is no. It surprised me a lot when I discovered this (I even wrote a post to PoP a few years ago), but as I said, the XvY matchups have much lower ELO than the global ELO rank, while they have thousands of games on Starcraft. It appears that the dilatation process is very slow (and if I remember correctly, TL use k=19 or something like that, not 32), so losing against a 2000 player will hurt you a lot more than losing to a 2200 because there is only 2200 players in the OSL/MSL.
BroodWarHD
Profile Blog Joined October 2011
136 Posts
February 02 2012 19:24 GMT
#70
I tried to calculate and
even with K 19, it takes

eloafter= elobefore+10*0.7x-9*0.3x
eloafter= elobefore+16*0.7x-16*0.3x

assuming equal opponent elo, it takes x=
47
70

So i underestimated game number in first try so its hard to get high elo i understand.
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