Ever since the Fall of Bisu in this OSL, people have been calling you the 'Last Hope' How do you feel about the recent PvZ?
"At first I thought Zerg was imbalanced and overpowered. But ever since I started practicing hard, I started to realize it wasn't that Zerg was imbalanced but rather it was the Zerg Players were alot more skilled than Protoss Players at this point of time.
I will practice hard and show a better self this season"
On October 21 2009 21:00 Ota Solgryn wrote: About todays OSL games. + Show Spoiler +
Stork Mini Interview
Ever since the Fall of Bisu in this OSL, people have been calling you the 'Last Hope' How do you feel about the recent PvZ?
"At first I thought Zerg was imbalanced and overpowered. But ever since I started practicing hard, I started to realize it wasn't that Zerg was imbalanced but rather it was the Zerg Players were alot more skilled than Protoss Players at this point of time.
I will practice hard and show a better self this season"
Now a pro said it. End of topic.
It's impossible to take Koreans at their word in an interview, on a topic as testy as this one. Do you really think he would have answered + Show Spoiler +
"yes the matchup is massively imbalanced, but I won anyway"?
On October 21 2009 21:00 Ota Solgryn wrote: About todays OSL games. + Show Spoiler +
Stork Mini Interview
Ever since the Fall of Bisu in this OSL, people have been calling you the 'Last Hope' How do you feel about the recent PvZ?
"At first I thought Zerg was imbalanced and overpowered. But ever since I started practicing hard, I started to realize it wasn't that Zerg was imbalanced but rather it was the Zerg Players were alot more skilled than Protoss Players at this point of time.
I will practice hard and show a better self this season"
Now a pro said it. End of topic.
It's impossible to take Koreans at their word in an interview, on a topic as testy as this one. Do you really think he would have answered + Show Spoiler +
"yes the matchup is massively imbalanced, but I won anyway"?
Well it was more honest than normally and he did say that he + Show Spoiler +
at first thought the matchup was imba, AND that he thinks the zerg players are just better.
On October 21 2009 21:00 Ota Solgryn wrote: About todays OSL games. + Show Spoiler +
Stork Mini Interview
Ever since the Fall of Bisu in this OSL, people have been calling you the 'Last Hope' How do you feel about the recent PvZ?
"At first I thought Zerg was imbalanced and overpowered. But ever since I started practicing hard, I started to realize it wasn't that Zerg was imbalanced but rather it was the Zerg Players were alot more skilled than Protoss Players at this point of time.
I will practice hard and show a better self this season"
Now a pro said it. End of topic.
It's impossible to take Koreans at their word in an interview, on a topic as testy as this one. Do you really think he would have answered + Show Spoiler +
"yes the matchup is massively imbalanced, but I won anyway"?
no matter how much you will whine and how much you are right blizzard wont change ballance, they dont care anymore if you would whine like that 8-9 year ago then probably today's ballance would be diffrent
i still don't understand why the community (or kespa) doesn't take into their hands to further balance the game *cough* scouts. i guess they can't really bother anymore, especially since sc2 is on the horizon (this century for sure).
On October 22 2009 02:38 anotherone wrote: no matter how much you will whine and how much you are right blizzard wont change ballance, they dont care anymore if you would whine like that 8-9 year ago then probably today's ballance would be diffrent
I don't think anyone wants Blizzard to do anything, nor do they expect them to. Maps are the main balancing point in this current age. That, and styles are what dictate the progamer statistics in matchups.
For 99% of the population, protoss is the easiest race to play / win with.
Change the game again so that the 1% population can be happy?
lol that was a dumbass thread XD
maybe toss its easiest race to start playing sc:bw because the macro issues.. but in a mid-pro level, all know about the zerg imbalance... pvz its the hardest match ever. pvt its gosu and very balanced.
On September 25 2009 17:12 motbob wrote: EDIT2: Since about page 30 this thread has turned into a haven for statistics nerds! Enter at your own risk.
Hey I'm not a statistics nerd :O Don't make me turn you into an unobserved qbit motbob ^o^
On topic though, we will probably end up with a result concerning how likely it is that one race is more difficult to play with in terms of metagame/mechanics combo (on the pro level of each time period) rather than which is inherently imbalanced (as that should assume perfect play). Slightly different results, but I think the former is what any statistical analysis would actually turn up, unless we assume that people who play protoss are inherently more fail than people who play zerg.
On October 21 2009 09:00 motbob wrote: OK, my econometrics textbook says that my way is correct but I think it might be wrong and I think that thus I did the test slightly wrong. I can see why your method of getting the SD from the null hypothesis is better than the way I'm doing it. I'll keep doing research.
you're doing a very simple stats equation. too simple to try and explain anything about ZvP except that it historically favors Z (if you got that part right i don't know) but that's it. it's not explaining anything. it's like if i went up and told you the sky is blue and then wrote up a giant equation and was like "yo bitch ur wrong sky's blue" and you were like "wtf kid i didnt say the sky isnt blue".
No. What his data show is that the recent trend of a higher than historical Zerg winning rate cannot be explained by purely random variation. He's demonstrated that a real trend exists, and now the only remaining question is the cause - what changed about seven months ago to cause this trend?
build orders, maps, could be because bisu started throwing games for money, etc, etc. I don't think anyone disagrees progaming is in a trend that is "statistically significant" if you ignore every variable and assume the data of 855 games is over a normal distribution, its obviously not, so we need to control as many variables as possible and compare similar samples, until then all the z-tests are meaningless.
1) Build orders. You could be referring to one of two things here - bad luck in build orders (like the old ideas about ZvZ being a highly luck-based matchup due to build order victories), or a metagame shift wherein Protoss players haven't found an effective counter to the most recent Zerg innovations. The first is definitely out - that would be a random variable which is excluded by our test. The second is possible, but might either be a temporary problem, solved by Protoss innovation, or a permanent and inherent problem with the matchup that can only be solved through adjustment of maps to give Protoss players a better chance. 2) Maps. It's pretty clear that maps aren't the problem. Go back and look at motbob's list of ZvP records broken down by map. The major new maps (Heartbreak Ridge, God's Garden, and Outsider) aren't more Zerg favoring than the older ones (Destination, Byzantium, Medusa), which seems to indicate that some other factor is at work. 3) Outside influence (i.e. players throwing games). Again, highly unlikely. No one player could affect the matchup's statistics this much, and there's no reason to believe that Protoss players are more susceptible to outside influence than Zerg players.
The evidence, it seems to me, strongly points to a general, non-map-based strategic advantage that Zerg has developed in this matchup recently. If Protoss players can find a way to counter this advantage, there's no problem. If they can't, the maps should be adjusted to bring the matchup closer to a 50% win rate. A 6:4 advantage for one race over another over a long a period of time is just bad for the game.
what about individual players? practice times? team makeup? map trends, style shifts, build order revelations? there are a lot of things aren't being taken into account that should be.
Exactly. Basically, this is impossible to quantify and it seems like people as usual want fast and easy facts, although those stats lack validity in reality. One can't assume that the matchups are 100% balanced because alot of stats talk against it. And saying that it's all about the maps is kind of ridiculous too because that implies that Blizzard managed to make three vastly different races completely even in a godlike way, which just has to be false. Also this argument doesn't hold up with what you Mahnini, wrote above.
I recall both Jju and Savior saying that ZvP is easy. I can see a protoss player saying PvT is easy, but I can't see a Terran or Protoss at pro level say that TvP or PvZ is easy.
What's easier about certain matchups in my opinion? Some requires alot less precision and multi-tasking compared to what their opponent needs to do. We've all seen the numerous zergling/hydra breaks in early/mid ZvP and it seems like basically any protoss can die to this to any zerg progamer. Protoss is really fragile against zerg and depend alot on building placement early game and must position their army very well and have the exactly right mix of units, while zerg in general do well with lings/hydra against almost anything if they have enough units.
Bisu is good at PvZ because he had a sick build, but most importantly because he has sick control too, speed and multi-tasking. Bisu is exceptional at PvZ, while almost no other protoss has ever been. Alot of zergs are at least good/very good at ZvP statistically. Now some people might say that it's because "protoss isn't playing good right now". What does it even mean? After all these years of Starcraft and considering how many games progamers have played, protoss should be able to be even with zerg but they aren't. This in my opinion, together with the recent trend of quite big maps that zerg can expo all over on, makes ZvP even harder for protoss than ever. They just have a harder time versus zerg than the other way around, and mind you, this is not a new problem. Although protoss has been stronger in different periods of time, zergs have pretty much figured out what I think is the last protoss revival there will be in PvZ.
On October 22 2009 05:49 Foucault wrote: And saying that it's all about the maps is kind of ridiculous too because that implies that Blizzard managed to make three vastly different races completely even in a godlike way, which just has to be false.
Er, I think maps having an influence on balance means exactly the opposite thing. Speaking of race strengths and weaknesses only makes sense relative to the maps on which they are played (availability of siege positions for terrans, expansions for zerg, etc). Blizzard adjusted the races' abilities so as to make them roughly balanced on the original campaigns and multiplayer maps, relative to 1998 skills and strategies. Since then, map makers have continually adapted their maps to the same old race abilities as well as the players' evolving skills and strategies. Any perceived godlike balance in Starcraft depends on the map makers' ability to pull this off, and it's obviously easier to fail than succeed -- especially with a rapidly changing metagame.
That said, maps are surely not the entire explanation.
On October 22 2009 05:49 Foucault wrote: And saying that it's all about the maps is kind of ridiculous too because that implies that Blizzard managed to make three vastly different races completely even in a godlike way, which just has to be false.
Er, I think maps having an influence on balance means exactly the opposite thing. Speaking of race strengths and weaknesses only makes sense relative to the maps on which they are played (availability of siege positions for terrans, expansions for zerg, etc). Blizzard adjusted the races' abilities so as to make them roughly balanced on the original campaigns and multiplayer maps, relative to 1998 skills and strategies. Since then, map makers have continually adapted their maps to the same old race abilities as well as the players' evolving skills and strategies. Any perceived godlike balance in Starcraft depends on the map makers' ability to pull this off, and it's obviously easier to fail than succeed -- especially with a rapidly changing metagame.
That said, maps are surely not the entire explanation.
On October 21 2009 13:37 motbob wrote: ok this is going to depend a lot on whether I can get TLPD data in raw form or not.
...but if I do get this data, here's what I'll do.
I'll run a probit regression model with a shitload of variables. I'll have a variable for Z player ELO and P player ELO. I'll have a seperate variable for each map (with entries 1 or 0). I'll add more as people suggest them (although I think signet's post above is very smart and I'll probably be using his "lumping" method of counting a bunch of different things under skill)
One of the variables will be a binary variable about whether the match was played after March 1st, 2009. The purpose of the regression will be to see whether this variable is statistically significant.
The way probit works is that it finds the probability that the dependent variable (whether the zerg won or not) is 1. It measures how the independent variables (maps and such) affect this.
Anyway, that's my plan. I'll carry it out if I can get TLPD data.
Sounds like a good model. By looking at elo rather than treating each player separately, you're giving the model more degrees of freedom (than if it treated each player as a binary variable), so you have the ability to take maps into account. That didn't dawn on me until you mentioned it.
If you are able to get a hold of the raw data, can you PM me -- maybe I can get it from you over gmail or something? There's some models I'd like to tinker with as well, but typing all this stuff in would be a real hassle.
EPT
