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On May 26 2006 09:26 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 09:19 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 09:17 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Eh, testie will just tell you everyone whines too much and say the game is balanced - he's been asked before ;o
And I agree. Trying to be macho and tough doesn't cancel out the facts. People seem to go too much on truthiness with this issue and not enough on truth. Oh yes, very macho, me no fear zerg - ugha bugah, hit zerg with heavvvvvvvvy club, zealot rush keke. I just don't see the imbalance that you see, that's all.
I don't *see* an imbalance, I calculate it. That's the whole point; it's not a matter of *opinion*, therefore you can't hide behind "oh, it's just my opinion". You are just *wrong*. (I'm somewhat overstating my case here; the numerical evidence isn't totally rock solid yet. It's pretty damn strong though).
I see a problem with maps mostly.. If there is an imbalance I don't think it's big enough to pay any attention to, just need less imbalanced maps.
It's easy to say "oh, just use better balanced maps", but the stats say that the vast majority of maps favour Z to some extent, and since leagues like to keep using new maps, it's unlikely that their latest map is going to be balanced (since there's only a limited period of time for testing). On the other hand if PvZ had better inherent balance by a change in the game mechanics, most maps would be reasonably well balanced, so the leagues could have their variety-cake and eat balance too.
There's a lot less protoss players in korea than there are terrans or zergs (zerg = traditionally korean race I believe, terrans because of boxer) so there's a slightly smaller talent pool, then we have the fact that PvZ takes a lot longer to learn as unlike PvT, it's a matchup where you need experience (ie in PvT you have the complete picture because of your observers, in PvZ you need to be able to read the game a lot more).
The fact that the stats still suggest a PvZ imbalance even at a lower level suggests that this isn't a major factor. It's not like P=Z when you consider foreigners only, despite P being traditionally more popular outside Korea.
This also makes it more stressful, harder to learn and easier to fuck up I guess, I don't think it makes it imbalanced tho. There could be changes made, I suppose, that didn't fuck up the balance but nothing major.
If P players have a less than 50% chance against Z players *on average* then that's imbalance by definition; the reason doesn't matter.
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FA, in that statement I was referring to the last two years, which have seen a major rise of Zerg strength in the post-Boxer/rise-of-July-and-co. era. In the last two years, the only P to win a starleague has been Anytime's primarily anti-Terran effort. Even including this, the likelihood of P winning only 0 or 1 out of the 11 Starleagues in the last 2 years is 7% if you assume that the races are balanced, which gives a 93% chance that the lack of Protoss performance is due to imbalance, and not just bad luck or a "bad patch" as you suggest. Nevermind that Ra is hardly going through a "bad patch"; he's playing at the top of his game right now.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
I think Z>P P>T T>Z to the same extent, the only difference which makes PvZ seem worse in things like PGTour is that PvZ is the matchup that takes the longest to get good at + most new players pick P.
Anyway, as for the maps thing, I'm gonna just quote myself and see if you actually read what I say this time:
On May 26 2006 04:42 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 04:22 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 04:21 FrozenArbiter wrote:On May 26 2006 04:21 gravity wrote:
I don't give a crap what hyper-conservative people say, ZvP is imbalanced. Go die, it's the fucking maps -_- When 90% of possible maps favour Z it's not "just the maps". It doesn't help if it's theoretically possible to make a P>=Z map if that restricts you to like 2 designs, something the leagues won't do. Uhm, 90%? R-Point favours P, guillotine favours P, every single island favours P (islands used in big leagues: Hall of Valhalla, Estrella, Forbidden Zone, Isles of Siren, gorky, charity.. and the list goes on), forte is either equal or in Ps favour. Martians Cross favours P I *think*. Requiem is about equal, 815 seems to be about equal, gaema gowon and nostalgia used to be about equal, gaia is equal, azalea is equal or close to it, arcadia seems to be about equal, luna is about equal. Rush hour I'm not sure about, but I guess it has pretty bad stats.. Dahlia I'm not sure about but I think it favours zerg. Maps that favour zerg: Bifrost, mercury, ride of valkyries, arizona, cultivation period, peaks of baekdoo (from what we have seen so far, although very limited), legacy of char, jungle story, Korhal of Ceres.. Hm. Anyway, I'm just bitter because nal_ra lost, I don't even think the maps played much of a role in todays games - JJu is very good =/
Oh and Gokai, yeah, maybe =] I visit op tl-west from time to time :D
On May 26 2006 09:40 gravity wrote:
FA, in that statement I was referring to the last two years, which have seen a major rise of Zerg strength in the post-Boxer/rise-of-July-and-co. era. In the last two years, the only P to win a starleague has been Anytime's primarily anti-Terran effort. Even including this, the likelihood of P winning only 0 or 1 out of the 11 Starleagues in the last 2 years is 7% if you assume that the races are balanced, which gives a 93% chance that the lack of Protoss performance is due to imbalance, and not just bad luck or a "bad patch" as you suggest. Nevermind that Ra is hardly going through a "bad patch"; he's playing at the top of his game right now.
Yeah, playing at the top of his game and lost vs JJu who is also playing at the top of his, I don't see the problem. The current best PvZer losing to the current, say, top 3 ZvP player on these maps.. It's not really that strange.
What about IPXZerg losing to yooi? Boxer losing to shinhwa? Oov losing to kingdom? And so on, I find these all just as surprising (actually, boxer vs shinhwa I still can't grasp actually happened) -,.-
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On May 26 2006 09:40 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
Possibly, but not neccessarily. The only thing the Starleague-winner stats say for sure is that P < the other races combined. It doesn't necessarily prove that Z is at fault rather than T, but other stats such as the PGTour stats suggest that in general PvZ is worse than PvT for P (in fact P is typically slightly favoured, though probably less so at the pro level), pro-gamer Ps tend to be worse at PvZ than pro-gamer Zs percent-wise, etc.
edit: you can't really consider full island maps anymore, as the leagues seem to have given up on them as being way too imbalanced.
Sure, if we had another league with Paradoxxx, Protoss would be a lot more likely to win, by should it be necessary to use one super-imbalanced map to cancel out 2-3 somewhat imbalanced ones? It would be a lot better to just fix the game - not to mention it would make for more interesting games when you don't typically have one side easily beating the other on their "favoured" map with the match being decided on the one relatively balanced map.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On May 26 2006 09:43 gravity wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 09:40 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
Possibly, but not neccessarily. The only thing the Starleague-winner stats say for sure is that P < the other races combined. It doesn't necessarily prove that Z is at fault rather than T, but other stats such as the PGTour stats suggest that in general PvZ is worse than PvT for Terran, pro-gamer Ps tend to be worse at PvZ than pro-gamer Zs percent-wise, etc.
Uhm, how does P < the other races combined when P>T T>Z Z>P?
-_-
Hm, it's funny, everytime PvZ balance gets brought up the situation gets really hostile :D
I'll say this - if you can come up with a way to improve PvZ balance, feel free to share it, it's not like I would be categorically against it (I used to/still do think that making the reaver attack upgrade give them +28 so they could 1 shot kill lurkers until they get 3 armor would be a good thing  ).
Also, Paradoxxx, Forbidden Zone etc.. maps like Bifrost, mercury and arizona more than made up for these I think, ie they are so few they are barely worth mentioning (the islands) compared to the imbalanced land maps.
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On May 26 2006 09:44 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 09:43 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 09:40 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
Possibly, but not neccessarily. The only thing the Starleague-winner stats say for sure is that P < the other races combined. It doesn't necessarily prove that Z is at fault rather than T, but other stats such as the PGTour stats suggest that in general PvZ is worse than PvT for Terran, pro-gamer Ps tend to be worse at PvZ than pro-gamer Zs percent-wise, etc. If Z>P but P>=T only, then P will indeed be worse than the other races combined. Uhm, how does P < the other races combined when P>T T>Z Z>P? -_-
P < the other races combined because they've won 1 SL out of 11, the one win under unusual circumstances at that. That was my point. "P>T T>Z Z>P" is a cliche, it doesn't mean that P has the same edge over T (if any, at the pro level) that Z has over P.
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What I think people actually don't realize is that some progamers seem to be just "special" at one matchup. I think Ra has an outstanding PvZ record on Ongamnet, but a below 50% record in PvT.
And Boxer could be another example with his unfair TvZ record, but sub-50% TvP record.
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Lol. Frozen, looks like your too busy argueing with gravity to notice my last post. I'll repost what I said here.
"Hey forzenarbiter, we should game sometimes if you don't mind playing a low skilled player like me."
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On May 26 2006 09:47 hasuprotoss wrote:
What I think people actually don't realize is that some progamers seem to be just "special" at one matchup. I think Ra has an outstanding PvZ record on Ongamnet, but a below 50% record in PvT.
And Boxer could be another example with his unfair TvZ record, but sub-50% TvP record.
Well, that doesn't really have anything to do with imbalance when you're taking the aggregate statistics (or at least performance in this case) of all players.
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On May 26 2006 09:44 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 09:43 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 09:40 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
Possibly, but not neccessarily. The only thing the Starleague-winner stats say for sure is that P < the other races combined. It doesn't necessarily prove that Z is at fault rather than T, but other stats such as the PGTour stats suggest that in general PvZ is worse than PvT for Terran, pro-gamer Ps tend to be worse at PvZ than pro-gamer Zs percent-wise, etc. I'll say this - if you can come up with a way to improve PvZ balance, feel free to share it, it's not like I would be categorically against it (I used to/still do think that making the reaver attack upgrade give them +28 so they could 1 shot kill lurkers until they get 3 armor would be a good thing ).
I think that change might be a little too subtle. Changing Storm back to 128 would be worth trying, in my opinion. Sure, it would be a big change, but what's the worst that could happen; P wins 2 MSL in a row instead of 3 Terran or Zerg in a row? I think people have gotten so used to P losing that they'd think the game had become imbalanced in P's favour if it was actually balanced for once. Besides, if that change was really too big in practice, you could try something like increasing templar movement speed (this might not be a good idea, but I thought it might make it easier to do good storms by making the templars get into position faster), or your suggestion, instead.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On May 26 2006 09:47 gravity wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 09:44 FrozenArbiter wrote:On May 26 2006 09:43 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 09:40 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
Possibly, but not neccessarily. The only thing the Starleague-winner stats say for sure is that P < the other races combined. It doesn't necessarily prove that Z is at fault rather than T, but other stats such as the PGTour stats suggest that in general PvZ is worse than PvT for Terran, pro-gamer Ps tend to be worse at PvZ than pro-gamer Zs percent-wise, etc. If Z>P but P>=T only, then P will indeed be worse than the other races combined. Uhm, how does P < the other races combined when P>T T>Z Z>P? -_- P < the other races combined because they've won 1 SL out of 11, the one win under unusual circumstances at that. That was my point. "P>T T>Z Z>P" is a cliche, it doesn't mean that P has the same edge over T (if any, at the pro level) that Z has over P.
But WHY should we only count this time period? If we count overall, zergs have won much less than protoss.
The game hasn't changed THAT much, what have changed are the maps mostly.. That and Nal_rA slumping for two years. And a distinct lack of fresh protoss players of high calibre 
And considering the times protoss players won starleagues, they've USUALLY had to go through 3-4 top ranked terrans, I'd say they have the same edge Z's got over P (ie very, very, very small)
Boxer has lost 3 finals to protoss players, and won 3 finals vs zergs. Kingdom won his final vs a P, so if we count the semi-final instead, where he crushed junwi 3-0, you could say he beat a zerg. Nal_rA also beat a zerg 3-1 and then went on to play a protoss.. Meh.
I've got a movie to watch before I have to return it, I guess I'll post more later, getting a bit disorganized too.
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Well obviously you can never generally say that a matchup is imbalanced in Starcraft, as a game's imbalance doesn't depend solely on the races, but also on the map the game is played on. If you make a statement about a matchup as a whole, you always have to include the map (i.e. P>Z on Gorky).
Following from that it would seem as though PvZ's imbalance was really just map-dependant, some maps favour P and some favour Z. While this is true, you also can't help but notice that it's a lot harder to make maps favour P (especially when you're not trying to make it T>P). Pretty much all the new original maps have turned out Z>P, which is sad, because a map like Peaks of Baekdu makes for really cool games.
So yeah, my take on the subject is that the imbalance depends on the map, but the maps tends to be either Z>P or T>P and because we had a Terran domination for so long, map-makers made their maps Z>P, rather than T>P (this will change again soon imo). I have no idea how to fix this though...
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Sweden33719 Posts
On May 26 2006 09:52 gravity wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 09:44 FrozenArbiter wrote:On May 26 2006 09:43 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 09:40 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
Possibly, but not neccessarily. The only thing the Starleague-winner stats say for sure is that P < the other races combined. It doesn't necessarily prove that Z is at fault rather than T, but other stats such as the PGTour stats suggest that in general PvZ is worse than PvT for Terran, pro-gamer Ps tend to be worse at PvZ than pro-gamer Zs percent-wise, etc. I'll say this - if you can come up with a way to improve PvZ balance, feel free to share it, it's not like I would be categorically against it (I used to/still do think that making the reaver attack upgrade give them +28 so they could 1 shot kill lurkers until they get 3 armor would be a good thing ). I think that change might be a little too subtle. Changing Storm back to 128 would be worth trying, in my opinion. Sure, it would be a big change, but what's the worst that could happen; P wins 2 MSL in a row instead of 3 Terran or Zerg in a row? I think people have gotten so used to P losing that they'd think the game had become imbalanced in P's favour if it was actually balanced for once. Besides, if that change was really too big in practice, you could try something like increasing templar movement speed, or your suggestion, instead.
Yeah, I didn't mean it as the only thing to change - it's just one of the few things I could think of to make it easier but not touch PvT.
I personally think that if something was done about observers that would REALLY help protoss out (scourges/spores can make attacking zerg defences really troublesome).
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Sweden33719 Posts
On May 26 2006 09:53 Orome wrote:
Well obviously you can never generally say that a matchup is imbalanced in Starcraft, as a game's imbalance doesn't depend solely on the races, but also on the map the game is played on. If you make a statement about a matchup as a whole, you always have to include the map (i.e. P>Z on Gorky).
Following from that it would seem as though PvZ's imbalance was really just map-dependant, some maps favour P and some favour Z. While this is true, you also can't help but notice that it's a lot harder to make maps favour P (especially when you're not trying to make it T>P). Pretty much all the new original maps have turned out Z>P, which is sad, because a map like Peaks of Baekdu makes for really cool games.
So yeah, my take on the subject is that the imbalance depends on the map, but the maps tends to be either Z>P or T>P and because we had a Terran domination for so long, map-makers made their maps Z>P, rather than T>P (this will change again soon imo). I have no idea how to fix this though...
The problem with making a map that favours/is good for protoss, and does not make PvT really hard, is that it needs to look somthing like The Hunters (guillotine aka the map where nal_ra went like 10-0 before losing a single game).
Not the most interesting map ever! Oh, or Luna (zerg is forced to play that map kinda gay unless they are better than their opponent, ie they have to sunken up and play mass drop mass counter style).
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On May 26 2006 09:53 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2006 09:47 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 09:44 FrozenArbiter wrote:On May 26 2006 09:43 gravity wrote:On May 26 2006 09:40 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Oh so in that case TvZ and PvT are also imbalanced?
Possibly, but not neccessarily. The only thing the Starleague-winner stats say for sure is that P < the other races combined. It doesn't necessarily prove that Z is at fault rather than T, but other stats such as the PGTour stats suggest that in general PvZ is worse than PvT for Terran, pro-gamer Ps tend to be worse at PvZ than pro-gamer Zs percent-wise, etc. If Z>P but P>=T only, then P will indeed be worse than the other races combined. Uhm, how does P < the other races combined when P>T T>Z Z>P? -_- P < the other races combined because they've won 1 SL out of 11, the one win under unusual circumstances at that. That was my point. "P>T T>Z Z>P" is a cliche, it doesn't mean that P has the same edge over T (if any, at the pro level) that Z has over P. But WHY should we only count this time period? If we count overall, zergs have won much less than protoss.
I'd say the last couple of years are more informative for a few reasons:
1. Some of the very oldest leagues (including 2 P wins) were played under 1.07
2. Boxer's appearance on the scene caused a Terran boom, giving P something to take advantage of (since P is equal to or has a slight edge over T).
and most importantly
3. The recent past is a better predictor of the future than the far past. Therefore, the fact that P won a good number of leagues several years ago isn't very reassuring when they're doing badly now.
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MB we should just believe statistics ? My guess(almost absolutely random) is that if U combine all pro maps statistic, u would get a f*cking horrible PvZ win ratio >_<
The easiest way 2 balnce PvZ is 2 make shield upgrade +2(to a maximum +6) so that 300 minerals per 12 lings wouldn`t B enough 2 rape like 3-4r mineral + 1-2k gas protoss main in 30 seconds.
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never ask nick about balance, he claims Gorky TvP is perfectly balanced 
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Hey FA, I thought your hands hurt. How can you write so much :D
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Man, seriously, we should get a debate judge to declare a winner. FrozenArbitor and Gravity arguements are going nowhere.
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Also note that that another reason to focus more on recent years for stats is that for literally every Terran OSL win in the early years, a Zerg was second, so they didn't do quite as bad as it looks at first glance (ie at least they got to the finals). In the last 6 OSLs only one P has even been in the finals. The chance of this happening due to bad luck/cold streaks rather than imbalance is only about 5%.
edit: if you include the current OSL it's about 2.5%.
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EPT
