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I don't think Protoss is the worst race - Page 5

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Avi-Love
Profile Joined November 2003
Denmark423 Posts
July 16 2022 09:11 GMT
#81
On July 16 2022 16:19 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 13:31 Avi-Love wrote:
In this thread: People looking to balance whine to make up for their own short comings, people incapable of analyzing data, someone that thinks the kespa era is still the pinnacle of bw (and still relevant) and lastly only a couple of genuinely unbiased and reasonable people.

All around terrible thread, the original post should have been locked instantly, the quality and 'discussion' it hoped to spark were doomed from the get go.


Most people regard the years leading up to and including 2012 the most competitive era, because that's when the trio of Flash/JD/Bisu was dominating the scene. That era is almost always mentioned first.
Today's standard of games is quite significantly lower, albeit still at a very high level.


You don't know what you're talking about, please stop posting. Firstly, It's very evident that bw has evolved *a lot* since 2010, and while progamers admit that maybe the mechnical skill of 2010 was slightly higher, the knowledge and meta has improved leaps and bounds -- it's fairly obvious to any viewer above a certain mmr that the game is being played at a higher level now than it was at the time.
Secondly, 2012 is a complete figment of your imagination, the 'competitiveness' of bw started declining the second progamers received access to the SC2 beta, which was in 2010. Unless you've deluded yourself into thinking progamers playing two games, and proleague having sc2 increased the skill level of bw...?
Thirdly, who are "most" people? I'd love to see your data on this, everyone I know that plays this game understands that it has *naturally* evolved over time. I think your obsesssion with both Bisu and Jaedong is a clear sign that you're living in the past and your mental gymnastics are stuck in the mud. Jaedong is garbage and has been for years, and Bisu chokes so hard that it's fairly obvious he's not even the best protoss player in a competitive setting.
Lastly, it is obvious that zvp is slightly zerg favoured. It is also fairly obvious that it has been for quite awhile -- the biggest change in balance over the last couple of years has been tvp swinging slightly towards being terran favoured.

So what does all of this mean? Does it mean bw needs a balance patch? Negative. Can it be fixed through maps? Absolutely. Is the goal of the ASL to have perfect map balance? Obviously not, they clearly value throwing in a couple of curveballs which is evident from historical data (Third world, Sparkle, Inner Coven etc). If you're a dumb foreigner losing x matchup at 1900 mmr on the ladder is it because of your race? No, you just suck. Stop having a shitty mentality and accept your shortcomings -- but it's a lot easier to whine and blame other factors than it is to look inward, hence this thread and the many replies in it, and why it's so pointless and should have been stopped straight away.
Lachrymose
Profile Joined February 2008
Australia1928 Posts
July 16 2022 09:24 GMT
#82
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.
~
TMNT
Profile Joined January 2021
2704 Posts
July 16 2022 10:10 GMT
#83
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?

Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
Last Edited: 2022-07-16 10:31:20
July 16 2022 10:16 GMT
#84
On July 16 2022 18:11 Avi-Love wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 16:19 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 13:31 Avi-Love wrote:
In this thread: People looking to balance whine to make up for their own short comings, people incapable of analyzing data, someone that thinks the kespa era is still the pinnacle of bw (and still relevant) and lastly only a couple of genuinely unbiased and reasonable people.

All around terrible thread, the original post should have been locked instantly, the quality and 'discussion' it hoped to spark were doomed from the get go.


Most people regard the years leading up to and including 2012 the most competitive era, because that's when the trio of Flash/JD/Bisu was dominating the scene. That era is almost always mentioned first.
Today's standard of games is quite significantly lower, albeit still at a very high level.


You don't know what you're talking about, please stop posting. Firstly, It's very evident that bw has evolved *a lot* since 2010, and while progamers admit that maybe the mechnical skill of 2010 was slightly higher, the knowledge and meta has improved leaps and bounds -- it's fairly obvious to any viewer above a certain mmr that the game is being played at a higher level now than it was at the time.
Secondly, 2012 is a complete figment of your imagination, the 'competitiveness' of bw started declining the second progamers received access to the SC2 beta, which was in 2010. Unless you've deluded yourself into thinking progamers playing two games, and proleague having sc2 increased the skill level of bw...?
Thirdly, who are "most" people? I'd love to see your data on this, everyone I know that plays this game understands that it has *naturally* evolved over time. I think your obsesssion with both Bisu and Jaedong is a clear sign that you're living in the past and your mental gymnastics are stuck in the mud. Jaedong is garbage and has been for years, and Bisu chokes so hard that it's fairly obvious he's not even the best protoss player in a competitive setting.
Lastly, it is obvious that zvp is slightly zerg favoured. It is also fairly obvious that it has been for quite awhile -- the biggest change in balance over the last couple of years has been tvp swinging slightly towards being terran favoured.

So what does all of this mean? Does it mean bw needs a balance patch? Negative. Can it be fixed through maps? Absolutely. Is the goal of the ASL to have perfect map balance? Obviously not, they clearly value throwing in a couple of curveballs which is evident from historical data (Third world, Sparkle, Inner Coven etc). If you're a dumb foreigner losing x matchup at 1900 mmr on the ladder is it because of your race? No, you just suck. Stop having a shitty mentality and accept your shortcomings -- but it's a lot easier to whine and blame other factors than it is to look inward, hence this thread and the many replies in it, and why it's so pointless and should have been stopped straight away.


I'm not going to stop posting just because you ask me so nicely, tyvm. And I know very well what I'm talking about, because I've been around since the very early days of SC, I know the historical development of most of the strategies, discoveries and trends, I've followed the pro scene and a decent portion of the amateur scene, and I have a good understanding of statistical fallacies.
The balance debate has raged for decades and it was never settled. It's never been proven beyond doubt that PvZ is actually imbalanced, it's only been shown that protoss players are losing more than zerg players. That by itself is not proof of imbalance, it's only an indicator that needs supporting evidence, of which none has ever been found.

2012 marks the end of the most competitive era of BW because of the migration of much of the pro scene to SC2. The latter is not up to debate, it's a fact.

Furthermore, this observation "the biggest change in balance over the last couple of years has been tvp swinging slightly towards being terran favoured." - i.e. terran having a positive record against protoss post-Kespa - is a perfect example of the observed winrate changing over time by several percentage points. Several percentage points. Ring a bell? 54% ZvP winrate? If this is a natural development, then it can just as well happen in the other matchups without any changes to the balance. Somehow your argument is that ZvP can only be imbalanced as demonstrated by the 54% ZvP winrate, even though provably another matchup statistic in TvP has demonstrably shifted over several years, which can just as much happen in ZvP as well (in either direction).

You're lazer focusing on the ZvP winrate to support your hypothesis of imbalance, but you're ignoring other data points when they point to some unknown variables being in play that contradict your hypothesis.

Edit:
Furthermore, you're contradicting yourself. On the one hand you're rejecting the claim that the late Kespa era was the most competitive era, on the other hand you're outright admitting that JD's and Bisu's skills have strongly declined.

"Jaedong is garbage and has been for years, and Bisu chokes so hard that it's fairly obvious he's not even the best protoss player in a competitive setting."

Please point to one player post-Kespa who has a winrate of >70% in any of the matchups, other than Flash. I'll wait.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
July 16 2022 10:19 GMT
#85
On July 16 2022 19:10 TMNT wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?



The effect is always the same regardless of the winrate, unless a player has a 100% winrate. If you flood a field with protoss players, even if they have a winrate that is lower than 50%, the likelihood will increase that the finals consist of one or more protoss players.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
July 16 2022 10:25 GMT
#86
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Lachrymose
Profile Joined February 2008
Australia1928 Posts
July 16 2022 10:34 GMT
#87
On July 16 2022 19:19 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:10 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?



The effect is always the same regardless of the winrate, unless a player has a 100% winrate. If you flood a field with protoss players, even if they have a winrate that is lower than 50%, the likelihood will increase that the finals consist of one or more protoss players.

Sure, but the effect isn't as strong as you think because the winner doesn't play every other entrant in series. Every time you double the entrants the winner plays 1 more game.

2 entrants: 1 game
4 entrants: 2 games
8 entrants: 3 games

At this point you can add another 8 PokJus to the tournament and Flash only has to beat one more. Then you have to add another 16 PokJus to reduce Flash's win chance again.

The reason you're getting a nice pretty number like 6.25% that sounds like it supports your argument is because you're making assumptions that lead to Flash having a 12.5% winrate in tournament vs 7 PokJus.

If Flash has an 75% TvP series winrate (against top pros) in title playoffs that receive his full focus you end up having to add a truly absurd amount of PokJus to make Protoss likely to win.
~
Lachrymose
Profile Joined February 2008
Australia1928 Posts
July 16 2022 10:44 GMT
#88
On July 16 2022 19:25 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.

The issue isn't the data. The issue is you assuming causation without proving it and then assuming the direction of the causation without proving it.

You collected data points A and B.
You explicitly claimed A causes B without evidence or argument.
You implicitly rejected B may instead be causing A without evidence or argument.

Your response to this being highlighted is only to reassert that the data points A and B exist and are valid.

You're missing the point.
~
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
July 16 2022 10:46 GMT
#89
On July 16 2022 19:34 Lachrymose wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:19 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:10 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?



The effect is always the same regardless of the winrate, unless a player has a 100% winrate. If you flood a field with protoss players, even if they have a winrate that is lower than 50%, the likelihood will increase that the finals consist of one or more protoss players.

Sure, but the effect isn't as strong as you think because the winner doesn't play every other entrant in series. Every time you double the entrants the winner plays 1 more game.

2 entrants: 1 game
4 entrants: 2 games
8 entrants: 3 games

At this point you can add another 8 PokJus to the tournament and Flash only has to beat one more. Then you have to add another 16 PokJus to reduce Flash's win chance again.

The reason you're getting a nice pretty number like 6.25% that sounds like it supports your argument is because you're making assumptions that lead to Flash having a 12.5% winrate in tournament vs 7 PokJus.

If Flash has an 75% TvP series winrate (against top pros) in title playoffs that receive his full focus you end up having to add a truly absurd amount of PokJus to make Protoss likely to win.


Of course the effect is smaller or greater depending on the exact field, but the effect is always the same. With each protoss player you add to the field, the likelihood of a protoss player in the finals goes up, and thus also the likelihood for more protoss titles. You can actually do the math for yourself with various field sizes and using only two races for simplification sake, adjust the winrates, adjust the racial representation, do it as much as you want. You'll see a superior player's chance of survival go down incrementally with each additional player in the field. And as a collective the same thing happens.
The fact remains that a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the tournaments, and so a smaller number of titles is perfectly expected due to underrepresentation.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
TMNT
Profile Joined January 2021
2704 Posts
July 16 2022 10:47 GMT
#90
On July 16 2022 19:19 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:10 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?



The effect is always the same regardless of the winrate, unless a player has a 100% winrate. If you flood a field with protoss players, even if they have a winrate that is lower than 50%, the likelihood will increase that the finals consist of one or more protoss players.

No it won't, unless you flood a field with Bisus and Storks. If you flood a field of Britneys, they will all get knocked out before the quarterfinals lol. In theory, yeah you'll get an increase of chance, but only marginally, like less than 1% or something. Have you heard of a thing call betting odds? It happens in every sport. If you add 100 other low level tennis players to the Roland Gaross, the finals will just consist of some guys from Spain/Serbia/Swiss anyway.

But you can't even flood a field with Protoss players anyway. It's just impossible. In reality, like I said, they got wiped off during the qualifiers already.


Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
July 16 2022 10:48 GMT
#91
On July 16 2022 19:44 Lachrymose wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:25 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.

The issue isn't the data. The issue is you assuming causation without proving it and then assuming the direction of the causation without proving it.

You collected data points A and B.
You explicitly claimed A causes B without evidence or argument.
You implicitly rejected B may instead be causing A without evidence or argument.

Your response to this being highlighted is only to reassert that the data points A and B exist and are valid.

You're missing the point.


I provided the data that protoss IS in fact underrepresented. From that underrepresentation it can only be concluded that a protoss winning a title is less likely, and therefore it's a good explanation for a lack of protoss titles.

Whatever causes the underrepresentation of protoss players is another story. I have ideas about that, and my hypothesis is that it's mainly due to a zerg overrepresentation from a historic preference for that race. That part of my argumentation is speculative and you can choose to ignore it, but you can't ignore the observation that zerg is in fact overrepresented in the tournaments.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
July 16 2022 10:56 GMT
#92
On July 16 2022 19:47 TMNT wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:19 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:10 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?



The effect is always the same regardless of the winrate, unless a player has a 100% winrate. If you flood a field with protoss players, even if they have a winrate that is lower than 50%, the likelihood will increase that the finals consist of one or more protoss players.

No it won't, unless you flood a field with Bisus and Storks. If you flood a field of Britneys, they will all get knocked out before the quarterfinals lol. In theory, yeah you'll get an increase of chance, but only marginally, like less than 1% or something. Have you heard of a thing call betting odds? It happens in every sport. If you add 100 other low level tennis players to the Roland Gaross, the finals will just consist of some guys from Spain/Serbia/Swiss anyway.

But you can't even flood a field with Protoss players anyway. It's just impossible. In reality, like I said, they got wiped off during the qualifiers already.


No, you're wrong. And it's very easy to prove this with mathematics.

I'm going to assume that there's a field of players with Flash in it, who has a 95% winrate (per match) against each individual player. The winrate of the other players against one another is irrelevant for this example, because they act as a collective. We're searching for Flash's survival rate against all players, i.e. his odds of winning the tournament, which is single-elimination.

1) There are four players in the field (Flash has three competitors)

Flash plays a match and moves into the finals with a 95% chance.
Flash plays the finals and wins with a 95% chance.
Total chance of Flash winning the tournament = 95% * 0.95
95% * 0.95 = 90.25%

2) There are eight players in the field (Flash has seven competitors)

Flash plays a match and moves into the semi-finals with a 95% chance.
Flash plays the semi-finals and wins with a 95% chance.
Flash plays the finals and wins with a 95% chance.
Total chance of Flash winning the tournament = 95% * 0.95 * 0.95
95% * 0.95 * 0.95 = 85.7375%

Observation: doubling the field size decreases Flash's odds of survival by ~4.51%
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Lachrymose
Profile Joined February 2008
Australia1928 Posts
Last Edited: 2022-07-16 11:04:36
July 16 2022 10:56 GMT
#93
On July 16 2022 19:46 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:34 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:19 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:10 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?



The effect is always the same regardless of the winrate, unless a player has a 100% winrate. If you flood a field with protoss players, even if they have a winrate that is lower than 50%, the likelihood will increase that the finals consist of one or more protoss players.

Sure, but the effect isn't as strong as you think because the winner doesn't play every other entrant in series. Every time you double the entrants the winner plays 1 more game.

2 entrants: 1 game
4 entrants: 2 games
8 entrants: 3 games

At this point you can add another 8 PokJus to the tournament and Flash only has to beat one more. Then you have to add another 16 PokJus to reduce Flash's win chance again.

The reason you're getting a nice pretty number like 6.25% that sounds like it supports your argument is because you're making assumptions that lead to Flash having a 12.5% winrate in tournament vs 7 PokJus.

If Flash has an 75% TvP series winrate (against top pros) in title playoffs that receive his full focus you end up having to add a truly absurd amount of PokJus to make Protoss likely to win.


Of course the effect is smaller or greater depending on the exact field, but the effect is always the same. With each protoss player you add to the field, the likelihood of a protoss player in the finals goes up, and thus also the likelihood for more protoss titles. You can actually do the math for yourself with various field sizes and using only two races for simplification sake, adjust the winrates, adjust the racial representation, do it as much as you want. You'll see a superior player's chance of survival go down incrementally with each additional player in the field. And as a collective the same thing happens.
The fact remains that a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the tournaments, and so a smaller number of titles is perfectly expected due to underrepresentation.

It goes down every time you double the field. This is because every time you flood the field with Protoss players they end up mostly playing and eliminating other Protoss players so the value you get for adding another Protoss player goes down with every Protoss player you add.

If you already have the best 31 Protoss players in the world you have to add another 32 Protoss players to add another round to the tournament. What exactly do you think is the bo3 winrate of the 32nd-63rd best Protoss player in the world? If you go again the game you're adding to Flash's tournament is the 64th-127th best Protoss player in the world. At this point we're probably actually starting to get into the 100% winrate area where your admit your assumptions no longer hold.
~
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
Last Edited: 2022-07-16 11:22:55
July 16 2022 11:15 GMT
#94
On July 16 2022 19:56 Lachrymose wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:46 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:34 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:19 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:10 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 16:15 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 06:27 TMNT wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

First of all, this way of reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The bold part is only true if you consider every single player entering the competition is equally good and has the same chance of winning. You can add 100 another Britneys to the Protoss list and it'd increase 0 title for the race.

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. Using your way of thinking, I can explain the reason Asian teams have never won a world cup is under-representation. I hope now you can see the flaw in your logic.

Secondly, this data is too raw. I performed the same filter that you probably did and got those numbers too - but this is literally a list of players who have an entry on liquipedia, regardless of era and level. Many have never played an "SL", and I still see some female BJs there. You might as well pull the player pool from ladder (in that case, Protoss overrepresenting at 50%). And the opposite also applies: there are progamers who played OSL/MSL who still don't have a liquipedia entry.

A better approach would be to count the number of players for each race in each SL, but I doubt any of us have time to do that. But then again, even if you find an under-representation of Protoss, it goes back to point one.

And tbh, I think if Protoss is under-represented at SLs, it actually supports the argument that Protoss is the worst race at the top level. You know why? Because a bigger proportion of them was wiped off in the qualifiers already. It also agrees with the fact that Protoss players account for like 50% of the ladder pool, but only like 40% in S rank.


Your claim (bold part) is wrong. To illustrate this, if you have a field of 16 players which consists of 15 A and 1 B, with both A and B having a 50% winrate, the odds of winning a single-elimination tournament are 6.25% for B. If you even out the number of A and B to 8 each, the odds of winning are 50% for both A and B.
So you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the representation of a race affects overall win probability in a tournament.

What? Have you not read a word I wrote before that bold part? Or the example I gave after that bold part? What is this madness???

Your example (of 16 players) is literally the case where every single player entering the competition is equally good and have the same chance of winning (hence you have all of them at 50% win rate) - which is never the case. How could you not understand this?



The effect is always the same regardless of the winrate, unless a player has a 100% winrate. If you flood a field with protoss players, even if they have a winrate that is lower than 50%, the likelihood will increase that the finals consist of one or more protoss players.

Sure, but the effect isn't as strong as you think because the winner doesn't play every other entrant in series. Every time you double the entrants the winner plays 1 more game.

2 entrants: 1 game
4 entrants: 2 games
8 entrants: 3 games

At this point you can add another 8 PokJus to the tournament and Flash only has to beat one more. Then you have to add another 16 PokJus to reduce Flash's win chance again.

The reason you're getting a nice pretty number like 6.25% that sounds like it supports your argument is because you're making assumptions that lead to Flash having a 12.5% winrate in tournament vs 7 PokJus.

If Flash has an 75% TvP series winrate (against top pros) in title playoffs that receive his full focus you end up having to add a truly absurd amount of PokJus to make Protoss likely to win.


Of course the effect is smaller or greater depending on the exact field, but the effect is always the same. With each protoss player you add to the field, the likelihood of a protoss player in the finals goes up, and thus also the likelihood for more protoss titles. You can actually do the math for yourself with various field sizes and using only two races for simplification sake, adjust the winrates, adjust the racial representation, do it as much as you want. You'll see a superior player's chance of survival go down incrementally with each additional player in the field. And as a collective the same thing happens.
The fact remains that a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the tournaments, and so a smaller number of titles is perfectly expected due to underrepresentation.

It goes down every time you double the field. This is because every time you flood the field with Protoss players they end up mostly playing and eliminating other Protoss players so the value you get for adding another Protoss player goes down with every Protoss player you add.

If you already have the best 31 Protoss players in the world you have to add another 32 Protoss players to add another round to the tournament. What exactly do you think is the bo3 winrate of the 32nd-63rd best Protoss player in the world? If you go again the game you're adding to Flash's tournament is the 64th-127th best Protoss player in the world. At this point we're probably actually starting to get into the 100% winrate area where your admit your assumptions no longer hold.


Of course some of the newly added players would eliminate one another, but it also increases their chance of survival to a later point in the tournament, for one because they either face one another more often (mirror matchups provide a 100% chance of a player of that race advancing to the next round), and also because there are a few more hurdles to overcome for the players of the opposing races. The fact remains that the total chance of survival for that race goes up very significantly. And every little bit matters when it comes to survival against a field, i.e. more titles for that race. If one race is represented with only 27% of players, those players cannot overcome that (as a collective) in the long run unless they demonstrate a superior winrate.

You can keep believing that leveling out the field would only have slightly improved the odds of protoss titles, but that's simply not right. The odds would've gone up a whole lot. Again, I can post the field sizes from individual tournaments.

These are a few common examples:

1) 2012 tving OnGameNet Starleague (slightly favoring zerg over protoss/terran)
Zerg 7
Protoss 5
Terran 4

2) 2011 ABC Mart MBCGame StarCraft League (slightly favoring zerg over protoss/terran)
Zerg 12
Terran 11
Protoss 9

And this is an extreme example (there are quite a bunch like that):

3) 2010 Korean Air OnGameNet Starleague Season 1
Zerg 18
Terran 14
Protoss 8

And of course, there are also some examples when protoss was overrepresented, but those are quite rare, and it was never by a large margin.
Also note that the cases of zerg overrepresentation are very numerous. Terran and protoss are usually underrepresented, in particular protoss. Fewer titles are obviously expected (for anyone who understand probabilities).

Oh and also, the argument that a flood of players would partially eliminate one another, that is of course true, but it also goes the other way. If they're less numerous and face one another, their odds of collective survival go down in that case as well. Only that they're less likely to face one another if they're less numerous, but the impact of eliminating one another also becomes greater.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Lachrymose
Profile Joined February 2008
Australia1928 Posts
July 16 2022 11:30 GMT
#95
On July 16 2022 19:48 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:44 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:25 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.

The issue isn't the data. The issue is you assuming causation without proving it and then assuming the direction of the causation without proving it.

You collected data points A and B.
You explicitly claimed A causes B without evidence or argument.
You implicitly rejected B may instead be causing A without evidence or argument.

Your response to this being highlighted is only to reassert that the data points A and B exist and are valid.

You're missing the point.


I provided the data that protoss IS in fact underrepresented. From that underrepresentation it can only be concluded that a protoss winning a title is less likely, and therefore it's a good explanation for a lack of protoss titles.

Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins. This is sound, yes.
Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation. But this is also sound. And it leads to:
[...] Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation [...] This is a positive feedback loop. You can't just walk into it at an arbitrary point and call it the start and say it explains things.

Whatever causes the underrepresentation of protoss players is another story. I have ideas about that, and my hypothesis is that it's mainly due to a zerg overrepresentation from a historic preference for that race. That part of my argumentation is speculative and you can choose to ignore it, but you can't ignore the observation that zerg is in fact overrepresented in the tournaments.

The fact that you call this 'another story' and don't realise it is the whole story is the problem. Your headcannon that Protoss representation was repressed because of non-gameplay bias toward playing Zerg is extremely questionable and the fact that you imply this affected Protoss more than Terran already implies a race balance issue anyway. You don't see heroes with terrible winrates flood the pickrates at TI. You don't see shit guns flood the buy rates at a CSGO major. You don't see low tier characters flood top8 at Evo. There's no good reason to believe that Broodwar is somehow different.
~
Liquid`Drone
Profile Joined September 2002
Norway28664 Posts
July 16 2022 11:32 GMT
#96
Protoss has a lower % of champions (17 of 73 for osl msl asl, or 23%) than they have % of competitors. Not doing the math, but I'm guessing this difference roughly matches what a 46.5% win rate gets you.

Moderator
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
July 16 2022 11:39 GMT
#97
On July 16 2022 20:30 Lachrymose wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 19:48 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:44 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:25 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.

The issue isn't the data. The issue is you assuming causation without proving it and then assuming the direction of the causation without proving it.

You collected data points A and B.
You explicitly claimed A causes B without evidence or argument.
You implicitly rejected B may instead be causing A without evidence or argument.

Your response to this being highlighted is only to reassert that the data points A and B exist and are valid.

You're missing the point.


I provided the data that protoss IS in fact underrepresented. From that underrepresentation it can only be concluded that a protoss winning a title is less likely, and therefore it's a good explanation for a lack of protoss titles.

Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins. This is sound, yes.
Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation. But this is also sound. And it leads to:
[...] Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation [...] This is a positive feedback loop. You can't just walk into it at an arbitrary point and call it the start and say it explains things.

Show nested quote +
Whatever causes the underrepresentation of protoss players is another story. I have ideas about that, and my hypothesis is that it's mainly due to a zerg overrepresentation from a historic preference for that race. That part of my argumentation is speculative and you can choose to ignore it, but you can't ignore the observation that zerg is in fact overrepresented in the tournaments.

The fact that you call this 'another story' and don't realise it is the whole story is the problem. Your headcannon that Protoss representation was repressed because of non-gameplay bias toward playing Zerg is extremely questionable and the fact that you imply this affected Protoss more than Terran already implies a race balance issue anyway. You don't see heroes with terrible winrates flood the pickrates at TI. You don't see shit guns flood the buy rates at a CSGO major. You don't see low tier characters flood top8 at Evo. There's no good reason to believe that Broodwar is somehow different.


If you want to explain the lacking protoss representation using the protoss winrate(s), then you'd have to also use the same reasoning to explain the zerg overrepresentation. Unfortunately this leads to a contradiction. Zerg players have the most balanced overall winrate of approximately 50% (or very slightly above). This would mean that, if the winrate dictated representation, then zerg players would be expected to make up approximately 33.3% of a tournament field on average. But this doesn't match the observation, as zerg is clearly very overrepresented, as much if not even more overrepresented than protoss is underrepresented. Furthermore, terran should be the most overrepresented race, but this doesn't match the observation either.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Lachrymose
Profile Joined February 2008
Australia1928 Posts
Last Edited: 2022-07-16 12:05:15
July 16 2022 11:59 GMT
#98
On July 16 2022 20:39 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 20:30 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:48 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:44 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:25 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.

The issue isn't the data. The issue is you assuming causation without proving it and then assuming the direction of the causation without proving it.

You collected data points A and B.
You explicitly claimed A causes B without evidence or argument.
You implicitly rejected B may instead be causing A without evidence or argument.

Your response to this being highlighted is only to reassert that the data points A and B exist and are valid.

You're missing the point.


I provided the data that protoss IS in fact underrepresented. From that underrepresentation it can only be concluded that a protoss winning a title is less likely, and therefore it's a good explanation for a lack of protoss titles.

Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins. This is sound, yes.
Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation. But this is also sound. And it leads to:
[...] Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation [...] This is a positive feedback loop. You can't just walk into it at an arbitrary point and call it the start and say it explains things.

Whatever causes the underrepresentation of protoss players is another story. I have ideas about that, and my hypothesis is that it's mainly due to a zerg overrepresentation from a historic preference for that race. That part of my argumentation is speculative and you can choose to ignore it, but you can't ignore the observation that zerg is in fact overrepresented in the tournaments.

The fact that you call this 'another story' and don't realise it is the whole story is the problem. Your headcannon that Protoss representation was repressed because of non-gameplay bias toward playing Zerg is extremely questionable and the fact that you imply this affected Protoss more than Terran already implies a race balance issue anyway. You don't see heroes with terrible winrates flood the pickrates at TI. You don't see shit guns flood the buy rates at a CSGO major. You don't see low tier characters flood top8 at Evo. There's no good reason to believe that Broodwar is somehow different.


If you want to explain the lacking protoss representation using the protoss winrate(s), then you'd have to also use the same reasoning to explain the zerg overrepresentation. Unfortunately this leads to a contradiction. Zerg players have the most balanced overall winrate of approximately 50% (or very slightly above). This would mean that, if the winrate dictated representation, then zerg players would be expected to make up approximately 33.3% of a tournament field on average. But this doesn't match the observation, as zerg is clearly very overrepresented, as much if not even more overrepresented than protoss is underrepresented. Furthermore, terran should be the most overrepresented race, but this doesn't match the observation either.

No, because I think it is more complicated than you make out. I think the representation is more in line with the winrates at practice partner level. Titles are more in line with the winrates at Flash level.

Terran being hard to win with at low levels might suppress Terran representation: Few candidate pros.
Protoss being hard to win with at high levels might suppress Protoss representation: Many candidate pros, few actual pros.
Zerg having a good vP matchup and bad vT matchup would end up overrepresented in such an environment.

Maybe I am wrong, I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think it's a better theory than "it was just random/unrelated."
~
Magic Powers
Profile Joined April 2012
Austria4091 Posts
Last Edited: 2022-07-16 12:12:40
July 16 2022 12:12 GMT
#99
On July 16 2022 20:59 Lachrymose wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 20:39 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 20:30 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:48 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:44 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:25 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.

The issue isn't the data. The issue is you assuming causation without proving it and then assuming the direction of the causation without proving it.

You collected data points A and B.
You explicitly claimed A causes B without evidence or argument.
You implicitly rejected B may instead be causing A without evidence or argument.

Your response to this being highlighted is only to reassert that the data points A and B exist and are valid.

You're missing the point.


I provided the data that protoss IS in fact underrepresented. From that underrepresentation it can only be concluded that a protoss winning a title is less likely, and therefore it's a good explanation for a lack of protoss titles.

Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins. This is sound, yes.
Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation. But this is also sound. And it leads to:
[...] Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation [...] This is a positive feedback loop. You can't just walk into it at an arbitrary point and call it the start and say it explains things.

Whatever causes the underrepresentation of protoss players is another story. I have ideas about that, and my hypothesis is that it's mainly due to a zerg overrepresentation from a historic preference for that race. That part of my argumentation is speculative and you can choose to ignore it, but you can't ignore the observation that zerg is in fact overrepresented in the tournaments.

The fact that you call this 'another story' and don't realise it is the whole story is the problem. Your headcannon that Protoss representation was repressed because of non-gameplay bias toward playing Zerg is extremely questionable and the fact that you imply this affected Protoss more than Terran already implies a race balance issue anyway. You don't see heroes with terrible winrates flood the pickrates at TI. You don't see shit guns flood the buy rates at a CSGO major. You don't see low tier characters flood top8 at Evo. There's no good reason to believe that Broodwar is somehow different.


If you want to explain the lacking protoss representation using the protoss winrate(s), then you'd have to also use the same reasoning to explain the zerg overrepresentation. Unfortunately this leads to a contradiction. Zerg players have the most balanced overall winrate of approximately 50% (or very slightly above). This would mean that, if the winrate dictated representation, then zerg players would be expected to make up approximately 33.3% of a tournament field on average. But this doesn't match the observation, as zerg is clearly very overrepresented, as much if not even more overrepresented than protoss is underrepresented. Furthermore, terran should be the most overrepresented race, but this doesn't match the observation either.

No, because I think it is more complicated than you make out. I think the representation is more in line with the winrates at practice partner level. Titles are more in line with the winrates at Flash level.

Terran being hard to win with at low levels might suppress Terran representation: Few candidate pros.
Protoss being hard to win with at high levels might suppress Protoss representation: Many candidate pros, few actual pros.
Zerg having a good vP matchup and bad vT matchup would end up overrepresented in such an environment.

Maybe I am wrong, I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think it's a better theory than "it was just random/unrelated."


Well I mean ok, the point I'm arguing is that it's difficult to figure out what actually causes the lack of titles, wins, representation, etc. and that pointing to imbalance results in many contradictions.
And I do not agree that you can use a certain reasoning to explain protoss representation, but not use it to explain zerg representation. You have to be consistent.
If you want to do the right thing, 80% of your job is done if you don't do the wrong thing.
Lachrymose
Profile Joined February 2008
Australia1928 Posts
July 16 2022 12:20 GMT
#100
On July 16 2022 21:12 Magic Powers wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 16 2022 20:59 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 20:39 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 20:30 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:48 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:44 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 19:25 Magic Powers wrote:
On July 16 2022 18:24 Lachrymose wrote:
On July 16 2022 04:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Alright, I've added the remaining names from the list, and now the stats went from this:
Terran: 44 (31.4%)
Zerg: 58 (41.4%)
Protoss: 38 (27.1%)

To this:
Terran: 117 (31%)
Zerg: 148 (40.5%)
Protoss: 104 (28.5%)

I'll also note that I recognize almost 100% of the players' usernames from the Kespa era. This is not a list including post-Kespa girl streamers or anything of that sort. (almost) every single one of these players is a legit competitor.

The conclusion remains the same. Protoss is underrepresented, which explains why a severe underrepresentation of protoss players has been observed in the individual leagues, which would obviously lead to fewer titles won.
Especially when noting the observed Kespa era ZvP winrate of ~54%, it makes even more sense that the smaller pool of protoss players would end up winning a lot fewer titles.

I don't see how my argument lacks validity in any reasonable sense. You can choose to keep believing in ZvP imbalance, but the data is undeniably biased against protoss.

You can't just assume the relationship between Protoss professional population and Protoss titles is causative in the direction you want. You can't just assume the causative relationship isn't opposite (there's less Protoss population because Protoss is a less-winning race).

You can't just assume that less people chose to play Protoss randomly without any weighting. If you roll a three sided die and roll Green significantly less than you roll Blue or Red then the most likely explanation is something is wrong with your die.

If race choice were random it is much, much more likely that the populations of players are more equal at the casual and pre-amateur stages and some other pressure is causing Zerg and Terran players to be more likely to transition to professional and title winner.

In all likelihood we can go even further than this. Literally every single person agrees that Protoss is the easiest race and most successful at very low skill levels and so it makes sense that Protoss actually has the most candidate players at the pre-amateur level and yet they will go on to have the least pros and the least title winners.

In my opinion the simple and uncontroversial explanation that Protoss is easier but ultimately weaker is more likely than your explanation that randomly less people picked the green race.


I don't make the data. Zerg is clearly overrepresented in the pro scene, and that is despite zerg not having a greater overall winrate than terran. Protoss is underrepresented in the pro scene. Please go ahead and point out errors in the data I've collected, e.g. you could count the number of Korean players in the list that aren't progamers from the Kespa era and thus allow us to figure out a corrected distribution of the three races.
So I'm not concluding from fewer protoss titles that protoss is underrepresented. I've straight up demonstrated that protoss is underrepresented. If you like I can post a random sample of individual tournaments so you can see how strongly biased against protoss the racial representation actually is.

An effect of racial overrepresentation in tournaments is that it increases the odds of a race to enter the finals and win the tournament. The math gets complicated with big numbers, but it's always the same effect.

The issue isn't the data. The issue is you assuming causation without proving it and then assuming the direction of the causation without proving it.

You collected data points A and B.
You explicitly claimed A causes B without evidence or argument.
You implicitly rejected B may instead be causing A without evidence or argument.

Your response to this being highlighted is only to reassert that the data points A and B exist and are valid.

You're missing the point.


I provided the data that protoss IS in fact underrepresented. From that underrepresentation it can only be concluded that a protoss winning a title is less likely, and therefore it's a good explanation for a lack of protoss titles.

Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins. This is sound, yes.
Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation. But this is also sound. And it leads to:
[...] Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation -> Less Protoss wins -> Less Protoss representation [...] This is a positive feedback loop. You can't just walk into it at an arbitrary point and call it the start and say it explains things.

Whatever causes the underrepresentation of protoss players is another story. I have ideas about that, and my hypothesis is that it's mainly due to a zerg overrepresentation from a historic preference for that race. That part of my argumentation is speculative and you can choose to ignore it, but you can't ignore the observation that zerg is in fact overrepresented in the tournaments.

The fact that you call this 'another story' and don't realise it is the whole story is the problem. Your headcannon that Protoss representation was repressed because of non-gameplay bias toward playing Zerg is extremely questionable and the fact that you imply this affected Protoss more than Terran already implies a race balance issue anyway. You don't see heroes with terrible winrates flood the pickrates at TI. You don't see shit guns flood the buy rates at a CSGO major. You don't see low tier characters flood top8 at Evo. There's no good reason to believe that Broodwar is somehow different.


If you want to explain the lacking protoss representation using the protoss winrate(s), then you'd have to also use the same reasoning to explain the zerg overrepresentation. Unfortunately this leads to a contradiction. Zerg players have the most balanced overall winrate of approximately 50% (or very slightly above). This would mean that, if the winrate dictated representation, then zerg players would be expected to make up approximately 33.3% of a tournament field on average. But this doesn't match the observation, as zerg is clearly very overrepresented, as much if not even more overrepresented than protoss is underrepresented. Furthermore, terran should be the most overrepresented race, but this doesn't match the observation either.

No, because I think it is more complicated than you make out. I think the representation is more in line with the winrates at practice partner level. Titles are more in line with the winrates at Flash level.

Terran being hard to win with at low levels might suppress Terran representation: Few candidate pros.
Protoss being hard to win with at high levels might suppress Protoss representation: Many candidate pros, few actual pros.
Zerg having a good vP matchup and bad vT matchup would end up overrepresented in such an environment.

Maybe I am wrong, I don't claim to have all the answers, but I think it's a better theory than "it was just random/unrelated."


Well I mean ok, the point I'm arguing is that it's difficult to figure out what actually causes the lack of titles, wins, representation, etc. and that pointing to imbalance results in many contradictions.
And I do not agree that you can use a certain reasoning to explain protoss representation, but not use it to explain zerg representation. You have to be consistent.

Says the person claiming Protoss titles are caused by representation while also showing Zerg titles don't align with representation. I don't think what I said is inherently inconsistent, but your stance on representation:titles absolutely is.
~
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