EPTBut I mean a broken map, one with a 65:35 win rate, will still see, in games between equally matched players, see the 35% race win twice in a row 1/8 of the time. And if the 35% is slightly better, than the 65% player, even more frequently. The ASL sample sizes are much too small to make map balance calculations from them. The 19:10 sponbang stat isn't big enough either, but it is something. More to the point is you can see how zerg's approach the map. The three ASL games we've had this season has featured one proxy hatch and two lurker allins. There's a reason for this; zerg's know that they fare very poorly in a longer game, because the map is imbalanced.
[ASL10] Ro8 Day 4 - Page 15
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28695 Posts
But I mean a broken map, one with a 65:35 win rate, will still see, in games between equally matched players, see the 35% race win twice in a row 1/8 of the time. And if the 35% is slightly better, than the 65% player, even more frequently. The ASL sample sizes are much too small to make map balance calculations from them. The 19:10 sponbang stat isn't big enough either, but it is something. More to the point is you can see how zerg's approach the map. The three ASL games we've had this season has featured one proxy hatch and two lurker allins. There's a reason for this; zerg's know that they fare very poorly in a longer game, because the map is imbalanced. | ||
TaardadAiel
Bulgaria750 Posts
On October 29 2020 22:06 Liquid`Drone wrote: Plasma is most certainly not broken in favor of zerg. It is however, genuinely broken in favor of protoss. But I mean a broken map, one with a 65:35 win rate, will still see, in games between equally matched players, see the 35% race win twice in a row 1/8 of the time. And if the 35% is slightly better, than the 65% player, even more frequently. The ASL sample sizes are much too small to make map balance calculations from them. The 19:10 sponbang stat isn't big enough either, but it is something. More to the point is you can see how zerg's approach the map. The three ASL games we've had this season has featured one proxy hatch and two lurker allins. There's a reason for this; zerg's know that they fare very poorly in a longer game, because the map is imbalanced. I completely agree, but there was the idea that since both Snow and Best lost so handily on Plasma then it must be imbalanced in favor of Zerg. Now, the quick math Avi did has a slight problem - the overall win rate is close to 50%, but both outlier maps have comparatively fewer games played on them and the win rate in PvZ for most of the others is slightly below 50%, so I'd argue an aggregate between those might yield a lower overall PvZ win rate. I don't have the data in front of me and I'm not doing any math, I could be wrong, but what's more important is that I think this reflects the overall state of the matchup - the Zerg player pool is just a bit stronger than the Protoss one. Keep in mind this somewhat wide disparity between the results on sponbbang and ASL is in part due to Bisu being pretty strong online (in fact he has a positive record against EVERYONE IIRC) and getting eliminated in the Ro24 in 2 PvT bo1s. You could say he inflates the statistics. | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28695 Posts
That 45.5:54.5 imbalance is over 30000 games though. If you remove Bisu from that equation, you get 43.7% for p. (But removing either Zero, Action or Hero from the Zerg statistic will push it more in favor of protoss than removing Bisu pushes it in favor of Zerg, so imo, that's totally irrelevant. Removing Flash from Terran stats makes them look bad, too. ) | ||
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TaardadAiel
Bulgaria750 Posts
On October 29 2020 23:33 Liquid`Drone wrote: the 45.5:54.5 (or 45:55 the past months) imbalance is real. But that means 9:11 over 20 games, not 0:6 over 6. That 45.5:54.5 imbalance is over 30000 games though. If you remove Bisu from that equation, you get 43.7% for p. (But removing either Zero, Action or Hero from the Zerg statistic will push it more in favor of protoss than removing Bisu pushes it in favor of Zerg, so imo, that's totally irrelevant. Removing Flash from Terran stats makes them look bad, too. ) True. My point was that we're looking at averages on sponbbang and watching significant outliers play in the ASL, especially in the later stages. The only player whose ASL result was wildly different from his online stats is Best and I don't think that's even new. Actually, with the Zero/Action/Hero bit you confirmed my own feeling about the state of PvZ - the top Zerg pool is stronger than the top Protoss one right now. | ||
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Shinokuki
United States923 Posts
On October 29 2020 21:04 Avi-Love wrote: Honestly I'm starting to get really annoyed with the idiocy and misinformation in this thread, are you guys just completely out of touch with reality? Do you not follow the scene? Do you not understand the game at all? First of all Falsh's pvz has nothing to do with fucking reavers, he plays the most stock standard sair/zeal attack into zeal/ht into 8 gate and/or exp, he's been doing this for weeks. He actually had a lot of success, especially on ringing bloom, where he would consistently do well against the very best zergs -- it does seem like Zero started figuring out how to counter his style, and he would implement a lot of big drop (counter drop / doom drop) play with hydras. There were a couple of funny games where he would also drop drones and start manner hatcheries in the middle of Flash's main. Second of all there is absolutely no need for any sort of patch, if you think there is you're blind to the evolution of the game. Sc:bw is never going to be patched, any and all need for balance changes is done via maps, which gives more than enough room to tinker with things -- if you don't believe that, just look at how a lot of maps have completely changed the meta and mu balance throughout the ASL. Sparkle changed all of the matchups on their head, Ringing Bloom has made it more or less impossible to do 3hh, Plasma is the best map for protoss since Third World, etc etc etc. Thirdly, this map pool is NOT "super broken" or "impossible for pvz". Since Jan 2020 the win rates on the ASL maps are as follows: Polypoid 46.7% Eclipse 45.1% Optimizer 47.4% Ringing Bloom 52.2% Benzene 37.7% Shakuras Temple 47.7% (Spon has two of them, I took the one with the most games, I'm too lazy to merge them) Plasma 67.9%. My quick calculator potato math gives me an average PvZ win rate of 49.24% (I also checked since July, for a more recent, but smaller sample size, and the number ends up at 49.64%). Granted, both benzene and plasma have low'ish game counts and I suspect that if you were to do a weighted calculation where you also took into account the amount of games played, it would be a bit worse for protoss. But overall this map pool is *not* super imbalanced, nor is it the reason there is no protoss in the top 4. A FS/CB/Sylphid/Escalade type of map pool would be way closer to 40/60 than this, and would actually be potentially imbalanced, in my opinion. Lastly, I honestly thought it would be painfully obvious for everyone watching that Best lost because he played badly, showed up with a ton of nerves and probably got tilted after his absolute failure to execute his own build in game 1. Best didn't lose because of the maps, or because of the match ups -- we know for a fact that he actually performs really well against Zero, and in particularly he does so on these very maps. The mental gymnastics required to consider 3 games played on one day, in a high pressure LAN situation, is a better sample size than their individual games played over a span of 3 months is absolutely breathtaking. How can you be that delusional? And yeah Snow lost too, to a player he has been losing to consistently, on a wide variety of maps (mappools spanning several ASL/KSLs). People seem to also forget that both Snow and Best won PvZ games against top tier opponents (that they normally lose to) to even get to the ro8 in the ASL -- did you guys just forget, or does protoss winning against good zergs while being underdogs not fit into your narrative, so you choose to ignore it? (Since July, Best is 10-16 vs Action and Snow is 21-38 vs Hero in spon games) No need to be mad. Most of the players complaining about balance are probably sub 1500 players who have no idea how to play protoss. Soma said zvp is harder than zvt. Snow said pvz is easier than pvt. That's all you have to know. They don't even factor just how easier it is to play protoss at amateur level. Heck they did race war with pros and protoss came on top. Back then when we had korean clans, ever clan used to recruit C terrans/Zergs over B protoss because there were so many protoss who had high mmr back then. | ||
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Light-
United States25 Posts
T has a slight edge over Z (50.7%) and also against P (50.6%). The only big difference is in...you guessed it...ZvP (54.5%). What could it imply? It's been long believed that the races have a slight advantage over another, going like P>T>Z>P, but P is the only race that seems to fail to hold its advantage. It comes up short on its advantage vs. T, while being more relatively disadvantaged compared to the other races on its weaker side (vs. Z). And Terran is the only race that seems to be able to hold its advantage while overcoming its disadvantage. Races imba? Tesagi?? Well, I don't think the stats can be explained by the maps or player styles due to the format of the league and the large sample sizes. I began this post saying that the top players of each race ought to represent the maximum potential of each race, because it's not necessarily the case that being a top player means you're using your race at its best. This is self-evident in the evolution of the game. I think the only variables left to consider are the players and their races. And there's a fine, perhaps even indistinguishable line between player skill and the "maximum potential" of each race. How can we tell or be sure that a player would or wouldn't have lost based on the way they played? We can easily tell a low level player they lost because they didn't do this or that, because we can point to a higher level player who shows it can be done. We have examples and points of reference. But when those two things are your highest level players, where do you then turn to for answers? What's left other than to point at the race itself? I believe that is why balance talk has always been so engaging and enduring, why it's dangerous, and why what we've done with Brood War is so beautiful. Because we don't start messing with the game, the races, these fundamental, overarching things that can come down and destroy everything they govern, to solve a problem we think is there. But we stay patient, and have faith, and hope for something or someone new to show us, there's more yet to be had that will bring us relief. We get to keep what we love and watch it grow, adding to its beauty. And how amazing and exciting all those new discoveries and revolutions were. That's what makes BW amazing to me. Please don't take that away. | ||
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oxKnu
1207 Posts
Light has been really solid in last 1.5 years and is great in all match-ups. Flash only really loses in TvP vs Snow when he has some amazing game or when Best overwhelms him on some maps. | ||
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Light-
United States25 Posts
On October 29 2020 10:27 Essbee wrote: Agreed with all the above (whaski, Magic Powers and Light-). Great posts all around. Thank you for pushing the discussion positively with well thought out posts like that. Thanks for the kind words. I try to build on ideas and test them, I believe it helps bring out knowledge and deeper understanding that everyone benefits from. And I thank you for your part in encouraging that. On October 30 2020 04:35 oxKnu wrote: ^I think the explanation is pretty simple: Flash and Light. Light has been really solid in last 1.5 years and is great in all match-ups. Flash only really loses in TvP vs Snow when he has some amazing game or when Best overwhelms him on some maps. Flash and Light, our brightest players  I agree. In fact I think some of, if not the, most creative, quickest, skilled players in BW's history were Terran. Boxer, Nada, oov, Flash, Fantasy. So it's no coincidence to me that Terran has the nicest numbers. But I'll always be fond of Bisu and Jangbi as well, and I believe Protoss isn't finished yet. And I'll always look forward to the day when the mighty Protoss warrior overcomes the vile Zerg swarm. | ||
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Avi-Love
Denmark423 Posts
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Models
Canada88 Posts
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littlechava
United States7220 Posts
On October 30 2020 07:45 Models wrote: I think we need to buff protoss and remove 'siege mode' as an upgrade for terran. this doesn't solve the pvz dilemma though. maybe zerg units should move slower and lose hp when not on creep? | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On October 30 2020 06:53 Avi-Love wrote: I think using Ultimate Battle as a sample when you have sponbbang is either ignorant or downright dishonest, why would you not use the bigger and more recent sample size to gauge balance? The map pool has shifted about 5 times since the first Ultimate Battle, thankfully Colosseum, Medusa, Cross Game and such are no longer used (and FS/CB). Let me understand, in your opinion ZvP is not the most lopsided matchup there is in Brood War(players and maps aside)? | ||
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SolaR-
United States2685 Posts
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Models
Canada88 Posts
On October 30 2020 07:49 littlechava wrote: this doesn't solve the pvz dilemma though. maybe zerg units should move slower and lose hp when not on creep? This is true, I think zerg should remove at least one unit (they do have too many options) so I think if we keep spawning pool but you can ONLY make sunken colonies, no more zerglings. | ||
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Djabanete
United States2786 Posts
Without having worked through the correct math, I’m skeptical of the idea that tossing one heavily P-favored map into a pool of 55/45 Z-favored maps would be fair. Edit: You could also question the validity of those win probabilities, as some have done, but even if you take them at face value you cannot perform a simple average in this context. Example: If I play you in a Bo5 and I have a 100%, 100%, 0%, 0%, and 100% chance to win on the five maps, then I will win the Bo5 100% of the time, not 60% of the time, even though 60% is my “average” win probability each game. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria4436 Posts
And don't forget that professional BW is not in its greatest shape right now either. A smaller player base likely results in a slower rate of discoveries. If BW were to experience another boom, the chance of a protoss player shifting the PvZ balance through discovery would increase (of course the same is true for any race). In fact if this were to happen then it could result in an overall protoss dominance, because to this day the data suggests a slight advantage for protoss over terran. And if that happens, what are terran and zerg players supposed to do? Ask for a balance patch? I mean of course they'd want that, some people always blame balance first. In their mind things are never the fault of the players. They think they've got the statistics all figured out, while being blissfully unaware of the forces behind the numbers. I have absolutely no faith in Blizzard (or anyone tbh) to be able to interfere with the balance in the right way. But I do have faith in the ability of the players to change the course of a matchup. Maybe people need to take an even more sophisticated approach these days, as the meta has been pushed to a very high point. Maybe it's time to start doing mathematical breakdowns of the success rate of various strategies. I haven't seen anyone do that yet in the entire history of BW. Although some players have an approach similar to that. Bisu for example purposely accepts losing many consecutive games in order to exhaust the whole potential of a strategy before he decides on whether or not he sees enough potential in it. That's pretty much a scientific approach and it's probably a key reason for he's such a great player. Edit: had a hearty laugh at the funny- err, I mean very serious balance patch ideas in the most recent posts. Thanks for that, guys  | ||
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Essbee
Canada2371 Posts
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Light-
United States25 Posts
On October 30 2020 06:53 Avi-Love wrote: I think using Ultimate Battle as a sample when you have sponbbang is either ignorant or downright dishonest, why would you not use the bigger and more recent sample size to gauge balance? The map pool has shifted about 5 times since the first Ultimate Battle, thankfully Colosseum, Medusa, Cross Game and such are no longer used (and FS/CB). Ignorant and dishonest as to what? Well, I was looking at Ultimate Battle because I thought it was a good and reliable set of data to make inferences from. I come from a psychology background where case studies are very popular, and we believe that certain things are needed in making a valid assessment, such as having a large sample size, a representative population that features variation, and parity in testing. Applied to BW and balance talk, this I think means to have a lot of games played by the top players vs other top players on many different maps, with a large and distributed number of games amongst each player/map. And I think Ultimate Battle features this in a nice, controlled setting. But since Spon matches are not exclusively between top players and top players, and feature many a lopsided beatdown by one player on another, usually on whatever the current ASL maps are, there are potential confounds that I think are more serious than any to be found in Ultimate Battle. | ||
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kaspa84
Brazil169 Posts
On October 30 2020 02:59 Shinokuki wrote: No need to be mad. Most of the players complaining about balance are probably sub 1500 players who have no idea how to play protoss. Soma said zvp is harder than zvt. Snow said pvz is easier than pvt. That's all you have to know. They don't even factor just how easier it is to play protoss at amateur level. Heck they did race war with pros and protoss came on top. Back then when we had korean clans, ever clan used to recruit C terrans/Zergs over B protoss because there were so many protoss who had high mmr back then. They did race war and Protoss came on top... for the first time in 15 race wars lol. You really want to use that as an argument? | ||
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RKC
2848 Posts
On October 30 2020 08:45 Light- wrote: Ignorant and dishonest as to what? Well, I was looking at Ultimate Battle because I thought it was a good and reliable set of data to make inferences from. I come from a psychology background where case studies are very popular, and we believe that certain things are needed in making a valid assessment, such as having a large sample size, a representative population that features variation, and parity in testing. Applied to BW and balance talk, this I think means to have a lot of games played by the top players vs other top players on many different maps, with a large and distributed number of games amongst each player/map. And I think Ultimate Battle features this in a nice, controlled setting. But since Spon matches are not exclusively between top players and top players, and feature many a lopsided beatdown by one player on another, usually on whatever the current ASL maps are, there are potential confounds that I think are more serious than any to be found in Ultimate Battle. You're one of the more balanced poster here. Best to ignore the negativity. Keep it up! The same side who earlier said "Thank you for pushing the discussion positively with well thought out posts" now accuses you of being "either ignorant and downright dishonest". It's amazing how quick tides can shift. I guess "pushing the discussion positively" only happens when we're pushing the discussion towards one side | ||
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