Chatter Plots: SC2 Data and Analysis

Firnafth

United States14 Posts

May 05 2019 00:30 GMT

We collect data from professional Starcraft 2 tournaments and summarize them to explore metagame trends.
Articles at root4root.com
Visualizations by Mina Ozgen
Data collection by Firnafth

Feel free to give us any feedback!

Released Content:

2019 Qlash Casters Invitational
Game Length, Units Used, Proxies and Tags
Raw Data

2019 WCS Winter Americas
Aggression
Proxies and Game Duration
Early Build Order
Raw Data

Other
Data Collection Methods

ZigguratOfUr

Iraq13975 Posts

May 05 2019 06:05 GMT

The data and the analyses you put out are all very interesting.

A few questions:

Have you tried collecting data from replays (when available)? There's some information you can't really collect that way of course (like the aggression information), but it seems like an easier (and more scalable) way of collecting build orders for instance.

Also is there a particular reason WCS America was chosen as the dataset? And have you considered collecting data from a tournament in another region and comparing the results?

MinaGOz

1 Post

May 05 2019 09:04 GMT

The reason behind which tournament is chosen to record data is down to whichever Firnafth wanted to watch and record. As far as improving ease and scalability, atm that hasnt been the focus and we didnt want to be dependent on the replay packs yet. It is fully possible that at some point in the future we record through replays but for now there isn't an intention to.

Firnafth

United States14 Posts

May 05 2019 13:02 GMT

Ziggurat - To be honest I originally planned to take data from GSL, which is my favorite tournament but does not release replay packs. Yet when I joined the Root content team, one of our other members claimed GSL as their focus, and I wanted to ensure we had a variety of tournaments covered, so I swapped to WCS Americas (for that time being). That's my region and I had hoped to watch it live while taking data, but to be honest I end up just watching VODs since there is no way I could keep up with an intensive broadcast schedule.

I do very much want to compare regions, but since not all of them release replays I think I will stick with my method, and also because think it would take a fairly long time for me, who has basic coding experience but knows nothing about replays, to figure out how to scrape things like whether an engagement is harassment or not from them. But to be honest the real reason is that I've taken data from over 300 games so far and feel deeply attached to my methods; I like watching the games.

I might consider a more careful build-order piece, derived from replay data, as a one-off I guess, but again I've become attached to my current methods.

Firnafth

United States14 Posts

June 12 2019 00:14 GMT

We have released a tool that allows you to search games by units used (and attack type, so you can search for just units used in harassment)! Search results are sorted by player and each game can be clicked on to bring you straight to a casted vod for it!

Search WCS Winter Americas and GSL Super Tournament 1 by Unit Composition

This piece makes use of the recently finished GSL Super Tournament 1 dataset; the raw data are here.

The next dataset will be for GSL Season 2, although it will be a while before it is completed. I wanted to do WCS Spring, but with so much of it not having casted vods (apparently) the sample size and selection would have been very poor. The good news is that adding GSL Season 2 will send our sample size for KR SC2 high enough that we can do some comparisons between it and WCS Americas, which will be super interesting.

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