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Active: 9003 users

keep pumping workers! 34k games => 4 charts

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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1 2 3 Next All
dsjoerg
Profile Joined January 2012
United States384 Posts
March 10 2012 05:44 GMT
#1
hi guys, many of you have probably read the great piece Do you macro like a pro? by whatthefat: a study of stats from 2,100 games showing that pros make more workers than noobs, consistently, all through the game.

here's a breakdown of workers-per-minute (wpm) from 34,000 games, graciously shared from by drop.sc from their public replay collection:

[image loading]


lesson: to improve your game, you should improve your worker production.

but, how can you tell if your worker production is really improving?

i've made a site called ggtracker to solve problems just like this. to let you track your stats, coach yourself and get a proper full-on nerd handle on your self-improvement.

you get charts like this:

[image loading]


in this article, we study the workers-per-minute from 34,000 games, introduce the ggtracker system you can use to track your own performance, and uncovers one interesting new finding not covered by whatthefat.

check out the article, it has interactive version of these graphs and explain ggtracker a little more.

hope you like it... let me know what you think! --dj
card-carrying grubby fan. developer of GGTracker.
statikg
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada930 Posts
March 10 2012 05:51 GMT
#2
Cool, constant worker production is definitely one of the major pillars of sc2 success and its not always easy to tell how well you are doing at it if you just miss a few seconds here and a few there.
Chicken Chaser
Profile Joined July 2010
United States533 Posts
March 10 2012 06:03 GMT
#3
Can we get further breakdowns instead of clumping Bronze-Diamond into one? I'm currently Diamond with an average WPM of 2.4. I imagine the data is skewed because of the mixing of lower leagues.
goldenwitch
Profile Joined August 2010
United States338 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-03-10 06:26:06
March 10 2012 06:20 GMT
#4
Oh my god, I'm uploading replays, and your status updates are hilarious.

Are you intending on adding extra statistics?
goldenwitch
Profile Joined August 2010
United States338 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-03-10 06:25:49
March 10 2012 06:25 GMT
#5
double post QQ
TheGreenMachine
Profile Joined March 2010
United States730 Posts
March 10 2012 06:34 GMT
#6
I have to quote this and talk about it...

"for the super nerds out there, a technical note. due to limitations of the replay file format, we cannot measure worker production exactly; we can only measure when the player attempts to create a worker. in some cases the player can spam worker-creation commands that do not correspond to actual worker production. therefore we put a 3-second anti-spam filter into the measurement. it’s not perfect. it’s at its worst when a player will queue up probe production or make six drones in a second. despite these problems, there’s a clear relationship between wpm as we measure it and league, so for that reason i’d argue you’re pretty safe using this wpm as a metric to measure your own improvement as a player."

sad that this isnt very accurate then
Don't forget to get everyone you know to play HOTS so this game we love called Starcraft will live on. Every little bit helps. ^^
dsjoerg
Profile Joined January 2012
United States384 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-03-10 14:06:48
March 10 2012 06:37 GMT
#7
Chicken Chaser! Here ya go: http://ggtracker.tumblr.com/wpm_breakdown_by_league

Pro tip: you can click in the legend area of the chart to turn lines on or off, so that you can focus on the lines you care about.
card-carrying grubby fan. developer of GGTracker.
thisillusion
Profile Joined January 2011
South Africa3 Posts
March 10 2012 06:39 GMT
#8
Fascinating article and beautiful graphs. May I ask what package you used to create the graphs?
iTzSnypah
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States1738 Posts
March 10 2012 06:39 GMT
#9
Could you incorporate supply vs time also? IF so that would be the bomb.

Here's mine lol

I think the workers per minute is a bit misleading. I'm a plat Terran with 2.6WPM average and my workers per minute game graph says i make more workers than masters and above by a considerable margin,

Other than that, I love this ALOT!
Team Liquid needs more Terrans.
thisillusion
Profile Joined January 2011
South Africa3 Posts
March 10 2012 06:48 GMT
#10
On March 10 2012 15:34 TheGreenMachine wrote:
I have to quote this and talk about it...

"for the super nerds out there, a technical note. due to limitations of the replay file format, we cannot measure worker production exactly; we can only measure when the player attempts to create a worker. in some cases the player can spam worker-creation commands that do not correspond to actual worker production. therefore we put a 3-second anti-spam filter into the measurement. it’s not perfect. it’s at its worst when a player will queue up probe production or make six drones in a second. despite these problems, there’s a clear relationship between wpm as we measure it and league, so for that reason i’d argue you’re pretty safe using this wpm as a metric to measure your own improvement as a player."

sad that this isnt very accurate then


Think of it as a reliable proxy for your worker creation rate, rather than a literal counting of your workers. If you build more workers in a useful fashion (the 3-second rule encodes "useful fashion") then the measure of WPM will increase. So it remains useful as a tool to track your worker creation habits.
dsjoerg
Profile Joined January 2012
United States384 Posts
March 10 2012 06:48 GMT
#11
thanks thisillusion! i'm using highcharts, a nice javascript charting package.

iTzSnypah, thanks for the suggestions. supply vs time is going to be approximate, unfortunately, but we can do it. maybe you really do make a lot of workers? you might be that rare Plat player who's really got the making-workers part of the game down cold.
card-carrying grubby fan. developer of GGTracker.
dsjoerg
Profile Joined January 2012
United States384 Posts
March 10 2012 06:52 GMT
#12
goldenwitch, YES
card-carrying grubby fan. developer of GGTracker.
iTzSnypah
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States1738 Posts
March 10 2012 07:06 GMT
#13
On March 10 2012 15:48 dsjoerg wrote:
thanks thisillusion! i'm using highcharts, a nice javascript charting package.

iTzSnypah, thanks for the suggestions. supply vs time is going to be approximate, unfortunately, but we can do it. maybe you really do make a lot of workers? you might be that rare Plat player who's really got the making-workers part of the game down cold.


Well after further thought, supply vs time would only be good until about 15 minutes because then your usually max supply.
Team Liquid needs more Terrans.
Iksf
Profile Joined March 2011
United Kingdom444 Posts
March 11 2012 00:25 GMT
#14
Dumping my replays on board for the lols :D
zylog
Profile Joined August 2010
Canada943 Posts
March 11 2012 00:34 GMT
#15
On March 10 2012 15:48 thisillusion wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 10 2012 15:34 TheGreenMachine wrote:
I have to quote this and talk about it...

"for the super nerds out there, a technical note. due to limitations of the replay file format, we cannot measure worker production exactly; we can only measure when the player attempts to create a worker. in some cases the player can spam worker-creation commands that do not correspond to actual worker production. therefore we put a 3-second anti-spam filter into the measurement. it’s not perfect. it’s at its worst when a player will queue up probe production or make six drones in a second. despite these problems, there’s a clear relationship between wpm as we measure it and league, so for that reason i’d argue you’re pretty safe using this wpm as a metric to measure your own improvement as a player."

sad that this isnt very accurate then


Think of it as a reliable proxy for your worker creation rate, rather than a literal counting of your workers. If you build more workers in a useful fashion (the 3-second rule encodes "useful fashion") then the measure of WPM will increase. So it remains useful as a tool to track your worker creation habits.


My experience with examining my own replays in sc2gears is that the worker production count is grossly inaccurate when looking at zerg replays. I'll frequently see 3-8 workers "produced" for each single one in the early game as I hold the D key down with larvae selected while waiting for 50 minerals.
Derez
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
Netherlands6068 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-03-11 00:41:41
March 11 2012 00:38 GMT
#16
When considering machine's worker production, have you considered that the peak you see in machine's is simply because he plays Z while the full dataset is made up out of all three races? The spike is visible in the 'full set' too, just less prevalent due to only a third (or something) being Z replays.
The_Templar
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
your Country52798 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-03-11 00:54:26
March 11 2012 00:49 GMT
#17
I'm quite surprised there are so few games of 3+ workers per minute, as that's not even constant 1 base probe production.
Going to give this a shot.
80 workers in a 28 minute game=2 workers per minute?
ModeratorI am still alive, somehow
TL+ Member
Demnogonis
Profile Joined December 2011
Finland80 Posts
March 11 2012 01:50 GMT
#18
On March 11 2012 09:49 TehTemplar wrote:
I'm quite surprised there are so few games of 3+ workers per minute, as that's not even constant 1 base probe production.
Going to give this a shot.
80 workers in a 28 minute game=2 workers per minute?


Well you need what, 24 workers per base? With mules something like 60 as Terran. Knowing when to make drones is a very important thing to learn for a Zerg player. No reason to make drones when you're not getting a base to put them to work to, right? Knowing when to stop SCV production and how many OC's to make is a good sense to have for Terran. For protoss? Dunno, never played them. 70 Probes, that's it?
This, I command!
SKGZombie
Profile Joined February 2012
United States42 Posts
March 11 2012 02:29 GMT
#19
I made 78 workers in an 18 min game and it says my WPM is 1.6 Or a 27 minute game where I made 115 workers it says that my WPM was only 0.9? Im a zerg player BTW so maybe its the 3 second rule bogging down my stats?

Also breaking down that stats by race would be sweet. Id assume Zergs would have a higher WPM than the other races so seeing how you stack up to master zergs players would be more helpful than comparing my results to a mix of Master players of all races.
If I live I will kill you if I die you are foregivin such is the rule of honor
Iranon
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States983 Posts
March 11 2012 02:36 GMT
#20
On March 10 2012 15:37 dsjoerg wrote:
Chicken Chaser! Here ya go: http://ggtracker.tumblr.com/wpm_breakdown_by_league

Pro tip: you can click in the legend area of the chart to turn lines on or off, so that you can focus on the lines you care about.


Whoa. There's a nice general trend from bronze to silver to gold to plat to masters, and then GM is totally different. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising, though, since there's a huge jump between low and high masters...
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