The proportion of each race at top level

On May 03 2010 22:26 aseq wrote:
That would be cool, is it a lot of work? I also wonder how things are in Korea, still wondering why there is such a difference still, I had expected Korea and the rest of the world to integrate more for the sc2 beta.

On May 03 2010 22:26 aseq wrote:
That would be cool, is it a lot of work? I also wonder how things are in Korea, still wondering why there is such a difference still, I had expected Korea and the rest of the world to integrate more for the sc2 beta.

On May 03 2010 23:12 Tenn wrote:
Takkara: You're right that you can present almost what you want with statistics. But you can still draw some conclusions though. E.g. that it seems to be a trend that Protoss is in fact more used than the other races, in exception for the Top 10 occasion.

So sure, statistics can be misleading, but they most often show you something.. That's how insurance companies makes money..

On May 03 2010 22:57 Takkara wrote:
Here's the thing about numbers, they can say anything you want it to say. The first question, even before "why is Terran so low" is "why the Top 250?" Is that somehow the most representative amount? Is that where you ran out of effort to do more? Is it a somehow important percentage of top players? It's so meaningless. To prove it, I compiled the Top 10, and all the numbers at values of 25 thereafter. You can see it shows completely different results depending on where you decide to draw your arbitrary cutoff. So I don't think your numbers show anything.

On May 03 2010 23:19 gravity wrote:

I chose 250 because AFAIK it's the smallest number that would be considered reasonably valid for a political poll. Obviously it's a bit different because we don't expect an even distribution as the number of players included increases.

On May 03 2010 23:24 Takkara wrote:


But taking the Top 250 isn't representative of the population. The Top 250 is a very particular subset of the population. If you wanted to see what the makeup of races was for all of SC2, then you'd need a random sampling of the population. You're not doing that. You're trying to show what the makeup of the competitive scene is to find imbalance. That's fine. I'm just saying if you stop at 10, 50, 100, 250, or even go farther to 500, 1000, the numbers are different.

So I'm saying that whatever conclusions you'd draw from 250, you'd draw different ones at either 100 or 500. So the numbers are interesting, as numbers always are, but they don't really prove much that you can truly stand on. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just trying to stop a lot of people using these types of tabulations as Grand Proof that X race is OP or Y race needs a nerf.

On May 03 2010 23:31 gavss wrote:
I am not surprised. Terran requires higher apm, skill and game iq right now.

Terran needs to have 4 or 5 types of units and abilities to deal with an army that has almost no unit diversity. It is ridiculous.
Terran always has lower production than spawn larva or warpgate production.
Terran doesn't have an endgame unit. Thors and battlecruisers are support units.
Terran needs to build production buildings while zerg just spawns larva.
Terran needs to build walls if he doesn't reaper rush.
Terran needs to build air units to counter some ground units like collossus.
Terran doesn't have a viable pure mech build.

On May 03 2010 23:16 Takkara wrote:


Yes, numbers are important. But if you're going to throw a number of people around as significant, there should be a justification. For example, someone broke down the Asia numbers by people above 2000 rating and people above 1800 rating. Those are more meaningful breakdowns than just 250. Because, if you look at the data, for some weird reason it's REALLY prone to runs. So sometimes stopping at 245 instead of 250 means that you lopped off like 5 protoss, which would really change the number distribution.

Case in point:
The OP says that based on Euro Top 250, things look balanced there. If he did the same thing with the Top 100, he'd see Zerg as BADLY overrepresented. Same thing with the US and Protoss.

On May 04 2010 00:04 Amber[LighT] wrote:


Not really. The best representative sample is 250 in this case. The top 100 gives you a misrepresentation of data. You're working backwards....

On May 03 2010 23:31 gavss wrote:
I am not surprised. Terran requires higher apm, skill and game iq right now.

Terran needs to have 4 or 5 types of units and abilities to deal with an army that has almost no unit diversity. It is ridiculous.
Terran always has lower production than spawn larva or warpgate production.
Terran doesn't have an endgame unit. Thors and battlecruisers are support units.
Terran needs to build production buildings while zerg just spawns larva.
Terran needs to build walls if he doesn't reaper rush.
Terran needs to build air units to counter some ground units like collossus.
Terran doesn't have a viable pure mech build.

On May 04 2010 01:20 hoovehand wrote:


i wonder if this guy is a (bad) terran player.

On May 03 2010 23:31 gavss wrote:
I am not surprised. Terran requires higher apm, skill and game iq right now.

Terran needs to have 4 or 5 types of units and abilities to deal with an army that has almost no unit diversity. It is ridiculous.
Terran always has lower production than spawn larva or warpgate production.
Terran doesn't have an endgame unit. Thors and battlecruisers are support units.
Terran needs to build production buildings while zerg just spawns larva.
Terran needs to build walls if he doesn't reaper rush.
Terran needs to build air units to counter some ground units like collossus.
Terran doesn't have a viable pure mech build.

On May 04 2010 04:54 smore wrote:
from artosis's latest vid at the playXP lan he said something like 80% of the people there were zerg and it consisted of pretty much the cream of the crop players from the asia server

he also said that on the asia ladder he plays a lot of "1-base-all-in noobie-protoss" at the top of plat league that didnt make it to the lan because theyre pretty much a 1 trick pony

On May 04 2010 01:17 Vargavaka wrote:
Interesting numbers, although as Takkara said, not really anything that you could draw any real conclusions from. The idea that the sample size of 250 players is "big enough" is a moot point when it's not randomly selected. It only represents the top 250 and nothing else.

A random sample of 250 Platium players, for example, would at least be something you could see as representative for the distribution of the races in the Platinum League.

On May 04 2010 00:20 rhap wrote:
Is this a thread about the rankings on US/EU/ASIA or a thread about terran whine? I see terrans on every important tourney doing good against zergs and protoss, and even winning. Idk what are you people complaining about. Maybe less people play the race, who knows. Tourneys are a better representative imo.

On May 04 2010 04:48 Antpile wrote:
- Everyone needs to build air units to counter colossus. Guess which air unit counters colossus the hardest? Yep, the viking.
.

On May 06 2010 17:02 TheElitists wrote:


+ Show Spoiler +

Not saying I disagree with you on the rest but this is the unit that does double damage to massive

On May 03 2010 22:57 Takkara wrote:
Here's the thing about numbers, they can say anything you want it to say. The first question, even before "why is Terran so low" is "why the Top 250?" Is that somehow the most representative amount? Is that where you ran out of effort to do more? Is it a somehow important percentage of top players? It's so meaningless. To prove it, I compiled the Top 10, and all the numbers at values of 25 thereafter. You can see it shows completely different results depending on where you decide to draw your arbitrary cutoff. So I don't think your numbers show anything.

US:


Europe:

Asia:

On May 06 2010 17:06 spinesheath wrote:


Vikings are cheaper, have 3 more range and deal more DPS to colossi. They have less HP, but their insane range compensates very well for that.

On May 06 2010 19:34 Artrey wrote:
The numbers are far too low to use them statistically. It's nonsense to deduct anything from such a low pool of samples. At least as long as you only compare the extreme examples. If you add up everything, it becomes a bit more valid and shows a slight toss advantage compared to terran, but that is what Blizzard told us already.

On May 06 2010 16:12 kickinhead wrote:


First of all, there are way less Terrans high up in the Tournaments than Zerg and Protoss. Look at the Zotac-Cups for example:

14 different players overall made it to the Finals in the 10 times so far, only 3 of them were Terrans and only one of them was able to win and that was a long time ago in Cup#3.

The reason why Terran is underperforming atm. and will keep getting weaker and weaker is IMHO, because Terran has to surprise the opponent in some way to be able to win with early harrassment (reaper), fast-tech to certain Units (Banshee-rush) or surprise the opponent with Thor-Drop's, Hellion-Drop's, Tanks on Cliffs etc. if you don't just want to rely on Mass-Marauders.

It's IMHO very hard for Terran to play a standard-game because for one thing all their Units have very strong counters to them and they just aren't that good at defending anymore, one example:

- You wan't to get up a fairly early expansion with T against P without dying to cheese, so what do you have to prepare for?

1) DT's (even if you see no council/shrine, it could be a proxy somewhere on the map)
--> Save Scans, which are basically 275 minerals, which is A LOT to kill one DT or get up turrets which aren't that good against DT's anymore either, because they cost more than in SC:BW, but do more DMG, but what does the DMG-buff help against DT's?
2) VR-Rush (even if you scout properly, it could again be a proxy)
--> you need a lot of Marines and vikings and/or turrets - everything quite expensive
3) 4-Warpgate timing-push
--> you need Bunkers and lots of Units
4) Timing-Push with Immortals
--> you need M&M's and probably Ghost for EMP
5) Collossi-rush
--> you shouldn't have many Marines and most likely you'd want to have some vikings
6) Protoss goes for a rather fast exe
--> you'd want to have the least amount of minerals spent on static defense as possible

So for a safe build you need let's say 3 Turrets (e-bay cost's 125, 3 Turrets 300, which is 425 - more than one expansion worth of money just to be kinda safe while defending against cheese/rushes?) But now comes the timing-push, against which you'll definitely loose with more than 400 minerals worth of stuff that doesn't help against warpgate-units and Immortal or that is a waste if the Protoss opted to go for an expansion himself. Also, the Mass Marines against VR's/Immo's get raped by Collossi and the Marauders by Immortals, without EMP-support... to defend against the same sort of stuff (VR/DT/Timing-push), Protoss just has to go robo and "waste" 50/100 for mobile detection and splash a bit more stalkers/sentries in their Unitmix as Antiair! So it's also easier to defend against timing-pushes and be economical nonetheless. Same is with Zerg - they don't have to go far out into other techroutes and build stuff they don't need if the opponent does not choose to go a certain way in his tech, cuz Queens are Anti-Air (so just splash in additional queens if necessary) and at T2, you can morph an Ovi into overseer and you have AntiAir anyways with Mutas/Hydras and economy-wise, Z should be fine with their FE anyways.

The Problem here is that the different ways to deal with the Protoss potential strategy are very different, so it's hard to be cost-effective and play safe at the same time. Besides, T is IMHO the race which is depending the most on Upgrades and Synergies between the Units. So besides wanting to play safe and having some Turrets and a good Unitmix AND the fact you want to get up your Expansion as fast as possible, you also want to get stim, shield-upgrade, marauder-upgrade, Medivacs to support your Infantry-Units etc.

I'm not saying that Terran Unit's aren't good, but if you want to come up with a fairly solid build, which is something you have to do to play solid on a higher level, T has just a hard time. Of course, this may not only be due to balancing-issues, but it's IMHO a Problem T's suffer from atm.

What I want to see, just to be able to come up with a safe build for starters, is just better static defense to hold of cheese/rushes/timing-attacks. With that I mean for example cheaper Turrets and no Bonus-DMG against Buildings because they are considered "armored", so you can actually keep a bunker alive by repairing it in dire situations. Also, Make E-Bay cheaper and able to fly, so you can defend better against stuff on your cliffs.