• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 12:49
CEST 18:49
KST 01:49
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
RSL Season 1 - Final Week8[ASL19] Finals Recap: Standing Tall15HomeStory Cup 27 - Info & Preview18Classic wins Code S Season 2 (2025)16Code S RO4 & Finals Preview: herO, Rogue, Classic, GuMiho0
Community News
Weekly Cups (July 14-20): Final Check-up0Esports World Cup 2025 - Brackets Revealed19Weekly Cups (July 7-13): Classic continues to roll8Team TLMC #5 - Submission re-extension4Firefly given lifetime ban by ESIC following match-fixing investigation17
StarCraft 2
General
Heaven's Balance Suggestions (roast me) Magnus Carlsen and Fabi review Clem's chess game. Who will win EWC 2025? Why doesnt SC2 scene costream tournaments RSL Season 1 - Final Week
Tourneys
Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond) FEL Cracov 2025 (July 27) - $8000 live event RSL: Revival, a new crowdfunded tournament series $5,100+ SEL Season 2 Championship (SC: Evo)
Strategy
How did i lose this ZvP, whats the proper response
Custom Maps
External Content
Mutation # 483 Kill Bot Wars Mutation # 482 Wheel of Misfortune Mutation # 481 Fear and Lava Mutation # 480 Moths to the Flame
Brood War
General
BW General Discussion Corsair Pursuit Micro? BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Pro gamer house photos Flash Announces (and Retracts) Hiatus From ASL
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues [BSL 2v2] ProLeague Season 3 - Friday 21:00 CET The Casual Games of the Week Thread BWCL Season 63 Announcement
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers I am doing this better than progamers do.
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread [MMORPG] Tree of Savior (Successor of Ragnarok) Path of Exile CCLP - Command & Conquer League Project
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread The Games Industry And ATVI Stop Killing Games - European Citizens Initiative
Fan Clubs
SKT1 Classic Fan Club! Maru Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Anime Discussion Thread Movie Discussion! [Manga] One Piece Korean Music Discussion [\m/] Heavy Metal Thread
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Ping To Win? Pings And Their…
TrAiDoS
momentary artworks from des…
tankgirl
from making sc maps to makin…
Husyelt
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 800 users

Scientific proof that SC2 is imbalanced (sorta) - Page 12

Forum Index > SC2 General
Post a Reply
Prev 1 10 11 12 13 Next All
texmix
Profile Joined May 2010
United States106 Posts
August 20 2010 02:33 GMT
#221
On August 20 2010 06:18 andyrichdale wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 20 2010 04:10 texmix wrote:
If every terran unit suddenly had +25% hit points (making them obviously overpowered), the original post methodology would still conclude the races are equal and have the same 2 pages of statistical garbage backing it up.


What?

If Terran units had 25% extra hit points then Terrans would win considerably more of their matches than they currently do. This would reflect in a win% increase to the point where it's in the "considerably higher than expected" region which would lead to the conclusion that Terrans are over powered.


No, there would just be more terran in the top 200/diamond league, but win % would not differ due to the match making process. The original post is 100.000% useless.
hdkhang
Profile Joined August 2010
Australia183 Posts
August 20 2010 02:44 GMT
#222
On August 20 2010 06:18 andyrichdale wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 20 2010 04:10 texmix wrote:
If every terran unit suddenly had +25% hit points (making them obviously overpowered), the original post methodology would still conclude the races are equal and have the same 2 pages of statistical garbage backing it up.


What?

If Terran units had 25% extra hit points then Terrans would win considerably more of their matches than they currently do. This would reflect in a win% increase to the point where it's in the "considerably higher than expected" region which would lead to the conclusion that Terrans are over powered.


Not at all.

Let's assume that the current system is "perfectly balanced", that the MMR assigned to each player is accurate, that a 500MMR Terran is as skilled as a 500MMR Protoss is as skilled as a 500MMR Zerg. Let's also assume that there is a perfect distribution of players using each race and that random did not exist. Let's also assume that skills remain exactly the same in the observation period immediately following this change.

Now if every terran unit in this perfectly balanced game had 25% more hit points, the 500MMR Terran player will have a greater chance at winning against his 500MMR Zerg/Protoss cohorts. So obviously the 500MMR Terran will have to be readjusted upwards, and the Zerg/Protoss now having trouble against 1/3 of the matchups will be adjusted down. So to make it easier to follow, we make up some numbers and come up with the Terran who used to be 500MMR now having an easier time winning 2/3 of his matchups is bumped up to 600MMR, the Zerg/Protoss having trouble with 1/3 of his matchups is now down to 450MMR.

The former 500MMR Teran player no longer is considered the same "skill level" as the former 500MMR Zerg/Protoss. So who is considered his "peer" in the eyes of the AMM? Answer is the newly 600MMR Zerg/Protoss who would have been 660MMR Zerg/Protoss under the "old, perfectly balanced" game. Now that the MMRs have been adjusted in accordance with the game, the former 500MMR Terran players with their shiny new 25% HP buff now has a 50% win ratio against former 660MMR Zerg/Protoss players. This 50% win ratio is exactly what the data will show you, and no amount of fancy analysis will reveal an imbalance even if it is obvious there is one.

BTW, 25% is just a number, don't get hung up over it.. there of course will come a point where that number will utterly break the game and result in nobody being able to win against an OP race, but that would be so painfully obvious you would not need maths to show it to be so.

e.g. 200HP Marines with 5 armour, everything else stays the same. There is no way that a Terran would lose if he went 7 RAX Marine.

I keep saying this but it keeps getting ignored and people still go about wasting their time: using clean/smoothed data will result in no imbalance issues revealed! Seriously guys, stop wasting your time!
GagnarTheUnruly
Profile Joined July 2010
United States655 Posts
August 20 2010 03:04 GMT
#223
On August 20 2010 11:44 hdkhang wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 20 2010 06:18 andyrichdale wrote:
On August 20 2010 04:10 texmix wrote:
If every terran unit suddenly had +25% hit points (making them obviously overpowered), the original post methodology would still conclude the races are equal and have the same 2 pages of statistical garbage backing it up.


What?

If Terran units had 25% extra hit points then Terrans would win considerably more of their matches than they currently do. This would reflect in a win% increase to the point where it's in the "considerably higher than expected" region which would lead to the conclusion that Terrans are over powered.


Not at all.

Let's assume that the current system is "perfectly balanced", that the MMR assigned to each player is accurate, that a 500MMR Terran is as skilled as a 500MMR Protoss is as skilled as a 500MMR Zerg. Let's also assume that there is a perfect distribution of players using each race and that random did not exist. Let's also assume that skills remain exactly the same in the observation period immediately following this change.

Now if every terran unit in this perfectly balanced game had 25% more hit points, the 500MMR Terran player will have a greater chance at winning against his 500MMR Zerg/Protoss cohorts. So obviously the 500MMR Terran will have to be readjusted upwards, and the Zerg/Protoss now having trouble against 1/3 of the matchups will be adjusted down. So to make it easier to follow, we make up some numbers and come up with the Terran who used to be 500MMR now having an easier time winning 2/3 of his matchups is bumped up to 600MMR, the Zerg/Protoss having trouble with 1/3 of his matchups is now down to 450MMR.

The former 500MMR Teran player no longer is considered the same "skill level" as the former 500MMR Zerg/Protoss. So who is considered his "peer" in the eyes of the AMM? Answer is the newly 600MMR Zerg/Protoss who would have been 660MMR Zerg/Protoss under the "old, perfectly balanced" game. Now that the MMRs have been adjusted in accordance with the game, the former 500MMR Terran players with their shiny new 25% HP buff now has a 50% win ratio against former 660MMR Zerg/Protoss players. This 50% win ratio is exactly what the data will show you, and no amount of fancy analysis will reveal an imbalance even if it is obvious there is one.

BTW, 25% is just a number, don't get hung up over it.. there of course will come a point where that number will utterly break the game and result in nobody being able to win against an OP race, but that would be so painfully obvious you would not need maths to show it to be so.

e.g. 200HP Marines with 5 armour, everything else stays the same. There is no way that a Terran would lose if he went 7 RAX Marine.

I keep saying this but it keeps getting ignored and people still go about wasting their time: using clean/smoothed data will result in no imbalance issues revealed! Seriously guys, stop wasting your time!


Exactly. And the effect of that is a shift in race frequencies, where there are more terrans and fewer zerg and protoss as you move up the leagues. Since we don't see this happening for league play, we infer that the game is balanced.
Mamojo
Profile Joined August 2010
Canada38 Posts
August 20 2010 03:19 GMT
#224
I actually agree with your statistics and your method to show that SC2 isn't balanced is very impressive, because I did calculation of my own win-lose ratio and compared it to the one you have, and it seems pretty close together.
Half
Profile Joined March 2010
United States2554 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-20 03:50:47
August 20 2010 03:28 GMT
#225
I think this thread is kind of funny. Because I distinctly remember the forum collectively yelling at Blizz's balance team when they had this information and we didn't that all they did was "balance using stats" and how "stats don't mean anything". And here we are, in their shoes, over analyzing stats that "don't mean anything".

This stat doesn't show much. However, we can conclusively draw these to points from it.

#1: Something in the games design is causing less players to play Zerg, which may or may not be a problem.
#2: Their is no game breaking imbalance that greatly detracts from the game on non-professional levels.

What it doesn't show is

Terran is balanced
Zerg is underpowered.

At all.
Too Busy to Troll!
explicit
Profile Joined August 2010
52 Posts
August 20 2010 03:36 GMT
#226
On August 20 2010 11:44 hdkhang wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 20 2010 06:18 andyrichdale wrote:
On August 20 2010 04:10 texmix wrote:
If every terran unit suddenly had +25% hit points (making them obviously overpowered), the original post methodology would still conclude the races are equal and have the same 2 pages of statistical garbage backing it up.


What?

If Terran units had 25% extra hit points then Terrans would win considerably more of their matches than they currently do. This would reflect in a win% increase to the point where it's in the "considerably higher than expected" region which would lead to the conclusion that Terrans are over powered.


Not at all.

Let's assume that the current system is "perfectly balanced", that the MMR assigned to each player is accurate, that a 500MMR Terran is as skilled as a 500MMR Protoss is as skilled as a 500MMR Zerg. Let's also assume that there is a perfect distribution of players using each race and that random did not exist. Let's also assume that skills remain exactly the same in the observation period immediately following this change.

Now if every terran unit in this perfectly balanced game had 25% more hit points, the 500MMR Terran player will have a greater chance at winning against his 500MMR Zerg/Protoss cohorts. So obviously the 500MMR Terran will have to be readjusted upwards, and the Zerg/Protoss now having trouble against 1/3 of the matchups will be adjusted down. So to make it easier to follow, we make up some numbers and come up with the Terran who used to be 500MMR now having an easier time winning 2/3 of his matchups is bumped up to 600MMR, the Zerg/Protoss having trouble with 1/3 of his matchups is now down to 450MMR.

The former 500MMR Teran player no longer is considered the same "skill level" as the former 500MMR Zerg/Protoss. So who is considered his "peer" in the eyes of the AMM? Answer is the newly 600MMR Zerg/Protoss who would have been 660MMR Zerg/Protoss under the "old, perfectly balanced" game. Now that the MMRs have been adjusted in accordance with the game, the former 500MMR Terran players with their shiny new 25% HP buff now has a 50% win ratio against former 660MMR Zerg/Protoss players. This 50% win ratio is exactly what the data will show you, and no amount of fancy analysis will reveal an imbalance even if it is obvious there is one.

BTW, 25% is just a number, don't get hung up over it.. there of course will come a point where that number will utterly break the game and result in nobody being able to win against an OP race, but that would be so painfully obvious you would not need maths to show it to be so.

e.g. 200HP Marines with 5 armour, everything else stays the same. There is no way that a Terran would lose if he went 7 RAX Marine.

I keep saying this but it keeps getting ignored and people still go about wasting their time: using clean/smoothed data will result in no imbalance issues revealed! Seriously guys, stop wasting your time!


This deserves another quote so nobody misses it. Excellent Post!
nam nam
Profile Joined June 2010
Sweden4672 Posts
August 20 2010 03:43 GMT
#227
On August 20 2010 12:04 GagnarTheUnruly wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 20 2010 11:44 hdkhang wrote:
On August 20 2010 06:18 andyrichdale wrote:
On August 20 2010 04:10 texmix wrote:
If every terran unit suddenly had +25% hit points (making them obviously overpowered), the original post methodology would still conclude the races are equal and have the same 2 pages of statistical garbage backing it up.


What?

If Terran units had 25% extra hit points then Terrans would win considerably more of their matches than they currently do. This would reflect in a win% increase to the point where it's in the "considerably higher than expected" region which would lead to the conclusion that Terrans are over powered.


Not at all.

Let's assume that the current system is "perfectly balanced", that the MMR assigned to each player is accurate, that a 500MMR Terran is as skilled as a 500MMR Protoss is as skilled as a 500MMR Zerg. Let's also assume that there is a perfect distribution of players using each race and that random did not exist. Let's also assume that skills remain exactly the same in the observation period immediately following this change.

Now if every terran unit in this perfectly balanced game had 25% more hit points, the 500MMR Terran player will have a greater chance at winning against his 500MMR Zerg/Protoss cohorts. So obviously the 500MMR Terran will have to be readjusted upwards, and the Zerg/Protoss now having trouble against 1/3 of the matchups will be adjusted down. So to make it easier to follow, we make up some numbers and come up with the Terran who used to be 500MMR now having an easier time winning 2/3 of his matchups is bumped up to 600MMR, the Zerg/Protoss having trouble with 1/3 of his matchups is now down to 450MMR.

The former 500MMR Teran player no longer is considered the same "skill level" as the former 500MMR Zerg/Protoss. So who is considered his "peer" in the eyes of the AMM? Answer is the newly 600MMR Zerg/Protoss who would have been 660MMR Zerg/Protoss under the "old, perfectly balanced" game. Now that the MMRs have been adjusted in accordance with the game, the former 500MMR Terran players with their shiny new 25% HP buff now has a 50% win ratio against former 660MMR Zerg/Protoss players. This 50% win ratio is exactly what the data will show you, and no amount of fancy analysis will reveal an imbalance even if it is obvious there is one.

BTW, 25% is just a number, don't get hung up over it.. there of course will come a point where that number will utterly break the game and result in nobody being able to win against an OP race, but that would be so painfully obvious you would not need maths to show it to be so.

e.g. 200HP Marines with 5 armour, everything else stays the same. There is no way that a Terran would lose if he went 7 RAX Marine.

I keep saying this but it keeps getting ignored and people still go about wasting their time: using clean/smoothed data will result in no imbalance issues revealed! Seriously guys, stop wasting your time!


Exactly. And the effect of that is a shift in race frequencies, where there are more terrans and fewer zerg and protoss as you move up the leagues. Since we don't see this happening for league play, we infer that the game is balanced.


Wrongly.
hdkhang
Profile Joined August 2010
Australia183 Posts
August 20 2010 04:11 GMT
#228
On August 20 2010 12:04 GagnarTheUnruly wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 20 2010 11:44 hdkhang wrote:
On August 20 2010 06:18 andyrichdale wrote:
On August 20 2010 04:10 texmix wrote:
If every terran unit suddenly had +25% hit points (making them obviously overpowered), the original post methodology would still conclude the races are equal and have the same 2 pages of statistical garbage backing it up.


What?

If Terran units had 25% extra hit points then Terrans would win considerably more of their matches than they currently do. This would reflect in a win% increase to the point where it's in the "considerably higher than expected" region which would lead to the conclusion that Terrans are over powered.


Not at all.

Let's assume that the current system is "perfectly balanced", that the MMR assigned to each player is accurate, that a 500MMR Terran is as skilled as a 500MMR Protoss is as skilled as a 500MMR Zerg. Let's also assume that there is a perfect distribution of players using each race and that random did not exist. Let's also assume that skills remain exactly the same in the observation period immediately following this change.

Now if every terran unit in this perfectly balanced game had 25% more hit points, the 500MMR Terran player will have a greater chance at winning against his 500MMR Zerg/Protoss cohorts. So obviously the 500MMR Terran will have to be readjusted upwards, and the Zerg/Protoss now having trouble against 1/3 of the matchups will be adjusted down. So to make it easier to follow, we make up some numbers and come up with the Terran who used to be 500MMR now having an easier time winning 2/3 of his matchups is bumped up to 600MMR, the Zerg/Protoss having trouble with 1/3 of his matchups is now down to 450MMR.

The former 500MMR Teran player no longer is considered the same "skill level" as the former 500MMR Zerg/Protoss. So who is considered his "peer" in the eyes of the AMM? Answer is the newly 600MMR Zerg/Protoss who would have been 660MMR Zerg/Protoss under the "old, perfectly balanced" game. Now that the MMRs have been adjusted in accordance with the game, the former 500MMR Terran players with their shiny new 25% HP buff now has a 50% win ratio against former 660MMR Zerg/Protoss players. This 50% win ratio is exactly what the data will show you, and no amount of fancy analysis will reveal an imbalance even if it is obvious there is one.

BTW, 25% is just a number, don't get hung up over it.. there of course will come a point where that number will utterly break the game and result in nobody being able to win against an OP race, but that would be so painfully obvious you would not need maths to show it to be so.

e.g. 200HP Marines with 5 armour, everything else stays the same. There is no way that a Terran would lose if he went 7 RAX Marine.

I keep saying this but it keeps getting ignored and people still go about wasting their time: using clean/smoothed data will result in no imbalance issues revealed! Seriously guys, stop wasting your time!


Exactly. And the effect of that is a shift in race frequencies, where there are more terrans and fewer zerg and protoss as you move up the leagues. Since we don't see this happening for league play, we infer that the game is balanced.


Only you have no starting point and no turning point to compare. Therefore to suggest the current distribution of racial "preference" being reasonably distributed in all leagues accounts for balance, which it clearly cannot, is simply incorrect. It also does not btw point to imbalance, how can it if it can't definitively account for anything other than the AMM system doing it's job?
hdkhang
Profile Joined August 2010
Australia183 Posts
August 20 2010 04:24 GMT
#229
On August 20 2010 12:28 Half wrote:
I think this thread is kind of funny. Because I distinctly remember the forum collectively yelling at Blizz's balance team when they had this information and we didn't that all they did was "balance using stats" and how "stats don't mean anything". And here we are, in their shoes, over analyzing stats that "don't mean anything".

This stat doesn't show much. However, we can conclusively draw these to points from it.

#1: Something in the games design is causing less players to play Zerg, which may or may not be a problem.
#2: Their is no game breaking imbalance that greatly detracts from the game on non-professional levels.

What it doesn't show is

Terran is balanced
Zerg is underpowered.

At all.


Completely agree.

People can choose their race for any number of reasons.

Also, say I devote 100 hours of training in 1 race, and then spend another 100 hours of training in another race, it does not necessarily result in my being equally proficient at both races, for all we know one race may have features which suit my skills/preferences/playstyle much better than another.
Mikilatov
Profile Blog Joined May 2008
United States3897 Posts
August 20 2010 04:37 GMT
#230
This is a really great post, but your thread title is just begging for controversy, haha.

Excellent information though, thanks.
♥ I used to lasso the shit out of your tournaments =( ♥ | Much is my hero. | zizi yO~ | Be Nice, TL.
GagnarTheUnruly
Profile Joined July 2010
United States655 Posts
August 20 2010 05:12 GMT
#231
On August 20 2010 12:43 nam nam wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 20 2010 12:04 GagnarTheUnruly wrote:
On August 20 2010 11:44 hdkhang wrote:
On August 20 2010 06:18 andyrichdale wrote:
On August 20 2010 04:10 texmix wrote:
If every terran unit suddenly had +25% hit points (making them obviously overpowered), the original post methodology would still conclude the races are equal and have the same 2 pages of statistical garbage backing it up.


What?

If Terran units had 25% extra hit points then Terrans would win considerably more of their matches than they currently do. This would reflect in a win% increase to the point where it's in the "considerably higher than expected" region which would lead to the conclusion that Terrans are over powered.


Not at all.

Let's assume that the current system is "perfectly balanced", that the MMR assigned to each player is accurate, that a 500MMR Terran is as skilled as a 500MMR Protoss is as skilled as a 500MMR Zerg. Let's also assume that there is a perfect distribution of players using each race and that random did not exist. Let's also assume that skills remain exactly the same in the observation period immediately following this change.

Now if every terran unit in this perfectly balanced game had 25% more hit points, the 500MMR Terran player will have a greater chance at winning against his 500MMR Zerg/Protoss cohorts. So obviously the 500MMR Terran will have to be readjusted upwards, and the Zerg/Protoss now having trouble against 1/3 of the matchups will be adjusted down. So to make it easier to follow, we make up some numbers and come up with the Terran who used to be 500MMR now having an easier time winning 2/3 of his matchups is bumped up to 600MMR, the Zerg/Protoss having trouble with 1/3 of his matchups is now down to 450MMR.

The former 500MMR Teran player no longer is considered the same "skill level" as the former 500MMR Zerg/Protoss. So who is considered his "peer" in the eyes of the AMM? Answer is the newly 600MMR Zerg/Protoss who would have been 660MMR Zerg/Protoss under the "old, perfectly balanced" game. Now that the MMRs have been adjusted in accordance with the game, the former 500MMR Terran players with their shiny new 25% HP buff now has a 50% win ratio against former 660MMR Zerg/Protoss players. This 50% win ratio is exactly what the data will show you, and no amount of fancy analysis will reveal an imbalance even if it is obvious there is one.

BTW, 25% is just a number, don't get hung up over it.. there of course will come a point where that number will utterly break the game and result in nobody being able to win against an OP race, but that would be so painfully obvious you would not need maths to show it to be so.

e.g. 200HP Marines with 5 armour, everything else stays the same. There is no way that a Terran would lose if he went 7 RAX Marine.

I keep saying this but it keeps getting ignored and people still go about wasting their time: using clean/smoothed data will result in no imbalance issues revealed! Seriously guys, stop wasting your time!


Exactly. And the effect of that is a shift in race frequencies, where there are more terrans and fewer zerg and protoss as you move up the leagues. Since we don't see this happening for league play, we infer that the game is balanced.


Wrongly.


Please elaborate. I can see one possible reason that just occured to me. I apologize if others have made this point and I missed it.

If we make a few assumptions, outlined elsewhere, I think it's clear that racial imbalance + AMM will cause weak races to be pushed lower in the leagues. However, I realize that it's not necessarily intuitive to me how the races will get pushed back.

In the figure below, I've assumed that there are two races. If the races are balanced, and we assume that race choice is influenced by factors other than player skill, then a graph of race use vs. placement should look like the one below (use of the two races may or may not be equal at 50%, but the proportion of players using each race won't change as a function of league placement).

As discussed above, we might predict that imbalance would lead to weak races being pushed down the ladder, but how would that manifest? Let's say the red race is stronger. Would the graph look like fig. A or fig. B? If it results in the pattern shown in A), that will be easy to detect. If it looks like the pattern shown in B), that will be hard to detect.

[image loading]
Half
Profile Joined March 2010
United States2554 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-20 06:20:09
August 20 2010 06:14 GMT
#232

Please elaborate. I can see one possible reason that just occured to me. I apologize if others have made this point and I missed it.


I don't think he was saying that basic premise of the post that was wrong

-that a races relative performance directly correlates to more players of that race being placed in a
relatively higher league-

Which is only logical.

Instead, he was saying


Exactly. And the effect of that is a shift in race frequencies, where there are more terrans and fewer zerg and protoss as you move up the leagues. Since we don't see this happening for league play, we infer
Wrongly
that the game is balanced.


That while the premise may be true, that alone cannot not conclude the game/race is balanced /imbalanced.

Statistics only go so far, as we've repeatedly told Dustin Browder. Lets just try to keep that in mind ^_^.
Too Busy to Troll!
Rabiator
Profile Joined March 2010
Germany3948 Posts
August 20 2010 06:30 GMT
#233
Useless thread IMO and abuse of the word "scientific", because every science should still involve common sense to know what affects its samples and differences of less than 1% are meaningless in such a complex game as Starcraft 2, where the daily form of the player has a MUCH greater impact than the actual abilities of the units (= the balance of races).

Many times there are effects which affect a "test" on a different scale, where one thing has a big effect on the test and completely dominates other, much weaker effects. Lets take a hot cup of tea for example, where you just put in the tea bag ...
- The smalles effect present is that of diffusion, where an atom (molecule) randomly changes place with a neighboring atom (molecule).
- If you stay on the earth you will also get convection flow of heat, you know the "hotter water is lighter and will go to the top and thereby stirs the tea" stuff. This is sooo much bigger that you almost cannot measure the diffusion effect on earth.
- If you take a spoon and stir the cup it would make convection immeasurable.

For any competitive game the daily form of the player is really really important and has a much greater effect than 1-2% and since Zerg players have pressured themselves with the "oh I cant win against Terrans because they are IMBA" propaganda they are at a psychological disadvantage to begin with IMO.
If you cant say what you're meaning, you can never mean what you're saying.
Gedrah
Profile Joined February 2010
465 Posts
August 20 2010 06:48 GMT
#234
Balance is a question of available technology and strategies and their timing, and how these relate to ground- and air-travel distances on a given map. Balance is NOT a question of win percentage on the ladders. Your well-put-together study seems to ignore the simple fact that those games aren't all being played by the same two people. The statistical analysis of who wins most often in league games is really meaningless for determining balance--even if Zerg were winning 60% of their games, this could be explained by the behavior of individual zergs kicking ass rather than "imbalance." Okay, okay, it may not be MEANINGLESS, but it's definitely not a scientific basis for claiming imbalances exist.
What is a dickfour?
Drowsy
Profile Blog Joined November 2005
United States4876 Posts
August 20 2010 06:51 GMT
#235
On August 17 2010 07:18 StarcraftGuy4U wrote:
None of these stats are worthwhile because the matchmaking system does not assign people like they would in a blind study, instead it is actively adjusting the matches so that every player reaches 50%. The numbers you are pulling are worthless for this reason.

Exactly. You just can't extrapolate anything from the win ratios by race due to this.
Our Protoss, Who art in Aiur HongUn be Thy name; Thy stalker come, Thy will be blunk, on ladder as it is in Micro Tourny. Give us this win in our daily ladder, and forgive us our cheeses, As we forgive those who play zerg against us.
harmony.piano
Profile Joined August 2010
2 Posts
August 20 2010 07:22 GMT
#236
I don't think the balance issue can simply be solved by looking at the stats.
Let me give you a simple example:
Suppose there is a very difficult manoeuvre (say some kind of reaper or hellion harass) that only 0.1% of the Terran players can pull it off consistently. If they manage to pull it off, they are almost guaranteed of a win against any Zerg.
While for the rest of 99.9% Terran players, they are not skilled enough to use this manoeuvre, and they have 49.9% chance of winning against Zergs by playing normally.
So in total, TvZ is about 50:50. But does this means TvZ is balanced? Of course not.
Because now TvZ is already flawed, as the 0.1% pros have a way to win against Zergs.
Pking
Profile Joined May 2010
Sweden142 Posts
August 20 2010 12:09 GMT
#237
On August 20 2010 15:51 Drowsy wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 17 2010 07:18 StarcraftGuy4U wrote:
None of these stats are worthwhile because the matchmaking system does not assign people like they would in a blind study, instead it is actively adjusting the matches so that every player reaches 50%. The numbers you are pulling are worthless for this reason.

Exactly. You just can't extrapolate anything from the win ratios by race due to this.


To the people saying the statistics is useless because of the matchmaking system, read the OP again.


Discussion: My data show that, within a league, each of the races has a rougly equal chance of winning a randomly selected game. This indicates that the balance of SC2 is probably pretty good. People have pointed out that matchmaking would cause this to happen, because it strives to set each player's win rate at 50%. That in turn would cause the win rate of each race to trend towards 50%. That being the case, poor balance would tend to result in 'weak' races getting pushed into the lower tiers of play. Because we don't see that happening either within or among leagues (data not shown), my data suggest both that the matchmaking system works well and that SC2 is inherrently pretty well balanced.


Zarahtra
Profile Joined May 2010
Iceland4053 Posts
August 20 2010 12:20 GMT
#238
I'm a bit interested in that as I went on sc2ranks.com I saw that zerg fills 24.07% of Diamond global but has 19.78% playerbase. Wouldn't this indicate that zerg was doing pretty decently overall(even if you'd have to take a bit more microscope to see if they are all just filling the last 24.07% of diamond) as they have just over 4% more players in diamond than you'd expect(if we assume players of x race aren't straight better on avg than of y race).
TanGeng
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Sanya12364 Posts
August 20 2010 12:28 GMT
#239
Fuck, there's even more facepalm than I originally suspected. This deserves a big ugh.

On August 20 2010 14:12 GagnarTheUnruly wrote:
As discussed above, we might predict that imbalance would lead to weak races being pushed down the ladder, but how would that manifest? Let's say the red race is stronger. Would the graph look like fig. A or fig. B? If it results in the pattern shown in A), that will be easy to detect. If it looks like the pattern shown in B), that will be hard to detect.


Your data has only FIVE DISCREET SKILL LEVELS buckets!
You also have no clue what the skill distribution looks like.

You can't assume a distribution for imbalance, show that the distribution doesn't exist, and claim that you proved imbalance doesn't exist or is small. FUCK THAT.

Please spare us all from more of that bullshit.
Moderator我们是个踏实的赞助商模式俱乐部
Thrombozyt
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
Germany1269 Posts
August 20 2010 12:43 GMT
#240
So lets do a little math game... Idra rages at least 3 times a week how imba terran is and that he loses due to that.
Statistics show that zerg lose 1.5 games in 1000 due to imbalance. That means Idra would have to play 2k games a week in order. Now Idra is a tough progamer and he plays 18 hours (even he needs 5 hours of sleep and another hour for food/hygiene) a day 7 days a week. Those are 7560 minutes. That means he is actually that pro, that he ends his average match in 3.76 minutes minus the time it takes to load up the game.

Now I know what I am doing wrong... moar 6pool ftw!

Prev 1 10 11 12 13 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 17h 11m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
mcanning 310
BRAT_OK 114
UpATreeSC 111
MindelVK 1
StarCraft: Brood War
Flash 3960
Barracks 2295
Jaedong 2285
Mini 1122
EffOrt 1045
BeSt 673
Soma 563
Stork 485
firebathero 370
Snow 314
[ Show more ]
Larva 282
Zeus 246
Free 141
Mind 119
Hyun 114
Rush 101
Sharp 54
TY 48
soO 40
zelot 35
Shine 34
Shinee 34
Movie 30
sorry 22
scan(afreeca) 21
Terrorterran 18
Yoon 15
SilentControl 9
ivOry 3
Dota 2
canceldota92
Counter-Strike
ScreaM1727
fl0m278
flusha179
allub169
Other Games
FrodaN1898
Beastyqt678
ceh9383
KnowMe130
Organizations
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 18 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• poizon28 47
• IndyKCrew
• sooper7s
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• Migwel
• intothetv
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Kozan
StarCraft: Brood War
• Azhi_Dahaki42
• FirePhoenix2
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
Dota 2
• C_a_k_e 3347
• WagamamaTV691
League of Legends
• Nemesis5546
• TFBlade760
Other Games
• Shiphtur303
Upcoming Events
Esports World Cup
17h 11m
ByuN vs Astrea
Lambo vs HeRoMaRinE
Clem vs TBD
Solar vs Zoun
SHIN vs Reynor
Maru vs TriGGeR
herO vs Lancer
Cure vs ShoWTimE
Esports World Cup
1d 17h
Esports World Cup
2 days
Esports World Cup
3 days
CranKy Ducklings
4 days
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
4 days
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
5 days
Bonyth vs Sziky
Dewalt vs Hawk
Hawk vs QiaoGege
Sziky vs Dewalt
Mihu vs Bonyth
Zhanhun vs QiaoGege
QiaoGege vs Fengzi
FEL
5 days
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
5 days
BSL20 Non-Korean Champi…
6 days
Bonyth vs Zhanhun
Dewalt vs Mihu
Hawk vs Sziky
Sziky vs QiaoGege
Mihu vs Hawk
Zhanhun vs Dewalt
Fengzi vs Bonyth
Liquipedia Results

Completed

CSL Xiamen Invitational
Championship of Russia 2025
Murky Cup #2

Ongoing

Copa Latinoamericana 4
Jiahua Invitational
BSL20 Non-Korean Championship
CC Div. A S7
Underdog Cup #2
FISSURE Playground #1
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25

Upcoming

CSLPRO Last Chance 2025
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
BSL Season 21
RSL Revival: Season 2
SEL Season 2 Championship
uThermal 2v2 Main Event
FEL Cracov 2025
Esports World Cup 2025
HCC Europe
ESL Pro League S22
StarSeries Fall 2025
FISSURE Playground #2
BLAST Open Fall 2025
BLAST Open Fall Qual
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.