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I didn't bother reading the 12 pages of replies  but I just wanted to offer a possibly reason why terran players in bronze league might seem extremely imbalanced. Could this possibly be due to the fact that new players that has only played the campaign(or nothing) first games would play terran because its the race that's first selected when you load the game. These players would play maybe a max of 10-20 games and then quit. Wouldn't the statistical analysis work best if each player had a larger number of games played. This is why i'm guessing platinum and diamond players are the most balanced since generally(not in my case ) you would have to play a fair amount of games to get to diamond/plat league.
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This is a splendid work I thank you for posting it, It should calm down all the whining of zerg v terran, Its the first thing I hear when i beat a zerg with mech. OP race this OP race that get skill loser etc.. there tuants are universally the same 
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How weird that you got a significant difference using 50million entries....
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Well the OP fell for the "awesome" Blizzard Matchmaking System.
Imagine you are a Zerg Player in the 500 Diamond Rankings and you start dropping games one after another. The matchmaking system will then match you with Gold Level noobs just to ensure you will stay at your ~55% win ratio.
Bronze League is a complete different thing. The ppl there are like "Why cant i switch to Hyperion for some research in multiplayer?" Or "I think 8 workers is enough, isnt it?"
Bronze league might even be a place to mitigate the terran overall win ratio...
seems like a Blizzard imbalance cover up plan.
someone play the X-Files theme pls...
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Guys, these statistics only show that bnet's matchmaking system works well, it says nothing about balance! Of course the win:loss ratio of the races is close to 50%, actually every players win:loss ratio should be around 50% if he plays long enough and is not better than everyone else.
The %-difference from the average rather shows current trends, this means that the situation for diamond / plat zergs is getting worse.
I dont see the need for discussion anyway, everyone knows in ZvT earlygame, Terran has any option and Zerg needs to react. Of course there is always a way for Zerg to counter Terrans action but it's quite hard to react perfectly to a perfectly executed build, when there is 20 different potentially deadly openings for T and scouting is so difficult in this period.
The current imbalance relies in the difference of skill requirement, not in potential strenght of the races. I think this is even worse for lower skilled players than for pros and that explains the low Zerg player percentage overall.
I notice it everyday, so many terran players in diamond league who cannot macro and when their initial 1-base build fails they ragequit and scream imba. Sure i have 50% vs terran but thats because i play vs ridiculusly low skilled people, thats rather sad.
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hmmmm something about the OP having a terran picture seems to make me mistrust his post
after thinking about it, he might be right, but hes proven the wrong things with the wrong evidence
for the game to be balanced, you need a good mix of wins purely at the pro level, noobs can derp around all they like and cry imbalance due to lack of skill, but at the pro scene, everybody has enough skill to properly use all the games mechanics, push when theyr winning instead of waiting to be countered etc
not only that but the claims of imbalance are more related to how many effective harassment options a terran has, while being virtually unharassable @ early game. example: the zerg and protoss generally have no real answer to reapers if they get rushed by them before ling speed or stalkers, and have no early game options outside of those to beat reaper harass
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I've already said a lot on this topic so I won't bother to rehash. Instead, I'll post something for you to consider.
If you watch House (MD), you will know that they tend to say stuff along the lines of, show an oncologist a patient and they see cancer, show a neurologist that same patient and they see neurological problems...
It's the same thing happening here, show a math geek some numbers and he sees number crunching opportunities.
Back when BETA started, Roaches were 1 supply + 2 armour, yet Terran were still able to win vs Zerg. People called it imbalanced... it was changed. Now people find the opposite to be true, that Terran is imbalanced and yet somehow just because the game has been released to retail it simply cannot be true?
What are the chances that a game with 3 races without 1:1 counters, a different number of units per race, different game mechanics per race and different play requirements per race is exactly balanced? It is practically impossible... so does this mean the game will never be balanced? Semantically speaking it isn't possible for it to be true, but it can be balanced enough, and that is all anyone is realistically asking for. But most importantly, it needs to be balanced in such a way that it is still fun.
Imagine back in WC2 days where humans had a direct counter to Orcs: we have an archer, well they throw axes- same crap different smell. It was practically a mirror matchup with cosmetic changes and some spells that sort of offset each other (e.g. temporary increase in attack damage offset by ability to heal). We don't want that for SC2, SC:BW was great because having 3 distinct races made for entertaining play and a great deal of variety. It took some time for balance changes to be rolled out and the main reason for those changes was not statistics. Whether SC:BW is balanced today is debatable, but it's balanced enough that people don't get bent out of shape over it.
Just check out the streams from the IEM challenge (day 1 and 2 in particular), do you think this whole Terran OP thing is really just everyone's imagination? Even Morrow mentioned that Terran is very strong right now, and he plays Terran. HasuObs was unhappy about how strong marauders were, when asked if he had changed his strategy would things have been any different, he said "no", they can just stim and do tank like DPS while having enough HP to tank psi storm and collossi damage. Dimaga played a match against Lucifron, killed all his SCVs and still lost, he was not happy that such a devastating blow to Terran, the race able to both turtle and harrass, is also such a beast at economic recovery - the last saving grace of the Zerg. People were surprised when TLO managed to comeback after a severe economic setback vs WhiteRa and still convincingly win.
We really should take into consideration what the pro's say since they are the ones trying to explore the deepest depths of this game. The thing is, even the pros will have differing opinions, each one will have their own point of view, so you will see Zergs saying the matchup is fine, and you will hear Terran saying the matchup is not fine. You'll also have a lot of people on forums countering this by saying that Pro's are the most suspect since their livelihood is at stake and so of course they will want to blame their lack of skill on racial imbalance - they will then go on to say that Blizzard is the one with all the "hard facts", they are the ones with the years and years of experience making games balanced.
Using a car analogy since that is the norm... a race driver tells his crew that the car whilst driveable does not handle very well in certain conditions... the mechanic tells him that isn't possible since he has been building/servicing race cars for years and that since it worked in the last car, this new car which despite being different in many ways should also behave the same. It would never happen.
Blizzard have a financial incentive to make the game easier to play for Terrans, more so than Pros have a financial incentive to whine about their race being UP. You don't even need to dig that deep to realise this is likely the case. The level of polish that Terran have received is far and away greater than that of the other two races, people are asking more for the other 2 races to get the attention to detail that they deserve, because afterall, mirror matches are not generally something everyone wants to eventuate. Blizzard knows that people who are new to the game will likely choose to play as Terran online and as such they don't want them to have a hard time getting some degree of proficiency at the game.
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I think the methodology is sound for what a starcraft 2 player can fathom. Critisizing the methodology is fine cause he has not taken the match making system into account. And plus I do wish to say that people who just comes in and say "terran is imba", the game is not perfectly balanced, so freaking what? Look at the streaky sc:bw winrates plz.
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If this includes data from the beta period you have made a whole lot of work for nothing as those games contribute to "balance" the scales as in "that race is op so we nerf it" which alters the win/loss %.
Is it retail only or beta data aswell?
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interesting way to see it..
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On August 21 2010 01:49 hmsrenown wrote:
I think the methodology is sound for what a starcraft 2 player can fathom. Critisizing the methodology is fine cause he has not taken the match making system into account. And plus I do wish to say that people who just comes in and say "terran is imba", the game is not perfectly balanced, so freaking what? Look at the streaky sc:bw winrates plz.
He has taken the MMS into account, that's not really the issue.
The problem is he completely ignores the players subjectivity and level of skill. Not to mention that "balance" is completely irrelevant except for at the very highest level of skill (which isn't even that high yet, which is why we see someone like Idra being consistently better than most other players).
People need to realise that even the very best players aren't even close to maxing out their potential in pure mechanics. A handful are getting quite good, but still, it's not like you can use some limited dataset based off completely random matches and think you'll get a result that matters. It's like telling a bunch of random people to complete a few laps in Monte Carlo with three different F1 cars, then using the data to determine which car is the best, or if there are any balance problems. It's ridiculous.
Looking at Diamond league as one entity in itself is dubious, at best, and even looking at the ladder in the first place is questionable.
To get any kind of significant data you would need to get players at the very top that have a similar skill-level in terms of mechanics. Them being similarly skilled in micro would also help. Then these would have to play a significant number of games (ideally, thousands), so that you could investigate individual match-ups.
Also, there is the issue of understanding that a lot of the complaining stems from the fact that at a higher level, Zerg is a purely reactive race in a game of advanced RPS (which is extremely macro-based, in comparison to any other RTS). Zerg hasn't got any viable aggressive options early game, which leads to a bunch of different issues, but balance-wise, looking at statistics, it's probably still somewhat subtle in comparison to what high-level Zerg players feel when they know that they have to constantly be on their toes to even stand a chance of winning, while Terrans basically can relax and lean on the opponent to win, and here is the very important bit — they haven't really got any incentive to do anything more than leaning. In other words, the nature of the match-ups vs Zerg is based in the fact that you always have more options, and can always play safer. Will this regularly show up in statistics? With time in high-level play, sure. Across the board with all kinds of idiots playing? Not a chance.
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i'd prefer to see a Study of diamond only. I think we'd see zerg Win rate decreasing as you got higher and higher in diamond league.
I never see sub-30 apm toss or zerg players in diamond ladder. Plenty of Terrans in that category though ... and they can still beat me =(
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I'm getting a little puzzled by a lot of these responses. The Diamond-only results are on the chart, and in fact the first thing you read about. The MMS was taken into account (sort of) by saying that an imbalance would stratify the races, and you'd see Zerg sinking lower in the leagues. He doesn't give the data showing the lack of stratification, admittedly, but these responses are acting like he hasn't addressed these questions at all.
Additionally, I think the arguments Zerg players are making in the ZvT matchup are valid, and I've followed these discussions with interest, but here he's taking the numbers, which are in fact the only measurable data in this debate, and concluding what they show.
I don't think I'm good enough at StarCraft to really comment on the balancing issues, but please stop attacking the OP for neglecting details that he covered adequately. Even if you don't read all the responses, at least finish reading the first post before beginning your assault.
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On August 21 2010 06:54 Zhobes wrote:
I'm getting a little puzzled by a lot of these responses. The Diamond-only results are on the chart, and in fact the first thing you read about. The MMS was taken into account (sort of) by saying that an imbalance would stratify the races, and you'd see Zerg sinking lower in the leagues. He doesn't give the data showing the lack of stratification, admittedly, but these responses are acting like he hasn't addressed these questions at all.
Additionally, I think the arguments Zerg players are making in the ZvT matchup are valid, and I've followed these discussions with interest, but here he's taking the numbers, which are in fact the only measurable data in this debate, and concluding what they show.
I don't think I'm good enough at StarCraft to really comment on the balancing issues, but please stop attacking the OP for neglecting details that he covered adequately. Even if you don't read all the responses, at least finish reading the first post before beginning your assault.
Exactly, and there is the problem. The conclusions are wrong imo. I give him credit for doing the math, but I don't agree with a lot of his conclusions. You simply can't use this data to prove or disprove imbalance unless you have more information.
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EPT
