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Racial Distribution in Patch 1.0 - Diamond Ladder - Page 10
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Keap
United States214 Posts
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oxxo
988 Posts
On September 02 2010 15:05 Keap wrote: Sample size is irrelevant because that is the actual data, not a poll or a drawn sample. You guys are retarded lol It IS relevant. We aren't trying to get an estimate of the total population. THAT is when it would be irrelevant. We are using the data for 'imbalance'. Maybe you should learn your basic statistics before you call other people stupid? | ||
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happyness
United States2400 Posts
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happyness
United States2400 Posts
On September 02 2010 13:50 JoKeR[X] wrote: No one's saying it's fine the way it is... but the extreme hyperbole about Terran OPness is starting to wear itself. The upcoming tweaks are IMO good, will they definitely settle the matter? Hell no. We just have to wait it out and let them keep tweaking it. I'm sure there will be upcoming patches where Terrans get over nerfed, and they get re-buffed. It's almost a certainty. They probably will get over-nerfed, or at least it will feel like it, like the roach. But I wouldn't call this a "tweak". These seem like pretty significant changes IMO. | ||
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
![[image loading]](http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/6366/91018474.png) this is the combined data of all 1100+ sample size of 803. terran: 331 protoss: 297 zerg: 175 whoops i left out random. whatever you get the point. what's more interesting is that every 100 point interval the number of users drops by about half each time. is that blizzards system at work? :D actually random sees a pretty significant drop to .02% | ||
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Ownos
United States2147 Posts
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NihiloZero
United States68 Posts
On September 02 2010 07:57 Mikilatov wrote: Pretty eye-opening, it seems. I'm glad that this graph pulls up an interesting point though, Terrans aren't really that overpowered except at high levels in the hands of 1000+ point diamond players. Or... it could simply mean that the higher level players are the ones who have fully recognized and taken advantage of Terran's strength. It doesn't at all mean that Terran isn't relatively overpowered at the slightly lower levels as well. At the lower levels, what you could be seeing, is Terran moving on through as they move up the ladder getting more points. And that's just talking about the diamond leagues. So... if you see relatively more Zerg players in the silver league it wouldn't necessarily mean that they were dominating at that level of play so much as it might suggest equivalent players using other races had moved on up to gold. | ||
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Ownos
United States2147 Posts
On September 02 2010 08:38 GoBackToGo wrote: so lets say im inventing a new pill to cure something, and i test it on a handful of ppl, lets say 5.. then those 5 ppl i gave my pill to make up the whole "population" the pill was ever tested on. so lets say the test showed no adverse reaction for any of the 5 ppl. given that information, would u like to go ahead and try my new pill? btw: t is slightly imbalanced. they are going to fix it. No, it would mean those 5 people have no adverse reaction. If you're population is those 5 people. What stats you take on the population are representative of the population. Trying to ask that you should take the pill or not based on your findings makes as much sense as taking statistics of the US population and then using it to say that people in china are 50% likely to eat beef. Seriously, people there is nothing wrong with the data. How you INTERPRET the data up is to you. . | ||
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Wargizmo
Australia1237 Posts
Yes, this is the entire population, not a 'sample' however, when the entire population is 20 you can't reliably use the data to prove a point. I think though, that in a population of 200 (e.g. the top 200) you can begin to draw some conclusions from that data. The question I ask then is this: Why is there a trend (High Terran %) in this particular subset of people (the top 200) which goes against the general trend of the Diamond population (High Protoss %). Hypotheses: 1) Racial imbalance. 2) Better players choose Terran. 3) Statistics are skewed by good players switching to Terran due to percieved imbalance. 4) People haven't figured out how to play the other races yet. 5) Terran are easier to play and the overall skill of players hasn't caught up yet to the point where other races can compete at the top level. 6) Top 200 is just randomly mostly Terran for no good reason, aka "sample size" is too small. These are the most common explanations I've seen. The most plausible by far to me seems to be the first option, since there's little evidence to support 2 or 3 (except for a couple of notable publicised cases), 4 seems unlikely given there doesn't seem any reason why the rate of development of strategies for one race should be higher than any of the others. 5 is plausible but isn't this also a form of imbalance? 6 is probably true for the top 20, but the top 200? I think this is a big enough number of people to make at least some conclusions. I think anyone with a brain will agree that imbalance, while not the only plausible explanation, is definitely the most likely. | ||
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NihiloZero
United States68 Posts
On September 02 2010 08:08 Doomrok wrote: Terran is perfectly balanced, I mean, look at my Terran vs Zerg win rate! http://www.danrok.com/stats/  rr:r Actually... all this really reveals is that you suck at mirror matches. ;P Love the game notes though! | ||
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s4m222
United States272 Posts
I feel Terran VS P or Z could be more balance but its more of a sense that i have from playing too many games. Nothing i could substantiate. This chart is good, another chart after a month or so, it would help make this more credible since technically although this is a large sample size, its of one moment in time. Its probably a LOAD of work but to see the progress of race distribution amoungst mid/high diamonds monthly or so. *blizzard should look at this thread! | ||
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dogabutila
United States1438 Posts
On September 02 2010 11:44 roronoe wrote: I'm interested in why random starts off high, dips in the middle, and goes back up, in a really consistent manner too. Anyone have a plausible explanation for this? Low level diamonds can cheese pretty well, random in lower diamond means that you can't do race specific cheeses // aggressive plays until you scout. In the mid level, diamond players dont rely on cheese as much, and have more familiarity with their race then whatever random player has, IOW their stock standard game is better. Even though the random player knows what race the opponent is, they might not necessarily use a tailored build vs that race (which might give them an advantage) because they might be preparing for cheese as they are used to. Then as they gain ranking // skill again, randoms have learned how to scout // deal with cheese well enough such that they can use tailored builds vs opponents race or are familiar enough with all the races to beat the opponent in a macro game. | ||
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
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Wargizmo
Australia1237 Posts
On September 02 2010 15:48 mahnini wrote: if you were to accept that racial imbalance causes terrans to be placed higher why is the trend only happening at the highest ELOs? how come at lower ELOs dont see any terran inflation? shouldn't racial imbalance cause a larger discrepancy causing an upside down pyramid of terran distribution? i know upside down pyramid is stupid i dont know how else to say that right now ~_~ This was explained by a few people earlier in the thread. It's all due to the matchmaking system trying to get everyone to have a ~50% win loss ratio, top players who play underpowered race(s) will be placed in lower brackets and make the distribution seem even in those brackets. Basically if there's an imbalance, the only place it will ever show up is at the top since at every other level there will still be loads of people who use the 'underpowered' race(s) because they're players who should be rated higher but have been pushed down due to the imbalance. Edit: I guess I was too quick for your edit but I'm going to leave my post up because I think a lot of people don't seem to understand this. | ||
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Foomnz
New Zealand36 Posts
The data is an actual representation of the entire population, not a sample or a subset. 2: If it is accurate.(no corroborating source or datum is evident) then my interpretation is that Terran are Imba! to argue otherwise makes it sound like you have your head in the sand. on its own the data is not so damning ..but in concert with the overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence surely it provides clear and incisive view off the issue. there is no forum anywhere in the world where i have seen the claim that Zerg are to strong follow by masses of butt-sore Zergs saying...no other races just need to learn how to play yet we see this every day about Terran(why do you think this is so?) what is more likely; top Terran's are just overwhelmingly better than top Zergs ....OR.... There is a mismatch regarding the effectiveness/supply cost/ease of use of Terran units that only becomes apparent when the issue of skill is not in variance (i.e. the very top)? | ||
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tomatriedes
New Zealand5356 Posts
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Tasonir
2 Posts
1: Anyone using the phrase "sample size" in an attempt to debunk the theory that Terran are imbalanced, immediately invalidates their own argument......there is no "sample size". The data is an actual representation of the entire population, not a sample or a subset. If there were only 4 starcraft 2 players in the entire world, and you took data on the entire population, your sample size is 4. It doesn't matter that it's the entire population, it's still a very small sample size. While the data at 600, 700, etc points seems robust, the sample size of 1500+ players is laughably small to do any statistics on. It doesn't matter that he used every 1500+ player reported; there are simply too few 1500+ players in the world to get meaningful data about. It's also entirely unproven that people pick the race they feel is strongest. Some players may pick their race more for style, or on a whim. Others may try to pick the strongest race, but be wrong about it, and actually pick a weaker race. Granted the top of the top are less likely to be mistaken, but I'd say it's still pretty common. | ||
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Deadlyfish
Denmark1980 Posts
How many players play the different races? How many players are even 1400+? You cant just pick the top 5 and go, "well there are 3 terrans so terran is OP". You need info across all brackets, not just the top 2% or whatever. I'd like for someone to do that, unfortunately i'm just too lazy :D | ||
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Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
I have seen on these sites that keep track of each race that zerg popularity overall has gone down from ~25% to 23% in the past month. Where are all the Zergies going? | ||
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Cotonou
42 Posts
On one hand, people shouting that Terran isn't OP are clearly wrong. Blizzard agrees. Done. On the other hand, people shouting that Terran is clearly OP because of this graph are also wrong. I haven't seen this rebuttal brought up, so forgive me if I'm repeating someone. There seems to be an underlying assumption that the proper ratio of players across the races (ie, the null hypothesis) should be some variation on 30-30-30-10, with the 10 being those overachieving randoms out there. Unfortunately, this is a faulty assumption. Fortunately, we have a means of examining this. Because of Blizzard's stunningly effective matchmaking algorithm, players maintain a 50-50 win ratio except at the extreme high and the extreme low end. A positive win ratio will result in promotion to a higher league (and tougher players), and a negative win ratio will result in the reverse. This has the effect of pushing extremely skilled and unskilled players to the edges of the bell curve -- high diamond and gutter bronze. Examining the edges of the bell curve is an extremely poor way of judging the performance of the remainder of the curve due to the fact that individual skill differences and irrational race preferences become more and more pronounced as the group diminishes in size. In other words, the power of a statistical analysis is that over a large enough group size, individual biases and skill differentials will largely cancel each other out and leave pure, unadulterated signal behind -- within a measure of confidence, of course. At the very top and very bottom this can no longer be counted upon, as irrational individual choices and the fundamental fact that some players are just plain better than others has a huge impact on what appears to be a rational decision (ie, which race will I play?). To put it even more simply -- I have seen the claim that because Terran dominates the extremely small high-end skill bracket that their race is overpowered. This claim is based on the assumption of even skill spread across all races, and even racial representation across all players, all in a group of 50-odd individuals. That is a remarkably strong claim for a group size so small and I find no reason to believe it is true. When talking about slices of 5 or 10 players, why am I to believe that the Terrans are not simply better Starcraft 2 players? Or that there is not some natural human preference towards Terran? It is certainly not as preposterous as some posters here have implied. Now, lets see if we can come up with a more accurate null hypothesis, as I think the 30-30-30-10 assumption is pretty clearly flawed. Take a look at the middle of the bell curve -- Gold League. While I know Gold League represents something like the 50-70% percentile and is thus somewhat off-center in terms of skill, it is the league located farthest away from the extremes (diamond and bronze) and so the effects of very, very good and very, very bad players can be ignored. These are the solid middle children of the laddering family, and from them we can derive a proper 'null' hypothesis with which to compare those above and below. SC2Ranks reports the following. In Gold League, 38% play Protoss 32% play Terran 20% play Zerg 10% play Random I see little reason not to adopt this spread as a proper null hypothesis of initial racial division, reflecting all the biases of gamers who play Starcraft 2 without all the high-end super-refinement concerns of the high diamond league or the unstable nuggets of anti-information on which Bronze is fueled. Due to their skill limitations or build misconceptions, these Gold players have not been worthy of a promotion to higher leagues, nor have they been demoted. They are the average -- and note, if you add in the other two 'middle' leagues, Platinum and Silver, the percentages are largely unchanged while near-tripling the sample size. This is the basis from which we should evaluate the racial spread of the higher and lower leagues. Now lets look at the data from the graph at the 1100 bracket, which is the last data point with a group size I feel comfortable examining. It shows: 41% play Protoss 35% play Terran 23% play Zerg 1% play Random Compared to the neutral Gold League numbers, only Random suffers markedly. Players appear to have largely settled on their races, and each race has benefited equally. This says to me that there is no clear preference amongst the races compared to the null hypothesis. Therefore, looking at the lack of Zerg and concluding that they are underpowered does not follow. Other reasons besides win percentage determine racial preference, as shown by the leagues where win percentage is 50-50, by definition. tl;dr -- Examining the extreme high and low end of any bell curve is unhelpful as differences in player skill and player preference skew what should be impartial data. Also, the assumption of a natural even split of players amongst all races finds no support in the data, therefore few solid conclusions can be drawn from the provided graph. | ||
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