So I opened up TeamLiquid's "TLPD - SC2 International - Individual League Index" to look at the recent tournament results, and I was surprised by what I saw...
I counted up the results for the last 85 tournaments for each race, and here they are:
Out of curiosity I began perusing the individual players and seeing their average win rates by race as well. I copied the stats for the top 40 players by ELO. TLPD - Players, Page 1
Here are the data from each player. The first number, next to the name, represents their winrate against all races. The second listed number is their winrate against Zerg opponents. + Show Spoiler +
Average winrate against ALL players = 59.5 Average winrate against ZERG players = 71.0
Just curious as to TL's response to and explanation for these numbers. If anyone knows of any discrepancy in the data or any reason the data is skewed (apart from there being slightly fewer Zerg's) that could explain these numbers, that would also be appreciated.
EDIT: Since everyone keeps mentioning GSL, maybe we should look at the most recent GSL results to see if they correspond with the current tournament results...
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
QFT
In addition, based on the fact that Blizzard's reports have in the past shown win% of each race against each race on each map in the past - if such a massive differential existed across the board, they would have at least acknowledged in by now.
In addition, do the OP's figures take into account the weighting of each race at this level?
We get this exact thread every week, it's no longer a cleverly designed whine thread. We all know what you're trying to say.
The fact of the matter is that you are taking all levels of tournament from craftcup to GSL and over all the major patches and then putting them on the same ground. Balance has changed, skill has changed, and the best zergs definitley aren't frequenting the craftcup (no offense, i think they are wonderful for the lower bracket of players)
There were like 18 Terran Bonjwas in BW but those stats don't make Terran overpowered...
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
On January 19 2011 09:05 Backpack wrote: We get this exact thread every week, it's no longer a cleverly designed whine thread. We all know what you're trying to say.
The fact of the matter is that you are taking all levels of tournament from craftcup to GSL and over all the major patches and then putting them on the same ground. Balance has changed, skill has changed, and the best zergs definitley aren't frequenting the craftcup (no offense, i think they are wonderful for the lower bracket of players)
There were like 18 Terran Bonjwas in BW but those stats don't make Terran overpowered...
lol my OP didn't have any whining at all, I'm just trying to understand the numbers. Your explanation is that Zerg's simply aren't playing in the tournaments? Any reason why?
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
Right, cause if there's an exception to a rule we should just completely ignore it, right? That's a great way to gather statistics. We see a trend, and ignore all the results that don't follow the trend. Your argument (yes, it's spelled that way, "A-R-G-U-M-E-N-T"), is pretty badly flawed as well.
Fact is, they're different. Until all the races are exactly the same, you won't see 33.3/33.3/33.3 numbers. How about this; have you looked into how many players played in the competition? If only 5 zergs entered each tournament, it's no wonder there were so few winners. You're extending your theory too far.
I play Toss, and I'll admit, the fundamentals for zerg aren't easy. Creep Spread, Larva Inject, Expanding, etc. It may be the most difficult race to play, which means there's a skill gap between pros and Code B and below. 2 Zergs won GSLs because they mastered the race (at that time), and played great with the understanding of a master. It isn't conclusive either way. Rather than produce a theory out of the results, just post the results and let the community formulate their own theories.
On January 19 2011 09:05 Backpack wrote: We get this exact thread every week, it's no longer a cleverly designed whine thread. We all know what you're trying to say.
The fact of the matter is that you are taking all levels of tournament from craftcup to GSL and over all the major patches and then putting them on the same ground. Balance has changed, skill has changed, and the best zergs definitley aren't frequenting the craftcup (no offense, i think they are wonderful for the lower bracket of players)
There were like 18 Terran Bonjwas in BW but those stats don't make Terran overpowered...
lol my OP didn't have any whining at all, I'm just trying to understand the numbers. Your explanation is that Zerg's simply aren't playing in the tournaments? Any reason why?
Did you read my post?
My explanation has to do with the scattered skill level and multiple balance patches that occurred over the course of the list that you are using.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
Right, cause if there's an exception to a rule we should just completely ignore it, right? That's a great way to gather statistics. We see a trend, and ignore all the results that don't follow the trend. Your argument (yes, it's spelled that way, "A-R-G-U-M-E-N-T"), is pretty badly flawed as well.
Fact is, they're different. Until all the races are exactly the same, you won't see 33.3/33.3/33.3 numbers. How about this; have you looked into how many players played in the competition? If only 5 zergs entered each tournament, it's no wonder there were so few winners. You're extending your theory too far.
I play Toss, and I'll admit, the fundamentals for zerg aren't easy. Creep Spread, Larva Inject, Expanding, etc. It may be the most difficult race to play, which means there's a skill gap between pros and Code B and below. 2 Zergs won GSLs because they mastered the race (at that time), and played great with the understanding of a master. It isn't conclusive either way. Rather than produce a theory out of the results, just post the results and let the community formulate their own theories.
Why are you trying to argue with me over balance? I already said in my post I don't think it's unfair. I said your argument was flawed. And thanks for taking such an effort to correct my spelling I guess.
Yes there is exceptions to rules. Like one player could just be better and could win with any race he wanted. But since we don't have all day to list every single variable I think it's simpler to look at statistics the way they were meant to. Not taking one specific example and using them to form a biased arugment.
Or if you want I can just state that Terran havn't won a GSL yet so obviously Terran need some serious buffs.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
Right, cause if there's an exception to a rule we should just completely ignore it, right? That's a great way to gather statistics. .
SC2 balance is one thing, understanding of statistics is another!
You can estimate the error you'd expect from your result by taking the root of the sample size.
For instance, if I flip a coin 100 times, I'd expect it to land heads 50 times and tails 50 times. If I do the experiment, I'd expect an error of +/- sqrt(100) = 10.
So if my coin lands 40 times on heads and 60 times on tails, that's statistically consistent with a fair coin.
That means of a tournament sample of size 13 (looking only at major tournaments), we can expect +/- 3 at the very least!
If we remarkably did have perfect balance between all races, then having 7 or 8 Terran winners - or merely 1 or 2 Zerg winners - would be statistically expected.
On the other hand, if you look at a larger sample - say 85 tournaments, the error is only 9. Anything less than 20 or so Zerg victories is statistically suprising, assuming perfect balance, and no other factors.
There are of course other explanations than imbalances between the races, but the way you are using statistics is wrong and you should stop.
Edit: Out of 4 GSL tournaments, we should expect +/- 2. That means that current GSL results are consistent with Zerg being statistically expected to win zero, or statistically expected to win all of them. When your error bars are bigger than your signal, you should start worrying about your sample size for sure!
I personally don't care what's balanced/isn't, I'm too nooby for it to matter. But the zerg win rate for tournaments OVERALL has always been abysmal, and it hasn't really changed. Zergs got lucky and won 2 tournaments, and those were luckily GSL's, and all of a sudden every other tourney in the world doesn't matter?
Either way, it doesn't change the percentages a lot. For this to be more significant, you'd need the proportion of all the progamers in the tournaments as well. Who's to say that Zerg weren't the minority in overall representation (and therefore the 7% would be more normal than if 1/3rd of the players were Zerg)?
Wow that's funny to look at. It's like each race is taking turns winning, so I guess a Protoss has to win the next major tournament to keep the perfection.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
Right, cause if there's an exception to a rule we should just completely ignore it, right? That's a great way to gather statistics. .
SC2 balance is one thing, understanding of statistics is another!
You can estimate the error you'd expect from your result by taking the root of the sample size.
For instance, if I flip a coin 100 times, I'd expect it to land heads 50 times and tails 50 times. If I do the experiment, I'd expect an error of +/- sqrt(100) = 10.
So if my coin lands 40 times on heads and 60 times on tails, that's statistically consistent with a fair coin.
That means of a tournament sample of size 13 (looking only at major tournaments), we can expect +/- 3 at the very least!
If we remarkably did have perfect balance between all races, then having 7 or 8 Terran winners - or merely 1 or 2 Zerg winners - would be statistically expected.
On the other hand, if you look at a larger sample - say 85 tournaments, the error is only 9. Anything less than 20 or so Zerg victories is statistically suprising, assuming perfect balance, and no other factors.
There are of course other explanations than imbalances between the races, but the way you are using statistics is wrong and you should stop.
Edit: Out of 4 GSL tournaments, we should expect +/- 2. That means that current GSL results are consistent with Zerg being statistically expected to win zero, or statistically expected to win all of them. When your error bars are bigger than your signal, you should start worrying about your sample size for sure!
Again, you're assuming that the # of Zerg players = # of Protoss players = # of Terran players in these tournaments...
I doubt this is the case. Zerg is comparatively unpopular (EDIT: though not on TL.net...).
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
Right, cause if there's an exception to a rule we should just completely ignore it, right? That's a great way to gather statistics. We see a trend, and ignore all the results that don't follow the trend. Your argument (yes, it's spelled that way, "A-R-G-U-M-E-N-T"), is pretty badly flawed as well.
Fact is, they're different. Until all the races are exactly the same, you won't see 33.3/33.3/33.3 numbers. How about this; have you looked into how many players played in the competition? If only 5 zergs entered each tournament, it's no wonder there were so few winners. You're extending your theory too far.
I play Toss, and I'll admit, the fundamentals for zerg aren't easy. Creep Spread, Larva Inject, Expanding, etc. It may be the most difficult race to play, which means there's a skill gap between pros and Code B and below. 2 Zergs won GSLs because they mastered the race (at that time), and played great with the understanding of a master. It isn't conclusive either way. Rather than produce a theory out of the results, just post the results and let the community formulate their own theories.
Why are you trying to argue with me over balance? I already said in my post I don't think it's unfair. I said your argument was flawed. And thanks for taking such an effort to correct my spelling I guess.
Yes there is exceptions to rules. Like one player could just be better and could win with any race he wanted. But since we don't have all day to list every single variable I think it's simpler to look at statistics the way they were meant to. Not taking one specific example and using them to form a biased arugment.
Or if you want I can just state that Terran havn't won a GSL yet so obviously Terran need some serious buffs.
No, you can't state that. That doesn't even make sense. Because the better players choose to play other races, doesn't make it "bad", or "imbalanced". Popularity =/= balance. You're right, we don't have all day to list every single variable, but that doesn't mean you can ignore data when it's presented.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
Right, cause if there's an exception to a rule we should just completely ignore it, right? That's a great way to gather statistics. We see a trend, and ignore all the results that don't follow the trend. Your argument (yes, it's spelled that way, "A-R-G-U-M-E-N-T"), is pretty badly flawed as well.
Fact is, they're different. Until all the races are exactly the same, you won't see 33.3/33.3/33.3 numbers. How about this; have you looked into how many players played in the competition? If only 5 zergs entered each tournament, it's no wonder there were so few winners. You're extending your theory too far.
I play Toss, and I'll admit, the fundamentals for zerg aren't easy. Creep Spread, Larva Inject, Expanding, etc. It may be the most difficult race to play, which means there's a skill gap between pros and Code B and below. 2 Zergs won GSLs because they mastered the race (at that time), and played great with the understanding of a master. It isn't conclusive either way. Rather than produce a theory out of the results, just post the results and let the community formulate their own theories.
Why are you trying to argue with me over balance? I already said in my post I don't think it's unfair. I said your argument was flawed. And thanks for taking such an effort to correct my spelling I guess.
Yes there is exceptions to rules. Like one player could just be better and could win with any race he wanted. But since we don't have all day to list every single variable I think it's simpler to look at statistics the way they were meant to. Not taking one specific example and using them to form a biased arugment.
Or if you want I can just state that Terran havn't won a GSL yet so obviously Terran need some serious buffs.
No, you can't state that. That doesn't even make sense. Because the better players choose to play other races, doesn't make it "bad", or "imbalanced". Popularity =/= balance. You're right, we don't have all day to list every single variable, but that doesn't mean you can ignore data when it's presented.
Right lets keep this simple because your keep talking about balance for some reason. I used Terran as an example because it is using the same logic a superstitious person would use. Which is the same thing you are doing.
For statistics to be accurate you need them to be clear what they're showing and a big sample size. The stats Blizzard have right now arn't the best because of patch changes. It needs to show a long length of time with a lot of games with no changes to be considered accurate.
Go on a poker forum and explain to them your a good player because you made a good profit in 10k hands. You'll just get laughed at.
Easy to conclude that for whatever reason, Zergs are both weaker and less plentiful right now. I'm sorry you went through all that trouble when you could have just asked.
On January 19 2011 09:42 Dragar wrote: If you assume people who enter tournaments are:
a) Statistically representative of the Masters Division b) No more or less likely to enter a tournament given their race
then your explanation just can't hold.
Yes, but the burden of proof isn't on me, it's on the OP. He's the one presenting evidence and I'm pointing out that it's lacking. We're only working off assumptions here and that's as good as hearsay (i.e., it's meaningless).
Unless he can provide the representation of Zergs in those tournaments and show, statistically, that number of Zerg winners are statistically divergent from what we would expect given the overall representation, then any discussion of these numbers is about as productive and conclusive as pissing into the wind. Sorry.
Note I say "winners," not "first-place finalists," because I still think that the first-place sample size might be a bit too small. Just look at the GSLs -- if you didn't consider runner-ups, you might take the conclusion that Terran underperforms in that tournament, thought that's clearly not the case.
While we're at it, why not mention the fact that ~1/3 of the master league players are zerg even though only 1/5 players on the BNet servers are Zerg. So a Zerg player is 5/3~ 2 * more likely to become excellent compared to Protoss and Terran, kind of absolutely destroys the so-called fact that Zerg has the highest skill ceiling.
Either way, it doesn't change the percentages a lot. For this to be more significant, you'd need the proportion of all the progamers in the tournaments as well. Who's to say that Zerg weren't the minority in overall representation (and therefore the 7% would be more normal than if 1/3rd of the players were Zerg)?
Just sayin'.
lol thanks for catching that. I accidentally subtracted the 54 and 7 from 100 instead of from 85, and that's why the numbers are off. After making th proper subtraction and also subtracting the two random winners, we have 22 protoss wins. The OP has been updated.
How long ago was the 85th tournament? The results are pointless if some of them are before patch 1.1 or the removal of Kulas Ravine.
Less people play Zerg because a)they are icky while Terrans are human and Protoss have lasors and invisible snipers and b)since the beta Zergs have whined and whined and whined and whined about how UP they are, so who wants to play a "UP" race even if the complaints are untrue?
On January 19 2011 10:16 TeWy wrote: While we're at it, why not mention the fact that ~1/3 of the master league players are zerg even though only 1/5 players on the BNet servers are Zerg. So a Zerg player is 5/3~ 2 * more likely to become excellent compared to Protoss and Terran, kind of absolutely destroys the so-called fact that Zerg has the highest skill ceiling.
Actually it reinforces the theory... The weaker players would tend to avoid the more difficult race with the higher skill ceiling, and the stronger players who can recognize some of the advantages of a higher skill ceiling will choose that race, therefore skewing the masters league to have a higher percentage of Zerg's than the proportions would suggest. And because there are more weaker players than strong, that also explains why the total number of zerg's is smallest of the three races.
On January 19 2011 10:34 Geovu wrote: How long ago was the 85th tournament? The results are pointless if some of them are before patch 1.1 or the removal of Kulas Ravine.
Less people play Zerg because a)they are icky while Terrans are human and Protoss have lasors and invisible snipers and b)since the beta Zergs have whined and whined and whined and whined about how UP they are, so who wants to play a "UP" race even if the complaints are untrue?
The 85th tournament took place on October 29, 2010.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
Because it doesn't matter how average joe schmoe beat another average joe schmoe. Players even in Ro64 GSL are NOT considered equal in ANY matter to the any or near top if not the top players in ANY other tournament. The statistics are not equal in weight, so they should not be represented together.
Please tell me who 75% of the players are on the link in the OP, because I have NEVER heard of them. WHY? Because they are not top tier players so it really doesn't matter.
It may have a lot to do with map pool. Winning as Zerg on DQ,JB,SoW, LT (against Terran), and Metalopolis close positions is tough. I don't think Zerg as a race is imbalanced, but I think many of the maps are unfair to Zerg. If the tournament scene gets away from blizzard maps or blizzard starts taking the bad ones out and putting in new ones (that aren't such an uphill battle for Zerg) I think the results will start to even out.
I think a reason Zerg players can perform well on the ladder and compete for top 200 spots is because they can veto 3 maps.
T gets further because they have 'safe' builds and are less likely to get knocked out by different forms of rushes. (mainly, assuming high skill level T is much more likely to get through BO1's)
As for the zerg stats/comments it's more my opinion that korean zergs are on a much higher level. your data is a little skewed from the intl tlpd
How long ago was the 85th tournament? The results are pointless if some of them are before patch 1.1 or the removal of Kulas Ravine.
While this may not necessarily be relevant, it does remind me of the fact that diamond's race distribution used to look significantly different before the roach buff (Zerg never really broke above 24% representation in diamond). This might affect some of the other comments that appeal to the assumption that the distribution of tournament participants should mirror the current distribution of the master league. It's hard to really understand how significant this information is without considering the fact that these tournaments occurred over a long period of time, within which there have been large changes to race distribution in all leagues.
It's not as clear cut as people think.
Less people play Zerg because a)they are icky while Terrans are human and Protoss have lasors and invisible snipers and b)since the beta Zergs have whined and whined and whined and whined about how UP they are, so who wants to play a "UP" race even if the complaints are untrue?
Proof? That's what I thought. Let's try to keep the discussion about evidence and less about YOUR personal opinions about which race is "icky" and which race is "cool." Thanks.
There's a serious issue with looking at tournaments in general without considering both the map pool and the map system. If zergs can veto certain maps, then (arguably) they have a better chance of success, but if you can't veto maps, and are forced to play even the unbalanced maps which heavily favour non-zerg races, then the outcome of a tournament could be significantly different.
Ignoring all the other things which also impact results.
On January 19 2011 09:42 Dragar wrote: If you assume people who enter tournaments are:
a) Statistically representative of the Masters Division b) No more or less likely to enter a tournament given their race
then your explanation just can't hold.
Yes, but the burden of proof isn't on me, it's on the OP. He's the one presenting evidence and I'm pointing out that it's lacking. We're only working off assumptions here and that's as good as hearsay (i.e., it's meaningless).
This burden of proof notion is daft. I don't know who came up with it.
We're not working off assumptions any more than usual, and nobody throws out everyday reasoning simply because we don't know everything. Whatever the reason, there's clearly something different happening with Zerg to the other two races, and that alone is interesting.
Unless he can provide the representation of Zergs in those tournaments and show, statistically, that number of Zerg winners are statistically divergent from what we would expect given the overall representation, then any discussion of these numbers is about as productive and conclusive as pissing into the wind. Sorry.
I'd be quite surprised if it differed much from the masters division distributions; the real issue is that I suspect this varies geographically quite considerably.
Note I say "winners," not "first-place finalists," because I still think that the first-place sample size might be a bit too small. Just look at the GSLs -- if you didn't consider runner-ups, you might take the conclusion that Terran underperforms in that tournament, thought that's clearly not the case.
The nice part about statistics is you can work out your errors. GSL first place finalists is a very small sample size, and you'd be an idiot to conclude anything from that sample beyond it's consistent with...well, everything. Winners of 100 tournaments starts to be quite a decent sample, certainly large enough to pick up glaring trends. Top four would increase the sample size even more, nothing wrong with that - though you might expect any effect to be less pronounced if you include too much. You're reducing both signal and noise...
Personally I would like to see Blizzard release some more of their win percentages, but only including data since the patch where reapers got nerfed and roach range got buffed.
Zerg is played less than the other races, it's obvious that they're going to have less winnings in tournaments than the other races. If Zerg was played less and they still won 1/3 of the time, they'd be horrendously overpowered.
And no, that has nothing to do with balance - even when Zerg was God-mode in beta with 1pop armored roaches, Zerg was still the least played race.
You can look for yourself at Sc2 ranks, on their stats page.
EU and NA has similar numbers of diamond and master league Zergs and Terrans. There are actually marginally more Z than T in master league!
Korea has about 10% more Terrans than Zergs at the top leagues, and zerg seems less popular overall in all leagues, compared to NA and EU.
At platinum level, zerg numbers plummet in all regions, compared to the other two races.
So, in NA and EU, it looks like Terran and Zerg are played in similar amounts by anyone who puts the time in to learn enough about the game to get into diamond.
Korea is another story. But the claim that Zerg is played less than Terran and Protoss is, in America and EU, false, and barely true at a global level (there are many more NA and EU players than Koreans, as Korea is quite a small country rather than half a continent).
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
Take a look at Master's league, where this distribution matters. You will see that the zerg numbers are only slightly behind the other races. If that is the case, and the game is balanced, we'd expect that zerg tourney winners would only be slightly under the 1/3 ratio, which is not the case. Clearly, there is no lack of 'skilled' players playing zerg, yet there is a lack of those who are succeeding. How could anyone deduce anything but imbalance from these statistics is unconvincing to any neutral observer in the very least.
Quick recap: you feel cognitive dissonance when new information isn't consistent with your current worldview or self-view. You don't like to feel dissonance so you try to either change your view or ignore the new information.
In this case: Terran and Protoss players think they're good and deserve all their wins against zerg. These data cast doubt on that view. This makes T and P players feel dissonance. A few might admit that zerg is UP, but most will ignore the data and just think "Man, Zerg sure QQ a lot."
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
I'm sorry; by played I meant 'played competently'. You're right that if you just add up everyone without a care, zerg aren't as popular. It's trivial to see that's not relevent though, and I figured you saw that obviously wasn't important as well.
And even on a global level, in the top leagues there's hardly a difference. Very close to 30%.
Also, I redid the analysis by taking out the 5 zerg, because their vZ win rate isn't relevant, and I also took out Genius and TOP because they both had 100% vZ win rates but had only played 2 and 1 games respectively against Z on their TLPD, so those 100%s were getting way too much weight. However, the results are still worrying:
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
I'm sorry; by played I meant 'played competently'. You're right that if you just add up everyone without a care, zerg aren't as popular. I don't see how that's relevent though, and I figured you didn't think it important either.
And even on a global level, in the top leagues there's hardly a difference. Very close to 30%.
It shows that the ratio of zerg players who will enter master's league is higher than the ratio of players of other races who will enter master's league. In order to equal out the lower leagues you'd have to add enough zerg players that they'd be way over-represented in Master's. That's why the ratio of lower leagues is important as well.
Pretty much the only thing that the statistics clearly show are that less people play zerg globally, zerg numbers among serious players is about where expected, and that less 'bad' players play zerg.
Is it because zerg is more difficult to play that they decide not to play it? or because people inherently just like zerg less (because they are the badguys in the campaign maybe?)
Who knows, the numbers can only tell you what (and only then sometimes.) They can never really tell you 'why'
You cant compare one tourneys statistics to another if the way the map pool is decided is different. Its pretty much a known fact that some maps are heavily biased towards some races than others. Therefore in tournaments where the tournament organisers choose the map pool you will get considerably different results from ones where players veto / choose.
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
I'm sorry; by played I meant 'played competently'. You're right that if you just add up everyone without a care, zerg aren't as popular. I don't see how that's relevent though, and I figured you didn't think it important either.
And even on a global level, in the top leagues there's hardly a difference. Very close to 30%.
It shows that the ratio of zerg players who will enter master's league is higher than the ratio of players of other races who will enter master's league. In order to equal out the lower leagues you'd have to add enough zerg players that they'd be way over-represented in Master's. That's why the ratio of lower leagues is important as well.
Could you explain that another way? I'm totally not following what you just said. The first sentence makes sense (and is true for diamond league as well) but the rest I don't understand at all.
The only two reasons I can imagine the higher leagues having far more Z representation in the higher than the lower leagues, is that Zerg is grossly overpowered at diamond or higher skill levels, or that there are a lot more people who play Terran and Protoss in a very casual fashion, while if someone wants to play zerg, they'll play enough to learn (and at the higher skill levels, it's fairly balanced).
We can test that last idea, not just assume it. The average number of games played by a zerg should be higher than the average Terran or Protoss, over all leagues. I wonder if SC2 ranks has that information?
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
I'm sorry; by played I meant 'played competently'. You're right that if you just add up everyone without a care, zerg aren't as popular. I don't see how that's relevent though, and I figured you didn't think it important either.
And even on a global level, in the top leagues there's hardly a difference. Very close to 30%.
It shows that the ratio of zerg players who will enter master's league is higher than the ratio of players of other races who will enter master's league. In order to equal out the lower leagues you'd have to add enough zerg players that they'd be way over-represented in Master's. That's why the ratio of lower leagues is important as well.
Could you explain that another way? I'm totally not following what you just said. The first sentence makes sense (and is true for diamond league as well) but the rest I don't understand at all.
The only two reasons I can imagine the higher leagues having far more Z representation in the higher than the lower leagues, is that Zerg is grossly overpowered at diamond or higher skill levels, or that there are a lot more people who play Terran and Protoss in a very casual fashion, while if someone wants to play zerg, they'll play enough to learn (and at the higher skill levels, it's fairly balanced).
We can test that last idea, not just assume it. The average number of games played by a zerg should be higher than the average Terran or Protoss, over all leagues. I wonder if SC2 ranks has that information?
a) Why do more zergs end up in master's league by percentage than other races?
b) If the answer to your question relates to the skill level of the players playing those races (i.e. zerg players are more skilled), why can't you apply that same answer to results from tournaments (i.e., terran/protoss is more skilled)? Why does that answer only apply when Zerg does well?
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
I'm sorry; by played I meant 'played competently'. You're right that if you just add up everyone without a care, zerg aren't as popular. I don't see how that's relevent though, and I figured you didn't think it important either.
And even on a global level, in the top leagues there's hardly a difference. Very close to 30%.
It shows that the ratio of zerg players who will enter master's league is higher than the ratio of players of other races who will enter master's league. In order to equal out the lower leagues you'd have to add enough zerg players that they'd be way over-represented in Master's. That's why the ratio of lower leagues is important as well.
Why do you need to "equal out the ratio of players in the lower leagues"? Taking into account the race choices of bronze and silver league players, who are just learning the game, contributes nothing to why zerg isn't doing so well at the top level, in spite of the fact that there is no shortage of good players playing zerg at that level. Many players switch races when they are through with learning the game, and some players switch to zerg after they feel like they have a deeper understanding of the other races. The fact remains:
1. At Master's league racial representation are approximately equal, albeit slightly less for zerg. 2. Zerg wins significantly less than their racial representation in tournaments. 3. Adding in numbers from any league other than Masters only distort this data.
It sounds like you are desperately trying to find ways to explain away these facts using tedious arguments that are not convincing at all. My question to you is: Why bother?
- When zerg does disproportionately well (Zerg players reach master at a higher ratio than other races, Zerg winning 2/3 GSLs), it is because the people playing Zerg have more skill - When zerg does disproportionately badly, it is because of imbalance, not because the T/P players have more skill
It's a really annoying and common double-standard.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance.
That's naive logic, and not something an actual statistician would say. You use the larger sample size if both sources of data are of the same quality and relevance... if they aren't you have a legitimate debate over which to use, if any.
On January 19 2011 12:59 iEchoic wrote: a) Why do more zergs end up in master's league by percentage than other races?
b) If the answer to your question relates to the skill level of the players playing those races (i.e. zerg players are more skilled), why can't you apply that same answer to results from tournaments (i.e., terran/protoss is more skilled)? Why does that answer only apply when Zerg does well?
I suspect it's because if someone plays Terran, they are more likely to play very few games. Same with Protoss. It's not that Terran's are generally better, it's just that there's a lot of people who don't compete at competent levels at all. These all appear in the platinum and lower levels of play.
I'm going to try and compute the numbers to test this, based on the achivements panel.
We could indeed apply the same to tournaments. It could just be that if someone plays Zerg, they are less likely to enter tournaments.
- When zerg does disproportionately well (Zerg players reach master at a higher ratio than other races, Zerg winning 2/3 GSLs), it is because the people playing Zerg have more skill - When zerg does disproportionately badly, it is because of imbalance, not because the T/P players have more skill
It's a really annoying and common double-standard.
its not like this is some theoretical situation watch the games from the 2 gsl's zergs won. fd was head and shoulders above all his opponents, still should have lost to top and still felt the need to allin inca. he was way better than everyone, he got a relatively easy draw, and he got lucky a number of times on top of it all. nestea got 2 zvz's in ro16 and 8, not a comment on balance, and then he held off a series of retarded cheeses from boxer and mk. and has since proven hes a really good player who has a special knack for holding off cheesy stuff. not only was he better than his opponents, he won games that werent very meaningful at all in terms of balance, poorly executed undeveloped cheeses.
zerg has never done proportionately well on the whole, besides qualifications or season 3 where every z dropped out in the first 2 rounds anyway. its always been a very very few z's having success and you can watch the games, they quite clearly were more skilled than their competition.
Unfortunately the achievements listing seem to be only for a small number of players on sc2 ranks. So unless someone can find someway to query the database to ask for the average number of games played by Terran, Protoss and Zerg players, it will have to wait until another time to answer...
Quick recap: you feel cognitive dissonance when new information isn't consistent with your current worldview or self-view. You don't like to feel dissonance so you try to either change your view or ignore the new information.
In this case: Terran and Protoss players think they're good and deserve all their wins against zerg. These data cast doubt on that view. This makes T and P players feel dissonance. A few might admit that zerg is UP, but most will ignore the data and just think "Man, Zerg sure QQ a lot."
- When zerg does disproportionately well (Zerg players reach master at a higher ratio than other races, Zerg winning 2/3 GSLs), it is because the people playing Zerg have more skill - When zerg does disproportionately badly, it is because of imbalance, not because the T/P players have more skill
It's a really annoying and common double-standard.
When zerg wins, I can guess all the possible candidate zergs on the five fingers of my left hand. Sen, IdrA, Dimaga, Ret, Haypro and that kind of concludes all reasonable possibilities on the foreign scene. The fact that so few carries the meagre chances of so many is why I believe they are just way more skilled than their opponents. Their history in bw also indicates that, with Ret IdrA and Sen being some of the most dominant foreigners in the sc1 scene for the last 2 years.
When terran or protoss wins, it would often be very different players than the ones who had won before, or somebody who isn't considered as top-notch. You have a whole list of terran and toss winners whose names nobody has even seen before, and this is possible because they win so much more often. I'm not saying that they all win because of imbalance, because they can very well be legitimately good and better than the zergs they were facing. To say that they win so much more often because these players are just superior every time to their zerg opponents, when the win ratios are so lop-sided, however, is just ignorant.
- When zerg does disproportionately well (Zerg players reach master at a higher ratio than other races, Zerg winning 2/3 GSLs), it is because the people playing Zerg have more skill - When zerg does disproportionately badly, it is because of imbalance, not because the T/P players have more skill
It's a really annoying and common double-standard.
its not like this is some theoretical situation watch the games from the 2 gsl's zergs won. fd was head and shoulders above all his opponents, still should have lost to top and still felt the need to allin inca. he was way better than everyone, he got a relatively easy draw, and he got lucky a number of times on top of it all. nestea got 2 zvz's in ro16 and 8, not a comment on balance, and then he held off a series of retarded cheeses from boxer and mk. and has since proven hes a really good player who has a special knack for holding off cheesy stuff. not only was he better than his opponents, he won games that werent very meaningful at all in terms of balance, poorly executed undeveloped cheeses.
zerg has never done proportionately well on the whole, besides qualifications or season 3 where every z dropped out in the first 2 rounds anyway. its always been a very very few z's having success and you can watch the games, they quite clearly were more skilled than their competition.
I agree, Fruit was way ahead of his opponents, no argument there. I guess I'd have to argue about Nestea. MKP only did two scv allins in the series against NesTea and won with one of them (one on Shakuras which he won, one game 7 on Metal which he lost) if I remember right.
I don't think you can say Nestea was ridiculously ahead of Foxer, whereas Fruit was way ahead of Rainbow.
I think that the ~30% proportion of zergs in the upper leagues, compared to their ~20% proportion in the lower leagues, is mostly due to a large number of Terran and Protoss players who play 'casually' at the lower leagues, simply not playing enough games to get into diamond.
We can test this. If we dont see the average number of games played by Zergs being higher than the average number of Terran and Protoss games, then I'm wrong. (But if we do see this, it doesn't mean I'm right. It might just be that low tier zergs have shorter games, six pooling every time!)
Edit: Some mistake...hold on!
Edit: Corrected numbers...
Bronze:
40M games for 350k Terrans, 114 games per T. 17M games for 145k Zergs, 117 games per Z.
Silver
22M games for 115k Ts, 191 games per T. 13.2M games for 70k Zs, 188 games per Z.
Gold 17.6M games 93k Ts, 183 games per T. 12.8M games 61k Zs 210 games per Z.
Platinum 16M games for 65k Ts, 246 games per T. 13.8M games for 48k Zs, 287 games per Z.
The number are roughly the same at higher levels, and the number of players is a lot smaller, so I didn't bother adding them.
I'd appreciate someone checking the numbers independently, I'm kind of tired.
But if I got the numbers right, it's pretty clear the average zerg in the mid leages play more games than the average Terran, with roughly the same at the very bottom levels. Are they, zerg, on average, more serious? Do they like to six pool? Something else? You decide!
this forum is hilarious, everyone already knows that most people on TL play zerg from past polls(not going to look them up for you, i'm not lying about this, look it up yourself) and terran and toss QQ is not allowed, while shadowed zerg QQ seems to be unabashed.
On January 19 2011 13:46 Dragar wrote: Aha, Sc2 ranks yields all information.
I think that the ~30% proportion of zergs in the upper leagues, compared to their ~20% proportion in the lower leagues, is mostly due to a large number of Terran and Protoss players who play 'casually' at the lower leagues, simply not playing enough games to get into diamond.
We can test this. If we dont see the average number of games played by Zergs being higher than the average number of Terran and Protoss games, then I'm wrong. (But if we do see this, it doesn't mean I'm right. It might just be that low tier zergs have shorter games, six pooling every time!)
Here's the data:
Bronze:
40M games for 350k Terrans. Average 114 games per Terran. 17M games for 145k Zergs. Average 117 games per Zerg.
Silver
18M games for 186k Ts, 97 games per T 12.8M games for 61k Zs, 210 games per Z.
Platinum 16M games for 130k Ts, 123 games per T. 14M games for 94k Zs, 149 games per Z.
The number are roughly the same at higher levels, and the number of players is a lot smaller, so I didn't bother adding them.
I'd appreciate someone checking the numbers independently, I'm kind of tired.
But if I got the numbers right, it's pretty clear the average zerg in the lower leages play a lot more (double in Silver!) games than the average Terran. Are they, on average, more serious? Do they like to six pool? Something else? You decide!
The reason for this is pretty obvious... People who are playing starcraft for the first time will start playing the terran campaign. This will naturally cause them to gravitate to playing terran on multiplayer due to their familiarity with it. Therefore terran in particular will have a higher representation in the lower leagues and among the less frequent players.
On January 19 2011 13:50 jdseemoreglass wrote: The reason for this is pretty obvious... People who are playing starcraft for the first time will start playing the terran campaign. This will naturally cause them to gravitate to playing terran on multiplayer due to their familiarity with it. Therefore terran in particular will have a higher representation in the lower leagues and among the less frequent players.
I agree that's the right explanation. I didn't think anyone would be surprised. But it's nice to see the numbers actually confirm it.
I am a little surprised at the Silver numbers. I think that may be a mistake...
On January 19 2011 13:49 Silidons wrote: this forum is hilarious, everyone already knows that most people on TL play zerg from past polls(not going to look them up for you, i'm not lying about this, look it up yourself) and terran and toss QQ is not allowed, while shadowed zerg QQ seems to be unabashed.
well played friends, well played.
Does anyone know why this is (z players being way overrpresented here)?
On January 19 2011 13:49 Silidons wrote: this forum is hilarious, everyone already knows that most people on TL play zerg from past polls(not going to look them up for you, i'm not lying about this, look it up yourself) and terran and toss QQ is not allowed, while shadowed zerg QQ seems to be unabashed.
well played friends, well played.
Does anyone know why this is (z players being way overrpresented here)?
probably because of IdrA/Artosis/Ret/Haypro.
IdrA probably being the main reason, the most well-known foreigner, it kinda goes hand in hand, people want to do what he does, etc.
- When zerg does disproportionately well (Zerg players reach master at a higher ratio than other races, Zerg winning 2/3 GSLs), it is because the people playing Zerg have more skill - When zerg does disproportionately badly, it is because of imbalance, not because the T/P players have more skill
It's a really annoying and common double-standard.
its not like this is some theoretical situation watch the games from the 2 gsl's zergs won. fd was head and shoulders above all his opponents, still should have lost to top and still felt the need to allin inca. he was way better than everyone, he got a relatively easy draw, and he got lucky a number of times on top of it all. nestea got 2 zvz's in ro16 and 8, not a comment on balance, and then he held off a series of retarded cheeses from boxer and mk. and has since proven hes a really good player who has a special knack for holding off cheesy stuff. not only was he better than his opponents, he won games that werent very meaningful at all in terms of balance, poorly executed undeveloped cheeses.
zerg has never done proportionately well on the whole, besides qualifications or season 3 where every z dropped out in the first 2 rounds anyway. its always been a very very few z's having success and you can watch the games, they quite clearly were more skilled than their competition.
I agree, Fruit was way ahead of his opponents, no argument there. I guess I'd have to argue about Nestea. MKP only did two scv allins in the series against NesTea and won with one of them (one on Shakuras which he won, one game 7 on Metal which he lost) if I remember right.
I don't think you can say Nestea was ridiculously ahead of Foxer, whereas Fruit was way ahead of Rainbow.
at the time mk was pure gimmick, hes gotten a bit more solid since then but every tvz win that season was 2 rax scv/rine, the weird pure mass marine stuff, or a strange 1 time build. on scrap he did an absolutely retarded fe->marine drop build and lost, then there were at least 3 scv marine rushes. think he did a tank drop on lt. either way it was a 4-3 win in odd games by a player who has continued to perform very well. when that's your point for zerg performing disproportionately well for the first couple of seasons your argument has serious issues.
On January 19 2011 13:49 Silidons wrote: this forum is hilarious, everyone already knows that most people on TL play zerg from past polls(not going to look them up for you, i'm not lying about this, look it up yourself) and terran and toss QQ is not allowed, while shadowed zerg QQ seems to be unabashed.
well played friends, well played.
Does anyone know why this is (z players being way overrpresented here)?
I can only offer tentative theories...
Maybe people who know the history of Starcraft recognize the power of macro-oriented play, and therefore favor the macro-oriented race.
Maybe people who take the game more seriously tend to favor the strategy and skills necessary in playing the reactive/adaptive race as opposed to playing the aggressive races.
Maybe playing reactively/defensively requires more external understanding of counters/metagame/etc. and therefore people who search the internet for the latest strategies and trends end up joining TL in greater numbers.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
I'll quote IdrA to respond to your comment
... ive really never understood this how can someone post something thats flat out wrong with such absolute certainty? what is broken in your brain to make that possible?
Zerg won the 2 GSL's a LONG time ago. The metagame HAS changed (if you even know what that means) , as well as patches that hurt zerg more such as phoenix buffs. Those zerg players are extremely good, and are some of the few zerg in Code S at the moment.. they may as well have won with terran or toss at that time because they are so skilled.
I absolutely hate it when people use this point in balance arguments.. the GSLs where Fruitdealer and Nestea won were when people played differently, terran and toss now know how to deal with zerg and as well know how to abuse zerg more.
- When zerg does disproportionately well (Zerg players reach master at a higher ratio than other races, Zerg winning 2/3 GSLs), it is because the people playing Zerg have more skill - When zerg does disproportionately badly, it is because of imbalance, not because the T/P players have more skill
It's a really annoying and common double-standard.
its not like this is some theoretical situation watch the games from the 2 gsl's zergs won. fd was head and shoulders above all his opponents, still should have lost to top and still felt the need to allin inca. he was way better than everyone, he got a relatively easy draw, and he got lucky a number of times on top of it all. nestea got 2 zvz's in ro16 and 8, not a comment on balance, and then he held off a series of retarded cheeses from boxer and mk. and has since proven hes a really good player who has a special knack for holding off cheesy stuff. not only was he better than his opponents, he won games that werent very meaningful at all in terms of balance, poorly executed undeveloped cheeses.
zerg has never done proportionately well on the whole, besides qualifications or season 3 where every z dropped out in the first 2 rounds anyway. its always been a very very few z's having success and you can watch the games, they quite clearly were more skilled than their competition.
I agree, Fruit was way ahead of his opponents, no argument there. I guess I'd have to argue about Nestea. MKP only did two scv allins in the series against NesTea and won with one of them (one on Shakuras which he won, one game 7 on Metal which he lost) if I remember right.
I don't think you can say Nestea was ridiculously ahead of Foxer, whereas Fruit was way ahead of Rainbow.
at the time mk was pure gimmick, hes gotten a bit more solid since then but every tvz win that season was 2 rax scv/rine, the weird pure mass marine stuff, or a strange 1 time build. on scrap he did an absolutely retarded fe->marine drop build and lost, then there were at least 3 scv marine rushes. think he did a tank drop on lt. either way it was a 4-3 win in odd games by a player who has continued to perform very well. when that's your point for zerg performing disproportionately well for the first couple of seasons your argument has serious issues.
... ive really never understood this how can someone post something thats flat out wrong with such absolute certainty? what is broken in your brain to make that possible?
Zerg won the 2 GSL's a LONG time ago. The metagame HAS changed (if you even know what that means) , as well as patches that hurt zerg more such as phoenix buffs. Those zerg players are extremely good, and are some of the few zerg in Code S at the moment.. they may as well have won with terran or toss at that time because they are so skilled.
I absolutely hate it when people use this point in balance arguments.. the GSLs where Fruitdealer and Nestea won were when people played differently, terran and toss now know how to deal with zerg and as well know how to abuse zerg more.
Wow talk about selective bias - what about that patch fixes that buffed zerg? But no you conveniently leave those out yeah?
they may as well have won with terran or toss at that time because they are so skille
A ridiculous statement in itself; Nestea vs Foxer was a very close series
terran and toss now know how to deal with zerg and as well know how to abuse zerg more.
A zerg won a GSL before and after the reaper nerf.. but zerg abuse is at an all time high? Terran and toss had this epiphany on how to bully zerg? No. Zergs decided to hatch first, they got punished. Now zergs pool first and then early hatch and are holding it off more convincingly.. it is all a part of the game developing .. please - no more zerg tears
Updated spreadsheet with these calculations found here
That wikipedia article is a little complicated and seems to focus on 50/50 probability rather than 33/33/33... could you give a simple explanation of how you came up with those "likelihood" numbers?
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
well the largest number of statistics includes all ladder playing, even bronze do you want to use that?
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
well the largest number of statistics includes all ladder playing, even bronze do you want to use that?
But bronze is irrelevant for obvious reasons for an indication of winrates at the tip level, whereas top level international tournaments aren't. You must have knew that before you posted >_>;; Why post this?
On January 19 2011 14:23 jdseemoreglass wrote: That wikipedia article is a little complicated and seems to focus on 50/50 probability rather than 33/33/33... could you give a simple explanation of how you came up with those "likelihood" numbers?
Each matchup can be expected to be a 50/50 probability, no? So I calculate standard error (se) as 1/2sqrt(n), observed error (e) as W%-0.5, your experiment's z-value (x) as e/se, and your confidence level P(z < x < z) with excel's 2*(normsdist(x)-0.5).
All the steps are in the excel sheet if you want to plug in numbers.
set x=1, and you get a confidence level of 68.269%, as per wikipedia. set w% to 50% and you get likelihood of 100%. you can also tweak n. for example, the 57% TvZ result becomes "likely" with n=26.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
well the largest number of statistics includes all ladder playing, even bronze do you want to use that?
But bronze is irrelevant for obvious reasons for an indication of winrates at the tip level, whereas top level international tournaments aren't. You must have knew that before you posted >_>;; Why post this?
Then use the top international tournaments, not the small 16 man no known names ones. Double standard ftw.
I just counted 29 players the first page of the 1st link that I have NEVER heard of before. I know a lot of top tier players, and these are not them. Should their stats weigh as much as IdrA's? That's an insult to IdrA imo.
Regardless of the overall state of game balance, it should be eminently clear that Zerg and to a lesser extent Protoss suffer from a lack of stable, safe, middle-of-the-road builds like Terran have access to. Whether this means that any of these races are "overpowered" or "underpowered" is obviously contested, but it is undeniable that having safe openings translates very well into improved tournament performance, particularly for the bo1 format or when map vetos are disallowed.
The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Yeah well done. When presented with a larger number of statistics you chose to use a smaller sample to discredit them. When using numbers you always use the larger sample size because it is less likely to be effected by variance. Also I play Zerg and I don't think they're UP. But I think your arguement is pretty badly flawed.
well the largest number of statistics includes all ladder playing, even bronze do you want to use that?
But bronze is irrelevant for obvious reasons for an indication of winrates at the tip level, whereas top level international tournaments aren't. You must have knew that before you posted >_>;; Why post this?
Then use the top international tournaments, not the small 16 man no known names ones. Double standard ftw.
I just counted 29 players the first page of the 1st link that I have NEVER heard of before. I know a lot of top tier players, and these are not them. Should their stats weigh as much as IdrA's? That's an insult to IdrA imo.
Sorry was there a part of this argument I missed?
Or do you mean the names supplied in the OP's link to TL records aren't top level? There are mostly "top" foreign players in these tournaments, a few of which has IdrA's involvement, should you want to defer into that.... So yes, these tournaments are indication of top level play outside of Korea
Is this another attempt to play around with the statistics? >_>;;
It's fairly transparent that Zergs aren't performing well at the moment.
I don't see why people even try to dispute that. On the ladder Top 200, in tournaments, in every way, it is fairly obvious Zerg isn't doing as well as the other races.
Does this mean they need a patch? Not necessarily. I'm not going to comment on balance here, because maybe Zerg in the current metagame just hasn't been figured out, and some different playstyles could yield better results for them.
But as it stands, I don't see how anyone could argue against the fact that Zergs are underperforming. UP? Not necessarily. Underperforming? Absolutely.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
On January 19 2011 14:47 Expurgate wrote: Regardless of the overall state of game balance, it should be eminently clear that Zerg and to a lesser extent Protoss suffer from a lack of stable, safe, middle-of-the-road builds like Terran have access to. Whether this means that any of these races are "overpowered" or "underpowered" is obviously contested, but it is undeniable that having safe openings translates very well into improved tournament performance, particularly for the bo1 format or when map vetos are disallowed.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
It will be interesting to see if this changes when the new maps trickle down to smaller events. I'm inclined to say this is because the maps blow, given how much better GSL zergs do when given a more wide open area, but even on Shakuras its right at 50% when you filter for international events.
Maintaining zerg economy/army once you're in the midgame has always felt much more difficult to me than T/P which is maybe also relevant. Any bias skill has between races is going to be amplified at the more middling level tournaments.
The stats only tell you what's already obvious. Watch the games and analyse that; that's how you see the problems in the game. A lot of the problems are linked directly to maps.
The game will never be perfect, BW isn't perfect either. But at the end of the day no-one picks your race for you so as long as it's fair enough that's ok.
As a Z player myself, I'm fairly fed up of the over represented self entitlement of Zergs on this forum.
Just the overall image of Zerg players forces me away from Z and I now spend more and more time practising off races.
Subjectively Zerg when played "on full cylinders" as iNcontrol puts it can get a lot more out of it than say P/T, and i myself don't quite understand the notion that creep spreading and injecting is "hard" or somehow makes Zerg a lot harder than the other races, a couple of clicks every 29 seconds, but the reward is total map vision, where creep has reached and the ability to create 10 of what you need instantly.
In a game of limited information, at least in my eyes Zerg has some very nice mechanics to help out, and due to this Zerg inferiority complex there are a LOT of Zerg resources available for the average player. (mrBitter, "the art of Zv* guides" and so on)
I'd also like to take this chance to agree with a poster a few pages back.. that perhaps the average TL poster isn't as good as they make out to be.. this would have been a great topic for the community to be able to read about (not post about) in a "pro poster only" forum.
On January 19 2011 14:47 Expurgate wrote: Regardless of the overall state of game balance, it should be eminently clear that Zerg and to a lesser extent Protoss suffer from a lack of stable, safe, middle-of-the-road builds like Terran have access to. Whether this means that any of these races are "overpowered" or "underpowered" is obviously contested, but it is undeniable that having safe openings translates very well into improved tournament performance, particularly for the bo1 format or when map vetos are disallowed.
uh, why is that eminently clear?
Because safe openings make it less likely that you lose a game based on blind counters or bad luck (in map pool or spawns) and are dropped from the tournament, and Z has no "safe" openings, and P has few of the caliber that T does? It mystifies me how that could conceivably be unclear.
statistic-based arguments wont even convince the publicity that there is a problem with the balance, because there is outright impossible to not be countered by some othe statistic. For example, you take into consideration the same TLPD does, which is logical, but im sure there are like 50 people before me stating that if we look at GSLs Zergs have 66% winrate and could be higher by now. Or if that would not work, they would go for korean only tournaments, or include the Beta too, or go for the general ladder, the Korean ladder, anything untill they find a stat which proves that there's a balance / Z is OP. We had many discussions like this An argument like :
Average winrate against ALL players = 59.5 Average winrate against ZERG players = 71.0
Will always be countered by Zergs won GSL even if winning the first one was ouright miracuolous and it included bug-abuse, luck and one single zerg player being on fire.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
Clearly you feel that this is a result of imbalance. What specific matches so far do you think were won by the lesser skilled player, with the Z player being eliminated due to imbalance?
(this question is for anyone else, as well, since I doubt you're reading TL an hour before your match)
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
Clearly you feel that this is a result of imbalance. What specific matches so far do you think were won by the lesser skilled player, with the Z player being eliminated due to imbalance?
(this question is for anyone else, as well, since I doubt you're reading TL an hour before your match)
That's not necessarily true. He said that they (the two Zergs) had relatively easy Ro32 groups. That doesn't mean that he feels those results were due to imbalance, or even that any specific matches so far in this season were won by the less skilled player.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
Clearly you feel that this is a result of imbalance. What specific matches so far do you think were won by the lesser skilled player, with the Z player being eliminated due to imbalance?
(this question is for anyone else, as well, since I doubt you're reading TL an hour before your match)
That's not necessarily true. He said that they (the two Zergs) had relatively easy Ro32 groups. That doesn't mean that he feels those results were due to imbalance, or even that any specific matches so far in this season were won by the less skilled player.
EDIT: fixed typo.
Idra's made it clear many times, including earlier in this thread, that he thinks that Zergs do 'disproportionately badly', including in the GSL (except for obviously Fruitdealer and Nestea). I don't believe he thinks that Z players are less skilled. So if Z players are equally skilled, and they do 'disproportionally badly', then that means that there had to have been situations where the more skilled player actually lost. Am I wrong here?
One example would be Nestea vs Rain last season. But I'm curious to see if anyone has examples from this season.
I'm talking about the zergs already eliminated, not the two that got into the ro16.
I'm pretty sure these massively skewed stats is due to the fact that most of the top EU and NA pros play either Terran or Protoss, not Zerg. If the GSL is anything to go by Zerg is anything but UP in the right hands.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
You and Nestea made it through, based on skill. I think if either of you played a different race you'd still get through.
Leenock, Check, Zenio, and Fruitdealer did not deserve to move on. Fruitdealer has been playing very nonstandard and has been failing on one base. Leenock played sub-par and was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a (rare) good game by Rainbow. Check has bad economy management, especially compared to the players in his group (you and Jinro) I never thought he had a chance of advancing from your group. I don't think it's racial imbalance, it's just that most of the top Zergs right now aren't playing well compared to the likes of MC, MVP, MKP, and others (everyone who made the RO8 except Choya basically)
As for the original topic, the data you used was trash. TLPD is not up to date and it doesn't use all of the tournament results. Idra doesn't have a 100% winrate vs Zerg, for example.
You can't draw any conclusions from your "data"
EDIT: Or maybe I'm misunderstanding. Are these all tournament FINALS wins, or tournament results through every round?
On January 19 2011 17:09 Ryuu314 wrote: I'm pretty sure these massively skewed stats is due to the fact that most of the top EU and NA pros play either Terran or Protoss, not Zerg. If the GSL is anything to go by Zerg is anything but UP in the right hands.
That's just straight up wrong. You can't possible have watched all 3 GSLs and come up with a definitive statement like that.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
You and Nestea made it through, based on skill. I think if either of you played a different race you'd still get through.
Leenock, Check, Zenio, and Fruitdealer did not deserve to move on. Fruitdealer has been playing very nonstandard and has been failing on one base. Leenock played sub-par and was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a (rare) good game by Rainbow. Check has bad economy management, especially compared to the players in his group (you and Jinro) I never thought he had a chance of advancing from your group. I don't think it's racial imbalance, it's just that most of the top Zergs right now aren't playing well compared to the likes of MC, MVP, MKP, and others (everyone who made the RO8 except Choya basically)
As for the original topic, the data you used was trash. TLPD is not up to date and it doesn't use all of the tournament results. Idra doesn't have a 100% winrate vs Zerg, for example.
You can't draw any conclusions from your "data"
EDIT: Or maybe I'm misunderstanding. Are these all tournament FINALS wins, or tournament results through every round?
So just because you can meticulously find all the vaguely possible citicisms about his data, no matter how miniscule or insignificant, means that that data he has put together is useless for drawing any conclusion? No need to defend your race like that, its just comical.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
Zerg's #1 issue - complete inability to scout is somewhat negated in GSL where top zergs have the ability to snoop around match histories and more or less prepare for the opponent's playstyle.
I feel like the reason for this is that there's a lot of opportunities for protoss and terran to pressure zerg early (4 gate, bunker rush just to name two possibilities) while zerg really doesn't have that much potential to do that (9 pool doesn't work against wallins ). This might be the reason why zergs tend to lose more often in tournaments especially considering that you have to advance far in them to get to a bo3 or bo5 stage. Once zergs are there the game should be balanced imo, but bo1 feels imbalanced to me.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
You and Nestea made it through, based on skill. I think if either of you played a different race you'd still get through.
Leenock, Check, Zenio, and Fruitdealer did not deserve to move on. Fruitdealer has been playing very nonstandard and has been failing on one base. Leenock played sub-par and was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a (rare) good game by Rainbow. Check has bad economy management, especially compared to the players in his group (you and Jinro) I never thought he had a chance of advancing from your group. I don't think it's racial imbalance, it's just that most of the top Zergs right now aren't playing well compared to the likes of MC, MVP, MKP, and others (everyone who made the RO8 except Choya basically)
As for the original topic, the data you used was trash. TLPD is not up to date and it doesn't use all of the tournament results. Idra doesn't have a 100% winrate vs Zerg, for example.
You can't draw any conclusions from your "data"
EDIT: Or maybe I'm misunderstanding. Are these all tournament FINALS wins, or tournament results through every round?
So just because you can meticulously find all the vaguely possible citicisms about his data, no matter how miniscule or insignificant, means that that data he has put together is useless for drawing any conclusion? No need to defend your race like that, its just comical.
First of all, I don't play Zerg, so I'm not "defending my race."
Second, yes, you CAN dismiss the "data" because it clearly is not sufficient. It lists multiple players as having 100% winrates against Zerg when I've seen them lose against Zergs in various different tourneys. The fact that this data doesn't include hundreds of GSL games makes it pretty unreliable, too. It's like comparing football national teams without looking at the World Cup, only international friendlies.
You can never draw conclusions on insignificant data, because they're unfounded until you have a large enough sample size. Clearly TLPD is not giving us a large enough sample size of games here, if Idra is listed as having 100% winrate against Z, for example.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
Clearly you feel that this is a result of imbalance. What specific matches so far do you think were won by the lesser skilled player, with the Z player being eliminated due to imbalance?
(this question is for anyone else, as well, since I doubt you're reading TL an hour before your match)
I don't think there have been any big upsets this whole season so far, except for Fruitdealer and Maka's elimination. MC might have been a favorite to win, but I don't honestly consider it a huge upset because MK and Jinro are also sick good.
Imbalances that exist if any, are probably more subtle than just straight up "I lost because I played Z". Also, there are now far less BitByBitPrime's in Code S.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
Clearly you feel that this is a result of imbalance. What specific matches so far do you think were won by the lesser skilled player, with the Z player being eliminated due to imbalance?
(this question is for anyone else, as well, since I doubt you're reading TL an hour before your match)
I don't think there have been any big upsets this whole season so far, except for Fruitdealer and Maka's elimination. MC might have been a favorite to win, but I don't honestly consider it a huge upset because MK and Jinro are also sick good.
Imbalances that exist if any, are probably more subtle than just straight up "I lost because I played Z". Also, there are now far less BitByBitPrime's in Code S.
Fruitdealer and Maka losing were not upsets. They just played badly.
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
Clearly you feel that this is a result of imbalance. What specific matches so far do you think were won by the lesser skilled player, with the Z player being eliminated due to imbalance?
(this question is for anyone else, as well, since I doubt you're reading TL an hour before your match)
I don't think there have been any big upsets this whole season so far, except for Fruitdealer and Maka's elimination. MC might have been a favorite to win, but I don't honestly consider it a huge upset because MK and Jinro are also sick good.
Imbalances that exist if any, are probably more subtle than just straight up "I lost because I played Z". Also, there are now far less BitByBitPrime's in Code S.
Fruitdealer and Maka losing were not upsets. They just played badly.
That's like saying Flash getting eliminated from the MSL/OSL was not an upset, he just played badly. Yes, that might be true, but it's still an upset.
Since everyone keeps mentioning GSL, maybe we should look at the most recent GSL results to see if they correspond with the current tournament results...
you can't take sub samples of larger data sets just to prove your point, it's the same reason why 120% of statistics online are made up (see what I did there?) Because you can skew data to make it look like what you want it to look like.
I'm not gonna sit here and say that this proves anything, but if you think that the fact that Zerg won 2 GSL's means they are balanced then you need to go back to school and learn some statistics (or common sense).
Statistics don't prove anything, reason and induction does. It is enough to look at a few replays and games to understand that Zerg is not OP by any means whatsoever.
It's time to go back to Rob Hustle song from a while back.
just like i said some months ago. statistics will get abit silly when u add in the foreigner scene because we dont have many good zerg players who compete in tournaments also zerg has been a very weak race for a long period of time. its clearly not as imba as it used to be
nestea saying its imba or marineking saying he has 90% winrate tvz close pos LT says alot more than chunking up all the statistics from the database.
i wish artosis would just go interview a couple of progamers and ask them what the deal is rather than seeing so many statistics threads :p (i appriciate these threads i just say artosis interviews would be better)
I know its cool and hip to pretend like theres no imbalance, but its pretty obvious that at the GSL level with the current map pool that terran is indeed OP, if no changes are made its only a matter of time before terrans take the GSL over, next season we are most likely increasing the number of terran players in Code S.
Saying zerg has 2 GSL champions and Toss 1 is very silly, if you look at all the 4 tournaments the great majority of players on RO8/4 were terran, they just choked or played poorly, see oGstop vs fruitdealer @ kulas ravine.
I can name a lot of talented terran players but only few protoss and zerg... Maybe that is why.. I don't understand why people have to bring this up when terran hasn't even won a gsl yet. If zerg and toss players are just that much better than all those terran players that they get a handicap and still loss would make even less sense considering the bonjwas from bw didn't even beat nestea who was some no name.
On January 20 2011 07:26 Raid wrote: I can name a lot of talented terran players but only few protoss and zerg... Maybe that is why.. I don't understand why people have to bring this up when terran hasn't even won a gsl yet.
I don't quite understand why everyone throws away TONS of evidence regarding something because of a few games played by a handful of pros... That is all that GSL is: a very small sample of games between top players. How can that negate all the evidence?
What evidence?
The stats from tournaments since the game was released, the stats from TL's player index, the stats from Blizzard's countless Top 200's, the statements from the pro-gamers themselves from ALL the races... All these facts are pointing to the same conclusion. A conclusion that everyone wants to reject because of a handful of games between a handful of players.
Do you want links to both Korean and NA polls stating the game is imbalanced? Do you want links to the comments from players like IdrA, FruitDealer, Artosis, Dimaga, Morrow, Drewbie, TLO, Sen, Sheth, MasterAsia, Psy, and countless others? Do you want the stats from sc2ranks.com?
All the evidence is there. But many people like to ignore the flood of evidence in favor of the exceptions, to make the tail wag the dog. The GSL's do not dissprove anything, especially when the most recent results have Terran's completely dominating the GSL with 87.5% of the Ro8 being Terran. And no, this can't be explained by more Terran players. Obviously Terran's do not come close to making up 87.5% of either players or professionals.
I wish people would just admit they don't give a damn about the evidence, they just don't WANT to accept imbalance so that they can accuse those who do of being whiny, poor players.
The way you calculated win rates is wrong from a quick excel check. It looks like you just added up the win rates from every player and just averaged that value, instead of adding up their individual wins and losses and finding that win ratio. Thus, the win rate you found vs zerg is inflated because all those 100% win rates vs zerg are probably only like (1-0 or 2-0) and yet being given equal weight to all the other ratios.
I don't necessarily think that we need any terran nerfs or zerg/protoss buffs, but I do think that we need to see some map changes. I think 4 player maps people shouldn't be allowed to spawn close positions (like shakuras). Have you ever seen a game on shakuras and said, "wow that person just won because of imbalance!". Have you ever seen a game on steppes or metal close positions and said, "wow that person just won because of imbalance!" Metal and lt close positions are worse then steppes, and I'm sure we can all agree that steppes is a horrible map.
All these super close rush distance maps make Terran OP. Even if the statistics show that terrans are winning 33%, protoss 33% and zerg 33%, its more or less a coin-flip based on what maps you get and which spawning positions.
On January 20 2011 07:26 Raid wrote: I can name a lot of talented terran players but only few protoss and zerg... Maybe that is why.. I don't understand why people have to bring this up when terran hasn't even won a gsl yet.
I don't quite understand why everyone throws away TONS of evidence regarding something because of a few games played by a handful of pros... That is all that GSL is: a very small sample of games between top players. How can that negate all the evidence?
What evidence?
The stats from tournaments since the game was released, the stats from TL's player index, the stats from Blizzard's countless Top 200's, the statements from the pro-gamers themselves from ALL the races... All these facts are pointing to the same conclusion. A conclusion that everyone wants to reject because of a handful of games between a handful of players.
Do you want links to both Korean and NA polls stating the game is imbalanced? Do you want links to the comments from players like IdrA, FruitDealer, Artosis, Dimaga, Morrow, Drewbie, TLO, Sen, Sheth, MasterAsia, Psy, and countless others? Do you want the stats from sc2ranks.com?
All the evidence is there. But many people like to ignore the flood of evidence in favor of the exceptions, to make the tail wag the dog. The GSL's do not dissprove anything, especially when the most recent results have Terran's completely dominating the GSL with 87.5% of the Ro8 being Terran. And no, this can't be explained by more Terran players. Obviously Terran's do not come close to making up 87.5% of either players or professionals.
I wish people would just admit they don't give a damn about the evidence, they just don't WANT to accept imbalance so that they can accuse those who do of being whiny, poor players.
I think your numbers are skewed toward the post you wanted to make, but claimed you didn't make in your post here:
lol my OP didn't have any whining at all, I'm just trying to understand the numbers. Your explanation is that Zerg's simply aren't playing in the tournaments? Any reason why?
You ignored the individual player results in favor of focusing on the winner. For example, if we look at ESL Go4SC2 Cup #73 (Jan.16) , we'd see a tournament where Terran absolutely dominated: TvZ: 3-1 (75%) [ Games ] ZvP: 4-0 (100%) [ Games ] PvT: 0-2 (0%)
Also, there are tournaments like Competo Cup #22 (Mon 10. Jan), which had the following player list: Terran 6 CuteZer, Daut, GoOdy, Kas, PlanetSystem, Satiini Random 1 Nerchio Zerg 1 MoMaN
There are tournaments I can find where Zergs did have good representation, such as: US CraftCup #16 (Sat 18. Dec) Terran 3 ArminvB, CocoA, Fuu Zerg 3 MeYera, mkengyn, Rigid Protoss 2 Antimage, Cheese
Literally, the only conclusion you can reach by your numbers is that Zerg representation in tournaments is consistently weak. After that, it's conjecture. Tossing around perspective and opinion like it's fact and berating people for it is pretty low - especially when your 2nd post ( I think ) was saying you weren't whining.
Besides, if you actually read pro responses from people like IdrA, MarineKing (Specifically, MKP said his absurd win-ratio is close position metal, which I bet is right considering it's shorter distance than Steppes), etc, most of them focus on maps. Instead of thinking "Terran must need nerfs" why not look at the maps and say "How often is Terran favored here in each state of the game?" Just consider that maybe if we're playing on a different pool of maps we'd draw different conclusions.
That said: I've played both Protoss & Zerg to a mid diamond level. Anyone who thinks that Zerg is an easier race to learn is seriously kidding themselves. Does this mean the game is imbalanced? Maybe; I'm not really qualified to say. I do know that at the mid-diamond level, the macro advantage that Zerg has is almost meaningless because you can't exploit it anyway. So I will say that, at the mid-diamond level, Zerg is probably the most difficult of the 3 races with which to win consistently.
Using the master league's distribution for what kind of distribution you'd expect at high level tournaments doesn't seem to be wise to me. That's still a rather large group of people and most of them are just amateurs with no hope of ever making money from the game, so they're free to just pick the race they like best. I would actually guess that the difficulty of playing zerg is an appealing trait to those people (just anecdotal though, but it's why I play zerg).
I've heard several instances of Korean progamers that chose terran because it was especially strong when the game was released. In Europe, a high amount of progamers come from a WC3 background, and zerg is less suited to those people's skills. I mean, the incredibly high amount of terran players in Europe can't just solely be because of balance, there also has to factor in that a lot of those players view terran as more abusable, or better at a pro level.
I will say that balance in general is pretty meaningless so far. When a good zerg wins a macro game, he tends to do so in a dominating fashion that looks just impossible for the other player to stop. That a lot of terrans still win games because of map imbalances doesn't mean that terran is stronger. Terran is more suited to a certain mappool, but that's quite volatile and simply introducing some new maps can swing that around a lot. I honestly expect that good zergs will seem just unbeatable if some of the super-large GSL test-maps were to be used and that if there wasn't a whole array of tricky strategies to "cheat" wins with for terran, then the forums will quickly come up with conventional wisdom that zerg is broken.
I'm not really sure about the actual late-game balance, I'd be happy to be corrected on this, but regardless of the specifics, what matters is that maps play such a large factor that balance judgements are meaningless if Blizzard doesn't fix them first (and they're doing an awful job at it: why not have a seperate mappool for high level players for one? and why not regularly update map-imbalances?)
On January 19 2011 14:49 branflakes14 wrote: The GSL proves that when the game is pushed, it's fairly balanced. A bunch of Terran and Protoss wins at sub-Code A tournaments isn't evidence of imbalance.
... TWO zergs earned a spot in the ro16 and we both had relatively easy ro32 groups
Clearly you feel that this is a result of imbalance. What specific matches so far do you think were won by the lesser skilled player, with the Z player being eliminated due to imbalance?
(this question is for anyone else, as well, since I doubt you're reading TL an hour before your match)
I don't think there have been any big upsets this whole season so far, except for Fruitdealer and Maka's elimination. MC might have been a favorite to win, but I don't honestly consider it a huge upset because MK and Jinro are also sick good.
Imbalances that exist if any, are probably more subtle than just straight up "I lost because I played Z". Also, there are now far less BitByBitPrime's in Code S.
Fruitdealer and Maka losing were not upsets. They just played badly.
That's like saying Flash getting eliminated from the MSL/OSL was not an upset, he just played badly. Yes, that might be true, but it's still an upset.
Flash has played BW for years, and has been top 3 in the world easily since 2008. His emergence onto the scene (by cheesing Bisu) was well over 3 years ago, in September 2007. The comparison does not exist. Maka has not won anything, and there are tons of players better than Maka. Flash's only true competition in the last few years have been Jaedong, Stork, and Bisu.
Fruitdealer, on the other hand, has been shown to be inconsistent. He won the first ever global tournament of SC2, sure, but he has not done anything significant since then, which was four long months ago. It was not an upset for him to lose in this GSL. It was an upset when he lost to Foxer in RO32 season 2, sure, but not this time around.
I didn't have time to read the whole thread, but in the part that I read there was one answer or aspect kind of missing or just represented through discussion about the map-pool. From my personal experience and watching lots of streams I'd make an argument that points in the same direction, but isn't bound only to the map pool, though it surely is one of the most contributing factors.
My feeling is that Z is the... most shaky of the the three races. I'm far away from thinking they are underpowered, but the margin for error seems a lot smaller than those for the other races. Mistakes usually do not only have more painful consequences but are harder to recover from. This stems from the different mechanics of the three races - the drone-mechanic is great, but often a walk on the tightrope as well, over-reacting in any direction is usually deadly, while this balance the Z player has to search anew in every game is basically build into the other two races. Another mechanic is the low cost-efficiency, micro-bility and harass-incapability of Z units. When in a dire situation careful leap-frogging, dropplay, forcefield- or blink or marinemicro can easily save the day. The Z units are rather blunt and don't really allow for fancy maneuver that pull you back into the game.
This idea especially makes sense because it could be an answer to why terrans perform so extremly strong (even compared to protoss). Good Terrans have awesome defenses, the mule and very strong single units that can make huge differences even in small numbers (marines, medivac drops, blue flame hellions, banshees, tanks) to fall back onto which give them possibilites to recover from former errors. This doesn't mean they are overpowered, the race just allows for a more stable gameplay.
This kind of sounds like a balance-rant, but isn't ment to be one. But besides other facts that have been pointed out already (map-pool - its just awful that cups like go4sc2 or zotac still force you to play maps like jungle basin, delta and steppes. Minority of high caliber foreign z players that participate in those tourneys) I think it contributes to the weak perfomance of Z players that the race just is not build for comebacks. Especially in small tourneys where the pre-rounds have to be played on awful maps in a BO-1 format.
What are you talking about? Zerg is the least-played in every single league. What I said was 100% correct. I don't care to argue how much less it is or in what region or what league or blah blah blah. What I said wasn't false.
That's a great standpoint to have... if you don't care then why are you posting.
Based on the statistics that the op posted 8% of tournaments are won by zerg, 25% toss, and 63% Terran. These statistics (depending on accuracy of course) show that Z is up simply because we know that Z is more than 8% of the tournament population. Using the 85 tournaments that were in this statistic I would like to see the top 248, top 16 and top 4 in addition to these winners so we know how many of each race started the tournament and when in the tournament we saw drop offs (this would really just show the percentages of the lesser skilled players race choice). I would almost guarantee that in the top 248 there is going to be more than 8% Z and in the top 16 as well (8% of 16 is like 1.28 per tourney) whereas it is within realm of reason that there aren't any Z in the top 4 (or any race for that matter).
While Z is the least played race, it is not so underrepresented that 8% is not worth noting.
I actually don't think that Z is up, because proving up/op is extremely hard to do (glaring things like reaper rush's and feeling completely helpless prior to patch 1.1 aside). I think that with a better map pool we will see where the real balance is at.
On January 20 2011 11:47 RiB wrote: These stats are meaningless. They ignore the most important factor, the person behind the keyboard.
So acording to you, the fact that in every tournament top8, +50% are terrans, is just because terran players are superior??
Any person with some knowledge in math statistics knows that an analize like that really means something. This is the thing. Terrans players are NOT superior human beings skill wise....there is something that makes them superior in the game.
On January 20 2011 07:26 Raid wrote: I can name a lot of talented terran players but only few protoss and zerg... Maybe that is why.. I don't understand why people have to bring this up when terran hasn't even won a gsl yet.
I don't quite understand why everyone throws away TONS of evidence regarding something because of a few games played by a handful of pros... That is all that GSL is: a very small sample of games between top players. How can that negate all the evidence?
What evidence?
The stats from tournaments since the game was released, the stats from TL's player index, the stats from Blizzard's countless Top 200's, the statements from the pro-gamers themselves from ALL the races... All these facts are pointing to the same conclusion. A conclusion that everyone wants to reject because of a handful of games between a handful of players.
Do you want links to both Korean and NA polls stating the game is imbalanced? Do you want links to the comments from players like IdrA, FruitDealer, Artosis, Dimaga, Morrow, Drewbie, TLO, Sen, Sheth, MasterAsia, Psy, and countless others? Do you want the stats from sc2ranks.com?
All the evidence is there. But many people like to ignore the flood of evidence in favor of the exceptions, to make the tail wag the dog. The GSL's do not dissprove anything, especially when the most recent results have Terran's completely dominating the GSL with 87.5% of the Ro8 being Terran. And no, this can't be explained by more Terran players. Obviously Terran's do not come close to making up 87.5% of either players or professionals.
I wish people would just admit they don't give a damn about the evidence, they just don't WANT to accept imbalance so that they can accuse those who do of being whiny, poor players.
The thread should really end with jdseemoreglass, who very concisely summed up the attitude of many of the people now entering. Could we get a sticky on a generalized version of this, so maybe people will understand better how to use statistics as evidence?
On January 20 2011 05:13 MorroW wrote: just like i said some months ago. statistics will get abit silly when u add in the foreigner scene because we dont have many good zerg players who compete in tournaments also zerg has been a very weak race for a long period of time. its clearly not as imba as it used to be
im not really sure why you keep saying that me ret dimaga haypro you machine sheth *should* easily be as good and accomplished as the group of players playing terran/protoss the reason zerg seems underrepresented is because so many new players have risen up and had success, to varying degrees, with t and to a lesser extent with p. the fact that essentially no one has done that with z says something in itself. but to say that the people playing z, especially outside of korea, dont deserve to be winning is absurd.
To be fair, a lot of those are from a time where the strategies and patches are now considered obsolete.
Lets do some math on the OP's statistics, shall we? Lets assume that all 3 races have an equal chance of winning a tournament. This is a binary distribution with each race having a 1/3 chance of winning a tournament, ideally. The likelihood of any given outcome where a race, in this case zerg, wins only 7 tournaments can be expressed as
Zerg: (1/3)^7*(2/3)^(85-7=78) = 8.4145 * 10^-18. Of course there are 85C7=4,935,847,320 ways this could occur. The probability of this event is .000000042. If all possibilities were equal one would expect an average probability of 1/85 = .01176. In short, it is extremely unlikely that this would happen by chance.
Terran: Now what is the probability of a race winning 54/84 games by chance. The likelihood of any situation where a race wins 54/85 games is (1/3)^54*(2/3)^(85-54=31)= 5.97892*10^-32. There are 85C54=1.48409980330845*10^23 possible outcomes with this result. The final probability of this happening is .000000009 compared to an expected average of .01176.
Skill might add some randomness, but i doubt one could argue that Zerg players are that skilless in general. The same could be said about Terran, given that a significant portion of sucessful Terran players don't do much besides SCV all ins and bunker rushes. How can one argue that the races are equal when the probability of Zerg winning only 7 games by chance is less than 1/10,000 the expected average probability. Less than 1/100,000 in the case of Terran.
Edit: As it's been pointed out. In the masters league the distribution of the races is close to equal.
Another mechanic is the low cost-efficiency, micro-bility and harass-incapability of Z units. When in a dire situation careful leap-frogging, dropplay, forcefield- or blink or marinemicro can easily save the day. The Z units are rather blunt and don't really allow for fancy maneuver that pull you back into the game.
Low cost efficiency? Absolutely.
Micro-bility? Through the roof.
Harass-incapability? Mutalisks and baneling drops would like to have a word with you.
Leap-frogging is a necessity. Same goes for marine micro, forcefields, and blinks. You can compare these to flanking with zerg, or using FG.
One of the worst things to happen to balance discussion has been the 2 zergs winning the GSL.
I don't know how anyone, in a level headed non-emotional balance discussion can point to any single victory by any race to represent balance from one tournament. I'm sorry, but when the finals is 3 Terran and 1 Zerg that to me is much more telling of balance, than if 1 Zerg manages to win it.
First, you can pretty much at this point throw away ANY statistics involving GSL 1. The game is so far removed from what we knew, and how it was played, plus we've gone through 2 patches(although not major they've still change the game enough) that really using it to show anything is pretty pointless. I immediately dismiss anyone's logic as soon as they bring up FD winning GSL 1.
I think you can reasonably go back 1 patch as this last patch hasn't change anything significantly, especially the zvt aspect.
I really don't see how anyone, who takes a non-bias look at the current state of the game doesn't see that there is something pretty off and in favor of terran at the moment. And this could shift with new strategies for sure. But as it is right now, with the current patch and current meta game terran is just rolling.
I don't know how anyone, in a level headed non-emotional balance discussion can point to any single victory by any race to represent balance from one tournament. I'm sorry, but when the finals is 3 Terran and 1 Zerg that to me is much more telling of balance, than if 1 Zerg manages to win it.
Yes, one single victory won nestea the second GSL. He definately didn't have to push through his qualifying brackets, and tournament brackets to get there. Same with MC. They both just played the finals.
First, you can pretty much at this point throw away ANY statistics involving GSL 1. The game is so far removed from what we knew, and how it was played, plus we've gone through 2 patches(although not major they've still change the game enough) that really using it to show anything is pretty pointless. I immediately dismiss anyone's logic as soon as they bring up FD winning GSL 1.
Illogical to dismiss an argument based on one small part of an opinion, but I agree with you, in that nobody can pull any analysis from GSL 1.
I really don't see how anyone, who takes a non-bias look at the current state of the game doesn't see that there is something pretty off and in favor of terran at the moment. And this could shift with new strategies for sure. But as it is right now, with the current patch and current meta game terran is just rolling.
And what should we do? Ask for patches, or try to change the meta game in order to compete? I'd vote for option two. It might take longer, or even be a futile effort, but I think it's a better choice in the long run. Terran had to deal with the same thing in BW.
Any balance discussion is inherently flawed since you'd have to assume:
1.) The skill level of all players are the same, only the race is different which is obviously false. Even in the GSL there is a HUGE range of skill level between the top 8 and the rest. There are even bigger differences in skill in other tournaments.
2.) There is an even number of Zergs, Toss, and Terrans in each tournament. Also false, the numbers will vary per tournament but all of them combined don't have a 33/33/33 split.
3.) Patches have affected balance alot, Roach range was huge along with other changes, so old tournament data isn't as valid, thus reducing the amount of data we have.
4.) The map pool and map voting procedures are the same in every tournament. Which of course is false, it has changed alot within the GSL and every tournmanet has their own procedure.
The basic of statistics is that if you start with bad data you will get bad results. The data we have is terrible at the moment.
On January 21 2011 03:01 Leviwtf wrote: Any balance discussion is inherently flawed since you'd have to assume:
1.) The skill level of all players are the same, only the race is different which is obviously false. Even in the GSL there is a HUGE range of skill level between the top 8 and the rest. There are even bigger differences in skill in other tournaments.
2.) There is an even number of Zergs, Toss, and Terrans in each tournament. Also false, the numbers will vary per tournament but all of them combined don't have a 33/33/33 split.
3.) Patches have affected balance alot, Roach range was huge along with other changes, so old tournament data isn't as valid, thus reducing the amount of data we have.
4.) The map pool and map voting procedures are the same in every tournament. Which of course is false, it has changed alot within the GSL and every tournmanet has their own procedure.
The basic of statistics is that if you start with bad data you will get bad results. The data we have is terrible at the moment.
No one is trying to scientifically prove anything here. The point is, if you look at tournament results, ladder results, top 200 results, community polls and pro-gamer comments, you see a general trend clearly exists below the number.
And what should we do? Ask for patches, or try to change the meta game in order to compete? I'd vote for option two. It might take longer, or even be a futile effort, but I think it's a better choice in the long run. Terran had to deal with the same thing in BW.
I agree. I never said anything had to be change right now or that it wouldn't change over time. However if you take a snapshot of the current game I find it hard to argue that there isn't a balance in the favor of terran. Not only that, but the race continues to improve simply because the current design allows for so many more options. The game to me has always felt like terran is 95% complete, and the other 2 races are only 75% complete and unfinished. Of course that doesn't mean a new strategy or build or idea doesn't pop up which can cause a shift in that balance. I have to imagine the expansions will help z and p in terms of options and units more so than terran.
The question is does blizzard just sit back and give it time and let the players figure out how to balance the game out, which they will eventually, or do they try to do something to help speed that process up some with patches.
Personally, I like to look at tournaments from the RO8. That to me is the point where more often then not the players that are there could win the tournament as long as they get some good luck and don't just play horrible. It is pretty rare these days to look at a tournament at that point and not have it be like 5 terran, 2 toss and a zerg, or 6 terran 2 toss.
The best argument people have for Zerg being fine is basically the 2 GSL winners. Anytime I see someone try to say Zerg is fine they always go to that point. That point, which held little weight in the first place, gets more and more meaningless each passing day.
To be fair, a lot of those are from a time where the strategies and patches are now considered obsolete.
Lets do some math on the OP's statistics, shall we? Lets assume that all 3 races have an equal chance of winning a tournament. This is a binary distribution with each race having a 1/3 chance of winning a tournament, ideally. The likelihood of any given outcome where a race, in this case zerg, wins only 7 tournaments can be expressed as
Zerg: (1/3)^7*(2/3)^(85-7=78) = 8.4145 * 10^-18. Of course there are 85C7=4,935,847,320 ways this could occur. The probability of this event is .000000042. If all possibilities were equal one would expect an average probability of 1/85 = .01176. In short, it is extremely unlikely that this would happen by chance.
Terran: Now what is the probability of a race winning 54/84 games by chance. The likelihood of any situation where a race wins 54/85 games is (1/3)^54*(2/3)^(85-54=31)= 5.97892*10^-32. There are 85C54=1.48409980330845*10^23 possible outcomes with this result. The final probability of this happening is .000000009 compared to an expected average of .01176.
Skill might add some randomness, but i doubt one could argue that Zerg players are that skilless in general. The same could be said about Terran, given that a significant portion of sucessful Terran players don't do much besides SCV all ins and bunker rushes. How can one argue that the races are equal when the probability of Zerg winning only 7 games by chance is less than 1/10,000 the expected average probability. Less than 1/100,000 in the case of Terran.
Edit: As it's been pointed out. In the masters league the distribution of the races is close to equal.
You do have to remember that GSL 4 seeded a ton of Terrans into both S class and A class from earlier tournaments, and that the early tournaments were before some of the Terran nerfs/Z and P buffs.
I am by no means an expert, but it seems to me to be an issue of the necessary skill and knowledge to play Zerg to its full potential. Blizzard likely doesn't balance the game based on how well noobs can do with a race, but rather balance races based on what is possible when played to its full potential. I think they break this "rule" sometimes, but for the most part balance will be based more on what is possible if played "right" then how well the Bronze level players are doing.
I personally think it is as simple as worker vs army production for Zerg. With Protoss and Terran, you CAN be fairly mindless (of course there are exceptions) and make a worker every time the previous one finishes building. Zerg have to be more intelligent about it and decide whether a worker or army unit is a more important use of the larva. Personally as a low level player I find this hard to figure out the right balance and I would bet even fairly strong players would struggle with this to a certain extent. Of course there are many other factors which could attribute to these stats, but I have to believe this is a major one. And if Blizz tried to affect these stats by making Zerg stronger then it likely would just lead to Zerg rule in the pro scene since they are likely making good decisions already when it comes to worker vs army and any change to significantly change the stats would likely put the pro Zergs over the top in tournaments.
When one refuses to admit disparity in the balance, one accuses player skill, player distribution - anything just so long as no imbalance is ever admitted.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's, which if you wanted to win any tournament, you would want to win that one.
sorry but zerg UP isn't going to work, GSL has the best players in the world.
QFT
In addition, based on the fact that Blizzard's reports have in the past shown win% of each race against each race on each map in the past - if such a massive differential existed across the board, they would have at least acknowledged in by now.
In addition, do the OP's figures take into account the weighting of each race at this level?
The problem with this win% argument is the skill differential between Z and other races, at least at lower levels. Everyone is matched so they win 50% of their games. More skill as a zerg may place you against much less skilled Terran players.
Not saying this is the case, but it's what I noticed switching from mid-diamond toss to now platinum zerg.
Of course as someone else stated, top-skill balance is what blizzard is focused on, so the imbalance at lower skill levels is expected.
Congrats! You just wasted your time writing down statistics that show what every decent player already knows. Zerg needs some buffing or there need to be more zerg favored maps
To be fair, a lot of those are from a time where the strategies and patches are now considered obsolete.
Lets do some math on the OP's statistics, shall we? Lets assume that all 3 races have an equal chance of winning a tournament. This is a binary distribution with each race having a 1/3 chance of winning a tournament, ideally. The likelihood of any given outcome where a race, in this case zerg, wins only 7 tournaments can be expressed as
Zerg: (1/3)^7*(2/3)^(85-7=78) = 8.4145 * 10^-18. Of course there are 85C7=4,935,847,320 ways this could occur. The probability of this event is .000000042. If all possibilities were equal one would expect an average probability of 1/85 = .01176. In short, it is extremely unlikely that this would happen by chance.
The problem though is that the probability of the data, given the model, is not the probability of the model, given the data.
Just because the probability of that event is extremely unlikely (the probability of the data) given equally balanced races (the model), does not mean that the probability of the model being correct is extremely unlikely.
I think the most correct way to interpret the data is that it is up to the zerg in zvp/zvt to mess up and protoss in pvt
this I think stems from scouting; zerg and protoss need to devote overlord/supply and tech respectively to scout while terran merely has to temporarily give up an innate income advantage
On January 21 2011 22:11 qxc wrote: why did you include zerg players in the op. You didn't really mention why it's even relevant that zerg players have a higher win % vs. other zergs.
Because its true for all races.
Average winrate against ALL players = 59.5
I think this is because some of the wins are from people who are not counted in the TLPD
omg. this threads are really gettin annoying. And it's allways zerg players who are whining. Those representation of wins on tournaments are not right. Do you take in count how many players of each race was represented on a tourney? well if it's like 10T 4P 2Z on tourney u can't expect for zerg to win. well if it wins i would say that Z is OP...
If Zs cant play anything but bling into mutas (happens allot in gold) or mass roach that doesn't mean that zergs are UP.
On January 21 2011 22:52 SedativeDev wrote: omg. this threads are really gettin annoying. And it's allways zerg players who are whining. Those representation of wins on tournaments are not right. Do you take in count how many players of each race was represented on a tourney? well if it's like 10T 4P 2Z on tourney u can't expect for zerg to win. well if it wins i would say that Z is OP...
If Zs cant play anything but bling into mutas (happens allot in gold) or mass roach that doesn't mean that zergs are UP.
Why do you think there are less players in the tournaments then?
On January 21 2011 22:52 SedativeDev wrote: omg. this threads are really gettin annoying. And it's allways zerg players who are whining. Those representation of wins on tournaments are not right. Do you take in count how many players of each race was represented on a tourney? well if it's like 10T 4P 2Z on tourney u can't expect for zerg to win. well if it wins i would say that Z is OP...
If Zs cant play anything but bling into mutas (happens allot in gold) or mass roach that doesn't mean that zergs are UP.
Why do you think there are less players in the tournaments then?
Because most people don't like to play the alien race, this is true for most games that include human like races and alien races. Not only that, many people don't like the larva mechanic because its harder to play with (most ppl starting off tend to shy away from it, so as a result their initial player pool is less). Also, the campaign in SC2 was only Terran so people stick to the race they know. This has all been said before...
On January 21 2011 22:52 SedativeDev wrote: omg. this threads are really gettin annoying. And it's allways zerg players who are whining. Those representation of wins on tournaments are not right. Do you take in count how many players of each race was represented on a tourney? well if it's like 10T 4P 2Z on tourney u can't expect for zerg to win. well if it wins i would say that Z is OP...
If Zs cant play anything but bling into mutas (happens allot in gold) or mass roach that doesn't mean that zergs are UP.
Why do you think there are less players in the tournaments then?
Because most people don't like to play the alien race, this is true for most games that include human like races and alien races. Not only that, many people don't like the larva mechanic because its harder to play with (most ppl starting off tend to shy away from it, so as a result their initial player pool is less). Also, the campaign in SC2 was only Terran so people stick to the race they know. This has all been said before...
Man, people who play on higher/high level do not really care about "allien" race and about campaign. All you say is for begginers and not for skilled players.
Or do you think most high level terrans take terran because they played humans in campaign? lol
Great, another Z fanboy trolling T/P players, great stuff to read! .....
But honestly, get out of here with your ridiculous statistics and your stupidity, they reflect nothing at all about the matchup currently. T hasn't won many tournaments at all recently either, the last notable/large-scale competition that was won by T was by Jinro at MLG. Since then its been Z and P mostly, but do we see silly posts about them? Hardly.
I seriously dont get why Z are whining so much. To be honest, if the game were perfectly balanced the ammount of zerg players should be equally distributed all over the board. So if 30% of the players are playing zerg in bronze, also 30% of the master league players should be zerg.
But thats not the case. All leagues from platinum and down is represented by about 20% zerg players. Where they have almost 30% in master and diamond.
In other words zerg is overrepresented in the higher leagues.
I do however admit that its disturbing that terrans are so highly represented in tournaments.. But that should not be the concern of the most players here. The race you picked is probably not whats holding you back from entering GSL.
On January 21 2011 23:30 xzidez wrote: I seriously dont get why Z are whining so much. To be honest, if the game were perfectly balanced the ammount of zerg players should be equally distributed all over the board. So if 30% of the players are playing zerg in bronze, also 30% of the master league players should be zerg.
But thats not the case. All leagues from platinum and down is represented by about 20% zerg players. Where they have almost 30% in master and diamond.
In other words zerg is overrepresented in the higher leagues.
I do however admit that its disturbing that terrans are so highly represented in tournaments.. But that should not be the concern of the most players here. The race you picked is probably not whats holding you back from entering GSL.
Worst argument I've ever seen. Balance does not equal preference. Even when the game is perfectly balanced, if there may still be fewer Zerg players than all the other races. Race distribution is not the sole indicator of balance. More people just like the terran and protoss races.
If zerg is less played this doesn't mean Z isn't UP and the statistics are wrong. The larger the sample is the smaller the error is. Race is under played when the race is not so powerfull, when you chose char/race in game you want to pick the strong. Will you pick race that is so hard to play and hard to master and even mastered you still has big chance losing on bad maps. If we don't count korean zergs, foreign scene realy lack zergs that realy win tournaments. If this trend continue soon or later we will only see zerg players only in korea. I don't think zerg is UP, but I think zerg need to be a bit OP so it get more popularity, and things balance out with maps and everything.
lol where did u got those stats from 100% win rate? really? why every second thread here somehow indicates how zerg is UP while its one of the most cost efficient races
On January 21 2011 23:19 cozzE wrote: Great, another Z fanboy trolling T/P players, great stuff to read! .....
But honestly, get out of here with your ridiculous statistics and your stupidity, they reflect nothing at all about the matchup currently. T hasn't won many tournaments at all recently either, the last notable/large-scale competition that was won by T was by Jinro at MLG. Since then its been Z and P mostly, but do we see silly posts about them? Hardly.
How can you be so certain of an opinion that is so easily disproved...
I've seen both sides of this argument against and for balance, and i can see how people come to the conclusions they do but i will however say this as my one and only statement on Balance:
No matter the amount of statistics you read or complaints and issues people bring up people will always find an position to argue from in favor of the stance that they've already taken. It's so easy to read a complaint and say "no, that's wrong" or "your argument is flawed as it doesn't take into account XYZ" and i don't think it's possible to find an argument that can account for everything. However there is one statement that i can say with 100% certainty in this argument:
If you played this game as Zerg at the highest level since release and were an intelligent player that adapted and studied each match-up:
There is absolutely no way you would think that Zerg balanced.
I've never met a Single Zerg at the top tier that doesn't believe that, on EU or US, and I don't think i will for quite some time. You may get "QQ posts" by the dozen, but i can assure you many of the players who play in these tournaments, who are competitors at the highest level don't post here, don't contribute to the mess because we already know the issues; there is no arguing left to be done. Telling someone who will never understand because he is merely a bystander who sees less than the tip of the iceburg has no value to any of us. You will and can never sympathize with or understand the issues we face because you've never even come close to experiencing what we do.
You see the result and it becomes a statistic that you argue for or against, locked up in forums. I actually play the games. WE play the games, and if you could feel the frustration we do for even a minute playing this race you would bite your tongue in your argument for balance.
On January 21 2011 23:19 cozzE wrote: Great, another Z fanboy trolling T/P players, great stuff to read! .....
But honestly, get out of here with your ridiculous statistics and your stupidity, they reflect nothing at all about the matchup currently. T hasn't won many tournaments at all recently either, the last notable/large-scale competition that was won by T was by Jinro at MLG. Since then its been Z and P mostly, but do we see silly posts about them? Hardly.
Youre the one trolling. No one who has decent knowlege about the game and how the matchups unfold on a high level will ever doubt that zerg is underpowered. Sure not every good zerg player rages about it like idra does... some zergs just don't want to whine. also competetive terran or protoss players who travel the planet to compete and after all make their living out of sc wont have too much of a problem that zergs have less chances to win.
Also how can you say zergs and protoss won major tourneys since mlg when jinro won ? Naama won dreamhack, tlo won that tourney in the uk (playing T i think... maybe R). GSL3: All zergs out in ro8. GSL4: Code A 4T 0Z Code S 3T 1Z. Oh and the IEM Europe finals currently running with 10T 2P 0Z
People like you denied the fact that zerg was UP before the last patches when even blizzard finally saw that they had to do something about the balance. You didn't get it back then and you don't get it now.
On January 22 2011 01:50 kerminator wrote: Youre the one trolling. No one who has decent knowlege about the game and how the matchups unfold on a high level will ever doubt that zerg is underpowered.
Wow, way to call someone a troll then proceed to do so epically yourself.
On January 21 2011 23:19 cozzE wrote: Great, another Z fanboy trolling T/P players, great stuff to read! .....
But honestly, get out of here with your ridiculous statistics and your stupidity, they reflect nothing at all about the matchup currently. T hasn't won many tournaments at all recently either, the last notable/large-scale competition that was won by T was by Jinro at MLG. Since then its been Z and P mostly, but do we see silly posts about them? Hardly.
Youre the one trolling. No one who has decent knowlege about the game and how the matchups unfold on a high level will ever doubt that zerg is underpowered. Sure not every good zerg player rages about it like idra does... some zergs just don't want to whine. also competetive terran or protoss players who travel the planet to compete and after all make their living out of sc wont have too much of a problem that zergs have less chances to win.
Also how can you say zergs and protoss won major tourneys since mlg when jinro won ? Naama won dreamhack, tlo won that tourney in the uk (playing T i think... maybe R). GSL3: All zergs out in ro8. GSL4: Code A 4T 0Z Code S 3T 1Z. Oh and the IEM Europe finals currently running with 10T 2P 0Z
People like you denied the fact that zerg was UP before the last patches when even blizzard finally saw that they had to do something about the balance. You didn't get it back then and you don't get it now.
Oh, so the IEM Europe finals contain 83.3% terrans? I wasn't aware of that, but I am glad you mentioned it. It doesn't surprise me in the least, it is simply the trend that has become popular to ignore or rationalize away.
On January 22 2011 01:50 kerminator wrote:No one who has decent knowlege about the game and how the matchups unfold on a high level will ever doubt that zerg is underpowered.
Well thats all the proof I need, if you say it I'm convinced.
Balancing is a Blizzard issue. Not a TL issue. Here we discuss tournaments, players, strategies, events... stuff like that.
If Blizzard sees those numbers they probably say: Ah ok Zergs seem to have a hard time. Lets go through our balance analysis process to find out if there is a problem and watch the development of it carefully.
If TL sees those numbers then we say: Ah ok Zergs seem to have a hard time. Lets talk about what Zergs are struggling with and come up with strategies and ideas that deal with the timings. And lets analyse Zerg players who still win alot to find out what they are doing right.
On January 21 2011 22:52 SedativeDev wrote: omg. this threads are really gettin annoying. And it's allways zerg players who are whining. Those representation of wins on tournaments are not right. Do you take in count how many players of each race was represented on a tourney? well if it's like 10T 4P 2Z on tourney u can't expect for zerg to win. well if it wins i would say that Z is OP...
If Zs cant play anything but bling into mutas (happens allot in gold) or mass roach that doesn't mean that zergs are UP.
Why do you think there are less players in the tournaments then?
Because most people don't like to play the alien race, this is true for most games that include human like races and alien races. Not only that, many people don't like the larva mechanic because its harder to play with (most ppl starting off tend to shy away from it, so as a result their initial player pool is less). Also, the campaign in SC2 was only Terran so people stick to the race they know. This has all been said before...
Man, people who play on higher/high level do not really care about "allien" race and about campaign. All you say is for begginers and not for skilled players.
Or do you think most high level terrans take terran because they played humans in campaign? lol
You don't just become a Pro or a high level player, everyone starts off a newb and thats when they pick their race.
My point is this, at the onset of the game (Starcraft and SC2) everyone starts off being a newb. So you pick a race like a newb would, what you like, what looks fun, etc. You don't strategically evaluate which race is the best and even if you do, you don't have enough knowledge of the game to make an informed decision.
So if 1000 newbs play SC when it comes out, lets say 40% picks Terran, 35% Toss, 25% Zerg because of the Alien Race/larva mechanic difficulty. As a result, if 10% of everyone who plays becomes high level you have more high level Terrans than any other race, more high level players = more tournament wins/more strategies developed, its a snowball effect of Terran do better and better relative to the other races, but not due to the actual game design, simply because of the strategies being developed and refined.
Also, it was interesting when SC2 came out and many "high level players" switched their race, I would say alot switched to Terran because during the Beta and in the release version, Terran were really strong with rax before supply depot, which allowed 5 rax reaper, and super fast banshee techs, etc it allowed ALOT of things that were very difficult to stop especially early on. So even MORE people switched to terran in SC2.
That's my theory, to my knowledge there is no data on pros race switching between SC1 and 2.
On January 22 2011 02:20 clickrush wrote: Balancing is a Blizzard issue. Not a TL issue. Here we discuss tournaments, players, strategies, events... stuff like that.
If Blizzard sees those numbers they probably say: Ah ok Zergs seem to have a hard time. Lets go through our balance analysis process to find out if there is a problem and watch the development of it carefully.
If TL sees those numbers then we say: Ah ok Zergs seem to have a hard time. Lets talk about what Zergs are struggling with and come up with strategies and ideas that deal with the timings. And lets analyse Zerg players who still win alot to find out what they are doing right.
But maybe thats just my point of view...
I agree completely, many players(regardless of race) pigeonhole themselves into blaming inbalance for losing or maps, or spawning close positions on a 4 player map, etc. Instead of focusing on how to improve and overcome those problems they decide to focus their efforts on posting on TL about imbalance and whining constantly. Notice how Day9 NEVER talks about imbalance because there is literally no point and nothing to gained from an improvement perspective by discussing it.
Even if at the very top level there is something imbalanced, you can't argue that was the sole reason you lost unless you are at that very top level.
On January 19 2011 08:57 Silidons wrote: but yet zerg has won 2 GSL's,
Anyone who uses this stupid argument should get their keyboard confiscated for life. The Zergs won because 1) Zerg was an underdog race, and noone expected much from them. 2) They were superior players, technically. They found miniature holes and exploited them perfectly.
The reason why Zerg (or rather FD and Nestea) has won the first two GSLs:
1st GSL: FD played twice as good as Rainbow and simply outplayed him in every game. Bunker rushes were nowhere near popular. 2nd GSL: Nestea > Foxer, he's also a better player. The fact that Foxer played the 2rax and the allins very poorly didn't help him either I guess.
GSL 3 is uninteresting now; In Code S only 2 Zergs made it to the round of 16, although there are many good Zerg players (FD, Nestea, IdrA, Zenio, Ret), they got knocked out by cheese/all-in strategies. As the game is right now, Zerg loses to terran due to bad maps/spawn positions and Protoss is kind of imbalanced (and it will become even more so once they make use of the new air capabilities). I dont see any Zerg making it to the round of 16 in the upcoming GSLs if it doesn't get patched. The introduction of new maps could help though.
Funniest thing is how IdrA has a 67 over all vs 100 vs zerg. Taking in account that that is a mirror matchup it says something about the other Zergs. But ooh well, everybody knows that IdrA is the best
OP I would like you to explain how you got those numbers (especially your averages) I don't think they are incorrect, but I suspect that they are extremely misleading.
EPT
Major Tournaments
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