Alright, so here are some charts I made on race winrates.
All data is from TLPD, so this is ONLY pro games from tournaments and leagues. NO ladder games. Mirror matchups are completely excluded from the data set since they would skew the results towards 50%.
MLG dallas is not included in April since they haven't released all their replays yet.
First one is from the international scene:
And here is the korean version. NOTE THAT THE KOREAN VERSION HAS A MUCH LOWER SAMPLE SIZE! The number of players and tournaments in Korea is much lower, so therefore these numbers are more volatile.
Wow, I can almost understand why not that many koreans pick up SC2 if their statistics look like that. :O Foreign stats look surprisingly balanced, shouldn't be surprising that it evens out like that after this amount of time. Strange the koreans haven't though.
The Korean stats are based on a much lower number of games. There just aren't that many tournaments over there. Since the sample size is smaller, the stats are more volatile.
Is there anyway you can add more games for each of these? The differences between Korea and International are huge. It almost seems like in Korea the game is becoming almost rock, paper, scissors based on race.
I wonder. Is it fair to say that korean protosses are generally terrible? That's the feeling I get from watching them but maybe I'm trying too hard to say zerg up.
Just when I watch a top 8 code s player like anypro pylon his nexus first, pull half his probes to kill it and then push out with only gateway units vs burrow roaches, I kind of have to wonder. (of course, he still won that series with 2 very skill less builds, the first of which he won even though he had 0 micro on the void ray, which was the focus of the entire build.)
It's certainly interesting to see regardless, and I'm surprised at terrans overall success.
The international one looks -VERY- promising... The Korean one not so much, haha...
I'd like to think that the Korean one is so off due to the fact that there's not enough data and it's only focusing on a small group of players at the veryveryvery top level of the game, while the international one is more widespread and generalized view of top players.
I'd like to see game counts per datapoint on these... I'm sure the massive skews in the Korean data is due to the fact that some of these plot points only include like 20-40 games of data.
I posted on the Reddit post but I thought I'd post here too: even though these charts indicate balance (or lack thereof) in certain ways, they're taken only for certain time periods which basically means certain events or specific players have disproportionately larger impact on the data.
For example, Naniwa's MLG run (I know it wasn't charted but it's a good example) or recent Losira domination in GSL would both skew results and make it seem like P is OP or Z is OP when really, neither can be conclusively decided as true.
Basically, players who make deep runs play more games and skew it. So what we sometimes see are only the best of the best represented their races. For example, the GSL currently has 4 zergs in the RO16. These zergs are the absolute best when it comes to their race, as opposed to mediocre protosses and terrans who made it in. This makes it look like Zv* is insane when it may not truly be, because the fewer number of zergs and their comparative skill means they'll obviously win more games.
Similarly, I imagine if IdrA continues his streak into NASL further and in other tournaments, he will single-handedly make zerg look OP in NA even if he's the only zerg playing major tournaments and getting far.
Could you elaborate on what the graphs actually show, like for example how far back in time does the the win percentage in a given point include game from?
Or did you just calculate monthly win percentages and then interpolate the points?
When i saw the first graph i though "good job blizzard, you may be on track" then I saw the korea graph and tried to see why it was that way and this is what I came up with
Koreans protoss generally stick to their guns in the sense that they will continue to do a BO untill it starts losing, and once it starts losing they will start doing a BO that counters the counter which explains the constant back and fourth of the protoss charts, as you can see after the drop in protoss wins they come back to have >50% win rate very soon after. This is simply development in the game.
Now in both charts Z has never had a good ratio vs T. Oddly tho the 2 charts are inverses of each other, when then international zergs do worse the Korean zergs do better. Personally I believe that the zerg generally has a low win rate vs T because T has alot of things that they can do which are not even close to all ins but can result in insta loss for the zerg. Also terran is simply much more forgiving endgame as opposed to zerg, if zerg loses 1 engagement late game they just lose the game.
This is super interesting, I especially like the graphs where the winrates switch places oppositely and then start to even out. It really tells you about the math behind the metagame...
Another thing to note is that key protoss players like MC have been knocked into up/down in GSL, so they haven't really had many games in Korea lately. Since the KR TLPD is based almost all on GSL, that means there are basically no protoss games to chart.
So what we have are dozens of terran games and maybe 4 protoss matches.
~33% win in 700 game sample? yeesh. so imba!! For the international graph, it's good to see the matchups are coming pretty close to 50/50; that's all we can really hope for
On May 03 2011 00:00 hmunkey wrote: Another thing to note is that key protoss players like MC have been knocked into up/down in GSL, so they haven't really had many games in Korea lately. Since the KR TLPD is based almost all on GSL, that means there are basically no protoss games to chart.
So what we have are dozens of terran games and maybe 4 protoss matches.
Though it does seem weird, why would korean protoss fail so hard yet european and NA protoss are fine after the infestor buff?
It's not like korean zerg are even using infestors more often.
Foreign data is more accurate as many more games are being looked at. I'd love to know how many games are being looked at in PvZ over that last month in Korea? On average it could only be about 45 games, which isn't enough, so don't pay too much attention to that big swing. <_<
On May 02 2011 23:58 hugman wrote: Could you elaborate on what the graphs actually show, like for example how far back in time does the the win percentage in a given point include game from?
Or did you just calculate monthly win percentages and then interpolate the points?
There is only one data point per month yeah. I could do per week as well if anyone is interested, but that would be a VERY shaky line, as the number of a games per week is fairly low.
Very interesting how close the international graph has drawn to 50% lately, that's pretty promising.
The Korean graph fluctuates too much as a result of the lack of tournaments they have on a regular basis, and as such I don't think you can really read too much into it. Interesting putting a context on the broad peaks and slumps though.
On May 02 2011 23:54 Let it Raine wrote: I wonder. Is it fair to say that korean protosses are generally terrible? That's the feeling I get from watching them but maybe I'm trying too hard to say zerg up.
Just when I watch a top 8 code s player like anypro pylon his nexus first, pull half his probes to kill it and then push out with only gateway units vs burrow roaches, I kind of have to wonder. (of course, he still won that series with 2 very skill less builds, the first of which he won even though he had 0 micro on the void ray, which was the focus of the entire build.)
It's certainly interesting to see regardless, and I'm surprised at terrans overall success.
The best korean protoss players are not terrible. Everyone makes mistakes every now and then. Top zergs are included in that statement.
The feeling I get from threads like these is that people want the statistics to reflect the reality that they feel. It usually doesn't. That doesn't mean that your feelings are wrong, and it doesn't mean that statistics are wrong - it does mean that you probably don't understand the data, which is a given in this kind of high level report.
On May 03 2011 00:04 stafu wrote: Foreign data is more accurate as many more games are being looked at. I'd love to know how many games are being looked at in PvZ over that last month in Korea? On average it could only be about 45 games, which isn't enough, so don't pay too much attention to that big swing. <_<
It's 99 games, 31 wins and 68 losses. Mostly from GSL.
I agree it's to little to make any assumptions from, the interesting thing will be to see if it's the start of a trend or just an anomaly.
On May 03 2011 00:03 Mailing wrote: Though it does seem weird, why would korean protoss fail so hard yet european and NA protoss are fine after the infestor buff?
It's not like korean zerg are even using infestors more often.
Well not fine. Protoss have been underperforming in the NASL recently against zerg.
But its to be expected, its not a balance issue just a patch requiring more time for one race to adjust to than another.
The international lines converging is pretty exciting.
On May 03 2011 00:07 K3Nyy wrote: Interesting.. it's funny that MVP says terran is the weakest but every statistic proves him wrong.
Zerg looks underpowered though and protoss aren't doing as well as everyone makes it sound.
How does it makes Zerg look underpowered?_?
Anyways, the koran stats are not that accurate since they have way less games than the whole foreign scene does. Good to see things relatively even, bad to see P on such a slump in Korea, and Korean Terran as dominating as ever
On May 02 2011 23:54 Let it Raine wrote: I wonder. Is it fair to say that korean protosses are generally terrible? That's the feeling I get from watching them but maybe I'm trying too hard to say zerg up.
Just when I watch a top 8 code s player like anypro pylon his nexus first, pull half his probes to kill it and then push out with only gateway units vs burrow roaches, I kind of have to wonder. (of course, he still won that series with 2 very skill less builds, the first of which he won even though he had 0 micro on the void ray, which was the focus of the entire build.)
It's certainly interesting to see regardless, and I'm surprised at terrans overall success.
This was my thought on the matter, Korean protosses have always been lacking (See GSL 1 and 2) and the only reason people think otherwise is people like MC and San playing really well. But other than those Korea has very few top protosses. Internationally on the other hand we have people like Cruncher coming out of nowhere and taking games of the best to cries of 'IMBA!'.
I dunno, just feels like Korea doesn't know how to play protoss compared to foreigners, only other explanation is that they're on a higher level Z and T and P really is underpowered....
Hmm, seems Protoss is having a hard time recently in Korea.
And for all those who say "XvX Matchup is Imba!", look at the International stats. They are currently all pretty much at 50%w/L ratio. So shut up, this game isn't Imba in any way shape or form at this time.
Conclusion - Blizzard needs to just let the game develop much, much longer in between new balance patches.
For example, this latest patch to deal with PvP...PvP is already being dealt with. We don't need a patch to fix it, it won't stay this way forever and has been evolving consistently, it just needs to be left alone. Everything needs to be left alone, let the players overcome the perceived imbalances and Blizzard can work on making SC2 better in terms of bnet features.
Blizzard comes to bail out the ones crying imbalance so early that there will never be an end to it. Zergs are starting to take the advantage in ZvP matchup when they were the ones saying how hard it is, new styles are coming that are really hard for P to play against without having to adapt. That's how it should be.
Think about the PvZ matchup in particular, Zerg's have, up until recently, been playing the same style of ZvP since...hell since the release of SC2 it seems. Protoss, in my opinion, at the start of sc2 release was the weakest race for a while. Protoss players have changed their play though and took the front stage for the imbalance cries but now Zerg's are changing their styles and learning new builds and timings which completely change the MU. You don't need a balance patch for that.
Unless you let the players overcome the struggles they're having today we'll never get a balanced game. IMO leave the balance patches alone for like a year and see what happens. There is no way to determine how to properly balance the game when you only give a couple months in between the patches. If you waited like a year to release a new balance patch the game would be much more defined and you could get a much more proper view on what needs to actually be changed but by constantly giving in to the imbalance cries and releasing a balance patch needs to stop.
Honestly I think foreigners use better strategies and have better builds than Koreans. Jinro and Thorzain come to mind as examples. IdrA for Zerg; Tyler for Protoss.
All these players are playing smart. Koreans understand the flow of battles and have incredible multitasking but they are all doing shitty tactics right now. Koreans do a ton of all ins.
I feel like the Terran dominance is because of all ins in Korea. I always hear Artosis say something like "theres this new build on ladder in Korea right now, banshee/tank/marine... whatever" and it's always some kind of all in. Terran all ins are the most powerful simply because they can tech the fastest, so they can successfully one base to any unit. I may be wrong here, so don't flame too hard, but that's what I think.
On May 02 2011 23:54 Let it Raine wrote: I wonder. Is it fair to say that korean protosses are generally terrible? That's the feeling I get from watching them but maybe I'm trying too hard to say zerg up.
Just when I watch a top 8 code s player like anypro pylon his nexus first, pull half his probes to kill it and then push out with only gateway units vs burrow roaches, I kind of have to wonder. (of course, he still won that series with 2 very skill less builds, the first of which he won even though he had 0 micro on the void ray, which was the focus of the entire build.)
It's certainly interesting to see regardless, and I'm surprised at terrans overall success.
This was my thought on the matter, Korean protosses have always been lacking (See GSL 1 and 2) and the only reason people think otherwise is people like MC and San playing really well. But other than those Korea has very few top protosses. Internationally on the other hand we have people like Cruncher coming out of nowhere and taking games of the best to cries of 'IMBA!'.
I dunno, just feels like Korea doesn't know how to play protoss compared to foreigners, only other explanation is that they're on a higher level Z and T and P really is underpowered....
LOL
That's because the korean metagame is just shifting constantly; therefore it's unstable. These players practice very hard, compared to foreigners, and don't hesitate to use new & creative builds. I believe it can be very hard to adapt to this kind of metagame. On the contrary, I feel that foreign players' playstyle is more standard and predictable. Looks like they just follow the trend instead of setting it. I mean, expect for White-ra's Warp prism tactics, I haven't seen anything truly insane coming from foreigners.
On May 03 2011 00:11 57 Corvette wrote: Hmm, seems Protoss is having a hard time recently in Korea.
And for all those who say "XvX Matchup is Imba!", look at the International stats. They are currently all pretty much at 50%w/L ratio. So shut up, this game isn't Imba in any way shape or form at this time.
The problem with these statistics is that they take neither the different maps nor the the difference in playskill into account, which, at least in my opinion, is much bigger in the foreign scene than in the GSL. So a matchup might look "more balanced" than it actually is due to a few top players beating worse players over and over.
this is a great post thank you for this. the international graph is an awesome thing to see. hopefully people will stop whining about imbaness now. though that has gotten better as of late. stats like these are very encouraging. and they correlate well with my personal games. its interesting how new styles are being developed so rapidly and these graphs show that beautifully. it will be interesting to see how these wavy lines continue to sway. =)
Interesting. International games start out with large imbalances in November and converge to almost perfect balance in April, while it's just the other way round in Korea. How come? Can someone explain this?
On May 03 2011 00:18 Scorch wrote: Interesting. International games start out with large imbalances in November and converge to almost perfect balance in April, while it's just the other way round in Korea. How come? Can someone explain this?
GSL is once a month.
Players like MVP and MC can own one month and be out in the first round the next, skewing results.
Extremely small sample size per month will have wide variations.
how i see it is : protoss > terran late game. protoss >zerg late game
terran > toss early TvP=mid game terran >=zerg early mid game
zerg >=toss early mid game zerg > terran late game
zerg spanishiva show i think that zergligns are great early game ..also after sviching to banglings drops or mutas is also efective erly mid game...plenty of toher exemples there is but this one is ok two
interesting results. i hope this will shut people who still think protoss is (too) good up.
i find it funny how terrans have always been arguing their race is balanced when they were winning almost 60% internationally at one point, wow. pretty delusional.
Not that I neccesarily agree/think that the statistics represent true balance I'm having a blast reading comments from zerg players trying to find reasons for protoss being overpowered/zerg being underpowered.
The issue with Korean Toss is that they got complacent. So many lose games early due to over-teching or over-expanding. The balance is too close for you to do that when your opponent is about to hit with a timing attack and still win.
That skews the results so much because there are so few Korean Toss. So 2 of them do bad for 4 games total (San, MC)... and the whole representation gets thrown off massively.
Toss just isn't strong enough any more to ignore what the other race is doing and still win.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
On May 03 2011 00:26 fant0m wrote: The issue with Korean Toss is that they got complacent. So many lose games early due to over-teching or over-expanding. The balance is too close for you to do that when your opponent is about to hit with a timing attack and still win.
That skews the results so much because there are so few Korean Toss. So 2 of them do bad for 4 games total (San, MC)... and the whole representation gets thrown off massively.
Toss just isn't strong enough any more to ignore what the other race is doing and still win.
I don't even understand why they would get complacent in the first place. PvT was never that strong for them, was it? Sure, it looked like they were dominating everything with MC leading the charge, but I can't believe how they all just seem so unprepared now.
Almost all of the Ps in GSL have been knocked out in PvT. I just can't wrap my head around it.
Wow interesting data! And this should make all the "protoss OP" whiners shut up. Also, holy crap!! What happened to the protoss korea win rate for april? :O
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
It is scary how accurate the graphs mimic the complaints of each race, at least the non korean version.
Protoss gaing a 5% lead over Zerg/Terran during Jan/Feb/Early-March, when Toss "OP" QQ reached its highest. Now Zergs/Terrans aren't complaining as much anymore and the win rate as evened out...
just look on todays gsl A games, all zergs got eliminated but when u actualy watch the games u will know balance had nothing to do with it, they just played plain horribly, but then u put this games on your graph with such meaningles sample size and say look terran is imba, useless ...
The sample size from Korea being 1/8 of the international one makes a big difference, can't really use it imo.
An interesting note is that on the international one there were 8346 games total: PvT - 3366 games - 40% ZvT - 2736 games - 33% ZvP - 2244 games - 27%
Now considering that the grandmaster leagues have a somewhat balanced spread across the races, this shows that either less zergs are participating in tournaments, or less zergs are reaching the later rounds of tournaments (which TLPD stores information for).
Is it possible for you to share with us how many mirror matches were for each race to see this clearly?
i am not sure if this data is entirely accurate because of the following reasons:
-Different map pools per tournament. GSL holds different map pool compared to some other tournaments, which can give different results. -International scene has more players, thus giving a more accurate averaged result (I dont think there is as many korean players in comparison to give a stable reading) -Possibly the KA amulet nerf was done because korean players are more dependant on them, thus showing signs to blizzard that it has to be removed and Korean players has not adjusted to such a drastic change yet.
On May 03 2011 00:07 K3Nyy wrote: Interesting.. it's funny that MVP says terran is the weakest but every statistic proves him wrong.
Zerg looks underpowered though and protoss aren't doing as well as everyone makes it sound.
Statistics cant prove anything. Only logic can.
Well, if you use logic when you assemble statistics it can very much prove stuff. The problem is that most of the time people just pulls numbers out of context (or their ass) which prove nada.
I love the difference since it shows how dynamic the game is, even though it isn't perfectly balanced yet. Also the different styles from different regions come into account also
On May 03 2011 00:47 LastMan wrote: just look on todays gsl A games, all zergs got eliminated but when u actualy watch the games u will know balance had nothing to do with it, they just played plain horribly, but then u put this games on your graph with such meaningles sample size and say look terran is imba, useless ...
terran easy to play. so most of people can learn how to play and win like a boss
On May 03 2011 00:53 meep wrote: I love the difference since it shows how dynamic the game is, even though it isn't perfectly balanced yet. Also the different styles from different regions come into account also
Terrans constantly on top with the highest win ranking everywhere. The only dynamik to terran is how much above the other 2 races they are with their %.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
The reason the korean graphs are so off kilter is the low sample size. Protoss in GSL this season have had a freakishly low win-percentage, especially in Code A.
In Code A this season the protoss record in the non-mirror matchups have been 8 wins 24 losses. That is the steep decline in the protoss results recently on the korean graphs.
I can say with conviction protoss is about to enter another dark time =/ at the highest level in a broad sense.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
Don't think it is imbalance, just easier to play Terran at higher levels than the other two races.
NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
God, I wish more people were aware that the stats suggest the game is very well balanced.
Every LR thread on TL is unreadable these days because its just 100 pages of balance whine, especially if a protoss wins.
Maybe if everyone links to this thread someday TL will get over the QQ fest and we can go back to having a useful discussion about the game and stop crying imba every single time a player we like loses.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
Don't think it is imbalance, just easier to play Terran at higher levels than the other two races.
NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
getting really annoyed by this quote, mvp said terran is the weakest race so why dont u quote him, biased much?
Zerg is UP they never win anything really. Maybe early on in tournaments but as you could see in the tournament roundup they won one small cup? and got hardly any medal places. Terran and Protoss seem fine however I certainly think Blizzard is getting close to good balance.
On May 03 2011 01:00 Dommk wrote: NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
Again, these stats are completely meaningless unless you separate by map pool. GSL balance is completely different than all the other small map map pool tournaments.
On May 03 2011 01:06 DarkShadowz wrote: Zerg is UP they never win anything really. Maybe early on in tournaments but as you could see in the tournament roundup they won one small cup? and got hardly any medal places. Terran and Protoss seem fine however I certainly think Blizzard is getting close to good balance.
nope Idra only just won the IGN/IPL. Stop crying PLEASE -.-
On May 03 2011 00:50 Noam wrote: The sample size from Korea being 1/8 of the international one makes a big difference, can't really use it imo.
An interesting note is that on the international one there were 8346 games total: PvT - 3366 games - 40% ZvT - 2736 games - 33% ZvP - 2244 games - 27%
Now considering that the grandmaster leagues have a somewhat balanced spread across the races, this shows that either less zergs are participating in tournaments, or less zergs are reaching the later rounds of tournaments (which TLPD stores information for).
Is it possible for you to share with us how many mirror matches were for each race to see this clearly?
i have to say that these stats are kinda ridiculous to me xD i totally didnt expect such a t dominance at the end of last year and the PvZ stats are (at least for me) not understandable since i lose like 70% of my ZvP but it seems to be my fault really xDD
Shows that Terran is still strongest (despite the as expected long slide downhill) and the Protoss OP QQ is pretty much nonsense. As expected. The Terran players feeling weak is understandable because of how far they've fallen, but the Protoss QQ is just silly.
Calling it now so I can quote it later: those PvZ trends in Korea are going to go international.
This was really interesting to see, tho the difference in the korean server tells a lot on the metagame evolving etc, but its to low amount of games to tell smth out of. But its so many swings it cant have with the patches to do,
I think this shows just how fluctuating balance can be. 1 race can figure out a new build that completely annihilates the current top strategy for the other race. The rate of change in balance is really unstable and I don't think we can say anything until we have a much longer time to evaluate (like 2 years).
Interesting...it seems that both the graph are complete reverse of one another. Very strong result....could it be that the korean scene are more prone to all-in or what is the real cause to this (lol jk)? Can anyone clarify why the statistic are so different? I don't believe that having a smaller sample could of cause such a big disparity in the win lost ratio....can it?
On May 02 2011 23:59 TT1 wrote: lol right when the amulet nerf and infestor buff happened toss went to shit in korea
^^^^
It's just that outside of Korea all the zergs either don't use any infestors or they rush to 20+ of them and then amove then with their 20 lings and cry when they get killed.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
Don't think it is imbalance, just easier to play Terran at higher levels than the other two races.
NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
getting really annoyed by this quote, mvp said terran is the weakest race so why dont u quote him, biased much?
This isn't balance though....Don't think anyone thinks Terran is imbalanced, but there have been so many "great" Terran players when there has been so little for the other races, why is that?
What NesTea said was right, other than MC how many very "solid" Protoss players do you have? Possibly Ace, maybe Alicia---keep in mind this is the most played race in Starcraft2 right now.
What about Zerg? NesTa and Losira come to mind, but for Terran there are a plethora. The race isn't stronger than any of the other races, but it is a lot easier to be consistent and "solid" with than the other two, though keeping that in mind it doesn't take anything away from the tip top players like Bomber and MVP.
Maybe in a few years it will cease to matter when people have gotten a lot better.
On May 03 2011 01:06 DarkShadowz wrote: Zerg is UP they never win anything really. Maybe early on in tournaments but as you could see in the tournament roundup they won one small cup? and got hardly any medal places. Terran and Protoss seem fine however I certainly think Blizzard is getting close to good balance.
nope Idra only just won the IGN/IPL. Stop crying PLEASE -.-
Ok they have one player. I never whine about balance anywhere else but I tihnk this is the thread to bring forward such thoughts. I just think it's really close to balanced but Zerg is doing worse then the other races in terms of actual tournament wins. They do have fewer players at high masters/GM so naturally they have less players pushing their development. But it's getting closer and closer to well balanced.
I think these stats show a lot to prove that map changes and race development are making the real changes to the "balance" of the game than actual balance changes (mostly looking at the international scene).
I would imagine that the decline in overall Terran win percentages is mostly due to the introduction of bigger maps and the removal of small maps (i.e. Steppes).
Protoss had a pretty big jump in win percentage with the big Patch 1.2, but I think that's a case of correlation vs. causation. Around that time, Protosses began getting upgrades a lot faster (double forge, etc.), which really proved to be hugely effective in the PvT matchup. Also around that time began the development of the 3 gate expansion and the Void Ray/Colossus deathball in PvZ. As Protoss strategy became more fleshed out, they began winning more despite relatively small changes.
It's also nice to note how these days Zerg is getting much better in the ZvP matchup. Indeed, the infestor buff helped Zerg out a lot, but Zergs also began developing new strategies such as fast burrow, more ling/baneling styles, and more effective use of their "tier 3" units, so much so that in fact the win rates slightly favor Zerg. It was just a few months ago that Zergs everywhere were complaining about ZvP imbalance, and nowadays seem to be doing fine in the matchup.
TvZ really surprised me, although if I were to guess at why the matchup favors Terran so much, I'd probably attribute it to the massive Terran presence in Europe. European Terrans are quite strong, whereas there just aren't that many European Zergs. That's just my guess, I really don't know for sure.
Overall, this just kind of proves that the game needs time to develop and grow before we should really be calling for massive balance changes.
On May 03 2011 01:06 DarkShadowz wrote: Zerg is UP they never win anything really. Maybe early on in tournaments but as you could see in the tournament roundup they won one small cup? and got hardly any medal places. Terran and Protoss seem fine however I certainly think Blizzard is getting close to good balance.
nope Idra only just won the IGN/IPL. Stop crying PLEASE -.-
Ok they have one player. I never whine about balance anywhere else but I tihnk this is the thread to bring forward such thoughts. I just think it's really close to balanced but Zerg is doing worse then the other races in terms of actual tournament wins. They do have fewer players at high masters/GM so naturally they have less players pushing their development. But it's getting closer and closer to well balanced.
They WERE doing worse, but now they are starting to do better with the same game, that only means they are starting too learn how to counter the terran/protoss builds they face. Sorry if I overreacted on ur post but I thought it was one of those omgwtf zerg is UP posts that have absolutely no worth again.
I think that those graphs show pretty much one thing concerning PvZ: Zergs have really stepped up their game recently, especially against Toss, but Toss didn't. I don't know whether this is an accurate reflection of Balance, it's IMHO more or less Zerg figuring out new styles of play and Toss having a hard time adapting.
Personally, not really considering the recent results out of Korea, PvZ is still in heavy favour of Toss, or have you heard a single Protoss saying anything like: Zerg is too strong against Toss? I didn't and it's IMHo cuz the Toss know that they are just not performing well.
I personally don't hate PvZ right now, but then again, if you look at my Multitasking/APM and decisions (after seeing my own replays), If I win against Toss, it's every time cuz I completely outplayed them, but the same cannot be said if a Protoss just turtles up on 3 bases and crushes me with one simple attack.
Just like Tyler said on SotG - Toss has so many more stuff they can do to get ahead against Zerg with heavy Blinkstalker/Phoenix-harrass and now that Zergs really begin to pressure all over the Toss' face with Drops, All-in's etc. Toss maybe just has to step up their game and use the many tools they have to get ahead against Zerg.
And srsly: If sm1 really feels like PvZ is Zerg-favoured now just because of these small samples from Korea, you really need to think a bit longer about that one. ^^'
On May 03 2011 01:19 Jayjay54 wrote: hmm. this is highly MMR affected isn't it? The system balances everything. So even if everything was 50% that doesn't mean the game is balanced. Better [your racehere] play worse [your antirace here] and the illusion of balance is artifically while the races may be imba as shit.
OP specifically says it is tournament games, zero ladder games. And you can discern imbalance on ladder as well, but anywho.
I personally prefer looking at tourney results to see how the race balance progresses.
To me, this shows somewhat the development of the metagame, as well as the effect of Blizz constantly patching the game. To be honest, I don't like this constant meddling in the game, especially when most of their "fixes" are to take options away from each race, and when they have expansions coming. People seem overjoyed to see win ratios in the international scene reaching 50%, but to me this doesn't imply much besides everyone wins in the same proportion. I don't like how people are saying balance is achieved when every race reaches 50%. Does that mean that all meta-game developments that later skew those percentages need to be patched out? That's it in a nutshell for me, that strategy is still evolving, but as soon as there are new developments there is a knee-jerk reaction amongst the community and Blizzard to "fix" things, and bring us back to this 50%. When the percentages are stable, people will say "balance achieved", but for me, all this seems to do is stifle development.
On May 03 2011 01:20 kickinhead wrote: Personally, not really considering the recent results out of Korea, PvZ is still in heavy favour of Toss, or have you heard a single Protoss saying anything like: Zerg is too strong against Toss? I didn't and it's IMHo cuz the Toss know that they are just not performing well.
What results indicate it is heavily Toss favored?
I personally don't hate PvZ right now, but then again, if you look at my Multitasking/APM and decisions (after seeing my own replays), If I win against Toss, it's every time cuz I completely outplayed them, but the same cannot be said if a Protoss just turtles up on 3 bases and crushes me with one simple attack.
That's not a balance issue...
And srsly: If sm1 really feels like PvZ is Zerg-favoured now just because of these small samples from Korea, you really need to think a bit longer about that one. ^^'
What these results show is how in flux the matchup is. Saying it's Zerg favored OR Protoss favored is daft.
On May 03 2011 01:19 Jayjay54 wrote: hmm. this is highly MMR affected isn't it? The system balances everything. So even if everything was 50% that doesn't mean the game is balanced. Better [your racehere] play worse [your antirace here] and the illusion of balance is artifically while the races may be imba as shit.
and when a race is buffed / nerfed this balanced is altered. e.g. imo the infestor buff highly affected pvz in korea. many protosses (who might have been rated a little too high) were dropping in ladder which explains the low percentage. However, I feel like this does not automatically cry IMBALANCE as maybe the system needs just some time to readjust itself after a huge patch.
I personally prefer looking at tourney results to see how the race balance progresses.
He looked ONLY at tournament and leagues if you read carefully.
By the way I think that all those whine abous zerg being UP and protoss being OP have no sense. Keep in mind that the metagame is still changing. From what I'm seeing protoss and zergs are evolving pretty fast while terran are remaning a little behind. So yeah, just be patient and let the metagame evolve.
On May 03 2011 00:26 fant0m wrote: The issue with Korean Toss is that they got complacent. So many lose games early due to over-teching or over-expanding. The balance is too close for you to do that when your opponent is about to hit with a timing attack and still win.
That skews the results so much because there are so few Korean Toss. So 2 of them do bad for 4 games total (San, MC)... and the whole representation gets thrown off massively.
Toss just isn't strong enough any more to ignore what the other race is doing and still win.
I don't even understand why they would get complacent in the first place. PvT was never that strong for them, was it? Sure, it looked like they were dominating everything with MC leading the charge, but I can't believe how they all just seem so unprepared now.
Almost all of the Ps in GSL have been knocked out in PvT. I just can't wrap my head around it.
It's simple really. Terrans went back to what was working for them a few months ago against protoss, winning by unit efficiency and eliminating expansions.
I think the HT nerf is often understated with concern to the matchup and sometimes its hard to notice the effect that it has. What we are seeing now is protoss defending drops by warping in chargelots and stuff, which is great... it gets the units off the ground, BUT it doesn't get the medivac out of the air so they can keep you pinned all game. If you leave the units there to defend further drops, your mid-size army at the front is too weak to take on a mid-size bio force.
I'm not saying its imba or anything, I'm just saying the HT nerf had a bigger impact than people think since they aren't seen all that often. The impact is in mid-late game drop defense. Protoss has the worst drop defense of all the races not because the units can't defend the drop, but because of the impact it has on your main army to break off chunks of it. Cannons are actually terrible against terran drops and though some people might argue that cannons are very strong, the protoss doesn't have abilities that give them mineral surges like the MULE for instance. MULEing makes getting the money for turrets alot less painful. Basically, cannons cost alot in opportunity cost for the protoss in an evenly matched game.
Enough of my digression. Basically, protoss' very weak base defense is being taken advantage of by these races in recent games. I think protoss users will need to come up with some creative uses of air (not deathball air, i mean map control style air) in the near future.
On May 03 2011 01:19 Jayjay54 wrote: hmm. this is highly MMR affected isn't it? The system balances everything. So even if everything was 50% that doesn't mean the game is balanced. Better [your racehere] play worse [your antirace here] and the illusion of balance is artifically while the races may be imba as shit.
and when a race is buffed / nerfed this balanced is altered. e.g. imo the infestor buff highly affected pvz in korea. many protosses (who might have been rated a little too high) were dropping in ladder which explains the low percentage. However, I feel like this does not automatically cry IMBALANCE as maybe the system needs just some time to readjust itself after a huge patch.
I personally prefer looking at tourney results to see how the race balance progresses.
These are based off of tournament results and leagues from the TLPD
On May 03 2011 01:25 Jayrod wrote: Enough of my digression. Basically, protoss' very weak base defense is being taken advantage of by these races in recent games. I think protoss users will need to come up with some creative uses of air (not deathball air, i mean map control style air) in the near future.
I don't think you can say our base defence is bad. Templar + phoenixs + warpins is very, very strong. But yes, I agree, the threat of medivacs is not well accounted for with current playstyles, and that's being abused (templar in the ball and stalkers are pretty much the only AA). Incontrol is right - phoenixs will see increasing usage.
On May 02 2011 23:57 hmunkey wrote: I posted on the Reddit post but I thought I'd post here too: even though these charts indicate balance (or lack thereof) in certain ways, they're taken only for certain time periods which basically means certain events or specific players have disproportionately larger impact on the data.
For example, Naniwa's MLG run (I know it wasn't charted but it's a good example) or recent Losira domination in GSL would both skew results and make it seem like P is OP or Z is OP when really, neither can be conclusively decided as true.
Basically, players who make deep runs play more games and skew it. So what we sometimes see are only the best of the best represented their races. For example, the GSL currently has 4 zergs in the RO16. These zergs are the absolute best when it comes to their race, as opposed to mediocre protosses and terrans who made it in. This makes it look like Zv* is insane when it may not truly be, because the fewer number of zergs and their comparative skill means they'll obviously win more games.
Similarly, I imagine if IdrA continues his streak into NASL further and in other tournaments, he will single-handedly make zerg look OP in NA even if he's the only zerg playing major tournaments and getting far.
Nice move maneuvering yourself into QQ position, but if Idra continues his NASL dominance, then it won't skew the NASL stats by an undue amount. The beauty of the NASL stats is that they are derived from a league, where the outcome of one event does not influence the next event. If a player loses, he can lose again.
KO tourneys make the race with the highest skill variance (around the same mean) look better, because the exceptional performing players contribute more games to an event.
Incontrol is right - phoenixs will see increasing usage.
He said that for PvP, you don't really have the army to toe-toe with other races with a Phoenix army. But in PvP Phoenixes do a hell of a lot considering:
a) Stalkers have such poor anti-air and super expensive compared to Hydra/Roaches/Marauders/Marines,
b) Protoss expansions take the longest to pay off in the game (Terran Expo brings in like 800 minerals by the time a Toss expo has just paid it self off) and thus economic harass to Protoss is more devastating than vs other races
c) Large amounts of thier DPS come from a 9range range unit which can be attacked by air. In PvP, without Phoenixes, trying to attack those Colossus will get you murdered, you usually have to kill all the gateway to do that or be creative with blink Stalkers, but since Stalkers have such shitty anti-air you can just go for the enemy Colossus directly with Phoenix in an engagement and there isn't much the other Protoss can do about it
Though there is the small problem of them just killing you the moment they see the first few Phoenix, might change come warpgate nerf
Are there any stats for the races that make in into the last 8 of each tournament, because I seem to see an awful lot of mirror match up from the quarter finals onwards and they are mainly TvT or PvP?
On May 02 2011 23:57 hmunkey wrote: I posted on the Reddit post but I thought I'd post here too: even though these charts indicate balance (or lack thereof) in certain ways, they're taken only for certain time periods which basically means certain events or specific players have disproportionately larger impact on the data.
For example, Naniwa's MLG run (I know it wasn't charted but it's a good example) or recent Losira domination in GSL would both skew results and make it seem like P is OP or Z is OP when really, neither can be conclusively decided as true.
Basically, players who make deep runs play more games and skew it. So what we sometimes see are only the best of the best represented their races. For example, the GSL currently has 4 zergs in the RO16. These zergs are the absolute best when it comes to their race, as opposed to mediocre protosses and terrans who made it in. This makes it look like Zv* is insane when it may not truly be, because the fewer number of zergs and their comparative skill means they'll obviously win more games.
Similarly, I imagine if IdrA continues his streak into NASL further and in other tournaments, he will single-handedly make zerg look OP in NA even if he's the only zerg playing major tournaments and getting far.
More people need to read this.
It's tempting to read something out of this, but imagine how few major tournaments are played in a month - particularly in Korea - and think if could really be representative of the current metagame.
Perhaps you should include smaller size cups and tournaments, like weekly and monthly ones, as well?
On May 02 2011 23:57 hmunkey wrote: I posted on the Reddit post but I thought I'd post here too: even though these charts indicate balance (or lack thereof) in certain ways, they're taken only for certain time periods which basically means certain events or specific players have disproportionately larger impact on the data.
For example, Naniwa's MLG run (I know it wasn't charted but it's a good example) or recent Losira domination in GSL would both skew results and make it seem like P is OP or Z is OP when really, neither can be conclusively decided as true.
Basically, players who make deep runs play more games and skew it. So what we sometimes see are only the best of the best represented their races. For example, the GSL currently has 4 zergs in the RO16. These zergs are the absolute best when it comes to their race, as opposed to mediocre protosses and terrans who made it in. This makes it look like Zv* is insane when it may not truly be, because the fewer number of zergs and their comparative skill means they'll obviously win more games.
Similarly, I imagine if IdrA continues his streak into NASL further and in other tournaments, he will single-handedly make zerg look OP in NA even if he's the only zerg playing major tournaments and getting far.
More people need to read this.
It's tempting to read something out of this, but imagine how few major tournaments are played in a month - particularly in Korea - and think if could really be representative of the current metagame.
Perhaps you should include smaller size cups and tournaments, like weekly and monthly ones, as well?
So are the data points you used to for the graph every month? So like 6 values for each race? And when you say you only tournaments/leagues, are you excluding all the KOTHs and qualifiers that are listed in the TLPD
The Korean statistics I'm most critical of. If we take for example the April statistic, I assume you're using the GSL Code A/S and the SK Gaming Asia Master tournament as the sole source of data. Now when you also consider the GSL code A and S are not even finished and that a large portion of games are mirror match ups, I just can't see how we can find value in a sample like this.
I think the huge variations we see are much more indicative of the volatility that comes from the tiny sample, rather than patches or "metagame" changes.
Do you think you could give your numbers more specifically and calculate the error? I don't think you just noting a small sample size is enough (As shown by how seriously people are taking the korean data in this thread). I think otherwise this thread is abusing statistics and giving people bad information.
On May 03 2011 01:15 Moriwo wrote: I think these stats show a lot to prove that map changes and race development are making the real changes to the "balance" of the game than actual balance changes (mostly looking at the international scene).
I would imagine that the decline in overall Terran win percentages is mostly due to the introduction of bigger maps and the removal of small maps (i.e. Steppes).
Protoss had a pretty big jump in win percentage with the big Patch 1.2, but I think that's a case of correlation vs. causation. Around that time, Protosses began getting upgrades a lot faster (double forge, etc.), which really proved to be hugely effective in the PvT matchup. Also around that time began the development of the 3 gate expansion and the Void Ray/Colossus deathball in PvZ. As Protoss strategy became more fleshed out, they began winning more despite relatively small changes.
It's also nice to note how these days Zerg is getting much better in the ZvP matchup. Indeed, the infestor buff helped Zerg out a lot, but Zergs also began developing new strategies such as fast burrow, more ling/baneling styles, and more effective use of their "tier 3" units, so much so that in fact the win rates slightly favor Zerg. It was just a few months ago that Zergs everywhere were complaining about ZvP imbalance, and nowadays seem to be doing fine in the matchup.
TvZ really surprised me, although if I were to guess at why the matchup favors Terran so much, I'd probably attribute it to the massive Terran presence in Europe. European Terrans are quite strong, whereas there just aren't that many European Zergs. That's just my guess, I really don't know for sure.
Overall, this just kind of proves that the game needs time to develop and grow before we should really be calling for massive balance changes.
Just my take on ZvP trends:
Since beta it was obvious Zerg had the greatest production potential with spawn larva. The only difference was that unlike the other two races, Zerg couldn't make workers and attacking units at the same time (well it technically could, but since the units were weaker it just wouldn't work because you needed to establish a stronger economy). However, once Zerg got an economy going it was accepted that the Protoss would get rolled.
So basically Protoss play centered around the idea of not letting a Zerg get his economy up uncontested, as they would be sure to get outmacroed in the late game. This pretty much defined the dynamic of the matchup. Zerg would drone for as long as possible, and then make units in anticipation of a push. They'd crush that push and win. Meanwhile Protoss would try to work on various timing rushes and high army pressure builds to prevent this.
Recently though, it dawned on Protoss that Zerg lategame was actually quite terrible, and that Zerg couldn't beat a 200 / 200 army. On top of that Zerg couldn't saturate more than ~3 1/2 bases because ot would mean making too many workers. So for the last few months Protoss have more or less always had their core army sitting at home, turtling 3 bases, and maxing out before they pushed. Zerg would wait and build an army in anticipation of a push that never came, and then get completely rolled by a maxed out army that their units simply can't stand up to. Hence we see from ~January till now Zergs doing horribly, especially vs Protoss, because their style was still to wait for a Protoss to move out, which isn't happening until 200 / 200.
Trends are now improving with perhaps the infestor buff (although I still maintain they suck in ZvP) but more notably a greater Zerg emphasis on aggression, drops, attacks, etc that try to stop Protoss from building a 200 / 200 army uncontested, cause you're gonna lose every time they do that =_=
Hm. Unless there is additional information about the data (number of matches per month, especially april), I am convinced this does not proove anything (if scientific criteria would apply). In terms of balance I mean.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
Don't think it is imbalance, just easier to play Terran at higher levels than the other two races.
NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
getting really annoyed by this quote, mvp said terran is the weakest race so why dont u quote him, biased much?
This isn't balance though....Don't think anyone thinks Terran is imbalanced, but there have been so many "great" Terran players when there has been so little for the other races, why is that?
What NesTea said was right, other than MC how many very "solid" Protoss players do you have? Possibly Ace, maybe Alicia---keep in mind this is the most played race in Starcraft2 right now.
What about Zerg? NesTa and Losira come to mind, but for Terran there are a plethora. The race isn't stronger than any of the other races, but it is a lot easier to be consistent and "solid" with than the other two, though keeping that in mind it doesn't take anything away from the tip top players like Bomber and MVP.
Maybe in a few years it will cease to matter when people have gotten a lot better.
You would quote anything that says Protoss is hard to play, it's getting tiring to read your replies to every thread that has "balance" in it. We get it: Terran OP, Protoss UP, sympathy for Zerg to get them to agree and ending on the note that you're not implying imbalance.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
Actually, my post wasn't anything about imbalance. It was simply hard and clear fact that the majority of the good players in Korea all play Terran. Whether this is indicative of any balance is not up to me. If you look at the 2 most recent GSLs, it is very hard to argue that Terran dominates in Korea. To be honest, I firmly believe that these people are also some of the most skilled players in Korea and that their skill is what's skewing Korea's results as well as the lack of sample size.
And yes, Hyperdub, Clide, and the like are jokes. I tried to make it obvious with the sarcasm.
Sample size is smaller for Korea but deviation from average is ridiculously huge. If you do a chi squared, I'm sure it would reject the null at 95% confidence, probably even 99% confidence. 700 games is pretty damn sizeable. PvT and PvZ are looking like absolute garbage right now.
I love reading over the replies of people here that you see often whining about balance (STOG thread, etc) now wanting to take a step back and look at the bigger picture :D
Really nice job. The international one is especially cool, and suggests that given a year or two, it's not unreasonable to expect 50% winrates across the board.
On May 03 2011 01:43 Mafe wrote: Hm. Unless there is additional information about the data (number of matches per month, especially april), I am convinced this does not proove anything (if scientific criteria would apply).
i agree, having the complete data tables or at the very least an explanation of how such data was created would validate the findings a lot more. to the OP, the more data you include with polls like this the better.
On May 03 2011 01:48 Micket wrote: Actually, my post wasn't anything about imbalance. It was simply hard and clear fact that the majority of the good players in Korea all play Terran.
Or Terran makes it easier to look good, so more Terrans look good than other races.
Whether this is indicative of any balance is not up to me. If you look at the 2 most recent GSLs, it is very hard to argue that Terran dominates in Korea.
They don't dominate like they used to, but they're still the most common race by far at the top level. Whether you want to call that domination or not is semantics.
To be honest, I firmly believe that these people are also some of the most skilled players in Korea and that their skill is what's skewing Korea's results as well as the lack of sample size.
Meh, people said the same when Terran was winning 70% of everything. Most of those Terran players vanished as they became less OP.
This isn't balance though....Don't think anyone thinks Terran is imbalanced, but there have been so many "great" Terran players when there has been so little for the other races, why is that?
Why is that?
Terran in the earlier stages of Starcraft 2's development were doing really well (whether it was balance or simply meta game is another debate). A lot of players chose which race was doing the best when the game first came out. At this point, players are more or less committed to their race (given some exceptions of course). This is no indication of the PRESENT state of Terran in the grand scheme of balance.
Your argument would make sense if players were recently switching to Terran and excelling in success, but that is not the case. Had Zerg been dominant at the very start of SC2 release, we would likely be seeing a higher quantity of Zerg players and less Terran players.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
Don't think it is imbalance, just easier to play Terran at higher levels than the other two races.
NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
getting really annoyed by this quote, mvp said terran is the weakest race so why dont u quote him, biased much?
This isn't balance though....Don't think anyone thinks Terran is imbalanced, but there have been so many "great" Terran players when there has been so little for the other races, why is that?
What NesTea said was right, other than MC how many very "solid" Protoss players do you have? Possibly Ace, maybe Alicia---keep in mind this is the most played race in Starcraft2 right now.
What about Zerg? NesTa and Losira come to mind, but for Terran there are a plethora. The race isn't stronger than any of the other races, but it is a lot easier to be consistent and "solid" with than the other two, though keeping that in mind it doesn't take anything away from the tip top players like Bomber and MVP.
Maybe in a few years it will cease to matter when people have gotten a lot better.
You would quote anything that says Protoss is hard to play, it's getting tiring to read your replies to every thread that has "balance" in it. We get it: Terran OP, Protoss UP, sympathy for Zerg to get them to agree and ending on the note that you're not implying imbalance.
I haven't made an opinion about balance or any race being easier/harder to play in a LONG LONG time... I think I maybe mentioned it once right after the interview with NesTea but that is it-- and just like this time, I said it wasn't that big of an issue as in a few years when people get better it might change
What is mostly ironic is that while the P matchups seem fine (as in, the shifts in winning percentage shifts are probably caused by metagame changes, as has been pointed out), TvZ statistically has always been fairly T favoured, while being looked at as the "balanced" matchup. Having said that, i will link this every time someone on ladder flames me with ZOMG PROTOSS OP...at platinum/diamond level -.-
Zergs could have 80% winrates in every matchup (including zvz) and they'd still find something to whine about. It's just the way the game works. Have you ever beaten a zerg who actually thought they deserved to lose? It is just the way Zerg play has developed; apparently being beaten into the ground by 5rax reaper for so long didn't sit well with them and they've grouped any loss they've suffered with a similar abuse. It is sad, really. A lot of zergs I know are losing because of their mindset rather than their play; they are beating themselves.
On May 03 2011 01:15 Moriwo wrote: I think these stats show a lot to prove that map changes and race development are making the real changes to the "balance" of the game than actual balance changes (mostly looking at the international scene).
I would imagine that the decline in overall Terran win percentages is mostly due to the introduction of bigger maps and the removal of small maps (i.e. Steppes).
Protoss had a pretty big jump in win percentage with the big Patch 1.2, but I think that's a case of correlation vs. causation. Around that time, Protosses began getting upgrades a lot faster (double forge, etc.), which really proved to be hugely effective in the PvT matchup. Also around that time began the development of the 3 gate expansion and the Void Ray/Colossus deathball in PvZ. As Protoss strategy became more fleshed out, they began winning more despite relatively small changes.
It's also nice to note how these days Zerg is getting much better in the ZvP matchup. Indeed, the infestor buff helped Zerg out a lot, but Zergs also began developing new strategies such as fast burrow, more ling/baneling styles, and more effective use of their "tier 3" units, so much so that in fact the win rates slightly favor Zerg. It was just a few months ago that Zergs everywhere were complaining about ZvP imbalance, and nowadays seem to be doing fine in the matchup.
TvZ really surprised me, although if I were to guess at why the matchup favors Terran so much, I'd probably attribute it to the massive Terran presence in Europe. European Terrans are quite strong, whereas there just aren't that many European Zergs. That's just my guess, I really don't know for sure.
Overall, this just kind of proves that the game needs time to develop and grow before we should really be calling for massive balance changes.
Just my take on ZvP trends:
Since beta it was obvious Zerg had the greatest production potential with spawn larva. The only difference was that unlike the other two races, Zerg couldn't make workers and attacking units at the same time (well it technically could, but since the units were weaker it just wouldn't work because you needed to establish a stronger economy). However, once Zerg got an economy going it was accepted that the Protoss would get rolled.
So basically Protoss play centered around the idea of not letting a Zerg get his economy up uncontested, as they would be sure to get outmacroed in the late game. This pretty much defined the dynamic of the matchup. Zerg would drone for as long as possible, and then make units in anticipation of a push. They'd crush that push and win. Meanwhile Protoss would try to work on various timing rushes and high army pressure builds to prevent this.
Recently though, it dawned on Protoss that Zerg lategame was actually quite terrible, and that Zerg couldn't beat a 200 / 200 army. On top of that Zerg couldn't saturate more than ~3 1/2 bases because ot would mean making too many workers. So for the last few months Protoss have more or less always had their core army sitting at home, turtling 3 bases, and maxing out before they pushed. Zerg would wait and build an army in anticipation of a push that never came, and then get completely rolled by a maxed out army that their units simply can't stand up to. Hence we see from ~January till now Zergs doing horribly, especially vs Protoss, because their style was still to wait for a Protoss to move out, which isn't happening until 200 / 200.
Trends are now improving with perhaps the infestor buff (although I still maintain they suck in ZvP) but more notably a greater Zerg emphasis on aggression, drops, attacks, etc that try to stop Protoss from building a 200 / 200 army uncontested, cause you're gonna lose every time they do that =_=
I think that's spot on.
But I personnally don't think ZvP is balanced though. If you look at the stats ZvP has been very imbalanced in the past months.
The fact that we are seeing more zergs winning can just mean that the bad protoss players previously getting undeserved wins cannot handle the changes in the metagame.
On May 03 2011 01:25 Jayrod wrote: Enough of my digression. Basically, protoss' very weak base defense is being taken advantage of by these races in recent games. I think protoss users will need to come up with some creative uses of air (not deathball air, i mean map control style air) in the near future.
I don't think you can say our base defence is bad. Templar + phoenixs + warpins is very, very strong. But yes, I agree, the threat of medivacs is not well accounted for with current playstyles, and that's being abused (templar in the ball and stalkers are pretty much the only AA). Incontrol is right - phoenixs will see increasing usage.
What I meant/tried to say was that it costs the protoss alot more to properly defend. You give up alot more in other areas than the other races. Zerg has creep (probably the single best defensive factor in SC2) and terrans have a 1500 hp building that does splash damage and can be prepared as well as generally a group of units rallied to a spot between their bases. Combine those things with their relative strength in medium size numbers compared to toss and you have a situation where its very difficult to defend as protoss.
InControl has generally been wrong about every prediction I've seen him make "NASL is going to be the best thing since sliced bread" "Phoenix are going to be a staple in PvP". Even the PvP I saw him win against cruncher with a phoenix switch was only possible by cruncher's mistake missing a gigantic timing window. (backwater gulch game couple weeks ago or last week). Everyone was so impressed, but TBH cruncher has a massive advantage in tech and comp, but just didn't attack.
If I agree with the increase in phoenix usage I have to say its going to come with this restructuring of protoss in general. With current builds and trends adding phoenix is like squeezing blood from a turnip. The builds are very tight and have to hit very specific timings or automatically become unsafe. As other races learn to abuse the builds (which they seem to be) protoss is going to have to adapt and change, which will take time and alot of frustrating losses.
On May 03 2011 01:15 Moriwo wrote: I think these stats show a lot to prove that map changes and race development are making the real changes to the "balance" of the game than actual balance changes (mostly looking at the international scene).
I would imagine that the decline in overall Terran win percentages is mostly due to the introduction of bigger maps and the removal of small maps (i.e. Steppes).
Protoss had a pretty big jump in win percentage with the big Patch 1.2, but I think that's a case of correlation vs. causation. Around that time, Protosses began getting upgrades a lot faster (double forge, etc.), which really proved to be hugely effective in the PvT matchup. Also around that time began the development of the 3 gate expansion and the Void Ray/Colossus deathball in PvZ. As Protoss strategy became more fleshed out, they began winning more despite relatively small changes.
It's also nice to note how these days Zerg is getting much better in the ZvP matchup. Indeed, the infestor buff helped Zerg out a lot, but Zergs also began developing new strategies such as fast burrow, more ling/baneling styles, and more effective use of their "tier 3" units, so much so that in fact the win rates slightly favor Zerg. It was just a few months ago that Zergs everywhere were complaining about ZvP imbalance, and nowadays seem to be doing fine in the matchup.
TvZ really surprised me, although if I were to guess at why the matchup favors Terran so much, I'd probably attribute it to the massive Terran presence in Europe. European Terrans are quite strong, whereas there just aren't that many European Zergs. That's just my guess, I really don't know for sure.
Overall, this just kind of proves that the game needs time to develop and grow before we should really be calling for massive balance changes.
Just my take on ZvP trends:
Since beta it was obvious Zerg had the greatest production potential with spawn larva. The only difference was that unlike the other two races, Zerg couldn't make workers and attacking units at the same time (well it technically could, but since the units were weaker it just wouldn't work because you needed to establish a stronger economy). However, once Zerg got an economy going it was accepted that the Protoss would get rolled.
So basically Protoss play centered around the idea of not letting a Zerg get his economy up uncontested, as they would be sure to get outmacroed in the late game. This pretty much defined the dynamic of the matchup. Zerg would drone for as long as possible, and then make units in anticipation of a push. They'd crush that push and win. Meanwhile Protoss would try to work on various timing rushes and high army pressure builds to prevent this.
Recently though, it dawned on Protoss that Zerg lategame was actually quite terrible, and that Zerg couldn't beat a 200 / 200 army. On top of that Zerg couldn't saturate more than ~3 1/2 bases because ot would mean making too many workers. So for the last few months Protoss have more or less always had their core army sitting at home, turtling 3 bases, and maxing out before they pushed. Zerg would wait and build an army in anticipation of a push that never came, and then get completely rolled by a maxed out army that their units simply can't stand up to. Hence we see from ~January till now Zergs doing horribly, especially vs Protoss, because their style was still to wait for a Protoss to move out, which isn't happening until 200 / 200.
Trends are now improving with perhaps the infestor buff (although I still maintain they suck in ZvP) but more notably a greater Zerg emphasis on aggression, drops, attacks, etc that try to stop Protoss from building a 200 / 200 army uncontested, cause you're gonna lose every time they do that =_=
I think that's spot on.
But I personnally don't think ZvP is balanced though. If you look at the stats ZvP has been very imbalanced in the past months.
The fact that we are seeing more zergs winning can just mean that the bad protoss players previously getting undeserved wins cannot handle the changes in the metagame.
An issue is that even if the results are skewed one way or another, it does not necessarily mean the tools available to both races make it possible for both to win about equally. The metagame changed with the roach buff patch and zerg is just now starting to adapt away from their old standard. Basically it went: Zerg struggle ZvP. Blizz buffs roach range. Toss struggle PvZ and resort to defensive style that beats roach builds with high success rate. Zerg continues to do roach/hydra until they figure out how to adapt. Now they're adapting out of their very bad standard unit mix.
Korean Terrans have many of the best players in the world-- MVP, MKP, Nada, oGs Top, oGs SuperNova, Bomber, MMA, etc. Because the sample size is so small, Terran has a very high winning %.
Well it's interesting to see how overstated the few months of "Protoss dominance" was (jan-march 2011). Which makes it seem more like a metagame change then anything. Anecdotal evidence does back this up as this is when the PvZ/PvT "standard" builds started to become more defined. Historically protoss have only managed to briefly climb above terran for most dominant race.
Korean numbers show that the game is ridiculously volatile there. One bad GSL for protoss has them at the historic balance low for the past 6 months, which is kind of absurd given everything leading up to that. Obviously the lack of events is to blame for the small data size.
No race really has any ground to complain about balance at the moment. Yes, even zergs.
On May 03 2011 02:03 Alejandrisha wrote: Zergs could have 80% winrates in every matchup (including zvz) and they'd still find something to whine about. It's just the way the game works. Have you ever beaten a zerg who actually thought they deserved to lose? It is just the way Zerg play has developed; apparently being beaten into the ground by 5rax reaper for so long didn't sit well with them and they've grouped any loss they've suffered with a similar abuse. It is sad, really. A lot of zergs I know are losing because of their mindset rather than their play; they are beating themselves.
That's kinda stupid. You can see that a reaper nerf was needed. That TvZ was (or is) imbalanced in favor of terran. And you still say 'whiny whiny zergs'. That's beyond my mind. Stop bashing on zerg.
Any chance of error bars on each data point? Just Poisson noice based on the number of games contributing to that point would be fine. Would be very useful to compare how reliable a given data point is. Alternatively, any indication of how many games contribute to each datapoint would be useful. If TvZ is up at 70% one month with only 10 games played then back down at 50% the next month with 100 games played the number of games is really important in interpreting the data.
PS That's sqrt(no. of games)/(no. of games) if you're not familiar with Poisson statistics.
On May 03 2011 02:03 Alejandrisha wrote: Zergs could have 80% winrates in every matchup (including zvz) and they'd still find something to whine about. It's just the way the game works. Have you ever beaten a zerg who actually thought they deserved to lose? It is just the way Zerg play has developed; apparently being beaten into the ground by 5rax reaper for so long didn't sit well with them and they've grouped any loss they've suffered with a similar abuse. It is sad, really. A lot of zergs I know are losing because of their mindset rather than their play; they are beating themselves.
That's kinda stupid. You can see that a reaper nerf was needed. That TvZ was (or is) imbalanced in favor of terran. And you still say 'whiny whiny zergs'. That's beyond my mind. Stop bashing on zerg.
I said the reapers were abuse. They were imbalanced. I'm not saying they were not. "whiny whiny zergs" was not found in my posted. How is that beyond your mind. Even Nestea, the zerg hero says "Zerg TT." It looks like you look past every other sentence in my post and just harp on 2 words here, three words there.
On May 03 2011 01:39 Befree wrote: So are the data points you used to for the graph every month? So like 6 values for each race? And when you say you only tournaments/leagues, are you excluding all the KOTHs and qualifiers that are listed in the TLPD
The Korean statistics I'm most critical of. If we take for example the April statistic, I assume you're using the GSL Code A/S and the SK Gaming Asia Master tournament as the sole source of data. Now when you also consider the GSL code A and S are not even finished and that a large portion of games are mirror match ups, I just can't see how we can find value in a sample like this.
I think the huge variations we see are much more indicative of the volatility that comes from the tiny sample, rather than patches or "metagame" changes.
Do you think you could give your numbers more specifically and calculate the error? I don't think you just noting a small sample size is enough (As shown by how seriously people are taking the korean data in this thread). I think otherwise this thread is abusing statistics and giving people bad information.
Yeah, there is one data point per race per month. I can very easily make it per week (or day) if you are interested in seeing that.
The data set IS the TLPD. I am loading everything in it. The only restrictions on the data set is the time period (6 months) and the exclusion of mirrors.
I would probably agree that the data set is to small to make any real analyses on the Korean side, but it is pretty interesting anyway. I would not make make the conclusion that P is weak based on only one data point.
On May 02 2011 23:59 DNB wrote: This is super interesting, I especially like the graphs where the winrates switch places oppositely and then start to even out. It really tells you about the math behind the metagame...
There is no math behind the metagame. That's like saying "the math behind anticipation".
On May 02 2011 23:59 DNB wrote: This is super interesting, I especially like the graphs where the winrates switch places oppositely and then start to even out. It really tells you about the math behind the metagame...
There is no math behind the metagame. That's like saying "the math behind anticipation".
Whenever some one says meta game I just wait for it xD
Ah, Chill isn't even reading this thread anymore, unless he has some special search function for the word "metagame"
If metagame isn't an acceptable term, then "the widely accepted as standard set of strategies as well as possible cheeses all seem to be fairly volatile at this point in the game".
Also, protoss not dominating? Am I reading this wrong?
On May 03 2011 02:20 Silkath wrote: Any chance of error bars on each data point? Just Poisson noice based on the number of games contributing to that point would be fine. Would be very useful to compare how reliable a given data point is. Alternatively, any indication of how many games contribute to each datapoint would be useful. If TvZ is up at 70% one month with only 10 games played then back down at 50% the next month with 100 games played the number of games is really important in interpreting the data.
PS That's sqrt(no. of games)/(no. of games) if you're not familiar with Poisson statistics.
I would love to do this, going to see if I can get this added!
On May 03 2011 01:43 Mafe wrote: Hm. Unless there is additional information about the data (number of matches per month, especially april), I am convinced this does not proove anything (if scientific criteria would apply). In terms of balance I mean.
Exactly. It's a nice plot, giving food for thought, showing exactly what the original poster said it shows. Inferring and/or interpreting any interesting general statements from this plot, like "as of now, races are balanced", requires a lot of work (and is impossible with these plots alone).
On May 02 2011 23:59 DNB wrote: This is super interesting, I especially like the graphs where the winrates switch places oppositely and then start to even out. It really tells you about the math behind the metagame...
There is no math behind the metagame. That's like saying "the math behind anticipation".
I disagree with this, I think there is math behind metagame-- To simplify-- you have a strategy that is perceived to be powerful, people flock to it. As more people flock to it, strategies which are strong vs. said strategy gain in popularity, people flock to said counter. As more people flock to said counter, initial strategy becomes less popular. The curves representing the number of people using both of those strategies approach bell curves.
This is idealized and simplified, and the reality is much more complex of course, but its disingenuous to say there is no math.
But I understand your hostility towards the term, it gets bandied around and used in a million different ways.
On May 03 2011 02:38 Kaonis wrote: So.. The metagame seems to be unstable.
Ah, Chill isn't even reading this thread anymore, unless he has some special search function for the word "metagame"
If metagame isn't an acceptable term, then "the widely accepted as standard set of strategies as well as possible cheeses all seem to be fairly volatile at this point in the game".
Also, protoss not dominating? Am I reading this wrong?
It's not special, I just used the search function.
How about "Protoss strategies are dominant"? There's no need to try to overcomplicate it. Using the wrong word is more convenient but it's still wrong. Compare the following:
1. The shuttle failed when the fuel inside initial booster rocket #6 exploded. 2. The shuttle failed when the table exploded.
On May 02 2011 23:59 DNB wrote: This is super interesting, I especially like the graphs where the winrates switch places oppositely and then start to even out. It really tells you about the math behind the metagame...
There is no math behind the metagame. That's like saying "the math behind anticipation".
I disagree with this, I think there is math behind metagame-- To simplify-- you have a strategy that is perceived to be powerful, people flock to it. As more people flock to it, strategies which are strong vs. said strategy gain in popularity, people flock to said counter. As more people flock to said counter, initial strategy becomes less popular. The curves representing the number of people using both of those strategies approach bell curves.
This is idealized and simplified, and the reality is much more complex of course, but its disingenuous to say there is no math.
But I understand your hostility towards the term, it gets bandied around and used in a million different ways.
Very true. My comment was a defensive exaggeration.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
Don't think it is imbalance, just easier to play Terran at higher levels than the other two races.
NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
getting really annoyed by this quote, mvp said terran is the weakest race so why dont u quote him, biased much?
This isn't balance though....Don't think anyone thinks Terran is imbalanced, but there have been so many "great" Terran players when there has been so little for the other races, why is that?
What NesTea said was right, other than MC how many very "solid" Protoss players do you have? Possibly Ace, maybe Alicia---keep in mind this is the most played race in Starcraft2 right now.
What about Zerg? NesTa and Losira come to mind, but for Terran there are a plethora. The race isn't stronger than any of the other races, but it is a lot easier to be consistent and "solid" with than the other two, though keeping that in mind it doesn't take anything away from the tip top players like Bomber and MVP.
Maybe in a few years it will cease to matter when people have gotten a lot better.
You would quote anything that says Protoss is hard to play, it's getting tiring to read your replies to every thread that has "balance" in it. We get it: Terran OP, Protoss UP, sympathy for Zerg to get them to agree and ending on the note that you're not implying imbalance.
Personally, people should just stop complaining about imbalance and just play to improve. Let the designer of the game do the game tweeking.
Also, people got to stop thinking higher apm=playing better. I just hate it whenever I hear someone say "I played better but I still lost". No, you lost because you played worse than your opponent saying the prior is merely trying to justify your loss through balance/imbalance discussion.
Some player in a few post said a lot of zerg whiners. It is mainly because pro zerg like Idra, and artosis (before he switched) tend to whine a lot more and the other zerg just follow. Protoss players have pros like Tyler and Incontrol. When protoss were dying left and right to terran/zerg in GSL1,2, and 3 they never said imba. They just said the protoss were playing bad.
Lets all remember the show Imbalance with Idra/artosis that said supposedly the "2base void ray colossus zealot build" was supposed to be unstoppable. How many PvZ pro games have people seen where toss went that.
Protoss has MC and maybee San and Alicia. Zerg has Nestea, Losira and July. Terran has MVP, MKP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, NaDa, Keen!, Supernova, SC, Top, Boxer (kinda), Jinro, Cliiiiiiiiide and Hyperdub (no denying this).
so you're saying out of all the people that train starcraft 2 really hard in korea (and it's a lot, trust me on this) only 1-2 protoss, 3 zergs and also a fuckton of terran players dominate the scene?
unless you somehow believe that picking terran magically gives a huge boost in skill (which it doesn't) then you're saying terran is imbalanced. i agree.
That post must be a joke, maybe San and Alicia but definatelly a shitload of Terrans like Hyperdub, Boxer, Clide, etc that either have one good run or haven't even showed anything besides a few Code A games or Team League games. A lot of the "Terran promises" may actually fail when time passes, like promisses always do. If you go that route, why not put Squirtle, Choya, Inca, Ace, etc? They had at least one good run, seemed promissing at the time, even if they are not the top Protosses.
This is just so biased it can't be taken seriously, and doesn't even consider the fact that, if you believe in the imbalance, which I don't, maybe players like Tester would have more sucess as Terran and some of those Terrans wouldn't have the same sucess as Protoss.
The korean sample is too small to start crying about anything, but the international sample definatelly says that all this Protoss OP QQ is weird, or at least premature, specially from Terrans, where the matchup has always been pretty damn close. PvZ hasn't really been stable so it's hard to say anything about it.
Don't think it is imbalance, just easier to play Terran at higher levels than the other two races.
NesTea even said it himself, I'm paraphrasing here, but in his interview with Artosis it went something along the lines of "Terran you can play a little bit and become a great player", "Protoss, if you work really hard and become really good at it, you will become unbeatable", "Zerg sad"
getting really annoyed by this quote, mvp said terran is the weakest race so why dont u quote him, biased much?
This isn't balance though....Don't think anyone thinks Terran is imbalanced, but there have been so many "great" Terran players when there has been so little for the other races, why is that?
What NesTea said was right, other than MC how many very "solid" Protoss players do you have? Possibly Ace, maybe Alicia---keep in mind this is the most played race in Starcraft2 right now.
What about Zerg? NesTa and Losira come to mind, but for Terran there are a plethora. The race isn't stronger than any of the other races, but it is a lot easier to be consistent and "solid" with than the other two, though keeping that in mind it doesn't take anything away from the tip top players like Bomber and MVP.
Maybe in a few years it will cease to matter when people have gotten a lot better.
You would quote anything that says Protoss is hard to play, it's getting tiring to read your replies to every thread that has "balance" in it. We get it: Terran OP, Protoss UP, sympathy for Zerg to get them to agree and ending on the note that you're not implying imbalance.
Protoss IS hard to play though and that is going to become very clear with the next patch when all the nubs 4-gating start fucking up the TL strategy forums trying to figure out why they can't win anymore.
On May 03 2011 02:20 Silkath wrote: Any chance of error bars on each data point? Just Poisson noice based on the number of games contributing to that point would be fine. Would be very useful to compare how reliable a given data point is. Alternatively, any indication of how many games contribute to each datapoint would be useful. If TvZ is up at 70% one month with only 10 games played then back down at 50% the next month with 100 games played the number of games is really important in interpreting the data.
PS That's sqrt(no. of games)/(no. of games) if you're not familiar with Poisson statistics.
I was just about to post the exact same thing.
I tell my students the first week of lab: "No data is useful without an error bar."
On May 03 2011 02:51 xbankx wrote: Personally, people should just stop complaining about imbalance and just play to improve. Let the designer of the game do the game tweeking.
Also, people got to stop thinking higher apm=playing better. I just hate it whenever I hear someone say "I played better but I still lost". No, you lost because you played worse than your opponent saying the prior is merely trying to justify your loss through balance/imbalance discussion.
Some player in a few post said a lot of zerg whiners. It is mainly because pro zerg like Idra, and artosis (before he switched) tend to whine a lot more and the other zerg just follow. Protoss players have pros like Tyler and Incontrol. When protoss were dying left and right to terran/zerg in GSL1,2, and 3 they never said imba. They just said the protoss were playing bad.
Lets all remember the show Imbalance with Idra/artosis that said supposedly the "2base void ray colossus zealot build" was supposed to be unstoppable. How many PvZ pro games have people seen where toss went that.
So many issues with the logic in this post...
I'll start with your comparison of pro Zergs vs pro Protoss.
Zerg has been buffed repeatedly since release and is only now coming to equal win ratios vs other races.
Protoss has been nerfed and now they're doing better than ever.
When Tyler and Incontrol said Protoss were just playing bad, that's true. When IdrA, Artosis, and every korean pro said Zerg was less capable, that was also true.
Then you move on to talk about 2 base Void Ray/Colossus implying that it isn't imbalanced when the infestor was specifically buffed by Blizzard to deal with this unit composition and even AFTER that, Zergs are STILL having trouble with it. When they made that episode so many months back, it definitely WAS imbalanced and had to be addressed by the creators of the game...
On May 03 2011 01:49 Cloak wrote: Sample size is smaller for Korea but deviation from average is ridiculously huge. If you do a chi squared, I'm sure it would reject the null at 95% confidence, probably even 99% confidence. 700 games is pretty damn sizeable. PvT and PvZ are looking like absolute garbage right now.
That would be relevant if we were 1. looking at a random sample of a population and 2. drawing conclusions about the whole population.
These statistics measure a non-random section of the population (results of specific tourneys and league) and from those statistics you aren't trying to draw conclusions about the whole population, but about the ephemeral subject of "game balance."
Very nice work, although as others have said it can be dangerous to try to read too much into these types of analyses. Any analysis of win rates between a pool of players who essentially never change races cannot tell us how the races are objectively balanced. This is essentially because it doesn't tell us how things would shake out if say all zergs switched to terran, all terrans to protoss, and all protosses to zerg. The players who are making it into top level tournaments are selected for based on their ability to compete with other top level players. We might thus expect close to 50% win rates (as we do on the ladder) unless tournament organizers are using some form of affirmative action to balance out the number of players of each race.
Perhaps the raw number of players of each race who qualify for tournaments, or make it to a particular round would be a more reliable statistic for assessing balance. But ultimately the term balance isn't very well defined. Would we consider the game balanced if the 3 races were objectively equal when played close to perfection, but one race won 80% of the time between equally skilled players at all lower levels? Or what if each player has a particular race that stylistically suits them best, but one race is only the best fit for 5% of the playing population. Since more than 5% of the population plays that race, they may appear to perform worse than they should. Would that be defined as imbalance?
On May 03 2011 02:03 Alejandrisha wrote: Zergs could have 80% winrates in every matchup (including zvz) and they'd still find something to whine about. It's just the way the game works. Have you ever beaten a zerg who actually thought they deserved to lose? It is just the way Zerg play has developed; apparently being beaten into the ground by 5rax reaper for so long didn't sit well with them and they've grouped any loss they've suffered with a similar abuse. It is sad, really. A lot of zergs I know are losing because of their mindset rather than their play; they are beating themselves.
Zergs will always lose to players worse than them. It's just the nature of the race and the larva mechanic which forces you to choose between drones and attacking units in the early game. The race is more susceptible to all ins and cheeses than the other races, so its only natural you're gonna hear more Zerg players bitching about undeserved wins than you will Terran and Protoss.
Like that fucking 3 gate expand --> cancel nexus --> 5 gate is so ridiculously hard to scout and a lot of the time ur fucked even if you see the nexus cancelled.
Hahaha, suddenly these results show that if anything protoss are weak and suddenly "all korean protoss are shit". For the record i wont ever complain about balance unless i make it to GM, and neither should any of you. Terran dominate KR and EU (the two highest standard servers), anyone who follows these scenes will know this. Is it because terran is OP? No. Is it because terran players are better than protoss and zerg players? No. I hope this would end protoss hate, but it wont.
Don't forget GomTV has now his own TLPD, which is an amazing source of various statistics. I wish they promoted it more, so I4ll do it for them, for instance you can select PvZ (protoss pov) http://www.gomtv.net/records/index.gom?searchType=3&race=P&vsrace=Z&season=2011&leaguetype=20&leagueid=21581&gamever=0&mapid=0 Also, don't forget that this season has been terrible for protosses in GSL, they lost to terran and zergs (mostly terrans), so the few matches the sample is based on explains the end of the Korean results graph.
On May 03 2011 02:51 xbankx wrote: Personally, people should just stop complaining about imbalance and just play to improve. Let the designer of the game do the game tweeking.
Also, people got to stop thinking higher apm=playing better. I just hate it whenever I hear someone say "I played better but I still lost". No, you lost because you played worse than your opponent saying the prior is merely trying to justify your loss through balance/imbalance discussion.
Some player in a few post said a lot of zerg whiners. It is mainly because pro zerg like Idra, and artosis (before he switched) tend to whine a lot more and the other zerg just follow. Protoss players have pros like Tyler and Incontrol. When protoss were dying left and right to terran/zerg in GSL1,2, and 3 they never said imba. They just said the protoss were playing bad.
Lets all remember the show Imbalance with Idra/artosis that said supposedly the "2base void ray colossus zealot build" was supposed to be unstoppable. How many PvZ pro games have people seen where toss went that.
So many issues with the logic in this post...
I'll start with your comparison of pro Zergs vs pro Protoss.
Zerg has been buffed repeatedly since release and is only now coming to equal win ratios vs other races.
Protoss has been nerfed and now they're doing better than ever.
When Tyler and Incontrol said Protoss were just playing bad, that's true. When IdrA, Artosis, and every korean pro said Zerg was less capable, that was also true.
Then you move on to talk about 2 base Void Ray/Colossus implying that it isn't imbalanced when the infestor was specifically buffed by Blizzard to deal with this unit composition and even AFTER that, Zergs are STILL having trouble with it. When they made that episode so many months back, it definitely WAS imbalanced and had to be addressed by the creators of the game...
*sigh* why bother...
I just never seen Pro toss just don't complain no matter how bad it looks. When you remember the period with medivac with freaken high movement speed where terran can snipe your builds then stalkers can't even catch up or when zerg was dominated with 2 base mutas into 3 base mutaling toss players like Tyler and Incontrol just said toss can always play better. They don't look at the game negatively and jump straight to imba like Idra/Artosis. Zerg being UP is a mere opinion just because pro players say it doesn't mean it is true because pro player will always want their race to be buffed until they can win every tourney.
Now look at the date when the episode imbalance was posted and then look at when the infestor buff came out. Then go find as many as game in between that time when a pro toss went that strat and tell me how many you can find. I followed the scene very well during that time and even after that episode other than random ladder games I played versus nub toss. All pro games from semi big to big tourney(not counting random round of 64 of a craft cup) that I had watch, I had never seen the the strat deployed other than the first time in GSTL. How could you say it is imbalanced after the patch? It is litterally never used in the pro scene except 1 game. If it was as strong as 5 rax reaper, I expected to see more than 1 game of it.
If however you are saying zergs are having trouble with it in diamond/masters, then yea it might be true. I had a hard time stopping it myself but you should never look at balance at that low of a level.
On May 03 2011 03:43 MrCon wrote: Don't forget GomTV has now his own TLPD, which is an amazing source of various statistics. I wish they promoted it more, so I4ll do it for them, for instance you can select PvZ (protoss pov) http://www.gomtv.net/records/index.gom?searchType=3&race=P&vsrace=Z&season=2011&leaguetype=20&leagueid=21581&gamever=0&mapid=0 Also, don't forget that this season has been terrible for protosses in GSL, they lost to terran and zergs (mostly terrans), so the few matches the sample is based on explains the end of the Korean results graph.
from that, i'm seeing toss winning more % games than zerg, the korean graph must really be volatile
man the pro scene never adapted to 6 rax 6 refinery 6 reaper cheese back before supply depots were needed for rax, worked best vs P
On May 03 2011 03:43 MrCon wrote: Don't forget GomTV has now his own TLPD, which is an amazing source of various statistics. I wish they promoted it more, so I4ll do it for them, for instance you can select PvZ (protoss pov) http://www.gomtv.net/records/index.gom?searchType=3&race=P&vsrace=Z&season=2011&leaguetype=20&leagueid=21581&gamever=0&mapid=0 Also, don't forget that this season has been terrible for protosses in GSL, they lost to terran and zergs (mostly terrans), so the few matches the sample is based on explains the end of the Korean results graph.
from that, i'm seeing toss winning more % games than zerg, the korean graph must really be volatile
man the pro scene never adapted to 6 rax 6 refinery 6 reaper cheese back before supply depots were needed for rax, worked best vs P
Yeah P are winning the boX but have 44% in individual maps.
On May 03 2011 02:03 Alejandrisha wrote: Zergs could have 80% winrates in every matchup (including zvz) and they'd still find something to whine about. It's just the way the game works. Have you ever beaten a zerg who actually thought they deserved to lose? It is just the way Zerg play has developed; apparently being beaten into the ground by 5rax reaper for so long didn't sit well with them and they've grouped any loss they've suffered with a similar abuse. It is sad, really. A lot of zergs I know are losing because of their mindset rather than their play; they are beating themselves.
Zergs will always lose to players worse than them. It's just the nature of the race and the larva mechanic which forces you to choose between drones and attacking units in the early game. The race is more susceptible to all ins and cheeses than the other races, so its only natural you're gonna hear more Zerg players bitching about undeserved wins than you will Terran and Protoss.
Like that fucking 3 gate expand --> cancel nexus --> 5 gate is so ridiculously hard to scout and a lot of the time ur fucked even if you see the nexus cancelled.
This is a bunch of crap though because it implies that zergs dont have the tools necessary to stop these builds. There's no foundation for your argument. Like... I understand what you're getting at, but its very narrow to imply that other races don't have to go to extremes to scout these difficult all-ins. From the protoss perspective you have to somehow get the information if they stop droning for a roach/ling all-in, which is extremely common, at least in master's. There are ways to do this, but they arent without sacrifice. Hallucinate is becoming the new standard scout for sentry expands and ya the fake phoenix is a strong count, but getting and using hallucinate is not without sacrifice. You have speedlings and early map control via overlords and speedseers are solid midgame choices for information. I just don't buy this whole scouting problem from zerg players as I feel they have just as many tools, if not more, than the other races to get the information they need.
I really don't think its a design issue with zerg, but rather a culture issue. The other races don't have these "boo hoo" figureheads like idra, morrow, and nestea who beat the living hell out of opponent after opponent and still find a way to call zerg weak or underpowered. Can you name the equivalent whiners in other races? Don't worry, I'll wait.
They've given every bad zerg player an excuse to be hard-headed and stagnant. The thing about it when it comes to laddering is, they match you with people around your skill level... with people you are likely to be 50/50 on. If you win OR lose you can't walk away from the game saying well I lost to a much worse player. The system is pretty good in finding people around your level as you work your way up. Its this constant reinforcement of negativity that makes a zerg who played poorly still feel like they are superior players, when really 95% of the time when you lose its because you were outplayed in some way that led to your ultimate end. It might just be one big mistake, or one clutch play by the other player, but thats how the cracker crumbles in starcraft so don't make that mistake the next time and you're one step closer to becoming a bonjwa!
The Korean version of this should really be taken with a major grain of salt. The international database has nearly 2000 games for every month since release. The Korean database has just over 2000 games in total or about 250 games for every month. The difference when it comes to sample sizes is so large that I almost wish the second graph would have been left out or the stats would have just been added to the international stats for some kind of composite.
The fact that the international graph is trending very closely to 50% for all races means a lot more to me than seeing the Korean graph go the opposite direction.
On May 03 2011 02:03 Alejandrisha wrote: Zergs could have 80% winrates in every matchup (including zvz) and they'd still find something to whine about. It's just the way the game works. Have you ever beaten a zerg who actually thought they deserved to lose? It is just the way Zerg play has developed; apparently being beaten into the ground by 5rax reaper for so long didn't sit well with them and they've grouped any loss they've suffered with a similar abuse. It is sad, really. A lot of zergs I know are losing because of their mindset rather than their play; they are beating themselves.
Zergs will always lose to players worse than them. It's just the nature of the race and the larva mechanic which forces you to choose between drones and attacking units in the early game. The race is more susceptible to all ins and cheeses than the other races, so its only natural you're gonna hear more Zerg players bitching about undeserved wins than you will Terran and Protoss.
Like that fucking 3 gate expand --> cancel nexus --> 5 gate is so ridiculously hard to scout and a lot of the time ur fucked even if you see the nexus cancelled.
I'd say the first step to success in SC2 is picking the right race, why would you be whining if you know you play the wrong race ? That's like saying it hurts when you are hitting yourself. So I don't think the amount of whining is justified at all no matter how bad players you lose to.
The stats look interesting but I doubt the current trend will continue very long in the foreign scene, maybe around HotS Blizzard can put the nerf hammer to rest at earliest.
Also the sample pool of the korean graph is way too small to be useful. I'd go as far and say that you need a way longer timeline than one month in the international graph too.
Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Whoa, look at the impact patch 1.3 had in the Korean chart. After it Protoss' winrates just sank. Is it the impact of poor balance changes or just Toss players not being prepared for it and adjusting accordingly?
But Protoss is so overpowered? How come they are getting crushed in the most imba matchup in the game!
I don't think Zerg is OP, I don't think this really proves anything. But imagine if these stats were reversed, every Zerg and their bitchy cousin would be whining about how imbalanced the game is.
On May 03 2011 02:03 Alejandrisha wrote: Zergs could have 80% winrates in every matchup (including zvz) and they'd still find something to whine about. It's just the way the game works. Have you ever beaten a zerg who actually thought they deserved to lose? It is just the way Zerg play has developed; apparently being beaten into the ground by 5rax reaper for so long didn't sit well with them and they've grouped any loss they've suffered with a similar abuse. It is sad, really. A lot of zergs I know are losing because of their mindset rather than their play; they are beating themselves.
Zergs will always lose to players worse than them. It's just the nature of the race and the larva mechanic which forces you to choose between drones and attacking units in the early game. The race is more susceptible to all ins and cheeses than the other races, so its only natural you're gonna hear more Zerg players bitching about undeserved wins than you will Terran and Protoss.
Like that fucking 3 gate expand --> cancel nexus --> 5 gate is so ridiculously hard to scout and a lot of the time ur fucked even if you see the nexus cancelled.
I'd say the first step to success in SC2 is picking the right race, why would you be whining if you know you play the wrong race ? That's like saying it hurts when you are hitting yourself. So I don't think the amount of whining is justified at all no matter how bad players you lose to.
The stats look interesting but I doubt the current trend will continue very long in the foreign scene, maybe around HotS Blizzard can put the nerf hammer to rest at earliest.
The logic that a race is worse, therefore don't pick it or don't whine is absolutely moronic. Would you prefer that pros only play terran or protoss and the game remain unpatched?
I don't think we can draw any kind of conclusion from these data at all. The maps are not taken into account and as everyone should know, maps play an enormous role in determining if a match up is "balanced". If we wanted to make any kind of imbalance conclusion, we would have to say X race is overpowered on Y map against Z race. Simply saying X is overpowered is almost never appropriate unless, across all maps, the results are skewed.
On May 02 2011 23:54 Let it Raine wrote: I wonder. Is it fair to say that korean protosses are generally terrible? That's the feeling I get from watching them but maybe I'm trying too hard to say zerg up.
Just when I watch a top 8 code s player like anypro pylon his nexus first, pull half his probes to kill it and then push out with only gateway units vs burrow roaches, I kind of have to wonder. (of course, he still won that series with 2 very skill less builds, the first of which he won even though he had 0 micro on the void ray, which was the focus of the entire build.)
It's certainly interesting to see regardless, and I'm surprised at terrans overall success.
god you should be banned, typical fucking zerg troll... korean protosses are generally terrible? r u kidding me? and anypros void rays were to confuse julyzerg into thinking that he was doing a fast expand build and to kill off overlords which they did perfectly.... god you sound fucking stupid
I would love to see IdrA try to argue with this math. Hopefully this is put down some of the unrest regarding balance of Protoss, I am personally extremely tired of beating a zerg on ladder and instead of a GG I get a IMBA or Toss is so OP. The Korean results show very little, the sample size is too small as stated, but the international results are quite astounding.
You know, you would think with the almost even distribution internationally of Zerg, Protoss, and Terrans... where are the high Zerg placements? It seems every tournament that you see, there are only one or two Zerg in the higher parts of the brackets, and this seems to carry on to GSL quite often as well!
On May 03 2011 04:05 phfantunes wrote: Whoa, look at the impact patch 1.3 had in the Korean chart. After it Protoss' winrates just sank. Is it the impact of poor balance changes or just Toss players not being prepared for it and adjusting accordingly?
Did the patch hit after or before the code A qualifiers?
On May 02 2011 23:54 Let it Raine wrote: I wonder. Is it fair to say that korean protosses are generally terrible? That's the feeling I get from watching them but maybe I'm trying too hard to say zerg up.
Just when I watch a top 8 code s player like anypro pylon his nexus first, pull half his probes to kill it and then push out with only gateway units vs burrow roaches, I kind of have to wonder. (of course, he still won that series with 2 very skill less builds, the first of which he won even though he had 0 micro on the void ray, which was the focus of the entire build.)
It's certainly interesting to see regardless, and I'm surprised at terrans overall success.
god you should be banned, typical fucking zerg troll... korean protosses are generally terrible? r u kidding me? and anypros void rays were to confuse julyzerg into thinking that he was doing a fast expand build and to kill off overlords which they did perfectly.... god you sound fucking stupid
Hes got like 10 posts in the Idra fan club, if that doesn't tell you al you need to know I dont know what will.
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Well, how do you define balance? Are you talking about some kind of innate ability of one race to beat another? That one race "potentially" is stronger than what people are doing right now?
So how would you measure that? It sounds extremely subjective to me. If you are going to draw any sort of conclusions on balance, you need to look at the numbers.
I would be interested to see what would happen to these differences if some measures against outliers were done. Maybe eliminate the players with top 10 and bottom 10 winning percentages and see how those graphs turn out. Also, since certain players are contributing more heavily to these figures (e.g. better players get farther in tournaments and thus play more games) it would be interesting to somehow normalize that data so that each player has an equally weighted contribution to the final differences.
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Well, how do you define balance? Are you talking about some kind of innate ability of one race to beat another? That one race "potentially" is stronger than what people are doing right now?
So how would you measure that? It sounds extremely subjective to me. If you are going to draw any sort of conclusions on balance, you need to look at the numbers.
Well that's the point, there is no way to objectively say that "it's" balanced.
If you use numbers from the top of the bill, the pro's in GSL and the biggest foreign tournaments, you have a problem. The problem is, that in the very top, there can be a skill difference big enough to overcome any balance. I think we can all agree that when Nestea won the GSL, Zerg was (slightly) UP. So in my opinion, win % from the pro's aren't the best one to use.
If you take the win % from the ladder, the skill from the players are the same (if you have faith in blizzard ladder). The problem with these % are that those aren't the best of the best.
So in my opinion it's very hard to safely determine something is balanced.
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
You are the one that brings that up, not me. I am just pointing something out
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
Why don't respond to his argument instead of making snarky remarks
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Well, how do you define balance? Are you talking about some kind of innate ability of one race to beat another? That one race "potentially" is stronger than what people are doing right now?
So how would you measure that? It sounds extremely subjective to me. If you are going to draw any sort of conclusions on balance, you need to look at the numbers.
Well that's the point, there is no way to objectively say that "it's" balanced.
If you use numbers from the top of the bill, the pro's in GSL and the biggest foreign tournaments, you have a problem. The problem is, that in the very top, there can be a skill difference big enough to overcome any balance. I think we can all agree that when Nestea won the GSL, Zerg was (slightly) UP. So in my opinion, win % from the pro's aren't the best one to use.
If you take the win % from the ladder, the skill from the players are the same (if you have faith in blizzard ladder). The problem with these % are that those aren't the best of the best.
So in my opinion it's very hard to safely determine something is balanced.
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
You are the one that brings that up, not me. I am just pointing something out
Yep but you can point this out for every game. MVP roflstomped 2 zergs in code A, he was obviously the better player. That's what it is and that's why we need big samples and that's why korean graph should not even have been posted, because everyone who just want to talk imbalance will disregard the graph with meaningful data to use the ony that means nothing but shows imbalance.
Terran at the top or near the top almost throughout every graph. Don't really see any big dips to the bottom for them. Zerg riding the caboose and protoss seem to go all over the place, toss definitely appear the most volatile. With the win rates plummeting in korea recently and a huge warp gate nerf potentially in the future, which will change every standard build order in every matchup for toss. I am very curious to see how these graphs will progress through the months ahead. Overall it looks like balance is pretty good.
I still think it's odd that blizzard said a few patches ago that they will be doing smaller changes in the future, but the last patch and the next patch (currently on ptr) are two of the biggest balance changes since beta.
What does the graph look like if you combine the international scene and the Korean Scene??
Whats worrying about the Korean graph is that while it is a smaller sample size, you can't just flat out ignore it. Blizzard themselves have admitted that Korea is generally the forefront of strategies in SC2. Whatever trends are happening in Korea, the rest of the world follows suit in a month or two. This was made common knowledge at the blizzcon panel.
On May 02 2011 23:57 hmunkey wrote: I posted on the Reddit post but I thought I'd post here too: even though these charts indicate balance (or lack thereof) in certain ways, they're taken only for certain time periods which basically means certain events or specific players have disproportionately larger impact on the data.
For example, Naniwa's MLG run (I know it wasn't charted but it's a good example) or recent Losira domination in GSL would both skew results and make it seem like P is OP or Z is OP when really, neither can be conclusively decided as true.
Basically, players who make deep runs play more games and skew it. So what we sometimes see are only the best of the best represented their races. For example, the GSL currently has 4 zergs in the RO16. These zergs are the absolute best when it comes to their race, as opposed to mediocre protosses and terrans who made it in. This makes it look like Zv* is insane when it may not truly be, because the fewer number of zergs and their comparative skill means they'll obviously win more games.
Similarly, I imagine if IdrA continues his streak into NASL further and in other tournaments, he will single-handedly make zerg look OP in NA even if he's the only zerg playing major tournaments and getting far.
The international stats are much less susceptible to the kind of skewing you are talking about than the Korean stats. One player's dominance in a certain matchup in one season of GSL can significantly sway the stats for that matchup in the Korean TLPD. One player's dominance in something like MLG will have an impact on the international TLPD, but due to a sample size that is 10x larger it's difference will not be significant.
These graphs will look very interesting after the new patch comes out with many changes to Protoss build orders. At the moment, I certainly do not think that protoss is half as good as people claim and zerg is not half as bad as people claim.
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Well, how do you define balance? Are you talking about some kind of innate ability of one race to beat another? That one race "potentially" is stronger than what people are doing right now?
So how would you measure that? It sounds extremely subjective to me. If you are going to draw any sort of conclusions on balance, you need to look at the numbers.
Well that's the point, there is no way to objectively say that "it's" balanced.
If you use numbers from the top of the bill, the pro's in GSL and the biggest foreign tournaments, you have a problem. The problem is, that in the very top, there can be a skill difference big enough to overcome any balance. I think we can all agree that when Nestea won the GSL, Zerg was (slightly) UP. So in my opinion, win % from the pro's aren't the best one to use.
If you take the win % from the ladder, the skill from the players are the same (if you have faith in blizzard ladder). The problem with these % are that those aren't the best of the best.
So in my opinion it's very hard to safely determine something is balanced.
edit:
On May 03 2011 04:19 MrCon wrote:
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
You are the one that brings that up, not me. I am just pointing something out
Yep but you can point this out for every game. MVP roflstomped 2 zergs in code A, he was obviously the better player. That's what it is and that's why we need big samples and that's why korean graph should not even have been posted, because everyone who just want to talk imbalance will disregard the graph with meaningful data to use the ony that means nothing but shows imbalance.
Yes that is true. But if Terran has 5 MVPs and Zerg has 3 (all hypothetical), and the win rates are 50%, then there STILL is a problem in ZvT because T should win more. That's why I think win rates prove nothing.
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
Why don't respond to his argument instead of making snarky remarks
Please explain me the argument. The poison of his post is precisely that it's not an argument, it's an example. If the argument is the first phrase, aka why not call this winrate and not balance, yeah I agree but on what is balance determined on if not winrates ? Now that idra is roflstomping protosses left and right this doesn't count for balance because it's not macro into roach hydra corruptor into gg anymore or because he's better ? Wasn't he the better player too when he lost against the same players ?
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Well, how do you define balance? Are you talking about some kind of innate ability of one race to beat another? That one race "potentially" is stronger than what people are doing right now?
So how would you measure that? It sounds extremely subjective to me. If you are going to draw any sort of conclusions on balance, you need to look at the numbers.
Well that's the point, there is no way to objectively say that "it's" balanced.
If you use numbers from the top of the bill, the pro's in GSL and the biggest foreign tournaments, you have a problem. The problem is, that in the very top, there can be a skill difference big enough to overcome any balance. I think we can all agree that when Nestea won the GSL, Zerg was (slightly) UP. So in my opinion, win % from the pro's aren't the best one to use.
If you take the win % from the ladder, the skill from the players are the same (if you have faith in blizzard ladder). The problem with these % are that those aren't the best of the best.
So in my opinion it's very hard to safely determine something is balanced.
edit:
On May 03 2011 04:19 MrCon wrote:
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
You are the one that brings that up, not me. I am just pointing something out
Yep but you can point this out for every game. MVP roflstomped 2 zergs in code A, he was obviously the better player. That's what it is and that's why we need big samples and that's why korean graph should not even have been posted, because everyone who just want to talk imbalance will disregard the graph with meaningful data to use the ony that means nothing but shows imbalance.
Yes that is true. But if Terran has 5 MVPs and Zerg has 3 (all hypothetical), and the win rates are 50%, then there STILL is a problem in ZvT because T should win more. That's why I think win rates prove nothing.
ok, I finally get what you want to say, and I can agree with that =)
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Well, how do you define balance? Are you talking about some kind of innate ability of one race to beat another? That one race "potentially" is stronger than what people are doing right now?
So how would you measure that? It sounds extremely subjective to me. If you are going to draw any sort of conclusions on balance, you need to look at the numbers.
Well that's the point, there is no way to objectively say that "it's" balanced.
If you use numbers from the top of the bill, the pro's in GSL and the biggest foreign tournaments, you have a problem. The problem is, that in the very top, there can be a skill difference big enough to overcome any balance. I think we can all agree that when Nestea won the GSL, Zerg was (slightly) UP. So in my opinion, win % from the pro's aren't the best one to use.
If you take the win % from the ladder, the skill from the players are the same (if you have faith in blizzard ladder). The problem with these % are that those aren't the best of the best.
So in my opinion it's very hard to safely determine something is balanced.
edit:
On May 03 2011 04:19 MrCon wrote:
On May 03 2011 04:00 Brutus wrote: Why is this thread named "race balance last 6 months"? Name it what it is, these are just win %. Name it "win rates last 6 months".These winrates say nothing about balance.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
yep, stats means nothing when zergs are winning, only when they lose.
You are the one that brings that up, not me. I am just pointing something out
Yep but you can point this out for every game. MVP roflstomped 2 zergs in code A, he was obviously the better player. That's what it is and that's why we need big samples and that's why korean graph should not even have been posted, because everyone who just want to talk imbalance will disregard the graph with meaningful data to use the ony that means nothing but shows imbalance.
Yes that is true. But if Terran has 5 MVPs and Zerg has 3 (all hypothetical), and the win rates are 50%, then there STILL is a problem in ZvT because T should win more. That's why I think win rates prove nothing.
Thing is that there is no way to reliably measure skill in a game of imperfect information. Besides skill its not all that determines whether you win a game of SC, yeah its a big part,but strategy,luck, mindset and many other things factor into that.
I guess what I am trying to say its that we should not treat skill(something not measurable by any means) as if it was a power level in DBZ
On May 03 2011 04:05 phfantunes wrote: Whoa, look at the impact patch 1.3 had in the Korean chart. After it Protoss' winrates just sank. Is it the impact of poor balance changes or just Toss players not being prepared for it and adjusting accordingly?
Did the patch hit after or before the code A qualifiers?
Toss player here - The toss dip is understandable. After a big balance change, it takes people time to adjust, and obviously the race that got nerfed is going to have to figure new stuff out, and thus their play will likely be affected. It'll be interesting to see how things change in a month or so (though there's another pretty big balance patch so it looks like we'll have to take extra long to figure everything out).
Interesting data. Though its discouraging to see though how people will completely define balance around it.
For me i find playing myself and watching pro gamers that tvz is pretty balanced. The better player will usually win, early, mid and late game. So to see terran pulling infront of zerg is a bit weird, does it mean they are imbalanced. Doubtful (IMO).
Personally i feel Protoss are still a little too overpowered. Colossi are difficult to deal with once there are more than 3 (as they should be), especially with decent ground support. New styles have emerged but they are risky to say the least. Micro'd right (which isnt easy even for pro players) and it looks like an easy win, miro'd wrong and its a massive fail and you lose. And in my eyes if you have to risk a lot to prevent a particular unit from being made because you know you cannot engage in a straight up fight then there is a problem somewhere.
Personally i always thought pvz came down to the sentry, and thought that if they increased FF time when near pylon power and decreased it when away would help. Making it harder to abuse offensively and easier to defend. But then they decreased the pylon power radius... or are about to.
edit: i would also love to know a match length breakdown for these matchups but that either sounds like hard work or impossible to gather.
If you think win rates=blanace than you are assuming the following
-sample size is big enough to show the average with no deviation -all players are playing the best that their race can possibly be played -all races are proportionally represented in sample size -all games were played on a perfectly balanced map where every race has an equal chance to win in every spawn position combination -there has been no game development so nothing can happen that is unexpected
if you think this shows balance than be ready to defend that you believe all the above are true.
On May 03 2011 02:51 xbankx wrote: Personally, people should just stop complaining about imbalance and just play to improve. Let the designer of the game do the game tweeking.
Also, people got to stop thinking higher apm=playing better. I just hate it whenever I hear someone say "I played better but I still lost". No, you lost because you played worse than your opponent saying the prior is merely trying to justify your loss through balance/imbalance discussion.
Some player in a few post said a lot of zerg whiners. It is mainly because pro zerg like Idra, and artosis (before he switched) tend to whine a lot more and the other zerg just follow. Protoss players have pros like Tyler and Incontrol. When protoss were dying left and right to terran/zerg in GSL1,2, and 3 they never said imba. They just said the protoss were playing bad.
Lets all remember the show Imbalance with Idra/artosis that said supposedly the "2base void ray colossus zealot build" was supposed to be unstoppable. How many PvZ pro games have people seen where toss went that.
So many issues with the logic in this post...
I'll start with your comparison of pro Zergs vs pro Protoss.
Zerg has been buffed repeatedly since release and is only now coming to equal win ratios vs other races.
Protoss has been nerfed and now they're doing better than ever.
When Tyler and Incontrol said Protoss were just playing bad, that's true. When IdrA, Artosis, and every korean pro said Zerg was less capable, that was also true.
Then you move on to talk about 2 base Void Ray/Colossus implying that it isn't imbalanced when the infestor was specifically buffed by Blizzard to deal with this unit composition and even AFTER that, Zergs are STILL having trouble with it. When they made that episode so many months back, it definitely WAS imbalanced and had to be addressed by the creators of the game...
*sigh* why bother...
I just never seen Pro toss just don't complain no matter how bad it looks. When you remember the period with medivac with freaken high movement speed where terran can snipe your builds then stalkers can't even catch up or when zerg was dominated with 2 base mutas into 3 base mutaling toss players like Tyler and Incontrol just said toss can always play better. They don't look at the game negatively and jump straight to imba like Idra/Artosis. Zerg being UP is a mere opinion just because pro players say it doesn't mean it is true because pro player will always want their race to be buffed until they can win every tourney.
Now look at the date when the episode imbalance was posted and then look at when the infestor buff came out. Then go find as many as game in between that time when a pro toss went that strat and tell me how many you can find. I followed the scene very well during that time and even after that episode other than random ladder games I played versus nub toss. All pro games from semi big to big tourney(not counting random round of 64 of a craft cup) that I had watch, I had never seen the the strat deployed other than the first time in GSTL. How could you say it is imbalanced after the patch? It is litterally never used in the pro scene except 1 game. If it was as strong as 5 rax reaper, I expected to see more than 1 game of it.
If however you are saying zergs are having trouble with it in diamond/masters, then yea it might be true. I had a hard time stopping it myself but you should never look at balance at that low of a level.
Lol.
You can go back just a few months and find Genius and Inca threatening to race switch, or you can go to some SotG episodes a few months ago and hear incontrol and tyler talking about how Protoss felt "bare", how they were too vulnerable to early timing rushes, how a Protoss army was incapable of safely retreating, and how Protoss needed better harass options.
On May 02 2011 23:59 TT1 wrote: lol right when the amulet nerf and infestor buff happened toss went to shit in korea
LOL come on.....
On May 03 2011 05:14 Silent331 wrote: If you think win rates=blanace than you are assuming the following
-sample size is big enough to show the average with no deviation -all players are playing the best that their race can possibly be played -all races are proportionally represented in sample size -all games were played on a perfectly balanced map where every race has an equal chance to win in every spawn position combination -there has been no game development so nothing can happen that is unexpected
if you think this shows balance than be ready to defend that you believe all the above are true.
I disagree. This would be true in an ideal world but its just not practical. That's why we use large sample sizes to average out all the variables. That being said....this sample size is pretty bad lol
Hopefully these charts will make people stop randomly bming when they lose to protoss. Ideally it would dull the balance whine that happens every time a zerg loses anything, but I doubt that.
On May 03 2011 05:14 Silent331 wrote: If you think win rates=blanace than you are assuming the following
-sample size is big enough to show the average with no deviation -all players are playing the best that their race can possibly be played -all races are proportionally represented in sample size -all games were played on a perfectly balanced map where every race has an equal chance to win in every spawn position combination -there has been no game development so nothing can happen that is unexpected
if you think this shows balance than be ready to defend that you believe all the above are true.
I'm not arguing that win rates are the same thing as balance, but I think the idea in this quote is incorrect. -certainly sample size matters, and it will only grow with time, though already there are so many tournaments going on that we should have a pretty good pool to draw from. Of course the balance changes and developing metagame mean data from a couple months ago may already be useless for talking about the game today. -hopefully, the end goal is not to make a game that is only balanced when everyone is able to play in a strategically and mechanically perfect manner (seeing as this is impossible for anyone, much less everyone). To talk about true balance you need perfect or at least near perfect players, but we wouldn't want one race to be absolute shit until your mechanics reached some plateau. Ideally the game can be somewhat competitive at all skill levels. The bnet 2.0 mmr system helps this. (this has been discussed in other threads) -on ladder maps are chosen randomly, as are spawn. Over a large enough sample size any random variation gets washed out on average. This would only be a significant concern if you were trying to say that a significant majority of maps or spawn positions significantly imbalance the game in a consistent way (i.e. 70% of maps favor p over z, and the remaining 30% don't have a strong enough reverse imbalance to counter this). Also, several tournaments (from which this data comes) allow the players to choose maps or thumb down maps, so this complicates things, but it also means that either players were able to alternate choosing favorable maps or they were able to cancel the effects of grossly imbalanced maps. -on the contrary, these graphs could be used to argue that there has been game development as we can see large swinging in win percentages of the races.
- 2k games / month. it's a big sample size corresponding with the right layer of play. I don't care if you add 500k bronze games, they'd prove nothing. - I would argue the sample size would equal out racial misstakes - No numbers are presented, but sc2ranks shows a close dispersion of close to 30% of each race, so I would for the sake of ease here suspect that the same ratio is applied here, again because of the sample size. - Have no numbers. It's always hard to look at maps and balance, since various tactics are near equal to the importance of races on various maps. Scrap station really premiers muta ling and drops, which means protoss has a hard time against those specific builds/tactics on the special maps. my point is that maps are hard to argue balance on. - There have been game changes, and the 'metagame' is a part of Blizzard balance. The recent 4gate nerf is a part of something I'd argue isn't op at all, but it's getting a nerf because Blizzard wants more various builds in PvP
I'm not saying Blizzard should balance the game just out of these graphs, I state that the graphs prove so much QQing wrong.
On May 03 2011 05:14 phrenzy wrote: Interesting data. Though its discouraging to see though how people will completely define balance around it.
For me i find playing myself and watching pro gamers that tvz is pretty balanced. The better player will usually win, early, mid and late game. So to see terran pulling infront of zerg is a bit weird, does it mean they are imbalanced. Doubtful (IMO).
Personally i feel Protoss are still a little too overpowered. Colossi are difficult to deal with once there are more than 3 (as they should be), especially with decent ground support. New styles have emerged but they are risky to say the least. Micro'd right (which isnt easy even for pro players) and it looks like an easy win, miro'd wrong and its a massive fail and you lose. And in my eyes if you have to risk a lot to prevent a particular unit from being made because you know you cannot engage in a straight up fight then there is a problem somewhere.
Personally i always thought pvz came down to the sentry, and thought that if they increased FF time when near pylon power and decreased it when away would help. Making it harder to abuse offensively and easier to defend. But then they decreased the pylon power radius... or are about to.
edit: i would also love to know a match length breakdown for these matchups but that either sounds like hard work or impossible to gather.
Considering the amount of zerg QQ in the korean forums, the PvZ in korea is quite surprising to me. Also pretty ridiculous how badly P did in april in korea.
On May 03 2011 05:14 Silent331 wrote: If you think win rates=blanace than you are assuming the following
-sample size is big enough to show the average with no deviation -all players are playing the best that their race can possibly be played -all races are proportionally represented in sample size -all games were played on a perfectly balanced map where every race has an equal chance to win in every spawn position combination -there has been no game development so nothing can happen that is unexpected
if you think this shows balance than be ready to defend that you believe all the above are true.
- sample size is pretty good here - The graphs shows that better maps are influencing the winrates - The races doesn't need to be proportional at all. Having less of a race just diminish its sample size but has no effect on winrate at all. - The graph shows that game development influenced winrates
This is still the best tool to evaluate balance, even if winrate isn't balance, it's still pretty close to the same thing. This shows that for a group of players who aim to improve at the game and to have the highest possible skill, the race doesn't (or does if there is imbalance) influence the results.
correct me if im wrong but the OP made these graphs himself based off of data posted on liquipedia? it would be cool if we could get more information like this on the site. not necessarily line graphs but sets of observable data. for example if you click on metalopolis you could pull up some data on wins/losses regarding matches. played on that map. or other information such as average match length. just some examples. i have limited knowledge on statistics, entry level college math, and a scientific understanding of analyzing and displaying data through biology labs. but i feel this could be something worth at least trying to work on. if anyone else likes the idea send a pm my way.
The Korean graph is a joke because it includes competitions which have no relevance, such as house contests.
You really think an IM House match between Horror and Seed on iCCup Testbug represents balance? No, it doesn't. They don't even know the map! Throwing in random games to make up the numbers is stupid.
GSL Code A and Code S combined give ZvP as being 10-8, so Z has a slight edge on a very small sample size. GSL TvP is a lot different and is 29-15 TvP, so maybe there is a story there, but throwing up a small sample which includes basically joke/entertainment games, not serious competition, is pretty silly when those games make up the majority of your sample size (42 games zvp, 18 from GSL, the rest from other competitions).
On May 02 2011 23:50 Zaros wrote: Nice to know the PvZ troubles i have been having is echoed in korea. Very interesting results.
Haha I was just thinking the same thing. PvZ is my strongest matchup, but whenever I play someone close to my level or better then me I found the matchup very hard and frustrating.
I know this is not exactly a balance chart lol. Just interesting to see.
Just data, remember not to take this and make a quick assumption or anything ^_^
The number of players and tournaments in Korea is much lower, so therefore these numbers are more volatile.
How do you know this? It's a bit ignorant of you to say that, unless you also are very close with the Korean scene. Just because we don't get too many news or posts here on TL or in the western world in general, it doesn't mean they don't have many tournaments or players.
simpy game is .... i think that unites should conter unites not i need fungel to conter mass marines or TS ... i think this game shouldt be like wc3 with hard conter(mass dps is hurting game) unites should conter unites and game would be easy balanced...
ofc some additionall dps from other unites would be great but if something have 2 high dps
for exemple colloss have hudge dps they should be easyer to kill they dont sufer enaph treet (it should easyer get killed by normal ground unites...) also Stimed MMM and banglings...
Cool data man. It's nice to see from the North American side that all the matchups seem to be hovering around 50% win/loss ratio. TvZ in Korea seems to be a little more one sided still haha.
On May 03 2011 06:15 Sqq wrote: The PvZ one just seems wrong. Before IdrA had his weird run this past week or two, I can't recall seing a lot of Zergs beating Protoss.
Looking at idra, his last 40 games in the TLPD he is 20-20, a clean 50%. Overall 34-29 53,97%. So I don't think he is skewing the stats like some are suggesting.
I recall for instance Nerchio, Happy and Stephano winning lots. They are bound to have been winning vs Protoss as well.
The number of players and tournaments in Korea is much lower, so therefore these numbers are more volatile.
How do you know this? It's a bit ignorant of you to say that, unless you also are very close with the Korean scene. Just because we don't get too many news or posts here on TL or in the western world in general, it doesn't mean they don't have many tournaments or players.
OP says it's from TLDP and there aren't a lot of games there. But of course there is a difference in the number of players and tournaments shown and number of players and tournaments that there isn't any data for. I guess it could mean any of the two.
Great job putting the numbers together anyway and it's really interesting. The only thing I'm missing is something like N per month.
The number of players and tournaments in Korea is much lower, so therefore these numbers are more volatile.
How do you know this? It's a bit ignorant of you to say that, unless you also are very close with the Korean scene. Just because we don't get too many news or posts here on TL or in the western world in general, it doesn't mean they don't have many tournaments or players.
One way of knowing this is that the Koreans players have stated this numerous of times in interviews. There are very few tournaments besides GSL in KR.
On May 03 2011 05:38 DragonDefonce wrote: Considering the amount of zerg QQ in the korean forums, the PvZ in korea is quite surprising to me. Also pretty ridiculous how badly P did in april in korea.
Yeah they did SO bad that the highest any Protoss got was 3rd and 4th in the World Championship and before that there were 3 Protosses in the top 4 of GSL March, with a Protoss winning the thing.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading this thread.
Scary statistics in Korea. So the higher the skill and the more experience, the better Zerg is doing and the worse Protoss... at least by the numbers. Can we have amulet back yet?
On May 03 2011 06:15 Sqq wrote: The PvZ one just seems wrong. Before IdrA had his weird run this past week or two, I can't recall seing a lot of Zergs beating Protoss.
Thats why its better to look at actual statisticts and not guess on our own valuation.
On May 03 2011 00:00 hmunkey wrote: Another thing to note is that key protoss players like MC have been knocked into up/down in GSL, so they haven't really had many games in Korea lately. Since the KR TLPD is based almost all on GSL, that means there are basically no protoss games to chart.
So what we have are dozens of terran games and maybe 4 protoss matches.
Though it does seem weird, why would korean protoss fail so hard yet european and NA protoss are fine after the infestor buff?
It's not like korean zerg are even using infestors more often.
Maybe it's because Korean Zergs and Terrans are more aggressive. Everybody knows to put pressure on Zerg, but they should also put pressure on Protoss.
On May 03 2011 06:45 RemrafGrez wrote: Scary statistics in Korea. So the higher the skill and the more experience, the better Zerg is doing and the worse Protoss... at least by the numbers. Can we have amulet back yet?
You can't really conclude that. It may be true, but there's not enough data to support that claim yet. I'd love to see Protoss get amulet back along with a +light nerf to collosus. It's been needed for a long time. Collosus is just too good against anything on the ground. Period. There is little reason to use immortals over collosus. It would make the game more interesting, IMO. It would add some choice.
Generally I'm a stickler for managing the omitted variable bias in statistics posts, but I must say you've done a really good job here. I love the fact that you removed mirror for bias, you've accounted for time period differences, you've taken into account the differences in sample size, and you have limited the data to tournaments only (where purpose is defined). I feel as if the other variables that would skew the data, such as skill of the player, is not only subject to personal bias, but can also be offensive to the players. I would love to see some regression analysis of this data to show if the differences in percentages is significant, but what you have done is really good, and I just wanted to share this compliment.
Also, if you wouldn't mind adding in lines for the patch adjustments I think that would be amazing. I doubt that there is much significance in the patches and changes in the percentages, but who knows? I think it would be a fun exercise, and eye candy for a lot of folks! :D
On May 03 2011 00:11 57 Corvette wrote: Hmm, seems Protoss is having a hard time recently in Korea.
And for all those who say "XvX Matchup is Imba!", look at the International stats. They are currently all pretty much at 50%w/L ratio. So shut up, this game isn't Imba in any way shape or form at this time.
The problem with these statistics is that they take neither the different maps nor the the difference in playskill into account, which, at least in my opinion, is much bigger in the foreign scene than in the GSL. So a matchup might look "more balanced" than it actually is due to a few top players beating worse players over and over.
The different maps? What happened to Protoss being better on big maps?Sounds like the bandwagon was wrong on that. So if Terran are OP on small maps, and Protoss are doing worse than ever on big maps... what now?
On May 03 2011 07:21 Barca wrote: Love the excuses people are making up to justify their belief that Protoss is OP.
People are just so defensive.
Still, it's important to note that Zerg doesn't have a 70% win rate over Protoss over hundreds of games. It's just one month and looking at the months before that we should expect the average win percentage to go towards 50/50 with more games played.
It's encouraging to see the international chart is trending to be close to balance. On the other hand, I fear that it will follow a similar pattern to the Korean chart in the future. I don't know other people definition of balance but my definition is the ratio of each race in GSL Code S. And the trend seems to show there will be more Terrans than ever before.
On May 03 2011 01:49 Cloak wrote: Sample size is smaller for Korea but deviation from average is ridiculously huge. If you do a chi squared, I'm sure it would reject the null at 95% confidence, probably even 99% confidence. 700 games is pretty damn sizeable. PvT and PvZ are looking like absolute garbage right now.
That would be relevant if we were 1. looking at a random sample of a population and 2. drawing conclusions about the whole population.
These statistics measure a non-random section of the population (results of specific tourneys and league) and from those statistics you aren't trying to draw conclusions about the whole population, but about the ephemeral subject of "game balance."
TL;DR statistics do not work that way.
Is it not random? It's all Korean tournament games right? Not just the ones where P loses. Doesn't need to be the whole population, just needs to be "a" population.
On May 03 2011 05:14 Silent331 wrote: If you think win rates=blanace than you are assuming the following
-sample size is big enough to show the average with no deviation -all players are playing the best that their race can possibly be played -all races are proportionally represented in sample size -all games were played on a perfectly balanced map where every race has an equal chance to win in every spawn position combination -there has been no game development so nothing can happen that is unexpected
if you think this shows balance than be ready to defend that you believe all the above are true.
Actually you just assume that it's all statistically average. Players don't need to play their best all the time, but you assume that proportionally there's players for all races that screw up equally. If the numbers are large enough, you don't need 33/33/33, you just need the smallest portion to be statistically significant. Map balance is definitely a confounding factor for race balance, but that doesn't make imbalance any better or more justified. Regarding game development, you just look at the whole curve.
One thing that I would see added though. Please add the releases of patches in the graph. I'm really curious how those correspond to the changes in the graph.
This is amazing! :D I like the visual representation! Beautiful graphs showing interesting trends in both the foreign and korean scene!
Great job!
I will be interested to see how this continues to change! :D I don't suppose we could have a sample size amount under each month? that would make me super happy!
On May 03 2011 16:11 gNs.I-Jasa wrote: if you made the graph for tournament wins, it will show mostly protoss this month and last. so stop complaining
Nobody is complaining except zergs and terrans who are trying to justify their perception of race balance which has been totally disproved by actual data. Perhaps you need to stop being so defensive.
it would be nice if you could post which tournaments are included! especially if you talk about korea, and we see protoss getting destroyed in the last month, I wonder if this only contains this GSL season, or if there are more korean tournaments in which P didn't perform well.
Seeing community collected data like this makes me really kind of hope to see Blizzard release some kind of data set/charts/graphs. You know they have data on everything and I think they could put a lot of perceived issues in the community to rest if we had something more tangible to make our observations from the just personal experiences.
why did you exclude mirror matchups? in BoX tournament format in particular, winrates dont always exactly match success in the form of advancement in the tourneys - therefore, a high amount of mirrors in the higher stages of the tournament, after suitably considering the difference in the amount of people playing the races, does say something about the strenght of a race. obviously, this is a whole different and much more intricate story than looking at winrates only, but imho it would be worth it.
i appreciate your work though, its very nice and well-done in itself, i just think it could be extended to tell even more about the development of balance.
On May 03 2011 16:17 Big J wrote: it would be nice if you could post which tournaments are included! especially if you talk about korea, and we see protoss getting destroyed in the last month, I wonder if this only contains this GSL season, or if there are more korean tournaments in which P didn't perform well.
On May 03 2011 16:21 Black Gun wrote: why did you exclude mirror matchups? in BoX tournament format in particular, winrates dont always exactly match success in the form of advancement in the tourneys - therefore, a high amount of mirrors in the higher stages of the tournament, after suitably considering the difference in the amount of people playing the races, does say something about the strenght of a race. obviously, this is a whole different and much more intricate story than looking at winrates only, but imho it would be worth it.
i appreciate your work though, its very nice and well-done in itself, i just think it could be extended to tell even more about the development of balance.
balance is not exactly equal to winrate!
If you want to see the graph with mirrors included that is very quick to do. In fact the hardest part of making the chart was excluding them. Set analysis expressions are hard...
On May 03 2011 01:15 Moriwo wrote: I think these stats show a lot to prove that map changes and race development are making the real changes to the "balance" of the game than actual balance changes (mostly looking at the international scene).
I would imagine that the decline in overall Terran win percentages is mostly due to the introduction of bigger maps and the removal of small maps (i.e. Steppes).
Protoss had a pretty big jump in win percentage with the big Patch 1.2, but I think that's a case of correlation vs. causation. Around that time, Protosses began getting upgrades a lot faster (double forge, etc.), which really proved to be hugely effective in the PvT matchup. Also around that time began the development of the 3 gate expansion and the Void Ray/Colossus deathball in PvZ. As Protoss strategy became more fleshed out, they began winning more despite relatively small changes.
It's also nice to note how these days Zerg is getting much better in the ZvP matchup. Indeed, the infestor buff helped Zerg out a lot, but Zergs also began developing new strategies such as fast burrow, more ling/baneling styles, and more effective use of their "tier 3" units, so much so that in fact the win rates slightly favor Zerg. It was just a few months ago that Zergs everywhere were complaining about ZvP imbalance, and nowadays seem to be doing fine in the matchup.
TvZ really surprised me, although if I were to guess at why the matchup favors Terran so much, I'd probably attribute it to the massive Terran presence in Europe. European Terrans are quite strong, whereas there just aren't that many European Zergs. That's just my guess, I really don't know for sure.
Overall, this just kind of proves that the game needs time to develop and grow before we should really be calling for massive balance changes.
Just my take on ZvP trends:
Since beta it was obvious Zerg had the greatest production potential with spawn larva. The only difference was that unlike the other two races, Zerg couldn't make workers and attacking units at the same time (well it technically could, but since the units were weaker it just wouldn't work because you needed to establish a stronger economy). However, once Zerg got an economy going it was accepted that the Protoss would get rolled.
So basically Protoss play centered around the idea of not letting a Zerg get his economy up uncontested, as they would be sure to get outmacroed in the late game. This pretty much defined the dynamic of the matchup. Zerg would drone for as long as possible, and then make units in anticipation of a push. They'd crush that push and win. Meanwhile Protoss would try to work on various timing rushes and high army pressure builds to prevent this.
Recently though, it dawned on Protoss that Zerg lategame was actually quite terrible, and that Zerg couldn't beat a 200 / 200 army. On top of that Zerg couldn't saturate more than ~3 1/2 bases because ot would mean making too many workers. So for the last few months Protoss have more or less always had their core army sitting at home, turtling 3 bases, and maxing out before they pushed. Zerg would wait and build an army in anticipation of a push that never came, and then get completely rolled by a maxed out army that their units simply can't stand up to. Hence we see from ~January till now Zergs doing horribly, especially vs Protoss, because their style was still to wait for a Protoss to move out, which isn't happening until 200 / 200.
Trends are now improving with perhaps the infestor buff (although I still maintain they suck in ZvP) but more notably a greater Zerg emphasis on aggression, drops, attacks, etc that try to stop Protoss from building a 200 / 200 army uncontested, cause you're gonna lose every time they do that =_=
See, I disagree that a 200 Zerg can't beat a 200 Protoss. Zergs lose to the deathball because they populate their armies with a mass of garbage low tier units. I've seen Zerg deathballs full of only high-tier units, broods, infestors, ultras, absolutely destroy Protoss deathballs. Fungal is so god damn good when you have enough of them to kill a stalker. And sticking NP on half or all of the colossi is just cool as hell.
Infestors are the future, baby. And broods. And ultras. Newsflash: colossi AoE sucks if it's only hitting one fatass ultralisk and a couple lings.
Let me not misrepresent myself, though: I still think toss is too strong, in a lot of ways. But I think maybe Zerg actually does have the tools to overcome.
On May 03 2011 16:11 gNs.I-Jasa wrote: if you made the graph for tournament wins, it will show mostly protoss this month and last. so stop complaining
Eh, the big things Protosses have won in the last couple of months are + Show Spoiler +
GSL Mar Code S, Copenhagen, IEM, Dreamhack and MLG Dallas (and 3 of those were by a single player, MC, who didn't even compete in the other ones and could very well have won those as well)
the IPL, Assembly, GSL Mar Code A, GSL World Championship and GSL May Code A (all Protosses have been knocked out).
If MVP went on a tour and cleaned out a bunch of foreign tournaments while MC stayed in Korea, you'd be able to say the same thing about Terran. I think that the majority of the "Protoss OP" perception originated from a combination of MC stomping over everyone and the trouble Zergs have been having in late-game ZvP. Meanwhile Terrans have been flying under the radar and dominating in the GSL WC and most recent GSL, and are presumably happy that Protoss now have most of the attention.
(I may have missed some things but the point remains)
On May 03 2011 05:45 Sporadic44 wrote: correct me if im wrong but the OP made these graphs himself based off of data posted on liquipedia? it would be cool if we could get more information like this on the site. not necessarily line graphs but sets of observable data. for example if you click on metalopolis you could pull up some data on wins/losses regarding matches. played on that map. or other information such as average match length. just some examples. i have limited knowledge on statistics, entry level college math, and a scientific understanding of analyzing and displaying data through biology labs. but i feel this could be something worth at least trying to work on. if anyone else likes the idea send a pm my way.
Sc2Statistics have been doing some good work! Keep it up!
Curious, how have you been pulling the TLPD information? I been working with TLPD.I data myself, but the lack of an API means I have not been able do more interesting number crunching.
On May 03 2011 06:25 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Just data, remember not to take this and make a quick assumption or anything ^_^
The number of players and tournaments in Korea is much lower, so therefore these numbers are more volatile.
How do you know this? It's a bit ignorant of you to say that, unless you also are very close with the Korean scene. Just because we don't get too many news or posts here on TL or in the western world in general, it doesn't mean they don't have many tournaments or players.
One way of knowing this is that the Koreans players have stated this numerous of times in interviews. There are very few tournaments besides GSL in KR.
There simply aren't many (maybe 1 or 2 events a month outside of the GSL that carry any decently large prize purse and can attract progamers to play in them. Sure there may be some lower level community based tournaments going on in pc baangs that we don't know about but they aren't putting forth top tournament cash for the best players to vie over.
On May 03 2011 01:15 Moriwo wrote: I think these stats show a lot to prove that map changes and race development are making the real changes to the "balance" of the game than actual balance changes (mostly looking at the international scene).
I would imagine that the decline in overall Terran win percentages is mostly due to the introduction of bigger maps and the removal of small maps (i.e. Steppes).
Protoss had a pretty big jump in win percentage with the big Patch 1.2, but I think that's a case of correlation vs. causation. Around that time, Protosses began getting upgrades a lot faster (double forge, etc.), which really proved to be hugely effective in the PvT matchup. Also around that time began the development of the 3 gate expansion and the Void Ray/Colossus deathball in PvZ. As Protoss strategy became more fleshed out, they began winning more despite relatively small changes.
It's also nice to note how these days Zerg is getting much better in the ZvP matchup. Indeed, the infestor buff helped Zerg out a lot, but Zergs also began developing new strategies such as fast burrow, more ling/baneling styles, and more effective use of their "tier 3" units, so much so that in fact the win rates slightly favor Zerg. It was just a few months ago that Zergs everywhere were complaining about ZvP imbalance, and nowadays seem to be doing fine in the matchup.
TvZ really surprised me, although if I were to guess at why the matchup favors Terran so much, I'd probably attribute it to the massive Terran presence in Europe. European Terrans are quite strong, whereas there just aren't that many European Zergs. That's just my guess, I really don't know for sure.
Overall, this just kind of proves that the game needs time to develop and grow before we should really be calling for massive balance changes.
Just my take on ZvP trends:
Since beta it was obvious Zerg had the greatest production potential with spawn larva. The only difference was that unlike the other two races, Zerg couldn't make workers and attacking units at the same time (well it technically could, but since the units were weaker it just wouldn't work because you needed to establish a stronger economy). However, once Zerg got an economy going it was accepted that the Protoss would get rolled.
So basically Protoss play centered around the idea of not letting a Zerg get his economy up uncontested, as they would be sure to get outmacroed in the late game. This pretty much defined the dynamic of the matchup. Zerg would drone for as long as possible, and then make units in anticipation of a push. They'd crush that push and win. Meanwhile Protoss would try to work on various timing rushes and high army pressure builds to prevent this.
Recently though, it dawned on Protoss that Zerg lategame was actually quite terrible, and that Zerg couldn't beat a 200 / 200 army. On top of that Zerg couldn't saturate more than ~3 1/2 bases because ot would mean making too many workers. So for the last few months Protoss have more or less always had their core army sitting at home, turtling 3 bases, and maxing out before they pushed. Zerg would wait and build an army in anticipation of a push that never came, and then get completely rolled by a maxed out army that their units simply can't stand up to. Hence we see from ~January till now Zergs doing horribly, especially vs Protoss, because their style was still to wait for a Protoss to move out, which isn't happening until 200 / 200.
Trends are now improving with perhaps the infestor buff (although I still maintain they suck in ZvP) but more notably a greater Zerg emphasis on aggression, drops, attacks, etc that try to stop Protoss from building a 200 / 200 army uncontested, cause you're gonna lose every time they do that =_=
In the past 2 months zergs have more tournaments wins against protoss then protoss have against zerg so i dont see how you can say from january till now zergs have been doing horribly you could say from january until febuary zergs have been doing horribly but i would stack that up to a meta game shift over imbalance, and now with zergs having a higher win rate in zvp i would stack that up to another metagame shift.
Also i was looking at statistics for NASL and zerg has almost a 70% win rate against protoss, i know that is mostly insignificant because NASL hasnt been on for a very long period of time , but i still found it interesting.
On May 02 2011 23:50 Zaros wrote: Nice to know the PvZ troubles i have been having is echoed in korea. Very interesting results.
Well, you're not a korean, so you shouldn't be having any troubles.
Edit: Also, even in Korea, protoss isn't actually doing poorly. The race is winning tournaments a lot. If it's just one tournament, it doesn't necessarily make the race balanced (Z did win GSL 1 during 1.00), but as far as I know, Protoss is doing just fine.
Correct me if I'm wrong, and Protoss isn't winning any korean tournaments.
On May 03 2011 16:38 Primadog wrote: Sc2Statistics have been doing some good work! Keep it up!
Curious, how have you been pulling the TLPD information? I been working with TLPD.I data myself, but the lack of an API means I have not been able do more interesting number crunching.
I'm scraping the data from the html XML tables. The program I'm using is called Qlikview, and I'm using it both for the scraping and the aggregation/visualization.
On May 03 2011 16:11 gNs.I-Jasa wrote: if you made the graph for tournament wins, it will show mostly protoss this month and last. so stop complaining
Eh, the big things Protosses have won in the last couple of months are + Show Spoiler +
GSL Mar Code S, Copenhagen, IEM, Dreamhack and MLG Dallas (and 3 of those were by a single player, MC, who didn't even compete in the other ones and could very well have won those as well)
the IPL, Assembly, GSL Mar Code A, GSL World Championship and GSL May Code A (all Protosses have been knocked out).
If MVP went on a tour and cleaned out a bunch of foreign tournaments while MC stayed in Korea, you'd be able to say the same thing about Terran. I think that the majority of the "Protoss OP" perception originated from a combination of MC stomping over everyone and the trouble Zergs have been having in late-game ZvP. Meanwhile Terrans have been flying under the radar and dominating in the GSL WC and most recent GSL, and are presumably happy that Protoss now have most of the attention.
(I may have missed some things but the point remains)
Yea i have no idea why zergs have decided to put all their attention (and hatred) towards protoss while terran have been secretely doing better against zerg this whole time, just goes to show that peoples perception of what is a problem and what actually might be a problem according to statistics can be completely different. Like i said if you look in other leagues such as NASL you can see zergs having a 70% win rate against protoss, wich although may be insignificant should that trend continue maybe protoss players may have something to complain about(although overall i think zerg is by far the whiniest race, they complain about anything and everything they see one finals and suddenly however someone won those finals against the zerg, that strategy/strategies is suddenly the most OP shit in the world)
Hey zergs newsflash your doing fine at the highest level ZVP so stop complaining maybe try something besides roach hydra corrupter, alot of zergs i see complaining are still going roach hydra corrupter and then wondering why they are losing =/ Infestors broodlords and ultra's are where its at. Im sick and tired of hearing zergs complain about every little advantage protoss has instead of using their own unique advantages to win, each race has certain advantages thats just how it works.
On May 03 2011 05:45 Sporadic44 wrote: correct me if im wrong but the OP made these graphs himself based off of data posted on liquipedia? it would be cool if we could get more information like this on the site. not necessarily line graphs but sets of observable data. for example if you click on metalopolis you could pull up some data on wins/losses regarding matches. played on that map. or other information such as average match length. just some examples. i have limited knowledge on statistics, entry level college math, and a scientific understanding of analyzing and displaying data through biology labs. but i feel this could be something worth at least trying to work on. if anyone else likes the idea send a pm my way.
All stats in the data set are linked to a map, so it's very easy to make analysis based on maps. If anyone has any good ideas on how to visualize it let me know.
On May 03 2011 16:51 vOdToasT wrote: Also, even in Korea, protoss isn't actually doing poorly. The race is winning tournaments a lot. If it's just one tournament, it doesn't necessarily make the race balanced (Z did win GSL 1 during 1.00), but as far as I know, Protoss is doing just fine.
Correct me if I'm wrong, and Protoss isn't winning any korean tournaments.
Well, there aren't many Korean tournaments to win, but TLPD says that no Protosses except MC (who won 2 GSLs and the "2010 Ygosu Invite") have won a Korean tournament since Genius won the Blizzcon qualifier.
Thanks for all the effort making the charts. I've always strongly believed in two things - first is that the game is generally pretty balanced, second is that protoss was probably the weakest race in Korea. And both these charts seem to validate that. All these protoss OP complaints really only started when they saw MC dominate the scene; but if you look closely, aside from him (and a bit of San/Alicia), the race has generally performed pretty mediocre especially when compared to terrans, and I really doubt its just because all the protoss players in Korea happen to be less skilled.
This is really interesting. I really don't understand how these kinds of numbers can still result in a huge difference between individual statistics and tournament statistics. For example, a player may have a fantastic win percentage on ladder (e.i. Happy), but still not be able to win a bo3 vs a pro, let alone an entire tournament. This is similar to these statistics because a race may be able to have a good individual game statistic, but if you were to look at, for example, Zerg's tournament win statistics for the past couple months, I'm sure you'd notice a huge digression.
I think the reason we see so much fluctuation with Protoss in Korea is twofold: Protoss are always the, screw up and die immediately, play perfectly and be extremely scary race. And obviously the very small sample size combines with this.
The Korean graph really shows how much the winner of tournaments effects the statistics.
Zerg peak in November is during GSL 2 where a Zerg won(Nestea) Protoss peak in December is during GSL 3 where a Protoss won(MC) Terran peak is huge in January due to MVP destroying the Gainsward tournament and GSL Jan. Second Protoss peak in March due to MC's win This month due to MVP winning WC.
On May 03 2011 17:08 Zealot Lord wrote:All these protoss OP complaints really only started when they saw MC dominate the scene
..And when a certain prominent pro player started shitting all over protoss when in reality it was over his lack of tournament results. This, in a way greenlighted a shitstorm to be unleashed by other narcisistic zerg players who just couldn't live up to their parents praises and promises of a bright future.
On May 03 2011 17:08 Zealot Lord wrote:All these protoss OP complaints really only started when they saw MC dominate the scene
..And when a certain prominent pro player started shitting all over protoss when in reality it was over his lack of tournament results. This, in a way greenlighted a shitstorm to be unleashed by other narcisistic zerg players who just couldn't live up to their parents praises and promises of a bright future.
lol i totally agree, zergs follow that certain prominent player like sheep and hang on his every word. You couldnt say the same for protoss or terrans, zergs really do have the hive mind mentality
Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
On May 03 2011 17:08 Zealot Lord wrote:All these protoss OP complaints really only started when they saw MC dominate the scene
..And when a certain prominent pro player started shitting all over protoss when in reality it was over his lack of tournament results. This, in a way greenlighted a shitstorm to be unleashed by other narcisistic zerg players who just couldn't live up to their parents praises and promises of a bright future.
lol i totally agree, zergs follow that certain prominent player like sheep and hang on his every word. You couldnt say the same for protoss or terrans, zergs really do have the hive mind mentality
Please stop spreading misinformation on the forums. I've never seen any Zerg Pro player complain about imbalance before. Artosis doesn't count because he is not qualified to be a pro player(best commentator though). Zergs are the gentleman race: they play fair and indulge in long, good macro games. You're making Zergs sound like small little whiny kids that complain about everything, which is completely untrue.
On May 03 2011 19:12 setmeal wrote: Please stop spreading misinformation on the forums. I've never seen any Zerg Pro player complain about imbalance before.
On May 03 2011 17:08 Zealot Lord wrote:All these protoss OP complaints really only started when they saw MC dominate the scene
..And when a certain prominent pro player started shitting all over protoss when in reality it was over his lack of tournament results. This, in a way greenlighted a shitstorm to be unleashed by other narcisistic zerg players who just couldn't live up to their parents praises and promises of a bright future.
lol i totally agree, zergs follow that certain prominent player like sheep and hang on his every word. You couldnt say the same for protoss or terrans, zergs really do have the hive mind mentality
Please stop spreading misinformation on the forums. I've never seen any Zerg Pro player complain about imbalance before. Artosis doesn't count because he is not qualified to be a pro player(best commentator though). Zergs are the gentleman race: they play fair and indulge in long, good macro games. You're making Zergs sound like small little whiny kids that complain about everything, which is completely untrue.
You've clearly not seen IdrA complaining about the Protoss deathball / Protoss in general numerous times. Baneling / Roach drops at multiple spots at once quite easily tear deathballs apart (or rather, prevent them from getting too scary) as he is showing nowadays, but in those days that was something Zergs somehow managed to overlook.
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
On May 03 2011 17:08 Zealot Lord wrote:All these protoss OP complaints really only started when they saw MC dominate the scene
..And when a certain prominent pro player started shitting all over protoss when in reality it was over his lack of tournament results. This, in a way greenlighted a shitstorm to be unleashed by other narcisistic zerg players who just couldn't live up to their parents praises and promises of a bright future.
boom nailed it. IdrA single-handedly lowered the level of discourse in the sc2 community back to beta levels as a way of covering a total lack of results for 3-4 months.
Every stat, tournament wins, tops of ladder say Terran is most OP. So obvious I just laugh when ppl say toss. Zerg and toss are fighting for a distant second with toss a little stronger. The pros are just as full of crap as any bronze and probably more when they balance whine because real money is on the line so it's to their financial benefit to see things change in their favor.
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Lol there are so many details left out, this data shows very little except for players of which race are performing well in tournaments at specific points in time. I mean if you wanted this to be meaningful, much needs to be included. You could have a timeline and add lines showing when there were patches that made significant changes to units of different armies. Youd also have to show how many players of how many races played how many games over what period of time for both the international and korea ones. And even then, whilst the data would be a fair bit more interesting, it still would probably only indicate who did well and when , which again could be due to other things such as player's health or what players were able to attend what events and what they couldnt, for whatever reason or reasons. Dont look for causation here
On May 03 2011 21:26 FireSA wrote: Lol there are so many details left out, this data shows very little except for players of which race are performing well in tournaments at specific points in time. I mean if you wanted this to be meaningful, much needs to be included. You could have a timeline and add lines showing when there were patches that made significant changes to units of different armies. Youd also have to show how many players of how many races played how many games over what period of time for both the international and korea ones. And even then, whilst the data would be a fair bit more interesting, it still would probably only indicate who did well and when , which again could be due to other things such as player's health or what players were able to attend what events and what they couldnt, for whatever reason or reasons. Dont look for causation here
Did you even look at the images? It has everyone of the things you are talking about >_> The only thing missing are patch dates, but you can easily find them out by yourself.
On May 03 2011 21:26 FireSA wrote: Lol there are so many details left out, this data shows very little except for players of which race are performing well in tournaments at specific points in time. I mean if you wanted this to be meaningful, much needs to be included. You could have a timeline and add lines showing when there were patches that made significant changes to units of different armies. Youd also have to show how many players of how many races played how many games over what period of time for both the international and korea ones. And even then, whilst the data would be a fair bit more interesting, it still would probably only indicate who did well and when , which again could be due to other things such as player's health or what players were able to attend what events and what they couldnt, for whatever reason or reasons. Dont look for causation here
Did you even look at the images? It has everyone of the things you are talking about >_> The only thing missing are patch dates, but you can easily find them out by yourself.
You forgot to highlight the How many players part. So I think the sample size as presented is misleading in a big way, as some have already suggested in this thread.
Great graphs, i would like to see what they would look like if the points were every two weeks instead of every month but that is just me being picky. I hope you continue to update the graphs as more information comes to hand.
Strange a young game with a hugely shifting meta game and newly discovered timings and counters has a constantly shifting win percentage that has almost nothing to do with actual balance. There could be no changes for 3 months and i guarantee there would be another huge shift in the korean numbers.
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
On May 03 2011 17:08 Zealot Lord wrote:All these protoss OP complaints really only started when they saw MC dominate the scene
..And when a certain prominent pro player started shitting all over protoss when in reality it was over his lack of tournament results. This, in a way greenlighted a shitstorm to be unleashed by other narcisistic zerg players who just couldn't live up to their parents praises and promises of a bright future.
It's sad because it's true. Personally, I don't really care if some pro tries to hide his lack of success behind balance whine, the real problem, that bothers me though is, how it influences the general balance sentiments around here.
NEXGenius once started a poll about to which race he should switch, Tester claimed he would start playing terran, MVP stated Terran was the weakest race, hell even Boxer mentioned once that he was considering to switch.....many pro gamers like to QQ when they lose. Since losing sucks, blaming it on something else other than your own play is only natural (up to a certain extent...) Nevertheless it's unbelievable how this has started to influence the general mindset of people around here.
I like these graphs, not because they show whether or not the game is balanced but how the general assumptions around here (about zerg being terrible) don't even show up in recent tournament results. Hopefully things like these will make people think again before posting some random QQ in a LR-thread.
So how many games were played in each month? This is important information to give context to the ups and downs. I have to agree with the posts that this is not the best type of graph to indicate balance or that the Korean graph should have been posted if you don't have enough data points.
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Well, reading up a bit on it it doesn't seem like this would be all that useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*The data behind this is not a sample of a bigger set. It's all matches played during this time period, and I'm not measuring it against a larger population.
*The actual data behind it is binary, ie, a match is either a 1 or a 0, win or loss.
*The sample size for each month is over 1000 games. See .
On May 03 2011 23:46 Spacemanspiff wrote: So how many games were played in each month? This is important information to give context to the ups and downs. I have to agree with the posts that this is not the best type of graph to indicate balance or that the Korean graph should have been posted if you don't have enough data points.
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
The funny part is that if the stats were swaying so heavily in the Protoss' favour, the Zerg whine would be unbearable. Thank god for this thread.
These graphs certainly arn't a good way to show any kind of imbalance. But they sure do a good job of showing that Protoss is not infact unbeatable.
Well, for those raising eyebrows at the Korean PvZ graph, do note that it only includes 269 games. And it gets crazy just at the ending month of April, one of the six months, or roughly 45 games or so. Really small sample size for that one especially.
On May 02 2011 23:59 Silent331 wrote: When i saw the first graph i though "good job blizzard, you may be on track" then I saw the korea graph and tried to see why it was that way and this is what I came up with
Koreans protoss generally stick to their guns in the sense that they will continue to do a BO untill it starts losing, and once it starts losing they will start doing a BO that counters the counter which explains the constant back and fourth of the protoss charts, as you can see after the drop in protoss wins they come back to have >50% win rate very soon after. This is simply development in the game.
Now in both charts Z has never had a good ratio vs T. Oddly tho the 2 charts are inverses of each other, when then international zergs do worse the Korean zergs do better. Personally I believe that the zerg generally has a low win rate vs T because T has alot of things that they can do which are not even close to all ins but can result in insta loss for the zerg. Also terran is simply much more forgiving endgame as opposed to zerg, if zerg loses 1 engagement late game they just lose the game.
my thoughts, take what you wish
Really Terran vs Zerg lategame is so much easier for zerg than it is for terran. infestor, broodlord + lings or any other unit really with a tech switch into ultralisks is pretty much unstoppable for a terran lategame.
Against broodlords you lose your tanks, against infestors you lose your vikings, if you add ghosts to your army to emp the infestors you will then die to the ultralisk tech switch.
I am yet to see a game where a terran can beat this late game strat of zerg and right now it really seems impossible.
Saying something like T>Z lategame is simply wrong, it might be true early game, but late game it's the exact opposite.
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Well, reading up a bit on it it doesn't seem like this would be all that useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*The data behind this is not a sample of a bigger set. It's all matches played during this time period, and I'm not measuring it against a larger population.
*The actual data behind it is binary, ie, a match is either a 1 or a 0, win or loss.
*The sample size for each month is over 1000 games. See .
Please correct me if I'm wrong here!
1.) The data is a sample of a bigger set. You have collected data on all games played, but not all possible games played -- all games played is the sample distribution, and all possible games would be the population. 2.) The data comes from a dichotomous variable, but what you're plotting is ultimately a proportion of the outcomes of that variable, not the variable itself. 3.) It doesn't matter if the sample size is 10,000 if the standard error is something like 1700.
I'm not sure if it would be more appropriate to have error bars of standard error (stdev/SQRT(n)) or standard deviation, since the error is what we are really worried about here (I'm not talking about mistakes, but statistical error).
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Well, reading up a bit on it it doesn't seem like this would be all that useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*The data behind this is not a sample of a bigger set. It's all matches played during this time period, and I'm not measuring it against a larger population.
*The actual data behind it is binary, ie, a match is either a 1 or a 0, win or loss.
*The sample size for each month is over 1000 games. See .
Please correct me if I'm wrong here!
1.) The data is a sample of a bigger set. You have collected data on all games played, but not all possible games played -- all games played is the sample distribution, and all possible games would be the population. 2.) The data comes from a dichotomous variable, but what you're plotting is ultimately a proportion of the outcomes of that variable, not the variable itself. 3.) It doesn't matter if the sample size is 10,000 if the standard error is something like 1700.
Edit: I'm not sure if it would be more appropriate to have error bars of standard error (stdev/SQRT(n)) or standard deviation, since the error is what we are really worried about here (I'm not talking about mistakes, but statistical error).
Could you give me an example of this (for one data point for example)? What numbers would you need? How would the expression look?
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Well, reading up a bit on it it doesn't seem like this would be all that useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*The data behind this is not a sample of a bigger set. It's all matches played during this time period, and I'm not measuring it against a larger population.
*The actual data behind it is binary, ie, a match is either a 1 or a 0, win or loss.
*The sample size for each month is over 1000 games. See .
Please correct me if I'm wrong here!
You are in the right here.
This is the same as taking all the win/loss records of your favorite sporting team over the last decade and plotting it, or plotting the performance of your companies stock over the last year. In that case, why would you ever use something like confidence intervals?
You aren't making predictions, there is no need for any further analysis.
1.) The data is a sample of a bigger set. You have collected data on all games played, but not all possible games played -- all games played is the sample distribution, and all possible games would be the population. 2.) The data comes from a dichotomous variable, but what you're plotting is ultimately a proportion of the outcomes of that variable, not the variable itself. 3.) It doesn't matter if the sample size is 10,000 if the standard error is something like 1700.
The data used is deemed worthy of being collected by TPLD. He is just graphing the results available there, there is no need for confidence. The data is not dichotomous given that he is using ALL data from the database he said he was using and not just what he himself deems worthy of being used.
He says he uses TPLD as his only source. If you have problems with the data he us using, then your qualms are with him using only TPLD. If he was only using specific data from TPLD then there would be some room to argue, but given he is showing no bias and graphing everything available there it doesn't need any further analysis. It is just pure recorded historical data.
All he has done is taken TPLD and graphed it. There is nothing else needed to be added.
After getting flamed every game by Zerg i just can say "LOL" by watching these graphs. Btw i said the same statistics in the SotG Thread but some Zergs there wanted to say these statistics mean nothing.
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Well, reading up a bit on it it doesn't seem like this would be all that useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*The data behind this is not a sample of a bigger set. It's all matches played during this time period, and I'm not measuring it against a larger population.
*The actual data behind it is binary, ie, a match is either a 1 or a 0, win or loss.
*The sample size for each month is over 1000 games. See .
Please correct me if I'm wrong here!
1.) The data is a sample of a bigger set. You have collected data on all games played, but not all possible games played -- all games played is the sample distribution, and all possible games would be the population. 2.) The data comes from a dichotomous variable, but what you're plotting is ultimately a proportion of the outcomes of that variable, not the variable itself. 3.) It doesn't matter if the sample size is 10,000 if the standard error is something like 1700.
Edit: I'm not sure if it would be more appropriate to have error bars of standard error (stdev/SQRT(n)) or standard deviation, since the error is what we are really worried about here (I'm not talking about mistakes, but statistical error).
Could you give me an example of this (for one data point for example)? What numbers would you need? How would the expression look?
I actually completely misread the graph. You're right -- error bars aren't really appropriate for this kind of data. If anyone is skeptical about the significance of the differences at each point, its possible to do a significance test for each month, but there isn't really a way to get error bars in the graph.
On May 03 2011 00:26 fant0m wrote: The issue with Korean Toss is that they got complacent. So many lose games early due to over-teching or over-expanding. The balance is too close for you to do that when your opponent is about to hit with a timing attack and still win.
That skews the results so much because there are so few Korean Toss. So 2 of them do bad for 4 games total (San, MC)... and the whole representation gets thrown off massively.
Toss just isn't strong enough any more to ignore what the other race is doing and still win.
I don't even understand why they would get complacent in the first place. PvT was never that strong for them, was it? Sure, it looked like they were dominating everything with MC leading the charge, but I can't believe how they all just seem so unprepared now.
Almost all of the Ps in GSL have been knocked out in PvT. I just can't wrap my head around it.
It's simple really. Terrans went back to what was working for them a few months ago against protoss, winning by unit efficiency and eliminating expansions.
I think the HT nerf is often understated with concern to the matchup and sometimes its hard to notice the effect that it has. What we are seeing now is protoss defending drops by warping in chargelots and stuff, which is great... it gets the units off the ground, BUT it doesn't get the medivac out of the air so they can keep you pinned all game. If you leave the units there to defend further drops, your mid-size army at the front is too weak to take on a mid-size bio force.
I'm not saying its imba or anything, I'm just saying the HT nerf had a bigger impact than people think since they aren't seen all that often. The impact is in mid-late game drop defense. Protoss has the worst drop defense of all the races not because the units can't defend the drop, but because of the impact it has on your main army to break off chunks of it. Cannons are actually terrible against terran drops and though some people might argue that cannons are very strong, the protoss doesn't have abilities that give them mineral surges like the MULE for instance. MULEing makes getting the money for turrets alot less painful. Basically, cannons cost alot in opportunity cost for the protoss in an evenly matched game.
Enough of my digression. Basically, protoss' very weak base defense is being taken advantage of by these races in recent games. I think protoss users will need to come up with some creative uses of air (not deathball air, i mean map control style air) in the near future.
Agreed with those bold points especially. Amulet nerf was actually huge for macro games. It also prevents Protoss from having strong harass styled play.
If patrolling phoenixes could take out dropships fast enough, maybe that'd be something.
1.) The data is a sample of a bigger set. You have collected data on all games played, but not all possible games played -- all games played is the sample distribution, and all possible games would be the population. 2.) The data comes from a dichotomous variable, but what you're plotting is ultimately a proportion of the outcomes of that variable, not the variable itself. 3.) It doesn't matter if the sample size is 10,000 if the standard error is something like 1700.
The data used is deemed worthy of being collected by TPLD. He is just graphing the results available there, there is no need for confidence. The data is not dichotomous given that he is using ALL data from the database he said he was using and not just what he himself deems worthy of being used.
He says he uses TPLD as his only source. If you have problems with the data he us using, then your qualms are with him using only TPLD. If he was only using specific data from TPLD then there would be some room to argue, but given he is showing no bias and graphing everything available there it doesn't need any further analysis. It is just pure recorded historical data.
All he has done is taken TPLD and graphed it. There is nothing else needed to be added.
First, see my post: I misread what was actually being graphed, so that post can be safely ignored.
Second: I wasn't criticizing the data or the sources, I was saying that the TLPD data isn't the [full] population distribution, but is instead a sample distribution of the data -- but this point is moot, since I misread the graph anyway.
However, if anyone is trying to make statements about balance based off of the graph, significance tests need to be run at each point to see if the data are actually statistically different. We can't just look at the graph and say 'oh yeah, terran is owning!' There may not even be a statistically significant difference -- and this was the point of error bars being suggested (by someone else originally, not me). However, due to the nature of the data, it doesn't look like error bars would be appropriate, but I'm not sure since I don't have the spreadsheet in front of me.
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
No point, 2 times in this thread people talked about zergs having a 70% winrate in NASL, so I just checked and posted the facts because I don't like misinformation spreading, that's all.
That's exactly the same as people here ignoring the significant graph and pointing to the 200 games sample graph to strengthen their "point" (which has the word imbalance in it obviously). The korean graph means absolutly nothing, I feel OP shouldn't even have posted it because it's just a justification for trolls now.
Is this based off only master league and higher or is this based upon the entire starcraft 2 ladder?
If this is based upon the entire ladder it might be rather skewed as diamond and below there is a lot of mechanical problems that people might have and just straight up build order loss's. I think that see if its balanced across all leagues is the incorrect way of going about it. We should only be looking at the upper tiers of play where people are playing to the best quality that there currently is.
On May 04 2011 01:11 DrBoo wrote: Is this based off only master league and higher or is this based upon the entire starcraft 2 ladder?
If this is based upon the entire ladder it might be rather skewed as diamond and below there is a lot of mechanical problems that people might have and just straight up build order loss's. I think that see if its balanced across all leagues is the incorrect way of going about it. We should only be looking at the upper tiers of play where people are playing to the best quality that there currently is.
On May 04 2011 01:11 DrBoo wrote: Is this based off only master league and higher or is this based upon the entire starcraft 2 ladder?
If this is based upon the entire ladder it might be rather skewed as diamond and below there is a lot of mechanical problems that people might have and just straight up build order loss's. I think that see if its balanced across all leagues is the incorrect way of going about it. We should only be looking at the upper tiers of play where people are playing to the best quality that there currently is.
Read the OP, it's not based on ladder, only tournaments and leagues.
i wish people wouldn't make graphs with such small sample sizes...
even if a sample size warning accompanies the graphs, the majority of people don't actually understand statistics well enough to be able to disregard these graphs as nothing more than pretty pictures, and so arguments happen and misinformation is spread
On May 02 2011 23:59 Silent331 wrote: When i saw the first graph i though "good job blizzard, you may be on track" then I saw the korea graph and tried to see why it was that way and this is what I came up with
Koreans protoss generally stick to their guns in the sense that they will continue to do a BO untill it starts losing, and once it starts losing they will start doing a BO that counters the counter which explains the constant back and fourth of the protoss charts, as you can see after the drop in protoss wins they come back to have >50% win rate very soon after. This is simply development in the game.
Now in both charts Z has never had a good ratio vs T. Oddly tho the 2 charts are inverses of each other, when then international zergs do worse the Korean zergs do better. Personally I believe that the zerg generally has a low win rate vs T because T has alot of things that they can do which are not even close to all ins but can result in insta loss for the zerg. Also terran is simply much more forgiving endgame as opposed to zerg, if zerg loses 1 engagement late game they just lose the game.
my thoughts, take what you wish
Really Terran vs Zerg lategame is so much easier for zerg than it is for terran. infestor, broodlord + lings or any other unit really with a tech switch into ultralisks is pretty much unstoppable for a terran lategame.
Against broodlords you lose your tanks, against infestors you lose your vikings, if you add ghosts to your army to emp the infestors you will then die to the ultralisk tech switch.
I am yet to see a game where a terran can beat this late game strat of zerg and right now it really seems impossible.
Saying something like T>Z lategame is simply wrong, it might be true early game, but late game it's the exact opposite.
100% accurate. Every Terran that I have spoken to and asked what they're doing tvz right now, or how much they win and if they're winning...or vica versa if they ask me what i've been doing tvz...it ends up with us both shrugging our shoulders going "we've been losing...wtf are we supposed to do tvz right now, 2 base allin every game?"
I've been off-racing as Z on ladder, and whenever I get a T I just sorta smile and think how much less effort I have to exert instead of playing a TvT
Overall, I think the graphs are nice to have as reference for balance but these things never really tell the full story, and regardless of how well balance things appear, there are a lot of balance problems (especially late game) that are still really not balanced.
edit: oh and supposedly new metagame trends crop up on the korean ladder more often than they do on the NA/EU ladders, so that may be why the stats look a lot different for the korean graphs than the international graphs.
Take Idra's wins vs Socke, kiwikaki and mana. You can't see the state of ZvP with just winrates. He did a series of allins vs both socke and kiwikaki and he just was way better then mana. This doesn't prove zerg is overpowered or anything. And no, I don't think Zerg is UP, I am just pointing out that win rates prove nothing.
Very sick of the attitude that aggressive play wins don't count. Are you kidding me? In that case, you can't count any MC wins ever. Right? Because he almost always puts tons of pressure that the layperson on teamliquid will call an all-in. Annoys the crap out of me... the attitudes that abound.
Pro Zergs are getting better at aggression. Even Idra, Idra the outspoken "macro only" guy is playing aggressive. It wasn't long ago that he admitted he was winning more when he "felt like I was losing". It makes sense because Zerg units are better early game per cost. Why not attack early and get ahead? When the other race has to defend and try to slowly build macro, you have to check them by playing aggressive, or they'll under-defend and win with a killer high economy.
SC2 is not the same as Broodwar... especially this early in the development. Aggression is paying off... so use it.
On May 04 2011 00:57 Blacklizard wrote: If patrolling phoenixes could take out dropships fast enough, maybe that'd be something.
Even just a couple of phoenixs to take out escaping dropships would be nice to see. Force every drop into a suicide mission. Makes me really sad seeing how many dropships run away successfully
I feel like a point that has been overlooked here is the fact that how much the races wins in which matchup does not in any way take the way wins occur. If zerg only ever 6 pooled because they have absolutely no chance against terran/toss in any kind of long game(over exaggerated ofc.), but terran/toss early defense is so shit graphs end up at 50-50 one could look at the game as balanced, however i think balance isnt just in what the percentages are, but also how the game is balanced at the different stages of the game.
To close out my point i just would like to say that just because zerg is doing well against toss or vice versa in the win percentages, you really cant conclude if the early/mid/late game is balanced out. I would much rather have a game where it wasnt just about "oh, i can never let toss get his deathball, i have to kill him before the X minute mark" and toss feeling the oposite thing.
On May 04 2011 01:16 jfourz wrote: i wish people wouldn't make graphs with such small sample sizes...
even if a sample size warning accompanies the graphs, the majority of people don't actually understand statistics well enough to be able to disregard these graphs as nothing more than pretty pictures, and so arguments happen and misinformation is spread
Over 8000 games is not a small sample size for starcraft2 imo, starcraft2 doesn't have that high of a variance as poker for example. Some people can keep 70-90% winrates for extended periods of times. Besides, aren't high-caliber tournament games the exact basis to our judgement whether something is imba or not? People have always thought zerg was UP because they thought it was winning less. Now we see that it's not the case, but the lack of zergs in tournaments is probably simply because the race is less popular.
On May 04 2011 01:16 jfourz wrote: i wish people wouldn't make graphs with such small sample sizes...
even if a sample size warning accompanies the graphs, the majority of people don't actually understand statistics well enough to be able to disregard these graphs as nothing more than pretty pictures, and so arguments happen and misinformation is spread
Well, just for the record, these same people are making statements on "balance in korea" anyway, only without any data to back it up at all.
The graph may have a low sample size, but it does show perfectly accurately the race win rate per month in Korea.
Sure it may not be relevant in a general balance discussion, but it does show very clearly what I set out to show with it.
1.) The data is a sample of a bigger set. You have collected data on all games played, but not all possible games played -- all games played is the sample distribution, and all possible games would be the population. 2.) The data comes from a dichotomous variable, but what you're plotting is ultimately a proportion of the outcomes of that variable, not the variable itself. 3.) It doesn't matter if the sample size is 10,000 if the standard error is something like 1700.
The data used is deemed worthy of being collected by TPLD. He is just graphing the results available there, there is no need for confidence. The data is not dichotomous given that he is using ALL data from the database he said he was using and not just what he himself deems worthy of being used.
He says he uses TPLD as his only source. If you have problems with the data he us using, then your qualms are with him using only TPLD. If he was only using specific data from TPLD then there would be some room to argue, but given he is showing no bias and graphing everything available there it doesn't need any further analysis. It is just pure recorded historical data.
All he has done is taken TPLD and graphed it. There is nothing else needed to be added.
First, see my post: I misread what was actually being graphed, so that post can be safely ignored.
Second: I wasn't criticizing the data or the sources, I was saying that the TLPD data isn't the [full] population distribution, but is instead a sample distribution of the data -- but this point is moot, since I misread the graph anyway.
However, if anyone is trying to make statements about balance based off of the graph, significance tests need to be run at each point to see if the data are actually statistically different. We can't just look at the graph and say 'oh yeah, terran is owning!' There may not even be a statistically significant difference -- and this was the point of error bars being suggested (by someone else originally, not me). However, due to the nature of the data, it doesn't look like error bars would be appropriate, but I'm not sure since I don't have the spreadsheet in front of me.
Exactly right here. The fact of the matter is that you have to create a distinction between the population and the sample data. If you consider that the population is all Starcraft II gamers as a whole, and these tournaments as a sample, then you can do sample statistics. There seems to be a lot of criticism, saying that the tournament data is not a sample, but a population, but this thought needs to be re-examined.
If you take all sc2 players as the population, you can isolate these tournaments in order to try and control for variable bias. This removes a random element to the study, which can be essential, but accounts for skill of the players (can be argued, but not without offense), motive/goals, and the bias of mirror matches. You could assume the mean win percentage of 50%, and run regressions to see if the percentage difference is significant. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I don't see anything wrong with sample statistics in this case.
Ok, so we'll just conclude that in that 6 months period, with balance patches, better maps, better players, and a big sample, the fact that all winrates converge to 50% in tournaments (so without matchmaking to compensate) is just a coincidence.
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Well, reading up a bit on it it doesn't seem like this would be all that useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*The data behind this is not a sample of a bigger set. It's all matches played during this time period, and I'm not measuring it against a larger population.
*The actual data behind it is binary, ie, a match is either a 1 or a 0, win or loss.
*The sample size for each month is over 1000 games. See .
Please correct me if I'm wrong here!
Any chance of sharing your data then? Simply the mean and number of games per month will be suffice. You can put it on http://docs.google.com/.
There's a difference in objective here. If your sole objective is to plot the actual changes in high level play racial win-rate, then the current graph is sufficient. However, if you want to address the question: Can we be confident that there was a imbalance between Race-A vs Race-B, some kind of statistics test will be needed.
Think about this comparison: Suppose we're flipping a coin. For one hour we flip it 10 times, next we flip it 1000 times, and the third hour we flip it 20 more times. I can make a graph that plot the percentage of times the coin landed heads, but how can we say with confidence that the coin is fair or not just by looking at the graph? What if for the first ten times, we get only 1 head and 9 tails? The entire 1030 times I flipped is the whole population, yet we can't really just point to the results of the third hour and say "this coin is balanced."
You need to use some statistics to test so, and one way is to calculate a standard error to account for the number of samples you have. The easiest one to use is 95% standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ). For hour 1, we expect the percentage to be between 18% and 81% (σ=.16); for hour 2, we expect the percentage to be between 47% and 53% (σ=.015); and for hour 3, we expect the percentage to be between 28% and 72% (σ=.11). It's a matter of expecting a fair coin to regress back to the mean if the sample in the particular hour is big enough.
I just looked at the charts quickly; it's interesting that the wider results are converging while the Korean results are diverging. My understanding is that the level of play on the KR server is much higher and more inflexible (less varied). Perhaps they are exploiting timing windows/small points of imbalance, and communicating these ideas to each other more quickly, so that small racial imbalances are more obvious on the KR server.
These graphs are extremly misleading. All tournaments have elimination system. If someone has win/lose ratio <50% that means he never won anything(with equal participation). You have to adjust the ordinate scale to (w/l ratio)*(quantity of matches) unit to make some sense.
On May 04 2011 01:42 Fr0d0 wrote: These graphs are extremly misleading. All tournaments have elimination system. If someone has win/lose ratio <50% that means he never won anything(with equal participation). You have to adjust the ordinate scale to (w/l ratio)*(quantity of matches) unit to make some sense.
It's not tracking players, it's tracking games. So in effect it already does that.
On May 03 2011 18:27 Primadog wrote: Any chance of outputting graphs with confidence intervals? I am concerned that some of the "trends" we see in the graph is simply random fluctuations due to some months having smaller sets of data.
Assuming all the match are independant event, the standard deviation for a given matchup is:
sqrt(p(1-p)/N) where p≈0.5 is the win rate of a race, and N the number of played games.
Let's take the PvZ match up as example. There are 2244 games over 6 months, 374 games/months gives a standard deviation of 2.5%
Considering an error of twice the standard deviation, your confidence interval is +/- 5%. Conclusion: the fluctuations we observe for the PvZ match up can very well be due to the sample size.
For ZvT however the sample size is large enough to say the matchup was unbalanced.
I would love to do his, trying to figure out how now. =P
Ideally you can make a graph something like the second graph on a stock screener: 95% confidence-interval (2 standard deviation) is the standard that most uses. So the range you will use is the mean+/-2*standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ), where σ=(P * (1-P)/n)^.5. Note that n will be the number of data you have per month, not the total datapoints overall.
Well, reading up a bit on it it doesn't seem like this would be all that useful. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
*The data behind this is not a sample of a bigger set. It's all matches played during this time period, and I'm not measuring it against a larger population.
*The actual data behind it is binary, ie, a match is either a 1 or a 0, win or loss.
*The sample size for each month is over 1000 games. See .
Please correct me if I'm wrong here!
Any chance of sharing your data then? Simply the mean and number of games per month will be suffice. You can put it on http://docs.google.com/.
There's a difference in objective here. If your sole objective is to plot the actual changes in high level play racial win-rate, then the current graph is sufficient. However, if you want to address the question: Can we be confident that there was a imbalance between Race-A vs Race-B, some kind of statistics test will be needed.
Think about this comparison: Suppose we're flipping a coin. For one hour we flip it 10 times, next we flip it 1000 times, and the third hour we flip it 20 more times. I can make a graph that plot the percentage of times the coin landed heads, but how can we say with confidence that the coin is fair or not just by looking at the graph? What if for the first ten times, we get only 1 head and 9 tails? The entire 1030 times I flipped is the whole population, yet we can't really just point to the results of the third hour and say "this coin is balanced."
You need to use some statistics to test so, and one way is to calculate a standard error to account for the number of samples you have. The easiest one to use is 95% standard deviation (μ +/- 2σ). For hour 1, we expect the percentage to be between 18% and 81% (σ=.16); for hour 2, we expect the percentage to be between 47% and 53% (σ=.015); and for hour 3, we expect the percentage to be between 28% and 72% (σ=.11). It's a matter of expecting a fair coin to regress back to the mean if the sample in the particular hour is big enough.
Thanks, that is a great explanation. I posted the data being used in the graph here (without restriction on month):
You are tracking match-ups actually. W/L ratio <50% in elemination system means zerg never won anything(with equal amount of qulified players of each race).
On May 04 2011 01:59 Fr0d0 wrote: You are tracking match-ups actually. W/L ratio <50% in elemination system means zerg never won anything(with equal amount of qulified players of each race).
I'd love to see demarcation of patch notes or at the very least "major" changes within the last 6 months. reaper changes, roach range, depot before barracks, amulet, infestor, (major map pool changes) just to name a few.
I couldn't really see anything written about it but I feel as though it's hard to overlook a few variables. The first being actual player skill, one player regardless of race just simply may be better than the other. In Tennis player A have a "better" raquet or shoes, but player B's fitness is far greater and is just simply the better athlete.
I'm not a numbers guy by any means, but I would also think that given the way tournaments are done (short groups) then playoff elimination, it's limiting in a sense. What about groups that have 3 protoss in it, and only 1 makes it out. Or a situation where Protoss A in a pvp advances to a semis, but severely lacks a tvp or zvp game as opposed to Protoss B who may have the better ZvP or TvP record. Is there any truth to this? I know that mirrors aren't counted but I think the results of mirror matches could skew the results as now player B who had a better chance in the rest of the bracket was eliminated by player A or one poor decision.
I like the graphs, their oscillations are really interesting which is why I'd like to see demarcation of major changes. I still take it with a grain of salt, not because the sample size is too small but because tournament formats are too limited, not to mention I would think frequency of race would also play a role in it?
On May 04 2011 01:59 Fr0d0 wrote: You are tracking match-ups actually. W/L ratio <50% in elemination system means zerg never won anything(with equal amount of qulified players of each race).
can you explain it more? i do not get that.
W/L ration <50% means you have lost more games, then you won. How can you you advance to final if you got eliminated, because you lost more games then you won ?
On May 04 2011 01:59 Fr0d0 wrote: You are tracking match-ups actually. W/L ratio <50% in elemination system means zerg never won anything(with equal amount of qulified players of each race).
can you explain it more? i do not get that.
W/L ration <50% means you have lost more games, then you won. How can you you advance to final if you got eliminated, because you lost more games then you won ?
Isn't it possible that the win rate was 60% in one tournament and <50% in another tournament in the same month?
On May 04 2011 01:59 Fr0d0 wrote: You are tracking match-ups actually. W/L ratio <50% in elemination system means zerg never won anything(with equal amount of qulified players of each race).
can you explain it more? i do not get that.
It's because it makes no sense at all.
Sv1, the examples you take have absolutely no effect on the data, it just change the sample size but has no effect on the actual graph, because the graph don't care about groups or what, the graph just takes XvsY and who wins and who loses. If of the 10000 games, 9999 would be TvZ and 1 would be TvP, it would just mean that the TvP graph is meaningless and no conclusion can be made of it. But it wouldn't mean that the result of the 9999 other games is meaningless.
On May 04 2011 01:59 Fr0d0 wrote: You are tracking match-ups actually. W/L ratio <50% in elemination system means zerg never won anything(with equal amount of qulified players of each race).
can you explain it more? i do not get that.
W/L ration <50% means you have lost more games, then you won. How can you you advance to final if you got eliminated, because you lost more games then you won ?
Isn't it possible that the win rate was 60% in one tournament and <50% in another tournament in the same month?
Yeah, but it should be <40% in another tournament(not <50%) if in first tournament it was 60%. Then average zerg perfomance would be <50%. But <40% means zerg was totally eliminated in another tournament in the fist round(BO3 andvance rata is >66% and BO5 andvance rate is >60%). I'm not really familiar with all SC2 tournament systems, but graphs don't have any values in <40% range so may be it not even possible.
Interesting data, but most of the interpretations here are standing on very shaky ground. I really don't like how people are desperately trying to find proof for their theories here.
Just graph total amount of wins for T, P and Z(including mirros!). W/L ratio in unequal qulified groups with different tournament systems tells nothing. Difference in 0.0001% can mean that in paticular matchup some race always wins another.
On May 04 2011 02:52 branflakes14 wrote: So the PvZ matchup is currently more swung in the favour of Zerg than it ever has been in favour of Protoss? Interesting.
No, the 2nd graph means nothing because each month doesn't even have 50 games. So a particular player going to the finals will make the graph skyrocket for instance. The sole Losira vs Alicia win is making zerg takes about +4% winrate for instance.
On May 04 2011 02:48 MrCon wrote: Sv1, the examples you take have absolutely no effect on the data, it just change the sample size but has no effect on the actual graph, because the graph don't care about groups or what, the graph just takes XvsY and who wins and who loses. If of the 10000 games, 9999 would be TvZ and 1 would be TvP, it would just mean that the TvP graph is meaningless and no conclusion can be made of it. But it wouldn't mean that the result of the 9999 other games is meaningless.
Well that's kind of what I was pointing out, that because it's just looking at solely at matchups. Some other factors that may contribute to those very lofty win percentages. The graphs are a nice start, but I'd like to see something a little more robust. We also can't run out of the house screaming that any particular race is overpowering another based on these graphs.
But that's the thing, the other factors are maps and patches basically (and metagame/builds evolution). There are no other factors when the sample is big enough.
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
No point, 2 times in this thread people talked about zergs having a 70% winrate in NASL, so I just checked and posted the facts because I don't like misinformation spreading, that's all.
That's exactly the same as people here ignoring the significant graph and pointing to the 200 games sample graph to strengthen their "point" (which has the word imbalance in it obviously). The korean graph means absolutly nothing, I feel OP shouldn't even have posted it because it's just a justification for trolls now.
I was one of the people that said it but it wasn't exactly misinformation it was outdated information I didn't realize they had updated the statistics yet (I checked 2 days ago) and zvp was 68 % in zergs favor. 57 percent is still quite substantial though I guess Protoss had a decent week in nasal though^^
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
No point, 2 times in this thread people talked about zergs having a 70% winrate in NASL, so I just checked and posted the facts because I don't like misinformation spreading, that's all.
That's exactly the same as people here ignoring the significant graph and pointing to the 200 games sample graph to strengthen their "point" (which has the word imbalance in it obviously). The korean graph means absolutly nothing, I feel OP shouldn't even have posted it because it's just a justification for trolls now.
I was one of the people that said it but it wasn't exactly misinformation it was outdated information I didn't realize they had updated the statistics yet (I checked 2 days ago) and zvp was 68 % in zergs favor. 57 percent is still quite substantial though I guess Protoss had a decent week in nasal though^^
Two games were WhiteRa's forfeit to July, four were due to Artosis simply being out of his league at the moment (both figuratively and literally). Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints, and the percentage actually falls below 50%.
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
No point, 2 times in this thread people talked about zergs having a 70% winrate in NASL, so I just checked and posted the facts because I don't like misinformation spreading, that's all.
That's exactly the same as people here ignoring the significant graph and pointing to the 200 games sample graph to strengthen their "point" (which has the word imbalance in it obviously). The korean graph means absolutly nothing, I feel OP shouldn't even have posted it because it's just a justification for trolls now.
I was one of the people that said it but it wasn't exactly misinformation it was outdated information I didn't realize they had updated the statistics yet (I checked 2 days ago) and zvp was 68 % in zergs favor. 57 percent is still quite substantial though I guess Protoss had a decent week in nasal though^^
Two games were WhiteRa's forfeit to July, four were due to Artosis simply being out of his league at the moment (both figuratively and literally). Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints, and the percentage actually falls below 50%.
Do you really want to go there? I mean I can understand the point about July's WO wins. But come on. Haypro lost 0-2 to Squirtle. When was the last time Haypro won a match against anyone? So take those two Protoss wins out of the equation. Moonglade lost to Axslav. Moonglade is in the same boat as Haypro. He hasn't been playing well at all lately. Machine lose to Hasuobs. I think everyone would agree that Hasu is the far superior player. So get rid of those two losses too. Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints and things dont look so bad again do they?
You can't just go ignoring matches on one side because of player skill and not ignore matches on the other side.
Thanks for publishing this data. Now whenever a zerg complains I can just link him to this thread
Basically pro zergs state that they are afraid of ZvP in their pre-match interviews but then proceed to win more than they lose. Rinse and repeat for 6 months, to instill the image that ZvP is imbalanced.
On May 04 2011 19:15 W2 wrote:You can't argue against statistics. Sweeeeeeeet.
actually you CAN argue against these statistics as theyre not here to prove anything but simply to showcase the.. well.. win/loss ratio per race in international tournaments. it still seems like 80% of the ppl posting in this thread have still not understood this thread wasnt ever, is not and will never be about race imbalance. and besides, whats being said around 10 times now, these statistics are VERY fragile as they only contain wins and losses in the official tournaments and therefore only few games overall.
Do bear in mind that ZvP could quite easily be balanced (or even Z favoured!) if Zerg has some favourable (or at leas 50% success) all-ins, or Protoss executes their 50%ish allins quite often. Top level Z play has pretty much moved toward just that. I can't recall seeing a top level ZvP that didn't involve an all-in from one side or the other.
On May 04 2011 Dragar wrote: Do bear in mind that ZvP could quite easily be balanced (or even Z favoured!) if Zerg has some favourable (or at leas 50% success) all-ins, or Protoss executes their 50%ish allins quite often. Top level Z play has pretty much moved toward just that. I can't recall seeing a top level ZvP that didn't involve an all-in from one side or the other.
That's not a good game though!
The game has developed to the point where zerg players need to be aggressive vs protoss most of the time, but calling all aggressive zerg wins "allin" is retarded, which I think is what people seem to want to do.
Alot of the wins I've been seeing zvp haven't been aggressive all INS. I've seen Alot of success with baneling long investor with baneling carpet bombs on army and probes. Ive seen spanishiwa style were you go broods or ultras wiith infestors and lings and possible some roaches. So many zergs try to defend they are up. The last thing they would want would to be on even footing in a matchup what would they complain about then.
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
No point, 2 times in this thread people talked about zergs having a 70% winrate in NASL, so I just checked and posted the facts because I don't like misinformation spreading, that's all.
That's exactly the same as people here ignoring the significant graph and pointing to the 200 games sample graph to strengthen their "point" (which has the word imbalance in it obviously). The korean graph means absolutly nothing, I feel OP shouldn't even have posted it because it's just a justification for trolls now.
I was one of the people that said it but it wasn't exactly misinformation it was outdated information I didn't realize they had updated the statistics yet (I checked 2 days ago) and zvp was 68 % in zergs favor. 57 percent is still quite substantial though I guess Protoss had a decent week in nasal though^^
Two games were WhiteRa's forfeit to July, four were due to Artosis simply being out of his league at the moment (both figuratively and literally). Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints, and the percentage actually falls below 50%.
Lol that's a little bit ridiculous like the other guy said may as well ignore a bunch of protoss matches too then like squirtle cd haypro or Haskins vs machine then as well if your going to ignore artosis match as those players have been having a bad streak and were outclassed as well.
On May 04 2011 19:15 W2 wrote:You can't argue against statistics. Sweeeeeeeet.
actually you CAN argue against these statistics as theyre not here to prove anything but simply to showcase the.. well.. win/loss ratio per race in international tournaments. it still seems like 80% of the ppl posting in this thread have still not understood this thread wasnt ever, is not and will never be about race imbalance. and besides, whats being said around 10 times now, these statistics are VERY fragile as they only contain wins and losses in the official tournaments and therefore only few games overall.
Like day 9 said yesterday what do we have to judge racial balance beyond wins and losses. It's the best way to judge without being subjective.
Thanks for publishing this data. Now whenever a zerg complains I can just link him to this thread
Basically pro zergs state that they are afraid of ZvP in their pre-match interviews but then proceed to win more than they lose. Rinse and repeat for 6 months, to instill the image that ZvP is imbalanced.
You can't argue against statistics. Sweeeeeeeet.
Before you do that I suggest you realise that the only statistic in favor of zerg in ZvP is one based on 10 games played in the GSL in April.
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
No point, 2 times in this thread people talked about zergs having a 70% winrate in NASL, so I just checked and posted the facts because I don't like misinformation spreading, that's all.
That's exactly the same as people here ignoring the significant graph and pointing to the 200 games sample graph to strengthen their "point" (which has the word imbalance in it obviously). The korean graph means absolutly nothing, I feel OP shouldn't even have posted it because it's just a justification for trolls now.
I was one of the people that said it but it wasn't exactly misinformation it was outdated information I didn't realize they had updated the statistics yet (I checked 2 days ago) and zvp was 68 % in zergs favor. 57 percent is still quite substantial though I guess Protoss had a decent week in nasal though^^
Two games were WhiteRa's forfeit to July, four were due to Artosis simply being out of his league at the moment (both figuratively and literally). Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints, and the percentage actually falls below 50%.
Do you really want to go there? I mean I can understand the point about July's WO wins. But come on. Haypro lost 0-2 to Squirtle. When was the last time Haypro won a match against anyone? So take those two Protoss wins out of the equation. Moonglade lost to Axslav. Moonglade is in the same boat as Haypro. He hasn't been playing well at all lately. Machine lose to Hasuobs. I think everyone would agree that Hasu is the far superior player. So get rid of those two losses too. Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints and things dont look so bad again do they?
You can't just go ignoring matches on one side because of player skill and not ignore matches on the other side.
Haypro won that TL tourney over TLO and Nony. He lives and trains in Korea. Dont for a moment think Haypro isnt one of the best Zergs in the world.
On May 04 2011 22:30 Dragar wrote: Do bear in mind that ZvP could quite easily be balanced (or even Z favoured!) if Zerg has some favourable (or at leas 50% success) all-ins, or Protoss executes their 50%ish allins quite often. Top level Z play has pretty much moved toward just that. I can't recall seeing a top level ZvP that didn't involve an all-in from one side or the other.
That's not a good game though!
Allins are a common and necessary phase. The way Zerg allins are killing so many Protoss players, indicates they are being too greedy. Their builds will adjust for this, and the allins will stop working. In exchange, the Protoss mid-late game will suffer.
It's indisputably possible for ALL of the allins being used now to be stopped. It's just about figuring out how to stop it without hamstringing yourself economically.
I think part of this "P is OP and Z is UP" comes from the fact that many top Zerg players whine about balance and the power of toss. Idra being the most upfront. And that reflects to these forums and other players.
Statistics threads are a slap to the face for "I think that...." threads.
I think regardless of whether z or p has the advantage in that matchup, it's pretty poorly designed and not that enjoyable right now from a spectator point of view. Zergs tend to have to find a way to end the games at an early stage, and don't have the tools to compete in late game scenarios. Even if the matchup is at a perfect 50% win rate right now, I still wouldn't mind blizzard making some pretty large adjustments.
Despite a small amount of time for the game to develop, and a ton of patches I think the best thing to take away from here is the change of play style from place to place; even if the Korean pool is smaller.
The interesting thing to note is how big the changes are patch after patch, and the its somewhat balancing out though. Of course, there a lot of things elsewhere to consider. Nice job OP!
On May 03 2011 22:10 MrCon wrote: NASL stats after 3 weeks Protoss Terran Zerg
Protoss [17-17] | 50%[21-17] | 55%[15-20] | 43%
Terran [17-21] | 45%[18-18] | 50%[25-27] | 48%
Zerg [20-15] | 57%[27-25] | 52%[13-13] | 50%
Not 70% winrate in NASL for ZvP :o
If I'm understanding your post correctly it's 57% ZvP. That may not be 70 % but it's still really high if we assume those numbers would be a fair representation of ZvP generally in high level play (It's not). So I'm not really sure what your point is.
No point, 2 times in this thread people talked about zergs having a 70% winrate in NASL, so I just checked and posted the facts because I don't like misinformation spreading, that's all.
That's exactly the same as people here ignoring the significant graph and pointing to the 200 games sample graph to strengthen their "point" (which has the word imbalance in it obviously). The korean graph means absolutly nothing, I feel OP shouldn't even have posted it because it's just a justification for trolls now.
I was one of the people that said it but it wasn't exactly misinformation it was outdated information I didn't realize they had updated the statistics yet (I checked 2 days ago) and zvp was 68 % in zergs favor. 57 percent is still quite substantial though I guess Protoss had a decent week in nasal though^^
Two games were WhiteRa's forfeit to July, four were due to Artosis simply being out of his league at the moment (both figuratively and literally). Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints, and the percentage actually falls below 50%.
Do you really want to go there? I mean I can understand the point about July's WO wins. But come on. Haypro lost 0-2 to Squirtle. When was the last time Haypro won a match against anyone? So take those two Protoss wins out of the equation. Moonglade lost to Axslav. Moonglade is in the same boat as Haypro. He hasn't been playing well at all lately. Machine lose to Hasuobs. I think everyone would agree that Hasu is the far superior player. So get rid of those two losses too. Ignore those 6 outlier datapoints and things dont look so bad again do they?
You can't just go ignoring matches on one side because of player skill and not ignore matches on the other side.
Haypro won that TL tourney over TLO and Nony. He lives and trains in Korea. Dont for a moment think Haypro isnt one of the best Zergs in the world.
It's hard to believe one of the best Zergs in the world would forget drones in gas and stockpile 2k minerals in the midgame, like in NASL week 1.
Nearly every game I watch of Hapro he just seems to stockpile extra minerals everywhere. He always seems to cripple himself in some way. Granted, I haven't watched many of his games, but at least half of the dozen games I've seen have had him do facepalm worthy novice mistakes, over and over.
On May 05 2011 23:09 hifriend wrote: I think regardless of whether z or p has the advantage in that matchup, it's pretty poorly designed and not that enjoyable right now from a spectator point of view. Zergs tend to have to find a way to end the games at an early stage, and don't have the tools to compete in late game scenarios. Even if the matchup is at a perfect 50% win rate right now, I still wouldn't mind blizzard making some pretty large adjustments.
It's heavily in flux at the moment. If it settles down into something unenjoyable ala PvP, that would be the time to change it.
It's heavily in flux at the moment. If it settles down into something unenjoyable ala PvP, that would be the time to change it.
Really?
I find PvZ probably the most unenjoyable matchup to watch at the moment. When watching it live, it's without exception extremely 1-sided.
If Protoss forge fast-expands, Zerg takes 3 bases and powers 70 drones freely and wins with a-move.
If Protoss 3 warpgate expands, Zerg rolls them over with this new ling/roach bust unless they blindly make 4 cannons in which case freely powers 70 drones and wins. With a-move.
If Protoss does some sort of 1-base all-in there's actually some enjoyable micro to watch and then it usually ends with Zerg holding it with emergency spines and winning.
If Zerg somehow fuck up during the first 15 minutes and let Protoss start the deathball and take a third, Protoss a-moves the ball all over whatever Zerg has.
How is that a fun matchup to watch? I take 4-gate micro over that any day.
Yes? There's very little stable play in the MU at the moment. Protoss and Zerg are both doing either greedy or allinish plays and ending it early.
If Protoss forge fast-expands, Zerg takes 3 bases and powers 70 drones freely and wins with a-move.
FFE doesn't really fall behind on workers but OK. You must know something other Zergs don't.
If Protoss 3 warpgate expands, Zerg rolls them over with this new ling/roach bust unless they blindly make 4 cannons in which case freely powers 70 drones and wins. With a-move.
1 cannon holds it. Greedy tosses haven't even been making that, so they die.
How is that a fun matchup to watch? I take 4-gate micro over that any day.
I said it was in flux, not that it was a fun matchup.
It's heavily in flux at the moment. If it settles down into something unenjoyable ala PvP, that would be the time to change it.
Really?
I find PvZ probably the most unenjoyable matchup to watch at the moment. When watching it live, it's without exception extremely 1-sided.
If Protoss forge fast-expands, Zerg takes 3 bases and powers 70 drones freely and wins with a-move.
You don't usually hatch first vs FFE because cannons rushes can be so powerful, and with pool first you fall behind economically. Just because you've seen Sheth mass expand and not get punished for it that doesn't mean that the matchup usually plays out that way,
On May 05 2011 23:55 MuazizTremere wrote: If Protoss 3 warpgate expands, Zerg rolls them over with this new ling/roach bust unless they blindly make 4 cannons in which case freely powers 70 drones and wins. With a-move.
Or they do a 2-base Warp Gate timing, or they turtle properly and get to 3-base and roll the Zerg over.
On May 02 2011 23:46 Ctuchik wrote: Alright, so here are some charts I made on race winrates.
All data is from TLPD, so this is ONLY pro games from tournaments and leagues. NO ladder games. Mirror matchups are completely excluded from the data set since they would skew the results towards 50%.
MLG dallas is not included in April since they haven't released all their replays yet.
First one is from the international scene:
And here is the korean version. NOTE THAT THE KOREAN VERSION HAS A MUCH LOWER SAMPLE SIZE! The number of players and tournaments in Korea is much lower, so therefore these numbers are more volatile.
It's heavily in flux at the moment. If it settles down into something unenjoyable ala PvP, that would be the time to change it.
Really?
I find PvZ probably the most unenjoyable matchup to watch at the moment. When watching it live, it's without exception extremely 1-sided.
If Protoss forge fast-expands, Zerg takes 3 bases and powers 70 drones freely and wins with a-move.
If Protoss 3 warpgate expands, Zerg rolls them over with this new ling/roach bust unless they blindly make 4 cannons in which case freely powers 70 drones and wins. With a-move.
If Protoss does some sort of 1-base all-in there's actually some enjoyable micro to watch and then it usually ends with Zerg holding it with emergency spines and winning.
If Zerg somehow fuck up during the first 15 minutes and let Protoss start the deathball and take a third, Protoss a-moves the ball all over whatever Zerg has.
How is that a fun matchup to watch? I take 4-gate micro over that any day.
On May 03 2011 00:11 57 Corvette wrote: Hmm, seems Protoss is having a hard time recently in Korea.
And for all those who say "XvX Matchup is Imba!", look at the International stats. They are currently all pretty much at 50%w/L ratio. So shut up, this game isn't Imba in any way shape or form at this time.
The problem with these statistics is that they take neither the different maps nor the the difference in playskill into account, which, at least in my opinion, is much bigger in the foreign scene than in the GSL. So a matchup might look "more balanced" than it actually is due to a few top players beating worse players over and over.
Over 8000+ games this will balance out. Also its including data from good players beating other good players
There's no way for it to control by "player skill", how would you even quantify that?
Regarding the sample size and the number of games. 8000 seems much, if you compare it to the number of respondents to a questionaire in a smaller country. There is a formula to calculate the needed sample size based on the population (can't remember it off the top of my head), but in this case, the "population" would be the total number of games played, ever (region specific), or a more specific sample from all games in a region since patch X. Interesting graphs though.
It's heavily in flux at the moment. If it settles down into something unenjoyable ala PvP, that would be the time to change it.
Really?
I find PvZ probably the most unenjoyable matchup to watch at the moment. When watching it live, it's without exception extremely 1-sided.
If Protoss forge fast-expands, Zerg takes 3 bases and powers 70 drones freely and wins with a-move.
If Protoss 3 warpgate expands, Zerg rolls them over with this new ling/roach bust unless they blindly make 4 cannons in which case freely powers 70 drones and wins. With a-move.
If Protoss does some sort of 1-base all-in there's actually some enjoyable micro to watch and then it usually ends with Zerg holding it with emergency spines and winning.
If Zerg somehow fuck up during the first 15 minutes and let Protoss start the deathball and take a third, Protoss a-moves the ball all over whatever Zerg has.
How is that a fun matchup to watch? I take 4-gate micro over that any day.
PvZ is currently the most volatile MU atm which is why Toss and Zerg both have roll over wins. I think the MU has bigger potential than TvP where it is basically lesser drop play and ball vs ball moving around because the defender advantage is crazy for Toss and good for terran(which have the more mobile army).
FFE is ahead of a pool hatch build in terms of worker + cb. 3 wg is 100% safe if you build a forge next to Nexus and have 1-3 cannons depending on maps.
We need to see how many players are winning though. Esp. when we are talking about pros. If the bulk of any races wins are coming from just a few people that doesn't mean the game is balanced... It just means they have some good players.
The korean graph is a more accurate reflection of trends than the international one. International there are a lot of players in tournaments who are terrible and skewing the statistics toward 50% when it shouldn't be. In GSL you have players who are more skilled than the large majority of international tournament participants. 1000 games is a significantly large sample size for this type of thing as well.
ZvP is volatile because if Z can gain an advantage they can win. The problem is P has all the tools in the world, including higher than 50% odds blind techs, to not only prevent the zerg from gaining an advantage but to actively put him at a disadvantage. As time goes it will develop to be somewhat p favored unless zerg finds a consistent way to lower protoss probe count and/or a safe way to open without blindly guessing whether you are about to get phoenixed, dtd, warp gate all-inned, fast robod, or what.
The ZvP graph spikes based on when P has a "safe" greedy opener and when Z finds a way to tear that opener apart. The more recent graph is because infestors really punish stalker heavy or ball play that isn't controlled exceptionally and there is an all-in stops the greedy expands we are seeing. I'm curious to see where the overlord-spine strat takes ZvP, because it will open up attack windows that zerg desperately needs in that matchup.
ZvT is consistently T favored in the korean graph despite being a match that most zergs enjoy because T simply has more comeback tools. The MULE is powerful as heck, and terran has "critical mass" armies with marines/tanks/maybe a few thors that no number of zerg units (before BL tech) are going to directly break. It requires the zerg to hit elsewhere or catch them in transit. Combine that with T having powerful early aggression and just flat out more forceful play and you have the reason ZvT is terran skewed in the graph despite not being imbalanced to actually play.
ZvT is going to continue developing because ghosts rip on mutalisks/infestors/broods and we aren't even seeing them used anywhere near their potential yet. This next patch has me a bit worried for TvZ because the ghost change is clearly aimed at other matchups but will potentially wreck TvZ in the korean professional scene.
"Balance" is a complicated beast that can be broken in to many sections. If SC2 were 100% balanced right now we wouldn't be seeing 50-50 distributions in either of these graphs. There are too many times where players have to guess in some matchups, and certain races have mechanics that soften harassment/army loss blows at certain points in the game.
racial balance is something that should be aspired to.
however, there is something that is more an issue of game design and that is RELATIVE BALANCE.
relative balance means optimal options throughout game. high range of strategical options as well as styles. etc etc. i'm not sure how to accurately define it but you can theoretically make a game that is absolutely balanced however it wouldn't be relatively balanced.
good example is that coli is too dominant of a strategy and zerg compared to the other races is just more difficult.
it may seem like i'm a sc2 hater i'm not. i'm actually quite a big supporter. blizz needs to work out a lot of kinks. i agree with most of the moves but they just seem to move too damn slow.
On May 06 2011 09:02 Phanekim wrote: racial balance is something that should be aspired to.
however, there is something that is more an issue of game design and that is RELATIVE BALANCE.
relative balance means optimal options throughout game. high range of strategical options as well as styles. etc etc. i'm not sure how to accurately define it but you can theoretically make a game that is absolutely balanced however it wouldn't be relatively balanced.
good example is that coli is too dominant of a strategy and zerg compared to the other races is just more difficult.
it may seem like i'm a sc2 hater i'm not. i'm actually quite a big supporter. blizz needs to work out a lot of kinks. i agree with most of the moves but they just seem to move too damn slow.
Since SC2 is such a competitive game with high prize tournaments revolving around it i don't think it would be wise for blizzard to be making heaps of changes without extensive testing.
good example is that coli is too dominant of a strategy and zerg compared to the other races is just more difficult.
Ya, but see you cant quantify those things either. Having played both at high levels I can say I find using zerg much easier than using protoss, which to me, is much easier than using terran.
alright I've had enough of these graphs popping up everywhere and people statingthat the game is 'balanced now' because it's like 50/50/50....
It'd be interesting to see what the average game length is over time as well. Since cheeses have changed a lot since the game started (5rax reaper and whatnot), people have a) learned to deal with cheeses all-ins more adequately and b) developed more late game strategies, the games are probably as a result, longer.
It isn't surprising to see that terran was so dominant at the beginning because of the number of people that started out playing terran. If i recall...the first GSL was vastly Terran populated. Not to mention vastly cheese populated too
Terran of course having the strongest tier one unit, the marine, had (has? i'm not sure anymore) the strongest early game. We all of course remember the BitByBit strategy (essentially all-inning...and if that all in doesnt work...all in again....and if that doesnt work...all in again...rinse and repeat).
Since terran had the strongest early game...the game ended fast because cheeses were so powerful/prevalent. Therefore Terran won a lot.
The games are getting longer now.... this of course results in more and more mistakes made by each player. Balance, in my opinion, should be weighted on how many mistakes the player can make in proportion to the other player's mistakes. What I mean by this is if one player makes less mistakes in his game decisions, he should ultimately win in a long game.
Why you ask? Because Starcraft 2 is a game of decisions. And the longer the game goes on, the more decisions must be made. The more decisions that are made, the more mistakes there are, which should result in the degree of separation that makes one player better than the other.
In context...let's say X race gets supply blocked 2 times (common macro mistake) but Y race never gets supply blocked. Y race then as a result has a larger army, larger economy etc. X race still wins simply because the units he made counter the units Y race made. Ok...this isn't imbalance...this is strategy right? Y makes a larger mistake by not scouting X and as a result his units crumble to X's.
So we've established that theres different TYPEs of mistakes one can make. And some mistakes are weighed less than others. But at what point do these mistakes balance. What if X can get supply blocked twice, not scout opponent's army (+more mistakes) and still win.
The severity of one race's total mistakes should not be much larger than another's. Ultimately I'd like to see X -not- win and I hope you agree with me, because X is clearly not the better player, his race is.
--------------back to the graphs..... Ok so these graphs are representations of both races making an equal amount of mistakes since they are pros, and we are assuming that most pros compete at the same skill level regardless of race.
So the degree of seperation of skill because of the mistakes that are made should be negligible.
To sum up a little.......
The average game length has increased (I'm pretty sure of this considering map size, cheese prevalance, spawn points).
More game length means more potential for mistakes. Ultimately as e-sports fans, we want to see the better player win. This means the player that made the right call at the right time, with the right micro, while maintaining the right macro.
Now it's super important to note...these graphs don't display anything about HOW the games were won.
Looking at T v P... you might think "oh look it's balanced now because it's 50%/50% wins now"
November2010 to jan 2011....Terran cheese prevails until protoss finally learns how to stop it (or they patched whatever). The game was balanced in january 2011 because Protoss learned how to stop strong terran all-ins? (the emergence of a 'safe build' to gain eco lead was developed)
this isn't balance, this is metagame development, meaning half the people that are trying the old strategies that used to work 60% of the time, failed a lot. And the other half that realized this, tried new strategies (and not as developed and therefore not as good) won because it was something their opponent hadn't seen before. yay for meta game development!
alright I've had enough of these graphs popping up everywhere and people statingthat the game is 'balanced now' because it's like 50/50/50....
It'd be interesting to see what the average game length is over time as well. Since cheeses have changed a lot since the game started (5rax reaper and whatnot), people have a) learned to deal with cheeses all-ins more adequately and b) developed more late game strategies, the games are probably as a result, longer.
It isn't surprising to see that terran was so dominant at the beginning because of the number of people that started out playing terran. If i recall...the first GSL was vastly Terran populated. Not to mention vastly cheese populated too
Terran of course having the strongest tier one unit, the marine, had (has? i'm not sure anymore) the strongest early game. We all of course remember the BitByBit strategy (essentially all-inning...and if that all in doesnt work...all in again....and if that doesnt work...all in again...rinse and repeat).
Since terran had the strongest early game...the game ended fast because cheeses were so powerful/prevalent. Therefore Terran won a lot.
The games are getting longer now.... this of course results in more and more mistakes made by each player. Balance, in my opinion, should be weighted on how many mistakes the player can make in proportion to the other player's mistakes. What I mean by this is if one player makes less mistakes in his game decisions, he should ultimately win in a long game.
Why you ask? Because Starcraft 2 is a game of decisions. And the longer the game goes on, the more decisions must be made. The more decisions that are made, the more mistakes there are, which should result in the degree of separation that makes one player better than the other.
In context...let's say X race gets supply blocked 2 times (common macro mistake) but Y race never gets supply blocked. Y race then as a result has a larger army, larger economy etc. X race still wins simply because the units he made counter the units Y race made. Ok...this isn't imbalance...this is strategy right? Y makes a larger mistake by not scouting X and as a result his units crumble to X's.
So we've established that theres different TYPEs of mistakes one can make. And some mistakes are weighed less than others. But at what point do these mistakes balance. What if X can get supply blocked twice, not scout opponent's army (+more mistakes) and still win.
The severity of one race's total mistakes should not be much larger than another's. Ultimately I'd like to see X -not- win and I hope you agree with me, because X is clearly not the better player, his race is.
--------------back to the graphs..... Ok so these graphs are representations of both races making an equal amount of mistakes since they are pros, and we are assuming that most pros compete at the same skill level regardless of race.
So the degree of seperation of skill because of the mistakes that are made should be negligible.
To sum up a little.......
The average game length has increased (I'm pretty sure of this considering map size, cheese prevalance, spawn points).
More game length means more potential for mistakes. Ultimately as e-sports fans, we want to see the better player win. This means the player that made the right call at the right time, with the right micro, while maintaining the right macro.
Now it's super important to note...these graphs don't display anything about HOW the games were won.
Looking at T v P... you might think "oh look it's balanced now because it's 50%/50% wins now"
November2010 to jan 2011....Terran cheese prevails until protoss finally learns how to stop it (or they patched whatever). The game was balanced in january 2011 because Protoss learned how to stop strong terran all-ins? (the emergence of a 'safe build' to gain eco lead was developed)
this isn't balance, this is metagame development, meaning half the people that are trying the old strategies that used to work 60% of the time, failed a lot. And the other half that realized this, tried new strategies (and not as developed and therefore not as good) won because it was something their opponent hadn't seen before. yay for meta game development!
I'm not attempting to derail the topic, but I want to make a note on part of this particular post. It seems like (Seems), given the current state of the Protoss 'Deatball', they don't have to scout at all late game. It's an army composition that can take on any comp relatively effectively, given good micro.
Now, purely in reference to your post, assuming the Protoss play doesn't scout, is this a mistake? Or is scouting truly not necessary, because of the current metagame?
On May 06 2011 00:47 l3iRdMaN wrote: lol sample size
8000 games is a pretty good sample size bro
User was warned for this post
was referring to the 1k korean sample size... brooooooo
anything <3-4k is subject to variance. perfect example is the apparent inferiority that is protoss on the korean ladder.
however when we look at the international graph everything's pretttttyyyy, pretty even.
Actually all samples are subject to variance, which is why we do significance tests. A chi square will tell you how confident you can be that the lopsided ratios are nonrandom.
On May 06 2011 08:56 Uhh Negative wrote: "Race balance" in the thread title should be replaced by "Win rate by race"
This implies nothing conclusive or usable about race balance
So you must have an explanation to why, wth a big sample size, better maps on the right of the graph than on left, better patches on the right of the graph than on left, more advanced metagame on the right of the graph than on left, the winrates are stabilizing as equal for everyone ? What else could it show ?
Also, people who are saying that the international graph means nothing because *insert exemple like what if zergs are more skilled on average, or what if example X* must inform themselves about why large samples are needed. And it's because with a large enough sample, all the *example to "show" the graph could be wrong" are not significant enough to influence the graph. (the "examples" I talk about are on like 50% in the posts in this thread)
On May 06 2011 00:47 l3iRdMaN wrote: lol sample size
8000 games is a pretty good sample size bro
User was warned for this post
was referring to the 1k korean sample size... brooooooo
anything <3-4k is subject to variance. perfect example is the apparent inferiority that is protoss on the korean ladder.
however when we look at the international graph everything's pretttttyyyy, pretty even.
Actually all samples are subject to variance, which is why we do significance tests. A chi square will tell you how confident you can be that the lopsided ratios are nonrandom.
the confidence level of a 1k sample size is somewhere between 40-60% (nowhere near enough to make an accurate assessment of 1's EV), where anything over 4k is probably above 85%. these numbers are just off the top of my head but if you could enlighten us with your fancy chi square math maybe we could get some specific numbers? everyone making a huge fuss about protoss inferiority is jumping the gun imo. (i play protoss as well)
On May 06 2011 00:47 l3iRdMaN wrote: lol sample size
8000 games is a pretty good sample size bro
User was warned for this post
was referring to the 1k korean sample size... brooooooo
anything <3-4k is subject to variance. perfect example is the apparent inferiority that is protoss on the korean ladder.
however when we look at the international graph everything's pretttttyyyy, pretty even.
Actually all samples are subject to variance, which is why we do significance tests. A chi square will tell you how confident you can be that the lopsided ratios are nonrandom.
the confidence level of a 1k sample size is somewhere between 40-60% (nowhere near enough to make an accurate assessment of 1's EV), where anything over 4k is probably above 85%. these numbers are just off the top of my head but if you could enlighten us with your fancy chi square math maybe we could get some specific numbers? everyone making a huge fuss about protoss inferiority is jumping the gun imo. (i play protoss as well)
I'm not saying either/or, just saying that there is a legit way to determine the statistic's validity. I'm just shutting down the notion that we have any idea what's a sufficient sample size without involving math.
Point is that the null hypothesis (null= itz balanced guis, itz just randum) gets far less likely when the outcomes get far beyond the standard deviation. I'm too lazy to crunch though. Other people are more inclined.
good example is that coli is too dominant of a strategy and zerg compared to the other races is just more difficult.
Ya, but see you cant quantify those things either. Having played both at high levels I can say I find using zerg much easier than using protoss, which to me, is much easier than using terran.
Really? So Zerg is the easiest and Terran is the hardest? Is that why there are very few terrans at Diamond and low masters but there's a jump in Terrans at high masters?
On May 06 2011 00:47 l3iRdMaN wrote: lol sample size
8000 games is a pretty good sample size bro
User was warned for this post
was referring to the 1k korean sample size... brooooooo
anything <3-4k is subject to variance. perfect example is the apparent inferiority that is protoss on the korean ladder.
however when we look at the international graph everything's pretttttyyyy, pretty even.
Actually all samples are subject to variance, which is why we do significance tests. A chi square will tell you how confident you can be that the lopsided ratios are nonrandom.
the confidence level of a 1k sample size is somewhere between 40-60% (nowhere near enough to make an accurate assessment of 1's EV), where anything over 4k is probably above 85%. these numbers are just off the top of my head but if you could enlighten us with your fancy chi square math maybe we could get some specific numbers? everyone making a huge fuss about protoss inferiority is jumping the gun imo. (i play protoss as well)
I'm not saying either/or, just saying that there is a legit way to determine the statistic's validity. I'm just shutting down the notion that we have any idea what's a sufficient sample size without involving math.
Point is that the null hypothesis (null= itz balanced guis, itz just randum) gets far less likely when the outcomes get far beyond the standard deviation. I'm too lazy to crunch though. Other people are more inclined.
i'm speaking from poker experience so i could be completely off... but any sample size >4k games had a relatively high %%% chance of being an accurate gauge of one's EV. the thing that makes it tough with SC2 is the vast range of skill between a bronze level nub and some of the top pros. what might appear as "imba" in gold could be easily countered in masters... as a result we have heaps of opinions clashing from all levels of skill into this huge never-ending debate
EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/dA8rr.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Z2rbu.png)
now toss have to find a way to counter the new zerg builds etc
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rHuxk.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/qLi1l.gif)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/k49GV.png)
