Statistical Analysis of StarCraft 2 Balance - Page 6

On May 07 2011 15:31 Elean wrote:

As far as I can tell, LASSO is a least square method that set up a constraint on the L1 norm. Constraint that has no justification in this case.

You have to understand that if 2 models give the exact same results for any match, there is no way to tell which one is better. I explained to you, that there is an infinite number of models that will give the same resuts with different "balance between 2 races". This means you can not tell if there is an unbalance.

I will explain to you on an example, why the L1 constraint does not have any justification.

For simplicity sake, let's consider only 2 races, T and Z, and let's consider that all the players of 1 race have the same skill.
Suppose TvZ is unbalance, and the actuall value of beta_TvZ is 500.
Since all the players made it in the tournaments, they are likely to have roughly the same strengh (skill + balance). This means the Z players have likely a beta_player that is 500 above the beta_player of the T players.

Now, run your mode, with a sample size extremely large. You get the solution beta_TvZ=0, beta_playerZ=0 and beta_playerT=0. This solution clearly minimize the L1 norm, and is also give the exact result for the probability of each match. However, it is completly wrong and does not manage to see the unbalance.

Your method fails to catch any unbalance for the exact same reason everyone can't tell the balance: we don't know if the zerg players are more or less skilled than the terran players.

On May 08 2011 00:38 Sueco wrote:
"There's lies, damn lies and statistics."

- Mark Twain

I watched state of the game last week and I found Idra's points very interesting. I agree completely with him that if there is no way for zerg to scout and if zerg has no build that makes it safe against any possible build then the game is imbalanced.

On May 08 2011 01:14 awesomoecalypse wrote:


Zerg, or any race, being 100% safe against any possible build is not a prerequisite for balance. It is just something IdrA wants because he thinks the game should conform to some platonic ideal which rewards "skill" (by which he means mechanics) above all else, and he hates the idea of losing to anyone who isn't "better" than him (by which he means more mechanically capable). The so-called "safe" builds lose to cheese all the time even in BW (witness Jaedong's legendary success via the 6 pool), unless you're name is Flash and you have jedi gamesense. But IdrA himself was famous for getting cheesed out of tournaments, then bitching about imbalance, Protoss in general, and his opponents lacking "skill". For all that people have this idea that BW evolved into these perfectly safe builds that made you immune to cheese and guaranteed you'd go into the mid and late game on decent footing...that really wasn't the case. All "safe" means is that if you play perfectly, scout like a motherfucker and have ludicrously good gamesense, you could theoretically react in time to anything. But if you had any lapses whatsover--which, you know, basically every pro does, which is why BW pros are far from immune to cheese--you'll still lose to cheese.

Even if Overlords were faster, IdrA would still lose to nonstandard play a lot, and he'd still bitch about it whenever he did, the same way he bitched every time he lost to cheese in BW (which was also a lot). At the end of the day, IdrA's problem isn't with the game, its himself--he's not as good as he thinks he is, and for some reason he has this platonic ideal of how the game "should" be played that has very little to do with how it actually is. That was true in BW and it will always be true in SC2, regardless of what patches may come.

If good gamers are all choosing Terran and bad ones are choosing Zerg, it's hard to analyze the balance.

On May 08 2011 02:16 mavyric wrote:
A number a people have brought up good points.

My 2 cents on using this statistics model:

You cannot just add up the seasons of the GSL, because there were balance changes(patches) and map changes. Therefore, you cannot infer from the data alone that a certain matchup was favored over another.

On May 07 2011 01:49 Mactator wrote:
The imbalance issue is not necessarily related to probability of a player winning. The usual notion of "imbalance" refers to specific issues rather than xvy being imbalanced.

If we consider the notorious example of the protoss death ball then many people complains that zerg players can't win against it. Let's assume that is correct. Then the obvious thing to do if you are a zerg player is to avoid getting into late game against a protoss. This may be a very effective strategy and you may even measure a high probability for zerg players to win. The game would still be imbalanced though!