• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 23:06
CEST 05:06
KST 12:06
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL22] Ro16 Preview: Rough Waters10[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Siren's Call8[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Summer's End9Serral wins HomeStory Cup 2915Serral wins Maestros of the Game 244
Community News
Weekly Cups (Aug 30-Sep 7): herO thrives amid growing schism10Official StarCraft website teases new content ahead of BlizzCon?129Stellar Fest TWO the Moon (Dec 16-20)9Weekly Cups (August 24-30): Patches' balance mod takes over3New 3v3 BGH Ladder (and more) on ShieldBattery!46
StarCraft 2
General
Team Liquid Map Contest #22: Results and Winners Balance hotfix patch 5.0.16b (July 16) Weekly Cups (Aug 30-Sep 7): herO thrives amid growing schism SC4ALL: II Winner will earn a spot at HSC 30! SC4ALL II: StarCraft 2 Player Announcement 7/8
Tourneys
KSL Week #92 IntoTheTV X SOOP SC2 League : Weekly & Monthly 2026 GSTL Announcement Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond)
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Nexus Wars 2021 GUIDE [M] (2) Industrial Park
External Content
Mutation # 542 The Ascended Mutation # 541 Binary Choice The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 540 Dodge This
Brood War
General
Official StarCraft website teases new content ahead of BlizzCon? [D] Brainstorming a balance patch for Brood war BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Broodwar Prediction Market Terran or Protoss
Tourneys
[ASL22] Ro16 Group A Escore Tournament - Season 3 [ASL22] Ro16 Group B Small VOD Thread 2.0
Strategy
Replay Review Process - What do you do? Simple Questions, Simple Answers Odyssey Mineral Stack Saturation Game Theory for Starcraft
Other Games
General Games
EVE Corporation Nintendo Switch Thread Diablo IV [Maplestory Hardcore] Let's Play~!! General RTS Discussion Thread
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
[TL LoL EUW IHs] Teemo shall perish TSM pausing esports and CLG Dead
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Russo-Ukrainian War Thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread Trading/Investing Thread
Fan Clubs
MarineLorD Fan Club The Creator Fan Club The ShoWTimE Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion!
Sports
Football (Soccer) Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 MLB/Baseball 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Northern Ireland Global Starcraft
Blogs
Virtual Romance, Real-Life C…
TrAiDoS
Regacy Esports:Our Goa…
regacyesports
Dreaming of BW patches (mod…
c3rberUs
LOCKPICKING NOOB
LUCKY_NOOB
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 8649 users

Blizzard's "skill-adjusted-win-percentages" - Page 7

Forum Index > SC2 General
Post a Reply
Prev 1 5 6 7 All
hummingbird23
Profile Joined September 2011
Norway359 Posts
September 30 2011 09:47 GMT
#121
MMR is also a pretty bad indicator of balance, simply because unless Blizzard is using matchup specific MMR, one bad matchup wrecks the reliability of MMR for every other non-mirror matchup. Say TvP is screwed in favor of Terran, this would make PvZ look in favor of Protoss simply because the Protoss player is playing less skilled zerg to force the win percentage towards 50%. Hence, zerg players on the ladder would have the perception that ZvP is Protoss favoured, except that that would be because they're playing opponents of a higher skill.
Ryps
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Romania2740 Posts
September 30 2011 09:57 GMT
#122
On September 30 2011 18:47 hummingbird23 wrote:
MMR is also a pretty bad indicator of balance, simply because unless Blizzard is using matchup specific MMR, one bad matchup wrecks the reliability of MMR for every other non-mirror matchup. Say TvP is screwed in favor of Terran, this would make PvZ look in favor of Protoss simply because the Protoss player is playing less skilled zerg to force the win percentage towards 50%. Hence, zerg players on the ladder would have the perception that ZvP is Protoss favoured, except that that would be because they're playing opponents of a higher skill.


Who said they are balacing based on MMR, they said they look at specific match ups percentages.

I see a lot of people bashing Blizzard for what system they are using but no one is giving suggestions on whats better.
Silidons
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
United States2813 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-09-30 10:08:29
September 30 2011 10:07 GMT
#123
On September 30 2011 18:57 Drey wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 30 2011 18:47 hummingbird23 wrote:
MMR is also a pretty bad indicator of balance, simply because unless Blizzard is using matchup specific MMR, one bad matchup wrecks the reliability of MMR for every other non-mirror matchup. Say TvP is screwed in favor of Terran, this would make PvZ look in favor of Protoss simply because the Protoss player is playing less skilled zerg to force the win percentage towards 50%. Hence, zerg players on the ladder would have the perception that ZvP is Protoss favoured, except that that would be because they're playing opponents of a higher skill.


Who said they are balacing based on MMR, they said they look at specific match ups percentages.

I see a lot of people bashing Blizzard for what system they are using but no one is giving suggestions on whats better.

He is saying that win-percentages are not a good indicator of things like balance because of how they are actually measuring the win-percentages (since who you play is based on MMR)

This is what he means:
Let's say Toss has a 40% win rate against Terran, assuming they are of both skill level and things such as EMP make the matchup favor the Terran. Toss then LOSE MMR since they have a hard time playing vT, and so as I said their MMR goes down, but then they get matched up with a Zerg. Well this Toss' MMR is artificially low because PvT is in favor of Terran, so he is playing a zerg who is a lesser-skilled player than him, which then will create PvZ to favor the toss because toss are actually playing worse players since their MMR is artificially low.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon Bonaparte
hummingbird23
Profile Joined September 2011
Norway359 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-09-30 10:10:43
September 30 2011 10:09 GMT
#124
On September 30 2011 18:57 Drey wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 30 2011 18:47 hummingbird23 wrote:
MMR is also a pretty bad indicator of balance, simply because unless Blizzard is using matchup specific MMR, one bad matchup wrecks the reliability of MMR for every other non-mirror matchup. Say TvP is screwed in favor of Terran, this would make PvZ look in favor of Protoss simply because the Protoss player is playing less skilled zerg to force the win percentage towards 50%. Hence, zerg players on the ladder would have the perception that ZvP is Protoss favoured, except that that would be because they're playing opponents of a higher skill.


Who said they are balacing based on MMR, they said they look at specific match ups percentages.

I see a lot of people bashing Blizzard for what system they are using but no one is giving suggestions on whats better.


My point is that it's pretty hard to use the numbers Blizzard is giving. Each matchup for each player differs. One way to test this system would be to throw every match of a particular matchup (eg. Terran player always quits whenever he sees Zerg), and see if the overall win/lose still tends towards 50%. If it does, it means that whenever the player plays against Protoss or Terran, he's playing inferior opponents. No amount of TvP balance will thus fix a TvZ imbalance, for example.
FeyFey
Profile Joined September 2010
Germany10114 Posts
September 30 2011 10:22 GMT
#125
On August 03 2011 13:34 KiLL_ORdeR wrote:
The third and arguably most important factor that they exclude from that though is map balance. They will never get a perfect rating unless the system takes the maps in account.


you already forgot their statement about maps, balance it on small maps and it works everywhere.

and it may be 2 unknowns but they relate to each other. So once you know who did win you can calculate them both. Its actually a clever system to sort out the ladder system searching equal opponents for you.
It gives you a good overview of how things changed after a patch at the different levels, which is probably the most important thing. Though you might not see which race has the less effort do do to win, but since they address this as well I guess somehow they know.
Deleted User 101379
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
4849 Posts
September 30 2011 12:25 GMT
#126
Does almost everyone in this thread really think Blizzard is stupid and ignores such obvious things?

They have really, really clever guys working on that, people that are about twice as smart as all posters here combined (including me) and they will have considered everything that is posted here and found ways to work around the limitations.

Example for how it could be, eventhough i'm not half as clever as the guys who thought about those things 8 hours a day for month:
Blizzard has 3 MMRs, 1 for each race

Player A (Zerg):
vT: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vZ: 30% Winrate, MMR 1200
vP: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400

We can assume that his average MMR is somewhere around 1500-1600, he just is very strong vs Terrans and less strong vs Protoss. Against Zerg, he sucks.

Player B (Terran):
vZ: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400
vP: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has has an average MMR of 1600, he is slightly stronger vs Protoss, slightly weaker vs Zerg.

Player C (Terran):
vZ: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vP: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has an MMR of about 1600-1700 and is slightly stronger vs Zerg.

If Player A and Player B meet 100 times on the ladder and Player A wins 40% of the matches while Player A and Player C end up in ~55% for Player C, the game should be balanced, eventhough for the point of Player B, it's imbalanced since he loses a lot. Personal skill in different matchups is accounted for and everyone should be happy.


Ofc as mentioned, there are more intelligent people whos job it is to calculate that stuff. They had month to figure everything out, i though of this in about a minute so i might be totally wrong.
Hider
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Denmark9447 Posts
September 30 2011 12:55 GMT
#127
On September 30 2011 21:25 Morfildur wrote:
Does almost everyone in this thread really think Blizzard is stupid and ignores such obvious things?

They have really, really clever guys working on that, people that are about twice as smart as all posters here combined (including me) and they will have considered everything that is posted here and found ways to work around the limitations.

Example for how it could be, eventhough i'm not half as clever as the guys who thought about those things 8 hours a day for month:
Blizzard has 3 MMRs, 1 for each race

Player A (Zerg):
vT: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vZ: 30% Winrate, MMR 1200
vP: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400

We can assume that his average MMR is somewhere around 1500-1600, he just is very strong vs Terrans and less strong vs Protoss. Against Zerg, he sucks.

Player B (Terran):
vZ: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400
vP: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has has an average MMR of 1600, he is slightly stronger vs Protoss, slightly weaker vs Zerg.

Player C (Terran):
vZ: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vP: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has an MMR of about 1600-1700 and is slightly stronger vs Zerg.

If Player A and Player B meet 100 times on the ladder and Player A wins 40% of the matches while Player A and Player C end up in ~55% for Player C, the game should be balanced, eventhough for the point of Player B, it's imbalanced since he loses a lot. Personal skill in different matchups is accounted for and everyone should be happy.


Ofc as mentioned, there are more intelligent people whos job it is to calculate that stuff. They had month to figure everything out, i though of this in about a minute so i might be totally wrong.


This isn't the main problem. The main problem is if race X is UP in all both mathcups. Then blizzards statisctics wont be able to realize that all players of race x actually have to low an mmr. If they used stats like average mmr of races they would have to assume that players of different skills are somewhat evenly distributed over the different leagues, however that is most likely not true.
Deleted User 101379
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
4849 Posts
September 30 2011 13:52 GMT
#128
On September 30 2011 21:55 Hider wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 30 2011 21:25 Morfildur wrote:
Does almost everyone in this thread really think Blizzard is stupid and ignores such obvious things?

They have really, really clever guys working on that, people that are about twice as smart as all posters here combined (including me) and they will have considered everything that is posted here and found ways to work around the limitations.

Example for how it could be, eventhough i'm not half as clever as the guys who thought about those things 8 hours a day for month:
Blizzard has 3 MMRs, 1 for each race

Player A (Zerg):
vT: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vZ: 30% Winrate, MMR 1200
vP: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400

We can assume that his average MMR is somewhere around 1500-1600, he just is very strong vs Terrans and less strong vs Protoss. Against Zerg, he sucks.

Player B (Terran):
vZ: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400
vP: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has has an average MMR of 1600, he is slightly stronger vs Protoss, slightly weaker vs Zerg.

Player C (Terran):
vZ: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vP: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has an MMR of about 1600-1700 and is slightly stronger vs Zerg.

If Player A and Player B meet 100 times on the ladder and Player A wins 40% of the matches while Player A and Player C end up in ~55% for Player C, the game should be balanced, eventhough for the point of Player B, it's imbalanced since he loses a lot. Personal skill in different matchups is accounted for and everyone should be happy.


Ofc as mentioned, there are more intelligent people whos job it is to calculate that stuff. They had month to figure everything out, i though of this in about a minute so i might be totally wrong.


This isn't the main problem. The main problem is if race X is UP in all both mathcups. Then blizzards statisctics wont be able to realize that all players of race x actually have to low an mmr. If they used stats like average mmr of races they would have to assume that players of different skills are somewhat evenly distributed over the different leagues, however that is most likely not true.


They can still see it when the MMR of many players against one race is higher than against the other races.

Example:
We can assume that over all Protoss players, their relative skill in other matchups is about even or the difference is statistically insignificant. Taking all 500'000 protoss into account, some are stronger in other matchups, some are weaker. Some are better in mirror matches, some are worse.
With that much data, it will even out.

We can then check the MMR of the mirror match compared to the other players MMR in mirror matches and check the results of the match.
For each player we go through each match, show how the person has faired in mirror matches, check the others MMR (again: by mirror) and check who should win. Then we look at who really won and compare the results. If the win was unexpected, we note it and move to the next game.

For a single game, the results will be wrong. Everyone can have a bad day, made a mistake, etc., but statistically, over the huge number of games, the results will even out. Not perfectly, for that the number is still too low, but good enough to show big differences (that might be why they say that between 45% and 55% there is no reason for concern. It's just statistics after all).

If we then find out that Protoss only wins 80% of the matches they should have won, we can put it down as 40% winrate for Protoss and therefor a big imbalance.


Anyways, as i said, there are people who think about it 8 hours a day 5 days a week. They are not stupid, they learned that stuff and know more about it than we do. They have a lot more data than we have access to and more than we might even assume, so we should trust that they don't just pull numbers out of their a**, just because we don't know how they do it.
DarQraven
Profile Joined January 2010
Netherlands553 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-09-30 14:36:52
September 30 2011 14:30 GMT
#129
On September 30 2011 22:52 Morfildur wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 30 2011 21:55 Hider wrote:
On September 30 2011 21:25 Morfildur wrote:
Does almost everyone in this thread really think Blizzard is stupid and ignores such obvious things?

They have really, really clever guys working on that, people that are about twice as smart as all posters here combined (including me) and they will have considered everything that is posted here and found ways to work around the limitations.

Example for how it could be, eventhough i'm not half as clever as the guys who thought about those things 8 hours a day for month:
Blizzard has 3 MMRs, 1 for each race

Player A (Zerg):
vT: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vZ: 30% Winrate, MMR 1200
vP: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400

We can assume that his average MMR is somewhere around 1500-1600, he just is very strong vs Terrans and less strong vs Protoss. Against Zerg, he sucks.

Player B (Terran):
vZ: 40% Winrate, MMR 1400
vP: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has has an average MMR of 1600, he is slightly stronger vs Protoss, slightly weaker vs Zerg.

Player C (Terran):
vZ: 60% Winrate, MMR 1800
vP: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600
vT: 50% Winrate, MMR 1600

This player has an MMR of about 1600-1700 and is slightly stronger vs Zerg.

If Player A and Player B meet 100 times on the ladder and Player A wins 40% of the matches while Player A and Player C end up in ~55% for Player C, the game should be balanced, eventhough for the point of Player B, it's imbalanced since he loses a lot. Personal skill in different matchups is accounted for and everyone should be happy.


Ofc as mentioned, there are more intelligent people whos job it is to calculate that stuff. They had month to figure everything out, i though of this in about a minute so i might be totally wrong.


This isn't the main problem. The main problem is if race X is UP in all both mathcups. Then blizzards statisctics wont be able to realize that all players of race x actually have to low an mmr. If they used stats like average mmr of races they would have to assume that players of different skills are somewhat evenly distributed over the different leagues, however that is most likely not true.


They can still see it when the MMR of many players against one race is higher than against the other races.

Example:
We can assume that over all Protoss players, their relative skill in other matchups is about even or the difference is statistically insignificant. Taking all 500'000 protoss into account, some are stronger in other matchups, some are weaker. Some are better in mirror matches, some are worse.
With that much data, it will even out.

We can then check the MMR of the mirror match compared to the other players MMR in mirror matches and check the results of the match.
For each player we go through each match, show how the person has faired in mirror matches, check the others MMR (again: by mirror) and check who should win. Then we look at who really won and compare the results. If the win was unexpected, we note it and move to the next game.

For a single game, the results will be wrong. Everyone can have a bad day, made a mistake, etc., but statistically, over the huge number of games, the results will even out. Not perfectly, for that the number is still too low, but good enough to show big differences (that might be why they say that between 45% and 55% there is no reason for concern. It's just statistics after all).

If we then find out that Protoss only wins 80% of the matches they should have won, we can put it down as 40% winrate for Protoss and therefor a big imbalance.


Anyways, as i said, there are people who think about it 8 hours a day 5 days a week. They are not stupid, they learned that stuff and know more about it than we do. They have a lot more data than we have access to and more than we might even assume, so we should trust that they don't just pull numbers out of their a**, just because we don't know how they do it.


Those very smart people, thinking about this 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, are also governed by deadlines, budgetting and compromising due to demands of managers, programmers and networking technicians. What they can think up as a perfect system isn't necessarily what they end up shipping. I'd like to point you to the state of bnet 2.0 at launch for a pretty clear example of "very smart people" shipping absolute garbage.

Blind faith in corporations is a bad idea.
MockHamill
Profile Joined March 2010
Sweden1798 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-09-30 21:52:04
September 30 2011 21:50 GMT
#130
It is not complicated at all to create skill-adjusted-win-percentages.

1. Create separate bell curves for each race. Place every single Zerg player on the the Zerg bell curve based on their MMR. Do the same for Terran and Protoss.
2. Compare the outcome of matches between Protoss and Zerg players at the same place at each race bell cure.
3. If Zerg players that are top 5.5-6.5% in skill on the Zerg bell curve win 60% of their matches against Protoss players that are on top 5.5-6.5% on the Protoss bell curve, there is an imbalance at that specific skill range.

This assumes that that for most of the curve the skill of the players of the races are about the same. This is very likely given the huge amount of players. However, very far out on the curve it is possible this does not hold true due to the numbers of players at those positions on the curve are so few.
Prev 1 5 6 7 All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
The PiG Daily
22:30
Best Games of GSTL
PiGStarcraft640
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
PiGStarcraft640
RuFF_SC2 168
PiLiPiLi 19
StarCraft: Brood War
Terrorterran 11
Icarus 6
Dota 2
NeuroSwarm164
LuMiX1
Counter-Strike
fl0m3505
taco 544
minikerr75
Other Games
summit1g9027
C9.Mang0137
ViBE125
[ Show 13 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Hupsaiya 80
• EnkiAlexander 56
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• masondota21993
League of Legends
• Lourlo404
• Stunt177
Upcoming Events
CranKy Ducklings
6h 54m
WardiTV Invitational
7h 54m
Cure vs Zoun
SHIN vs Classic
ByuN vs MaxPax
Percival vs YoungYakov
AI Arena Tournament
13h 54m
OSC
17h 24m
Sparkling Tuna Cup
1d 6h
WardiTV Invitational
1d 7h
Shopify Rebellion Sundays
1d 11h
Spirit vs Mixu
Clem vs TBD
RSL Revival
1d 12h
Serral vs Rogue
BlizzCon
1d 15h
IdrA vs MC
Replay Cast
1d 20h
[ Show More ]
Afreeca Starleague
2 days
Light vs JyJ
Soulkey vs hero
WardiTV Weekly
2 days
Monday Night Weeklies
2 days
Afreeca Starleague
3 days
Snow vs Shinee
Shine vs EffOrt
GSL
3 days
PiGosaur Cup
3 days
The PondCast
4 days
Kung Fu Cup
4 days
Replay Cast
4 days
KCM Race Survival
5 days
IntoTheTV X SOOP
5 days
Replay Cast
5 days
IntoTheTV X SOOP
6 days
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Acropolis #5 - TRS
PiG Sty Festival 8.0
Big Dog Cup 2026 Div 1

Ongoing

KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3
K-JUNGMAN
ASL Season 22
Super Anchor Qualifying S3
CSL 2026 AUTUMN (S22)
Acropolis #5
Acropolis #5 - GSA
RSL Revival: Season 6
Calamity Invitational
FISSURE Playground #3
BLAST Open Fall 2026
Esports World Cup 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026

Upcoming

Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
Acropolis #5 - GSB
Acropolis #5 - GSC
SC4ALL II: Brood War
HSC XXX
Stellar Fest 2: Lunar Cup
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Offline Finals
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
PGL Major Singapore 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 6
BLAST Rivals Fall 2026
IEM Beijing 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 5
PGL Masters Bucharest 2026
1win Private Club #2
Thunderpick World Champ. '26
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
1win Private Club #1
Logitech G Play Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.