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Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 1038

Forum Index > SC2 General
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Awin
Profile Joined June 2014
France65 Posts
July 28 2014 11:29 GMT
#20741
As I said, the global distribution is close to 33/33/33 because of the important number of terran in bronze/silver. And this doesn't mean Terran is UP (balance is irrelevant in those leagues)

In statistics, it is common to remove extreme values to have a better vision of your data. If you want a more accurate distribution of starcraft 2 players, removing bronze/silver league as well as GM may be a good idea. Then the distribution will be closer to 37/31/31. It doesn't mean zerg is easier and protoss/terran has the same difficulty, it just represents the average number of players playing the game "seriously".

And i do think we can find explanation to this figures:
- in lower leagues, people are likely to choose terran because the macro looks a lot more like other rts game ( a town hall that creates workers, barracks where you can queue units, depot supply)
- people who play the game at higher level are probably aware of the competitive scene and so having very popular zerg players (JD the "korean legend from broodward", Stephano the used to be "best foreigner", TLO the "most creative player") may have an impact on the race they decide to play

Of course, having 31% for protoss and terran and the number of major tournaments won by protoss can legitimately be interpreted as you say.

And please, do not use figures from 2011, those are not relevant anymore
Faust852
Profile Joined February 2012
Luxembourg4004 Posts
July 28 2014 11:41 GMT
#20742
On July 28 2014 20:29 Awin wrote:
As I said, the global distribution is close to 33/33/33 because of the important number of terran in bronze/silver. And this doesn't mean Terran is UP (balance is irrelevant in those leagues)

In statistics, it is common to remove extreme values to have a better vision of your data. If you want a more accurate distribution of starcraft 2 players, removing bronze/silver league as well as GM may be a good idea. Then the distribution will be closer to 37/31/31. It doesn't mean zerg is easier and protoss/terran has the same difficulty, it just represents the average number of players playing the game "seriously".

And i do think we can find explanation to this figures:
- in lower leagues, people are likely to choose terran because the macro looks a lot more like other rts game ( a town hall that creates workers, barracks where you can queue units, depot supply)
- people who play the game at higher level are probably aware of the competitive scene and so having very popular zerg players (JD the "korean legend from broodward", Stephano the used to be "best foreigner", TLO the "most creative player") may have an impact on the race they decide to play

Of course, having 31% for protoss and terran and the number of major tournaments won by protoss can legitimately be interpreted as you say.

And please, do not use figures from 2011, those are not relevant anymore


Why ? We used to have an even number of high caliber players per race, there is no reason they disapeared but because of balance issue.
Awin
Profile Joined June 2014
France65 Posts
July 28 2014 11:54 GMT
#20743
Of course there are other reason: players can retire, be tired of re adapting in the new metagame after patches, don't enjoy the game anymore. Plus the new high caliber player are not necessarely uniformly distribued among the 3 races (because the pool of player between gold and master is not)


pure.Wasted
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada4701 Posts
July 28 2014 11:57 GMT
#20744
On July 28 2014 20:54 Awin wrote:Plus the new high caliber player are not necessarely uniformly distribued among the 3 races (because the pool of player between gold and master is not)


You're literally saying "there aren't more Terrans in GM because there aren't more Terrans in GM."
INna Maru-da-FanTa, Bbaby, TY Dream that I'm Flashing you
Hider
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Denmark9433 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-07-28 12:32:46
July 28 2014 11:58 GMT
#20745
On July 28 2014 20:29 Awin wrote:
As I said, the global distribution is close to 33/33/33 because of the important number of terran in bronze/silver. And this doesn't mean Terran is UP (balance is irrelevant in those leagues)

In statistics, it is common to remove extreme values to have a better vision of your data. If you want a more accurate distribution of starcraft 2 players, removing bronze/silver league as well as GM may be a good idea. Then the distribution will be closer to 37/31/31. It doesn't mean zerg is easier and protoss/terran has the same difficulty, it just represents the average number of players playing the game "seriously".

And i do think we can find explanation to this figures:
- in lower leagues, people are likely to choose terran because the macro looks a lot more like other rts game ( a town hall that creates workers, barracks where you can queue units, depot supply)
- people who play the game at higher level are probably aware of the competitive scene and so having very popular zerg players (JD the "korean legend from broodward", Stephano the used to be "best foreigner", TLO the "most creative player") may have an impact on the race they decide to play

Of course, having 31% for protoss and terran and the number of major tournaments won by protoss can legitimately be interpreted as you say.

And please, do not use figures from 2011, those are not relevant anymore


That didn't answer my question.

Also no statistician in their right mind would mistaken bronze/silver-players as being part of the outlier-phenonema that you are trying to make it out to be.

- in lower leagues, people are likely to choose terran because the macro looks a lot more like other rts game ( a town hall that creates workers, barracks where you can queue units, depot supply)


This could have been an argument back in early WOL where terran FYI was overpresented in both the higher leagues and the lower leagues.
But today it's just nonsense. What is more likely is that those casuals who chose terran in early WOL becasue of the "simpliciticty" of the race have quitted the game today which explains why zerg is now a more played race.

- people who play the game at higher level are probably aware of the competitive scene and so having very popular zerg players (JD the "korean legend from broodward", Stephano the used to be "best foreigner", TLO the "most creative player") may have an impact on the race they decide to play


Stephano, JD weren't stars in early WOL, so you are now implying that people who played their own race for a while would suddenly just switch because a couple of relatively succesful guys played another race. Further, how does this explain protoss doing so well?

Following your argument, wouldn't it be more likely that more players would have chose terran early WOL due to the popularity of early terran heroes such as MVP, MarineKing and the foreign hope Jinro...... If anything, I believe terran for the majority of Sc2 has had the most popular players.

But in the end, I think both of these arguments doesn't matter in the bigger picture, and if you think about it, those people who switch race because their idols play another race, aren't they more likely to be casuals than competitive?
Faust852
Profile Joined February 2012
Luxembourg4004 Posts
July 28 2014 11:58 GMT
#20746
So you are saying Terrans are more encline to retire or adapt to the meta ? For no reason ? This is stupid and you have no proof of what you claim.
But I do have proof of what I'm saying : terran has been hugely UP in the end of WoL and it's been at least 6 months that terran sucks because of balance issues. Blizzard admitted it and it is common knowledge between non-blinded-by-bias people.
Big J
Profile Joined March 2011
Austria16289 Posts
July 28 2014 12:01 GMT
#20747
These kinds of ladder stats are hard to interprete imo.
It's obvious that there is a connection between balance and player distribution compared to overall player distribution.

But in general, we don't know the reasons why someone plays some race. It's already amazing in my opinion, that we get such close numbers of players for each of the races. I would not have expected this when SC2 came out, it feels much more natural that a lot of people will just pick some race and stick with it forever, with the picking being hugely influenced by some factors of taste.

And I think, all of that given, the player distributions just aren't bad currently to even start a discussion on the situation. We get like what, 80-50-60 at worst in the biggest regions GM? 500-400-600 in Masters? I think nearly everybody would be quite OK if the tournament distributions in representation/wins/later rounds would stabilize at this level.
submarine
Profile Joined March 2012
Germany290 Posts
July 28 2014 12:01 GMT
#20748
On July 28 2014 20:54 Awin wrote:
Of course there are other reason: players can retire, be tired of re adapting in the new metagame after patches, don't enjoy the game anymore. Plus the new high caliber player are not necessarely uniformly distribued among the 3 races (because the pool of player between gold and master is not)



Why do you cut off at gold league? (You do not happen to be in gold league ? :-) ).
IMHO the current race distribution just looks like terran is harder to play. The terran population is shifted down a league.
ejozl
Profile Joined October 2010
Denmark3482 Posts
July 28 2014 12:25 GMT
#20749
I think people underwhelm how much pro players/personalities in the community can have effect on race destribution.
When Idra played there was so much talk about Zerg and people complained about Terran being the bullshit race.
Moonglade is the soul reason Australia has only Zergs.
When Boxer played in GSL everyone in Korea was playing Terran and they never did so well.
In the BL/Infestor era, people were rallying behind Stephano, Korea had their versions aswell.

Now lets say Protoss have been imbalanced, or at least is being well represented in the best of the Korean leagues and lets
imagine that this race is not imbalanced anymore, there's still gonna be a whole ton of Koreans figuring out the Protoss metagame. The same can be said about underrepresentation, Terran did extremely poorly in an era and now people switched from Terran, can't find motivation, or have other reason. Being 3 players against the world is an impossible task.

I'm not saying it's the end all be all, but it definitely plays it's factors.
SC2 Archon needs "Terrible, terrible damage" as one of it's quotes.
Awin
Profile Joined June 2014
France65 Posts
July 28 2014 12:30 GMT
#20750
On July 28 2014 20:58 Faust852 wrote:
So you are saying Terrans are more encline to retire or adapt to the meta ? For no reason ? This is stupid and you have no proof of what you claim.
But I do have proof of what I'm saying : terran has been hugely UP in the end of WoL and it's been at least 6 months that terran sucks because of balance issues. Blizzard admitted it and it is common knowledge between non-blinded-by-bias people.



No i am not saying that. I am saying that having a different distribution now than the perfect one in 2011 is perfectly normal, actually the contrary would be strange. There are not a lot of very good players so if 2 or 3 decide to leave the game it changes the figures a lot.
Plus there are no reason for the new pros to have the same race than the one who left,

Once again, given the few numbers we are talking about, having a perfect 33/33/33 distribution in pro level would be very strange.

And if you have proof of what you re saying, share it cause i don t see any (plus i don't entirely disagree with this, my original post was just to explain that, in my opinion, we can explain the players distribution among races with other things than balance and that the 33/33/33 distribution is a myth)

I didn't select bronze and silver not because I am gold ( i am diamond) but because i do think balance doesn t matter AT ALL in those leagues : just look some bronze league heroes by Husky, they just play a entirely different game.
Deleted User 137586
Profile Joined January 2011
7859 Posts
July 28 2014 12:47 GMT
#20751
I'm one of those Silver terrans now that I've stopped playing due to the automatic mmr decay blizz introduced (I generally play a game or two per season nearly by accident) . I stopped playing because it's no fun going against P. And I've directly contributed to the reduction of terrans in higher leagues.
Cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war
Faust852
Profile Joined February 2012
Luxembourg4004 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-07-28 12:59:56
July 28 2014 12:59 GMT
#20752
On July 28 2014 21:30 Awin wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 28 2014 20:58 Faust852 wrote:
So you are saying Terrans are more encline to retire or adapt to the meta ? For no reason ? This is stupid and you have no proof of what you claim.
But I do have proof of what I'm saying : terran has been hugely UP in the end of WoL and it's been at least 6 months that terran sucks because of balance issues. Blizzard admitted it and it is common knowledge between non-blinded-by-bias people.



No i am not saying that. I am saying that having a different distribution now than the perfect one in 2011 is perfectly normal, actually the contrary would be strange. There are not a lot of very good players so if 2 or 3 decide to leave the game it changes the figures a lot.
Plus there are no reason for the new pros to have the same race than the one who left,

Once again, given the few numbers we are talking about, having a perfect 33/33/33 distribution in pro level would be very strange.

And if you have proof of what you re saying, share it cause i don t see any (plus i don't entirely disagree with this, my original post was just to explain that, in my opinion, we can explain the players distribution among races with other things than balance and that the 33/33/33 distribution is a myth)

I didn't select bronze and silver not because I am gold ( i am diamond) but because i do think balance doesn t matter AT ALL in those leagues : just look some bronze league heroes by Husky, they just play a entirely different game.


You think that 2/3 peoples would change figures a lot but it's in no way true. There are hundreds of players (300+ for each race) that appears every list on Aligulac. To have such an impact you would need dozens of retirement from the same race to be true.
Awin
Profile Joined June 2014
France65 Posts
July 28 2014 13:11 GMT
#20753
Well, people keep talking of the number of terran in code S so i thought it was your criteria for "high calliber players"
Big J
Profile Joined March 2011
Austria16289 Posts
July 28 2014 13:19 GMT
#20754
On July 28 2014 21:47 Ghanburighan wrote:
I'm one of those Silver terrans now that I've stopped playing due to the automatic mmr decay blizz introduced (I generally play a game or two per season nearly by accident) . I stopped playing because it's no fun going against P. And I've directly contributed to the reduction of terrans in higher leagues.


Sometimes I wonder whether the only reason why blizzard doesn't implement choosing matchups is that then half of the playerbase would immidiatly veto vs Protoss...
Awin
Profile Joined June 2014
France65 Posts
July 28 2014 13:32 GMT
#20755
Pro players would probably love to be able to veto match up for training purpose
Big J
Profile Joined March 2011
Austria16289 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-07-28 14:59:12
July 28 2014 13:45 GMT
#20756
On July 28 2014 22:32 Awin wrote:
Pro players would probably love to be able to veto match up for training purpose


And nearly every downside would only apply to the player who chooses the matchups, but hardly anything would apply to his opponent.
Like, say one player only plays TvZ and becomes really good at it. Is this unfair to his opponent? No, because the whole MMR of said player is based upon TvZ, so his MMR still only puts him up against opponents of equal skill in TvZ (just probably higher skill in the other matchups).
Say you have long queuing times because of only choosing 1matchup. Well, then choose more matchups, it's your own fault.

The only real argument in terms of worse playing experience is that if people play less matchups, the queing times overall might increase. On the flipside, the queuing times might also decrease if people get slower frustrated playing or more people play because of a more enjoyable experience. Also, if you really give an option for a complete customization, it might not even make such a big difference. E.g. in my case, I might queue for ZvT, TvZ, ZvP. So regardless of the opponent, I would still get matched against everybody queing regularily (in ranked). Just in case of a Zerg, I'd be Terran instead of Zerg.
And it would still only be unranked, so the bigger part of the playerbase in ranked may still rank regulairly.
And even if the queing times change by 15seconds, it's still not that much.
Awin
Profile Joined June 2014
France65 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-07-28 14:11:09
July 28 2014 14:07 GMT
#20757
Also I am zerg and I would love to play as protoss but only PvZ in order to practice a specific build order that i find hard to deal with as a zerg (I don't care about pvp or pvt)

Plus people would be less encline to whine about balance if they can play a specific match up in both sides

Edit : one other big advantage : in mirrors match up, if you lose against a build order, you can try it the next time you play, Playing both sides of a match up would allowed you to see how other zergs from your league for example deal with a 7 gate all in
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26360 Posts
July 28 2014 14:57 GMT
#20758
On July 28 2014 22:45 Big J wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 28 2014 22:32 Awin wrote:
Pro players would probably love to be able to veto match up for training purpose


And nearly every downside would only apply to the player who chooses the matchups, but hardly anything would apply to his opponent.
Like, say one player only plays TvZ and becomes really good at it. Is this unfair to his opponent? No, because the whole MMR of the other player is based upon TvZ, so his MMR still only puts him up against opponents of equal skill in TvZ (just probably higher skill in the ohter matchups).
Say you have long queuing times because of only choosing 1matchup. Well, then choose more matchups, it's your own fault.

The only real argument in terms of worse playing experience is that if people play less matchups, the queing times overall might increase. On the flipside, the queuing times might also decrease if people get slower frustrated playing or more people play because of a more enjoyable experience. Also, if you really give an option for a complete customization, it might not even make such a big difference. E.g. in my case, I might queue for ZvT, TvZ, ZvP. So regardless of the opponent, I would still get matched against everybody queing regularily (in ranked). Just in case of a Zerg, I'd be Terran instead of Zerg.
And it would still only be unranked, so the bigger part of the playerbase in ranked may still rank regulairly.
And even if the queing times change by 15seconds, it's still not that much.

This is a great idea, especially for unranked.
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
_Epi_
Profile Joined February 2014
Germany158 Posts
July 28 2014 15:10 GMT
#20759
On July 28 2014 22:32 Awin wrote:
Pro players would probably love to be able to veto match up for training purpose

Wouldnt be unreasonable to have that option at least for unranked matchmaking
Ovid
Profile Blog Joined October 2013
United Kingdom948 Posts
July 28 2014 15:43 GMT
#20760
On July 28 2014 22:32 Awin wrote:
Pro players would probably love to be able to veto match up for training purpose


Would be pointless since they train against other pros in custom games. Not all of them but lots.
I will make Yogg Saron priest work...
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