Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 1097

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KOtical

Germany451 Posts

September 21 2014 14:20 GMT

#21921

im a terran player myself, and after watcching latest pro games it seems the widow mine is a bit to strong again, should be a bit weaker but not as weak is it has been before... just my oppinion.

SC2Toastie

Netherlands5725 Posts

September 21 2014 14:21 GMT

#21922

On September 21 2014 23:13 RaFox17 wrote:

Show nested quote +

Kinda have agree with Big J in that when you look how many major tournaments zerg has won and the whine about OP zerg one would have thought zerg was winning left and right but it´s mainly P and T players that have won big tournaments. You can argue about the reasons for that but thats how things are.

I'd like to argue about those reasons, it sounds like an interesting subject.

What could be reasons for Zerg "slacking" in the big tournaments in the past 4 years?
A. Zerg doesn't lend itself well to preparation tournaments? Zerg is a very reactive and flexible race but lacks the ability to take initiative or force a game/series into a certain direction. This makes Zerg weaker as you approach best of 5/7 formats.
B. Zerg as a race, because of it's defensive nature, suffers badly from innovative play by the other races. There's always a delay between a new pressure build coming out and the defending race finding a strong and efficient defense. Especially in the first years of a new game/expansion, new builds still pop up and Zerg is the race that suffers mostly from that.
C. Zerg has trouble finishing a game of. If you reach lategame in ZvP/ZvT, Zerg has a pretty easy time throwing a lead because Zerg is terrible at breaking a defense. You can't close the game out, grow impatient and make mistakes. That costs even the best Zergs a couple of games.
D. Luck of the draw? The sample size of Premier Tournament Winners is tiny and might be cherrypicked.

Go ahead

This might become and interesting discussion!

Deleted User 137586

7859 Posts

September 21 2014 14:28 GMT

#21923

I'd just like to point out that `premier tournaments' is not a very good metric as there are very different tournaments lumped in there. A good way to show this is just to take the money paid out to first place. If you look only at 2014, the first place positions of P have paid out 928,962 dollars, the first places of Zergs have paid out 260,800 dollars and the first places of T have paid out 175,000. So despite T winning more premier tournaments, they have been less prominent tournaments with exactly 25,000 dollar first places. At the same time P has been winning all but one of the big ones except for WCSAM season 1 won by Hyun.

Faust852

Luxembourg4004 Posts

September 21 2014 14:29 GMT

#21924

i'll just stay with the Performance Difference graph from Aligulac to decide if a race if dominating or is not. It represents greatly how it felt if I recall back. Terrans dominated 2010 and the 1st half of 2011, then things were balanced for a while (with P a bit behind) till mid 2012 with the queen patch, which led to a big zerg dominance for the rest of WoL.
T came back as OP for the first months of HotS, but a bunch of changes made the game even then made T shitty and P kinda OP, then it was the Zerg turn. And now we are at another crossroad where it's still too soon to draw conclusions, but T looks a little bit ahead, and we will see how it evolves in time.

Deleted User 137586

7859 Posts

September 21 2014 14:35 GMT

#21925

While I have the numbers open, let's throw out one more thing. An argument often put forward is that a race is OP if many different players succeed, instead of having a (or a couple of) leading player(s). Well, one way to test for it (in a superficial manner) is to remove the top player for the race and calculate the winnings then. If the prize money drops significantly, the race is probably not OP.

For T, the winnings drop by 3 Taeja victories from 175,000 to 100,000.

For Z, the winnings drop by Hyun's victory from 260,800 to 129,900.

For P, the winnings drop by Zest's 3 victories from 928,962 to 679,696.

MockHamill

Sweden1798 Posts

September 21 2014 14:36 GMT

#21926

The game is in in good place. Anything can be solved by playing better, there is nothing that is OP enough that a patch is needed.

I hope Blizzard do not touch balance before Legacy of the Void.

tomatriedes

New Zealand5356 Posts

September 21 2014 14:42 GMT

#21927

If a buff for zerg is required then I hope they at least make it something fun like nydus canals or neural parasite.

xyzz

567 Posts

September 21 2014 15:17 GMT

#21928

Since recently there's definately been a trend of Terran doing better than the other 2 at premier tournaments. Lots of Terran winners and top 4 finishers. Even multiple TvT finals. Since June, out of 12 premier tournaments that have finished, Terran has won 7 and come second in 4.

Hider

Denmark9342 Posts

September 21 2014 15:18 GMT

#21929

On September 21 2014 23:29 Faust852 wrote:
i'll just stay with the Performance Difference graph from Aligulac to decide if a race if dominating or is not. It represents greatly how it felt if I recall back. Terrans dominated 2010 and the 1st half of 2011, then things were balanced for a while (with P a bit behind) till mid 2012 with the queen patch, which led to a big zerg dominance for the rest of WoL.
T came back as OP for the first months of HotS, but a bunch of changes made the game even then made T shitty and P kinda OP, then it was the Zerg turn. And now we are at another crossroad where it's still too soon to draw conclusions, but T looks a little bit ahead, and we will see how it evolves in time.

Performance difference can only pick up when there is a change in balance. If a race is UP over a longer period of time, its prediction-W/R will decline, which will put it towards 0.

Thus, terran now having a rating above 0, doesn't actually say whether terran is OP or not, but rather that terran is doing better than it did previously

Big J

Austria16289 Posts

September 21 2014 15:23 GMT

#21930

On September 21 2014 23:28 Ghanburighan wrote:
I'd just like to point out that `premier tournaments' is not a very good metric as there are very different tournaments lumped in there. A good way to show this is just to take the money paid out to first place. If you look only at 2014, the first place positions of P have paid out 928,962 dollars, the first places of Zergs have paid out 260,800 dollars and the first places of T have paid out 175,000. So despite T winning more premier tournaments, they have been less prominent tournaments with exactly 25,000 dollar first places. At the same time P has been winning all but one of the big ones except for WCSAM season 1 won by Hyun.

My post about Premiers was also a response to a winrates post, trying to explain why people do feel that way despite winrates not seeming to reflect that. Not so much about PT being the best measure or so. Just that people see Terrans winning a lot and thus come to the theory that Terran is very strong currently.

Also money is also not a good measure either. E.g. IEM Toronto was still probably as stacked as WCS AM or WCS EU or even the 100k IEM Championship.

On September 21 2014 23:21 SC2Toastie wrote:

Show nested quote +

This might become and interesting discussion!

Point D) is actually a massive factor of influence. There is just a certain amount of random influence. If soO wins 3GSLs in a row, we would have all other kinds of discussions...

A), B) and C) are all very similar points and I just don't agree with them a lot, or rather, that they matter a lot. I think we have seen in numerous games that Zergs can be quite tricky. Also I don't think playing sneaky makes champions. Zest, Classic, Dear were all pretty good at macro and actually when they tried to play tricky against soO they lost many more games than they won as far as I remember. sOs being kind of the exception, and not even that in vZ he is very well known for Stargate based macro play.
Neither are any of the stronger Terrans known for sneaky play, it's all about standard and solid play that is very "easy" to prepare for.

Also I don't agree with there being a big delay between aggression and its defense. I more so believe that many players that try to figure offensive play also often just lose because the builds are not refined, e.g. the famous Maru vs Effort Hellbat push with banshee/hellbat on MGR, which turned out to be a weak build variation to begin with. In short, the aggressor also has to figure out what an actually strong variation of his build is to begin with (and whether there even is one).
C) I kind of agree, yet, if a player doesn't have the patience to play a long game he is shit and should lose.
But especially with SHs in the picture and the fact that this is a minor issue against Terran bio play (if you have enough of a lead it's not that hard to finish Terran if he doesn't build tanks), this also swings both ways.

ReMinD_

Croatia846 Posts

September 21 2014 15:24 GMT

#21931

You can use common sense and see that Terran is doing too well now, especially in TvZ.

jojos11

Korea (North)314 Posts

September 21 2014 15:30 GMT

#21932

On September 21 2014 20:18 Ghanburighan wrote:
Aligulac list 119.

[image loading]

Another list period is over, albeit the number of games is still lower than the regular number. Still, there are nearly twice as many games as in 118, so the results should be more representative.

In terms of winrates, P and T are pretty even, with P having a marginal advantage. The change from the previous list was 4 points, from 47% to 51%.

Z and P are also even, with Z having a marginal advantage.The change from the previous list was 1 point, from 48% to 49%.

And T and Z are better than before, but with T having an advantage. The change from the previous list was 2 points, from 56% to 54%.

In terms of population numbers, there were once again many more ZvZs than PvPs or TvTs. With 2.4x more ZvZ than TvT and 1.7x more ZvZ than PvP.

The number of Z games might be explained by the fact that Z is doing better against P, and there being more P than T in competitions.

Overall, no generalizations can really be made from this data, but we can probably soon look at the overall trend once there are more games collected.

Show nested quote +

On September 04 2014 23:37 Ghanburighan wrote:
Aligulac list 118.

[image loading]

Here's the second list after the patch. Let's first look at winrates.

P has clawed back a bit against T (47% versus the previous 45%). P has also lost the same amount of percentage points against Z (47% versus the previous 49%). T significantly improved its result versus Z (56% versus the previous 50%). It should also be noticed (according to preliminary results posted in the thread) that in the beginning of the period the winrates were further away from 50%, while later games allowed both P and Z to make up several percentage points.

It has to be noted, though, that there were only ~1/3 of the games that you usually see in an Aligulac list due to the holidays. So all winrates need to be taken with an even greater bit of salt than usually. (With these low numbers a single 4-0 results in a full percentage point swing).

As for population numbers, they continue to even out. TvTs make up 80% of PvPs while previously they made up 68%. Albeit TvTs make up 46% of ZvZs while last time they made up 58% of ZvZs. And PvPs make up 56% of ZvZs while they previously made up 85% of ZvZs. So ZvZ numbers are on the rise again (Z improved against P both in terms of winrate and population) but the numbers are still in the same ballpark as last time, rather than showing differences of multiple times as before the patch.

On August 21 2014 20:32 Ghanburighan wrote:
Aligulac list 117.

[image loading]

This time we have interesting results. The patch went through on the 25th of July, so both 116 and 117 are pertinent for our analysis.

The first thing to notice, PvT has been consistently at ~45% since the patch. (Down from 48%, 52%, 52%, 50%, 46% in previous lists).

TvZ has been hovering around 50%, which has roughly been the norm over all quoted lists (it sometimes dips to ~46% for short periods).

PvZ has climbed back to ~50%, from a short 47% dip.

Population numbers are becoming more even. TvTs make up 58% of the ZvZs, and PvPs 85% of ZvZs. TvTs also make up 68% of TvTs. This is a marked improvement from the time when there were for example 4x or 5x more ZvZs than TvTs (and smaller advantages for PvPs, still measured as nx).

Population wise, there's also a non-significant improvement for P compared to Z.

The conclusion from the first month after the balance change appears to be that T is doing better, but mostly with respect to games against P. Albeit, you could make the argument that as there are more terrans in tournaments, but the winrates against Z are equal, terrans are actually doing better, it's merely weaker terrans that are losing more.

What's clearly the case is that we can no longer count how many times more ZvZs and PvPs there are than TvTs.

Anyone who actually watched the games should comment further.

On August 08 2014 05:03 Ghanburighan wrote:
Aligulac list 116.

[image loading]

Regarding winrates, T had an edge against P, and a very small edge against T. PvZ is even.

Regarding populations, there were only about twice as many PvPs as TvTs and 2.5x ZvZs as TvTs, so there's improvement.

On July 24 2014 15:32 Ghanburighan wrote:

While we're looking at winrates, here's another Aligulac list:

[image loading]

Just looking at winrates, PvT is rather even, and so is PvZ but TvZ has gone down to the dumps again.

On the other hand, the population numbers are the worst ever for Terran. It looks like T has a constant of around 100 games every period, but with the added number of games (last period has 1799 games, this one 3866), only Z and P seem to have added more mirrors.

So there are 4.8x as many ZvZ as TvT, and 3.8x as many PvP as TvT. This also means that P has once again caught up with Z populations, last period it was 1.3 ZvZ for every 1 PvP, now it's 1.2.

On July 10 2014 20:15 Ghanburighan wrote:
Here's the latest Aligulac list (114) with pretty new formatting.

[image loading]

With regard to P, nothing seems to have changed. Just like the first half of June, P>T by a slight margin, P and Z are roughly even, and there are roughly the same number of PvP MU's in tournaments.

Z did worse in this period, while it was at >55% against T last time, it's now even in winrates.

More importantly, looking at populations, while there were 5x more ZvZ than TvT, and 2x more ZvZ than PvP, then now there are only roughly 3x more ZvZ than TvT, and a just over a fourth more ZvZ than PvPs. This suggests that Z is doing worse, and it's mainly doing worse against T (note that worse doesn't imply that they're doing bad, this is a comparison with the previous period).

Looking more closely at the population numbers, there appear to have been fewer games, the total for 114 is 1835 and for 113 it was 2379.

So for the previous 113 list Z MUs made up 72% of all MUs. P MUs made up 55% (note that the overlap is due to the fact that P plays Z...). T MUs made up 36% of all MUs.

In this list, 114, Z MUs made up 65% of all MUs. P MUs made up 57%. T MUs made up 42% of all MUs.

So Z is down 7%, P is up 2% and T is up 6%. (with rounding)

The previous lists can be found below.

On June 29 2014 05:42 Ghanburighan wrote:
Sorry for the delay, here's Aligulac 113.. The previous list(s) can be found at the end of this post.

[image loading]

Looking at the winrates, P has extended its advantage over T, P has also gained some ground back against Z, yet TvZ has strongly turned in Z favour once gain (it's as bad as it was before the hellbat patch in April).

Population numbers are also worse. Previously there were 4x more ZvZ games than TvT games, now there are more than 5x. PvP's have not changed in number, so it's mostly just less terrans and more zergs getting further that's creating the problem.

All in all, balance-wise this was a very depressing period.

On June 12 2014 15:32 Ghanburighan wrote:
Time to post the latest Aligulac list. The previous list can be found at the end of this post.
[image loading]

Regarding winrates, PvT has fluctuated back from T having a slight advantage to P having a minuscule advantage. In PvZ, P has also improved although it hasn't caught up with Z. On the other hand, T has improved in the TvZ MU (110 had 45%, 111 had 47%) and its even now.

In terms of populations measured in numbers of mirror MUs, there's virtually no change compared to the last list, the proportions are very close. This means that there is no repopulation of terrans according to these numbers and there are 4 times fewer TvTs than ZvZs.

As T MUs have even winrates, there cannot really be a repopulation with these numbers.

Furthermore, a word of caution, I'd say that this was one of the best periods for Terran in a long while, Taeja won Hsc 9 (where Z had a comparatively weaker list of players), Maru is tearing up Code S, and Innovation is kicking as in teamleagues and the Dragon cup. I don't think they contributed overly much to the final winrates (their games are still a small fraction of all the games), but taken together they did contribute significantly. If they don't keep their winning ways going, winrates can plunge below 50% again. And, their wins aren't helping repopulate in any way.

On May 29 2014 02:45 Ghanburighan wrote:
Uploading the latest Aligulac list.

[image loading]

Unfortunately there was a TvZ patch in the middle of the period, so those numbers could be anything now.

But it looks like P is doing worse against Z in terms of winrate. But the population ratios haven't changed compared to the last list, though. It's still roughly 1/4 TvT, 2/4 PvP and 1/1 ZvZ.

loved how terran getting patch after patch despite having a stable winrate lol

parkufarku

882 Posts

September 21 2014 15:35 GMT

#21933

Terran players citing Aligulac to try to make it seem their race isn't OP right now...disgusting cherry-picking sources. Everyone knows Aligulac isn't a good representation of data

Tyrhanius

France947 Posts

September 21 2014 15:43 GMT

#21934

Just remove the Hive requirement for 3/3 upgrades. Zerg has to pay : Infest pit :100/100 + Hive 200/150 + the building time to pay 500/500 to catch with T upgrades while they have a composition that cost a lot of more gaz than the T and which is less cost effective.

Thieving Magpie

United States6752 Posts

September 21 2014 15:46 GMT

#21935

On September 21 2014 21:17 Ghanburighan wrote:

Show nested quote +

What happened? I just saw the results, Scarlett lost to Cure and Polt 2-1, which I thought was a better than expected result (at least against Cure). What were the games like?

It was actually the Polt game.

She won game 1, was ahead game two and three until widow mine shots destroyed her clumped up banes.

I can see how some players would get upset by tide turning moments like that. Realistically the answer is to not clump up banes when your opponent has been using widowmines for the past 45 minutes, but people like to use emotions to dictate balance.

Grumbels

Netherlands7028 Posts

September 21 2014 16:01 GMT

#21936

On September 22 2014 00:43 Tyrhanius wrote:
Just remove the Hive requirement for 3/3 upgrades. Zerg has to pay : Infest pit :100/100 + Hive 200/150 + the building time to pay 500/500 to catch with T upgrades while they have a composition that cost a lot of more gaz than the T and which is less cost effective.

That's just differences between races. Tech is more difficult to unlock for zerg, but with larva they are better at tech switches. The only real anomaly is having slower 3/3 upgrades, which doesn't fit in the overall trade-off scheme.

Hider

Denmark9342 Posts

September 21 2014 16:02 GMT

#21937

There was one big widow mine hit in the game vs polt. Mostly it was clumped up mutas dying to Thors and banelings going afk during the battle for a brief period. And her preengagement wasnt good either and she stayed too long losing additional mutas to marines

TokO

Norway577 Posts

September 21 2014 16:09 GMT

#21938

Having 50% win percentages across the board doesn't necessarily mean that the game is balanced though, as there might be underlying factors causing a skew in performance, and win-percent balancing might compensate for something outside of gameplay that is causing fluctuations.

sibs

635 Posts

September 21 2014 16:19 GMT

#21939

0 Zergs already on aligulac's top10, 7 Terran's though, pretty fast change, compared to before the patch.

I feel TvZ at high-levels really favors terran, early/mid game is all about Z not suffering game ending damage, terran's harrassment is varied and cheap enough that the zerg can't really get ahead, if you do make it to the 10min mark, then you have survive terran having an easier time getting better trades... I guess Zerg has an advantage if they survive for 20minutes get 3/3 or a massive muta ball? I see Zerg winning mostly with all ins, it's basically the same shit as when hots was released, it's funny people said that it was solved because of 1 series.

r691175002

249 Posts

September 21 2014 16:26 GMT

#21940

Since all the Protoss seem to be coming out of the woodwork, let me ensure everyone is on the same page with facts here.
Protoss:
[image loading]

That is 12/16 tournaments over a 6 month period, with terran not winning a single one.

Broodlord:
[image loading]

That is 10/18 tournaments over a 5 month period, with terran at 2 and protoss at 6.

Anyone who claims broodlord infestor was the worst period in sc2 is uninformed or lying.

Zerg seems to have been hit very hard by the recent patch (Expected, considering both patches affected tvz more than tvp), but I don't expect anything before blizcon.

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