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r691175002
249 Posts
Here are some questions that actually matter: Do you expect this period of Terran strength to continue going forward? Will the gap widen or become smaller as the metagame develops? At what point do you think Blizzard should pursue corrective action? Can the issue be resolved with a new map pool or does it need a patch? There is no point whining about something as transient as winrates if you are not willing to make your position clear. | ||
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10bulgares
352 Posts
On October 14 2014 22:55 Thieving Magpie wrote: No disagreements here. Just look a few pages back when I praised antiRW's efforts. I'm saying that they are different stats that show different things. It's a philosophical difference on how should things be judged. For example. If the game is 50% for the totality, but 60/40 for the minority, then patching the top 50 players so they are 50/50 will make the totality 40/60 Now, if you don't ladder and only watch SC2 then that is okay. If you ony play SC2 and don't watch it won't be okay. I am in favor of the representative minority argument--and hence why I argued earlier in the thread that "if Maru can consistently do well vs Protoss then terrans can't complain about imbalance" I'm not sure you're correct. If the 50% win rate for lower level players depends on the highest level of randomness for players with lower skills, it can very well stay there with the hypothetical patch (not necessarily but very possibly). | ||
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cptjibberjabber
Netherlands87 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:00 r691175002 wrote: After the past few tournaments it is fairly clear Terran is strong right now. That isn't really up for debate, nor is it an interesting topic for discussion. Here are some questions that actually matter: Do you expect this period of Terran strength to continue going forward? Will the gap widen or become smaller as the metagame develops? At what point do you think Blizzard should pursue corrective action? Can the issue be resolved with a new map pool or does it need a patch? There is no point whining about something as transient as winrates if you are not willing to make your position clear. I have been out of the loop for a while. What buffs did terran actually get? The widow mine re-buff, the useless thor buff and the changing map pool, right? I think we can all agree that making the widow mine the new bunker build time isn't going to work. It's simply too small of a band to allow for proper balance. Either it's underpowered which leaves terran with no proper AoE, or it's overpowered and zergs and mineral lines (and now zealots and HT too) get mutilated. This points to a completely different problem, being the fact that terran has no dependable AoE (except the widow mine atm), and without it they apparently do nothing but lose. If there was another way or another strategy or another unit composition possible, i'm pretty sure we'd have seen it by now. And to be honest, i don't have a clue on how to fix it. Everyone says to buff the siege tank, and I would agree with that because siege tanks are awesome but muta's wreck siege tanks in any number which makes us go back to WoL 2/2 pushes. the Hellbat is nice against zergs that still have to drone, but otherwise you get these scenario's where zergs make 80 banelings vs 75 marines and GG WP. I'm so very tired of seeing the same unit compositions from terran over and over again, and playing with the same marines and medivacs over and over again. I wish there was something else to do. It's the reason i've started playing mech vs protoss, just because i'm so F*ing bored of MMM(M/H). | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:17 10bulgares wrote: I'm not sure you're correct. If the 50% win rate for lower level players depends on the highest level of randomness for players with lower skills, it can very well stay there with the hypothetical patch (not necessarily but very possibly). You do know that that "lower skills" category of players (according to antiRW's calculations) is the top 51-100 players on Aligulac? We're not talking GM here, we are talking the bottom half of the top 100 players of the world. According to antiRW's numbers: 1-50: 55%-60% 51-100: 50%-55% In reference to the totality of Aligulac at the time period when antiRW got his numbers: 48% The lower the ranking on Aligulac, the lower the terran winrate. I am sure there are also people who believe ladder winrates follow a similar trend. I don't have those numbers so I can't really add them to my argument--but what I am saying is that the game isn't 50% because of the "wide range of skills of the totality" the game is 50% over infinite games because it is a balanced game. Lets move to coin flipping. Flipping a coin 1-17 times does not show a 50% chance for heads. Only flipping a coin an infinite number of times does that. If you only count the most recent coin flips, the coin will always look imba and so you get to argue that heads is OP or tails is OP by ignoring the totality of flips made. The same is true with SC2. If you only get a select amount of results, it will always look imba no matter how balanced the game is because its not until you look at the totality of games that you see if the game actually is balanced or not. However: one always has to talk about significant population groups with vested interests. People who enjoy watching SC2 only want the games to be 50% amongst the top X% of players. People who only enjoy playing SC2 (but don't watch it) only want games to be 50% amongst the totality. People who enjoy both playing and watching SC2 do a yoyo where they will always complain when one or the other isn't 50% Since I enjoy watching SC2, I am biased into thinking that we should only care about the top X% of players. But it is a bias, its not "objectively better" than the other options. People think they want option 3, but option 3 is only possible if you water down the game to the point where there is zero skill ceiling in mechanical execution. The only 2 options available is whether the game should be balanced for players of the game, or watchers of the game. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26459 Posts
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Maniak_
France305 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:17 cptjibberjabber wrote: I have been out of the loop for a while. What buffs did terran actually get? The widow mine re-buff, the useless thor buff and the changing map pool, right? In the latest balance patch yes (though if you find the thor buff useless, you must not have been watching the same games). However unless you believe that the metagame was 100% explored, known and fixed at the time of this patch but was still evolving, you have to include the previous patches too. Which means: 2.0.9: - banshee cloak research cost 200/200 -> 100/100 2.0.12: - mech ground/air attack upgrades combined - tank attack speed +10% 2.1: - free ghost energy upgrade - mine damage doubled vs shield 2.1.2: - free hellion transformation upgrade 2.1.3: - mine splash damage back to full - thor prioritize air combat units over ground | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:40 Wombat_NI wrote: Thor buff is a bigger deal than I think myself and many others thought, don't think it's swung the matchup of TvZ massively but it was a bigger change than I'd initially thought it would have been It was huge! Mostly because I can't tell you how many games I've lost watching the 1-2 thors I made hitting lings instead of mutalisks with me yelling at the screen "I didn't cut 2 tanks worth of supply from my army to have a no-splash thor hit the things my marines can beat!" | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
Either it's underpowered which leaves terran with no proper AoE, or it's overpowered and zergs and mineral lines (and now zealots and HT too) get mutilated. I don't think it is necessarily overpowered currently. However, I think the real tragedy here is this: Terran had diversity in strategies, as Blizzard had so kindly wished, but those strategies had also something uncalled-for in common: they were all equally insufficient against solid Zerg play. Instead of doing something that had the chance to make all of the diverse strategies sufficient - which is to nerf a common Zerg evil, e.g. the mutalisk - blizzard buffed a single one of the 3-4 insufficient Terran strategies. Imo they should have basically done with the mutalisk and zerg what they did with the mine and Terran: a) nerf the mutalisk and start to give some tiny redemption (similar to what they did with the banshee when they nerfed hellbat drops and to Mech when they nerfed the widow mine) - this would possibly drop Zerg winrate a little below balance b) give some more redemptions, eventually increasing variety for Zerg (drops, roach/hydra, vipers vs bio, infestors, broodlords... tons of good targets around that you could probably specifically patch) and returning to balance With the result that instead of Muta/ling/bling vs 4M as we have it now all day everyday, we could have had multiple equal options for Terran and Zerg: 4M, hellbat/bio, biomech, Mech vs muta/ling/bling, ling/bling/infestor/ultra, roach/hydra/viper | ||
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10bulgares
352 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:32 Thieving Magpie wrote: You do know that that "lower skills" category of players (according to antiRW's calculations) is the top 51-100 players on Aligulac? We're not talking GM here, we are talking the bottom half of the top 100 players of the world. According to antiRW's numbers: 1-50: 55%-60% 51-100: 50%-55% In reference to the totality of Aligulac at the time period when antiRW got his numbers: 48% The lower the ranking on Aligulac, the lower the terran winrate. I am sure there are also people who believe ladder winrates follow a similar trend. I don't have those numbers so I can't really add them to my argument--but what I am saying is that the game isn't 50% because of the "wide range of skills of the totality" the game is 50% over infinite games because it is a balanced game. Lets move to coin flipping. Flipping a coin 1-17 times does not show a 50% chance for heads. Only flipping a coin an infinite number of times does that. If you only count the most recent coin flips, the coin will always look imba and so you get to argue that heads is OP or tails is OP by ignoring the totality of flips made. The same is true with SC2. If you only get a select amount of results, it will always look imba no matter how balanced the game is because its not until you look at the totality of games that you see if the game actually is balanced or not. However: one always has to talk about significant population groups with vested interests. People who enjoy watching SC2 only want the games to be 50% amongst the top X% of players. People who only enjoy playing SC2 (but don't watch it) only want games to be 50% amongst the totality. People who enjoy both playing and watching SC2 do a yoyo where they will always complain when one or the other isn't 50% Since I enjoy watching SC2, I am biased into thinking that we should only care about the top X% of players. But it is a bias, its not "objectively better" than the other options. People think they want option 3, but option 3 is only possible if you water down the game to the point where there is zero skill ceiling in mechanical execution. The only 2 options available is whether the game should be balanced for players of the game, or watchers of the game. Actually antiRW's numbers are: 1-50: 62%, 50-100: 54% Then I don't really get how your post responds to mine. I'll try to reformulate my argument. The more the games are randomly decided, the more the rate should be close to 50%, whatever the balance. It is then true that the randomness might not be a purely decreasing function of the skill level of the players. There might be minima and maxima, even though it should tend to zero as the skill level increase. Then I never disagreed with your more "philosophical" point. It all depends on the question: for whom should be the game designed? | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:55 10bulgares wrote: Actually antiRW's numbers are: 1-50: 62%, 50-100: 54% Then I don't really get how your post responds to mine. I'll try to reformulate my argument. The more the games are randomly decided, the more the rate should be close to 50%, whatever the balance. It is then true that the randomness might not be a purely decreasing function of the skill level of the players. There might be minima and maxima, even though it should tend to zero as the skill level increase. Then I never disagreed with your more "philosophical" point. It all depends on the question: for whom should be the game designed? There is a 5 point drop between the 1-50 vs 51-100, and a 12 point drop between top 50 to the totality. That is significant because it shows that within a 1 month time span that top terrains did well that month while all other terrains did far worse. Remember that the totality is only that high because the top 50 players pulled up the statistic. The winrates of those below the top 100 is very much below 50% What I am saying is that your assumption of games reaching 50% the higher the population included is something that only happens in balanced games. Much like coin flips, balanced games are only balanced over infinite iterations and not over subsets of the iterations. We are not looking for a balanced game, we are looking for a game balanced in relation to a subset of player's performances. | ||
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cptjibberjabber
Netherlands87 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:43 Maniak_ wrote: In the latest balance patch yes (though if you find the thor buff useless, you must not have been watching the same games). However unless you believe that the metagame was 100% explored, known and fixed at the time of this patch but was still evolving, you have to include the previous patches too. Which means: 2.0.9: - banshee cloak research cost 200/200 -> 100/100 2.0.12: - mech ground/air attack upgrades combined - tank attack speed +10% 2.1: - free ghost energy upgrade - mine damage doubled vs shield 2.1.2: - free hellion transformation upgrade 2.1.3: - mine splash damage back to full - thor prioritize air combat units over ground To be fair I haven't watched any games over the last few months, nor have I played much. I've played about 1 game per 2 weeks so i'll probably end up in silver with all that MMR decay next season. It just got boring. It's a macro-only game nowadays with all the same unit compositions which makes all the games look completely similar. | ||
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Ouija
United States129 Posts
On October 14 2014 23:00 r691175002 wrote: After the past few tournaments it is fairly clear Terran is strong right now. That isn't really up for debate, nor is it an interesting topic for discussion. Here are some questions that actually matter: Do you expect this period of Terran strength to continue going forward? Will the gap widen or become smaller as the metagame develops? At what point do you think Blizzard should pursue corrective action? Can the issue be resolved with a new map pool or does it need a patch? There is no point whining about something as transient as winrates if you are not willing to make your position clear. 1 - It will be interesting to see with next seasons map pool. IEM San Jose is in December and I checked the qualifiers for it and this seasons maps will be used, so I guess it safe to assume they will also use these maps for the main event (though it does not say yet). If they do use the same maps from this season then I believe Terran strength will continue in tournament play moving forward. 2 - Again, it will be cool to see how the metagame changes with these older maps coming in. But unless zerg finds a safe way to reach hive tech and keep the terran from parading across the map I don't think the gap will get any smaller. 3 - If the terran dominating trend continues throughout the wcs finals then shortly afterwards I think blizzard should be looking to make some changes. It would be stupid to make changes based on data gathered from games on metalopolis, ohana and the other old maps making a return IMO. 4 - The issue(s) probably could be resolved with a map pool, but IMO the game itself is not balanced enough to focus solely on balancing it through maps. Blizzards idea of solving it through the map pool is by making all the maps have roughly the same features because they typically want to stop a single "strong strategy". Which I dislike very much and it kind of takes away from the variety of styles that could be used by each race if we had a more diverse map pool | ||
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Foxxan
Sweden3427 Posts
On October 15 2014 00:25 cptjibberjabber wrote: To be fair I haven't watched any games over the last few months, nor have I played much. I've played about 1 game per 2 weeks so i'll probably end up in silver with all that MMR decay next season. It just got boring. It's a macro-only game nowadays with all the same unit compositions which makes all the games look completely similar. Just wanted to chim in here. I dont think the issue is with the same unit compositions. Its more that it feels hard to almost impossible to be active with those units. The relationships in sc2 is lacking quite heavy. To heavy i would say. This is what makes it dull in the long run. When i look at protoss and "woah, they have so many unit compositions" i just think that its completely irreelvant what and or how many compositions it is. Its how the units can be used and are used that is the key to "fun". In broodwar terran went vult and tank every single game against protoss. Was it dull? No it was never dull in the years and it was never dull as protoss fighting those units either because the option to harass and attack was there. You could be active with those units at anytime. It was your decision. Two units but still, the builds could vary alot. How many factories. When should the expansion be put up. Add dropship or not add dropship. When is the third. Back in the days. Even in present bw-time, when the meta feels very stale. Its still possible to be active with those units. When i say possible i do mean "consistent-possible". Two units but so many options it felt like. And the real options are how those units can be used. | ||
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sibs
635 Posts
Lets move to coin flipping. Flipping a coin 1-17 times does not show a 50% chance for heads. Only flipping a coin an infinite number of times does that. If you only count the most recent coin flips, the coin will always look imba and so you get to argue that heads is OP or tails is OP by ignoring the totality of flips made. The same is true with SC2. If you only get a select amount of results, it will always look imba no matter how balanced the game is because its not until you look at the totality of games that you see if the game actually is balanced or not. Actually you don't need many coinflips/games to tell the coin/game is imbalanced. For example with only 17 coinflips assuming 50% distribution for head/tails you only have 2.4252% chance of getting 4 or less heads, sure it can happen but it's unlikely. The statistic of top50 players cannot be waved away like that, Terran does have a very significant advantage over Zerg at the highest levels of play. | ||
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DinoMight
United States3725 Posts
Therefore it's not at all surprising that the win percentages for TvZ favor better players. The game should be balanced around top players. Lower tier players can always improve their win rate by reducing the number of mistakes they make. Top tier players make fewer mistakes and are more subject to game balance. If (theoretically speaking) both players make zero mistakes and Terran wins every time, then Terran is imbalanced. If both players make tons of mistakes and Terran wins then you can't really make any conclusions about the game. That's just common sense to me. | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On October 15 2014 00:47 sibs wrote: The statistic of top50 players cannot be waved away like that Yeah, this top50 with KingKong and Ourk looks pretty legit | ||
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sibs
635 Posts
I know you've read it, why even make that comment? | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On October 15 2014 00:57 DinoMight wrote: Top players make fewer mistakes than lower tier players. Mistakes introduce randomness. Randomness skews things closer to 50%. Therefore it's not at all surprising that the win percentages for TvZ favor better players. The game should be balanced around top players. Lower tier players can always improve their win rate by reducing the number of mistakes they make. Top tier players make fewer mistakes and are more subject to game balance. If (theoretically speaking) both players make zero mistakes and Terran wins every time, then Terran is imbalanced. If both players make tons of mistakes and Terran wins then you can't really make any conclusions about the game. That's just common sense to me. Meh... randomness and randomness with 50% expectancy are two pairs of shoe. Without further information, it makes sense to assume equal suffering from mistakes for both sides in an average game. Hence the winrate should stil reflect the balance for as long as we assume equal skill. | ||
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TheDwf
France19747 Posts
On October 15 2014 01:03 sibs wrote: It's not like statistics including only wcs am/kr/eu weren't showing the same thrend or just code S isn't the same thrend. I know you've read it, why even make that comment? Because it's hilarious how you cling to a flawed tool—the Aligulac ratings have never been accurate for many players—to support your claim. If you want to analyze TvZ at the highest level, perfect! But at least use a proper tool for that, not some random list where half of the Zergs in the "top50" have nothing to do there in the first place. Or is this KingKong vs RunaMoK series what you're looking for when talking about "top50 TvZ" ? | ||
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RaFox17
Finland4581 Posts
On October 15 2014 00:58 TheDwf wrote: Yeah, this top50 with KingKong and Ourk looks pretty legit What is something you would approve then? It´s not perfect but i would say it´s a lot better than just plain aligulac stats. | ||
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