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On November 20 2013 22:27 Pirfiktshon wrote:I would like to know whta race DK fancies when he plays SC2 
He's a random player. Oops there goes that theory.
Past few pages here have been utterly absurd. Protoss, with all of its strengths and weaknesses, does consistently well in blind BO1s against unknown opponents? No way! Stop the presses! EVERYONE MUST KNOW!
Or...you know...everyone with a shred of common sense and who knows how Protoss plays has known this since the start of WoL. And also knows that ladder means pretty much nothing when it comes to balance.
Regardless, still want to see a Marine nerf and a mass buff to every other Terran unit to make Terran more flexible and interesting with more possibilities. I dread rolling Terran when I random because its so dull to play "normally" and this fetishisation of the Marine by Blizzard really isn't doing them any good.
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Funny how terran´s used to laugh at zerg complaints when the hellbat or the parade push was a huge problem and now they are cooking up some huge conspiracy theory against their race. And the last noticeable tournament was won by a terran. (or was it that tournaments mean nothing in balance? or was it the ladder? or the one that happens to support your arguments?)
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Funny how terran´s used to laugh at zerg complaints when the hellbat or the parade push was a huge problem
Neither of those were balance problems in TvZ or TvP.....
DK's thoughts on Hellbat that in TvT it was to easy to win with hellbat drops and that bad players could use it to beat good players ( Huge shot at Innovation seeing how he was dominating the scene at that time with this strategy which his domination was pretty much ended shortly there after)
The WM nerf happened because DK wanted to see more variation and a combination of Siege tanks and WM play as opposed to just WM play . Neither were balance problems just what DK wanted..... ( IE doesn't like how the race plays IE doesn't like the race which supports my earlier arguments.....) This was a dream that has fallen quite short and hard TBH we are still going to see WM armies just maybe a tank opener here and there like bomber showed which is actually something he did pre-patch.......
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On November 20 2013 23:21 Pirfiktshon wrote:Show nested quote +Funny how terran´s used to laugh at zerg complaints when the hellbat or the parade push was a huge problem Neither of those were balance problems in TvZ or TvP..... DK's thoughts on Hellbat that in TvT it was to easy to win with hellbat drops and that bad players could use it to beat good players ( Huge shot at Innovation seeing how he was dominating the scene at that time with this strategy which his domination was pretty much ended shortly there after) The WM nerf happened because DK wanted to see more variation and a combination of Siege tanks and WM play as opposed to just WM play . Neither were balance problems just what DK wanted..... ( IE doesn't like how the race plays IE doesn't like the race which supports my earlier arguments.....) This was a dream that has fallen quite short and hard TBH we are still going to see WM armies just maybe a tank opener here and there like bomber showed which is actually something he did pre-patch.......
So P and Z (especially Z) was forced to build static D every time in case of the HB drop was nothing? (and the fact it could end the game immediately) When you propose turrets for terran in the early game they go apeshit over it and scream how imba that would be. The results still show quite even balance.
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The timing of a Hellbat drop was considerably later than an Oracle if thats what you are referring to LOL Oracles do a TON more of indirect damage then a hellbat drop ever could lol
Hellbat drops hit 7:50 at your base Oracle 5:15 LOL HUGE HUGE HUGE Difference and they nerfed hellbat and buffed oracle ? lolololol its pretty funny when looking at the facts....
ON top of the fact sOs has showed us that its not an all in and you can in fact transition into a normal game from this doing damage or not. Hellbats HAD to do damage or you were WAYYYYY to behind because of how much you invest into the hellbats are the same time crucial upgrades need to be started. SO stim / cs were delayed by a minute and 1/1 was delayed about 1:30 zerg that plays a normal game eats some money in minerals and just comes out ahead if Hellbats are mitigated.
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On November 20 2013 23:37 Pirfiktshon wrote:
The timing of a Hellbat drop was considerably later than an Oracle if thats what you are referring to LOL Oracles do a TON more of indirect damage then a hellbat drop ever could lol
Hellbat drops hit 7:50 at your base Oracle 5:15 LOL HUGE HUGE HUGE Difference and they nerfed hellbat and buffed oracle ? lolololol its pretty funny when looking at the facts....
Pre-patch. And i would call min spore+spines an indirect damage.
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Pre-patch. And i would call min spore+spines an indirect damage.
I'm not saying its not Indirect damage but because of the timing in game it doesn't hurt anywhere near the amount an oracle does because of how early it hits and how hard it can derail yoru build order.....
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I would still stop the doomsday talk and wait till the next WCS season starts. Or at leas after red-bull and Dreamhack winter.
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On November 20 2013 23:40 RaFox17 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 23:37 Pirfiktshon wrote:
The timing of a Hellbat drop was considerably later than an Oracle if thats what you are referring to LOL Oracles do a TON more of indirect damage then a hellbat drop ever could lol
Hellbat drops hit 7:50 at your base Oracle 5:15 LOL HUGE HUGE HUGE Difference and they nerfed hellbat and buffed oracle ? lolololol its pretty funny when looking at the facts.... Pre-patch. And i would call min spore+spines an indirect damage.
For crying out loud, why are you talking about this? Just because you're bitter and want to distract from the actual discussion? Whether X that isn't in the game anymore is imba or not is not relevant. Whatever discussions you had with people Y is not something anyone else cares about. Besides that, a cloak banshee also forces defences by Z, OMG it's imba too! Nerf terran! /sarcasm
Besides maliciously distracting from the topic at hand, you're also failing to prove that something that was nerfed was actually imba.
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On November 20 2013 23:46 Ghanburighan wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 23:40 RaFox17 wrote:On November 20 2013 23:37 Pirfiktshon wrote:
The timing of a Hellbat drop was considerably later than an Oracle if thats what you are referring to LOL Oracles do a TON more of indirect damage then a hellbat drop ever could lol
Hellbat drops hit 7:50 at your base Oracle 5:15 LOL HUGE HUGE HUGE Difference and they nerfed hellbat and buffed oracle ? lolololol its pretty funny when looking at the facts.... Pre-patch. And i would call min spore+spines an indirect damage. For crying out loud, why are you talking about this? Just because you're bitter and want to distract from the actual discussion? Whether X that isn't in the game anymore is imba or not is not relevant. Whatever discussions you had with people Y is not something anyone else cares about. Besides that, a cloak banshee also forces defences by Z, OMG it's imba too! Nerf terran! /sarcasm Besides maliciously distracting from the topic at hand, you're also failing to prove that something that was nerfed was actually imba.
I would still stop the doomsday talk and wait till the next WCS season starts. Or at leas after red-bull and Dreamhack winter. Results show no imbalance at the moment. Disagree?
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I would still stop the doomsday talk and wait till the next WCS season starts.
Your only interpreting it as doomsday talk. The reality is all the love Terran sees gets Nerfed or changed since 2010. It came to a crest in 2012 in the end of the WOL days and now we have considerably less Terran players globally and no Foreign Terran that actually performs consistently well in tournaments that didn't originate from korea LOL. Unlike stephano , scarlett, or Naniwa. It just would be nice to get some love and not get our candy taken away from us as soon as we get it 
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Until Terrans stop being the favorites to win tournaments (Innovation, Bomber, Maru, Flash, etc...) then Terrans will get no Buffs.
Ladder winrates will always be balanced--since the ladder forces 50% losses.
Ladder race composition will always be weird--since race choice has no causal relation to race effectiveness.
All we have are tournaments. And since Innovation/Maru/Bomber always seems like the clear winners during the early rounds, Terran will never *feel* like they need a buff since those top terrans can make it happen. There's a reason that when those top terrans lose its all "what an upset" and not "Damn, Duckduck sooo good!"
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On November 21 2013 00:12 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Until Terrans stop being the favorites to win tournaments (Innovation, Bomber, Maru, Flash, etc...) then Terrans will get no Buffs.
Ladder winrates will always be balanced--since the ladder forces 50% losses.
Ladder race composition will always be weird--since race choice has no causal relation to race effectiveness.
All we have are tournaments. And since Innovation/Maru/Bomber always seems like the clear winners during the early rounds, Terran will never *feel* like they need a buff since those top terrans can make it happen. There's a reason that when those top terrans lose its all "what an upset" and not "Damn, Duckduck sooo good!"
How do you know that? Almost all the friends I have who played terran have switched to protoss. Why? Because they got tired of all the protoss early game pressure that they AT BEST broke even from, at worst died from.
Not saying anecdotal evidence count for much, but its better than to draw conclusion from no evidence. Which is what you seem to do.
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There are two statements that people keep bringing up in this thread that really bug me, because they are so obviously false:
"Ladder play is not indicative of balance because it's just a bunch of bo1s against random opponents."
1. Match format is totally irrelevant. Whether you're playing bo1, bo3, bo5, or bo7, the game should be balanced. Who died and made you God to arbitrarily declare that bo1 doesn't matter? It's what 99.999% of StarCraft players play, and even the OSL features lots of bo1s.
2. Facing random opponents vs facing known opponents is totally irrelevant. Whether you know who you're playing or not, the game should be balanced. In fact, the more you know about your opponent, the less balanced the game should become, because then the match becomes decided by studying and meta-strategies.
3. Blizzard themselves have repeatedly stated that performance on ladder influences their balance decisions. So saying "ladder play is not indicative of balance" is a false statement plain and simple.
Randomized anonymous trials over a large sample size (e.g. ladder play) are the gold standard when it comes to measuring anything in any field. It's fine if you don't care about ladder, but claiming that it's not statistically relevant just makes you look dumb and degrades the quality of the discussion in this thread.
"Racial distribution doesn't matter. Only win rates do."
1. Win rates by themselves are meaningless if you take them across the entire ladder. For example, let's say Protoss beat Zerg 50% of the time on ladder. It may still be the case that in high level play, Protoss win 80% of the time, which would obviously indicate imbalance at that level.
2. Win rates within a particular division are also meaningless by themselves. For example, let's say Protoss beat Zerg 50% of the time in GM. To the statistically ignorant this may indicate balance, but it's a meaningless fact unless you also factor in distribution. It could be the case that GM is 199 Protoss and 1 Zerg, which would mean that Zerg is so hard that only one guy is good enough to have a 50% win rate at that level.
Sorry, but win rates by themselves are meaningless. It's extremely obvious that distribution matters, and pretending it doesn't just because you don't like the results degrades the quality of the discussion in this thread.
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On November 20 2013 09:25 vRadiatioNv wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 09:22 TheDwf wrote:On November 20 2013 09:19 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 20 2013 08:21 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 20 2013 08:06 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 20 2013 07:56 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 20 2013 07:47 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 20 2013 07:32 Courthead wrote:On November 20 2013 06:43 TheDwf wrote:On November 20 2013 06:14 Courthead wrote:
[quote]
99.9999% of people play StarCraft on ladder, and yet your argument is that winrates on ladder is not "a metric for balance"? What?
What, then, should we use for balance? Should 100% of the balance equation be based on small, statistically insignificant tournaments comprised of 16-32 players? Btw I'm not the first to point out winrates and racial makeup of ladder as a evidence of game imbalance. David Kim and Blizzard do it all the time.
The inescapable fact is that the NA league is 29% Terran and 30% Protoss, but the Grandmaster league is 41% Protoss and 20% Terran. In other words, it's much easier for Protoss players to get high win rates, which is the very definition of imbalance. Interestingly enough, the same thing can be observed on all servers: ![[image loading]](http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/910412GML.jpg) Racial distribution as of today, source nios.kr. Korean Terrans were even a bit less represented in the last weeks of the last season, but otherwise the 20-25/40-45/35 distribution is remarkably unchanged since I started checking those numbers at the end of September. So we have to ask ourselves, if it's literally 100% easier for certain races to achieve success on ladder, what does that say about game balance? What does that say about how we should be dealing with those expressing frustration at ladder play? What does that say about Blizzard's repeated pronouncements that "everything looks good"? Except you cannot conclude that from these numbers at all. Maybe the reason most people don't play Terran is that they think it's stale using Marines as the primary unit in every single match up (which is exactly what most people complain about). There can be plenty of other reasons as well but you cannot conclude from those numbers that Terran is underpowered or to what degree it may be underpowered. That doesn't make sense. That would suggest that there are less terran players all together, but that's not true. Terrans are only underrepresented at higher levels, which suggests that it's harder to reach higher levels with terran. The sad thing is, I can barely remember a time when this wasn't the case. Except the people who are higher on the ladder most likely practice more often. If the playstyles are stale they will be less likely to continue playing. If I only play an hour or two every day at a low level I probably wouldn't get bored with Terran. Again, you cannot draw conclusions of balance off these numbers alone. That's mere speculation at best; making it up as you go along is more likely. As others have said, there are reasons why the ladder is dominated by P and T is underrepresented (all-ins help if you are anonymous and bo1) but there are unanswered questions. First, most pro players know each other's barcodes, so anonymity is not guaranteed. Second, Korea is as bad as the other regions, despite having a strong showing of terrans. Third, zerg doesn't benefit from all-ins, and it's especially vulnerable to them, yet it outperforms terran on ladder. The bo1 theory does not account for this. Lolwhat. My argument is at least as reasonable (imo moreso) than "omgwtfbbq look at % of ppl playing terran = UP." As many people have already said the winrates do not show Terran being absurdly underpowered. My argument makes much more sense and I only said there are plenty of other explanations and, again, low % of terran players does not directly translate to imbalance. It is you who are trying to make these figures seem like more than they are. Your argument about Terrans being underrepresented because their high level players would be more bored by their race is totally far-fetched. You don't even have the beginning of a proof for that. Show me your proof that low % of Terrans in GM = imbalance. Oh that's right, there is none. The winrates are within 1%, you have nothing. But keep complaining if you want.
Drop ladder levels and put all players on one level. In this scenario average T player winrate would be lowest of all races .
Ladder level race distribution is as much balance indicator for ladder like winrates are for tournaments.
Also for people mentioning WoL. In WoL situation never occured that on GM level one race had over 40% and other below 25%. It was more like 35/35/30 and the end of WoL
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On November 21 2013 02:33 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2013 09:25 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 20 2013 09:22 TheDwf wrote:On November 20 2013 09:19 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 20 2013 08:21 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 20 2013 08:06 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 20 2013 07:56 Ghanburighan wrote:On November 20 2013 07:47 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 20 2013 07:32 Courthead wrote:On November 20 2013 06:43 TheDwf wrote:[quote] Interestingly enough, the same thing can be observed on all servers: Racial distribution as of today, source nios.kr. Korean Terrans were even a bit less represented in the last weeks of the last season, but otherwise the 20-25/40-45/35 distribution is remarkably unchanged since I started checking those numbers at the end of September. So we have to ask ourselves, if it's literally 100% easier for certain races to achieve success on ladder, what does that say about game balance? What does that say about how we should be dealing with those expressing frustration at ladder play? What does that say about Blizzard's repeated pronouncements that "everything looks good"? Except you cannot conclude that from these numbers at all. Maybe the reason most people don't play Terran is that they think it's stale using Marines as the primary unit in every single match up (which is exactly what most people complain about). There can be plenty of other reasons as well but you cannot conclude from those numbers that Terran is underpowered or to what degree it may be underpowered. That doesn't make sense. That would suggest that there are less terran players all together, but that's not true. Terrans are only underrepresented at higher levels, which suggests that it's harder to reach higher levels with terran. The sad thing is, I can barely remember a time when this wasn't the case. Except the people who are higher on the ladder most likely practice more often. If the playstyles are stale they will be less likely to continue playing. If I only play an hour or two every day at a low level I probably wouldn't get bored with Terran. Again, you cannot draw conclusions of balance off these numbers alone. That's mere speculation at best; making it up as you go along is more likely. As others have said, there are reasons why the ladder is dominated by P and T is underrepresented (all-ins help if you are anonymous and bo1) but there are unanswered questions. First, most pro players know each other's barcodes, so anonymity is not guaranteed. Second, Korea is as bad as the other regions, despite having a strong showing of terrans. Third, zerg doesn't benefit from all-ins, and it's especially vulnerable to them, yet it outperforms terran on ladder. The bo1 theory does not account for this. Lolwhat. My argument is at least as reasonable (imo moreso) than "omgwtfbbq look at % of ppl playing terran = UP." As many people have already said the winrates do not show Terran being absurdly underpowered. My argument makes much more sense and I only said there are plenty of other explanations and, again, low % of terran players does not directly translate to imbalance. It is you who are trying to make these figures seem like more than they are. Your argument about Terrans being underrepresented because their high level players would be more bored by their race is totally far-fetched. You don't even have the beginning of a proof for that. Show me your proof that low % of Terrans in GM = imbalance. Oh that's right, there is none. The winrates are within 1%, you have nothing. But keep complaining if you want. Drop ladder levels and put all players on one level. In this scenario average T player winrate would be lowest of all races . Ladder level race distribution is as much balance indicator for ladder like winrates are for tournaments. Also for people mentioning WoL. In WoL situation never occured that on GM level one race had over 40% and other below 25%. It was more like 35/35/30 and the end of WoL
Where are you finding these numbers on Wings of Liberty GM distribution? I have my own theory regarding GM race distribution and I need access to the GM race distribution numbers, particularly early 2012 and late 2012. Also, it would help with your point if you actually had a source to back it up.
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Sorry, but it's extremely obvious that distribution matters. Pretending it doesn't just because you don't like the results degrades the quality of the discussion in this thread.
The distributions themselve are worthless. People keep on saying that "winrates aren't everything", the plain race distributions are much worse, since we don't know the reasons why people play which race at what level.
E.g. when the game came out the (overall summed up) distributions were something like 38-37-25 (P-T-Z). So initially people did not choose races 33-33-33.
So was Protoss initially overpowered? Far from! Most likely there were other reasons why people chose Protoss and Terran over Zerg and same thing is probably true right now.
Of course racial strength/balance is most likely a reason to play a race. But we don't know how important it is. More likely I'd say (which is of course connected to balance) it's a question of gameplay as well. Do you like how you have to play the matchups of a race? Being the aggressor or the defender? Having cheeses/tricks or rather play straight up everygame?
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Drop ladder levels and put all players on one level. In this scenario average T player winrate would be lowest of all races .
Ladder level race distribution is as much balance indicator for ladder like winrates are for tournaments.
Also for people mentioning WoL. In WoL situation never occured that on GM level one race had over 40% and other below 25%. It was more like 35/35/30 and the end of WoL
Whoa whoa whoa its because Terran players don't try like zerg and protoss players do. We are just whiney whores who should just accept our place in the sewers LOL Don't use numbers to try to prove your point facts hurt pplz brains on here
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On November 21 2013 02:38 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +Sorry, but it's extremely obvious that distribution matters. Pretending it doesn't just because you don't like the results degrades the quality of the discussion in this thread. The distributions themselve are worthless. People keep on saying that "winrates aren't everything", the plain race distributions are much worse, since we don't know the reasons why people play which race at what level. E.g. when the game came out the (overall summed up) distributions were something like 38-37-25 (P-T-Z). So initially people did not choose races 33-33-33. So was Protoss initially overpowered? Far from! Most likely there were other reasons why people chose Protoss and Terran over Zerg and same thing is probably true right now. Of course racial strength/balance is most likely a reason to play a race. But we don't know how important it is. More likely I'd say (which is of course connected to balance) it's a question of gameplay as well. Do you like how you have to play the matchups of a race? Being the aggressor or the defender? Having cheeses/tricks or rather play straight up everygame?
Exactly this, there's almost no way to determine which races are being chosen, especially for players who are playing for the first time. I originally chose Protoss because they were super advanced aliens and had a guy which was really tall and shot freaking lasers from his eyes(dead serious). Determining a causal relationship between the two isn't possible, because there are a variety of factors which influence the race a player chooses. There is a potential correlation, but even that can be skewed by the potential exodus of Terran players at the end of Wings of Liberty because of broodlord/infestor.
The bolded statement is something that I would love to be able to test.
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On November 21 2013 02:38 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +Sorry, but it's extremely obvious that distribution matters. Pretending it doesn't just because you don't like the results degrades the quality of the discussion in this thread. The distributions themselve are worthless. People keep on saying that "winrates aren't everything", the plain race distributions are much worse, since we don't know the reasons why people play which race at what level. E.g. when the game came out the (overall summed up) distributions were something like 38-37-25 (P-T-Z). So initially people did not choose races 33-33-33. So was Protoss initially overpowered? Far from! Most likely there were other reasons why people chose Protoss and Terran over Zerg and same thing is probably true right now. Of course racial strength/balance is most likely a reason to play a race. But we don't know how important it is. More likely I'd say (which is of course connected to balance) it's a question of gameplay as well. Do you like how you have to play the matchups of a race? Being the aggressor or the defender? Having cheeses/tricks or rather play straight up everygame?
On November 21 2013 02:42 Wingblade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2013 02:38 Big J wrote:Sorry, but it's extremely obvious that distribution matters. Pretending it doesn't just because you don't like the results degrades the quality of the discussion in this thread. The distributions themselve are worthless. People keep on saying that "winrates aren't everything", the plain race distributions are much worse, since we don't know the reasons why people play which race at what level. E.g. when the game came out the (overall summed up) distributions were something like 38-37-25 (P-T-Z). So initially people did not choose races 33-33-33. So was Protoss initially overpowered? Far from! Most likely there were other reasons why people chose Protoss and Terran over Zerg and same thing is probably true right now. Of course racial strength/balance is most likely a reason to play a race. But we don't know how important it is. More likely I'd say (which is of course connected to balance) it's a question of gameplay as well. Do you like how you have to play the matchups of a race? Being the aggressor or the defender? Having cheeses/tricks or rather play straight up everygame? Exactly this, there's almost no way to determine which races are being chosen, especially for players who are playing for the first time. I originally chose Protoss because they were super advanced aliens and had a guy which was really tall and shot freaking lasers from his eyes(dead serious). Determining a causal relationship between the two isn't possible, because there are a variety of factors which influence the race a player chooses. There is a potential correlation, but even that can be skewed by the potential exodus of Terran players at the end of Wings of Liberty because of broodlord/infestor. The bolded statement is something that I would love to be able to test.
Why do people keep making this tired argument? Racial distributions are basically even across ladder. It's 31% Zerg, 31% Protoss, 30% Terran, and 8% Random. There is basically no difference in the number of people playing each race.
There was no mass exodus of Terrans. That's total bs. And if you're planning to advance some conspiracy theory like "a lot of pros switched", then you'll need to provide some actual evidence, otherwise it's meaningless.
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EPT
