|
On January 03 2014 12:29 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2014 12:24 Pirfiktshon wrote:Too many variables involved in how frequent TvT appears which you are disregarding. TvT's might simply be occuring less frequently because terrans have been playing against more zergs and protoss players in the early games. Yes: there are fewer terran players than there are protoss and zerg players, but there have been more terran players which consistently place well in tournaments than there have zerg or protoss players. Either the argument is that terran pros are just plain better players in general and have always been and will be (which was the argument every terran made during GOMTvT), or you might want to consider that there isn't a balance problem that's significant, and that there are other variables and factors at work. Look i'm going to just be straight with you..... I don't want Terrans to win every tournament or dominate the scene just as much as you do.... as a matter of fact even though I was a Terran Player in BW I <3 Bisu and his domination as well as Stork to death I also love JD and am glad he is resurfacing in sc2 its like a nerd dream come true.... BUT What I want is for Protoss to be less of an I have the big guns Run and Hide and hopefully Someone can put a Piece of chewing gum between the bullet and hammer to stop the bullet from firing  Taeja seems to be a quick one and always finds a way to put that chewing gum there within the short period of time that its open! ( ok this is a crazy metaphor but it makes sense if you think about it LOL) Basically I want every match up to be unique yet more of like a Ninja Fighting a Samurai with Swords Numchuku and throwing stars where you have an exchange of blows and such in depth strategy and micro is needed to perform what was almost art .... Instead of it being a ninja having a sword and an advanced alien race dodging the only sword swipe before quickly vaporizing him with a Ray gun LOL I've been a strong proponent of Protoss needing a complete redesign for a long time now. The mothership core is a horrible idea: the race was so broken design wise they had to give them a single overpowered unit and limit them to one of them so protoss would stop dying horrifically in the early game. I don't like the protoss design at all right now, even though I play that race. However, design flaws and balance flaws are not the same thing. You are arguing for a design revamp: I agree with that desire. Regardless of design flaws, the game does not currently appear to be significantly imbalanced in favor of protoss. This month, PvT at the pro level was a little better than a 51% rate for protoss: that's quite balanced overall. PvZ went in favor of zerg. This month, terrans got their asses handed to them by zergs way more than by protoss players. There is some amount of expected swing in the data each month, and this is well within those expectations, so there's no indication of imbalance or major problems. Essentially, we're in the margin of error still.
Gonna keep posting this, but apparently your still missing the point. The 51% w/r is pointless as subprotoss players are being matched up against top-terran players.
W/R always goes towards 50-50, regardless of whether you look at ladder statistics or Aliguac. Instead, the only real signs we have of imbalances is a too low amount of competitive terran players (aliguac) or the distribution of players on the ladder (Sc2 ranks statistics).
|
On January 04 2014 02:18 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2014 12:29 Whitewing wrote:On January 03 2014 12:24 Pirfiktshon wrote:Too many variables involved in how frequent TvT appears which you are disregarding. TvT's might simply be occuring less frequently because terrans have been playing against more zergs and protoss players in the early games. Yes: there are fewer terran players than there are protoss and zerg players, but there have been more terran players which consistently place well in tournaments than there have zerg or protoss players. Either the argument is that terran pros are just plain better players in general and have always been and will be (which was the argument every terran made during GOMTvT), or you might want to consider that there isn't a balance problem that's significant, and that there are other variables and factors at work. Look i'm going to just be straight with you..... I don't want Terrans to win every tournament or dominate the scene just as much as you do.... as a matter of fact even though I was a Terran Player in BW I <3 Bisu and his domination as well as Stork to death I also love JD and am glad he is resurfacing in sc2 its like a nerd dream come true.... BUT What I want is for Protoss to be less of an I have the big guns Run and Hide and hopefully Someone can put a Piece of chewing gum between the bullet and hammer to stop the bullet from firing Taeja seems to be a quick one and always finds a way to put that chewing gum there within the short period of time that its open! ( ok this is a crazy metaphor but it makes sense if you think about it LOL) Basically I want every match up to be unique yet more of like a Ninja Fighting a Samurai with Swords Numchuku and throwing stars where you have an exchange of blows and such in depth strategy and micro is needed to perform what was almost art .... Instead of it being a ninja having a sword and an advanced alien race dodging the only sword swipe before quickly vaporizing him with a Ray gun LOL I've been a strong proponent of Protoss needing a complete redesign for a long time now. The mothership core is a horrible idea: the race was so broken design wise they had to give them a single overpowered unit and limit them to one of them so protoss would stop dying horrifically in the early game. I don't like the protoss design at all right now, even though I play that race. However, design flaws and balance flaws are not the same thing. You are arguing for a design revamp: I agree with that desire. Regardless of design flaws, the game does not currently appear to be significantly imbalanced in favor of protoss. This month, PvT at the pro level was a little better than a 51% rate for protoss: that's quite balanced overall. PvZ went in favor of zerg. This month, terrans got their asses handed to them by zergs way more than by protoss players. There is some amount of expected swing in the data each month, and this is well within those expectations, so there's no indication of imbalance or major problems. Essentially, we're in the margin of error still. Gonna keep posting this, but apparently your still missing the point. The 51% w/r is pointless as subprotoss players are being matched up against top-terran players. W/R always goes towards 50-50, regardless of whether you look at ladder statistics or Aliguac. Not true. This is only true if there's only one non-mirror matchup, but there are two.
|
On January 04 2014 02:23 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2014 02:18 Hider wrote:On January 03 2014 12:29 Whitewing wrote:On January 03 2014 12:24 Pirfiktshon wrote:Too many variables involved in how frequent TvT appears which you are disregarding. TvT's might simply be occuring less frequently because terrans have been playing against more zergs and protoss players in the early games. Yes: there are fewer terran players than there are protoss and zerg players, but there have been more terran players which consistently place well in tournaments than there have zerg or protoss players. Either the argument is that terran pros are just plain better players in general and have always been and will be (which was the argument every terran made during GOMTvT), or you might want to consider that there isn't a balance problem that's significant, and that there are other variables and factors at work. Look i'm going to just be straight with you..... I don't want Terrans to win every tournament or dominate the scene just as much as you do.... as a matter of fact even though I was a Terran Player in BW I <3 Bisu and his domination as well as Stork to death I also love JD and am glad he is resurfacing in sc2 its like a nerd dream come true.... BUT What I want is for Protoss to be less of an I have the big guns Run and Hide and hopefully Someone can put a Piece of chewing gum between the bullet and hammer to stop the bullet from firing Taeja seems to be a quick one and always finds a way to put that chewing gum there within the short period of time that its open! ( ok this is a crazy metaphor but it makes sense if you think about it LOL) Basically I want every match up to be unique yet more of like a Ninja Fighting a Samurai with Swords Numchuku and throwing stars where you have an exchange of blows and such in depth strategy and micro is needed to perform what was almost art .... Instead of it being a ninja having a sword and an advanced alien race dodging the only sword swipe before quickly vaporizing him with a Ray gun LOL I've been a strong proponent of Protoss needing a complete redesign for a long time now. The mothership core is a horrible idea: the race was so broken design wise they had to give them a single overpowered unit and limit them to one of them so protoss would stop dying horrifically in the early game. I don't like the protoss design at all right now, even though I play that race. However, design flaws and balance flaws are not the same thing. You are arguing for a design revamp: I agree with that desire. Regardless of design flaws, the game does not currently appear to be significantly imbalanced in favor of protoss. This month, PvT at the pro level was a little better than a 51% rate for protoss: that's quite balanced overall. PvZ went in favor of zerg. This month, terrans got their asses handed to them by zergs way more than by protoss players. There is some amount of expected swing in the data each month, and this is well within those expectations, so there's no indication of imbalance or major problems. Essentially, we're in the margin of error still. Gonna keep posting this, but apparently your still missing the point. The 51% w/r is pointless as subprotoss players are being matched up against top-terran players. W/R always goes towards 50-50, regardless of whether you look at ladder statistics or Aliguac. Not true. This is only true if there's only one non-mirror matchup, but there are two.
Yeh but that doesn't show anything about absolute imbalances. That can only show whether (e.g.) TvZ is relatively more imbalanced to TvP.
Arguing that TvP is balanced due to the 51% w/r is absolutele nonsen and shows a basic lack of skill on how to interpret statistics.
|
How sc2 works is simple :
-Game is balance : same racial distribution at the top level.
-An Imbalance occures : Statistics shows something odd (e.g. 55% in a match up).
-Game state stagnate : Players that used to compete at the top now can't no longer play at this level, start playing weaker oponent since they are weaker too due to the imbalance.
-Statistics return to 50%.
The only way to tell there is an imbalance is to look at the racial distribution.
That's how it works on the ladder, and even at pro level, look at the foreign scene, or hell, even korean scene now.
|
On January 04 2014 02:26 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2014 02:23 RampancyTW wrote:On January 04 2014 02:18 Hider wrote:On January 03 2014 12:29 Whitewing wrote:On January 03 2014 12:24 Pirfiktshon wrote:Too many variables involved in how frequent TvT appears which you are disregarding. TvT's might simply be occuring less frequently because terrans have been playing against more zergs and protoss players in the early games. Yes: there are fewer terran players than there are protoss and zerg players, but there have been more terran players which consistently place well in tournaments than there have zerg or protoss players. Either the argument is that terran pros are just plain better players in general and have always been and will be (which was the argument every terran made during GOMTvT), or you might want to consider that there isn't a balance problem that's significant, and that there are other variables and factors at work. Look i'm going to just be straight with you..... I don't want Terrans to win every tournament or dominate the scene just as much as you do.... as a matter of fact even though I was a Terran Player in BW I <3 Bisu and his domination as well as Stork to death I also love JD and am glad he is resurfacing in sc2 its like a nerd dream come true.... BUT What I want is for Protoss to be less of an I have the big guns Run and Hide and hopefully Someone can put a Piece of chewing gum between the bullet and hammer to stop the bullet from firing Taeja seems to be a quick one and always finds a way to put that chewing gum there within the short period of time that its open! ( ok this is a crazy metaphor but it makes sense if you think about it LOL) Basically I want every match up to be unique yet more of like a Ninja Fighting a Samurai with Swords Numchuku and throwing stars where you have an exchange of blows and such in depth strategy and micro is needed to perform what was almost art .... Instead of it being a ninja having a sword and an advanced alien race dodging the only sword swipe before quickly vaporizing him with a Ray gun LOL I've been a strong proponent of Protoss needing a complete redesign for a long time now. The mothership core is a horrible idea: the race was so broken design wise they had to give them a single overpowered unit and limit them to one of them so protoss would stop dying horrifically in the early game. I don't like the protoss design at all right now, even though I play that race. However, design flaws and balance flaws are not the same thing. You are arguing for a design revamp: I agree with that desire. Regardless of design flaws, the game does not currently appear to be significantly imbalanced in favor of protoss. This month, PvT at the pro level was a little better than a 51% rate for protoss: that's quite balanced overall. PvZ went in favor of zerg. This month, terrans got their asses handed to them by zergs way more than by protoss players. There is some amount of expected swing in the data each month, and this is well within those expectations, so there's no indication of imbalance or major problems. Essentially, we're in the margin of error still. Gonna keep posting this, but apparently your still missing the point. The 51% w/r is pointless as subprotoss players are being matched up against top-terran players. W/R always goes towards 50-50, regardless of whether you look at ladder statistics or Aliguac. Not true. This is only true if there's only one non-mirror matchup, but there are two. Yeh but that doesn't show anything about absolute imbalances. That can only show whether (e.g.) TvZ is relatively more imbalanced to TvP. Arguing that TvP is balanced due to the 51% w/r is absolutele nonsen and shows a basic lack of skill on how to interpret statistics. If both TvP and TvZ are close to 50%, there is no imbalance, unless the idea is that Terran is underpowered in BOTH matchups.
Don't confuse overall winrates with matchup winrates. Overall winrates will tend towards 50%, yes, but matchup winrates will be offset by the other matchup. So if the TvP winrate tended towards 40%, you would expect the TvZ winrate to tend towards 60% (assuming equal amounts of each matchup played).
Edit: This is assuming equally skilled T and P players. The idea being that if Terran is getting "dragged down" by the TvP matchup, there will be a jump in their TvZ win% as they get matched up against worse players.
|
On January 04 2014 02:49 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2014 02:26 Hider wrote:On January 04 2014 02:23 RampancyTW wrote:On January 04 2014 02:18 Hider wrote:On January 03 2014 12:29 Whitewing wrote:On January 03 2014 12:24 Pirfiktshon wrote:Too many variables involved in how frequent TvT appears which you are disregarding. TvT's might simply be occuring less frequently because terrans have been playing against more zergs and protoss players in the early games. Yes: there are fewer terran players than there are protoss and zerg players, but there have been more terran players which consistently place well in tournaments than there have zerg or protoss players. Either the argument is that terran pros are just plain better players in general and have always been and will be (which was the argument every terran made during GOMTvT), or you might want to consider that there isn't a balance problem that's significant, and that there are other variables and factors at work. Look i'm going to just be straight with you..... I don't want Terrans to win every tournament or dominate the scene just as much as you do.... as a matter of fact even though I was a Terran Player in BW I <3 Bisu and his domination as well as Stork to death I also love JD and am glad he is resurfacing in sc2 its like a nerd dream come true.... BUT What I want is for Protoss to be less of an I have the big guns Run and Hide and hopefully Someone can put a Piece of chewing gum between the bullet and hammer to stop the bullet from firing Taeja seems to be a quick one and always finds a way to put that chewing gum there within the short period of time that its open! ( ok this is a crazy metaphor but it makes sense if you think about it LOL) Basically I want every match up to be unique yet more of like a Ninja Fighting a Samurai with Swords Numchuku and throwing stars where you have an exchange of blows and such in depth strategy and micro is needed to perform what was almost art .... Instead of it being a ninja having a sword and an advanced alien race dodging the only sword swipe before quickly vaporizing him with a Ray gun LOL I've been a strong proponent of Protoss needing a complete redesign for a long time now. The mothership core is a horrible idea: the race was so broken design wise they had to give them a single overpowered unit and limit them to one of them so protoss would stop dying horrifically in the early game. I don't like the protoss design at all right now, even though I play that race. However, design flaws and balance flaws are not the same thing. You are arguing for a design revamp: I agree with that desire. Regardless of design flaws, the game does not currently appear to be significantly imbalanced in favor of protoss. This month, PvT at the pro level was a little better than a 51% rate for protoss: that's quite balanced overall. PvZ went in favor of zerg. This month, terrans got their asses handed to them by zergs way more than by protoss players. There is some amount of expected swing in the data each month, and this is well within those expectations, so there's no indication of imbalance or major problems. Essentially, we're in the margin of error still. Gonna keep posting this, but apparently your still missing the point. The 51% w/r is pointless as subprotoss players are being matched up against top-terran players. W/R always goes towards 50-50, regardless of whether you look at ladder statistics or Aliguac. Not true. This is only true if there's only one non-mirror matchup, but there are two. Yeh but that doesn't show anything about absolute imbalances. That can only show whether (e.g.) TvZ is relatively more imbalanced to TvP. Arguing that TvP is balanced due to the 51% w/r is absolutele nonsen and shows a basic lack of skill on how to interpret statistics. If both TvP and TvZ are close to 50%, there is no imbalance, unless the idea is that Terran is underpowered in BOTH matchups. Don't confuse overall winrates with matchup winrates. Overall winrates will tend towards 50%, yes, but matchup winrates will be offset by the other matchup. So if the TvP winrate tended towards 40%, you would expect the TvZ winrate to tend towards 60% (assuming equal amounts of each matchup played). Edit: This is assuming equally skilled T and P players. The idea being that if Terran is getting "dragged down" by the TvP matchup, there will be a jump in their TvZ win% as they get matched up against worse players.
Isn't that roughly what happened in HotS? P was slightly favoured over T, and Z was complaining about WM, hellbats, too easy 3CC double ebay pushes? Hence, T was nerfed specifically in those areas: overseer, WM, hellbat changes were rolled out. Remember, Blizz can tailor nerfs to a MU.
|
On January 04 2014 02:49 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2014 02:26 Hider wrote:On January 04 2014 02:23 RampancyTW wrote:On January 04 2014 02:18 Hider wrote:On January 03 2014 12:29 Whitewing wrote:On January 03 2014 12:24 Pirfiktshon wrote:Too many variables involved in how frequent TvT appears which you are disregarding. TvT's might simply be occuring less frequently because terrans have been playing against more zergs and protoss players in the early games. Yes: there are fewer terran players than there are protoss and zerg players, but there have been more terran players which consistently place well in tournaments than there have zerg or protoss players. Either the argument is that terran pros are just plain better players in general and have always been and will be (which was the argument every terran made during GOMTvT), or you might want to consider that there isn't a balance problem that's significant, and that there are other variables and factors at work. Look i'm going to just be straight with you..... I don't want Terrans to win every tournament or dominate the scene just as much as you do.... as a matter of fact even though I was a Terran Player in BW I <3 Bisu and his domination as well as Stork to death I also love JD and am glad he is resurfacing in sc2 its like a nerd dream come true.... BUT What I want is for Protoss to be less of an I have the big guns Run and Hide and hopefully Someone can put a Piece of chewing gum between the bullet and hammer to stop the bullet from firing Taeja seems to be a quick one and always finds a way to put that chewing gum there within the short period of time that its open! ( ok this is a crazy metaphor but it makes sense if you think about it LOL) Basically I want every match up to be unique yet more of like a Ninja Fighting a Samurai with Swords Numchuku and throwing stars where you have an exchange of blows and such in depth strategy and micro is needed to perform what was almost art .... Instead of it being a ninja having a sword and an advanced alien race dodging the only sword swipe before quickly vaporizing him with a Ray gun LOL I've been a strong proponent of Protoss needing a complete redesign for a long time now. The mothership core is a horrible idea: the race was so broken design wise they had to give them a single overpowered unit and limit them to one of them so protoss would stop dying horrifically in the early game. I don't like the protoss design at all right now, even though I play that race. However, design flaws and balance flaws are not the same thing. You are arguing for a design revamp: I agree with that desire. Regardless of design flaws, the game does not currently appear to be significantly imbalanced in favor of protoss. This month, PvT at the pro level was a little better than a 51% rate for protoss: that's quite balanced overall. PvZ went in favor of zerg. This month, terrans got their asses handed to them by zergs way more than by protoss players. There is some amount of expected swing in the data each month, and this is well within those expectations, so there's no indication of imbalance or major problems. Essentially, we're in the margin of error still. Gonna keep posting this, but apparently your still missing the point. The 51% w/r is pointless as subprotoss players are being matched up against top-terran players. W/R always goes towards 50-50, regardless of whether you look at ladder statistics or Aliguac. Not true. This is only true if there's only one non-mirror matchup, but there are two. Yeh but that doesn't show anything about absolute imbalances. That can only show whether (e.g.) TvZ is relatively more imbalanced to TvP. Arguing that TvP is balanced due to the 51% w/r is absolutele nonsen and shows a basic lack of skill on how to interpret statistics. If both TvP and TvZ are close to 50%, there is no imbalance, unless the idea is that Terran is underpowered in BOTH matchups. Don't confuse overall winrates with matchup winrates. Overall winrates will tend towards 50%, yes, but matchup winrates will be offset by the other matchup. So if the TvP winrate tended towards 40%, you would expect the TvZ winrate to tend towards 60% (assuming equal amounts of each matchup played). Edit: This is assuming equally skilled T and P players. The idea being that if Terran is getting "dragged down" by the TvP matchup, there will be a jump in their TvZ win% as they get matched up against worse players.
Why would Terran be getting matched up against lesser zergs when its Toss thats the problem?? And no one was ever talking about total win rates, they were talking specifically about the PvT percentage being 51%. In fact, no one anywhere talks about overall win rates, they are always laid out by MU. So no, if TvP went toward 40% TvZ could still be 50%. This would account for the fact that there are less Terrans in tournaments overall, because they are performing the same against Zerg, but are losing more to Toss, and therefore more of them are being knocked out early. TvP winrates are in no way connected to the winrates in other MUs..
|
On January 04 2014 02:49 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2014 02:26 Hider wrote:On January 04 2014 02:23 RampancyTW wrote:On January 04 2014 02:18 Hider wrote:On January 03 2014 12:29 Whitewing wrote:On January 03 2014 12:24 Pirfiktshon wrote:Too many variables involved in how frequent TvT appears which you are disregarding. TvT's might simply be occuring less frequently because terrans have been playing against more zergs and protoss players in the early games. Yes: there are fewer terran players than there are protoss and zerg players, but there have been more terran players which consistently place well in tournaments than there have zerg or protoss players. Either the argument is that terran pros are just plain better players in general and have always been and will be (which was the argument every terran made during GOMTvT), or you might want to consider that there isn't a balance problem that's significant, and that there are other variables and factors at work. Look i'm going to just be straight with you..... I don't want Terrans to win every tournament or dominate the scene just as much as you do.... as a matter of fact even though I was a Terran Player in BW I <3 Bisu and his domination as well as Stork to death I also love JD and am glad he is resurfacing in sc2 its like a nerd dream come true.... BUT What I want is for Protoss to be less of an I have the big guns Run and Hide and hopefully Someone can put a Piece of chewing gum between the bullet and hammer to stop the bullet from firing Taeja seems to be a quick one and always finds a way to put that chewing gum there within the short period of time that its open! ( ok this is a crazy metaphor but it makes sense if you think about it LOL) Basically I want every match up to be unique yet more of like a Ninja Fighting a Samurai with Swords Numchuku and throwing stars where you have an exchange of blows and such in depth strategy and micro is needed to perform what was almost art .... Instead of it being a ninja having a sword and an advanced alien race dodging the only sword swipe before quickly vaporizing him with a Ray gun LOL I've been a strong proponent of Protoss needing a complete redesign for a long time now. The mothership core is a horrible idea: the race was so broken design wise they had to give them a single overpowered unit and limit them to one of them so protoss would stop dying horrifically in the early game. I don't like the protoss design at all right now, even though I play that race. However, design flaws and balance flaws are not the same thing. You are arguing for a design revamp: I agree with that desire. Regardless of design flaws, the game does not currently appear to be significantly imbalanced in favor of protoss. This month, PvT at the pro level was a little better than a 51% rate for protoss: that's quite balanced overall. PvZ went in favor of zerg. This month, terrans got their asses handed to them by zergs way more than by protoss players. There is some amount of expected swing in the data each month, and this is well within those expectations, so there's no indication of imbalance or major problems. Essentially, we're in the margin of error still. Gonna keep posting this, but apparently your still missing the point. The 51% w/r is pointless as subprotoss players are being matched up against top-terran players. W/R always goes towards 50-50, regardless of whether you look at ladder statistics or Aliguac. Not true. This is only true if there's only one non-mirror matchup, but there are two. Yeh but that doesn't show anything about absolute imbalances. That can only show whether (e.g.) TvZ is relatively more imbalanced to TvP. Arguing that TvP is balanced due to the 51% w/r is absolutele nonsen and shows a basic lack of skill on how to interpret statistics. If both TvP and TvZ are close to 50%, there is no imbalance, unless the idea is that Terran is underpowered in BOTH matchups. Don't confuse overall winrates with matchup winrates. Overall winrates will tend towards 50%, yes, but matchup winrates will be offset by the other matchup. So if the TvP winrate tended towards 40%, you would expect the TvZ winrate to tend towards 60% (assuming equal amounts of each matchup played). Edit: This is assuming equally skilled T and P players. The idea being that if Terran is getting "dragged down" by the TvP matchup, there will be a jump in their TvZ win% as they get matched up against worse players.
Yes, but nowhere has I stated that TvZ is balanced and TvP protossfavored. In fact, I believe terran is underpowered in both matchups. In higher level play, I believe TvZ is close to unwinable due mass-mutalisks being the most imbalanced thing in the game right now (protoss imbalance is more a combo of several things).
However, at lower levels, this imbalance isn't as significant, which should mean that terrans should do better vs zerg than vs protoss on the ladder.
Looking isolated at ladder-statistics I would expect that terrans have a slightly-below 50% w/r, and a slightly-above 50% w/r in TvZ. But there are lots of reasons for why this could vary in the short to mid-term.
|
Why would Terran be getting matched up against lesser zergs when its Toss thats the problem?? And no one was ever talking about total win rates, they were talking specifically about the PvT percentage being 51%. In fact, no one anywhere talks about overall win rates, they are always laid out by MU. So no, if TvP went toward 40% TvZ could still be 50%. This would account for the fact that there are less Terrans in tournaments overall, because they are performing the same against Zerg, but are losing more to Toss, and therefore more of them are being knocked out early. TvP winrates are in no way connected to the winrates in other MUs..
Be carefull what you are talking about here: There is a difference in responsiveness between ladder and Aliguac statistics.
Let me try to make a realistic example which shows how Aliguac numbers reponse to a balance-problem. The below numbers are made up, but the essense is a mathematical truth.
Period 1: Assume all matchups are balanced at this point in time. But at the end of period 1, a new patch is released that makes terran UP in TvP, but maintains the TvZ balance.
Period 2: Early on W/R will go down vs protoss - Let's say to 40%. The amount of games played by terrans (in the Aliguac database) declines by a modest amount (let's say 5%) as terran players are knocked out earlier. Win-rates vs zerg increases a bit (from 50% to 52%) as the remaining terran players are of a slightly higher caliber.
Period 3: Over the next 1-2 months, W/R increases from 40% to 45% vs protoss and from 52% to 55% vs zerg. If we look at the amount of games played by each race in the Aliguac database it could like this;
- Games played by terran players reduced by 15%
- Games played by protosses increased by 15%
- Games played by zergs = unchanged
So terran players are being matched up against zergs which are of the same caliber as in period 1. But the terrans they are meeting are of a higher caliber than in period 1. The protoss players are of a worse quality than in period 1. So to sum up, in this assymetrical balance change Blizzard, we see three effects;
1) Amount of games played by terran goes up
2) Amont of games played by protosses goes by a similar amount.
3) TvP w/r goes down a lot initially, but eventually regains some of the decline.
4) TvZ w/r goes up marginally initially, and over time it increases further.
Period 5: Blizzard recognizes an assymetrical balance-issues. So they make a change that buffs terrans in TvP, and nerfs them in TvZ --> W/R goes closer to 50-50 and everyone thinks game is balanced. Yet, the game isn't balanced, but terran is UP in all matchups as top-terran players are being matched up against sub-par protoss/zerg players.
Applying theory to empirical data
Below is a long post, so I put it into various spoilers.
Effect of EMP nerf - 2011
+ Show Spoiler +Let's do a quick case-study that assess the impact on the EMP nerf that came in early november 2011. According to the Aliguac numbers, terrans and protosses were equally represented back then in terms of games played, but TvP win-rates favored by 53%-47% during the August-October period. Thus, it seemed that terran was a bit favored in the matchup.
Post-patch we should expect win-rates to increase. I would also expect to see a small decline in the amount of games played by terrans, but it may take longer time (perhaps up to 6 months) before it can be seen due to the low samples.
From Aliguac's database, we can make the following observartions;
- TvP win-rates declines from 57% in October to around 50% in the November-January period
- Average amount of games which has a terran represented in it declines from 66.2% 63.3% from August-October to February-April.
- TvZ win/ratio's are largely unaffected here. I happen to believe that it doesn't disproove the theory at all, but simply suggests that zergs were getting better at using Infestors during this period.
Nevertheless, the EMP nerf had a clear effect on balance, and at least in the short/mid-term it seemed to make TvP more balanced than it previously was.
2012 - what happened?
+ Show Spoiler + In this period, I have made an interesting observarations; The rise of patchzergs came at the expense of terrans - not protosses!.
Common knowledges tells us that both protoss and terrans did poorly during this period. However, the numbers doesn't tell the same story as protoss performed well in this period, both in terms of player representations and win-rates in both matchups
One possible explanation for the observarations is related to the strenght of the protoss 2-base Immortall allin vs zerg. However, that doesn't explain how protoss could continue to do well against the few remaining top-top terran players that remained.
My theory is that we (during this period) saw the first symptopms of a huge TvP-balance issue in competitive play. Protoss players had learned (with Parting in the lead) to use HT's incredibly well and overall just play a much stronger late-game.
However, the balance issue was simply disguised by the fact that ZvT was even more imbalanced, which accelerated the 5 stage-proces (described in the theory) a lot. This meant that we never actually saw a period where TvP-win rates declined significantly before the amount of terran players adjusted.
So going into HOTS, simple Aliguac statistics showed us that terrans had a slightly above 50% win-rates, but as I have argued, this is highly misleading. Having calculated adjusted win-ratio's (that games race distribution into account), I conclude that the protoss actually was a bit favored in TvP at the end of WOL.
HOTS
+ Show Spoiler +Speed-medi's are nice, but the addition of the mothership core has created an early-game assymmetry which definitely has favored protoss more than terrans. Thus, we should view HOTS as "patch" that further buffs the favored race. So according to the theory, HOTS should reduce PvT win-rates in the short run, and then the amount of games played by terrans should slowly increase and win-rates would adjust once again.
However, as HOTS also buffed terran in TvZ, the effect isn't so simple. Thus, we should have expected to see these types of trends post HOTS release;
- TvP w/r increases while TvZ winrates declines
- The amount of terran players increases marginallys the buff in TvZ is a bigger buff than the nerf in PvT
- Protoss also got buffed in PvZ, so protoss representation should increase as well (at the expense of zerg players)
Early HOTS, most of these predictions came true as terran representation and w/r in TvZ increased. However, we actually didn't see the increase in PvT w/r mmediately. Chances are that it took a while before protosses figured out how to adjust to speed-medivacs. This resulted in the protoss imbalance first being apparent in the late summer.
However, during autumn we found out that the early game imbalances were even larger than one could have expected prior to HOTS release. TvP win-rates were around 46%, and the terran representation which initially had increased fell to an even lower level than during late WOL. Further, TvZ balance also started to resemble the WOL balance due to the buff to Mutalisks.
Conclusion
+ Show Spoiler +I remember a quote from Idra in early 2011/late 2010 where he argued that the nerfs to terran/buffs to zergs hadn't been large enough yet as zerg was simply a lot more UP than anyone had realized. Fair to say, Idra was completely right as the adjusted W/R from October 2010 to January 2011 was approximiately 63% in favor of terran. Blizzard back then was slow to see the large imbalance, and Dustin Browder even demonstrated his incompetence by saying that TvZ was balanced. His comment arose due to his poor understanding of statistics.
During the patch zerg era, they repeated the error as the adjusted W/R in TvZ had to go down to 36% before they acted. Quotes by Blizzard renewed my belief in their incompetency as they also back then thought the game was balanced. Check out this quote byDavid Kim from December 2012: Globally, at both the pro and non-pro levels, we’re not seeing significant balance issues
And today, terrans adjusted win-rates in both matchups are below 40%. The most recent stats for PvT shows that the w/r are closer to 50-50 than in the November-period, and I fear that Blizzard may not implement the neccesary terran buff in the next patch.
|
|
|
i dont play sc2 anymore. i watched like 20 of the best games list of 2013. i will watch them all. widow mines are not good. in TvZ its pretty much, mmm pressure + widow mines. zerg mostly defends with muta ling bane, flying across a minefield with an overseer. while terran is waiting for 1 lucky widow mine hit, which decides the game. curious innovation game 3: curious did that 40 minutes long and luckily, there wasn't the ONE big hit. DRG:Innovation game 11 : DRG did that also for about 40 minutes, but then the ONE lucky widow mine hit decided and ended the game. i can't say, pretty impressive. all what comes to my mind is: bad game design, bad balance.
|
On January 05 2014 06:25 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Why would Terran be getting matched up against lesser zergs when its Toss thats the problem?? And no one was ever talking about total win rates, they were talking specifically about the PvT percentage being 51%. In fact, no one anywhere talks about overall win rates, they are always laid out by MU. So no, if TvP went toward 40% TvZ could still be 50%. This would account for the fact that there are less Terrans in tournaments overall, because they are performing the same against Zerg, but are losing more to Toss, and therefore more of them are being knocked out early. TvP winrates are in no way connected to the winrates in other MUs.. Be carefull what you are talking about here: There is a difference in responsiveness between ladder and Aliguac statistics. Let me try to make a realistic example which shows how Aliguac numbers reponse to a balance-problem. The below numbers are made up, but the essense is a mathematical truth. Period 1: Assume all matchups are balanced at this point in time. But at the end of period 1, a new patch is released that makes terran UP in TvP, but maintains the TvZ balance. Period 2: Early on W/R will go down vs protoss - Let's say to 40%. The amount of games played by terrans (in the Aliguac database) declines by a modest amount (let's say 5%) as terran players are knocked out earlier. Win-rates vs zerg increases a bit (from 50% to 52%) as the remaining terran players are of a slightly higher caliber. Period 3: Over the next 1-2 months, W/R increases from 40% to 45% vs protoss and from 52% to 55% vs zerg. If we look at the amount of games played by each race in the Aliguac database it could like this; - Games played by terran players reduced by 15% - Games played by protosses increased by 15% - Games played by zergs = unchanged So terran players are being matched up against zergs which are of the same caliber as in period 1. But the terrans they are meeting are of a higher caliber than in period 1. The protoss players are of a worse quality than in period 1. So to sum up, in this assymetrical balance change Blizzard, we see three effects; 1) Amount of games played by terran goes up 2) Amont of games played by protosses goes by a similar amount. 3) TvP w/r goes down a lot initially, but eventually regains some of the decline. 4) TvZ w/r goes up marginally initially, and over time it increases further. Period 5: Blizzard recognizes an assymetrical balance-issues. So they make a change that buffs terrans in TvP, and nerfs them in TvZ --> W/R goes closer to 50-50 and everyone thinks game is balanced. Yet, the game isn't balanced, but terran is UP in all matchups as top-terran players are being matched up against sub-par protoss/zerg players. Applying theory to empirical dataBelow is a long post, so I put it into various spoilers. Effect of EMP nerf - 2011+ Show Spoiler +Let's do a quick case-study that assess the impact on the EMP nerf that came in early november 2011. According to the Aliguac numbers, terrans and protosses were equally represented back then in terms of games played, but TvP win-rates favored by 53%-47% during the August-October period. Thus, it seemed that terran was a bit favored in the matchup.
Post-patch we should expect win-rates to increase. I would also expect to see a small decline in the amount of games played by terrans, but it may take longer time (perhaps up to 6 months) before it can be seen due to the low samples.
From Aliguac's database, we can make the following observartions;
- TvP win-rates declines from 57% in October to around 50% in the November-January period
- Average amount of games which has a terran represented in it declines from 66.2% 63.3% from August-October to February-April.
- TvZ win/ratio's are largely unaffected here. I happen to believe that it doesn't disproove the theory at all, but simply suggests that zergs were getting better at using Infestors during this period.
Nevertheless, the EMP nerf had a clear effect on balance, and at least in the short/mid-term it seemed to make TvP more balanced than it previously was.
2012 - what happened?+ Show Spoiler + In this period, I have made an interesting observarations; The rise of patchzergs came at the expense of terrans - not protosses!.
Common knowledges tells us that both protoss and terrans did poorly during this period. However, the numbers doesn't tell the same story as protoss performed well in this period, both in terms of player representations and win-rates in both matchups
One possible explanation for the observarations is related to the strenght of the protoss 2-base Immortall allin vs zerg. However, that doesn't explain how protoss could continue to do well against the few remaining top-top terran players that remained.
My theory is that we (during this period) saw the first symptopms of a huge TvP-balance issue in competitive play. Protoss players had learned (with Parting in the lead) to use HT's incredibly well and overall just play a much stronger late-game.
However, the balance issue was simply disguised by the fact that ZvT was even more imbalanced, which accelerated the 5 stage-proces (described in the theory) a lot. This meant that we never actually saw a period where TvP-win rates declined significantly before the amount of terran players adjusted.
So going into HOTS, simple Aliguac statistics showed us that terrans had a slightly above 50% win-rates, but as I have argued, this is highly misleading. Having calculated adjusted win-ratio's (that games race distribution into account), I conclude that the protoss actually was a bit favored in TvP at the end of WOL. Speed-medi's are nice, but the addition of the mothership core has created an early-game assymmetry which definitely has favored protoss more than terrans. Thus, we should view HOTS as "patch" that further buffs the favored race. So according to the theory, HOTS should reduce PvT win-rates in the short run, and then the amount of games played by terrans should slowly increase and win-rates would adjust once again.
However, as HOTS also buffed terran in TvZ, the effect isn't so simple. Thus, we should have expected to see these types of trends post HOTS release;
- TvP w/r increases while TvZ winrates declines
- The amount of terran players increases marginallys the buff in TvZ is a bigger buff than the nerf in PvT
- Protoss also got buffed in PvZ, so protoss representation should increase as well (at the expense of zerg players)
Early HOTS, most of these predictions came true as terran representation and w/r in TvZ increased. However, we actually didn't see the increase in PvT w/r mmediately. Chances are that it took a while before protosses figured out how to adjust to speed-medivacs. This resulted in the protoss imbalance first being apparent in the late summer.
However, during autumn we found out that the early game imbalances were even larger than one could have expected prior to HOTS release. TvP win-rates were around 46%, and the terran representation which initially had increased fell to an even lower level than during late WOL. Further, TvZ balance also started to resemble the WOL balance due to the buff to Mutalisks.
I remember a quote from Idra in early 2011/late 2010 where he argued that the nerfs to terran/buffs to zergs hadn't been large enough yet as zerg was simply a lot more UP than anyone had realized. Fair to say, Idra was completely right as the adjusted W/R from October 2010 to January 2011 was approximiately 63% in favor of terran. Blizzard back then was slow to see the large imbalance, and Dustin Browder even demonstrated his incompetence by saying that TvZ was balanced. His comment arose due to his poor understanding of statistics.
During the patch zerg era, they repeated the error as the adjusted W/R in TvZ had to go down to 36% before they acted. Quotes by Blizzard renewed my belief in their incompetency as they also back then thought the game was balanced. Check out this quote byDavid Kim from December 2012: Globally, at both the pro and non-pro levels, we’re not seeing significant balance issues
And today, terrans adjusted win-rates in both matchups are below 40%. The most recent stats for PvT shows that the w/r are closer to 50-50 than in the November-period, and I fear that Blizzard may not implement the neccesary terran buff in the next patch.
Can you offer evidence of situations where an imbalance in one matchup did cause a swing in the other matchup? For the most part it seems like you give a theoretical reason for why you might expect it, and then gave several instances where it didn't happen, using the theory to conclude that in all those circumstances the other matchup was actually more imbalanced than it appeared. But as far as I can tell the simplest explanation of the data is that when one non-mirror matchup is imbalanced, the effect on the other non-mirror matchup is either small or non-existent.
I wrote a blog once on balance metrics and how changes in other matchups can throw off your data for a matchup (even changes in mirror matchups), but I have to say that despite the theoretical basis I gave in that blog, there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence of that bearing out in reality (post is here if you're interested). I assume the effect is small, if it happens at all.
|
On January 05 2014 09:16 Hider wrote:
A couple things I think your overlooking with that info: First, Terrans making through the first round are still playing better than average zerg players who were also able to make it through the first round. Secondly, as there are more players and MUs in the first round, the 50-50 split in the TvZ games played during that round also significantly weighs the data in that direction from the get go. Therefore between these two points, it is possible that there is no meaningful shift in the wr of the TvZ MU that falls outside the bounds of a normal margin of error. Also, I obviously dont play as Zerg, but just from an observers standpoint (Ive seen a lot of PvZs lately), I do feel like Toss is slightly favored in that MU as well, though not nearly as significantly as in PvT, so I would say that the Zergs making it through are in a similar position to the Terrans making it through.
|
That being said, I think that if the widow mine is not buffed soon, either back to its previous state, or by changing the splash from 20 damage at 1.25-1.5 range and 10 damage from 1.5-1.75, to just 20 damage from 1.25-1.75, then we will begin to see the MU favoring Zergs more and more.
|
Both Thor and tanks (especially Thor) have great potential to get a buff.
Players who excel in bio mine are doing fine until muta count is too high and even when adding Thors they can't deal with muta well enough.
Imo a Thor buff would better because it helps dealing with ultras as well (function better as a soft counter before you get a nice marauder count up)
|
I've completely given up hope that this game will be balance by the time this expansion ends. Playing starcraft might as well be a form of mental punishment.
Blizzard's fix for everything lately is just MAKE IT FASTER!!!
HoTS release: Make mutas faster, regen faster! Lets make medvacs FASTER!!!
patch: make oracles faster! for no real reason! we are bored.
patch: make roaches faster!
I mean seriously, there is no reason for these super mutas anymore now that mines have been chopped down. No one wanted the oracle speed buff and for some reason that made it through. WTF is blizzards obsession with making roaches faster?!
I honestly feel that bliz has no idea what is going on and are just making changes every now and then to make it look like they are doing something.
Terran is completely broken atm, TvP especially. Terran is just at toss's mercy all game and can only deal damage to toss when they have toss's permission aka toss fell asleep at the controls.
|
Korean Terrans showing how it is done. 6-0! 6-0!
|
On January 05 2014 22:32 Ana_ wrote:
Korean Terrans showing how it is done. 6-0! 6-0!
Europeans did pretty well also yesterday in WCS qualifier.
|
On January 05 2014 22:38 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2014 22:32 Ana_ wrote:
Korean Terrans showing how it is done. 6-0! 6-0! Europeans did pretty well also yesterday in WCS qualifier.
It is true then! Terrans are saved!!!1
|
and Reality showing how much of a dark horse strategy mech is vs Zerg
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
