Blizzard Blog: Balance Snapshot

On September 23 2011 01:34 jexxto wrote:
Blizzard recently posted a blog with numbers regarding the current balance of the game: Original Post

Do you feel this is an accurate depiciton of the current state of the game? Certainly the results and representation in korea doesn't match up with these numbers.

On September 23 2011 01:38 chadissilent wrote:
Nerf Fungal Growth.

On September 23 2011 01:51 R3N wrote:
PvZ 57% on both NA and EU. I thought 'toss is UP?

On September 23 2011 01:52 Shewklad wrote:



Yes, the people on Sotg might want you to think that.

On September 23 2011 01:48 MisterFred wrote:
Terran IMBA. Just look at the Korean numbers. Now imagine eliminating Korean masters and just going with GM. The numbers would probably get worse. Professional Terran dominance isn't a fluke. The race is just better. And I'm not exactly the easiest sell on this... I play random and Terran is my worst race, but it's still clear to me.

Lower than high masters - don't make me laugh. MMR should keep everything near 50%. Everything else is metagame shift, but honestly, who cares, all those players will have about 50% win rate and the meta game will never be constant because they aren't good enough to smooth it out.

On September 23 2011 01:57 QTIP. wrote:
I think what we are looking at here is the trickle-down effect. Metagame transfer Korean -> EU/NA takes some time.

On September 23 2011 01:54 R3N wrote:


You mean Inc It's really only him xD

On September 23 2011 01:58 HubertFelix wrote:


Yeah but protoss players act like they have the sames issues as korean protoss on GSL.

On September 23 2011 01:52 Shewklad wrote:



Yes, the people on Sotg might want you to think that.

On September 23 2011 01:58 Sated wrote:
Pretty sure tournaments are the only legit values to use. The ladder tries to balance people to 50% win/loss so the numbers are irrelevant.

On September 23 2011 01:58 Sated wrote:The ladder tries to balance people to 50% win/loss so the numbers are irrelevant.

On September 23 2011 01:58 Sated wrote:
Pretty sure tournaments are the only legit values to use. The ladder tries to balance people to 50% win/loss so the numbers are irrelevant.

EDIT:


I'm not stupid, I know that I don't have those problems at my level because there are so many other things that come into effect at my level (like not being able to micro well, or getting supply blocked too often). However, the game shouldn't be balanced according to my level, it should be balanced according to the pro-level - that's the only way SC2 can be a legitimate e-sport!

On September 23 2011 02:02 QTIP. wrote:


Same thing could be said for Zerg players when everyone but FD was winning. Pointless statement. I remember when the first game came out, Zerg's were quoting Idra in Platinum League.

On September 23 2011 02:03 RavenLoud wrote:
I bet that 59% TvZ is cus of 2 rax.

On September 23 2011 02:07 monx wrote:
who gives a shit about lower leagues anyway? I am low league but balance is for progamers. Wake up Blizzard

On September 23 2011 01:58 HubertFelix wrote:


Yeah but protoss players act like they have the sames issues as korean protoss on GSL.

On September 23 2011 01:58 HubertFelix wrote:


Yeah but protoss players act like they have the sames issues as korean protoss on GSL.

On September 23 2011 01:55 Brotocol wrote:



Well said.

I also want to point out that matchmaking makes all winrates tend toward 50%.

* The only case where this does not apply is tournaments, where matchmaking is not done algorithmically.

* The definition of balance means that, for 2 players of the same skill level, the game should be perfectly even. How do we isolate the skill level variable? We can't. But the closest we can do is make some assumptions: (1) There is less variability (lower std. deviation) in the highest tournaments and (2) The more up to date a given scene's metagame is, the more viable it is.

Thus, we really should be looking at GSL for the closest picture of balance that we can get, as it's the closest situation in terms of reflecting equal skill levels (tapering off on the high end, and thus not as highly variable as other tournaments/scenes), and metagame advancement.


PS. A common misconception of "balance for the highest levels" is that imbalance doesn't affect lower leagues. It affects any game with equal skill level players, where one has to work harder than the other to achieve the same result.

The entire "balance only affects the highest leagues" is wrong. It affects high leagues consistently, but can also happen, albeit inconsistently, at lower leagues.

Say, for instance, take 2 silver league players who are playing at skill levels 100 and 95, respectively (hypothetical values of course). Meaning that one is outplaying the other. And yet, the latter opponent wins. That is imbalance.


Verdict: This looks like damage control, as it misrepresents these stats as "raw stats," whereas in reality, matchmaking has influenced them heavily.

On September 23 2011 02:05 branflakes14 wrote:


Gotta agree with this. And weighing master league wins as heavily as GM wins is like weighing a code A win as heavily as a code S win.

On September 23 2011 02:10 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote:
Why exactly does Blizzard think that ladder winrate percentages are an indication of balance, when they have themselves designed the ladder to match players so that their winrates are roughly 50%?

I mean, if for example Terran was to be made so underpowered that someone with Master's level 'skill' can barely hold their own vs mid-level Diamond Zerg & Protoss players, ladder stats would appear largely normal anyway? Am I missing something here?

On September 23 2011 02:10 RaGe wrote:


Yeah, I can't believe blizzard still hasn't understood that they're not working on raw data.

On September 23 2011 02:13 Teejing wrote:
those numbers are useless !

Players are matched by skill so ofc it will be close to 50% win.

If we only take gm+ masters its terrible too!
There could be 1 Protoss, 1 zerg and 198 terrans in GM only and if those 2 players would win 70% of their matches you would think Zerg and Protoss are super overpowered, when in fact 99% of the players in that gm league are terran !

win % dont mean shit in that context. you would need z, t and P players of the exact same skill to play each others hundreds of times to get a meaningful win % statistics, but how u determine 100% equal skills of the players?

Those numbers are SHIT, screw this shit!
The best way to determine race balance in sc2 right now is to look at the very top positions of leagues and tourneys.
Just look what races place highly in tourneys or even better, look what races are present in the GSL code S.
GSL right now has the highest density of skill, if by a small or large margin can be debated, but not the fact that in the end it has.

So just watch gsl code s player list:

20 T , 7 Z and 5 P

Concluding we can say that Terran dominates at the highest skill level right now.
I am not saying for blizzard to nerf the shit out of terran now, this is a another topic, BUT those BULLSHIT numbers from blizzard presented here are a LIE.

God i got mad seeing those bullshit numbers, deceiving us and padding their shoulders the same time.

SHAME ON YOU BLIZZARD

On September 23 2011 02:17 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
Everyone complaining about the ladder shifting everyone to their 50/50 point, you're not thinking the math through enough.

I am Protoss. If PvZ is horribly imbalanced and we all start winning 100% of our games, we will indeed experience upward MMR pressure until we hit about a 50/50 ratio of wins and losses. However, if we assume that PvT is pretty balanced, the result will be that we've got something like an 80% win rate against Z, balanced out by a 20% winrate against the Terran players we're being matched up against (who are beating us in a balanced matchup because they're much better than we are). The overall result is that we stabilize at even numbers of wins and losses, but our matchup winrates will still be clearly skewed.

Of course, that means that the numbers Blizzard gives us aren't necessarily enough to see where an imbalance lies, even if it shows that there is an imbalance. If PvT shows Toss losing more than half their games, it could mean that Terran is OP in TvP, but it could also mean that Zerg is UP in ZvP and Toss are getting matched up against excessively skilled Terrans as a result.

One of the many tools that are used to assess balance in StarCraft II are the relative win rates for each race versus the others called adjusted win percentages. What's an adjusted win percentage? While the math behind calculating an adjusted win percentage is extremely complex, an adjusted win percentage can be summed up as the 'true' win percentage of a given race, produced by removing the skewing effects of the matchmaker and factoring in player skill. Combining information from millions of games being played, hundreds of thousands of players, their hidden skill rating, and a little math, we can generate reasonably accurate figures to compare how successful each race really is versus the others.

We can then categorize these stat by league, region, specific stretches of time, or any other way we might want to arrange the data for analysis. The end result is the information that we use (in combination with many other resources) to piece together a picture of what current StarCraft II balance looks like.

On September 23 2011 02:18 SniXSniPe wrote:


If you are going to reference GSL, at least make an effort to note the race stats for Code A: 12 P 12 Z 8 T.

On September 23 2011 02:18 SniXSniPe wrote:


If you are going to reference GSL, at least make an effort to note the race stats for Code A: 12 P 12 Z 8 T.

On September 23 2011 02:21 Soma.bokforlag wrote:
matchmaking doesnt mean that a platinum terran gets matched against diamond zerg and toss and gold terran.

if terran is OP this would show even in stats from lower leagues

this is of course in the case that balance works the same across leagues, which it doesnt. it is extremely hard for blizzard to balance the game on all levels. what do you do if its balanced for masters and lower? patch the game just for GM and e-sports?

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:18 SniXSniPe wrote:


If you are going to reference GSL, at least make an effort to note the race stats for Code A: 12 P 12 Z 8 T.

On September 23 2011 02:13 Teejing wrote:
So just watch gsl code s player list:

20 T , 7 Z and 5 P

Concluding we can say that Terran dominates at the highest skill level right now.
I am not saying for blizzard to nerf the shit out of terran now, this is a another topic, BUT those BULLSHIT numbers from blizzard presented here are a LIE.
SHAME ON YOU BLIZZARD

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:25 Zorkmid wrote:


Here's a thought. Since there are only 50 or 60 players that have a chance to be Code S in the GSL, couldn't it just be that the better players happened to pick terran?

I'd rather look at the HUGE sample sizes that Blizzard provides than a 32 man tournament.

On September 23 2011 02:27 Condor Hero wrote:

Because Blizz can't stop doing things that makes their community go "lol...."

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:30 Dommk wrote:

Or maybe they genuinely feel like they want to give the community some insight given the heightened amount of balance whine lately.

They have done this before, it seems to me they just keep tabs on the community because whenever they post these numbers is when ever there is a lot of crying about balance within the community (more than usual)

On September 23 2011 02:30 Dommk wrote:

Or maybe they genuinely feel like they want to give the community some insight given the heightened amount of balance whine lately.

They have done this before, it seems to me they just keep tabs on the community because whenever they post these numbers is when ever there is a lot of crying about balance within the community (more than usual)

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:27 crms wrote:



I think it's because balance issues are about the most significant outcry of the community in RTS gaming. While these numbers are basically nonsensical they make balance (to a casual viewer) seem pretty damn good. These numbers alleviate some of the mass hysteria regarding balance for people who take everything blizzard say as gospel (a lot of fucking people).

Blizzard throws out nice looking balanced numbers and 99% think, wow the game is pretty balanced, 1% (TL nerds, redditors etc.,) are left scratching their head with the same balance concerns they've always had.

On September 23 2011 02:30 tehemperorer wrote:

What defines "better players?" Ones with a better win ratio? Those players are all high level players, but it's clear that Terran have tools to deal with pretty much any situation, and for these tools there is a lower barrier to acquisition for them compared to Protoss and Zerg because of the flexibility of Terran's early units: you can basically do anything you like and be safe behind pure marine (early pressure, saves gas) or mm (stronger early pressure, takes a bit of gas)

On September 23 2011 02:10 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote:
Why exactly does Blizzard think that ladder winrate percentages are an indication of balance, when they have themselves designed the ladder to match players so that their winrates are roughly 50%?

I mean, if for example Terran was to be made so underpowered that someone with Master's level 'skill' can barely hold their own vs mid-level Diamond Zerg & Protoss players, ladder stats would appear largely normal anyway? Am I missing something here?

On September 23 2011 02:36 Pred8oar wrote:
And because of this np was nerfed? gj blizzard you fail.

On September 23 2011 02:03 hotwings wrote:
The changes in the patch make no sense when you look at those statistics.

Blizzard y u no make sense >:o

On September 23 2011 01:51 R3N wrote:
PvZ 57% on both NA and EU. I thought 'toss is UP?

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 02:36 sekritzzz wrote:

I can't agree more with this type of question.


What is even worst is that Blizzard isn't even consistent with the way they display their data nor the timing of their data. Last I remember they gave us separate leagues and the timing of it just seems weird and random.

On September 23 2011 02:39 TERRANLOL wrote:


You talk about is as if there is some big conspiracy regarding something terrible. It's not really like there are that many reasons we can point to that blizzard would want to say to us that the game is balanced. It's obviously a response to Protoss' recent poor performance in the GSL.
But don't talk about it as if Blizzard is committing some travesty that just sounds silly.

On September 23 2011 02:42 headbus wrote:
7 Zergs, 5 Protoss in GSL code S. That should be enough to convince people that terran is stronger.

On September 23 2011 01:55 Brotocol wrote:



Well said.

I also want to point out that matchmaking makes all winrates tend toward 50%.

* The only case where this does not apply is tournaments, where matchmaking is not done algorithmically.

* The definition of balance means that, for 2 players of the same skill level, the game should be perfectly even. How do we isolate the skill level variable? We can't. But the closest we can do is make some assumptions: (1) There is less variability (lower std. deviation) in the highest tournaments and (2) The more up to date a given scene's metagame is, the more viable it is.

Thus, we really should be looking at GSL for the closest picture of balance that we can get, as it's the closest situation in terms of reflecting equal skill levels (tapering off on the high end, and thus not as highly variable as other tournaments/scenes), and metagame advancement.


PS. A common misconception of "balance for the highest levels" is that imbalance doesn't affect lower leagues. It affects any game with equal skill level players, where one has to work harder than the other to achieve the same result.

The entire "balance only affects the highest leagues" is wrong. It affects high leagues consistently, but can also happen, albeit inconsistently, at lower leagues.

Say, for instance, take 2 silver league players who are playing at skill levels 100 and 95, respectively (hypothetical values of course). Meaning that one is outplaying the other. And yet, the latter opponent wins. That is imbalance. Real life example: 1-1-1 happening at lower leagues. That is imbalanced if an inferior player beats a superior one.


Verdict: This looks like damage control, as it misrepresents these stats as "raw stats," whereas in reality, matchmaking has influenced them heavily.

On September 23 2011 02:24 Brotocol wrote:



Misconception.

What it really means to "balance for the highest level of play" is that the strongest play must be balanced, but this should automatically scale down to all levels because skill levels are relative.

If it's balanced for players that have skill levels of 150, then it should automatically ensure balance for skill level 5.

On September 23 2011 02:48 nemo14 wrote:

You're wrong.

A diamond terran who can't remember to split his bio will lose to infestors constantly. A gold zerg who can't remember to scout properly will lose to a 6rax every time he sees it. A platinum protoss who can't remember to watch the minimap will lose to a ling/nydus all-in basically every time he encounters it.

Not every strategy that silver-leaguers can pull off can be defended with silver-league map awareness, micro, etc.

On September 23 2011 02:44 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:
Also, there's this thing on the ladder called MMR. Because it will have you play people on your MMR, you can be a lot better than someone and play Protoss, but beat them because you're just a lot better than them. How the ladder works is that it is supposed to keep things 50%. The ladder is by no means a demonstration of balance.

What's an adjusted win percentage? While the math behind calculating an adjusted win percentage is extremely complex, an adjusted win percentage can be summed up as the 'true' win percentage of a given race, produced by removing the skewing effects of the matchmaker and factoring in player skill.

On September 23 2011 02:51 Zaphid wrote:


That's exactly what makes you improve, people's skill isn't static

On September 23 2011 02:38 maddogawl wrote:



You do realize Blizzard does realize this. Theres a video that they did at Blizzcon where they discuss how they analyze balance, and they say themselves that they can't look at straight w/l ratios. They have behind the scenes skill values for each player that they analyze as well. Check out the video if you can.

Blizzard designers are a lot smarter than people on the forums give them credit for.

On September 23 2011 02:39 BronzeKnee wrote:


This is a great post. Obviously if Blizzard was balancing the game based in part on these stats, they would not have balanced it all in the way that they did.

On September 23 2011 02:39 Rob28 wrote:


Yeah, in the bronze league maybe. look at master/GM stats, they are better indicators since top level guys don't lose as much due to micro/macro or just inexperience...

On September 23 2011 02:19 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote:


And then how many of these 12/12 are advancing to Ro16, compared? l0l

On September 23 2011 02:24 Brotocol wrote:



Misconception.

What it really means to "balance for the highest level of play" is that the strongest play must be balanced, but this should automatically scale down to all levels because skill levels are relative.

If it's balanced for players that have skill levels of 150, then it should automatically ensure balance for skill level 5.

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

"It’s fairly common, for example, for a new strategy or build order to skew the numbers in favor of a particular race for a brief period, until the metagame catches up and the counter strategies spread through the community. "

Still, while they may be interesting, it’s important to emphasize that these numbers aren't the last word in our balance analysis.

On September 23 2011 02:59 Sabu113 wrote:
So they aren't going to fix toss soon. Interesting.

Does explain the perceptions of zerg and Terrans on the forums. Wierd. I can think of a few stories that might explain it but they're all a bit too hand wavey.

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 01:56 Keula wrote:
I also want to point out that matchmaking makes all winrates tend toward 50%.

* The only case where this does not apply is tournaments, where matchmaking is not done algorithmically.

* The definition of balance means that, for 2 players of the same skill level, the game should be perfectly even. How do we isolate the skill level variable? We can't. But the closest we can do is make some assumptions: (1) There is less variability (lower std. deviation) in the highest tournaments and (2) The more up to date a given scene's metagame is, the more viable it is.

Thus, we really should be looking at GSL for the closest picture of balance that we can get, as it's the closest situation in terms of reflecting equal skill levels (tapering off on the high end, and thus not as highly variable as other tournaments/scenes), and metagame advancement.

On September 23 2011 02:54 Grummler wrote:


Try to read what is written above these numbers. Are you seriously thinking that Blizzard forgot about their own matchmaking system? That would make you look very stupid.

Actually i think this might be true, so i am going to quote the important part for you, in case you have trouble finding it:



Source: See OP.

On September 23 2011 02:42 headbus wrote:
7 Zergs, 5 Protoss in GSL code S. That should be enough to convince people that terran is stronger.

On September 23 2011 01:55 Brotocol wrote:



Well said.

I also want to point out that matchmaking makes all winrates tend toward 50%.

* The only case where this does not apply is tournaments, where matchmaking is not done algorithmically.

* The definition of balance means that, for 2 players of the same skill level, the game should be perfectly even. How do we isolate the skill level variable? We can't. But the closest we can do is make some assumptions: (1) There is less variability (lower std. deviation) in the highest tournaments and (2) The more up to date a given scene's metagame is, the more viable it is.

Thus, we really should be looking at GSL for the closest picture of balance that we can get, as it's the closest situation in terms of reflecting equal skill levels (tapering off on the high end, and thus not as highly variable as other tournaments/scenes), and metagame advancement.


PS. A common misconception of "balance for the highest levels" is that imbalance doesn't affect lower leagues. It affects any game with equal skill level players, where one has to work harder than the other to achieve the same result.

The entire "balance only affects the highest leagues" is wrong. It affects high leagues consistently, but can also happen, albeit inconsistently, at lower leagues.

Say, for instance, take 2 silver league players who are playing at skill levels 100 and 95, respectively (hypothetical values of course). Meaning that one is outplaying the other. And yet, the latter opponent wins. That is imbalance. Real life example: 1-1-1 happening at lower leagues. That is imbalanced if an inferior player beats a superior one.


Verdict: This looks like damage control, as it misrepresents these stats as "raw stats," whereas in reality, matchmaking has influenced them heavily.

On September 23 2011 02:18 SniXSniPe wrote:


If you are going to reference GSL, at least make an effort to note the race stats for Code A: 12 P 12 Z 8 T.

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 03:07 Soulriser wrote:
I think the big point that people are making here sortof goes back to what Tyler said: that blizzard has no incentive to release these numbers. They released the numbers to make it appear to a massive audience that the game is fine, which is a business move that gets more players to buy the game and continue playing.(blizzard doesnt make all of their money from just pro players guys)

however, to people who actually know whats going on, these numbers just look like a pile of shit. because in reality, thats pretty much what they are. there is no point to revealing this, and without giving the math or other reasons for their 'balance' changes, then it just makes blizzard look stupid. :/ i mean, giving out these numbers say "zerg is fine, the NP was pointless", which makes everyone get pretty pissed at blizzard. however, if they released something like, "well we nerfed NP because..." then that would make them look more intelligent.

tldr; the OP blog is merely a financial move that makes the majority of players think the game it great. the rest of us are disgusted by the lack of information that this actually gives us.

On September 23 2011 02:52 Kazeyonoma wrote:
blizz gives info to help quell the masses, masses cry foul and pick it apart.

blizz doesn't give info to help quell the masses, masses cry foul and claim blizzard doesn't know what it's doing.

You can't go by just pure GM rankings. that's only 200 people per region, statistically it is too low to be able to balance upon, you have to include masters because at least in korea, lots of master level players are borderline pro or GM level but the 200 max system prevents them from being moved up until someone in GM falls out.

Take what you want away from this blog post, but to flame blizzard for even giving us any information is horseshit. You can be skeptical, or you can try to interpret it into other subsets of data, but you have to believe that blizzard has ALL of the numbers. Our stats, even from the best of our community, is based off of partial data mining utilizing tools like sc2ranks (love you!) to try to collect the best data we can, but blizzard literally has it ALL.

You have no clue why the neural parasite change happened. Maybe in their data, they can do a search where it says, in PvZ when games get past X time, and Infestors are out. Games with Neural parasite are won 90% of the time by zerg, games without are closer to 50%. See, a statistic like that, something that only blizzard can easily filter, would indicate there is some sort of disparity in PvZ when Neural is used. That's not to say they immediately made the change like the blog post said. It's possible this initial inference lead them to then further investigate the "possible problem" and look at it closer, looking further at variances of data, and upon their research and despite shifting meta game changes, the PvZ + Neural statistics have remained outside of the 55/45 win rate range they like to see. So they then hit the balance team to figure out a suitable fix, apply to PTR and test how that alters their data.

It's easy to look at JUST these overall win rates and see PvZ isn't lop sided why nerf NP blizz? and QQ heavily, but we don't have the data, and we will never have all of the data. They have spreadsheets that are probably so sophisticated we couldn't dream of imitating them. As a former theorycrafter for WoW we used to try to create simulation spreadsheets to mimic that of blizzard, and several times we came close, but even blizzard employees would post that while impressed upon our reverse engineering of data to create our own spreadsheets, ours were fundamentally flawed for an overall viewpoint, but useful for our specific needs. SC2 has probably more possible iterations and changes due to unit compositions and macro/micro than in WoW, so I can only imagine their findings to be even harder to balance and their spreadsheets even more sophisticated.

So please, while it's easy to try to judge blizzard upon this release and their recent patch changes, the blog itself says these numbers ARE NOT THE ONLY REASONING FOR CHANGES.

/rant off

On September 23 2011 02:54 Grummler wrote:


Try to read what is written above these numbers. Are you seriously thinking that Blizzard forgot about their own matchmaking system? That would make you look very stupid.

Actually i think this might be true, so i am going to quote the important part for you, in case you have trouble finding it:



Source: See OP.

On September 23 2011 03:09 cHaNg-sTa wrote:

That's cuz all the good Terrans are in Code S XD

On September 23 2011 03:07 tyrless wrote:


Anybody who is convinced by those most meaningless numbers is in fact ignorant and uneducated to basic statistical analysis. Which most of the whiners in this thread are, not to mention the terrible reading comprehension I'm seeing (there are actually people here bringing up the matchmaking system in their arguments).

Sometimes I forget that there are just a lot of uneducated/inexperienced kids posting here. Sorry haters but Blizzard does in fact have people who are much smarter/more experienced than you who work fulltime on this.

On September 23 2011 03:07 tyrless wrote:


Anybody who is convinced by those most meaningless numbers is in fact ignorant and uneducated to basic statistical analysis. Which most of the whiners in this thread are, not to mention the terrible reading comprehension I'm seeing (there are actually people here bringing up the matchmaking system in their arguments).

Sometimes I forget that there are just a lot of uneducated/inexperienced kids posting here. Sorry haters but Blizzard does in fact have people who are much smarter/more experienced than you who work fulltime on this.

On September 23 2011 03:00 EnderSword wrote:


That's non-sensical.

Certain elements of the game require more and less skill, and there may be imbalance at different levels of play.

Take a few examples...

The MarineKing:

A Terran and Zerg are fighting, and 10 banelings begin rolling towards 20 marines on creep.

At Bronze level, 20 marines are going to die

At Plat-Dia type level, some marines are likely going to die

at MKP level, The 20 marines will be split into 20 groups and the banelings will do nothing.

The HongUn:

A Zerg and Protoss are fighting, 40 Roaches attack 30 Blink Stalkers

At Bronze level, both armies basically get destroyed, the fight is simply determined by the concave.

At Plat-Dia level, The Stalkers will edge it out, taking a lot of damage, blinking away some but losing many.

At HongUn level all 30 stalkers will be blinked away perfectly as their shields run out, while HongUn reads a book about cashews.


The DRG

6 Colossus and Gateway units march out as a deathball

At Bronze level, the Protoss rolls over a horribly positioned zerg player, despite trapping his own zealots behind his Stalkers. 6 Infestors are killed with full energy because he A-moved them with the army.

At Plat-Dia level, Several Colossus are NPed and FG coats the army...Zerg likely loses, but send Protoss packing back home to rebuild to fight again.

At DRG level, you don't have a Deathball, you died at the 9-10 minute mark to a ling/roach faceroll supported by Infestors and ITs

There's units and tactics the scale well, and those that do not.

That's why it's so difficult to actually balance for everyone.

On September 23 2011 01:48 MisterFred wrote:
Lower than high masters - don't make me laugh. MMR should keep everything near 50%. Everything else is metagame shift, but honestly, who cares, all those players will have about 50% win rate and the meta game will never be constant because they aren't good enough to smooth it out.

On September 23 2011 03:25 Bro_Stone wrote:
Hmm... these stats basically mean nothing since the MMR is designed to keep players at 50-50

On September 23 2011 03:19 Ownos wrote:


People are just questioning the convenient effects of this black box adjustment.

"Let me use this algorithm that I won't show you to conveniently demonstrate that all win rates are 50%."

It all comes down to trusting their word.

On September 23 2011 03:00 EnderSword wrote:


That's non-sensical.

Certain elements of the game require more and less skill, and there may be imbalance at different levels of play.

Take a few examples...

The MarineKing:

A Terran and Zerg are fighting, and 10 banelings begin rolling towards 20 marines on creep.

At Bronze level, 20 marines are going to die

At Plat-Dia type level, some marines are likely going to die

at MKP level, The 20 marines will be split into 20 groups and the banelings will do nothing.

The HongUn:

A Zerg and Protoss are fighting, 40 Roaches attack 30 Blink Stalkers

At Bronze level, both armies basically get destroyed, the fight is simply determined by the concave.

At Plat-Dia level, The Stalkers will edge it out, taking a lot of damage, blinking away some but losing many.

At HongUn level all 30 stalkers will be blinked away perfectly as their shields run out, while HongUn reads a book about cashews.


The DRG

6 Colossus and Gateway units march out as a deathball

At Bronze level, the Protoss rolls over a horribly positioned zerg player, despite trapping his own zealots behind his Stalkers. 6 Infestors are killed with full energy because he A-moved them with the army.

At Plat-Dia level, Several Colossus are NPed and FG coats the army...Zerg likely loses, but send Protoss packing back home to rebuild to fight again.

At DRG level, you don't have a Deathball, you died at the 9-10 minute mark to a ling/roach faceroll supported by Infestors and ITs

There's units and tactics the scale well, and those that do not.

That's why it's so difficult to actually balance for everyone.

On September 23 2011 01:54 aristarchus wrote:
Wow, the gap in P performance between NA/EU and KR is insane. Either KR has much worse protoss players and much better zerg players or... something is fishy. My guess is that mostly it's just that there is an imbalance, but only at the very, very top of the skill spectrum. But who knows. Could just be the top players in each place (which is a pretty small set) happened to pick different races disproportionately often. There's really no way to know from the data. Anyone who thinks Blizzard has an easy job to do in balancing the game is very wrong.

On September 23 2011 03:25 ZaaaaaM wrote:
PvZ 57%, I guess that was 40% before 1.4 and 99% after 1.4, but because its been only 2 days it goes up to 57%?


If blizzard went into making 1.4 with this in mind, the changes in the patch boggle my mind lol.

Did you even read any of it? Obviously not, so why are so commenting.

On September 23 2011 03:08 ShootingStars wrote:
Korea results ONLY matter. Look at TvP Korea... haha unbalanced there X_X

On September 23 2011 03:33 Huragius wrote:


With all the respect to the koreans protoss (compared to korean Terrans)- they suck shit. Honestly, you have to be very ignorant not to admit that. Most of the GSL games from Protoss looks really sad compared to Terrans/Zergs. And If Korea results are the only ones who matter, then the problem isn't protoss. It's their players.b

On September 23 2011 03:19 R3N wrote:


can bet my left nut on you're a terran lol.

Seriously the code S race balance shouldn't be the only important stat (well it actually isn't a stat , but still it says something!) but it's definitely not useless. It's been going on for months now and this is just the result of it. Also you could present your ideas on how these numbers are void, I'd like to hear it.

On September 23 2011 03:34 QTIP. wrote:


And how would you go about reliably proving that? If there is an inherent imbalance in the Protoss race can we agree that their play would also tend to "suck shit" as you so elegantly put it?

On September 23 2011 03:38 Huragius wrote:
Proving ? Inca vs Nestea finals and such ? There are boat loads of reliable proofs in GSL, all you need to do is to watch the games and not to blindly follow statistics.

On September 23 2011 03:38 Huragius wrote:


Proving ? Inca vs Nestea finals and such ? There are boat loads of reliable proofs in GSL, all you need to do is to watch the games and not to blindly follow statistics.

On September 23 2011 03:38 Huragius wrote:


Proving ? Inca vs Nestea finals and such ? There are boat loads of reliable proofs in GSL, all you need to do is to watch the games and not to blindly follow statistics.

On September 23 2011 03:30 ComplexConf wrote:
The thing is R0yal that although toss have been failing left and right lately. We cannot conclude anything at this given time. One patch at a time, one meta game at a time, we grow wiser...

On September 23 2011 03:33 Huragius wrote:


With all the respect to the koreans protoss (compared to korean Terrans)- they suck shit. Honestly, you have to be very ignorant not to admit that. Most of the GSL games from Protoss looks really sad compared to Terrans/Zergs. And If Korea results are the only ones who matter, then the problem isn't protoss. It's their players.b

On September 23 2011 03:40 polysciguy wrote:
If people don't like comparing to GAL how about looking at other prominent tourneys. What were the racial distributions of the last couple MLG finals? What about the most recent dreamhack?

On September 23 2011 03:26 tztztz wrote:


i don't get why it's such a problem to trust their word. why has mistrust always have to be the default position? why has it to be "propaganda" an not just blizzard being so kind and releasing some stats? the math they're using is probably to complicated to understand for 99% of the people on this thread.

On September 23 2011 03:38 Huragius wrote:


Proving ? Inca vs Nestea finals and such ? There are boat loads of reliable proofs in GSL, all you need to do is to watch the games and not to blindly follow statistics.

On September 23 2011 03:06 ScoutingDrone wrote:


Because Blizzard want to show us the balance of each matchup? .....

On September 23 2011 03:33 Huragius wrote:


With all the respect to the koreans protoss (compared to korean Terrans)- they suck shit. Honestly, you have to be very ignorant not to admit that. Most of the GSL games from Protoss looks really sad compared to Terrans/Zergs. And If Korea results are the only ones who matter, then the problem isn't protoss. It's their players.b

On September 23 2011 03:35 tyrless wrote:


I hope you weren't attached to your left nut because you just lost it Should probably take the other nut too for even suggesting that what race I play is relevant to the facts. As for methodology for interpreting GSL stats in the context of game balance, it's not really my job to educate you of basic statistics, your local community college can probably help with that.

On September 23 2011 03:43 Brotocol wrote:



The problem is the unevenness of the skill levels. If NesTea beats Goody, does that tell you anything about balance?

GSL, on the other hand, has the highest skill levels, tapering off in the "diminishing returns" part of skill, where the differences are a lot more compressed.


@usethis2:

You raise some valid criticisms, and those are indeed limitations of looking at GSL. Nonetheless, it's the closest we've got to controlling the "skill" variable.

On September 23 2011 03:42 tztztz wrote:


maybe nestea is better than inca...

On September 23 2011 03:33 Huragius wrote:


With all the respect to the koreans protoss (compared to korean Terrans)- they suck shit. Honestly, you have to be very ignorant not to admit that. Most of the GSL games from Protoss looks really sad compared to Terrans/Zergs. And If Korea results are the only ones who matter, then the problem isn't protoss. It's their players.b

On September 23 2011 03:34 QTIP. wrote:


And how would you go about reliably proving that? If there is an inherent imbalance in the Protoss race can we agree that their play would also tend to "suck shit" as you so elegantly put it?

On September 23 2011 03:45 JudicatorHammurabi wrote:

I'll give you a stick, and I'll drive an M2 Bradley. Then I'll say you did poorly not because you had a stick against an IFV, but because you're not skilled.

On September 23 2011 03:49 willz22912 wrote:


There's racial imbalance that's hard to see sometimes, and then there's players just straight up sucking.

I'll name two different PvZ games and hopefully you know what happened. Game 1 = HuK vs Coca at MLG Raleigh Tal'darim Altar. Game 2 Hero vs Idra at DH Valencia on Metalopolis. Can you look at either of those games objectively and draw a conclusion relating that one race is imbalanced versus the other.

On September 23 2011 02:22 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
I'm kind of interested why Blizzard wants us to know this. As far as I know, there's no pressure on them to release these numbers. No one is waiting on them. And no one in the community is going to use them for anything. Blizzard simply wants us to know them... why?

On September 23 2011 01:55 Brotocol wrote:
PS. A common misconception of "balance for the highest levels" is that imbalance doesn't affect lower leagues. It affects any game with equal skill level players, where one has to work harder than the other to achieve the same result.

The entire "balance only affects the highest leagues" is wrong. It affects high leagues consistently, but can also happen, albeit inconsistently, at lower leagues.

On September 23 2011 03:49 willz22912 wrote:


There's racial imbalance that's hard to see sometimes, and then there's players just straight up sucking.

I'll name two different PvZ games and hopefully you know what happened. Game 1 = HuK vs Coca at MLG Raleigh Tal'darim Altar. Game 2 Hero vs Idra at DH Valencia on Metalopolis. Can you look at either of those games objectively and draw a conclusion relating that one race is imbalanced versus the other.

In summary of those games if you haven't seen them, G1 Huk was completely blind and had 0 intel on what Coca was doing, and was trying to be greedy getting a fast 3rd until Coca rushed him with ling/infested terrans/infestors and smashed him. G2 Idra was at multiple points ahead of Hero, but fell apart due to Hero's harassment and multi-tasking.

If we are trying to be objectively honest in terms of balance as much as possible, how could you use any of those two games as indicating which race is either ahead or imbalanced? There are extremely logical and visible reasons why the players/races lost the way they did. Are you going to scream imbalance/ P is UP / Z is OP, or are you going to see that it is quite hard to balance a game even at pro levels if people are just playing poorly. What games then do we use as an example of imbalance, or showing trends of imbalance, if we keep seeing games where players, not the races, make mistakes.