EPTEDIT: I don't mean so sound like a total dick, you obviously put a lot of time and effort into this post and it is much appreciated, i just want to see somebody with greater map knowledge than i start proposing some really viable answers to map balancing.
Statistics behind map balance - Page 3
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docvoc
United States5491 Posts
EDIT: I don't mean so sound like a total dick, you obviously put a lot of time and effort into this post and it is much appreciated, i just want to see somebody with greater map knowledge than i start proposing some really viable answers to map balancing. | ||
Antoine
United States7481 Posts
1.0 was pulled from the ladder pool because of invis buildings and when it came back it was 2.0. | ||
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tzenes
Canada64 Posts
For example, if TvZ is currently 60% (I realize it's not) and a map has a TvZ of 55%, although the map might look Terran favored the exact opposite would be true. Ideally, you'd want to break out win rates by patch, and compare them to map win rates in the same time period using a Chi-squared test for independence. | ||
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Nymbul
United Kingdom127 Posts
On November 25 2011 07:13 docvoc wrote: Taldarim has major issues. The zvp is full of blind 6pools and 7RR that are effective because of the lack of choke. The PvP on that map is all 4 gate w or w/o phoenix. So far blizz just needs to let the real map makers in the community make the map like they have promised and stop with the stubborness. I understand that some maps are very good, like shakuras is, but there have been many issues. Also to quote Liquid` Sheth on a thread about metalopolis, some maps that are slightly imba are their because of that watching value and that it allows such maps to show who really has the great ability between two players. Heck if you hate a map so much, since blizz won't let the community make them, just veto up to three of them. Really map balance in question seems to lead to much in the way of complaints about maps and not really a true answer to how to fix said imbalances. EDIT: I don't mean so sound like a total dick, you obviously put a lot of time and effort into this post and it is much appreciated, i just want to see somebody with greater map knowledge than i start proposing some really viable answers to map balancing. I agree with this. On ladder I pretty much have to double scout in ZvP cause otherwise the zerg can do a random 6 pool which can kill you if you scout the zerg 2nd or last and PvP is just the same game every time. I'm still not a massive fan of Antiga either. Sure terran and protoss can go onto 3 bases easily but after that it seems almost impossible for them to secure a 4th against a good zerg. | ||
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JiYan
United States3668 Posts
If you dont get my point: Say patch 1.6 makes marines cost 100 minerals and terrans start losing everywhere. During this patch period, the current maps in play (i.e. the latest antiga, the latest shakuras). Since maps arent the only things that have been fluctuating, they can't be the only variable you look at. | ||
Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33723 Posts
Like, shakuras: Conclusion for this one seems pretty straight forward. This is a classic case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. In an attempt to make the map closer to a balanced meta-game, they’ve managed to make it worse. All 3 matchups are worse off than before. We can almost definitively make a conclusion as well, since we have over 1700 non-mirror match-ups played in version 2.0 and over 1100 games beforehand. Pretty sure if you gave us back the old version it would have more terran favoured stats now than it did then, because terran players are MUCH better at playing long macro games now, than 1 year ago. | ||
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Diamond
United States10796 Posts
 . For example (my fav exmaple) is Scrap Station which is as follows: TvZ: 252-249 (50.3%) | ZvP: 171-164 (51%) | PvT: 163-190 (46.2%) Wait a minute, you mean SS is one of the most balanced maps ever? No. So many metagame shifts and balance changes happened during that time that I believe (but don't have proof cause I'm too lazy to hand add up everything) is those stats were all evened out over the many metagame shifts. For example for a long time SS was Zerg favored in TvZ/ZvT. However eventually Terrans figured out how to play it and it became a Terran map in TvZ/ZvT. So basically these two major shifts caused it to balance out. Does it make the map balanced? No, it just makes it used too long. | ||
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Antoine
United States7481 Posts
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Primadog
United States4411 Posts
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Diamond
United States10796 Posts
On November 25 2011 07:49 Antoine wrote: Just fyi you can separate it out manually, go to a map page and filter by date. I like the idea of making it easier though. Well then I have to do into Liquipeida and pull patch dates and line it up and document it all, not that hard but too much for someone already working 100+ hours a week in E-Sports  ! But I am pretty positive SS would show MAJOR shifts in it's balance over the life of the game. It just happened to get canned when it happened to be pretty even. | ||
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darkscream
Canada2310 Posts
I find this post pretty interesting, I think map balance was the real issue rather than race balance and a lot of weird changes were made along the way before blizzard cleaned up the map pool. Now I think the problem with the maps is that they are stale; but at least they are relatively balanced with the game as it is today for the most part. Its hard to introduce a new map and have it be somewhat balanced tho, even antiga is somewhat problematic in early versions thus far | ||
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Iamyournoob
Germany595 Posts
First of all: What is the distribution you used to do the calculation? Binomial distribution? Second: What are +/- numbers behind the percentages? Are those the empirical standard deviations or are those confidence intervals? If it is the latter, what is the probability of the intervals? (If you explained this somewhere and I missed it, then I am sorry) | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On November 25 2011 08:11 Iamyournoob wrote: Nicely done overall, but may I ask a couple of questions? First of all: What is the distribution you used to do the calculation? Binomial distribution? Second: What are +/- numbers behind the percentages? Are those the empirical standard deviations or are those confidence intervals? If it is the latter, what is the probability of the intervals? (If you explained this somewhere and I missed it, then I am sorry) The error is the square root of the smallest number of the wins and the losses, which is the standard deviation in this kind of counting measurables. In the limit of large numbers (as rule of thumb it's fine above 20 samples) this becomes a normal distribution where the standard deviation correspond to a 68% confidence, two standard deviations correspond to 95% confidence, and 3 standard deviations is more than 99%. These confidence intervals become a bit shaky below 20 samples, but still give a pretty good idea about how reliable things are. | ||
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Hassybaby
United Kingdom10823 Posts
On November 25 2011 07:27 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Fun to read but there's a lot of cases where it really isnt about what the map looked like imo... Like, shakuras: Pretty sure if you gave us back the old version it would have more terran favoured stats now than it did then, because terran players are MUCH better at playing long macro games now, than 1 year ago. That reinforces the point of "wait and see" though. Map balances are a lot more subtle than race balance imo, so any changes have to be really justified. Removing the high ground in LT made sense, as did the prevention of close spawns on Shakuras. After that though, can there be actual justification of map changes when race changes have such an effect that could easily neutralise the effects? Or worse, cause greater diversity in number? | ||
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Szubie
United Kingdom294 Posts
I wonder: perhaps it is because the map-makers are not sure exactly how to adjust balance effectively that maps have not played as large a role in balancing the game as in BW. Or maybe it's the other way around, that because we as a community look only to blizzard for most balance changes, and so the map-makers aren't given the opportunity to learn the nuances of balancing the matchups. | ||
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Acritter
Syria7637 Posts
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Probulous
Australia3894 Posts
This is also a good opportunity to link perhaps the greatest troll in the history of TL. http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=70545 We love you Inc. | ||
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KevinIX
United States2472 Posts
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Hassybaby
United Kingdom10823 Posts
We are constantly changing the state that the game is in. The meta-game shifts constantly, with innovation coming out in droves. Balance changes are quite constant, and their effects are wide and varied. General play-styles are different in different regions. The difference in player ability. All of these, and more factor into the overall results that we see. And all on them are constantly changing So how, with all of these changes, it is even more important that we have a base to compare with. We don't have that in any way: - We can't use the meta-game because it is ever shifting, and there are no indicators that we can use to portray when the next shift will be - We can't use balance, because new patches come quite often, and their results are varied, so there is no stability in that sense. - We have to take into consideration the difference in ability and match-up strengths. DRG playing a weaker Terran who isn't the great in TvZ is going to be different to playing, say, MMA. But again, with the way that tournaments are played, there is no logical way that we can take that into consideration in a reasonable manner, because there is always the "bad-day" aspect as well, that adds to the errors. In an ideal world, we would test the ability of a map by pitting 2 equally skilled players on a map across several periods of time, and compare their results across the board, across several balance changes and meta shifts. That is to say, ceteris paribus, the variables would be the meta game and the balance changes. However, right now that can't happen, as we have all aspects being variables, including the fact that both competitors are human! But with all these changes, should we not have something that is a constant? The only thing that CAN be is the map, which is why I'm asking that we stop changing maps so much. They are adding another variable to something that could possibly have been fixed through other means, so why the constant changes? I want to actually use Jinro's example of Shakuras, because its a perfect point that he made: On November 25 2011 07:27 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Fun to read but there's a lot of cases where it really isnt about what the map looked like imo... Like, shakuras: Pretty sure if you gave us back the old version it would have more terran favoured stats now than it did then, because terran players are MUCH better at playing long macro games now, than 1 year ago. 100% correct, I'm not going to argue with that. BUT the fact that there are these meta-game changes, as well as balance additions means that we can reasonably assume that would happen. But what was the result? We'll never know because the change has been put in. There may not have been an issue with the map in the first place, it was just the meta-game at the time. But we will never know Same with Antiga Shipyard. barely 200 games have been played on a competitive levels, and then it was hit with the anti0-gold base movement. Now we have another map that was essentially a good test for us, but we've lost all data on it with the changes. And we really shouldn't have. If it has consistently had high win-rates for a race, or performs better than the win-rates at numerous points, THEN we can justify a change to it, because we can see that balance changes and meta-game shifts are not the problem on the map. But it has to get that far to be able to have that data. A map should be untouched for a year, unless there are blatant indications of a problem with it (and I'm taking about high-ground LT, or revealed buildings on Shalkuras levels here.) Then and only then will we have enough data to declare a map with balance problems. | ||
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Belha
Italy2850 Posts
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