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1. Stigma - Terran players have been hated on since the beta and the Terran race has had a negative stigma attached to it since the beta as well. Players are aware of this and many will opt to play a different not stigamitized race in order to avoid BM or flaming on B.Net. (note: Terran doesn't have the same stigma in Korea)
2. Terran is harder to play at Plat/Diamond levels. In these leagues where most players are just starting to understand macro games and the games are just starting to resemble what higher level games look like, Terrans have a required level of multitasking they must accomplish in order to compete. Terrans cannot win at this level by simply out macroing their opponent. Unit compositions like Infestor/Broodlord and the Protoss deathball simply destroy any late game Terran unit composition that a Terran can field unless the Terran player is able to sufficiently micro his army/position his army and continue to macro well back at home. Warp gate, and larva mechanics makes this part of the game easier for a Diamond or Plat level Zerg or Protoss to deal with than for a Terran player. (note: this does not explain the lower Terran population at the Master's and Grandmaster's level, at this level the difficulty of each race are more closely in line.)
Those are my explanations.
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I have noticed the lack of terrans too. I have equal zerg and protoss, but they make up about 70-80% of my games. Terran is just so frustrating to play. I can't play zerg or protoss anymore, they just seem to be so simple and dont have all of the terran gimicks. I think thats a reason why people are quitting terran or the game.
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On March 11 2012 11:17 Fission wrote:Your sample is too small for your conclusion to be statistically significant. With that said, there are slightly less terrans in NA diamond than P or Z (sc2ranks stats). http://sc2ranks.com/stats/league/am/1/all
I have almost quit the game a few times, and still might end up quitting or race swapping because the balance of races on ladder is so bad. I have been hovering around mid master for quite some time now, and I can say consistenly I get a TVT 1 in 10 games if I am lucky. I think this is a very serious issue that is not being addressed at all.
I would also like to mention that I think Sc2ranks IS OUTDATED, for me it says its using patch 1.4.2 while we have been on 1.4.3 for a while, wonder why it hasn't been updated. I STRONGLY suspect that the balance of races has gotten worse during 1.4.3, considering the continued buffs to other races and nerfs for terran.
TVP is a large part of the problem and personally I know a lot of other master players who cheese a lot vs protoss, because playing in a straight up macro game is rage inducing, even if your a chilled out player. My personal opinion is TVT is one of the most dynamic and developed matchups in sc2, and I love to watch it because of the constant positional and multitasking battles required. This issue keeps fading away, but I'm sure the protoss and zerg out their must be getting sick of playing like 70% pvp or zvp...
Also what Plexa said holds 100% true, you will see top terran like MMA/MVP doing all sorts of variations on marine tank all ins, simply because they know the longer the game goes the worse its going to get. Personally this disgusts me, I hate being forced into using hyper aggressive stratgies because macro is more my forte then constantly trying to find ways to kill him before 15 minutes. You could say play another races, but I don't feel the other races are nearly as dynamic as terran and therefore not as much fun. I hated it when in TVT you were forced into mech before the BFH nerf, and as such welcomed the nerf as it would make the matchup more dynamic.
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On March 11 2012 13:13 Vindicare605 wrote:
(note: Terran doesn't have the same stigma in Korea)
What's your proof that they don't? I think it's pretty much universal if you read the playxp and their official kr forum.
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Grand Masters-
Terran 29.15%
Protoss 35.99%
Zerg 33.05%
Masters
Terran 29.63%
Protoss 33.54%
Zerg 32.81%
Diamond
Terran 26.45%
Protoss 32.24%
Zerg 34.82%
Platinum
Terran 25.41%
Protoss 32.35%
Zerg 33.67%
T and P are less played. T and P have the highest representation of their races in GM and master. Tells you which race is UP. I blame hatch and lair tech. I don't necessarily think T and P are OP, just that zerg is slightly up with regard to low tech units. brood lord festor corruptor obviously being a slight exception.
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for people who say that there are more terrans in KR - basic requirement in TvP
Be able to micro a 4 hellion drop in the back of a protoss base AND 8 marines poking the natural of the protoss.
Be able to kill as many probes as possible without losing all of the hellions.
Im practicing this but its fucking gay hard. -_-
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Top diamond league EU server, started 2012-01-20
Total games 280
TvZ 117
TvP 97
TvT 66
Zergs are taking over the ladder O_o
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I'm not sure that these stats mean there are less terran players total. It does look like terran is the least played race at the moment probably for the reasons that have already been mentioned about high skill ceiling and late game issues with the race (reliance on tier 1 units and awful reinforce capabilities). I still think there is a large portion of the playerbase who play terran but I do believe they haven't been playing the game recently.
I'm a masters terran and I know I haven't been playing the 1v1 ladder near as much as I have pre 1.4.3. I'm sure there are many terrans that are doing the same by either switching race for the moment or playing other games until the game changes. The current state of the game has made Starcraft 2 frustrating and annoying to play for terran right now.
It's been said before that its expected that terran do all these tricks and somersaults in the early game and mid game to get far enough ahead of their opponents to just overwhelm them in stuff. While having the ability to do early game pressure is nice, the game shouldn't demand you to play that way to be balanced. A lot of the time, terrans who have very good macro mechanics and would like to play longer games with zerg and protoss sell themselves short on purpose because they understand that if the other player has the same caliber of mechanics they are at a disadvantage. We see this especially in the TvP matchup.
Unfortunately, this makes for uninteresting (and frankly unfun) games for Terran to play, where each game the Terran player is wondering "Well, let's see if he knows how to hold this all-in or not". And so we have an entire race of players more or less playing games that really just depend on if their opponent makes some early game fatal mistakes. This can be fun occasionally (for the lulz) but gets stale pretty quick and doesn't make laddering to improve compelling.
TL;DR
Anyways, I didn't mean for this to be long but I think the race distribution is still quite healthy but you won't find the % of Terrans increasing anytime soon until Blizzard gives them a reason to want to play Starcraft 2 and not AllinCraft 2.
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On March 11 2012 13:37 Spieltor wrote:
Grand Masters-
Terran 29.15%
Protoss 35.99%
Zerg 33.05%
Masters
Terran 29.63%
Protoss 33.54%
Zerg 32.81%
Diamond
Terran 26.45%
Protoss 32.24%
Zerg 34.82%
Platinum
Terran 25.41%
Protoss 32.35%
Zerg 33.67%
T and P are less played. T and P have the highest representation of their races in GM and master. Tells you which race is UP. I blame hatch and lair tech. I don't necessarily think T and P are OP, just that zerg is slightly up with regard to low tech units. brood lord festor corruptor obviously being a slight exception.
Wish people would realize those stats are out of date, those are for 1.4.2, after another terran nerfed you can bet its less terran
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What about other ladders (EU+KR), don't they have more Terrans? Once again, the world does not revolve around the United States.
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I don't understand this thread at all, Protoss has always been more popular than Terran for the entire time that SC2 has been around. Bringing it up now as if Terrans are quitting en mass because (random issue) is some of the most intellectually dishonest race whining I've ever seen on TL.
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On March 11 2012 11:42 Gheed wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2012 11:34 NoctemSC wrote:On March 11 2012 11:32 Gheed wrote:
Around the mid levels of skill (check the SC2Ranks stats for gold through diamond) I think Terran is the most difficult race to play. It's harder to split marines than it is to a-move banelings, for example. Stutter stepping a marauder/marine force certainly takes more APM than having chargelots automatically pursue them.
Once players get the skills to macro and micro at the same time, Terran win rates, and thus their representation, pick back up.
I don't think it's necessarily imbalanced, just that it's hard to make the game equally difficult for all races at all skill levels.
I'm not really stating I think Terran is too weak per say overall. I added the sc2ranks link and it clearly shows Terran is the lowest played race in anything Gold through GM now. I'm concerned on the ratio shifts, I certainly do not want to play 60% of my games as TvPs but that's just me. On a side note, I love your blogs. I would say to look at KR master league and GM league for the next step in skill progression after NA/EU GM league. In Korea, terrans are a bit overrepresented in master and about even in GM. At the end of the day, people aren't playing terran because they don't want to play terran. Since there were tons of terran in 2010, and far less now, you could say either A: people got bored of playing terran and switched or B: they switched to a race they feel is better.
Or C: They switched to a race that's easier to play.
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Everyone is switching to the easy-mode protoss.
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TvP is the hardest match up for me because the current metagame is macro, macro, macro. And terrans generally lose after the 20 minute mark unless they severely crippled the protoss in the early game. So that's why I think terrans are losing TvP. Protoss excels late game so they want to keep the gaming going as long as possible so I try to end it with my first 2 pushes usually.
I think people don't play terran as much because of that reason. Terran is the race that wins the early game. But now people are focusing on macro and until it changes to a more micro focused opening (like someone figured out an abusive 3 gate opening or some roach timing that punishes early expands) rather than a FE macro opening then terrans will always have a harder time winning.
I just think it wasn't as easy as it was playing Terran so now there's less of us. It didn't get ridiculously hard. It just became less easy. Plain and simple.
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On March 11 2012 14:13 Vaporak wrote:
I don't understand this thread at all, Protoss has always been more popular than Terran for the entire time that SC2 has been around. Bringing it up now as if Terrans are quitting en mass because (random issue) is some of the most intellectually dishonest race whining I've ever seen on TL.
No, if you look their has been a steady decline of Terrans in the higher leagues, especially diamond+, it used to be that zerg was pretty underrepresented, now its the opposite, this is actually more of a recent phenomenon.
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Yes, I too have been noticing quite the decline in terran players. Which blows, cause TvT is probably my best match up.
My theory is that being ridiculed, and attacked for playing the "imba" and "cheezy" race has led to a dejected feeling among terran players. At least from my own experience, I feel like terran gets more hate compared to the other races. Its no fun to play a race when all your success with it is attributed to "imba marines".
Also, it seems like if you don't end the game early or mid-game as Terran, your chances of winning are much more slim. But when you do an aggressive attack early, especially against zerg, you get yelled at for being an "all-iner".
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I felt Diamond to Masters was by far the toughest plateau i've ever hit in a game.
You are forced to both macro and attack P or Z while they lay back, just macro and overwhelm you later on. Not saying go for the jugular and end the game early, but some damage or at at least a good scare out of drone/probe mode had to be done. The required multitasking though was too much for my brain to compute.
I had no issues with the ranting towards T, as apart from beta and maybe season 1, it was ridiculous and uncalled for, especially on levels that aren't high Masters or more.
Also, you can't attribute this drastic regression to patch changes, buffs will not make any difference when you're behind in population, upgrades (hello chrono forge), bases and momentum.
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Blizzard balance the game around top professional level.
The top Korean pro terrans are just flat out better players than most (not all, just most) so the entire race gets nerfed to compensate? Hence why since release Terran has been consistently nerfed every patch while the other two races receive buffs to compensate for nerfs they get.
Just my theory but really who knows, it could be any reason at all. Blizzard keep making changes way too often to know the true reason.
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Terrans have having trouble with tvp because they don't understand timings and think they can just make an army, micro, and win. My weakest is tvt because i play it least often, and my strongest is tvp because i go out of my way to play as many protosses are possible
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On March 11 2012 14:36 phiinix wrote:
Terrans have having trouble with tvp because they don't understand timings and think they can just make an army, micro, and win.
Funny how this is exactly what Protoss has to do to win
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EPT
