Ladder-Balance-Data - Page 9

On July 11 2012 11:55 shabinka wrote:
The MMR deviation is very tiny compared to overall MMR (it's about a win with some bonus pool for terran being UP), and with an average of 2 wins per ladder account it means nothing.

On July 11 2012 11:55 shabinka wrote:
The MMR deviation is very tiny compared to overall MMR (it's about a win with some bonus pool for terran being UP), and with an average of 2 wins per ladder account it means nothing.

On July 11 2012 02:39 Shiori wrote:

That sounds incredibly unlikely in the sense that you're suggesting, though. When Blizzard says that more new players choose Terran, they don't say or even suggest that those people choose their race in a different way than the people who choose other races. It's entirely possible (and likely, I'd say) that most people pick Terran because they're the protagonists and because they're human beings. The people who pick Zerg/Protoss at the noob level don't know enough about their "styles" to make a choice that really affects their ability to win, because it's not actually very clear from the start what the styles of the races even are.

The people who pick P/Z are probably motivated by the same thing that motivates players to pick Terran: they think the race is cool. It just so happens that there are fewer of them because aliens are less appealing than humans.

Besides, even if there were a strong bias for new players to automatically choose Terran, talented RTS players are talented RTS players, and weak RTS players are weak. I don't believe that players have an inbuilt magical bias to one race that influences them so much that they'd be incapable of playing the other races at a high level. If Terran is just more appealing to human beings in general, then it's going to attract all sorts with random distribution, meaning that the average Terran player isn't going to be any better than the average P/Z player because it's just a larger sample but is still evenly distributed.

Until you can show that there's a race which has a baffling number of good players but almost no bad players, the point is moot.

On July 11 2012 11:37 _Search_ wrote:
I'm really not understanding how the OP draws his conclusions.

Is he comparing the win rates of races where players have different MMRs? As in, Zerg is overpowered because players with lower MMRs are beating players with higher MMRs? If so, the conclusions are laughably overreaching. Despite all the esteem given to MMR, it's a terrible indicator of skill because it's based on win rates and averaged across the race. To put it concisely: balance dictates win rates, which dictate MMR, which the OP is using to determine balance. It's totally circular.

Also, certain races are just plain easier to win with using lower skill. Some races rely more on luck. How many Protoss wins can be attributed to a lucky DT timing? How many TvZs have been won by getting one medivac in the right place at the right time? Its widely accepted that Protoss is the easiest race to play and Zerg is the hardest. How does that factor into the OPs findings? Naniwa, for one, has said that the immortal sentry PvZ allin is far easier to execute than it is to stop, (though I think this description could be applied to most Protoss attacks, and to attacking in general, which helps Protoss the most since they have the strongest attacks).

It's also easier to cheese with certain races, and, assuming that a cheese win is a non-skill based win, that would give Protosses another undeserved boost in win rates, since they are doubtless the biggest cheesers. The OP treats all wins as equally legitimate, when many are clearly bullshit. I play Terrans on the ladder all the time who refuse to guard against a 6 pool, saying they'd rather lose. They go for a super greedy opening that plain straight up loses to a potential counter build. Others refuse to guard against DT openings. How are those games legitimate? These players will never be able to win against the same opponent twice!

I also totally reject the notion that each race receives an equal degree of skilled and unskilled players. Heck, just comparing the Korean to the foreigner Terrans one can see a readily apparent skill gap, one that isn't there with Protoss and Zerg.

Even then, most newcomers gravitate to Terran or Protoss (because of the campaign/because of the instant easiness). I have more than one friend who has abandoned SC2 entirely because Zerg was just too difficult to play.

Last, Zerg recently received a fairly significant buff, which means that, if the buff did what it was supposed to do, Zergs SHOULD be winning over higher MMR opponents right now. That was the point of the buff! To move Zergs up the ladder and give them higher tournament representation! In other words, something would be wrong if Zergs WEREN'T winning more! Did the OP take this into account? Did he calculate the win rates before and after the patch separately?

These are the issues I have the OPs method.

Edit: I would also love to see how this relates to the maps. Many of the maps in the pool have severe balance issues, which always affect Zerg most heavily. But those maps are being slowly weeded out and as more balanced maps enter the pool we see Zergs winning more. Most recently Korhal Compound and Metalopolis were removed (both of which were terrible for Zerg if they spawned close positions on Metalopolis). Every season the map changes have been a subtle buff to Zerg. How do the recent map changes affect the OPs findings?

On July 11 2012 11:55 shabinka wrote:
The MMR deviation is very tiny compared to overall MMR (it's about a win with some bonus pool for terran being UP), and with an average of 2 wins per ladder account it means nothing.

On July 11 2012 12:57 Niazger wrote:


Im sorry bro but you couldve saved a lot of time. You arent even close to understanding how the OP came to his results yet you post this wall of text.

Also your rant about luck is pretty retarded tbh. If getting a medivec in the right postion/dts are luck I guess we all should just roll the dice at the beginning of the game.

On July 11 2012 13:06 Cascade wrote:
First: nice work on putting these together! Must have been a lot of job.

I'm fine with everything you do, up to the point where you go from average MMR to balance. As many others. You have, very neatly, shown that the average MMR is lower for terran than for zerg. No more, no less.

Why are there more terrans at lower MMR? I don't know.
Because they are UP? Maybe.
Because casual (bad) players are more likely to pick terran due to single player? Maybe.
Because the good players switch away from terran as they perceive them as UP? Maybe.
Because people switch race from terran as they get better? Maybe.
Something else? Could be

Some comments:

1) Your result is essentially the same as in the sc2ranks link you provide.
I know that MMR is not exactly identical to league, but I think everyone here can agree that if there are more of a race at lower MMR, then that will very likely reflect in more of that race also being in lower leagues. And this is in fact what we see.


I even did a short calculation:
+ Show Spoiler +

2) Random shows a huge signal. You are fine with going from terran has lower average MMR to terran being UP. By the same argument you would conclude that random is horribly underpowered. And you see on sc2ranks that there are a lot more randoms in the lower leagues (again, consistent with your results). This again is presented with the list of possible explanations above.

I think most agree that random is indeed a bit UP, in the sense that a player with a given time put into training would do the worst with random. However, I would guess that the strongest factor would be that high level players tend to switch away from random because they are UP. If 25% of the strong players would play random, I think the MMR signal would me much smaller. But this is my personal thought only, so nevermind.

Point being, this very strong signal maybe would open you to the possibility of other important factors than balance that can influence the average MMR. But well, nothing conclusive, just a little case study, don't take this point too seriously.

3) Then I'm also a bit curious about the way you estimate the error. Why 4 groups? With more groups, you would get larger error, with fewer groups you would get a smaller one. Seems a bit arbitrary. Why not just calculate the standard deviation and calculate the error from that? You should have enough statistics to use the central limit theorem. Anyway, I think you would get similar values, I just got a bit curious.

4) A better measure is what blizzard does. Namely, look at win rates in different matchups, compensating for MMR difference. I don't think you have the information to do that in your program? This method ofc has it's problems as well, and no matter what blizzard says, I don't believe that they can tell if a race is OP, or if the better players just happen to play that race. And your very small difference in average MMR (consistent with the very small signal in sc2ranks) would probably only give a very small difference in win percentage. Well within the 45% to 55% range blizzard is aiming for. But that is a different story.

5) No offence meant. The original MMR calculation is a great program (gj!), and it's really cool that you find more uses for it! I just think that you got a bit carried away in the interpretation at a certain point. Also, I should mention that I don't want to claim anything about balance. + Show Spoiler + I don't want to say that any race is or is not UP or OP. Cheers.

On July 11 2012 13:30 skeldark wrote:


True that. But this is balance! its a question how you define balance. But even if the problem is not in the unit design it disrupt the balance of the races = inbalance. Perhaps i use the word to mathematical.

a league is not 1000 MMR
Not 100% (promotion offset != league offset ) but close :
+ Show Spoiler +

Thee main point is valid. You can do it with leagues in generell but someone could come with the argument
(all race x are high in the league all race y are low) so thats why this way is more accurate. But overall its the same i agree.

Its like the first point more a question of definition of balance.

4 because 4 races = near to the size of the racegroups = near to the same datavalue before i take the average.
This way is not optimal. I know that and this is a valid critic. Here are the reasons why i did not test on standart , normalise and calculated it : i was lazy ... and the random testdata is calculated by my computer with me drinking coffee meanwhile ...
My point is i think the random testdata show the error %. Its a not so exact way but in the end i do the same.
I will publish a better datafile with more accounts. This hole thing is a site project of my mmr calculator

I have this data. mmr of both players the matchup and the result.
And i agree that setting the +- 5% allow for great inbalance.

No offence taken ^^. I appreciate your post. Its a nice break from explaining what average does or what the diffrence between an depending and independent error is asking myself what they teach at school in some country's...

On July 11 2012 13:57 Cascade wrote:

YEs, I think you confuse a lot of people if you let the word imbalance include effects such that single player leading casual players to pick terran. To define balance, I would use something like having an infinite number of equally talented players (whatever that means) train a certain (large) amount of time with one race each, and then let them play an infinite number of games. And I think most people would use similar definitions.

If you use the word "balance" in a very different way, I suggest you to be very clear with what you mean in the OP, or better, use a different word.

ok, so if a league is roughly 1000MMR (as the error is about a third of the signal, we don't need to be more accurate than between 800 and 1200 I think), it means that the distribution of players in your calculation and the sc2ranks distribution both gives the same result. And that, as you say, the distributions within the leagues don't do funky stuff. I guess expect, but nice to get confirmation from your more accurate method.
edit: oops, now I understand your plot. the lines are the leagues? So it is more like 500 points on average? And I shouldn't have used linearly increasing steps of points for the different leagues. Anyways, close enough I guess. Same ballpark.

haha, yes, not really sure where I wanted to go with the randoms.

ok, I'd find it much easier to calculate standard deviation than programming the split runs. Just take the average of the squared MMR as well, and the rest is a few lines of plus and minus. I guess you are faster programmer than I am though. ^^

I agree that it is "good enough" despite maybe not being perfect.
Maybe that would be a better analysis, because then you could see if terrans at a certain MMR struggle the most in TvP or TvZ. TvT should be 50%, and TvZ + TvP (weighted by player frequency) should average to 50% as well (or they would not be at that rank). But it should be possible to see what of the other two races each race has the most problems with.

Let's see if you can reproduce blizzards result first. After that the sky is the limit!
Unless, ofc, you are lazy.

Mmm, I hear you.
I mean, I'm fine with people not knowing statistics. It's hard, and not everyone should be required to be an expert to post. I just wish sometimes that people were a bit more aware of what they do and don't know. Then again, I think I myself also sometimes post a bit too confidently in areas that I'm not an expert on, so I can't blame anyone really. But it does discourage this kind of posts, no doubt.