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On December 19 2012 23:37 avilo wrote:What was the motivation of making this thread? To pretend like there isn't an obvious imbalance/issues with the game? It's quite easy to lie with statistics and pretend something is something else when it's not. If you want more telling results, look at the top 16 finishes of a lot of the tournaments in the last 8 months as well as these provided by dvorak on reddit: dvorak posted on reddit: ------------------------------------------------------------------- "On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being David Kim Sparkles and 10 being IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA how do you rate the Grand Finals of the 8 most recent big-name Premier events: WCS Asia - PvP WCS Word - PvP WCG - PvP DreamHack Winter - PvT DreamHack Bucharest - ZvZ GSL Season 5 - ZvZ MLG Fall - ZvZ IGN Season 5 - ZvZ" ------------------------------------------------------------------- As you can see, despite what you tried to make out to be a balanced stat sheet in the OP, that's not how the game actually is. Nor are results anywhere near indicative of balance or the current metagame. Sure, they can be a quick reference, but they don't tell even 1% of the story. Starcraft's viewership has steadily declined (regardless of what optimistic fanbois and paid casters will tell you) because of the gameplay stagnating into infestor broodlord every game with Zerg, 2 base immortal allins to fight Zerg from Protoss, and Terrans becoming non-existent. There is a real problem with the game, and any attempt to falsify that or create a fantasy world in which there is no problem is not going to help this game's lifetime run any longer. Instead what it will do is slowly cause more and more people to leave SC2 like they have in recent months because they are not stupid as spectators and got tired of bland, low depth gameplay. Instead of trying to lie with statistics, you as a caster have a responsibility to this game and the spectators to speak up when there is such an obvious problem with the game. One can only yell "amazing fungal" so many times before spectators realize something is wrong with the game. I have said it before, but Starcraft fans are some of the smartest fans out there - they are not stupid, do not treat them as such or they will simply leave for other games, we as a fan community do not expect a high quality product such as Starcraft 2 being ruined by something as obvious as broodlord/infestor literally every game. The SC fandom originated from Brood War, so there were of course high expectations, and no one wants to see this game die to glaringly obvious balance issues. /real talk that is all. p.s. To all reading this thread, just because someone is a known figure in the community, do not take what they say at face value, at least research it, and question it because they could literally be slinging bs your way. FYI, i do not mean disrespect to khaldor, I am a fan of his casting, became a fan when even after he started getting fame he would still cast "lower level" tournaments on tourney streams which i thought was awesome. Just gotta keep things real y0. + Show Spoiler +
TLDR: StarCraft2 casters, even though not all bad, will try to convince you SC2 is not AS imbalanced as you believe it is, regardless of statistics put right in front of them proving otherwise.
WCS Asia - PvP What chinese did you expect to do well?
WCS Word - PvP The best terran at the tournament was LucifroN and he lost in a close series to his brother it is not a bad result.
WCG - PvP MarineKing fails second year in a row it is his problem not balance.
DreamHack Winter - PvT TaeJa is terrible in TvP
DreamHack Bucharest - ZvZ The only good terran was TheStC who is Code B and he lost to fraer whose best matchup is PvT
GSL Season 5 - ZvZ Top 4 2T 2Z
MLG Fall - ZvZ Top 4 2T 2Z
IGN Season 5 - ZvZ Top 4 2T 2Z
There are a lot of korean terrans who do not attend events - for example jjakji, GuMiho, Happy, Hack, Maru. There are a lot of Code B terrans on foreign teams and it would be very weird to see them winning over Code S player on proteams.
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On December 19 2012 23:37 avilo wrote:
The SC fandom originated from Brood War, so there were of course high expectations, and no one wants to see this game die to glaringly obvious balance issues.
/real talk that is all.
the irony to me is that most people argue BW was so insanely successful because each unit was individually imbalanced, but the game itself was balanced.
basically if it ain't infestors, it's koreans. same identical story just 5 years later.
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On December 19 2012 22:56 Vanadiel wrote:
Anyway, I agree with Kaldor on this subject, the game isn't perfect right now, but the situation isn't as bad as some people claim (whatever the stats) and it's certainly not as bad as it used to be, I remember the time where only Nestea was successful as a Zerg in the ZvT match up and people were claiming that the match up was balanced but just that terrans were just better player.
Not really, stats for 3 months posted about month ago showed that TvZ was at 41% which is more imbalanced then TvZ was ever in Terran favour
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Thanks Khaldor for trying to be the voice of reason. Unfortunately people just seem to want to complain and be doomsayers about the state of SCII. The number of times I have watched an epic game and read threads/comments relating to the game and instead of be entertained and amazed by the show of skill, people instead complain about the game itself. It is really grating and off-putting. I know trying to quell people from their whining is more frustrating than smashing your face into a wall, but I appreciate that there are people that are trying here.
So yeah, I agree. The game isn't perfect, but that isn't the end of the world - it is still the most exciting and entertaining thing around to watch and get excited over!
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I appreciate what you do Khaldor but:
a. I don't think this is threadworthy, any number of zerg imba threads would have worked.
b. The difference between the first half of the year and the second is huge. Broodwar wasn't patched for years but it took a long time to stabilise into the mechanical game it became.
The start of the year saw MarineKing and DRG slugging it out for just about everything, would you say they were the top performers of 2012? Probably not, things change even without a balance update. The full potential of things like the infestor were unlocked and it turned out they favoured P and Z much more than they did Terran.
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On December 19 2012 23:42 Butterednuts wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2012 16:22 Khaldor wrote:After I posted this on Reddit a few people argued that the information should rather be posted on TL. So here you go: As it's nearly the end of 2012 now and after all the recent balance whining I was curious about the results in Premier Tournaments in 2012. So I took the liberty of having a closer look at Liquipedia and the race distribution for 1st and 2nd place finishers in 2012. Here are the results: - Zerg: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 16 times
- Protoss: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 15 times
- Terran: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 8 times
What does this mean? I'm not trying to say the game is balanced. Nor am I saying that certain units (Infestors hi?) don't need to be changed. All I am saying is that these days everyone echoes "facts" they've read on Twitter, Reddit or here on TL whithout even thinking about them. The game is certainly not perfect and there are a lot of things that need to be changed, BUT it is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be these days. TLDR: StarCraft2, even though not balanced, is not AS imbalanced as people might want you believe it is There are different levels of balance. There is balance that has to be considered for the highest, most competitive level of gameplay where mindgames and metagame take part. There is balance that has to be considered for masters level players that spam the ladder with their games that may or may not be as good as those competing on stage. Finally, there is the lowest level of balance that needs to be considered as if it is impossible for anyone to move up in the game because of how difficult it is, then no one would ever play. There are some easy components of StarCraft II and there are some difficult components that only the fairest of fair competitors can take advantage of. Balance isn't just a single construct, it's made of different tiers and different opinions.
That is correct, but not very important on that matter. Esports should aim for balance at highest level first. Normal players who use ladder are getting roughly 50% winrate regardless of balance due to the matchmaking system.
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I posted this in the lings of liberty thread. Khaldor this isnt appropriate because the patch didn't hit until May. I took the results since in Premier Tournaments in Liquipedia. Here's the result since May.
Zerg - 10 1sts 11 2nds
Protoss - 11 1sts 11 2nds
Terran - 5 1sts 4 2nds
The zerg (and possibly toss haven't watched ro6 yet) totals will go up based on the Blizzard Cup results. The terrans will not as MVP was annhiliated.
This makes it that terran has made 1 in 6 finals over an 8 month time span. It should be 1 in 3.Terran is at HALF of what it should be. I play terran and you can call me biased or make excuses for this. I took facts from liquipedia and presented them here. Its an 8 month sample and happened over 27 tournaments, so I think its enough data.
@Khaldor, I'm a fan of yours, I think you've improved a hell of a lot, I know you have a lot of passion for the game, I know this is your occupation, but I really disagree with you on this one.
@opertown I don't really know if there is a better that takes bias out of the equation. I think over a 27 tournament 8 month sample, the level of competition should about even out. Let me know if you have a better way in mind.
@aike if you think Flash's 2010 in BroodWar is anywhere comparable to what is happening in sc2 now you are out of your damn mind. It was one man dominating not an assortment of zergs. Flash's play was phenomenal. You could tell he was winning because he was the bestr player. He beat players in different matchups in a variety of ways. He still lost in a finals to Jaedong and Effort. He bombed out of both MSL and OSL at the end of that year.
What does zerg do now? Queen turtle (usually), into lategame infestor, broodlord, corrupter deathball. Flash was winning in so many different varieties of ways. Proxy rax, timing pushes, Flash build, bunker rush, extreme late game (vs Calm on Fighting Spirit  )
Your example was just Flash over a 6-8 starleague sample size. My arguement is over 27 tournaments from GSL, to IEM, to Dreamhack, to MLG, to IPL. Flash is also just 1 person, the zergs winning now you could name 10 of them that are terran destroyers.
Again, take all this for what its worth. My opinion ( backed by some statistics) is that the game is really had for terran right now and that the game is losing popularity because of it.
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Not convinced about a direct relationship between 1st place finishes and balance. In most tournaments (especially marathon style ones like MLG, IPL, Dreamhack) there are factors like bracket luck, jet lag, psychological condition, metagame vs a specific player (like a teammate), extended series, nerves, etc. that have a significant outcome on who actually gets the top spot. Of course balance might have a role in who is getting deep in a tournament, especially over a few-month period with no patch, but just looking at 1st place finishes alone is too small of a sample size IMO.
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On December 20 2012 01:10 Erik.TheRed wrote:
Not convinced about a direct relationship between 1st place finishes and balance. In most tournaments (especially marathon style ones like MLG, IPL, Dreamhack) there are factors like bracket luck, jet lag, psychological condition, metagame vs a specific player (like a teammate), extended series, nerves, etc. that have a significant outcome on who actually gets the top spot. Of course balance might have a role in who is getting deep in a tournament, especially over a few-month period with no patch, but just looking at 1st place finishes alone is too small of a sample size IMO.
He looked at first and second place. Those are the most important places, the 3rd or 4th place of a tournament is seldomly remembered and also does not provide too prize money.
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Khaldor, I thought you'd be smarter than make a thread taking samples from a whole year in a game like sc2. By your logic (ignoring patches) we could take results from 2011 instead and see that terran is op! It's not indicative of balance anyway though as many people say.
Well said Nick_54
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Russian Federation15 Posts
On December 20 2012 00:28 DiMano wrote:WCS Asia - PvP What chinese did you expect to do well?
WCS Word - PvP The best terran at the tournament was LucifroN and he lost in a close series to his brother it is not a bad result.
WCG - PvP MarineKing fails second year in a row it is his problem not balance.
DreamHack Winter - PvT TaeJa is terrible in TvP
DreamHack Bucharest - ZvZ The only good terran was TheStC who is Code B and he lost to fraer whose best matchup is PvT
GSL Season 5 - ZvZ Top 4 2T 2Z
MLG Fall - ZvZ Top 4 2T 2Z
IGN Season 5 - ZvZ Top 4 2T 2Z
There are a lot of korean terrans who do not attend events - for example jjakji, GuMiho, Happy, Hack, Maru. There are a lot of Code B terrans on foreign teams and it would be very weird to see them winning over Code S player on proteams.
WCS World finals 4 terrans of 32 players
WCG top 8- 2 terrans
DreamHack Winter top 12- 2 terrans
DreamHack Bucharest top 16- 2 terrans
GSL top 16- 8 zergs
IPL top 8- 6 zergs
MLG is the only tornament you can call balnced, thankfully to it format
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you know whats funny? Pre-Infestor and then the queen patch late 2011/early 2012 we were seeing some of the most epic SC2 we had seen in a while. I really still don't understand what they were thinking when they decided to drastically change the game like this. Map changes have had a role in this as well, but rather have that affect the win rates/balance than these changes that basically made the game so stale so quickly.
Honestly I'm a huge balance whiner self admittedly, but even I'm getting very tired of these threads and the counter argument threads to go with them. None of them really put it better than Ver's post. MMA vs DRG Blizzard Cup, JJajjki vs Leenock, MvP vs Squirtle, Leenock vs MVP, MKP vs DRG...the special time that was Nestea being god zerg.. its all gone and that is the bottomline. If we didn't have the Kespa players to make things exciting the game would be practically dying at this point I think.
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Does nobody remember BW?
If I recall correctly Protoss had like 2 years where they didn't win a single individual league. (think it was 2004->2006 oov-savior era perhaps?)
Sure there were less individual tournaments, but still..~2 years and no protoss champion.
I'm not sure what would happen in SC2 if some race wouldn't win a GSL for 1-2 yeasr. Forums RIP?
Even if SC2 is theoretically imbalanced, any perceived imbalances that the spectators or the players may have can easily be beaten by player-skill. FruitDealer and Nestea both won titles for zerg when it seemed a bleak time to be a zerg. Same thing for MVP in 2012.
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dezi
Germany1536 Posts
On December 19 2012 16:22 Khaldor wrote:After I posted this on Reddit a few people argued that the information should rather be posted on TL. So here you go: As it's nearly the end of 2012 now and after all the recent balance whining I was curious about the results in Premier Tournaments in 2012. So I took the liberty of having a closer look at Liquipedia and the race distribution for 1st and 2nd place finishers in 2012. Here are the results: - Zerg: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 16 times
- Protoss: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 15 times
- Terran: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 8 times
What does this mean? I'm not trying to say the game is balanced. Nor am I saying that certain units (Infestors hi?) don't need to be changed. All I am saying is that these days everyone echoes "facts" they've read on Twitter, Reddit or here on TL whithout even thinking about them. The game is certainly not perfect and there are a lot of things that need to be changed, BUT it is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be these days. TLDR: StarCraft2, even though not balanced, is not AS imbalanced as people might want you believe it is
As long as the database is big enough everything balances out itself. That's why you can also find "hidden code" in any book you want as long as it's big enough and you keep searching for "hidden code". What i'm trying to say: measuring the balance with tourney wins isn't that meaningfull as you leave out: skill of players that participated, daily form, maps played, fatigue, ... and on and on and ... that's a bit to easy Khalle.
I guess you posted this because GSL Blizzard Cup? Well, we got one T there that i not shape right now (Mvp), close defeats from P players - wouldn't judge balance just because of this one tourney. Would still love to see a redesign of Fungal instead a useless dance around them numbers.
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et tu, khaldor?
i imagined you'd be the guy who would take the side of reason in this.
guess i was wrong
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On December 19 2012 23:37 avilo wrote:What was the motivation of making this thread? To pretend like there isn't an obvious imbalance/issues with the game? It's quite easy to lie with statistics and pretend something is something else when it's not. If you want more telling results, look at the top 16 finishes of a lot of the tournaments in the last 8 months as well as these provided by dvorak on reddit: dvorak posted on reddit: ------------------------------------------------------------------- "On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being David Kim Sparkles and 10 being IMBA IMBA IMBA IMBA how do you rate the Grand Finals of the 8 most recent big-name Premier events: WCS Asia - PvP WCS Word - PvP WCG - PvP DreamHack Winter - PvT DreamHack Bucharest - ZvZ GSL Season 5 - ZvZ MLG Fall - ZvZ IGN Season 5 - ZvZ" ------------------------------------------------------------------- As you can see, despite what you tried to make out to be a balanced stat sheet in the OP, that's not how the game actually is. Nor are results anywhere near indicative of balance or the current metagame. Sure, they can be a quick reference, but they don't tell even 1% of the story. Starcraft's viewership has steadily declined (regardless of what optimistic fanbois and paid casters will tell you) because of the gameplay stagnating into infestor broodlord every game with Zerg, 2 base immortal allins to fight Zerg from Protoss, and Terrans becoming non-existent. There is a real problem with the game, and any attempt to falsify that or create a fantasy world in which there is no problem is not going to help this game's lifetime run any longer. Instead what it will do is slowly cause more and more people to leave SC2 like they have in recent months because they are not stupid as spectators and got tired of bland, low depth gameplay. Instead of trying to lie with statistics, you as a caster have a responsibility to this game and the spectators to speak up when there is such an obvious problem with the game. One can only yell "amazing fungal" so many times before spectators realize something is wrong with the game. I have said it before, but Starcraft fans are some of the smartest fans out there - they are not stupid, do not treat them as such or they will simply leave for other games, we as a fan community do not expect a high quality product such as Starcraft 2 being ruined by something as obvious as broodlord/infestor literally every game. The SC fandom originated from Brood War, so there were of course high expectations, and no one wants to see this game die to glaringly obvious balance issues. /real talk that is all. p.s. To all reading this thread, just because someone is a known figure in the community, do not take what they say at face value, at least research it, and question it because they could literally be slinging bs your way. FYI, i do not mean disrespect to khaldor, I am a fan of his casting, became a fan when even after he started getting fame he would still cast "lower level" tournaments on tourney streams which i thought was awesome. Just gotta keep things real y0. + Show Spoiler +
TLDR: StarCraft2 casters, even though not all bad, will try to convince you SC2 is not AS imbalanced as you believe it is, regardless of statistics put right in front of them proving otherwise.
Its actually worse than you are even admitting. Not only is the infestor terrible as an overall unit, fungal growth is obviosly imbalanced and boring, neural paraiste is too hot and cold spell and infester terrans are just more free units that have no place in a starcraft game. What is worse though is that there is no positional play in STarcraft 2, there is no macro mechanics, the supposed "marco mechanics" are just make the game easy mechanics that are forgiving to even noob players, not to mention pro players. The "macro mechanics" actually make the game easier, instead of the intended? purpose to make it harder. Unless there is a conspiracy that is that Blizzard wants to make the game easier and noob forgiving so they can capture more of the casual base to buy it, even if they don't end up playing it for long.
Then there is the clumped up movement, then there is the baneling which replaced the lurker, then there is the ultra hard counters, etc... Starcraft 2 is going to hell in a hand basket.
It only took off because of the hype and build-up it got for the Brood War fans and supporters, and now we are seeing it diminish incrediby with streams like Idras that were reaching 20k at one point in the first year, now barely have 3k viwers, tournaments that had over 120k viewers are barely getting 40k viewers these days.
So Starcraft 2 is failing big time and I'm afraid no amount of bullshit pretend and tinkering around the edges is going to help save it.
So to all those people who think SC2 is the next best thing since sliced bread, you got a terrible realization in front of you and very, very soon and I'm afraid even HOTS won't be able to save the train-wreck that is SC2.
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On December 19 2012 23:07 Khaldor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2012 23:01 TeeTS wrote:
So I must admit I'm a bit disappointed in this thread by you Khaldor, because this thread only seems to try the same thing you are critizing with it, you post some questionable statistics that may mislead people into assuming wrong things. I'm disappointed that people like you (and belive me, you are not alone in this) don't even get what point I'm trying to make. You guys are arguing things that have nothing to do with what I said. I bet half of the posters in here didn't even read the first post I made. But I kinda gave up already. It's pointless in this community to try to reason an argument without people instantly drifting to a completely different topic. The tweets alone that I got are a joke and nothing else. People quoting random "facts" or numbers that are simple falsifications or plain lies. At the same time I'm trying over and over again to come back to my original point only to see it ignored in the post following mine.
If you read my post on the 1st page, I made a considerable recap of the mayor tourneys the last quarter of the year with a real analysis.
In your OP you said clearly that the game is not as bad as many said. Why? Because in the whole year, All races won almost the same tournaments. That's what you said.
Now read again my post on the 1st page, the longer one.
I'm gonnna resume it to you: Every time all the best of the best players (not in those tourneys that have like 3 koreans and rest just gm) get together and play a tournament, the Z wins, and have mayority in the top4.
When other race won, if you look at that tournament, there was not many top players, and those top players where the non-Z players, that won the tourney at the end.
That is not good balance at all to me.
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I think it's way too much of a broad stroke to look at a year and say the game at present is balanced in comparison to the balance of MULTIPLE patches ago. Granted, bitching about it now is hollow masterbation seeing as HotS and such are basically right around the corner (we can deal with any imbalances for another few months I feel).
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Balance is P(Race winning | race). The OP has compiled P(Race winning) over the last major tournaments. Until you have the information to marginalize, this can't show anything about balance yet.
If someone posted the joint distribution on previous pages, then I apologize in advance for not reading but hopefully you can requote and forgive me - there are too many trolls on TL these days =)
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On December 19 2012 18:00 thuracine wrote:
Mayans where right, terran died in 2012
god damn so funny how did i not think of that llololol
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EPT
