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On March 09 2013 20:14 Evil_Sheep wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 19:40 Orek wrote:
While GSL stats shouldn’t be the only source of balance discussion, it should be weighed heavily because GSL is THE league where the absolute best players compete, and everyone else should aspire to be like them.
It's fascinating to see the numbers laid out like this. The only thing is I would caution anyone from making conclusions about overall game balance from just one tournament, no matter how important.
Agreed. Still it's annoying to have a tournament looking imbalanced when it's your favorite one. Because there is no code A+S participants graph, I guess the most relevant graph is the code A+S mirror number graph. This is telling it all really...
Edit: this mirror graph makes me smile when I hear terrans (qxc yesterday for instance) say that TvT are now rare so that he is happy to see some in IEM. Maybe he doesn't watch the GSL but I doubt it a bit...
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On March 09 2013 20:00 Added wrote:
People remember what they want to remember; the difference between Code Z and GOMTvT is that the TvT was actually fairly enjoyable in comparison. The view counts for this GSL finals (and especially for the very last WoL finals), were very underwhelming.
I honestly think the negativity train is what affected the perception of this ZvZ finals. You have a few people complaining about it, then it becomes a bandwagon (cool thing to jump on).
Also, the early days of GOMTVT was when SC2WoL was still new and watching any tournament (at the time) was still cool.
Plus MVP was in most of them, and MVP is a popular player.
The game with MVP vs Top for example, I thought wasn't that great. (Yes, even the first game which was cited as the best game. The nukes mostly did nothing, yes nukes are fun but if they don't do anything, they might as well be Nydus Worms that do nothing.)
Polt vs MMA was fun of course (both fun players). MMA vs MVP was also fun. In both cases, the underdog (Polt in MMA vs Polt, and MMA in MVP MMA finals) managed to win and it became a good storyline. Though in the terms of the actual games themselves, they weren't that great IMO (I say that because I don't particularly remember any amazing thing that happened).
Now the game with Nestea and Losira, I remember that mass of Overseers contaminating the Hatcheries. Epic play and ZvZ is really underrated IMO, there's lots of fun stuff.
Really though, if it wasn't for the personal investment in these T players, I honestly don't view T games that much more interesting. Actually, personal investment is a huge part of whether watching a game is entertaining or not. Regardless of the races played, I don't find watching SC2 itself (even in BW too) that interesting because eventually the same stuff happens. Great storylines is a huge part of whether something is impressive or not.
That's why I feel that ZvZ finals negativity train was overplayed too much IMO.
It's just sad that the last WoL championship player may not get as much credit or attention just because it's was a ZvZ finals. If it were a ZvT finals instead and the Z rolled the T, would that be a better finals (imagine if RorO vs Taeja was the finals, since it was a Bo7 too. Would that RorO vs Taeja game be a better finals since it was too a Bo7? This ZvZ was way better than RorO vs Taeja IMO). (Also the reason I'm not using a hypothetical Symbol vs Taeja finals is because it's better to use something "we already seen". We already seen the RorO vs Taeja Bo7 game, and that series wasn't that great IMO despite being a "TvZ". This finals is a better series, despite being a "ZvZ". Could a TvZ be potentially better? Definitely but only "potentially" and not definitely better. The Innovation vs Symbol games weren't that great either IMO, if we take a TvZ on Symbol's side to match RorO.)
Edit - I guess a TvZ is fun if the Terran wins (notice the two TvZ series I found uninteresting, Z wins). But since that didn't happen (or else we'd be having a Terran in these finals), just enjoy the ZvZ (which is better than PvZ or PvP IMO). It can have some fun cool stuff too.
(I also find it interesting that in most HotS threads nowadays, everyone is "now" complaining about Terran being the most imbalanced. The hate train for anything seems to never end... a bit of a slight exaggeration but I am disappointed at the negativity that can become real contagious to the community.)
Edit 2 - Okay I am mostly done with edits to my post (yep I edited a lot).
Edit 3 - I'm not a Zerg player (despite me defending this ZvZ finals), I just really dislike the negativity that can come from things like this (negativity towards ZvZ isn't just negativity towards ZvZ itself, the players and GOMTV, etc can be affected too). I'm glad there was a huge and filled audience for the finals. (Finally this post isn't to anyone specifically but the feeling I've been getting from people in the LR threads. After reading the ZvZ final LR thread for a bit, I stopped reading it because it had a decent amount of complaining which was totally ruining the hype and fun of the ZvZ finals for me  . Though I did have to mention that GOMTV got Polt on the phone for the montage of past champions interview, which was neat! They didn't forget Polt !)
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On March 09 2013 20:14 Evil_Sheep wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 19:40 Orek wrote:
While GSL stats shouldn’t be the only source of balance discussion, it should be weighed heavily because GSL is THE league where the absolute best players compete, and everyone else should aspire to be like them.
It's fascinating to see the numbers laid out like this. The only thing is I would caution anyone from making conclusions about overall game balance from just one tournament, no matter how important. If you look at stats from sc2ratings.com, which takes data from all the major tournaments, it shows that during the last 250 days, which roughly covers what's been dubbed the "Lings of Liberty" era, the stats were: PvT: 50.2% ZvP: 52.6% ZvT: 51.4% PvAll: 48.7% TvAll: 49.2% ZvAll: 52% That's actually remarkably well balanced for a long span of time that has been considered heavily zerg-favoured.
Is there a stat for PvZ in terms of how many protosses win with 2 base-all ins and how many zergs win with ultra late game army?
It seems well balanced from that stat, but I'd wage it's actually pretty deceiving.
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On March 09 2013 20:19 samurai80 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 20:14 Evil_Sheep wrote:On March 09 2013 19:40 Orek wrote:
While GSL stats shouldn’t be the only source of balance discussion, it should be weighed heavily because GSL is THE league where the absolute best players compete, and everyone else should aspire to be like them.
It's fascinating to see the numbers laid out like this. The only thing is I would caution anyone from making conclusions about overall game balance from just one tournament, no matter how important. Agreed. Still it's annoying to have a tournament looking imbalanced when it's your favorite one. Because there is no code A+S participants graph, I guess the most relevant graph is the code A+S mirror number graph. This is telling it all really...
On March 09 2013 20:05 samurai80 wrote:
It's a pity you don't have the code A+S participants stats. I think it's the most desperate one for protoss. Actually season 1 2013 is the best balanced in term of participants number in code A+S iirc.
Edit: Especially the number of terrans participating has been even bigger in code A than in code S I think, so it would have been good to add it in the participants graph, along with a code A+S participants graph as well. I'm not sure if everyone realize how it has almost always been GOMTvT actually. The only reason Code S+A participation isn't in the OP is because since 2012, lower half of Code S player "descend" to Code A in a single season so that they get counted twice. TLPD tournament pages don't provide the information on how many of which race come from Code S. I know I can find out by going through all results, but it takes significantly more time to figure out. If you don't mind double counting, it is 241T - 197Z - 198P in 13 tournaments according to my spreadsheet, but this doesn't mean much.
Edit: 241T - 197Z - 198P participants in 13 "Code A" tournaments.
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On March 09 2013 20:24 Goldfish wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 20:00 Added wrote:
People remember what they want to remember; the difference between Code Z and GOMTvT is that the TvT was actually fairly enjoyable in comparison. The view counts for this GSL finals (and especially for the very last WoL finals), were very underwhelming. I honestly think the negativity train is what affected the perception of this ZvZ finals. You have a few people complaining about it, then it becomes a bandwagon (cool thing to jump on). Also, the early days of GOMTVT was when SC2WoL was still new and watching any tournament (at the time) was still cool. Plus MVP was in most of them, and MVP is a popular player. The game with MVP vs Top for example, I thought wasn't that great. (Yes, even the first game which was cited as the best game. The nukes mostly did nothing, yes nukes are fun but if they don't do anything, they might as well be Nydus Worms that do nothing.) Polt vs MMA was fun of course (both fun players). MMA vs MVP was also fun. In both cases, the underdog (Polt in MMA vs Polt, and MMA in MVP MMA finals) managed to win and it became a good storyline. Though in the terms of the actual games themselves, they weren't that great IMO (I say that because I don't particularly remember any amazing thing that happened). Now the game with Nestea and Losira, I remember that mass of Overseers contaminating the Hatcheries. Epic play and ZvZ is really underrated IMO, there's lots of fun stuff. Really though, if it wasn't for the personal investment in these T players, I honestly don't view T games that much more interesting. Take note I'm being sort of anti-anti fan of ZvZ haters. It's just sad that the last WoL championship may not get as much credit or attention just because it's a ZvZ. (I also find it interesting that in most HotS threads nowadays, everyone is "now" complaining about Terran being the most imbalanced. The hate train for anything seems to never end... a bit of a slight exaggeration but I am disappointed at the negativity that can become real contagious to the community.)
I agree. ZvZ is usually cool to watch. I think TvT is cool too, but I don't think it is as good as everyone says. But I think the reason why I think that is because I saw way too many of these TvT in GSL. If they were fewer, maybe I would get much more excited about them.
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Thank you so much! Now there is some conclusive evidence that protoss was indeed clearly the worst race in WoL, however hots will fix that. Nice post 
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On March 09 2013 20:28 Orek wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 20:19 samurai80 wrote:On March 09 2013 20:14 Evil_Sheep wrote:On March 09 2013 19:40 Orek wrote:
While GSL stats shouldn’t be the only source of balance discussion, it should be weighed heavily because GSL is THE league where the absolute best players compete, and everyone else should aspire to be like them.
It's fascinating to see the numbers laid out like this. The only thing is I would caution anyone from making conclusions about overall game balance from just one tournament, no matter how important. Agreed. Still it's annoying to have a tournament looking imbalanced when it's your favorite one. Because there is no code A+S participants graph, I guess the most relevant graph is the code A+S mirror number graph. This is telling it all really... Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 20:05 samurai80 wrote:
It's a pity you don't have the code A+S participants stats. I think it's the most desperate one for protoss. Actually season 1 2013 is the best balanced in term of participants number in code A+S iirc.
Edit: Especially the number of terrans participating has been even bigger in code A than in code S I think, so it would have been good to add it in the participants graph, along with a code A+S participants graph as well. I'm not sure if everyone realize how it has almost always been GOMTvT actually. The only reason Code S+A participation isn't in the OP is because since 2012, lower half of Code S player "descend" to Code A in a single season so that they get counted twice. TLPD tournament pages don't provide the information on how many of which race come from Code S. I know I can find out by going through all results, but it takes significantly more time to figure out. If you don't mind double counting, it is 241T - 197Z - 198P in 13 tournaments according to my spreadsheet, but this doesn't mean much.
I did it once for this season actually and it takes more time indeed. I can try to give you all the numbers if I find the time.
EDIT: And thanks a lot for the great work !
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On March 09 2013 20:24 Goldfish wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 20:00 Added wrote:
People remember what they want to remember; the difference between Code Z and GOMTvT is that the TvT was actually fairly enjoyable in comparison. The view counts for this GSL finals (and especially for the very last WoL finals), were very underwhelming. I honestly think the negativity train is what affected the perception of this ZvZ finals. You have a few people complaining about it, then it becomes a bandwagon (cool thing to jump on). Also, the early days of GOMTVT was when SC2WoL was still new and watching any tournament (at the time) was still cool. Plus MVP was in most of them, and MVP is a popular player. The game with MVP vs Top for example, I thought wasn't that great. (Yes, even the first game which was cited as the best game. The nukes mostly did nothing, yes nukes are fun but if they don't do anything, they might as well be Nydus Worms that do nothing.) Polt vs MMA was fun of course (both fun players). MMA vs MVP was also fun. In both cases, the underdog (Polt in MMA vs Polt, and MMA in MVP MMA finals) managed to win and it became a good storyline. Though in the terms of the actual games themselves, they weren't that great IMO (I say that because I don't particularly remember any amazing thing that happened). Now the game with Nestea and Losira, I remember that mass of Overseers contaminating the Hatcheries. Epic play and ZvZ is really underrated IMO, there's lots of fun stuff. Really though, if it wasn't for the personal investment in these T players, I honestly don't view T games that much more interesting. Actually, personal investment is a huge part of whether watching a game is entertaining or not. Regardless of the races played, I don't find watching SC2 itself (even in BW too) that interesting because eventually the same stuff happens. Great storylines is a huge part of whether something is impressive or not. That's why I feel that ZvZ finals negativity train was overplayed too much IMO. It's just sad that the last WoL championship player may not get as much credit or attention just because it's was a ZvZ finals. If it were a ZvT finals instead and the Z rolled the T, would that be a better finals (imagine if RorO vs Taeja was the finals, since it was a Bo7 too.. Would that RorO vs Taeja game be a better finals since it was too a Bo7? This ZvZ was way better than RorO vs Taeja IMO). (I also find it interesting that in most HotS threads nowadays, everyone is "now" complaining about Terran being the most imbalanced. The hate train for anything seems to never end... a bit of a slight exaggeration but I am disappointed at the negativity that can become real contagious to the community.)
Just wanted to point out that I think you are wrong about the nukes in the Mvp vs TOP game. It was pretty much a stalement since both players had tank lines and had the maps cut in half. Although the nukes didn't actually kill much. They forced TOP to move a lot of tanks back (or he would have lost a lot of production) and once TOP's tanks were in his main, that gave Mvp the opening to move his tanks up and TOP was trapped in his natural and you can't move tanks down a ramp against sieged up tanks from Mvp.
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Thank you for this! Also, to confirm this conclusion: + Show Spoiler +On March 09 2013 19:40 Orek wrote:
In summary,
2010 ~ early 2011 = volatile era
mid-2011~ late 2011 = Terran OP “Wings of Liberty” era
early 2012 ~ mid 2012 = Protoss OP “Blinks of Liberty” era
late 2012 ~ 2013 = Zerg OP “Lings of Liberty” era
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
Overall winrates in GSL aren't a good measure of balance. When zerg gets buffed. Not only does a guy like DRG win more. But a no talent scrub will win more too. This no talent scrub makes it into the GSL whereas before the patch he couldn't make it into the GSL. He makes it in and gets owned.
So you see overall winrates will always stabilize at 50% because changes in balance will allow weaker players to make it into the GSL. A better measure of racial balance is to count the number of players in each level of GSL.
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On March 09 2013 20:38 T.O.P. wrote:
Overall winrates in GSL aren't a good measure of balance. When zerg gets buffed. Not only does a guy like DRG win more. But a no talent scrub will win more too. This no talent scrub makes it into the GSL whereas before the patch he couldn't make it into the GSL. He makes it in and gets owned.
So you see overall winrates will always stabilize at 50% because changes in balance will allow weaker players to make it into the GSL. A better measure of racial balance is to count the number of players in each level of GSL.
This is exactly my thoughts. The number of participants in code A+S is crucial imo. But as Orek said, this number is given nowhere here on TL and it takes actually more time to calculate (I don't say it's difficult of course) because of the current GSL format.
To evaluate the number of participants, the numbers of games for each mirror m-u is a good indication though.
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its kind of a shame, after all the ups and downs the game was hitting perfect balance right before zerg became really overpowered, it was only going to get worse as well. I think its safe to say more zerg nerfs were incoming and then we may have actually reached balance
edit: also, i agree that representation should be important as well, but it should not be the only factor. win rates as well as representation should be looked at for balance
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On March 09 2013 20:38 T.O.P. wrote:
Overall winrates in GSL aren't a good measure of balance. When zerg gets buffed. Not only does a guy like DRG win more. But a no talent scrub will win more too. This no talent scrub makes it into the GSL whereas before the patch he couldn't make it into the GSL. He makes it in and gets owned.
So you see overall winrates will always stabilize at 50% because changes in balance will allow weaker players to make it into the GSL. A better measure of racial balance is to count the number of players in each level of GSL.
While that's true, you have to acknowledge that both are imperfect measurements, since the number of players in GSL:
1). depends on the race distribution among South Korean players, more precisely talented South Korean players
2). is very low (around 10 players per race in a division) compared to the win ratio data
3). fallowed a very conservative and recursive trend for a long time (used to be soooo hard to get kicked out of code S)
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On March 09 2013 20:46 MateShade wrote:
its kind of a shame, after all the ups and downs the game was hitting perfect balance right before zerg became really overpowered, it was only going to get worse as well. I think its safe to say more zerg nerfs were incoming and then we may have actually reached balance
Immediately before the queen patch Zerg had their worst GSL season ever. Only 2 in the ro16 and 0 in the ro8. They only had like 5-6 in the ro32 too. I wouldn't call that hitting perfect balance.. Obviously the queen patch wasn't the right answer but zerg was very weak before the queen patch.
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Also there are seeds.
I think using Match Results is fine. They will not stabilize at 50% as long as new players come in from Code B and old players drop out to Code B where their matches are not counted anymore.
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On March 09 2013 20:48 JJH777 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 20:46 MateShade wrote:
its kind of a shame, after all the ups and downs the game was hitting perfect balance right before zerg became really overpowered, it was only going to get worse as well. I think its safe to say more zerg nerfs were incoming and then we may have actually reached balance Immediately before the queen patch Zerg had their worst GSL season ever. Only 2 in the ro16 and 0 in the ro8. They only had like 5-6 in the ro32 too. I wouldn't call that hitting perfect balance.. Obviously the queen patch wasn't the right answer but zerg was very weak before the queen patch.
Unless you judge balance on results from more than 1 tournament.
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It's cause Terran players are more talented of course ! :p
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On March 09 2013 20:53 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2013 20:48 JJH777 wrote:On March 09 2013 20:46 MateShade wrote:
its kind of a shame, after all the ups and downs the game was hitting perfect balance right before zerg became really overpowered, it was only going to get worse as well. I think its safe to say more zerg nerfs were incoming and then we may have actually reached balance Immediately before the queen patch Zerg had their worst GSL season ever. Only 2 in the ro16 and 0 in the ro8. They only had like 5-6 in the ro32 too. I wouldn't call that hitting perfect balance.. Obviously the queen patch wasn't the right answer but zerg was very weak before the queen patch. Unless you judge balance on results from more than 1 tournament.
The GSL right before that had them doing pretty badly too. DRG won but he had tons of extremely close calls and zerg had the worst overall representation in each round. DRG was pretty much the only zerg doing well in 2012 pre queen patch. I guess Nestea had his IPL4 run but that was just one example and IPL4 was a very bad tournament for zergs overall. It had 4 players in the top 20 and 3 of those players were guaranteed to get top 20 even if they lost every match. Curious was the only zerg who got out of the open bracket. MLGs had DRG doing very well but they were consistently the lowest represented in the top 16s and top 8s. So maybe you are the one with bias and judging results from 1 player? That's even worse than judging from 1 tournament.
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Zerg OP, Protoss Underpowered, gosh really?
Come on, this has been obvious for years, the only person actually believing Protoss was overpowered is IdrA because he felt he should win every game with mass Roaches, even versus Colossus, hence Protoss OP and you get many clueless idiots regurgitating IdrA's baseless opinion.
What can I say, in the end it worked, his race has been ridiculously imbalanced for a long long time, all the while Zergs were still qqing about Protoss. His little endless rant paid off even though it wasn't good for the game, only made the worst race worse and the best race better (yet still, even as a Zerg player, he didn't book any results?)
I don't dislike IdrA, I respect the guy a lot but I hate the role he's played in making the clueless loud idiots amongst us believe Protoss is OP (which it's not) and Zerg is shit (lol, best race since roachbuff by far).
Blizzard failed hard, nothing new there as they've failed with every single one of their franchises for the past few years. The balance in WoL has been laughable, I hope HotS will bring a better game.
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Although not amazing the win rate graph overall is pretty good and reasonable balanced. Although when looking at balance I would think representation and how games are won need to be taken into account. Looking purely just at that graph though, it's not too bad and the balance team have done a pretty decent job overall, especially when they decided to keep tricky to balance mechanics like warp tech, queen inject and mules in the game. Very hard to get an RTS perfectly balanced with such tools in a game I should imagine.
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EPT
