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On March 10 2013 19:22 samurai80 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 19:14 Qikz wrote:On March 10 2013 19:04 samurai80 wrote:On March 10 2013 00:10 Assirra wrote:On March 09 2013 23:42 mlspmatt wrote:
Game looked pretty balanced before Queen buff. Makes you wonder why that was implemented. What did Blizzard see in the numbers that led them to the conclusion it was needed.
Terran dominated for a long time, but it wasn't all due to balance. Terran had a stronger tradition of champions from BroodWar, a lot of the current top Koreans grew up watching these guys, so it was natural that a greater share of talented Koreans choosing to play SC2 would choose Terran. And Terran was IMBA for a while as well. Are we seriously back to the "Terran has better players" nonsense again? So many of them believe they are just better so that's why their winrate should be higher. It's complete bullshit. It's not why it should be higher, it's why it is higher. MVP for example no matter what the balance was went out and won 5 GSL titles. It's not because he's terran, it's because he's by far the best SC2 player. Looking at win rates, especially across all tournaments is fine to do, but you have to realise it's not just the race, it's the player and their individual skill that makes the difference. Flash in BW for example, did he dominate purely on the back of the terran race? No, by god he's a damn good Terran player, but it wasn't because Terran was OP (especially when TvP is so much harder than PvT) he won so much because of his skill/mind set. No, just no. I mean, terran is the race that enables players to abuse of certain techniques, their are skilled enough. It's not that protoss or zerg players are less skilled, it's that they don't have the same tools to abuse of their skills. Then maybe more skilled players choose to be terran, but it's because the terran race is OP for them in the first place. For me whatever you can say about it, statistics don't lie if the numbers are big enough and terrans saying they have more players in high level because their players are just more skilled is just total nonsense. There is not even more to say about that.
Its not about abusing, its about good race design. Terran was always race that that scaled really well with players skill because of great micro potential, promoting mutlitasking by being strong in small unit groups etc.
So its not that terran player are better, just their race gave them abillity to shine.
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On March 10 2013 18:09 AstroPegnuin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 18:04 keglu wrote:On March 10 2013 16:27 AstroPegnuin wrote:
It's always funny to read how biased Terran players are and ignorant to the actual realities of the games balance,
The whole foreigner Terran struggle argument is completely invalid to me because there are no where near as much hard working foreign Terran as there is Protoss and Zerg, So terran players are biased and you are not based on second sentence? It might be subjective but I expand upon it a bit later if you'd keep reading, the gist of it is that a majority of the foreigner results are from people who have went to Korea. I ought to have mentioned that the only real Terran who stuck it out in Korea was Thorzain (Who has results to show for it) and Jinro
Its definietly subjective and biased to say "foreing Terran just dont practice enough".
Also all most of these foreing Zerg players were never in Korea.
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On March 10 2013 19:48 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 19:22 samurai80 wrote:On March 10 2013 19:14 Qikz wrote:On March 10 2013 19:04 samurai80 wrote:On March 10 2013 00:10 Assirra wrote:On March 09 2013 23:42 mlspmatt wrote:
Game looked pretty balanced before Queen buff. Makes you wonder why that was implemented. What did Blizzard see in the numbers that led them to the conclusion it was needed.
Terran dominated for a long time, but it wasn't all due to balance. Terran had a stronger tradition of champions from BroodWar, a lot of the current top Koreans grew up watching these guys, so it was natural that a greater share of talented Koreans choosing to play SC2 would choose Terran. And Terran was IMBA for a while as well. Are we seriously back to the "Terran has better players" nonsense again? So many of them believe they are just better so that's why their winrate should be higher. It's complete bullshit. It's not why it should be higher, it's why it is higher. MVP for example no matter what the balance was went out and won 5 GSL titles. It's not because he's terran, it's because he's by far the best SC2 player. Looking at win rates, especially across all tournaments is fine to do, but you have to realise it's not just the race, it's the player and their individual skill that makes the difference. Flash in BW for example, did he dominate purely on the back of the terran race? No, by god he's a damn good Terran player, but it wasn't because Terran was OP (especially when TvP is so much harder than PvT) he won so much because of his skill/mind set. No, just no. I mean, terran is the race that enables players to abuse of certain techniques, their are skilled enough. It's not that protoss or zerg players are less skilled, it's that they don't have the same tools to abuse of their skills. Then maybe more skilled players choose to be terran, but it's because the terran race is OP for them in the first place. For me whatever you can say about it, statistics don't lie if the numbers are big enough and terrans saying they have more players in high level because their players are just more skilled is just total nonsense. There is not even more to say about that. Its not about abusing, its about good race design. Terran was always race that that scaled really well with players skill because of great micro potential, promoting mutlitasking by being strong in small unit groups etc. So its not that terran player are better, just their race gave them abillity to shine.
That's what I meant but you said it better.
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On March 10 2013 18:55 monkybone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 16:27 AstroPegnuin wrote:
It's always funny to read how biased Terran players are and ignorant to the actual realities of the games balance, Terrans would tell you that they deserve to be made Saints because playing Terran is of the same caliber of Jesus' sacrifice. The whole foreigner Terran struggle argument is completely invalid to me because there are no where near as much hard working foreign Terran as there is Protoss and Zerg, I would love to see someone veto all foreigner players who have trained in Korea who have predominantly been Protoss and Zerg in the foreigner standings, I would not at all be surprised to see Terran do much better on the totem pole for non KR.
There's a reason why there's not as many Terran players and Protoss and Zerg players. There is a continuous spectrum of skill among the players, and the density is just higher at the top for Protoss and Zergs. For every mediocre Protoss and Zerg you have a bad Terran who is not differing in skill. And for every good Protoss and Zerg you have a mediocre Terran. It gives the impression of that there are less Terrans than Zergs and Protosses, but the matter of fact is that the few foreign Terran players who actually are relevant practice their ass off like no one else, like Kas. To just look at it superficially and say that there's just not as many Terrans as there are Zergs and Protosses and state that as a reason why Terran is doing bad in the foreign scene is inverting the causality. Terran isn't doing bad because of lack of Terrans. There is a lack of Terrans because Terran is harder at the pro level.
That's such a crap myth that Terrans continously try to build up. Anytime a foreigner was really dominant you could find more than one source saying that he/she has Koreanlevel mechanics - Idra, Jinro, Huk, Naniwa, Stephano, MaNa, Thorzain, Nerchio.
Basically just read a list of premier tournament winners, lookout for foreigners and you will find those names - and hardly any other apart from a few exceptions - again. It's the guys with Code A/S mechanics that are topforeigners, regardless of what they play.
Even more, if you go to sc2ranks.com and watch the racedistribution of Korea you will see that Protoss was often the most played race there. According to the "Protoss/Zerg easier"-myth the GSL should have had at least the same Protoss representation as it had Terrans or Zergs right now (similar/higher amount of players, easier to go pro with protoss according to the myth). But this statistical effect didn't show up for 2.5years.
We know today that gameplay 2 years ago was very suboptimal. According to P/Z "easier to learn", players of those races should have dominated Terran at that time as Terrans would have been stuck at a lower skilllevel compared to P/Z mediocre skilllevel. I ask you, where were they? Why could Mvp, Polt, MKP, MMA dominate over players that with the same training were already closer to optimal play?
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I'm probably in the minority here, but I feel Blizzard's continuous patching of the game really detracted from my enjoyment of socializing with others fellow SC fans. It seems like half the posts in any thread talks about OP race and how Blizzard sucks for not taking care of it yesterday. Because it seemed like whack a mole with Blizzard. Some player figures out an OP strategy, community gets pissed. Blizzard covers it with a patch. But as a result, it makes another strategy OP, community gets pissed, etc.
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United Kingdom12023 Posts
On March 10 2013 19:22 samurai80 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 19:14 Qikz wrote:On March 10 2013 19:04 samurai80 wrote:On March 10 2013 00:10 Assirra wrote:On March 09 2013 23:42 mlspmatt wrote:
Game looked pretty balanced before Queen buff. Makes you wonder why that was implemented. What did Blizzard see in the numbers that led them to the conclusion it was needed.
Terran dominated for a long time, but it wasn't all due to balance. Terran had a stronger tradition of champions from BroodWar, a lot of the current top Koreans grew up watching these guys, so it was natural that a greater share of talented Koreans choosing to play SC2 would choose Terran. And Terran was IMBA for a while as well. Are we seriously back to the "Terran has better players" nonsense again? So many of them believe they are just better so that's why their winrate should be higher. It's complete bullshit. It's not why it should be higher, it's why it is higher. MVP for example no matter what the balance was went out and won 5 GSL titles. It's not because he's terran, it's because he's by far the best SC2 player. Looking at win rates, especially across all tournaments is fine to do, but you have to realise it's not just the race, it's the player and their individual skill that makes the difference. Flash in BW for example, did he dominate purely on the back of the terran race? No, by god he's a damn good Terran player, but it wasn't because Terran was OP (especially when TvP is so much harder than PvT) he won so much because of his skill/mind set. No, just no. I mean, terran is the race that enables players to abuse of certain techniques, provided they are skilled enough. It's not that protoss or zerg players are less skilled, it's that they don't have the same tools to abuse of their skills. Then maybe more skilled players choose to be terran, but it's because the terran race is OP for them in the first place. For me whatever you can say about it, statistics don't lie if the numbers are big enough and terrans saying they have more players in high level because their players are just more skilled is just total nonsense. There is not even more to say about that.
You can say what you want about how many players in the high level, but we shouldn't look at that for balance, we should look at winners. The GSL for example is very bad (especially the early seasons where nobody would drop out) to judge balance on because of how randomized the path up into code S is. Some people get super easy pathways to get into code S where as others get super hard pathways depending on groups and or what they end up with in Code B/Code A. Heck, even tournament wins are hard to judge as no one person plays every single other player.
If anything the area you should look at for balance is the Ro8/Ro4 of all tournaments. That shows the people who have fought their way out of group stages through most likely skill.
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The problem I have with analysis like this is that the numbers are inherently flawed. If it was the exact same players every season playing the exact same patch then it would he more meaningful.
As it is, every new patch should essentially "reset" all analysis and make older data obsolete. It doesn't matter what balance was like in the previous patch, let alone three or four patches ago. Each individual patch had too few GSL level games to ever make meaningful statistical statements, in my opinion.
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On March 10 2013 21:54 KrazyTrumpet wrote:
The problem I have with analysis like this is that the numbers are inherently flawed. If it was the exact same players every season playing the exact same patch then it would he more meaningful.
As it is, every new patch should essentially "reset" all analysis and make older data obsolete. It doesn't matter what balance was like in the previous patch, let alone three or four patches ago. Each individual patch had too few GSL level games to ever make meaningful statistical statements, in my opinion.
I think the same way as you.
Thats why i cant agree with all the statistics, whine, saying someone is the greatest ever, right now.
I know its something impossible for 99,99% of people here, but you must wait maybe 3 years after the
release of LOV to say something about the game or the players.
One can dream 
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On March 10 2013 21:54 KrazyTrumpet wrote:
The problem I have with analysis like this is that the numbers are inherently flawed. If it was the exact same players every season playing the exact same patch then it would he more meaningful.
As it is, every new patch should essentially "reset" all analysis and make older data obsolete. It doesn't matter what balance was like in the previous patch, let alone three or four patches ago. Each individual patch had too few GSL level games to ever make meaningful statistical statements, in my opinion.
Well, let's be clear here - it's not the numbers or statistics that are flawed, they're objective descriptions of what actually happened in reality. What's "flawed" (I'd honestly prefer "incomplete") is any attempt at weaving said numbers or statistics into an argument as to whether or not significant and meaningful imbalance is present in the game.
I also don't think it's totally true that each patch individually affected SC2 so drastically that we were effectively seeing different games after every patch. I do strongly believe that - even though patches do play a significant role in how strategies and tactics evolve over time - there nevertheless exists a large component of strategy and tactics particular to each race that largely stayed the same over the course of WoL, and therefore that it's still meaningful to talk about racial balance across patches.
EDIT: And even if this wasn't true, you'd totally still be able to perform analyses to see how particular patches affect racial winrates. This is a big part of the usual "balance" discussion!
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Thanks for this Orek, good read and some quite horrifying stats hopefully hots wont be as volatile.
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On March 09 2013 19:58 rj rl wrote:
lol protoss was never good, that's sad
Not a lot of Protoss in the tournament means that the sample size is smaller for them and every loss counts more than for the other two races. Thus Protoss will have a bad statistic every time they dont win the tournament.
On March 11 2013 03:06 Tobblish wrote:
Thanks for this Orek, good read and some quite horrifying stats hopefully hots wont be as volatile.
My prediction is that it will be even more so (unless it is totally skewed towards one dominating race), because WoL wasnt really "finished balancing" (there were changes to the units right until the end) and HotS adds new units on top of that ...
There are some obvious reasons as to why the game is so volatile and hard to balance, but I guess most people are unwilling to hear them (again).
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Nice analysis, it's so hard to find Balance discussion on actual statistics.
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On March 11 2013 03:15 Rabiator wrote:Not a lot of Protoss in the tournament means that the sample size is smaller for them and every loss counts more than for the other two races. Thus Protoss will have a bad statistic every time they dont win the tournament. Show nested quote +On March 11 2013 03:06 Tobblish wrote:
Thanks for this Orek, good read and some quite horrifying stats hopefully hots wont be as volatile. My prediction is that it will be even more so (unless it is totally skewed towards one dominating race), because WoL wasnt really "finished balancing" (there were changes to the units right until the end) and HotS adds new units on top of that ... There are some obvious reasons as to why the game is so volatile and hard to balance, but I guess most people are unwilling to hear them (again).
I am glad you're taking hte level headed approach...
Statistics are merely a tool to tell a story. Any halfway competent person observing the games could draw a roughly similar timeline to what the stats pulled. GomTvT was the consequence of a badly designed and badly balanced game.
God I wish people would look past their personal ladder problems.
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On March 10 2013 20:58 baubo wrote:
I'm probably in the minority here, but I feel Blizzard's continuous patching of the game really detracted from my enjoyment of socializing with others fellow SC fans. It seems like half the posts in any thread talks about OP race and how Blizzard sucks for not taking care of it yesterday. Because it seemed like whack a mole with Blizzard. Some player figures out an OP strategy, community gets pissed. Blizzard covers it with a patch. But as a result, it makes another strategy OP, community gets pissed, etc.
The problem, in my opinion is that imbalances are a lot more of an issue in SC2 than they were in BW. SC2 games were (and still are) often resolved in a quick battle in the mid or late game (the ball vs ball syndrome). In this scenario little imbalances (or what is viewed as imbalanced) make it so one player just cannot recover and loses. BW was more forgiving because of its old gameplay (bad AI, limitations of control etc), therefore if some things may have been imbalanced between units they weren't the biggest challenge a player had to face. His biggest challenge was micro and macro and that was able to eclipse possible balance issues (also it made attacking a lot harder than defending) whereas in my opinion SC2 is way too much rooted in a "composition" vs "composition" mind frame.
And Blizzard continues to design the game that way. Things like "we give X this unit (or buff) in order to better fight this unit" are their bread and butter when it comes to patches.
So don't hope much, HotS while probably being a better game will still have the same nerf, whine, nerf, whine patterns.
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On March 11 2013 04:09 sitromit wrote:Meanwhile in Proleague Protoss has been utterly dominating both races. Here are the numbers for Round 1-3 of proleague 2012-2013: http://www.sc2ratings.com/stats.php?season=spl2PvT 61%, PvZ 56.5%, ZvT 53.1%
Meanwhile in my personal platinum division Protoss has a 95% winrate. End of story!
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On March 11 2013 04:09 sitromit wrote:Meanwhile in Proleague Protoss has been utterly dominating both races. Here are the numbers for Round 1-3 of proleague 2012-2013: http://www.sc2ratings.com/stats.php?season=spl2PvT 61%, PvZ 56.5%, ZvT 53.1%
What is sample size?
Also what is the central limit theorem?
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On March 11 2013 04:15 ktgster wrote:What is sample size? Also what is the central limit theorem?
You do realize that the stats for each GSL season that this thread is based on are from half the number of games per matchup as those PL stats?
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On March 10 2013 19:04 samurai80 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 00:10 Assirra wrote:On March 09 2013 23:42 mlspmatt wrote:
Game looked pretty balanced before Queen buff. Makes you wonder why that was implemented. What did Blizzard see in the numbers that led them to the conclusion it was needed.
Terran dominated for a long time, but it wasn't all due to balance. Terran had a stronger tradition of champions from BroodWar, a lot of the current top Koreans grew up watching these guys, so it was natural that a greater share of talented Koreans choosing to play SC2 would choose Terran. And Terran was IMBA for a while as well. Are we seriously back to the "Terran has better players" nonsense again? So many of them believe they are just better so that's why their winrate should be higher. It's complete bullshit.
I think it's better to look at consistent players across all patches, relatively to race strength and playstyle.
For example, a lot of random "trash" Terrans from the GomTvT Supertournament era are gone (think asd, virus...). What's left of the Terran race at its weakest? Litterally the best of the best, like Taeja, MarineKing, GuMiHo, Bomber, top Kespa players like Innovation, Flash and Fantasy, players that are widely acclaimed as the best microers, macroers and multitaskers the race can offer, and for a long time (MKP is considered a micro god since Open Season 2).
Conversely, who was good at Zerg when Zerg was bad? Well, almost exclusively DRG, Nestea and Leenock. Nestea with incredible godly decision making, insight and creative builds, Leenock on the back of wild tactics and micro (he's the only one to make burrowed banelings attempts work) and DRG hailed as a mechanical monster and a macro god. They're still there of course (well, Nestea's time has passed I think), but a lot (like, a LOT) of Zergs popped kinda out of nowhere when "circumstances" started to favor them. Who's got godly creep spread? Well, everyone, as they at least make 4 queens as soon as they're on 2 bases. Who's got godly macro and larva management? Well, they kinda have 70 drones by default anyway, the rest is up to their injects. Who's got the best infestor micro? Nah, I'm just teasing ya.
The point is, there is no such thing as "Terran players are just better", that's just bullshit as you said. What is true however, is that we can only truly acknowledge the best players of their race, when said race is at its lowest. I don't think anyone would doubt the skill of the remaining Terran in Code S. I will be interested to see however if the myriad of Zerg players (including our dear foreigner heroes) that are considered "top players" will still be doing as well in HotS, which is arguably much less advantageous for them.
I talked only about Terran compared to Zerg, but what I said is even more true for Protoss compared to the other two. 7 in Code S (with Rain seeded) is not a lot, and you can be sure those guys are really consistently good at Protoss. I mean MC? The guy is there since Open Season 1.
I know that this opinion will not be shared by many on TL, which promotes kind of the "game is balanced at all points, only the better players win" mindset.
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EPT
