On January 10 2014 16:49 A.Alm wrote: Remove the mothership core.
It's a stupid unit that makes protoss really safe early game but also gives them an awesome all-in tool.
It's a boring unit and it makes the early game boring.
boring boring
We can't just cut the MSC without giving the Protoss something in return, though, because that would put PvT right where it was at the end of WOL - with Protoss having absolutely no way to be aggressive until ten minutes into the game. More or less where Terran is now. It's no good for almost the same reasons.
On January 10 2014 16:49 A.Alm wrote: Remove the mothership core.
It's a stupid unit that makes protoss really safe early game but also gives them an awesome all-in tool.
It's a boring unit and it makes the early game boring.
boring boring
We can't just cut the MSC without giving the Protoss something in return, though, because that would put PvT right where it was at the end of WOL - with Protoss having absolutely no way to be aggressive until ten minutes into the game. More or less where Terran is now. It's no good for almost the same reasons.
Are you serious? Protoss not able to be aggressive without MSC till ten minutes? What happened with DTs(cheaper),oracle,Xgate allin,Immortal all in, Voidray Allin, Oracle+gateunits all in? Blink? Now tell me just a SINGLE all in you can do as Terran in TvP. All this stuff except the Oracle, was totally possible in PvT.
MSC should be defensive,only switching between Nexi and PO range less than a banshee.
On January 10 2014 16:49 A.Alm wrote: Remove the mothership core.
It's a stupid unit that makes protoss really safe early game but also gives them an awesome all-in tool.
It's a boring unit and it makes the early game boring.
boring boring
We can't just cut the MSC without giving the Protoss something in return, though, because that would put PvT right where it was at the end of WOL - with Protoss having absolutely no way to be aggressive until ten minutes into the game. More or less where Terran is now. It's no good for almost the same reasons.
Are you serious? Protoss not able to be aggressive without MSC till ten minutes? What happened with DTs(cheaper),oracle,Xgate allin,Immortal all in, Voidray Allin, Oracle+gateunits all in? Blink? Now tell me just a SINGLE all in you can do as Terran in TvP. All this stuff except the Oracle, was totally possible in PvT.
MSC should be defensive,only switching between Nexi and PO range less than a banshee.
First, I didn't say we shouldn't change the MSC, I said we can't remove it. You're arguing against a strawman. That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with it having some offensive uses, they just have to be more exacting on the Protoss. With proper control, there's zero risk to the MSC with a Blink all in, and that's complete crap.
Second, I'm not counting all ins. I should have been clearer on this. If our goal is to fix the MU by encouraging standard play, all ins can't be the only form of aggression available to the Protoss.
I must say I don't understand how can they factor out the player skill and look only on race strength. How does that work? Especially now with the MMR decay system where ladder is all messed up.
On January 10 2014 17:17 Qwerty85 wrote: I must say I don't understand how can they factor out the player skill and look only on race strength. How does that work? Especially now with the MMR decay system where ladder is all messed up.
I wonder about that as well, considering that looking the pure win percentage on a ladder is bogus, because a working ladder should only match you against opponents against whom your win percentage is about 50:50, even if that means that the, say, top 1% of one race are matched against the top 2% of another race.
On January 10 2014 17:17 Qwerty85 wrote: I must say I don't understand how can they factor out the player skill and look only on race strength. How does that work? Especially now with the MMR decay system where ladder is all messed up.
They are balancing races..not players. Ofc they are ignoring player skill.... Player skill only indicates the league he is in. If a pro protoss players steamrolls everyone on the planet..it's his win. Or do u want them to nerf good players because you are terrible at the game.
Again....balance happens only at a game level..not at a player level. That is perfectly logical. They want T Z and P to be perfectly balanced..leaving the deciding factor ONLY to the player himself.... not a bad player picking a "good" race..but the other way around...a good player picking ANY race he wants without the other 2 races having a native advantage over him.
Please keep in mind these are not straight-up win percentages. They’re win percentages with player skill factored out. When we grab win/loss data for balance purposes, we categorize each game with 2 different variables per side: one being player skill and other being race strength. So by factoring the player skill out, we are able to more accurately check how each race is doing at each skill level.
The win percentages are meaningless if one does not know the way they computed them. I could say:
"male and female progamers have the same representation in major tournaments, if you factor out the skill level."
I've said this before, but how exactly is TvP balanced at lower leagues??????
Where a-moves and all-ins are concerned, Protoss is clearly favoured over Terran. And that is the kind of playstyle most commonly found at lower leagues.
Note: This is not commentary on balance at top level. People argue all the time that only balance at the top matters. But when the metric used by David Kim also shows TvP being balanced at lower leagues, it casts a lot of doubt for me.
On January 10 2014 11:39 iHirO wrote: I'd be interested to know how the player skill was factored out.
Yeah, same for me, how's that done? Without providing a formula it sounds more like "we just fixed the numbers so we can tell you the game balance throughout the leagues is totally fine (rendering most complaints useless), which means the only reason you're reading this right now, is Blizzard overwhelmingly caring for you".
Don't get me wrong, I overall appreciate the more frenquent efforts of communicating with the community, but all this is just too vague. I could call my granny with dementia and would gain more solid info out of that. If they don't want to, it's fine, but whole paragraphs filled with "thoughts here, maybe there, overall everything is cool etc." aren't helping much tbh
If there are roughly the same amount of P, Z and T players on the ladder, but terran is overreprestented in lowerleagues and underrepresented in higher leagues, then how can all the winrates be so close to 50%? Shouldnt terran be losing alot more since they dont get promoted to the same exent as P and Z?
Maybe there is so little movement on the ladder, so few getting promoted and demoted, that this wont show in the stats? The racial distribution is set in stone and thats why DK can show off his 50/50. Either way, there is no way around the fact that the racial distribution is the way it is and im very disappointed that DK is so keen on brushing of this issue like its nothing.
On January 10 2014 12:06 Zanzabarr wrote: Protoss has been savagely brutalized this week in proleague..... they went 1-15 in non mirrors in a best of 1 format.... the supposedly strongest format for protoss. To all the non-pro players out there.... no... your perceived strength of protoss isn't holding you back... you are. I'm pretty sure 80%+ of the player base doesn't use their army mobility advantage properly, if at all, and go through this three step magical process.
1) A-move mobile army 2) Take bad engagement and lose said engagement 3) Cry imbalance and demand buffs/nerfs
best comment i've read in ages.oh and 1 week in data across all servers means tens of thousands of games btw !
On January 10 2014 17:17 Qwerty85 wrote: I must say I don't understand how can they factor out the player skill and look only on race strength. How does that work? Especially now with the MMR decay system where ladder is all messed up.
They are balancing races..not players. Ofc they are ignoring player skill.... Player skill only indicates the league he is in. If a pro protoss players steamrolls everyone on the planet..it's his win. Or do u want them to nerf good players because you are terrible at the game.
Again....balance happens only at a game level..not at a player level. That is perfectly logical. They want T Z and P to be perfectly balanced..leaving the deciding factor ONLY to the player himself.... not a bad player picking a "good" race..but the other way around...a good player picking ANY race he wants without the other 2 races having a native advantage over him.
You obviously didn't understand my question. I didn't ask why they do it, I asked how can they isolate race strength and skill, especially with current mmr decay system. You have people of diamond skill playing gold players and people of master skill playing platinums etc. Their mmr doesn't correspond to their actual skill.
Ok, after reading tons of posts on the matter I think I've finally understood what other posters meant when they said that win rates in a void are useless. Even during the BL Infestor era we had some months where terran was achieving 50% win rate in tournaments, and protoss still had like 50% win rate, but we now know for fact BL Infestor was horribly broken.
So, if BL Infestor was so broken how come we had bouts of 50% win rates and the WR still holding steady at around like 45% for most months? Its because, all but the best terrans started falling out off tournaments and only those the best of the best remained, so even though the MU was flat out broken, win rates held steady because the few terrans that remained where so head and shoulders above the rest they where kind of skewing the stats by defeating far worst zergs, only to fall to the best ones.
So I think, like many other posters have said, the correct way to measure balance is by using win rates + race representation in a tournament or on ladder.
Like even though TvZ was kind between 45 to 50% win rate and PvZ was about 50% win rate at the end of BL Infestor era, the tournament had a lot more zergs then both terran or protoss, and the upper brackets of the tournaments where almost always filled with zergs.
The reasons are two fold, because zerg was so strong it started to get more and more representatives trough qualifiers up until we had a lot more zergs in tournaments, this served to slightly skew the win rates since you'd have a ton of bad zergs that lost to much stronger protoss and terrans again, giving the illusion the MUs where balanced. This wasn't always the case because of how seeding worked for certain tournaments and also because some qualifiers occurred before the problem became to severe or on Protoss favored maps.
If you haven't caught on yet, here is a hint, so much bloody red!
Also fun stats. IPL 5 had 27 zergs, 21 terrans, 14 toss. Iron squid, 14 zerg, 9 terran, 9 protoss. GSL Code S season 5 of 2012 had, 9 protoss, 9 zerg and 14 terran, the tide hadn't quite yet began to turn here because of the difficulty to go to and stay in Code S. However 2013 Season 1 Code S (the last wings Code S), had 5 protoss, 13 terrans and 14 zergs, yep the tide did turn.
The only stat I don't have, is the total ladder distribution during the BL Infestor era up until HoTS, I think if you correlate that to what was happening in the premier tournaments at the time you'd see the solid that of how broken BL Infestor was. But I don't need to tell you that, I just wanted to make a point, like others have made before me.
So is Protoss broken right now? Well not quite, but its getting there, looking at the last 3 months off 2013 you kind of see a trend of more protoss start to qualify for events and a couple of more winning, but its inconsistent compared to the BL infestor era. However, taking into account that, + ladder distribution + the state of the MU now I'd be inclined to give say Protoss is quite favored, enough to do something about it.
I won't post analysis of Protoss right now, because I'm extremely hungry so I might get around to doing it later. Also if anyone can find me the ladder distribution for master and GM, especially GM in KR, EU and NA for the BL infestor era and the HoTS era, then I'd be very thankful.
Edit: And this is why I am now disinclined to trust DK any more, he has lied to the community in the past for the sake of PR, especially during the BL Infestor era, and it looks like he is doing it again, providing just stats while failing to address race distribution on ladder and in tournaments or even failing to talk in depth about the MUs, about the lack of good pressures and all-ins from terrans against P, about the multitude of strong all-ins or pressures that can turn into both kill moves or macro games, about the ridiculous flexibility Protoss has compared to terran in choice of builds and of changing up builds.
I really like that David Kim decided to give us a full rundown on what they think and why they think it. Some others have noted that this is the first time he actually shows data. I hope that trend continues.
Many critique that he mentions "sorting by player skill and race strength". My understanding is he controls for player skill (which is an obvious good thing) in order to get the stats he showed us (which are "raw race strength"). Sounds good to me.
Though the data comes from just a week, that's a LOT of games you have on the global ladder. Percentages look really good, actually, better than my subjective feel as a terran player. I still think the changes they have planned sound very reasonable, but no need to rush. Wait for pros to show the new strats they've planned beforehand.
On January 10 2014 12:52 T.O.P. wrote: [quote] Perhaps because good players play more games, if you just present the data unaltered good players would make influence the winrates more than their proportion in the population.
Here's the thing though: all they do is present win-rates, and they already break down the win-rates by tier. Ignoring or weighting data based on their stated filters in this context is only done assuming you want to shape the data to your advantage.
That assumes that your goal is to mislead the people you are presenting the data to, which David and Blizzard have almost no reason to do. In fact, they have numerous reasons to provide us with the most accurate information possible.
Unless you believe that DKim is trying to mislead us and sell us on the idea that the game is balance when he knows that one race is over powers.
I question all use of statistics, and it leads me to question people's motives when I sense bad methodology. I don't make the assumption that all data and interpretations of data presented to me are kosher, precisely because I know how easy it is to shape any data set to say whatever it is I want it to say and phrase it in such a way that few people will question it.
Ok, but I am going to ask you the same question, why would they do that? You don't just imply that their data is incorrectly gathered, but they do so with purpose with the intent to mislead. Do you really think they want an imbalanced game? I don't really see any good reason for them to "cook the numbers" to make the game appear balanced.
I don't think they would purposely mislead anyone. But it's easy to mislead yourself into just looking at the numbers. There was a reason BL/infestor wasn't touched for the last 6-8 months of WoL and it was because the numbers were balanced. It's easy to mislead yourself into thinking winrates are the problem rather than the design or function of the matchups. There are just too few people with too much information and too many objectives to comprehensively cover all paths and solutions to everything the want. From what I've seen in the last few years they want:
1) A balanced game across all levels of play (to attract more casual players. I can understand the sentiment, but you won't be attracting casuals to play more through ladder imho.) 2) They want it to be fun and dynamic. 3) They want to increase the skill cap. 4) They want less deathball matchups. 5) They want Zerg to be "Zergy" 6) The bunker must be changed. 7) They want to all races to have multiple options per matchup.
But a lot of those objectives are contradictory. They felt Protoss was too weak early so they gave them photon cannon. That helped balance but increased the amount of deathball matchups and fun and dynamic gameplay (Nothing is more deflating than watching a TvP about to ramp up in speed to only be stopped cold by a photon cannon.) They want the game to be more fun and dynamic so they increase the speed of mutas, medivacs and oracles. But at the same time it decreases tension and awe of the game. Mass drops are now a standard play capable of being done by every solid Terran instead of a hard earned specialty way to play that was only done by MMA and Gumiho. Mutas became faster and gained regen increasing the "Multitasking" of Zerg players but in the end all it really did was let weaker players play like Soulkey/DRG/Leenook at the end of WoL without the extreme control, intuition and practice as it was much more forgiving.
They wanted to give Protoss more options in the early game against both Zerg and Terran so they gave them the MSC, cheaper dts and an oracle. While Zerg can still play a variety of opening builds, Terran has been pigeonholed into going reaper cc every game unless they want to just randomly gamble on a cc or double proxy rax compared to Protoss' 4-5 solid openings that all transition well into mid-late (And this doesn't include obscure builds like First's double forge robo immortal build.)
Which is why I assume they read all of the balance threads on here and other places. Even if they never release how they are reaching those numbers, even being critical of the methodology is still an important point to bring up so that both spectators and the dev.team don't take the numbers as the only truth. I doubt very much that they will ever comprehensively tell us how they came to these numbers and honestly they shouldn't. It only opens them to more criticism and takes away from actual balance discussion but its always important to not take these numbers at face value either.
But what would be the point of releasing these numbers? To back their point, to have the unsinkable argument when some one would question their thinking? Without saying how they came up with these numbers, it even more sinkable argument, because everyone can question it. Seriously, what they were thinking?
They just wanted something concrete to show why they think Protoss isn't as much of a problem as the community is making it out to be? Maybe they just wanted to show some of their reasoning and keep us as informed as they can without violating company policy? Who knows.
In any case, I am glad that they keep their methods in-house and do not publicise. Nor should they (especially to a community as over-represented in armchair experts as SC2). It's a pity he felt he had to share it, even if partially. A more blatant fuck you to the community would have been a lot better. I'm sure it would have been a lot more cathartic for him too.
Slow and steady as she goes from Blizzard suits me just fine.
I would honestly much rather have some radical change, but I know that Blizzard can't and won't do that until the expansion (if they do it at all).
If there were to be radical change, a new expansion is the place to put it. Although the degree of that radicality is another issue. For example, new units is a radical change but may not be radical enough for some. Radical for the sake of it may destroy the scene entirely if it destroys the basics of the game that people have become used to over the last 4 years. For example, for the same of argument, a change to resources or resource collection that means basic build timings have to be re-thought. The game would have to be re-learned, for everyone, from scratch. This would not be good for anybody.
Therefore, I think for LOTV, we are likely to see another expansion like HOTS. New units and some tweaks to unit behaviours. These types of changes make the most logical sense for everybody (including Blizzard). And, speaking for myself, assuming I am still playing this game when that time comes, I would be fine with this level of radical change.
I think the two most valuable insights people can give Blizzard right now are:
A) Short term - what small changes can be made to make the game more fun to play and/or more fun to watch?
If people have opinions of this kind (and plenty of us do) this is fine. The problem is that one person's idea for improvement is another person's idea for destroying the game. Nor should we expect Blizzard to take on board this feedback and necessarily do anything with it. Nor should we expect them to test all of these ideas. Do we seriously expect them to put resources into endlessly chasing their own tails especially when a lot of people are so certain that they have the idea that will improve the game, no doubt at all. Consider the case where small change X is made in the test environment. It appears to have a positive effect (based on whatever the metric of "positive effect" is decided to be). But this is no guarantee this will be the case when that change is made in a live environment (this is because, for one, the effect of say 10 testers in the space of a week is not as effective as 10,000 real users in the space of 3 months). What if small change Y comes up and is tested but has negative effects (based on whatever the metric of "negative effect" is decided to be). However, if X were not in the game, then Y might actually be positive. How is it decided and who decides between X and Y?
Sure, let's keep Blizzard informed of our ideas. We show we love this infuriating, crazy, lovely game when we do so. But, let's not pretend to any more than that or think less of Blizzard when our ideas are met with silence.
B) Long term - what radical changes can be made to overhaul game systems, map attributes, race mechanics, or entire units to make the game more fun to play and/or more fun to watch?
As I have said above, my take on this is dependent on the degree of radicality of changes. I'd be against changes that lead to substantial re-learning of the game. Therefore, removal of units is out as is fundamental alteration of race mechanics (such as forcefields, floating buildings, spawn larvae etc). I believe the positive effects of these changes are largely unknown (and in the many cases usually imagined). I prefer a known state, whatever its shortcomings, to an imagined utopia.
This leaves map attributes as this is an area where the existing tools of SC2 can be realised in new or different ways. Will different maps lead to a better or different meta? I don't know. But, I think it an area still largely unexplored and one which does not condemn users to have to re-learn the game. Are there limits with maps? Probably, given such things as forcefields and Zerg production. But, as long as we do not expect SC nirvana from maps it is an area worth looking at further and in more depth. I'd have no trouble with a greater variety of maps on ladder and in tournament play - even if they are imba for my race (as long as there is a good distribution of these maps between races). I want to see more different maps in 2014.
There are lots of good topics about point B (though they're scattered across the last four years - maybe making a big "large changes that could improve SC2 list with all the big featured blogs/threads from TL would be cool), but there isn't a lot of feedback about point A.
That's why I guess I felt frustrated earlier in the thread with the detour to statistics; the majority of the informed SC2 community doesn't actually think there is a statistical balance problem with win rates. That isn't the game's issue -remotely-. The problem is keeping everything interesting, fresh, and evolving over a long period of time. If SC2 (and its final expansion) are able to engage users and players, then that's what will give SC2 a legacy like Brood War. If it can't do that, it will eventually fail a couple of years after LotV.
I don't know who the majority of the SC2 community are, nor do I know if they are informed or not (about what?). It's too easy to throw around words like "community". Keeping things fresh and interesting and evolving is up to the players (not Blizzard). However, what is fresh to one person is imba to another. I am not sure what you want or expect when you say this. It's almost as meaningless, to me, as complaints that the game is "stagnant" and "stale". The history of WOL and HOTS shows a ebb and flow in strategy and play, and the top players are getting better and better. If we want more then perhaps it says more about us and our expectations than about Blizzard or the game itself. SC2 may or not live up to BW. Personally, I don't care. I don't give two shits about BW or its legacy. I've had a lot of fun with this game over the last four years. My only regret is that I did not play enough. If, after LOTV, the game dies in 2 - 3 years then so be it. I've spent a lot of money on worse games. If that is how it goes, I'll thank Blizzard for a really good game and go on my way.
SC2 doesn't have to beat MOBAs, and it doesn't even need perfect balance (Brood War's balance certainly wasn't perfect - not in win rates or unit potential). It just needs to keep people interested, and the fans will keep the game alive.
I agree that perfect balance is not required. But, some approximation of balance over a sufficient length of time is required because losing over something imba is not fun. The problem is, of course, what is imba or not. I like Blizzard's current approach to balance (as opposed to WOL where they were too itchy with the trigger finger on their nerf gun) even if I don't like their tendency to interpose what they think is cool or desirable (e.g. Oracles and Roaches) over that of the players'.
Sure, the constraint on Terrans' openings is a concern in TvP. But, that has to be balanced against the flowering of P openings (and gameplay) in all HOTS match-ups. The game is better for a stronger and better Protoss race. Should this constraint for Terran be remedied as far as can be without losing too many gains made in other areas? Absolutely. What that solution may be, I don't know. Some form of nerf to the Overcharge is likely, but what and to what extent is the question. Whatever it is, I am happy to leave it to Blizzard to do, slowly and carefully.
On January 10 2014 12:34 IncubusSC wrote: lol uses a 6 day statistic sample to support his argument, then says that one tournament is too small of a sample size.
What a fucking goon, it's hilarious how he hasn't been fired for his incompetence.
User was warned for this post
Ya because 30 games in Proleague equals 1 week of EVERY GAME played on B.net ladder on EVERY SERVER. That makes a lot of sense right?
Everyone is so bent out of shape and dead set on proving David Kim wrong or finding some mistake in his wording that the things they are saying doesn't even make any sense. He never said he wasn't going to tweak the matchup even? All he said was that he wanted to wait longer to see how things play out. How come that's so hard for people to understand? And everyone saying that PvT is somehow all of a sudden a "stale" matchup, either hasn't been playing, or hasn't been watching any PvT recently. I've been getting all kinds of different strategies thrown at me from both sides, I think it's actually one of the more exciting matchups at this time. Blink all-in is only strong on certain maps, and even then we are seeing Terran's able to defend it. Part of the reason it's so good is because of the strategy most Terran's have been using i.e. MMA, Innovation, open up Reaper and 1 rax Reactor, 1 rax Tech Lab, which pretty much guarantee's the Terran won't have enough marauders or units in general to stop the all-in. Not to mention the resources to get 1-2 more barracks. Which is exactly why we aren't seeing that as much, or the Terran's are recognizing the weakness of this on Blink favored maps.
Everyone needs to chill out a little and think logically and clearly before ranting and getting all pissed off, patience people jesus christ.
Look, how much time did DK give for the oracle buff? Even when protosses themselves didn't think it was needed. Did they give hellbats tons of time for players to figure out? How about widow mines? It was pretty obvious that the top zergs were getting really good at playing against them. That is why terrans are pissed, because DK is very inconsistent with his patching reasoning and timing.
Since the launch of the game until the latest patch seems like quite a long time to me, unless your sense of time is that warped? The widow mine nerf was right after WCS season 1-3 so that is what, thousands or even tens of thousands of games? How does that compare to ,essentially, 2 months where maybe a couple hundred pro matches were played since the patch after Blizzcon? But ya my intelligence level is bring down the thread hahaha that's hilarious.
EPT
