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I dont know about the rest of you but I think he should prioritize making the game more fun over 50% ratios balance.
People are asking for mech viability not to make it the strongest shit of the universe, but to make positional play using tanks. Instead of making PvP early game viable through gateway units they just made that gimmicky shit Planetary Overcharge and forcefields. I loved the early beta nydus options but that was just scrapped because it was too hard to think about it. This coming from a protoss player that should be enjoying the so called imbalanced situation.
The game is so unidimensional, forcing player to play it the way he intend only, that it sounds that he prefer to keep it as it is so it makes it easier for him to not get fired (and save his ass from complains about it).
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On January 10 2014 13:36 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 13:34 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:31 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:27 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:25 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:22 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:20 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:16 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 12:52 T.O.P. wrote:On January 10 2014 12:18 itsjustatank wrote:
[quote]
Without an explanation as to what this actually means, statistically speaking, this sounds like like linguistic flourish justifying cherrypicking one's data to one's advantage, a component of lying with statistics.
Elucidation would be greatly appreciated, because I have to assume this isn't the case. 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. Having the public on your side, especially in this community, when you are trying to change things in the game is politically useful. You make assumptions about what is rational and not rational that come off as being pretty naive. And your assumptions seem overly paranoid since we are dealing with a video game that people play for fun. I find it hard to grasp the idea that someone is Blizzard is sitting there plotting to mislead us for "political reasons" through no balancing the game. And it would have to be quite a few people, because its a balance team. It seems extremely far fetched to say the least. I mean I'm sure the Kool-Aid tastes nice in your world, but I'll continue to question data presented to me as fact. And your welcome to do so, just remember to keep the tinfoil hat on tight. It makes you immune to the Kool-Aid they are putting in the water supply.
It's not paranoia or tinfoil hat crazy. It's called skepticism and it's a trait exhibited by people smart enough not to just blindly believe things they are told as fact.
Typically, when an organization releases statistics that paint them in a good light, statistics that have no way to be vetted by an independent third party (as in this case), their is likely to be some bias. It's a good idea to take these type of things with a grain of salt.
Just like most charts in USA Today -- they're just terrible.
Hopefully some good will come from this.
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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.
I think what this passage is referring to is hidden MMR, since that's what the ladder system is using as a representation of your skill. By looking at games where both player's MMRs are identical (or at least within a very small range), you basically eliminate skill since games between two equally skilled players (which, according to the MMRs, they are) should theoretically be exactly 50/50. So, if the winrates in this situations are not exactly 50/50 (like right now), there must be something else contributing, such as one race being stronger than another.
That's all purely theoretical, though. I very much doubt MMR actually quantifies player skill accurately enough to confidently say "two players with the same MMR are exactly equally skilled", but it's also probably the best they can do. Otherwise, they'd be using a new system.
That's just my interpretation of what is apparently a very confusing passage. I think that, theoretically, it's a good approach. However, practically, I very much doubt MMR is accurate enough to do what they want it to do. I also think that taking games from ladder is a bad idea because the vast majority of games there are going to be between players of equal MMR (since that's what the system is designed to do), thus producing an artificial 50/50.
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On January 10 2014 13:14 Emuking wrote:
Perhaps someone can explain the correlation between a balanced match-up and a 50% win rate to me, because I do not think aiming for a 50/50 win rate is how to make a game balanced. A perfectly balanced game to me means the best player should win every time with small random variables being the smallest factor in victory or defeat.
I will try to make an analogy that might apply to this case that I hope makes sense. I hope this isn't racist..
Lets say African Americans = Protoss and Asians = Zerg and the game of choice is basketball. After a week of games played between Africans and Asians we find Africans win 60% of the games and Asians win 40% of the games. Is Basketball a balanced game? By Blizzards definition the answer is no; therefore we need to:
a) change the basketball court (map) to make it more favored towards asians
b) nerf Africans (take away their ability to jump)
c) buff Asians (give them bouncy shoes)
Lets say A, B, and C are all applied to the game of basketball and now after a week of games between black people and Asians, we find the games are 50/50. So is basketball balanced now that we've taken away the natural skillsets of Africans and improved Asians artificially? By Blizzards thought process, yes; even though the Africans are having to fight against an unfair advantage.
This is what's going on exactly in my opinion whenever they balance match-ups and it doesn't make sense to me. They see a 50/50 and think, "This is a balanced game now, on to the next project."
On a side note; imagine PvZ comes to a point where Protoss is scouted by Zerg overlords to check for a certain 2 base timing. That 2 base timing looks exactly like a macro build also. Zerg can prepare for a 2 base timing and hold and win, or guess wrong and get outmacroed. Zerg can also macro up hoping its a macro build and stay even, or macro up and die to a 2 base all-in. Its a 50/50 chance in this scenario and therefore leads towards a 50/50 win rate for both sides. How is this balanced? Are we just admitting that is what Starcraft 2 has become?
Allow me to eradicate this completely illogical and totally not fitting (despite being at least a bit funny) comparison.
While, from the example you made, Africans have a natural higher ability to play basketball in sc2 P players cannot be defined naturally better (nor worse) at playing the game than the others. So you cannot distinguish between something artificial and natural in the sc2 case (unless you take into account wrong statements like "P/T/Z players are naturally more endowed in sc2 but not because of their race").
Obviously your conclusion, or starting point since you cannot come to that from the basketball example, is right.
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So this dude only talks about stat. Hows about some of the late game are simple so goddamn stale to play and terrible to watch?
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MMR quantifying pure skill and being dissociate from race strength is a bit of a far-fetched dream. Your MMR goes up if your race is buffed.
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it's good that they are finally communicating more at least.
But I think it's already time to go beyond balance stats, they should consider talk about each of the issues for each matchup and what they think about it.
for example, we heard nothing about swarmhost etc for months and it is becoming the more dominate style in ZvP.
That huge sky terran deathball in TvZ, problem?
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I don't tell you how I got the data but everything is 50-50.
- David Kim 2010-2014
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So do you guys think achieving 50/50 for each matchup means the game is balanced? I don't.
Also i would like to acknowledge my analogy was not good enough to relate to this situation. Maybe if I said skilled people instead of black and unskilled people instead of asians, it would make more sense
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On January 10 2014 13:38 ssxsilver wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 13:32 Brian333 wrote:On January 10 2014 13:29 ssxsilver wrote:On January 10 2014 13:09 Brian333 wrote:My point is your comment about unfavorable conditions and unequal skill is not true. Prime might be an exception due to how small their roster is but you are acting like these coaches are sending out Protoss with sub-par win-rates in map-specific PvT for shits and giggles. Who knows how good some of their PvT win-rates are on those specific maps in internal practice? The coach, not you. I said all but 1 Terran being fielded has been Code A or better at one point or better and that 37% of the losses come from Prime (who everyone picked to finish dead last b/c of many reasons). Nowhere did I mention any of what you suggest I said. Then why even post in the first place? You were obviously saying that good Terrans were fielded and that is justification for them winning. I said in my initial response that you don't know if the Protoss opponents they faced weren't just as good or even better based on internal practice and in-house rankings, Prime being an exception. Seriously? Your rebuttal of internal rankings applies to every race. I nor you know whose performing better in-house. My points never address that because it's valid (albeit you're making your case on the assumption that only random Protosses are performing). However, that doesn't supersede anything of what I said. Prime accounts for nearly 40% of PvT/PvZ losses and hardly any "random" Terrans are getting fielded. Do you not realize how huge those two conditions are?
I never said I knew how these Protoss players were performing in practice, I said their coaches knew before sending them out. So again, yea, good Terrans were fielded. But, PL coaches are not hired to lose. If they are sending a player out, they have their reasoning. Bad players are not going to be played. So, saying that all but 1 Terran being fielded has been Code A or better is a pointless statement because there is no guarantee that they were any more skilled than their Protoss opponent.
And like I said, the point about Prime is fine.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
On January 10 2014 13:25 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 13:22 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:20 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:16 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 12:52 T.O.P. wrote:On January 10 2014 12:18 itsjustatank wrote: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. Without an explanation as to what this actually means, statistically speaking, this sounds like like linguistic flourish justifying cherrypicking one's data to one's advantage, a component of lying with statistics. Elucidation would be greatly appreciated, because I have to assume this isn't the case. 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.
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On January 10 2014 13:45 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 13:29 MysticaL wrote:On January 10 2014 11:55 CutTheEnemy wrote:
On EU, 24% of masters players are terran now compared with 35% and 38% for zerg and protoss. How can he say its balanced considering this? His appeal to win percentages within leagues is highly misleading.
He's also been speaking for years as though he's ignorant of our main complaint- its isn't balance per se, its how hard and stressful it is to play terran and win. We know terrans can win once they go pro, but most of us aren't capable of sustaining the serious damage to our personal relationships, grades, hands and paychecks it takes in order to play the race competitively. ^ I think this is the point It's reflected everywhere that while there may be balance among the skilled players, people hate playing terran because it's too frustrating and hard. Although this sounds like QQ, it's shown by how many Terrans are still competing. Some examples: - Terran being under-represented in GM for several seasons in a row now - Terran being under-represented in Proleague (source: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2014_Proleague/Statistics)8/41 players that played in Proleague so far are Terran. Once again, the same counter-argument is there, "it's a small sample size." Well, it's going to continue being a small sample size. While I understand this small sample size argument... the truth is the entire SC2 pro-scene is a small sample size of the select few hundred players, and Terran is definitely under-represented in the pro scene. Whether win rates back it up or not, not many like playing Terran at the pro-level. Like I said, it's fine if you're extremely good at the game (shown by the god-mode skilled terrans like Maru, Flash, TY all doing well). The reason why we're seeing a lot of 50% in general is because you are matched with people your MMR. If one race struggles, the only impact this makes is every player of that race has lower MMR. It has nothing to do with "who is the better player" - in the game's perspective, the better player is the one with higher MMR, but we all know that's not true. The MMR system automatically adjusts your opponent so that you have a roughly ~50% win ratio. Ladder win ratios are a misleading indicator of balance. I'll repeat this as much as necessary to as many people as necessary: The ladder matches you up to win 50% of your games, right? Great! So it thus follows that your matchups will all approximate 50%, right? ...Not even remotely. Most people have strong and weak matchups, so they may have a 50% overall, but a 60% TvZ, a 50% TvT, and a 40% TvP. So even if they win 50% of their games, they won't win 50% of their games in every matchup. This actually makes it EXTREMELY easy to tell if there is an overall racial imbalance, because what you'll find is that even though there is a 50% winrate for the total populations, the matchup winrates will be more or less than 50% for the non-mirrors, as a population. Protoss appears to be (extremely slightly) overpowered vs. T at the moment, having just above 50% PvT winrates across region, skill level, and at the pro level. But it's nothing like the huge imbalance it's been claimed to be. TL;DR: The matchmaking system's desire to put you at 50% winrate makes it extremely easy to spot racial imbalances across a population, because a Terran population-wide problem in TvP would require an increase in TvZ winrates to keep the population at 50%.
And towards the end of WOL, at the height of Broodlord/Infestor bullshit when Patchzergs took games off of clearly superior Terrans and Protoss, Blizzard's stats were 49.8% PvZ and 48.8% ZvT.
So either Terrans were (extremely slightly) overpowered vs. Zerg... or results-oriented statistics can be completely meaningless when there are balance factors inside of games that frustrate players and spectators.
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Well at least they did say something, but sadly it's just a "cover our ass" bunch of lark. (IE meaningless stats getting spewed out to make the situation not look as awful as it is)
Do people really buy this completely ridiculous notion that ladder percentages mean anything of importance? After the Protoss changes I dropped a full league. But then, as the ladder is supposed to do, I finally started winning again because I was simply BETTER than my opponents! So YES I'm back in the 50/50 range! How can anybody be fooled by these silly meaningless stats?
The ladder will ALWAYS push everybody to a 50/50 in every matchup.
I put the game down before the holidays to wait for something from Blizzard, and this is what we get? You know what I want to hear? This is what they need to tell us:
"Hi community, us here over at Blizzard have been PLAYING A TON OF LADDER GAMES AS TERRAN and this is how we feel!" I guarantee you they are not playing this game at all, if they were they would not lob silly meaningless stats at us from a system DESIGNED to keep us all at 50%!!!
Very frustrating, and it's looking more and more like I'll be permanently moving on.
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I'm not buying those statistics.
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On January 10 2014 13:45 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 13:41 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:36 ZenithM wrote:On January 10 2014 13:31 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:27 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:25 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:22 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:20 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:16 itsjustatank wrote: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. Having the public on your side, especially in this community, when you are trying to change things in the game is politically useful. You make assumptions about what is rational and not rational that come off as being pretty naive. And your assumptions seem overly paranoid since we are dealing with a video game that people play for fun. I find it hard to grasp the idea that someone is Blizzard is sitting there plotting to mislead us for "political reasons" through no balancing the game. And it would have to be quite a few people, because its a balance team. It seems extremely far fetched to say the least. It could simply be that they don't have the manpower to work on SC2 balance, so they would rather pretend that the game is mostly balanced, and don't release patches as often. Edit: That's just a reasonable hypothesis, I don't think they're trying to deceive anyone either, Plansix. Except what you have just described as potentially going on would be deception, malicious or not. I actually don't care about their motives, but using statistics incorrectly, potentially on purpose to cover things up, is not good. But you have zero proof they are using them incorrectly or intentionally trying to mislead people. Literally zero. You question if the data is accurate, which is fine, but then you go the next step and try to say it is inaccurate on purpose. I am just pointing out that it sounds like crazy talk, since they work for a video game company. You can't not care about their motives and then claim they are trying to cover things up.
they maintain the ZvT is balance in wol stance for 6months.
they maintain that ZvP is balance for more time in wol.
They promoted a meaningless tank buff to compensate for a huge mine nerf without balance concern, wanting to promote tank play, which didn't happen (and so the main point of this retarded patch was a failure) but managed successfully (who'd have guess) to make TvZ harder.
They buffed the oracle speed to make P use oracle lategame (LOL is the only response)
They refused to acknowledge the PvT scouting pbm pre obs during 1year in WoL (and P had to wait for HotS anyway, and the solution was to allow them to not scout)
And the list could continue. They're either clueless or unable to fix the problem and trying to avoid to recognize that fact.
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On January 10 2014 13:45 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 13:29 MysticaL wrote:On January 10 2014 11:55 CutTheEnemy wrote:
On EU, 24% of masters players are terran now compared with 35% and 38% for zerg and protoss. How can he say its balanced considering this? His appeal to win percentages within leagues is highly misleading.
He's also been speaking for years as though he's ignorant of our main complaint- its isn't balance per se, its how hard and stressful it is to play terran and win. We know terrans can win once they go pro, but most of us aren't capable of sustaining the serious damage to our personal relationships, grades, hands and paychecks it takes in order to play the race competitively. ^ I think this is the point It's reflected everywhere that while there may be balance among the skilled players, people hate playing terran because it's too frustrating and hard. Although this sounds like QQ, it's shown by how many Terrans are still competing. Some examples: - Terran being under-represented in GM for several seasons in a row now - Terran being under-represented in Proleague (source: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2014_Proleague/Statistics)8/41 players that played in Proleague so far are Terran. Once again, the same counter-argument is there, "it's a small sample size." Well, it's going to continue being a small sample size. While I understand this small sample size argument... the truth is the entire SC2 pro-scene is a small sample size of the select few hundred players, and Terran is definitely under-represented in the pro scene. Whether win rates back it up or not, not many like playing Terran at the pro-level. Like I said, it's fine if you're extremely good at the game (shown by the god-mode skilled terrans like Maru, Flash, TY all doing well). The reason why we're seeing a lot of 50% in general is because you are matched with people your MMR. If one race struggles, the only impact this makes is every player of that race has lower MMR. It has nothing to do with "who is the better player" - in the game's perspective, the better player is the one with higher MMR, but we all know that's not true. The MMR system automatically adjusts your opponent so that you have a roughly ~50% win ratio. Ladder win ratios are a misleading indicator of balance. I'll repeat this as much as necessary to as many people as necessary: The ladder matches you up to win 50% of your games, right? Great! So it thus follows that your matchups will all approximate 50%, right? ...Not even remotely. Most people have strong and weak matchups, so they may have a 50% overall, but a 60% TvZ, a 50% TvT, and a 40% TvP. So even if they win 50% of their games, they won't win 50% of their games in every matchup. This actually makes it EXTREMELY easy to tell if there is an overall racial imbalance, because what you'll find is that even though there is a 50% winrate for the total populations, the matchup winrates will be more or less than 50% for the non-mirrors, as a population. Protoss appears to be (extremely slightly) overpowered vs. T at the moment, having just above 50% PvT winrates across region, skill level, and at the pro level. But it's nothing like the huge imbalance it's been claimed to be. TL;DR: The matchmaking system's desire to put you at 50% winrate makes it extremely easy to spot racial imbalances across a population, because a Terran population-wide problem in TvP would require an increase in TvZ winrates to keep the population at 50%.
Yes that's okay only if you assume that the total population = 33% Terran, 33% Toss, 33% Zerg, but we know that's not true...
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A larger sample size would be great.
But then you'd have to start looking at specific patch dates - and know specific buff or nerfs that each patch implemented - to see how (or if) Things changed. This is the data I'd like to see.
If you gave the community better data David Kim, the feedback you'd get would be of more use to you I feel. Though thanks for explaining some, but maybe leaves more questions than answers.
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Is it correct to assume that, in a pure a-move engagement, Protoss armies will roll over Terran bioball? Because if it is correct, then lower league balance distribution should favour Protoss naturally, shouldn't it?
I was of the impression that Protoss is balanced (more or less) at top levels where Terrans know how to flank, engage multiple positions, etc.
Something about PvT being balanced at gold, silver and bronze is just strange if my above assumptions are correct.
/edit
Talking strictly PvT here btw.
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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.
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On January 10 2014 14:06 stuchiu wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2014 13:25 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:22 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 13:20 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2014 13:16 itsjustatank wrote:On January 10 2014 12:52 T.O.P. wrote:On January 10 2014 12:18 itsjustatank wrote: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. Without an explanation as to what this actually means, statistically speaking, this sounds like like linguistic flourish justifying cherrypicking one's data to one's advantage, a component of lying with statistics. Elucidation would be greatly appreciated, because I have to assume this isn't the case. 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?
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