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I've spent this morning collecting data form Liquipedia, making a table of the racial distributin in the premier tournaments since the release of HotS. In the spreadsheet I calculated the average percentage for each race for a given round (depth) in a tournament, i.e. ro64, ro32, quarterfinals etc.
Without further redue I present the graphs to you:
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b4vrw/d0d2f7faa4.png)
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b4vsq/097b781a5e.png)
And combined into an average for all of HotS
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b4w6K/25686a0161.png)
I'm no expert in statistics, so my main motivation for posting this here on TL is to hear your opinion. I find the statistics very interresting, but I'm not sure what to extract from it.
Are individuals like Tajea carrying their race and through that disguising a weak terran race? Why are zergs overrepresented in the early rounds, but underrepresented in the later stages of tournaments? Is protoss actually a stronger race, or is a bigger part of the most talented players playing protoss? Why is the graph seemingly more unbalanced in 2014 than in 2013?
These are questions I find it hard to answer precicely.
There are however certain things I think is important when concidering the statistics/graphs:
• The later into a tournament we look, the more will one players individual skill inflict the racial distribution.
• The sudden jump the terran line does in 2013 when going from semis to finals is because of the Summer of Taeja (sounds silly, but check it out and it is true).
• The statistics for 2014 is not as accurate as the 2013 ones, some tournaments are unfinished.
• Also please note that the scale of the vertical axis is linear while the scale on the horizontal axis is logarthmic.
• Google spreadsheets wasn't the nicest to work with, but if you see the small bends in the lines you'll be able to identlify ro32, ro16, ro8, ro4 and ro2
I hope I contributed something new. I know some of you are aware of this to a certain extent, but I still think this sums up and presents thing in a nice way. I'm very interrested in hearing your opinions on the matter!
Below is a link to the spreadsheet with the table holding the data that is the base of the graphs:
+ Show Spoiler +
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Wow interesting. That Protoss spike in 2014 lol. Though I think you should have waited until the end of 2014 to do this to have equal representation by year.
Though HotS did come out in March so idk maybe it's even? Either way, results from early 2013 are a product of people still figuring out the game. I think post-WM patch, the game is in a pretty good place balance wise.
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lol poor zergs not wionning much but running deep in tournaments :D
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On August 23 2014 23:48 Hadronsbecrazy wrote:
lol poor zergs not wionning much but running deep in tournaments :D
Yeah this is one of the things I think is more caused by individual players rather than race differences
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Interesting, so if we look at the winners, there are really just a bunch of terrans that are carrying the whole race.
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Now we wait for our reborn god to carry the terran race back to its glory
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The change in right portion of graph is only for winner (1 player) so there is big randomness thanks to very little data. Probably random or thanks to few players. Apart from that not much surprising. A lot of Z in early rounds that are weeded out, more protoss, fewer terran.. as expected.
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A lot of tournaments have really weak starting lineups, but by ro4/ro2 they can be of a really high-level caliber.
I think the graph does show the Terran dominance of early hots, and the Protoss dominance of 2014.
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nice, thx !!! Now I would love to see the same graphs without Taeja  ...Ok without the 1st of each race to be fair.
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Russian Federation232 Posts
Protoss has win almost every single major tournament and the only one to save the day is Taeja.
Half of the top16 people attending WCS in November (8 out of 16) are protoss.
I think this is due to the very forgiving mechanics introduced (Photon overcharge, recall, detection with oracle etc.)
that basically always save ass for P players even tho they should be dead, increasing their resiliance in early to mid game where if they messed up they'd tend to die, and hence allowing them to reach late game often and as we all know, late game P is a bit tough to go up against
These statistics are not very surprising.. for me at least
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On August 24 2014 00:51 Tuczniak wrote:
The change in right portion of graph is only for winner (1 player) so there is big randomness thanks to very little data. Probably random or thanks to few players. Apart from that not much surprising. A lot of Z in early rounds that are weeded out, more protoss, fewer terran.. as expected.
Yeah you are absolutely correct, but I couldn't just leave out the winner of tournaments as a part of the stats/graphs either, I felt.
On August 24 2014 00:54 sibs wrote:
A lot of tournaments have really weak starting lineups, but by ro4/ro2 they can be of a really high-level caliber.
I think the graph does show the Terran dominance of early hots, and the Protoss dominance of 2014.
The fact that you point out that terrans dominated 2013 is pretty interresting, I didn't realize this before now. Terrans are represetned better in every round after ro64 then they are in the ro64 (some of this may be due to a lower chance for the terrans to face each other). Terrans performing well statistically even though they are outnumbered is an indication of strength, if I understand things properly. Unless Teaja is messing with my head again.
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Graph is a bit funny. Surely the numbers should be that of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 on the x-axis, so as to not obscurate the data. Anyhow by the time you get to 1 you get to the point of a diminishingly small sample. It'll be better that instead of percentages, that you simply showed the number of players on the y-axis.
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So we can basically assume there are less Terran Progamers and Zergs are the most.
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On August 24 2014 02:24 Big J wrote:
So we can basically assume there are less Terran Progamers and Zergs are the most.
wasn't that always the situation? i mean yes, at the beginning of WoL there seemed to be a huge number of korean terrans. but after big teams disbanded (oGs, Slayers, Zenex) a lot of those terrans either transitioned into foreign teams or just flat out retired.
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Zerg is either popular or qualifies a lot for tourmanents, prolly both, since zerg representation in GM is high. Then zerg just dies lol. If its not an indication that zerg is weak at the pro level then there are no good zerg pros out there. Nah, its indication of imbalance guys (only at the top).
For terran there is abnormal Taeja, for zerg there is no single player carrying the race, but even then the race overall is supposed to be winning more. That or protoss got a ton of Taeja skilled guys.
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Graphs make sense.
Pre HoTS BL/Infestor ruled the world
Post HoTS launch MMMM and Hellbat timings became beast
Post T Nerf Toss rained supreme with Z a close 2nd
Post T rebuff we see some more balance coming back
Really though tournaments could see better distribution, or more sense to a lack of it, if blizzard would just give more ways for better players to win games pre all in or max out timings. As is harassment and smaller level engagements in the mid game just don't feel like they mean enough to decide games at later stages. You can economically get ridiculously ahead and still lose to a very powerful maxed out army just due to Rock smashing the hell out of Scissors. But that goes back to a lack of soft counter dynamics and only hard counter dynamics in SC2 /shrug.
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These graphs seem to imply that Zerg is a popular but terrible race over the course of HoTS. In all cases Zerg has the highest distribution in round of 64, prior to heavy eliminations, and despite this higher representation Zerg still ends up with by far the worst tournament win rate in all time periods. For 2014 it looks like its sitting at about 14% right now. Apparently zerg just isn't that good at the higher levels.
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Na, Zerg is pretty good guys. It still has zhe most second places. It just lost a lot of tournament finals, but there are and were definitely carrying players like Jaedong, Soulkey or soO. The low amount of final wins is probably just a random occurence.
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On August 24 2014 02:00 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Graph is a bit funny. Surely the numbers should be that of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 on the x-axis, so as to not obscurate the data. Anyhow by the time you get to 1 you get to the point of a diminishingly small sample. It'll be better that instead of percentages, that you simply showed the number of players on the y-axis.
I can't fix the x-axis labels, sorry. Google spreadsheets is not the best tool.
And this is how the graph would look like with average number of players instead of percentage, pretty uninformative
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b5K7w/a6b8101709.png)
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There's a funny bit where the Terran in 2013 is caused by Taeja, while the Zerg for championships are caused by Jaedong & soO.
That's the problem with sample size as it gets small.
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On August 24 2014 21:17 Taf the Ghost wrote:There's a funny bit where the Terran in 2013 is caused by Taeja, while the Zerg for championships are caused by Jaedong & soO. That's the problem with sample size as it gets small.
lol I just realized that. 2013 zerg drop off might be mainly because of jaedong and his 5 second place finishes.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On August 24 2014 03:53 Big J wrote:
Na, Zerg is pretty good guys. It still has zhe most second places. It just lost a lot of tournament finals, but there are and were definitely carrying players like Jaedong, Soulkey or soO. The low amount of final wins is probably just a random occurence.
In BW, Zerg had a really long history of amassing a great number of 2nd places (always losing to the current Terran king pin - i.e boxer -> nada -> oov etc), while the 'worst race' of protoss actually had managed to win a few times.
Of course eventually shit evened out with the savior zerg revolution and bisu etc.
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The amount of Z in the early rounds of tournaments is probably just an after-effect of the Brofestor era, with more Z being seeded into various tournaments.
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On August 24 2014 22:08 Ghanburighan wrote:
The amount of Z in the early rounds of tournaments is probably just an after-effect of the Brofestor era, with more Z being seeded into various tournaments.
I think this is not true. The ro64 is not primarily where seeding occurs, I think it just happens to be that zerg is a popular race. The "brofestor era" might have made people more likely to get serious about the game if they played Z, but seeding I think is completely unrelated.
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On August 25 2014 01:30 hewo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2014 22:08 Ghanburighan wrote:
The amount of Z in the early rounds of tournaments is probably just an after-effect of the Brofestor era, with more Z being seeded into various tournaments. I think this is not true. The ro64 is not primarily where seeding occurs, I think it just happens to be that zerg is a popular race. The "brofestor era" might have made people more likely to get serious about the game if they played Z, but seeding I think is completely unrelated.
As the graphs take all of 2014 and all of HOTS into account, they include code S, and other tournaments where prior results mattered, and those were still full of Z players. This means that at least some tournaments were in the data were influenced by the brofestor era.
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Maybe its because the sample is small but if you compare with race distribution data, it gets funny. Check http://www.sc2ranks.com/
Protoss is the least popular race with zerg and terran about even. But in GM protoss is the most common followed by zerg and terran in last.
Then somehow zerg qualifies more often for tournaments but wins less.
I suppose terran is actually strong in the pro level, but too hard to master if you cannot dedicate yourself a lot. While zerg is not as hard to get into GM but weak for top pro play (and top pro level play only). Protoss is in good shape in all levels, top pro, GM and climbing up.
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I guess the only conclusion is, in retrospect, SC2 races are Protoss , Zerg and Taeja
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On August 25 2014 02:47 HomeWorld wrote:I guess the only conclusion is, in retrospect, SC2 races are Protoss , Zerg and Taeja
Polt wins as much as Taeja. Innovation, Bomber, Maru to name some other champions.
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I don't know if these statistics are important for balance. It just shows that the club of tournament winners affects tournament outcomes.
If we assume that players care about their early round matches then we can conclude that they play at nearly-their-best every match. So, since every match is their best play, the overall winrate is the better representation of which race is doing better or worse. Worrying about who goes deeper in a handful of tournaments is a way of heavily weighting the later round games over the early round games.
Maybe you could check balance by ignoring tournament winners' games, see if their performance is skewing results because of their gosu-ness?
You could break that winrate down by aligulac rank I guess: which races get to the top 40?
Among the top 40 players on aligulac, we have:
14 T
12 P
13 Z
1 race switcher
(Weird seeing Europeans on there who lose to the koreans all the time)
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If we actually look at the 2014 graph, Terran would honestly appear to be more balanced. They have the fewest entrants into tournaments, and roughly the same percentage of winners. If we were to see a big spike for Terran winners(i.e. 2013), or a dropoff then we would have something. But it's level. You say Taeja is holding the line for Terran, but why can't anyone hold the line for Zerg?
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On August 25 2014 07:55 Wingblade wrote:
If we actually look at the 2014 graph, Terran would honestly appear to be more balanced. They have the fewest entrants into tournaments, and roughly the same percentage of winners. If we were to see a big spike for Terran winners(i.e. 2013), or a dropoff then we would have something. But it's level. You say Taeja is holding the line for Terran, but why can't anyone hold the line for Zerg?
"fewest entrants" might mean "fewest qualifiers". Apparently the best Zerg players are professional chokers/silver specialists/Storkitis
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On August 25 2014 07:12 CutTheEnemy wrote:
I don't know if these statistics are important for balance. It just shows that the club of tournament winners affects tournament outcomes.
[...]
Maybe you could check balance by ignoring tournament winners' games, see if their performance is skewing results because of their gosu-ness?
You could break that winrate down by aligulac rank I guess: which races get to the top 40?
Among the top 40 players on aligulac, we have:
14 T
12 P
13 Z
1 race switcher
Of cource what you are saying is interresting, and probably right. Tournament winners are best and would probably have been the best even if they had played another race for the whole of their career.
One of the things I think is ineterresting however when you lok at the graphs is the difference from to 2013 to 2014 when you look at Ro16 alone.
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b73mg/5828f98e7c.png)
in 2013 the ro16 is almost perfectly balanced, while in 2014 it seems that zergs are eliminated (alot by other zergs though) while protoss is overrepresentated and terran underrepresentated.
I never said these graphs or the statistics point out imbalance in the game, I just posted to hear you guys' take on the information you might be able to pull out of the data.
On August 25 2014 07:55 Wingblade wrote:
If we actually look at the 2014 graph, Terran would honestly appear to be more balanced. They have the fewest entrants into tournaments, and roughly the same percentage of winners. If we were to see a big spike for Terran winners(i.e. 2013), or a dropoff then we would have something. But it's level. You say Taeja is holding the line for Terran, but why can't anyone hold the line for Zerg?
I think it's kinda important to point out that most of what has been said about Taeja carrying his race goes for 2013. He won what, 5 big tournaments?
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EPT
