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After I posted this on Reddit a few people argued that the information should rather be posted on TL. So here you go:
As it's nearly the end of 2012 now and after all the recent balance whining I was curious about the results in Premier Tournaments in 2012. So I took the liberty of having a closer look at Liquipedia and the race distribution for 1st and 2nd place finishers in 2012. Here are the results:
- Zerg: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 16 times
- Protoss: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 15 times
- Terran: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 8 times
What does this mean? I'm not trying to say the game is balanced. Nor am I saying that certain units (Infestors hi?) don't need to be changed. All I am saying is that these days everyone echoes "facts" they've read on Twitter, Reddit or here on TL whithout even thinking about them. The game is certainly not perfect and there are a lot of things that need to be changed, BUT it is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be these days.
TLDR: StarCraft2, even though not balanced, is not AS imbalanced as people might want you believe it is
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Zerg has 1 more 2nd place?! IMBA!!!!
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I'd like to quote Nick_54 over in this thread
On December 19 2012 13:24 Nick_54 wrote:
I guess this is the palce to put my grievances with Blizzard saying the game seems "fine." I go to the highest level of competition premier tournaments on liquipedia. I start with May. 27 tournament sample size so 54 finalists. Terran has 5 wins and 4 runnerup finishes.
Thats 1 in 6 finalists are terran. It should be 1 in 3. I just want the game to be fair and not queen turtle into infestor into corrupter infestor broodlord every game. I want to see my terran favorites fight on a level playing field and be ale to compete.
I get some of this may be satire from Ver, but some of it is true and accurate.
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Thanks Khaldor, I agree!
Wish more people could see something like that.
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
as i mentioned over there too, premier tournament wins are not exactly the best way to determine balance.
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On December 19 2012 16:42 opterown wrote:
as i mentioned over there too, premier tournament wins are not exactly the best way to determine balance.
why?
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
On December 19 2012 16:46 Insoleet wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2012 16:42 opterown wrote:
as i mentioned over there too, premier tournament wins are not exactly the best way to determine balance. why?
you're looking at two players out of an entire player field, possibly 32 or even up to 72 players. in this case, what is more relevant is individual skill, not balance. for example, throw taeja in a pool of mediocre zergs and he will probably come first. but throw a bunch of mediocre terrans and mediocre zergs together and you will likely get a zvz final. you want to compare results from players of similar skill, not players who stand out.
for example, you may look at IEM singapore and DH winter and say "oh look we had TvP finals" when the zergs who were at either tournament weren't top tier like the finalists. there were no korean zergs at DH and stephano/nerchio, skilled as they may be, are not as good as hero or taeja. the same thing applies for IEM - while there were quite a few zergs playing, they were all pretty mediocre. both zergs in the semifinals also lost by just one map too.
these are just some examples
that thread is stupid, but does it matter if i post there or not? i've read the thread. what i meant by posting over there too was directed at khaldor; i posted on reddit
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On December 19 2012 16:54 opterown wrote:that thread is stupid, but does it matter if i post there or not? i've read the thread
doesn't. I just wanted to see the logic of your previous post and I was confused because I couldn't find it and I didn't know if I was messing up, that's all.
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I completely disagree with what you say Opterown. We are looking at an entire year here. There are a lot of arguments why this does not reflect balance or why it does. In the end it simply shows that it's possible for each race to win tournaments. And that's all that I've been saying.
Where did I state that this makes the game balanced? I even pointed out that it doesn't. The only point that I am making here is that the state of the game is not as bad as the balance whiners make it out to be. And at the same time I agree that some things have to be changed. I simply hate the continues bitching that led to a lot of people echoing it over and over again.
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And this is exactly what blizzard wants, a close to perfect ratio before wol dies out and hots takes over. Browder and Kim won't fail to remind us that after +2 years of competition, they managed to get even distribution amongst the three races, like BW ! I'm not sure they will be keen to tell us how they achievied it though, but let's say the infestor era we've been suffering from these past 6 months sure managed to close the gap and achieve the so desired "balance".
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On December 19 2012 16:27 nomyx wrote:I'd like to quote Nick_54 over in this threadShow nested quote +On December 19 2012 13:24 Nick_54 wrote:
I guess this is the palce to put my grievances with Blizzard saying the game seems "fine." I go to the highest level of competition premier tournaments on liquipedia. I start with May. 27 tournament sample size so 54 finalists. Terran has 5 wins and 4 runnerup finishes.
Thats 1 in 6 finalists are terran. It should be 1 in 3. I just want the game to be fair and not queen turtle into infestor into corrupter infestor broodlord every game. I want to see my terran favorites fight on a level playing field and be ale to compete.
I get some of this may be satire from Ver, but some of it is true and accurate.
Except that is dumb. If a race won 1/3 of competitions then the game WOULD be broken. You have to take players skill into account. If in the last 11 tournaments we had 4 zerg wins, 4 terran wins, and 3 protoss wins, and the 12th tournament has a PvT finals, the P shouldn't win just because that would make it even with zerg/terran. The protoss should win because he is better than his opponent on that day. Did you know in BW flash had a 71% winrate vs zerg? That doesn't mean terran is imba, it means flash is so much better than his opponents that he wins more than he loses. He was so good that he skews the results of any tournament he enter to favor terran if you look at statistics. Sure there are players that can beat flash, but if they play early in a tournament and flash wins, then hey look there's no protoss in the finals! There are so many factors that go into winning a tournament that go beyond game balance, so looking at that as a guide in any sense is pointless.
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On December 19 2012 16:22 Khaldor wrote:Here are the results: - Zerg: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 16 times
- Protoss: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 15 times
- Terran: 1st - 13 times, 2nd - 15 times
Could you break this down by quarter? I'm curious because it seems like every recent tournament has ended with a Zerg winning. I'm not saying that's the case as that could easily be confirmation bias but it would be interesting to see if these ratios have changed from the beginning of the year to the end of the year and what the trend is now.
That's probably a more accurate way of determining if the game is "balanced" anyway. This shows that the game is roughly balanced over the course of a year but doesn't say much about the balance now.
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You can spin statistics to say anything, you really have to dive into how the statistics were taken before you make assumptions, kinda like what opterown said.
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On December 19 2012 16:54 opterown wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2012 16:46 Insoleet wrote:On December 19 2012 16:42 opterown wrote:
as i mentioned over there too, premier tournament wins are not exactly the best way to determine balance. why? you're looking at two players out of an entire player field, possibly 32 or even up to 72 players. in this case, what is more relevant is individual skill, not balance. for example, throw taeja in a pool of mediocre zergs and he will probably come first. but throw a bunch of mediocre terrans and mediocre zergs together and you will likely get a zvz final. you want to compare results from players of similar skill, not players who stand out. for example, you may look at IEM singapore and DH winter and say "oh look we had TvP finals" when the zergs who were at either tournament weren't top tier like the finalists. there were no korean zergs at DH and stephano/nerchio, skilled as they may be, are not as good as hero or taeja. the same thing applies for IEM - while there were quite a few zergs playing, they were all pretty mediocre. both zergs in the semifinals also lost by just one map too. these are just some examples that thread is stupid, but does it matter if i post there or not? i've read the thread. what i meant by posting over there too was directed at khaldor; i posted on reddit
The zergs at iem were not pretty mediocre when compared to the playing field. Revival, Vortix, and Yugioh are not really mediocre compared to grubby and sting.
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
On December 19 2012 17:04 goswser wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2012 16:54 opterown wrote:On December 19 2012 16:46 Insoleet wrote:On December 19 2012 16:42 opterown wrote:
as i mentioned over there too, premier tournament wins are not exactly the best way to determine balance. why? you're looking at two players out of an entire player field, possibly 32 or even up to 72 players. in this case, what is more relevant is individual skill, not balance. for example, throw taeja in a pool of mediocre zergs and he will probably come first. but throw a bunch of mediocre terrans and mediocre zergs together and you will likely get a zvz final. you want to compare results from players of similar skill, not players who stand out. for example, you may look at IEM singapore and DH winter and say "oh look we had TvP finals" when the zergs who were at either tournament weren't top tier like the finalists. there were no korean zergs at DH and stephano/nerchio, skilled as they may be, are not as good as hero or taeja. the same thing applies for IEM - while there were quite a few zergs playing, they were all pretty mediocre. both zergs in the semifinals also lost by just one map too. these are just some examples that thread is stupid, but does it matter if i post there or not? i've read the thread. what i meant by posting over there too was directed at khaldor; i posted on reddit The zergs at iem were not pretty mediocre when compared to the playing field. Revival, Vortix, and Yugioh are not really mediocre compared to grubby and sting.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/IEM_Season_VII_-_Singapore
yugioh and revival topped their groups, vortix took out revival, and was in turn barely taken out by sting 3-2 in some pretty scrappy games. it's not like grubby and sting dominated their way across the zerg playing field haha. i agree that the zergs are probably just as good or even better than the finalists but that was a small stroke of bad luck haha
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
On December 19 2012 17:00 Khaldor wrote:
I completely disagree with what you say Opterown. We are looking at an entire year here. There are a lot of arguments why this does not reflect balance or why it does. In the end it simply shows that it's possible for each race to win tournaments. And that's all that I've been saying.
Where did I state that this makes the game balanced? I even pointed out that it doesn't. The only point that I am making here is that the state of the game is not as bad as the balance whiners make it out to be. And at the same time I agree that some things have to be changed. I simply hate the continues bitching that led to a lot of people echoing it over and over again.
well i'm not arguing that different races can win tournaments, haha. what i'm saying is that even though the number of wins are pretty even across races, that doesn't mean that in a head to head, each race has an even chance of winning. maybe the best terran can beat the best zerg 1v1, but that's not related to balance so much as it is related to individual skill. the average terran versus the average zerg is what we should be looking at for balance, not the top tier haha
i don't even play the game, i don't really care about balance but rather i care about entertaining games and for my favourites to win. i have favourites of each race so i've very little in terms of investment for racial balance.
and yes, the game is more balanced than what some make it out to be, especially those who have a vested interest in balance (e.g. progamers themselves). but they're generally the vocal minority who whine haha. but i don't think this is the way to show them that this game is balanced or otherwise.
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Italy2850 Posts
Gonna repost this cose i posted it in a pretty forgotten thread.
On December 08 2012 12:54 Belha wrote:
Win rates latelly have been missleading. If you don't differentiate between the facts and the quality of the stats, then the numbers worth nothing.
Here I looked deeper inside the most important tournaments from the last months, not just blind numbers, analysis.
2012 MLG Fall Championship:
Top 4: 1º Life; 2º Leenock; 3º Bomber; 4º Flash ; All code S level
About Top4: 2 top Z's in the world, and 2 top T's in the world. (2z 2T 0P)
Toughest opposition: Basically best of the best, with the exception of Startale P's, Hyun, Sniper and Mvp.
2012 Battle.net World Championship
Top4: 1º Parting ; 2º Creator; 3º Rain; 4º Sen
About Top4: Prolly the best 3 P's in the world, and foreigner Z. (1z 0T 3P)
Toughest opposition: Roro (code B), Curious (code A), Stephano, then pure foreigners
Observation: The 3 code S participants ended with the 3 top spots. Only 4T (all non korean) among 32 players.
World Cyber Games 2012:
Top 4: 1º Parting; 2ºAdelscot; 3º MacSed; 4º Lowely
About Top4: Top korean P and 3 foreigners. (1z 0T 3P)
Toughest opposition: MKP....... That's it. The rest of the player pool was just gm level, weaker compared to top pro level.
IEM Season VII - Singapore
Top 4: 1º Sting; 2º Grubby; 3º Slivko; 4º Vortix
About Top4: Korean T, and 3 foreigners. (2z 1T 1P)
Toughest opposition: Not much. MC (code A boss toss), Revival (code B zerg) and Yugioh (code A z).
Observations: Only 3 T players, only 1 korean, who took the trophy.
2012 DreamHack Open: Winter
Top4: 1º Hero; 2º Taeja; 3º monchi and Nerchio.
About Top4: Top korean P and Top korean T. Then 2 foreigners. (1z 1T 2P)
Toughest opposition: Naniwa, TheStc and Stephano. Rest are foreigners and foreign level koreans.
Observations: No korean Z. Only 4 T, still 2 managed to Ro8.
GSL Code S Season 4
Top4: 1º Life; 2º MvP; 3º Taeja and Rain.
About Top4: Top tier koreans. (1z 2T 1P)
Toughest opposition: Best of the best.
GSL Code S Season 5
Top4: 1º Sniper; 2º Hyun; 3º Bogus and Ryung.
About Top4: All top tier koreans. (2z 2T 0P)
Toughest opposition: Best of the best.
Observation: 1 P in Ro8
IGN ProLeague Season 5
Top4: 1º Leenock; 2º Violet; 3º Polt; 4º Bomber.
About Top4: All top tier koreans. (2z 2T 0P)
Toughest opposition: Best of the best, both koreans and foreigners (no Kespa players tho).
Observation: No P at Ro8, clear Z dominance in Tournament bracket.
What can you get from all these?
From the weaker tournaments (with the least quality of players, few koreans and lot of foreigners):
- Terrans are usually the least represented race between foreigners, by a huge margin.
- All were won almost always simply by the most notable/safe bet players. In those cases, those players were the invited korean P's.
Now all the tournaments that held all best of the best in the player pool (aka the players are not a limiting factor), have this facts:
- From the 4 top8's : 15z 12T 5P
- From the 4 top4's : 7z 8T 1P (all koreans)
- All were won by Z players.
Ok, I should add it the GSL Blizzard Cup Top6.
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Has anybody else noticed that these statistics show 39 1st place finishes and 46 2nd place finishes?
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On December 19 2012 17:12 SupaChalupa wrote:
Has anybody else noticed that these statistics show 39 1st place finishes and 46 2nd place finishes?
LOL, my bad :D Terran came in 2nd 8 times and not 15. Copy & Paste Error, sorry
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EPT
