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Active: 1617 users

The proportion of each race at top level

Forum Index > SC2 General
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1 2 3 Next All
gravity
Profile Joined March 2004
Australia1988 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-05-03 13:46:18
May 03 2010 13:20 GMT
#1
Occasionally people post here about whether such-and-such race is more popular at the top levels. I've quickly compiled some actual stats for this based on the top 250 US players from http://starcraftrankings.com/. I can't vouch for the accuracy of that site but it's the best we have to go on right now short of manually combing the ladders. Here are the results:

Terran
60 (24%)

Protoss
94 (38%)

Zerg
74 (30%)

Random
23 (9%)

edit: Europe:

Terran
71 (28%)

Protoss
84 (34%)

Zerg
81 (32%)

Random
15 (6%)

The Korean ranks aren't available on that site unfortunately.
aseq
Profile Joined January 2003
Netherlands3992 Posts
May 03 2010 13:26 GMT
#2
That would be cool, is it a lot of work? I also wonder how things are in Korea, still wondering why there is such a difference still, I had expected Korea and the rest of the world to integrate more for the sc2 beta.
Snaiil
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Sweden312 Posts
May 03 2010 13:29 GMT
#3
Surprising numbers. I thought most top players played Terran, only by a small margin though.

Would be nice to see one for Europe as well, if it isn't too much of a hassle.
nedsat
Profile Joined April 2010
27 Posts
May 03 2010 13:33 GMT
#4
Im not much surprised by the numbers. Would be really nice if you could do europe and korea too!
Erucious
Profile Joined March 2010
Norway393 Posts
May 03 2010 13:34 GMT
#5
top 250 is like...Place 1 and 2 in each plat division?

I know a lot of people arent bothered to ladder much anymore since the issues with account resetting, so it might be a bit skewed (albeit, this counts for all races)
I'm Norwegian/Dutch. Just the awesome parts of them though :D
spinesheath
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Germany8679 Posts
May 03 2010 13:39 GMT
#6
I would also be interested in the overall winrates of each of the races, of course top250 again.
If you have a good reason to disagree with the above, please tell me. Thank you.
rhap
Profile Joined April 2010
Brazil136 Posts
May 03 2010 13:42 GMT
#7
No, top 250 is like, the best 250 players in terms of points. There are divisions where the top player is got less points than the top 20 of another division.
zealing
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Canada806 Posts
May 03 2010 13:43 GMT
#8
thought Terran was gonna be up there and zerg less but i'm sure people moved on to zerg when they realized it was imba
Think you got lag? It took Jesus 3 days to respawn.
gravity
Profile Joined March 2004
Australia1988 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-05-03 13:46:50
May 03 2010 13:45 GMT
#9
On May 03 2010 22:26 aseq wrote:
That would be cool, is it a lot of work? I also wonder how things are in Korea, still wondering why there is such a difference still, I had expected Korea and the rest of the world to integrate more for the sc2 beta.

Nope, I made small script so it's easy. They don't have the Korean ladder on that site, so here's Europe:

Terran
71 (28%)

Protoss
84 (34%)

Zerg
81 (32%)

Random
15 (6%)

Looks like the races a are a bit more balanced there.
einohr
Profile Joined April 2010
Germany45 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-05-03 13:49:12
May 03 2010 13:48 GMT
#10
On May 03 2010 22:26 aseq wrote:
That would be cool, is it a lot of work? I also wonder how things are in Korea, still wondering why there is such a difference still, I had expected Korea and the rest of the world to integrate more for the sc2 beta.

Here's a link with the Top 100 from asia (4/18)
http://sc2.17173.com/content/2010-04-19/20100419160405006.shtml
More than 1800 points

Terran
25 (24.3%)

Protoss
41 (39.8%)

Zerg
33 (32.0%

Random
4 (3.9%)


2000 or above

Terran
6 (15.8%)

Protoss
13 (34.2%)

Zerg
18 (47.4%)

Random
1 (2.6%)
Sent
Profile Joined April 2010
United States120 Posts
May 03 2010 13:53 GMT
#11
Nice glimpse, but very hard to dig deep into this without a much larger player base. It will be much more interesting one month after launch.
I got nothing
Takkara
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2503 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-05-03 14:14:34
May 03 2010 13:57 GMT
#12
Here's the thing about numbers, they can say anything you want it to say. The first question, even before "why is Terran so low" is "why the Top 250?" Is that somehow the most representative amount? Is that where you ran out of effort to do more? Is it a somehow important percentage of top players? It's so meaningless. To prove it, I compiled the Top 10, and all the numbers at values of 25 thereafter. You can see it shows completely different results depending on where you decide to draw your arbitrary cutoff. So I don't think your numbers show anything.

US:
[image loading]

Europe:
[image loading]

Asia:
[image loading]
Gee gee gee gee baby baby baby
TheMick
Profile Joined April 2010
Great Britain164 Posts
May 03 2010 14:09 GMT
#13
interesting stuff, not suprised by koreans having 47% zerg, macro skills!
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/265104/1/HyperioN/ My SC2 profile!
Tenn
Profile Joined April 2010
Sweden12 Posts
May 03 2010 14:12 GMT
#14
Takkara: You're right that you can present almost what you want with statistics. But you can still draw some conclusions though. E.g. that it seems to be a trend that Protoss is in fact more used than the other races, in exception for the Top 10 occasion.

So sure, statistics can be misleading, but they most often show you something.. That's how insurance companies makes money..
Takkara
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2503 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-05-03 14:20:56
May 03 2010 14:16 GMT
#15
On May 03 2010 23:12 Tenn wrote:
Takkara: You're right that you can present almost what you want with statistics. But you can still draw some conclusions though. E.g. that it seems to be a trend that Protoss is in fact more used than the other races, in exception for the Top 10 occasion.

So sure, statistics can be misleading, but they most often show you something.. That's how insurance companies makes money..


Yes, numbers are important. But if you're going to throw a number of people around as significant, there should be a justification. For example, someone broke down the Asia numbers by people above 2000 rating and people above 1800 rating. Those are more meaningful breakdowns than just 250. Because, if you look at the data, for some weird reason it's REALLY prone to runs. So sometimes stopping at 245 instead of 250 means that you lopped off like 5 protoss, which would really change the number distribution.

Case in point:
The OP says that based on Euro Top 250, things look balanced there. If he did the same thing with the Top 100, he'd see Zerg as BADLY overrepresented. Same thing with the US and Protoss.
Gee gee gee gee baby baby baby
gravity
Profile Joined March 2004
Australia1988 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-05-03 14:22:38
May 03 2010 14:19 GMT
#16
On May 03 2010 22:57 Takkara wrote:
Here's the thing about numbers, they can say anything you want it to say. The first question, even before "why is Terran so low" is "why the Top 250?" Is that somehow the most representative amount? Is that where you ran out of effort to do more? Is it a somehow important percentage of top players? It's so meaningless. To prove it, I compiled the Top 10, and all the numbers at values of 25 thereafter. You can see it shows completely different results depending on where you decide to draw your arbitrary cutoff. So I don't think your numbers show anything.

I chose 250 because AFAIK it's the smallest number that would be considered reasonably valid for a political poll. Obviously it's a bit different because we don't expect an even distribution as the number of players included increases. Depending on what rating/rank you consider good you might want to include even more.
Takkara
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2503 Posts
May 03 2010 14:24 GMT
#17
On May 03 2010 23:19 gravity wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 03 2010 22:57 Takkara wrote:
Here's the thing about numbers, they can say anything you want it to say. The first question, even before "why is Terran so low" is "why the Top 250?" Is that somehow the most representative amount? Is that where you ran out of effort to do more? Is it a somehow important percentage of top players? It's so meaningless. To prove it, I compiled the Top 10, and all the numbers at values of 25 thereafter. You can see it shows completely different results depending on where you decide to draw your arbitrary cutoff. So I don't think your numbers show anything.

I chose 250 because AFAIK it's the smallest number that would be considered reasonably valid for a political poll. Obviously it's a bit different because we don't expect an even distribution as the number of players included increases.


But taking the Top 250 isn't representative of the population. The Top 250 is a very particular subset of the population. If you wanted to see what the makeup of races was for all of SC2, then you'd need a random sampling of the population. You're not doing that. You're trying to show what the makeup of the competitive scene is to find imbalance. That's fine. I'm just saying if you stop at 10, 50, 100, 250, or even go farther to 500, 1000, the numbers are different.

So I'm saying that whatever conclusions you'd draw from 250, you'd draw different ones at either 100 or 500. So the numbers are interesting, as numbers always are, but they don't really prove much that you can truly stand on. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just trying to stop a lot of people using these types of tabulations as Grand Proof that X race is OP or Y race needs a nerf.
Gee gee gee gee baby baby baby
gravity
Profile Joined March 2004
Australia1988 Posts
May 03 2010 14:28 GMT
#18
On May 03 2010 23:24 Takkara wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 03 2010 23:19 gravity wrote:
On May 03 2010 22:57 Takkara wrote:
Here's the thing about numbers, they can say anything you want it to say. The first question, even before "why is Terran so low" is "why the Top 250?" Is that somehow the most representative amount? Is that where you ran out of effort to do more? Is it a somehow important percentage of top players? It's so meaningless. To prove it, I compiled the Top 10, and all the numbers at values of 25 thereafter. You can see it shows completely different results depending on where you decide to draw your arbitrary cutoff. So I don't think your numbers show anything.

I chose 250 because AFAIK it's the smallest number that would be considered reasonably valid for a political poll. Obviously it's a bit different because we don't expect an even distribution as the number of players included increases.


But taking the Top 250 isn't representative of the population. The Top 250 is a very particular subset of the population. If you wanted to see what the makeup of races was for all of SC2, then you'd need a random sampling of the population. You're not doing that. You're trying to show what the makeup of the competitive scene is to find imbalance. That's fine. I'm just saying if you stop at 10, 50, 100, 250, or even go farther to 500, 1000, the numbers are different.

So I'm saying that whatever conclusions you'd draw from 250, you'd draw different ones at either 100 or 500. So the numbers are interesting, as numbers always are, but they don't really prove much that you can truly stand on. I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just trying to stop a lot of people using these types of tabulations as Grand Proof that X race is OP or Y race needs a nerf.

Well, it's just a matter of choosing what you consider a good enough player that they can be taken into account when consider race popularity, then including all of them. But I agree, it's too soon and too little information to be claiming serious imbalance based on numbers like these. At best it gives a starting point for further investigations (along with other stats like matchup win percentages).
gavss
Profile Joined February 2010
Turkey94 Posts
May 03 2010 14:31 GMT
#19
I am not surprised. Terran requires higher apm, skill and game iq right now.

Terran needs to have 4 or 5 types of units and abilities to deal with an army that has almost no unit diversity. It is ridiculous.
Terran always has lower production than spawn larva or warpgate production.
Terran doesn't have an endgame unit. Thors and battlecruisers are support units.
Terran needs to build production buildings while zerg just spawns larva.
Terran needs to build walls if he doesn't reaper rush.
Terran needs to build air units to counter some ground units like collossus.
Terran doesn't have a viable pure mech build.
FarbrorAbavna
Profile Joined July 2009
Sweden4856 Posts
May 03 2010 15:01 GMT
#20
On May 03 2010 23:31 gavss wrote:
I am not surprised. Terran requires higher apm, skill and game iq right now.

Terran needs to have 4 or 5 types of units and abilities to deal with an army that has almost no unit diversity. It is ridiculous.
Terran always has lower production than spawn larva or warpgate production.
Terran doesn't have an endgame unit. Thors and battlecruisers are support units.
Terran needs to build production buildings while zerg just spawns larva.
Terran needs to build walls if he doesn't reaper rush.
Terran needs to build air units to counter some ground units like collossus.
Terran doesn't have a viable pure mech build.


Or they can just go with mmm
Do you really want chat rooms?
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