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For the past nearly 5 months, we've held 2 Playhem Daily tournaments every day on EU and NA. Our brackets fill to an average of 150-220 players each time and match verification is done by the players uploading replays and those replays have just been sitting on servers collecting dust - until now. Thanks in part to the wonderful work done by TL user Dakota_Fanning in creating Sc2Gears I've taken an in-depth look at how our map pool has been influencing tournament outcomes and balance in general.
Over 31,500 replays (so that's what it looks like) of mostly masters, grand masters, and professional gamers. I consider these to be a great representation of real-world statistics as the entry is free and no qualifications to sign up so a very wide range of players enter, unlike data from TLPD or the like which reflect mostly the very top tier. I present you my findings:
MLG Shattered Temple
![[image loading]](http://playhem.com.s3.amazonaws.com/map_images/2/original.jpg)
Replays: 7486
Average Game Length: 10:49
TvP - 54%
PvZ - 45%
ZvT - 43%
MLG metalopolis
![[image loading]](http://playhem.com.s3.amazonaws.com/map_images/1/thumb.jpg)
Replays: 6548
Average Game Length: 10:47
TvP - 54%
PvZ - 46%
ZvT - 49%
ESV Cloud Kingdom
![[image loading]](http://playhem.com.s3.amazonaws.com/map_images/36/thumb.png)
Replays: 3040
Average Game Length: 11:36
TvP - 45%
PvZ - 52%
ZvT - 51%
MLG Antiga Shipyard
![[image loading]](http://playhem.com.s3.amazonaws.com/map_images/33/thumb.jpg)
Replays: 2750
Average Game Length: 11:55
TvP - 59%
PvZ - 50%
ZvT - 52%
MLG Shakuras Plateau
![[image loading]](http://playhem.com.s3.amazonaws.com/map_images/34/thumb.jpg)
Replays: 2425
Average Game Length: 11:46
TvP - 50%
PvZ - 53%
ZvT - 48%
GSL Dualsight
![[image loading]](http://playhem.com.s3.amazonaws.com/map_images/11/thumb.jpg)
Replays: 2251
Average Game Length: 10:53
TvP - 57%
PvZ - 44%
ZvT - 50%
Nexus First FE - 35% win rate
Forge Fast Expand - 27% win rate
Pool, double hatch, double gas, roach - 61% win rate
Tal'Darim Altar LE
![[image loading]](http://playhem.com.s3.amazonaws.com/map_images/16/thumb.jpg)
Replays: 1458
Average Game Length: 10:58
TvP - 51%
PvZ - 49%
ZvT - 51%
Misc. Stats:
Top 5 players by win-rate (with more than 50 games played)
Maynard (T) 87% - 169W 24L
viOLet[EU] (Z) 85% - 91W 16L
Campanella (T/Z) 85% - 69W 12L
uGpSwip (T) 84% - 93W 16L
BLY (Z) 84% - 70W 13L
Highest winrate opening build order for each race across all maps/matchups
[Terran] Supply Depot, Barracks, Refinery, Supply Depot, Factory, Supply Depot - 588 occurences / 60% winrate
[Protoss] Pylon, Gateway, Gateway, Pylon - 116 occurences / 62% winrate
[Zerg] Extractor, Spawning Pool, Hatchery - 95 occurences / 67% winrate
Honorable mention - the most played opening build order overall also has one of the consistently worst win rates.
[Protoss] Pylon, Gateway, Assimilator, Pylon, Cybernetics Core, Assimilator - 6289 occurences / 46% winrate
Conclusion
As tournament organizers, map makers, and a community as a whole we can have a huge impact on the balance of this game that goes almost as far as Blizzard's balance patches. As the game continues to develop and move forward I think it's important that some of these older maps are discontinued and replaced with better options (Dual Sight, Shattered, Metalopolis) or modified to compensate for the differences in win rates that are seen.
Tal'Darim Altar LE gets a special shout out for being possibly the most balanced map currently in our pool, it scored nearly 50% win rates for every match up and overall race win rates.
As a result of these numbers we've significantly changed our map pool the last few weeks and are going to continue to change it to include new maps and see how they stack up to the rest.
Finally, a word cloud including all chat from the replays. 33,076 GGs.
![[image loading]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8225426/cloud.PNG)
Note about the data presented:
+ Show Spoiler +These are by no means perfect statistics, they are very rough data that I just wanted to share. There are surely many techniques and filters that could be applied to get much more accurate information out of this but I'll leave that to map makers and Blizzard. I think even with just the basic level of sorting I applied to the data, it can provide useful insight into map balance and overall race interactions.
upvote on reddit if you want to share this with others
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wow overall maps look pretty balanced..
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I love those statistics, great work. can you give us overall winrates in all matchups?
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wow this is incredible, thanks for this! i like how the best protoss bo statistically is a 2gate
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Proxy 2 gate represent. 62% winrate might make it one of the most effective cheeses in the game
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love love love love love love it.
i dislike the low game average (10~mins)
however i like how most maps are almost all balanced (Taldarim LE REPRESENT!!!!!!!)
is there a download link for all 30k replays 
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Nice. Even though it's not really at the highest level, it's still interesting to see.
And lol at 2gate being Protoss highest win rate build order, while the standard being the lowest. ><"!!
Thanks for this!
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Thanks a ton for this! Its sick ! xD
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good work, nicely done
edit: I really like TDA's statistics. I know lots of zergs who hate zvp on it, but it is surprisingly balanced.
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whenever i see these posts with stats that show terran winning most matchups, it makes me think why am I so bad vs. protoss or zerg 
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wow, impressive stuff sir! i really like the word cloud
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Very very interesting information here.
It's interesting to see that maps that people feel are favoured to once race v another (ZvX on Metal, TvZ on Antiga) are in fact rather balanced.
Tal darim as the most balanced map is also quite interesting.
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On February 04 2012 15:02 TyrantPotato wrote:love love love love love love it. i dislike the low game average (10~mins) however i like how most maps are almost all balanced (Taldarim LE REPRESENT!!!!!!!) is there a download link for all 30k replays
remember that this is real time, not game time
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Who's Maynard? I feel like it's unlikely for it to be the same one from bw.
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On February 04 2012 15:01 0kz wrote:
wow overall maps look pretty balanced..
what? out of the entire map pool only ONE map is balanced. the rest have 1 or more matchups that aren't even remotely balanced.
Edit: and this is the issue with trying to balance the game. the maps play such a huge factor it's really difficult to say what's "imbalanced" or not.
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The results of Dualsight aren't really surprising I think. Despite the general consensus that it's a good map I personally think it's a horrible map for Protoss due to the way the expansions are designed.
Overall a great write-up!
I think Tal'Darim Altar LE needs a few more replays to produce a significant result.
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This is really awesome that you could put this entire thing together. Thank you so much it really helps visualize what are great maps.
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Who would have thought Tal'darim is the most balanced among all those maps? lol
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these stats don't really reflect balance and random masters players don't even play the game right anyway.
i.e.: Metal should be way more z favored, and antiga should be incredibly terran favored. Dual Sight and Shakuras should be more T favored TvZ too. Can't really comment on the other matchups.
Regardless, nice post. <3 Playhem 
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EPT
