On January 08 2019 16:01 Jealous wrote: I think it's a bit disingenuous to remove just Flash. At the very least, you should remove the top performing ZvT Zerg as well, to remove two of the outliers. Repeating this process for say the top 3 and bottom 3 TvZ/ZvT players would likely make the results balance out to a better estimate of the match-up at the pro level?
If there is a significant outlier and you remove said outlier and you find that your results are actually quite mellow, how is it disingenuous?
As an example, this didn't happen but if Bisu came in, smashed savior, and alone upped the PvZ % by like 4-5% points, and if you removed him Protoss was still like 50/50 in the matchup instead of 55/45, do you still think the matchup would be Protoss favored?
Is PvT favored to Terran if FlaSh is the only one who can confidently say he has a good matchup that is above 50/50, and if you remove him, PvT is toss favored?
As an addition, with FlaSh out of ASL7 and Last looking weak, while many thought Terrans are destroyed now, there are still more Terrans than any other race in the tournament. However, what quality of Terrans are we looking at? How many are we doing to keep moving to the Ro16? How many will we see in Ro8. My guess is, unless Last steps up again and returns to form, I'm really only seeing Sharp as the Terran who makes Ro8.
Once we add enough caveats, nothing is off limits, which makes both sides sound pretty disingenuous at times. One of the main reasons viewers of AfreecaTV started to argue for terrans being too strong, was due to what they saw on a daily basis over thousands of online sponsored matches.
As of now, there are 47,925 recorded online sponsored matches on the above site dating back to May 2017. Excluding matches played by Flash and Last, we still have a data set of 42,196 online sponsored matches. Even if we ignore online sponsored matches that had Flash or Last in it, terrans still have the best overall record (by a slight margin) compared to the other two races.
If we exclude only Flash, terran players have a superior win rate against both the zerg and protoss race within the realm of online sponsored matches with a sample size of 44,734 matches.
This is the main thrust of the Taesagi argument presented by the some viewers of AfreecaTV, and while I agree that online sponsored matches have a different nature from tournament games played within a LAN setting, it is somewhat misleading to say Taesagi supporters are totally delusional because their main argument is based on their viewing experience from online sponsored matches, not tournament matches which are not daily occurences. The sheer overwhelming number of online sponsored matches changes perspective to a greater degree than one imagines, especially if you watch these streams on a daily basis.
I realize that the focus of this article is for racial balance in recent years within a tournament setting, but this hot issue was birthed mostly due to the online sponsored matches, the main streaming content that allowed the Brood War scene to thrive within a streaming platform. I wish this article addressed this issue in greater detail to give voice to both sides of the table rather than presenting only one side of the argument.
That's actually interesting that this began from the sponsored matches. I had thought that Terran's great advantage in tournaments was TvT, because it is the one mirror matchup that always goes on a long time (more chances for a better player to comeback or cement a victory), and less volatile in build order advantages (also better chance for better player to show their skill). Zerg actually post surprisingly good results for having a mirror that is in my unbacked-by-data opinion a little more unforgiving than PvP (in that, although both matchups have build order disadvantages, PvP can sometimes go on for a long game, and if the builds are equal it seems a little less of a razor's edge). But then when comparing the Zergs to the Protoss, we have to sympathise for the early game problem of PvZ where a lesser overall player can knock out a good protoss player if they hit a hydra rush.
It is interesting that even if you take out the tournament issues of players getting knocked out by lesser players, there's still a Terran bias. Perhaps because the Terran matchups have more skill transfer between them, where ZvZ can be it's own game entirely, or perhaps just because when used to their highest potential, Terran units really do have more possibility and potential. It is a funny thing, because Terran has long been considered the hardest race to master, Protoss has long been considered a little weak at the highest level, and Zerg has long been considered volatile and prone to short hotstreaks.
Still, it's always been impressive that there have been dominant players from all races. The balance achieved in BW has also long been considered an incredible fluke. It does seem like Terran is the most stable and the most rewarding for a skilled player with good managements in mid and late game, with good opportunities for surprise in the early game. In certain matchups that just isn't true, but all Terran matchups seem to have gotten lucky, with TvP being hard but not unrewarding to the stronger player.
The distribution of match-ups for online sponsored matches is almost entirely dependent on the market demand. The mirror match-up factor you've mentioned may have played a role in overall terran success on other platforms (such as the ProLeague where a disproportionately high number of mirror match-ups took place), but online sponsored matches are obviously not one of those examples.
As of today, 48,000 online sponsored matches have been recorded since May 2017. If every player picked random, and the match-ups happened entirely by chance, the distribution should be roughly 22% for each of the non-mirror match-ups, and approximately 11% for the mirror match-ups. The actual distribution of the match-ups are as follows:
TvZ: 14,791 matches (30.81% of the entire sample available for analysis) ZvP: 13,475 matches (28.07% of the entire sample available for analysis) PvT: 13,610 matches (28.35% of the entire sample available for analysis) TvT: 1,813 matches (3.78% of the entire sample available for analysis) ZvZ: 2,106 matches (4.38% of the entire sample available for analysis) PvP: 2,205 matches (4.59% of the entire sample available for analysis)
As expected, terran-versus-zerg is the most in demand match-up, while terran-versus-terran match-up is the lowest in terms of viewer demand.
The landscape of AfreecaTV has warped the distribution of the match-ups, and I think the overwhelming number of matches where the zerg player gets stomped (with Flash being one of the main culprits for the phenomenon) has shaped the current perception of the terran race to an unhealthy degree. With Flash's games in the picture, zerg-versus-terran has the lowest win rate out of any match-ups within the realm of online sponsored matches, and due to popular market demand, zerg players have no choice but to partake in the one sided massacre over and over again.
So I personally would tackle the issue from the perspective that people enjoy the terran-versus-zerg match-up the most, which artificially raises the frequency of zergs being defeated on stream, which in turn shapes public perception of the terran race (especially since they don't suffer as much even without Flash against the protoss race in online sponsored matches thanks to Last), which makes people question Flash's overwhelming success within the ASL, which makes Flash supporters insecure and go too far in the other direction and state that every good terran result comes from Flash alone, which then makes people take away Flash's records in online sponsored matches to prove that terran players still enjoy the highest win rate even without Flash in the picture.
This entire argument would be less heated if both sides were ready to make concessions and make less outlandish hyperboles based on statistics that favour their viewpoint. The only thing that needed to happen was to state that the overall viewing experince of online sponsored matches portrays a somewhat warped view of Brood War due to the popularity of the terran-versus-zerg match-up, although truth be told, the fact that terran players enjoy an above 50% win rate versus the protoss race in online sponsored matches even after taking away all games where Flash participated is a little bothersome.
This topic has too much nuance to be confirmed or denied by a single article, and the debate could last a lifetime. There's always a way out even for the most retarded viewpoint, which makes the discussion extremely attractive to whoever wants to throw in their two cents. I've been guilty of it as well.
On January 08 2019 16:01 Jealous wrote: I think it's a bit disingenuous to remove just Flash. At the very least, you should remove the top performing ZvT Zerg as well, to remove two of the outliers. Repeating this process for say the top 3 and bottom 3 TvZ/ZvT players would likely make the results balance out to a better estimate of the match-up at the pro level?
If there is a significant outlier and you remove said outlier and you find that your results are actually quite mellow, how is it disingenuous?
As an example, this didn't happen but if Bisu came in, smashed savior, and alone upped the PvZ % by like 4-5% points, and if you removed him Protoss was still like 50/50 in the matchup instead of 55/45, do you still think the matchup would be Protoss favored?
Is PvT favored to Terran if FlaSh is the only one who can confidently say he has a good matchup that is above 50/50, and if you remove him, PvT is toss favored?
As an addition, with FlaSh out of ASL7 and Last looking weak, while many thought Terrans are destroyed now, there are still more Terrans than any other race in the tournament. However, what quality of Terrans are we looking at? How many are we doing to keep moving to the Ro16? How many will we see in Ro8. My guess is, unless Last steps up again and returns to form, I'm really only seeing Sharp as the Terran who makes Ro8.
Once we add enough caveats, nothing is off limits, which makes both sides sound pretty disingenuous at times. One of the main reasons viewers of AfreecaTV started to argue for terrans being too strong, was due to what they saw on a daily basis over thousands of online sponsored matches.
As of now, there are 47,925 recorded online sponsored matches on the above site dating back to May 2017. Excluding matches played by Flash and Last, we still have a data set of 42,196 online sponsored matches. Even if we ignore online sponsored matches that had Flash or Last in it, terrans still have the best overall record (by a slight margin) compared to the other two races.
If we exclude only Flash, terran players have a superior win rate against both the zerg and protoss race within the realm of online sponsored matches with a sample size of 44,734 matches.
This is the main thrust of the Taesagi argument presented by the some viewers of AfreecaTV, and while I agree that online sponsored matches have a different nature from tournament games played within a LAN setting, it is somewhat misleading to say Taesagi supporters are totally delusional because their main argument is based on their viewing experience from online sponsored matches, not tournament matches which are not daily occurences. The sheer overwhelming number of online sponsored matches changes perspective to a greater degree than one imagines, especially if you watch these streams on a daily basis.
I realize that the focus of this article is for racial balance in recent years within a tournament setting, but this hot issue was birthed mostly due to the online sponsored matches, the main streaming content that allowed the Brood War scene to thrive within a streaming platform. I wish this article addressed this issue in greater detail to give voice to both sides of the table rather than presenting only one side of the argument.
That's actually interesting that this began from the sponsored matches. I had thought that Terran's great advantage in tournaments was TvT, because it is the one mirror matchup that always goes on a long time (more chances for a better player to comeback or cement a victory), and less volatile in build order advantages (also better chance for better player to show their skill). Zerg actually post surprisingly good results for having a mirror that is in my unbacked-by-data opinion a little more unforgiving than PvP (in that, although both matchups have build order disadvantages, PvP can sometimes go on for a long game, and if the builds are equal it seems a little less of a razor's edge). But then when comparing the Zergs to the Protoss, we have to sympathise for the early game problem of PvZ where a lesser overall player can knock out a good protoss player if they hit a hydra rush.
It is interesting that even if you take out the tournament issues of players getting knocked out by lesser players, there's still a Terran bias. Perhaps because the Terran matchups have more skill transfer between them, where ZvZ can be it's own game entirely, or perhaps just because when used to their highest potential, Terran units really do have more possibility and potential. It is a funny thing, because Terran has long been considered the hardest race to master, Protoss has long been considered a little weak at the highest level, and Zerg has long been considered volatile and prone to short hotstreaks.
Still, it's always been impressive that there have been dominant players from all races. The balance achieved in BW has also long been considered an incredible fluke. It does seem like Terran is the most stable and the most rewarding for a skilled player with good managements in mid and late game, with good opportunities for surprise in the early game. In certain matchups that just isn't true, but all Terran matchups seem to have gotten lucky, with TvP being hard but not unrewarding to the stronger player.
The distribution of match-ups for online sponsored matches is almost entirely dependent on the market demand. The mirror match-up factor you've mentioned may have played a role in overall terran success on other platforms (such as the ProLeague where a disproportionately high number of mirror match-ups took place), but online sponsored matches are obviously not one of those examples.
As of today, 48,000 online sponsored matches have been recorded since May 2017. If every player picked random, and the match-ups happened entirely by chance, the distribution should be roughly 22% for each of the non-mirror match-ups, and approximately 11% for the mirror match-ups. The actual distribution of the match-ups are as follows:
TvZ: 14,791 matches (30.81% of the entire sample available for analysis) ZvP: 13,475 matches (28.07% of the entire sample available for analysis) PvT: 13,610 matches (28.35% of the entire sample available for analysis) TvT: 1,813 matches (3.78% of the entire sample available for analysis) ZvZ: 2,106 matches (4.38% of the entire sample available for analysis) PvP: 2,205 matches (4.59% of the entire sample available for analysis)
As expected, terran-versus-zerg is the most in demand match-up, while terran-versus-terran match-up is the lowest in terms of viewer demand.
The landscape of AfreecaTV has warped the distribution of the match-ups, and I think the overwhelming number of matches where the zerg player gets stomped (with Flash being one of the main culprits for the phenomenon) has shaped the current perception of the terran race to an unhealthy degree. With Flash's games in the picture, zerg-versus-terran has the lowest win rate out of any match-ups within the realm of online sponsored matches, and due to popular market demand, zerg players have no choice but to partake in the one sided massacre over and over again.
So I personally would tackle the issue from the perspective that people enjoy the terran-versus-zerg match-up the most, which artificially raises the frequency of zergs being defeated on stream, which in turn shapes public perception of the terran race (especially since they don't suffer as much even without Flash against the protoss race in online sponsored matches thanks to Last), which makes people question Flash's overwhelming success within the ASL, which makes Flash supporters insecure and go too far in the other direction and state that every good terran result comes from Flash alone, which then makes people take away Flash's records in online sponsored matches to prove that terran players still enjoy the highest win rate even without Flash in the picture.
This entire argument would be less heated if both sides were ready to make concessions and make less outlandish hyperboles based on statistics that favour their viewpoint. The only thing that needed to happen was to state that the overall viewing experince of online sponsored matches portrays a somewhat warped view of Brood War due to the popularity of the terran-versus-zerg match-up, although truth be told, the fact that terran players enjoy an above 50% win rate versus the protoss race in online sponsored matches even after taking away all games where Flash participated is a little bothersome.
This topic has too much nuance to be confirmed or denied by a single article, and the debate could last a lifetime. There's always a way out even for the most retarded viewpoint, which makes the discussion extremely attractive to whoever wants to throw in their two cents. I've been guilty of it as well.
Not sure how relevant this is or how well I understand it but I believe sample size shows diminishing returns after a certain point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination For example if flash's win rate is around 70% after a million games it's safe to say it's going to be around the same after 2 million games in spite of almost twice as many games played. Just some food for thought.
The analysis on whether Tesagi exists should also factor in the Protoss and Zerg game samples and perspectives (ZvP, ZvT, PvZ and PvT) and not just from the Terran perspective (TvZ and TvP).
So, from a larger sample, you can then define the winning percentage for each race and conclude which race is slightly favoured (though that may not define "Tesagi".)
Thus,
T win% = ((TvZ% + TvP%)/2) P win% = ((PvZ% + PvT%)/2) Z win% = ((ZvT% + ZvP%)/2)
I found the following analysis to be more accurate though it might be outdated :
Removing FlaSh, I think, removes the point of the idea of tesagi - the concept that the game at the very highest level in imbalanced in favor of Terran. If anything, I think the existence of FlaSh is because of the tesagi phenomenon.
All the idea of tesagi is, is saying that Terran has the higher skillcap - BoxeR, NaDa, iloveoov, and FlaSh (like three different times) have been the people in the game who push on that skillcap. Because Terran is the most mechanically difficult, its best players are mechanically the game’s best players, and StarCraft is a mechanical game.
i think the real issue here, as has been clearly highlighted once again by this article, is that toss is crap. TOSSREGI is real. lets be honest, if toss didnt have bisu to carry their asses we may have actually gotten an official balance patch
On January 08 2019 17:25 Dante08 wrote: Tesagi DOES NOT exist. The Terran race was propped up by Flash (and to a certain extent Last) in the post Kespa era. Watch Terran fall into mediocrity going into 2019 with these 2 players taking a break.
what about boxer's era? nada's era? iloveoov's era?
When a terran player dominates the scene they always talk about the fact that he is so amazing and shit and never take into consideration racial balance nor map pool. imo if bw was only one race and always mirror matchups i bet bisu wouldave never lost the best player in the world title. if bisu played terran he wouldave been greater than flash.
i know some ppl here hate LS cause he hacked and shit, but his points are quite good on this interview.
It's impossible to hate someone with his fathers features, italian olive skin and all that. Clearly.
As for imbalance, i thought the consensus now is the maps determine balance? Has something changed over the years?
On January 08 2019 15:45 Ej_ wrote: And zerg sucked dick in proleague
TE SA GI
Unless playoff and KT (the best one) was playing
Indeed. HoeJJa is the holder of the all-time ProLeague post-season win streak record with eight consecutive play-off victories, beating Jaedong and FanTaSy's record of seven consecutive ProLeague post-season victories. His record is even more singular in nature because both Jaedong and FanTaSy had their ProLeague post-season win streaks created due to the Winner's League post-season (easier to have win streaks due to the king-of-the-hill format), while HoeJJa did it solely through regular ProLeague post-season games.
The unsung hero of KT Rolster's redemption arc against the SK Telecom T1 empire.
On January 08 2019 16:01 Jealous wrote: I think it's a bit disingenuous to remove just Flash. At the very least, you should remove the top performing ZvT Zerg as well, to remove two of the outliers. Repeating this process for say the top 3 and bottom 3 TvZ/ZvT players would likely make the results balance out to a better estimate of the match-up at the pro level?
If there is a significant outlier and you remove said outlier and you find that your results are actually quite mellow, how is it disingenuous?
As an example, this didn't happen but if Bisu came in, smashed savior, and alone upped the PvZ % by like 4-5% points, and if you removed him Protoss was still like 50/50 in the matchup instead of 55/45, do you still think the matchup would be Protoss favored?
Is PvT favored to Terran if FlaSh is the only one who can confidently say he has a good matchup that is above 50/50, and if you remove him, PvT is toss favored?
As an addition, with FlaSh out of ASL7 and Last looking weak, while many thought Terrans are destroyed now, there are still more Terrans than any other race in the tournament. However, what quality of Terrans are we looking at? How many are we doing to keep moving to the Ro16? How many will we see in Ro8. My guess is, unless Last steps up again and returns to form, I'm really only seeing Sharp as the Terran who makes Ro8.
Once we add enough caveats, nothing is off limits, which makes both sides sound pretty disingenuous at times. One of the main reasons viewers of AfreecaTV started to argue for terrans being too strong, was due to what they saw on a daily basis over thousands of online sponsored matches.
As of now, there are 47,925 recorded online sponsored matches on the above site dating back to May 2017. Excluding matches played by Flash and Last, we still have a data set of 42,196 online sponsored matches. Even if we ignore online sponsored matches that had Flash or Last in it, terrans still have the best overall record (by a slight margin) compared to the other two races.
If we exclude only Flash, terran players have a superior win rate against both the zerg and protoss race within the realm of online sponsored matches with a sample size of 44,734 matches.
This is the main thrust of the Taesagi argument presented by the some viewers of AfreecaTV, and while I agree that online sponsored matches have a different nature from tournament games played within a LAN setting, it is somewhat misleading to say Taesagi supporters are totally delusional because their main argument is based on their viewing experience from online sponsored matches, not tournament matches which are not daily occurences. The sheer overwhelming number of online sponsored matches changes perspective to a greater degree than one imagines, especially if you watch these streams on a daily basis.
I realize that the focus of this article is for racial balance in recent years within a tournament setting, but this hot issue was birthed mostly due to the online sponsored matches, the main streaming content that allowed the Brood War scene to thrive within a streaming platform. I wish this article addressed this issue in greater detail to give voice to both sides of the table rather than presenting only one side of the argument.
That's actually interesting that this began from the sponsored matches. I had thought that Terran's great advantage in tournaments was TvT, because it is the one mirror matchup that always goes on a long time (more chances for a better player to comeback or cement a victory), and less volatile in build order advantages (also better chance for better player to show their skill). Zerg actually post surprisingly good results for having a mirror that is in my unbacked-by-data opinion a little more unforgiving than PvP (in that, although both matchups have build order disadvantages, PvP can sometimes go on for a long game, and if the builds are equal it seems a little less of a razor's edge). But then when comparing the Zergs to the Protoss, we have to sympathise for the early game problem of PvZ where a lesser overall player can knock out a good protoss player if they hit a hydra rush.
It is interesting that even if you take out the tournament issues of players getting knocked out by lesser players, there's still a Terran bias. Perhaps because the Terran matchups have more skill transfer between them, where ZvZ can be it's own game entirely, or perhaps just because when used to their highest potential, Terran units really do have more possibility and potential. It is a funny thing, because Terran has long been considered the hardest race to master, Protoss has long been considered a little weak at the highest level, and Zerg has long been considered volatile and prone to short hotstreaks.
Still, it's always been impressive that there have been dominant players from all races. The balance achieved in BW has also long been considered an incredible fluke. It does seem like Terran is the most stable and the most rewarding for a skilled player with good managements in mid and late game, with good opportunities for surprise in the early game. In certain matchups that just isn't true, but all Terran matchups seem to have gotten lucky, with TvP being hard but not unrewarding to the stronger player.
The distribution of match-ups for online sponsored matches is almost entirely dependent on the market demand. The mirror match-up factor you've mentioned may have played a role in overall terran success on other platforms (such as the ProLeague where a disproportionately high number of mirror match-ups took place), but online sponsored matches are obviously not one of those examples.
As of today, 48,000 online sponsored matches have been recorded since May 2017. If every player picked random, and the match-ups happened entirely by chance, the distribution should be roughly 22% for each of the non-mirror match-ups, and approximately 11% for the mirror match-ups. The actual distribution of the match-ups are as follows:
TvZ: 14,791 matches (30.81% of the entire sample available for analysis) ZvP: 13,475 matches (28.07% of the entire sample available for analysis) PvT: 13,610 matches (28.35% of the entire sample available for analysis) TvT: 1,813 matches (3.78% of the entire sample available for analysis) ZvZ: 2,106 matches (4.38% of the entire sample available for analysis) PvP: 2,205 matches (4.59% of the entire sample available for analysis)
As expected, terran-versus-zerg is the most in demand match-up, while terran-versus-terran match-up is the lowest in terms of viewer demand.
The landscape of AfreecaTV has warped the distribution of the match-ups, and I think the overwhelming number of matches where the zerg player gets stomped (with Flash being one of the main culprits for the phenomenon) has shaped the current perception of the terran race to an unhealthy degree. With Flash's games in the picture, zerg-versus-terran has the lowest win rate out of any match-ups within the realm of online sponsored matches, and due to popular market demand, zerg players have no choice but to partake in the one sided massacre over and over again.
So I personally would tackle the issue from the perspective that people enjoy the terran-versus-zerg match-up the most, which artificially raises the frequency of zergs being defeated on stream, which in turn shapes public perception of the terran race (especially since they don't suffer as much even without Flash against the protoss race in online sponsored matches thanks to Last), which makes people question Flash's overwhelming success within the ASL, which makes Flash supporters insecure and go too far in the other direction and state that every good terran result comes from Flash alone, which then makes people take away Flash's records in online sponsored matches to prove that terran players still enjoy the highest win rate even without Flash in the picture.
This entire argument would be less heated if both sides were ready to make concessions and make less outlandish hyperboles based on statistics that favour their viewpoint. The only thing that needed to happen was to state that the overall viewing experince of online sponsored matches portrays a somewhat warped view of Brood War due to the popularity of the terran-versus-zerg match-up, although truth be told, the fact that terran players enjoy an above 50% win rate versus the protoss race in online sponsored matches even after taking away all games where Flash participated is a little bothersome.
This topic has too much nuance to be confirmed or denied by a single article, and the debate could last a lifetime. There's always a way out even for the most retarded viewpoint, which makes the discussion extremely attractive to whoever wants to throw in their two cents. I've been guilty of it as well.
Not sure how relevant this is or how well I understand it but I believe sample size shows diminishing returns after a certain point. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination For example if flash's win rate is around 70% after a million games it's safe to say it's going to be around the same after 2 million games in spite of almost twice as many games played. Just some food for thought.
Kind of. Sample Size determines how good your estimate for any value (e.g Win-Ratio) is. Let's say you only have 10 games TvP. P wins 7 of them. That would give a Winrate of 70%. But, due to limited data you would get a uncertanty of 2.7. Meaning that you would need to add say the Winrate is 70% +/- 27%, which changes perception a lot.
By the way, i've not read the whole thread, but the opening thread did not do a simple p-value analysis. What's the p-Value for this being significant over an assumption of 50% ratio?
To be honest, based on the title in the forum sidebar alone, I thought this was going to be another Reddit-tier balance whining post but oh boy was I in for a treat.
Excellent write-up, this kind of insightful analysis of Brood War's balance sparks some really interesting conversations. I personally feel that some factors to consider as well are the outside viewers' schemas towards Terran being the hardest race (equaling to higher skillcap, therefore better results, maybe?). Then again, this post regarded pro-level play rather than the grassroots of picking a race etc.
On January 08 2019 17:25 Dante08 wrote: Tesagi DOES NOT exist. The Terran race was propped up by Flash (and to a certain extent Last) in the post Kespa era. Watch Terran fall into mediocrity going into 2019 with these 2 players taking a break.
what about boxer's era? nada's era? iloveoov's era?
When a terran player dominates the scene they always talk about the fact that he is so amazing and shit and never take into consideration racial balance nor map pool. imo if bw was only one race and always mirror matchups i bet bisu wouldave never lost the best player in the world title. if bisu played terran he wouldave been greater than flash.
i know some ppl here hate LS cause he hacked and shit, but his points are quite good on this interview.
This is a really good talk. If I remember correctly LS makes a rhetorical point in this presenting the hypothetical situation of Bisu picking Terran instead of Protoss. Wonder what that world would look like.
On January 08 2019 17:27 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with Letmelose that the game is incredibly, but not perfectly, balanced. For that reason, whether or not Tesagi is real or Protoss is weakest is unimportant. I will admit that most bonjwas are Terran and that Protoss has won the fewest Starleagues out of the three races. However, Protoss is also the least-played race so that is important to consider. Also, the first three bonjwas were near the beginning of Starcraft competition so this argument is not as relevant to the discussion of racial balance in the modern meta. I would finally add that, even though Bisu does not have as many Starleagues as Flash and Jaedong, his winrate was pretty close to theirs and I think if he was more clutch of a tournament player, he probably would've had more starleague success. Basically, I think that he is closer to them in terms of skill than his Starleague career would suggest.
"However, Protoss is also the least-played race so that is important to consider."
source?
Right now, there's 92 players listed in the sponbbang rankings, here's the race split:
33 T 31 P 28 Z
Despite the reasonably even split, there's only 4 protoss players among the top 20 atm.
Sorry, I meant in the context of Starleagues of the past. Also, I have no statistics on the racial distributions in the MSL either, so I'm aware that my statement can only be shown to be true for the OSLs. Nonetheless, if you look at the race distribution chart of OSL participants, Protoss definitely looks like the least commonly played race (looks like only 24-26% of OSL participants were Protoss and yet they won 29.4% of the OSLs (10 OSL wins, 9 silvers). I'm aware that the statistics are worse for MSL (they won only 4 OSLs and had 9 silvers). Assuming 25% of players were Protoss in all starleagues (which I'm aware is a big assumption and I hope someone will check MSL racial distribution to make sure if my guess is close to reality), Protoss won 14/60 (23.3%) starleagues and got 18/60 (30%) silvers, which does not indicate that protoss players performed disproportionately poorly compared to the other two races, imo. I think the main reason Protoss is seen as being kind of "bad" is because they never had a player like Flash or Jaedong. BIsu in an alternate universe probably should have won 4-5 Starleagues if he was a better tournament player.
Also, If someone could count the Starleague semifinals that would give better information.
"I think the main reason Protoss is seen as being kind of "bad" is because they never had a player like Flash or Jaedong. BIsu in an alternate universe probably should have won 4-5 Starleagues if he was a better tournament player"
I have an issue with these type of arguments because they're baseless, there's nothing backing your statement. Throughout the entire history of the game there hasn't been a single bonjwa calibre P player whereas T and Z had multiple bonjwas. I could say Bisu never became a player like Flash or Jaedong because his race held him back. Hell he wasn't even able to dominate BW even when Flash and Jaedong were playing SC2.
There has been 5 Bonjwas, 4 terrans and a discredited Zerg whom most SC fans want to just forget.
jd, july and savior = 3 zergs flash, nada, iloveoov, boxer = 4 terrans
How did you come up with that list. If anyone can claim these things, than it s easy to counter your argument, saying there were 2 Protoss Bonjwas as well, Bisu and Stork, or whoever. As far as I know this thing is fairly un-controversial, there has been 5 Bonjwa
And you will be hard pressed to find a more biased JD fan on TL than I was (am), but still I dont claim he was a Bonjwa.
The problem protoss has is not terran, it's zerg. It's fitting to say that when you look at proleague and even now you say that X protoss is a PvT master/specialist. There's only one person you can say that about in PvZ and that's Bisu. Every other protoss' vs Z is pretty terrible especially these days. The one that came closest to having great PvZ was certainly shuttle and even then it didn't even hold a candle to Bisu.
Meanwhile, Bisu's PvT late game sucked majorly. In comparison to players like Stork, JangBi who had amazing PvT and terrible PvZ.
If stats-wise it holds that T>Z>P>T but for whatever reason Protoss lags behind (perhaps the kind of player who would pick up protoss correlates worse with championship - calliber player?) in success than terran is indeed in favorable position, right?
Like if stats wide the races are balanced via imbalance but one race is seen less frequently deep in tournaments etc.
On January 10 2019 00:43 Qikz wrote: The problem protoss has is not terran, it's zerg. It's fitting to say that when you look at proleague and even now you say that X protoss is a PvT master/specialist. There's only one person you can say that about in PvZ and that's Bisu. Every other protoss' vs Z is pretty terrible especially these days. The one that came closest to having great PvZ was certainly shuttle and even then it didn't even hold a candle to Bisu.
Meanwhile, Bisu's PvT late game sucked majorly. In comparison to players like Stork, JangBi who had amazing PvT and terrible PvZ.
Maybe you're exaggerating a little bit by saying that stork's/ jangbi's PvZ was terrible (both finished the kespa era with >50% winrate in the MU). But yeah if you look at the TLPD list of top PvZ ELO peaks, Bisu is so far ahead of everyone else. He's the only player with >60% in the MU, whereas all of the other top PvZers sit around 53-55% (plus movie at 58%).
It's probably not specific enough of a stat though since its only looking at career stats and not just stretches of peak performance (players like jangbi, kal, stork, and free all had stretches of pretty good PvZ but also had some pretty big slumps). T and Z only have 2-3 top players with >60% winrate in the unfavored MU, but almost all of them also did better in their favored MU, unlike Bisu.