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On September 21 2012 23:00 Lightspeaker wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 22:44 flodeskum wrote: The real victims here are protoss players tbh. Nobody wants to play ladder with only zvp and pvp. It's terrible.
I can't wait until protoss is back on the bottom of winrates where we belong - then I'll finally have a pvp-free ladder. God I hope so. I love PvTs and think its easily one of the most entertaining matchups (albeit quite stressful) but theres no Terrans about. On the other hand constant PvPs are mentally destructive (I like watching PvP but playing it saps my soul) and PvZ is just...I don't know what to think about it. Constantly playing against zerg broodlord/Infestor or mass roach is just irritating. I've started just leaving instantly when I get a PvP on ladder. Life's too short to waste time playing that matchup. So my laddering is basically 90% ZvP nowadays (and holy shit can lategame ZvP get boring).
HotS can't come soon enough.
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I feel as if this is always the case I remember season 7 or something I laughed because I played nearly 200 games and I played about 10 terran out of those games if makes me sad.
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On September 21 2012 23:04 flodeskum wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 23:00 Lightspeaker wrote:On September 21 2012 22:44 flodeskum wrote: The real victims here are protoss players tbh. Nobody wants to play ladder with only zvp and pvp. It's terrible.
I can't wait until protoss is back on the bottom of winrates where we belong - then I'll finally have a pvp-free ladder. God I hope so. I love PvTs and think its easily one of the most entertaining matchups (albeit quite stressful) but theres no Terrans about. On the other hand constant PvPs are mentally destructive (I like watching PvP but playing it saps my soul) and PvZ is just...I don't know what to think about it. Constantly playing against zerg broodlord/Infestor or mass roach is just irritating. I've started just leaving instantly when I get a PvP on ladder. Life's too short to waste time playing that matchup. So my laddering is basically 90% ZvP nowadays (and holy shit can lategame ZvP get boring). HotS can't come soon enough.
It'll be exactly the same in HotS. I don't see many people saying "WOAH LOOK HOW INTERESTING TERRAN IS NOW" if anything more people will switch from T to something else
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On September 21 2012 23:04 KOtical wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 23:01 Ghanburighan wrote: Many people mentioned mysterious friends that switched from T to Z. I'm a low diamond played and I switched about 2 months ago. (Different servers, though, I play Z in NA, terran in EU, although I've played a few Z and T games just for kicks on both servers.)
It's so much more fun to play Z! I don't know builds ( I constantly drone to 10, accidentally, I build structures whenever (including forgetting a baneling nest for a baneling bust... still won), and generally have no idea what I'm doing. Yet, I've improved my vZ by 20% 60 - 80 and silly pylon, cannon, roach bust shenanigans give me a healthy 60-70% vP. vT I lose more, 45%. Yet, I'm still meeting low diamond players on the ladder.
But the way the games looks is vastly different. Gone are the days when i need to grind builds and mechanics, gone are fears of silly losses to AOE (I get silly losses to inbase cannons, or tech switches as I have no idea how to scout yet, but those feel better because I know what to do better next time, when and where to look.)
Also, I can be aggressive or play passive, as I feel like. I feel so much more safe (even when I lose games, I just lose to people that are better than me. I've started to ggwp, and chat to my opponents a lot more (Protoss cannoning up my ramp was pretty frustrating until I learned to counter it). Overall, I feel happier and less frustrated as a Z. Although I'm clearly a worse played as Z.
So, I recommend to bad (diamondish) players like me who are frustrated to switch to Z. You'll enjoy the game again!
Edit: P.S. The last thread on this topic uncovered that SC2ranks statistics can be off by a large margin. How did the OP find the stats for non-GM? well recommend all T´s to switch won´t solve anything...
Well it solves alot of stuff on a personal level.
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On September 21 2012 22:44 rikter wrote:
Explain to me why BW terran populations were so much tinier, yet the game was balanced-- hell, maybe even terran favoured, if population size is directly related to some "hive mind" attempt to win?
I have my alternative explanation: Terran is vanilla, people dont like playing the good guys or the humans. Terran doesnt stand out in any particular way and so more people are naturally drawn to the other races. Terran is very mechanicall demanding and therefore stressful, at lower levels you will see less obvious rewards for your efforts. Games still balanced, it just works to stress out the newbie terran more so than the masters or GM terran. [/QUOTE]
I took the liberty of bolding the part of your post where you agree with me that Terran is harder to play effectively, especially at lower levels. This is my explanation for why the population is skewed.
Worth considering is that even though Terran in BW was just as challenging mechanically as it still is, we had: Better tanks, better medics, no banelings, no infestors, no collosus, no smart casting for storm. Even if the game was Terran favoured, as you said above, the mechanical requirements are so demanding, as you also said above, that it was more effective for people to use another race.
People do whats most effective. If a race is super powerful, but only if you practice 10 hours a day for months and months, then it isnt really an effective way to win games, is it?[/QUOTE] Obviously I'd never agree to the point that you have play 10 hours a day for months in order to win games. Not only by the mere construction of ladder will you win regardless of how good you are, but the difference is by no means that large. BW terran had a bigger mechanical gulf at d~ rank than terran does now in ladder. And for that matter, d rank is diamond to high diamond, so its not as if terran players have to slog their way through the endless horror of mechanical and strategical advancement before they start to reach the point where skill curves converge. Lower level, non compeitive players will probabl not reach that point: fine, i dont care. It aint thread worthy, which was my original contention. This is just the way RTS games are-- some race will be harder when you have no mechanics, will take a bit of time to learn, and people will stay away from that a bit more.
I suspect you have a greater greviance than I given your here debating fervently that Terran is very hard, or perhaps I'm just cynical; do you have any other 'gripe' ?
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take into account also that hots is comming.
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On September 21 2012 23:00 Covariance wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 22:53 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 22:42 Covariance wrote:On September 21 2012 22:29 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 22:14 Covariance wrote:On September 21 2012 22:10 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 22:05 Covariance wrote:On September 21 2012 22:02 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 21:55 RaiZ wrote:On September 21 2012 21:40 Covariance wrote: [quote]
Statistics "don't lie" - but there's no shortage of people who fail to interpret stats properly.
Second, just because there are 2.5x more Zs than Ts in GM, it doesn't mean anything about race balance if we don't know what the base rates are to begin with. For example, if there are just 2.5x more zerg players than terran players to start out with, than this would be perfectly proportional.
I've some doubts about the second part... I mean the GM league is filled with only 200 players, we aren't talking about the number of terran or zerg, but rather how much of them are reaching the tops. Do you really think that the more zerg than terran still applies ? I don't know about you, but i'd rather see a pretty balanced rate between all 3 races. And even so, don't you think that it should be the opposite ? Since terrans are facing way more zerg than zerg against terran, it means they got a lot more practice, yet that's not the case. That second part is in fact wrong. If the races were equal you would expect to see a more normal distribution, not necessarily dead even, but not what it is now. There is a reason for the disparity, I believe its because most people will naturally gravitate towards what is more effective. Rikter, see my previous message. I saw it, and I see the point you are trying to make. But you cant just say, oh the population is bigger so they should be more represented. Explain why. It's perfectly logical to say that. This is, in fact, the underlying logic behind this phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacyIF the game is perfectly balanced, and one race is in general more played, then this would be reflected in GM as well. What this means is that without knowledge of the base rates, you can't make a judgement call on balance based SOLELY on the proportions in GM. Ask yourself, why is the population so skewed in the first place?
I've already offered a more parsimonious explanation. In every game I have ever played, watched, studied, whatever, over the past 20 years...
Unless you're collecting data in a systematic way, this isn't particularly convincing from an empirical investigation POV. The population functions like a hive mind computer, and right now this 'computer' is saying that zerg is more effective Again, this is one interpretation. It might even be true, but saying that there are disproportionately larger numbers of zergs in GM alone doesn't constitute damning evidence. I should point out, at this time, that I am TA'ing a Research Methods course. I went back and read it again, and the point I am hung up on is that you just accept as reasonable that the population is bigger for one race. Much bigger. Your parsimonious explanation is that the bigger total population results in a bigger GM population, with no explanation as to why the population got so big in the first place, where if the game is balanced you would expect roughly even distribution (since nothing is inherrently better/easier than anything else). I understand that my statement is not systematic data collection (i got my B.S. in Molecular/Cell Biology, I've got some background in this too), its just to get people thinking about other games they have seen this phenomenon. Prolly the best way to check this data would be to compare the size of the population with each successive patch. ANyone know how to get that data? But it is a fact that the sc2 population functions as a hivemind computer, dedicated to solving the game of starcraft. Whatever is imbalanced will be exploited until it is patched, I think we have all seen this, no? Fwiw: I dont think terran is under powered so much as it is much harder atm to get the most out of the race. Both P and Z feature less micro intensive, more mobile, deathball compositions. I dont see how anyone could win TvP above plat without being able to handle a bio ball control group, a viking control group, and a ghost control group at the same time, all while macroing. Not the easiest thing to do, especially when the other dude is just amoving. 1. The thing is though, I'm not making any assumptions about the size of the base rates here. I only used one example to illustrate that knowing membership %s in GM alone doesn't tell us very much. 2. Using win rates could help (in which case it doesn't matter if there are 5x as many zergs as terrans, the win % should still be close to 50). And we have some of this data in a very limited amount. I've seen gifs/jpgs of it floating around before; though I can't remember if there are standard error bars or not though. This kind of data is much more informative, but that's another story. 3. Yes, if you knew the size of each population that'd be great (e.g., 300,000 zergs, 300,000 protoss, 300,000 terrans would indicate that a disproprotionate number of zergs in GM truly does indicate something is wrong). Only thing is, we (i.e., the community) don't have access to this. If we had information on population parameters, we wouldn't even be calling them stats. The obstacle here isn't Blizzard's fault since the issue is more c omplex than, "how many accounts have protoss as their most used race" - it has to be determined which accounts are active, which are smurph accounts with inflated loss %s etc... 4. I don't care what your specific opinion on race balance is; my point is merely that if we want to get as close to the truth as possible via empirical/scientific/evidence-based means, we have to acknowledge that our own personal biases (whatever that may be) can easily distort our line of thinking and lead us to rationalize. I personally DO think Zergs are OP in the late game, but I full heartedly acknowledge that their over-representation in GM is not evidence in support of my position. The only reason why I am of my opinion is based on annecdote alone, and I would never parade my annecdotes and idiosyncratic experiences as hard evidence. Dude, the over representation is evidence in support of your position. Yes, there is other evidence, but we dont have access to it. Its not about better versus worst its about effective versus ineffective. Personal experience doesnt have to be anecdotal or idiosyncratic. If I have thousands and thousands of hours in game, observing these phenomenon, my opinion is a bit better than mere anecdote. 1. As I indicated so many times before, the over-representation is not evidence of anything if you don't know the base rates. 2. Better vs Worse, Effective vs. Ineffective. However you chop it, there's no damning evidence of one race being better, or one race being more effective based on number of Z/P/T in GM alone. 3. You can have tens of thousands of hours of game observing, but you'd still be vulnerable to things like confirmation bias. I'm not calling you a bad guy; it's literally a common error that more or less affects everyone. We tend to remember things better when they support our stance and are more likely to forget instances that go against our stance. When Race X beats Race Y and we expect it, we cite it as an example of our righteous belief. When the reverse happens, we are more likely to discount it as a chance/freak accident. This is why merely saying that your opinion is based on having watched +1,000 games or +5,000 hours is still not damning evidence. You can argue that Z is over powered (or more effective, or whatever buzzword you prefer) if you'd like, but lets call a spade a spade when it comes to what descriptive statistics do and do not tell us. People do what's effective? fine. Hive minds at work? Fine (whatever that means). Doesn't change the fact that you can't make meaningful inferences from membership rates in GM without knowing anything about base population rates. * * * Canikizu makes a stronger case because he presents the base population numbers. If the zergs overall are actually less than 1/3 of the pop but represent 1/2 of GM, then we're talking about a much more convincing case! Having said that, someone still needs to calculate some sort of standard error term before being able to say that zergs are being over-represented at a level beyond chance (i.e., 5%, 1% certainty). etc etc. And THAT would be hard(er) evidence! S4: Protoss - 616155(36.4%), Terran - 617375(36.4%), Zerg - 460327(27.2%) S5: Protoss - 94502(35.3%), Terran - 89046(33.3%), Zerg - 84001(31.4%)
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On September 21 2012 23:00 Covariance wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 22:53 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 22:42 Covariance wrote:On September 21 2012 22:29 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 22:14 Covariance wrote:On September 21 2012 22:10 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 22:05 Covariance wrote:On September 21 2012 22:02 rikter wrote:On September 21 2012 21:55 RaiZ wrote:On September 21 2012 21:40 Covariance wrote: [quote]
Statistics "don't lie" - but there's no shortage of people who fail to interpret stats properly.
Second, just because there are 2.5x more Zs than Ts in GM, it doesn't mean anything about race balance if we don't know what the base rates are to begin with. For example, if there are just 2.5x more zerg players than terran players to start out with, than this would be perfectly proportional.
I've some doubts about the second part... I mean the GM league is filled with only 200 players, we aren't talking about the number of terran or zerg, but rather how much of them are reaching the tops. Do you really think that the more zerg than terran still applies ? I don't know about you, but i'd rather see a pretty balanced rate between all 3 races. And even so, don't you think that it should be the opposite ? Since terrans are facing way more zerg than zerg against terran, it means they got a lot more practice, yet that's not the case. That second part is in fact wrong. If the races were equal you would expect to see a more normal distribution, not necessarily dead even, but not what it is now. There is a reason for the disparity, I believe its because most people will naturally gravitate towards what is more effective. Rikter, see my previous message. I saw it, and I see the point you are trying to make. But you cant just say, oh the population is bigger so they should be more represented. Explain why. It's perfectly logical to say that. This is, in fact, the underlying logic behind this phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacyIF the game is perfectly balanced, and one race is in general more played, then this would be reflected in GM as well. What this means is that without knowledge of the base rates, you can't make a judgement call on balance based SOLELY on the proportions in GM. Ask yourself, why is the population so skewed in the first place?
I've already offered a more parsimonious explanation. In every game I have ever played, watched, studied, whatever, over the past 20 years...
Unless you're collecting data in a systematic way, this isn't particularly convincing from an empirical investigation POV. The population functions like a hive mind computer, and right now this 'computer' is saying that zerg is more effective Again, this is one interpretation. It might even be true, but saying that there are disproportionately larger numbers of zergs in GM alone doesn't constitute damning evidence. I should point out, at this time, that I am TA'ing a Research Methods course. I went back and read it again, and the point I am hung up on is that you just accept as reasonable that the population is bigger for one race. Much bigger. Your parsimonious explanation is that the bigger total population results in a bigger GM population, with no explanation as to why the population got so big in the first place, where if the game is balanced you would expect roughly even distribution (since nothing is inherrently better/easier than anything else). I understand that my statement is not systematic data collection (i got my B.S. in Molecular/Cell Biology, I've got some background in this too), its just to get people thinking about other games they have seen this phenomenon. Prolly the best way to check this data would be to compare the size of the population with each successive patch. ANyone know how to get that data? But it is a fact that the sc2 population functions as a hivemind computer, dedicated to solving the game of starcraft. Whatever is imbalanced will be exploited until it is patched, I think we have all seen this, no? Fwiw: I dont think terran is under powered so much as it is much harder atm to get the most out of the race. Both P and Z feature less micro intensive, more mobile, deathball compositions. I dont see how anyone could win TvP above plat without being able to handle a bio ball control group, a viking control group, and a ghost control group at the same time, all while macroing. Not the easiest thing to do, especially when the other dude is just amoving. 1. The thing is though, I'm not making any assumptions about the size of the base rates here. I only used one example to illustrate that knowing membership %s in GM alone doesn't tell us very much. 2. Using win rates could help (in which case it doesn't matter if there are 5x as many zergs as terrans, the win % should still be close to 50). And we have some of this data in a very limited amount. I've seen gifs/jpgs of it floating around before; though I can't remember if there are standard error bars or not though. This kind of data is much more informative, but that's another story. 3. Yes, if you knew the size of each population that'd be great (e.g., 300,000 zergs, 300,000 protoss, 300,000 terrans would indicate that a disproprotionate number of zergs in GM truly does indicate something is wrong). Only thing is, we (i.e., the community) don't have access to this. If we had information on population parameters, we wouldn't even be calling them stats. The obstacle here isn't Blizzard's fault since the issue is more c omplex than, "how many accounts have protoss as their most used race" - it has to be determined which accounts are active, which are smurph accounts with inflated loss %s etc... 4. I don't care what your specific opinion on race balance is; my point is merely that if we want to get as close to the truth as possible via empirical/scientific/evidence-based means, we have to acknowledge that our own personal biases (whatever that may be) can easily distort our line of thinking and lead us to rationalize. I personally DO think Zergs are OP in the late game, but I full heartedly acknowledge that their over-representation in GM is not evidence in support of my position. The only reason why I am of my opinion is based on annecdote alone, and I would never parade my annecdotes and idiosyncratic experiences as hard evidence. Dude, the over representation is evidence in support of your position. Yes, there is other evidence, but we dont have access to it. Its not about better versus worst its about effective versus ineffective. Personal experience doesnt have to be anecdotal or idiosyncratic. If I have thousands and thousands of hours in game, observing these phenomenon, my opinion is a bit better than mere anecdote. 1. As I indicated so many times before, the over-representation is not evidence of anything if you don't know the base rates. 2. Better vs Worse, Effective vs. Ineffective. However you chop it, there's no damning evidence of one race being better, or one race being more effective based on number of Z/P/T in GM alone. 3. You can have tens of thousands of hours of game observing, but you'd still be vulnerable to things like confirmation bias. I'm not calling you a bad guy; it's literally a common error that more or less affects everyone. We tend to remember things better when they support our stance and are more likely to forget instances that go against our stance. When Race X beats Race Y and we expect it, we cite it as an example of our righteous belief. When the reverse happens, we are more likely to discount it as a chance/freak accident. This is why merely saying that your opinion is based on having watched +1,000 games or +5,000 hours is still not damning evidence. You can argue that Z is over powered (or more effective, or whatever buzzword you prefer) if you'd like, but lets call a spade a spade when it comes to what descriptive statistics do and do not tell us. People do what's effective? fine. Hive minds at work? Fine (whatever that means). Doesn't change the fact that you can't make meaningful inferences from membership rates in GM without knowing anything about base population rates.
1. Guy above just gave some base rates, zerg was #3 on the list, lowest total population, highest GM population. Even without them, given three equal choices, the hypothetical base rate pretty much has to be 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. Some variance, plus random players, means it wont be perfect, but still, the fact that it is so far off what would be normally expected is, in and of itself, evidence that something is going on. Itd be interesting to see the GM race breakdown by season, just to get a standard deviation.
2. We just have to agree to disagree that a big shift from the expected norm is evidence that more than random chance is in play. Good thing we got so many famous high level zergs, now that the zerg expansion is coming out.
3. My best examples are MW3, Black Ops. Again, you see a similar phenomenon: huge skewing towards certain weapons, especially amongst higher ranked players. And this is verified objectively, via the player stats. I can see, for certain, how many of my deaths were caused by a particular weapon. So its not just an anecdote, its hard numbers. And when 60+% of your deaths, over thousands of hours, come from 3 guns out of 30 available, then maybe its fair to say those are more effective than the others.
How is it that all these people seemed to gravitate towards what was most effective, to the point that they completely dominate the stats, without a concerted effort? Thats the power of the hive mind dude. Its not a buzzword. Swarm computing, crowd computing. Check it out, interesting stuff. Trust me, the evidence is more significant than you think.
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On September 21 2012 22:50 Coffee Zombie wrote: After spending some time in the fighting game community I find it odd how SC2 players are disposed towards player skill and faction balance. Like, during this year's Evolution tournament (Biggest tournament in the fighting game community), a player called Infiltration just murdered everybody with Akuma. People know Akuma is strong. But are there hordes screaming Akuma OP? No. People see the win was all Infiltration playing like a possessed monster from Hell. A guy called Dieminion played a character that's considered much weaker to Top 8. Guile suddenly not weak? No. It's plainly evident that Guile is flawed. People just also know that Dieminion is a goddamn monster and wins. Partly because Guile clicks with him. But mostly because he is a monster.
What I'm trying to say here that the community seems to have a strange relationship with beastly play. At the same time the pros are worshipped, and balance is advocated to be balanced towards pros - which essentially means what has been done to the Terran. The monsters have been balanced away, so to speak, so they're just your every day very good player instead of a monster. Should Zerg have been nerfed when Stephano came to the fore? No. Like the T players with crazy super micro that kills everything, we had a Z player who could see the toe of one of your units and know exactly what you're doing. Aka he was a monster in the most important skill for a Zerg player, plus he actually bothered to do what basic micro is possible with Zerg units. Consistently focus firing and stuff. Is it any wonder he crushed people left and right? No. It was as it should be.
As for Terran players dropping, is it any wonder? It's not fun being constantly nerfed. It is not fun being behind by default every TvZ from beginning to the end. Before the Queen patch, you could force the Zerg to invest larvae into units to shoo away the Hellion contain which equalized the economy. This probably felt bad to Zerg players - after all, you were concretely set behind from droning which you always hear you should maximize. Understandable, but also necessary. Unhindered Zerg economy is brokenly good. Now you basically have to commit to heavy pressure or try to outgreed a macroing Zerg. All the while people are telling you to go to the late game. The late game where you have the most costly and inflexible production infrastructure, the most upgrades to research and where basically all your lategame units are merely narrow counters to your opponent's devastating lategame threats. People say, use Ghost. Ghost is good against Infestor, little else. Infestor is useful against everything. This kind of thing is demoralizing. Then Z players say they are reactionary when Queens are nowadays an all around defense unit, better in combat than Roaches, that help mitigate midgame timing pushes, into fast lategame tech where the Z players has all the threats and the more flexible production. Yeah, that sounds exciting to face. Very much so. Feels even, man.
Finally, about Terran being more difficult to play. Something being more difficult to play is pretty ok - I play a difficult deck in Magic because I enjoy it, not because it grants me any significant advantages over people playing simpler decks. In Street Fighter, there are characters that are blatantly stupidly hard to play, like in SF4 Gen, for example. You need lots of character-specific knowledge, fast execution and you are very frail. Gen is not super strong. But people like that kind of play and thus play him. He's still strong enough to compete. The crucial difference here is that Gen is one character out of 40. The deck I play is one out of something like a dozen or more archetypes. You are not forced to play the difficult stuff and still have a lot of choice in playstyle and aesthetic. Terran is one faction out of 3. It is fine for say, Muta/ling to be difficult, fragile and to require good micro. It is fine for Bio to do that, too. But Zerg can choose something else. Terran cannot. One faction out of three is overall unreasonably hard to play. One whole aesthetic and playstyle flavour is too damn hard because the devs are stupid. Then the players go around and act like it's okay. It's not.
Most people aren't paid to play this game. Most people play this game for fun. And it's pretty easy to see that Terran just isn't fun to play anymore. I quit the game a few patches ago - still watch a lot, but seeing Blizzard's patching policy and hearing the then-current HotS unit designs, it just hit me that I would end up being frustrated. Not from playing Terran (Zerg seems to click with me better), but by the overall attitude and design decisions the company does with the game. It is okay for me that my T opponent needs to micro more. That is fine, part of being T. But I'd expect to have a fair equally taxing game on other fronts, from positioning, map control and the like. I don't. I'm just ahead by default and there's little they can say about it. Just feels stupid. The Queen patch especially. Yay, sdddddd. What is wrong with having to wall in and build units? Nothing. But I guess someone thought there was. Ahh, well. Hadouken, folks.
Easily the best post here. Even though i dont agree all as i think that wol has decent balance (other than low level TvZ <masters). But you can easily get away off lot of stuff as other races than terran. I also think that for the game design view T just looks sillier day by day...
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It's always interesting to read these threads.
Basically, there are three types of people in this thread.
1. People who give their opinions because it is in their self interest (Terran player who says Terran is harder to play; Zerg player afraid that if everyone agrees Terran is hard, Zerg will be nerfed)
2. People who say that Terran is not the hardest, and point to examples of GM or Pro korean players, and tell people to stop having a "loser attitude." Reminds me of Republicans in the USA who say "be like the millionaire CEO you lazy welfare bum" and who generally are incapable of nuanced thought regarding social circumstances/situations.
3. People who genuinely think Terran is the hardest of the three races - i.e. they're right. Btw I'm a random player.
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@Ghanburighan
I remember your input to several balance and design threads in the past. Always enjoyed your moderate and smart comments. Just out of curiosity: What made you ultimatly switch? Cause you always seemed to be terran at heart and enjoying the challenge.
And what is your personal prediction for racial balance in hots, concerning the current state of beta?
It's good to hear you enjoy the game again. And at the same time a bit sad to see even more terrans switch.
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S4: Protoss - 616155(36.4%), Terran - 617375(36.4%), Zerg - 460327(27.2%) S5: Protoss - 94502(35.3%), Terran - 89046(33.3%), Zerg - 84001(31.4%)
Good stuff Canikizu!
Again, it's been a while since I tested significance for categorical data. I think in this case it's supposed to be a contingency table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency_table.
At any rate, someone who's got some time on their hands and a little less rusty with this technique can check to see whether or not the discrepency is statistically significant!
@ Rikter
- Now that we have the base rates (and we'll assume they're accurate enough) we still have to see whether or not the discrepency is statistically significant, otherwise it could be due to chance. Although given the large sample size and the large discrepency, I have a good feeling about power.
I won't discuss this 'crowd computing' thing since I'll be honest with the fact that I have no idea what it means. What I do know is what can and cannot be derived from descriptive stats alone.
Canikizu provided some base rates, though, which is cool as that should allow someone to calculate the appropriate inferential statistics.
And if someone runs the appropriate test (I suggested one earlier in my post) and finds the discrepency to be statistically significant, then hey, I'll be sold!
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[B]On September 21 2012 23:12 whatevername wrote:
Obviously I'd never agree to the point that you have play 10 hours a day for months in order to win games. Not only by the mere construction of ladder will you win regardless of how good you are, but the difference is by no means that large. BW terran had a bigger mechanical gulf at d~ rank than terran does now in ladder. And for that matter, d rank is diamond to high diamond, so its not as if terran players have to slog their way through the endless horror of mechanical and strategical advancement before they start to reach the point where skill curves converge. Lower level, non compeitive players will probabl not reach that point: fine, i dont care. It aint thread worthy, which was my original contention. This is just the way RTS games are-- some race will be harder when you have no mechanics, will take a bit of time to learn, and people will stay away from that a bit more.
I suspect you have a greater greviance than I given your here debating fervently that Terran is very hard, or perhaps I'm just cynical; do you have any other 'gripe' ?
The 10 hours a day thing is an exaggeration, but I truly think that Terran is more difficult to play, not because its an excuse, or anything like that. It just is, I thought everybody knew that. I offer this up as an explanation for why they are underrepresented on GM. If its easier to get GM with another race, that is what people will inherrently do.
I am out of work and havent started my new job. I am home all day and have little money, and lots of energy, and no one around to spend it on. I do get frustrated dealing with some of the deathballs (collossus/HT comes to mind), but mostly I just have nothing else to do.
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Hi Rikter, see my most recent post to address your previous point!
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On September 21 2012 23:20 Tryagain4free wrote: @Ghanburighan
I remember your input to several balance and design threads in the past. Always enjoyed your moderate and smart comments. Just out of curiosity: What made you ultimatly switch? Cause you always seemed to be terran at heart and enjoying the challenge.
And what is your personal prediction for racial balance in hots, concerning the current state of beta?
It's good to hear you enjoy the game again. And at the same time a bit sad to see even more terrans switch.
Hi Tryagain4free.
The thing that made me switch was the latest patch. It nerfed the hellion build I had been practicing for 4 months and I didn't have time to re-learn everything alongside finishing my PhD. I'll probably return to Terran once, if I have some free time again.
HOTS predictions - I'm honestly on the fence. Nothing useful to add. Could go in any direction, imo.
- Secretly terrans at heart.
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Good T is very had to play if you don't have the time to train mechanics, good P is hard to play vs people you know nothing about at all. This is related to how the ladder works and is mostly irrelevant to pro gaming.
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@Ghanburighan
thx for your answer. I don't play terran myself, but the queen buff killed the last terran players (2) on my buddylist. Feels like a 2 race game sometimes.
Hope you'll find your "terran fighting!!!" spirit again.
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On September 21 2012 23:20 Covariance wrote:Show nested quote + S4: Protoss - 616155(36.4%), Terran - 617375(36.4%), Zerg - 460327(27.2%) S5: Protoss - 94502(35.3%), Terran - 89046(33.3%), Zerg - 84001(31.4%)
Good stuff Canikizu! Again, it's been a while since I tested significance for categorical data. I think in this case it's supposed to be a contingency table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency_table. At any rate, someone who's got some time on their hands and a little less rusty with this technique can check to see whether or not the discrepency is statistically significant! @ Rikter - Now that we have the base rates (and we'll assume they're accurate enough) we still have to see whether or not the discrepency is statistically significant, otherwise it could be due to chance. Although given the large sample size and the large discrepency, I have a good feeling about power. I won't discuss this 'crowd computing' thing since I'll be honest with the fact that I have no idea what it means. What I do know is what can and cannot be derived from descriptive stats alone. Canikizu provided some base rates, though, which is cool as that should allow someone to calculate the appropriate inferential statistics. And if someone runs the appropriate test (I suggested one earlier in my post) and finds the discrepency to be statistically significant, then hey, I'll be sold!
Best example of crowd computing I could give you is the TV show, who wants to be a millionaire. Ever see it? Or one of its spin offs? One of your options, if you cant answer the question, is to poll the audience. Not everyone in the audience gets it right, but as a group they are over 90% accurate. The bigger the group, the better the results. Thats crowd computing. Basically, if a lot of people are doing something, there is probably some merit to it.
I think the two most useful pieces of data are 1) the population of GM, by race, for each season. That way you can take the averages and use em to compute the standard deviation. Then compare that to this season to see how many deviations off we are.
2) Id want a graph of population vs. patch dates. Itd be interesting to see what kind of effects the various buffs and nerfs have had on the population. No correlation would tend to support the idea that aesthetics is the biggest factor in which race you play, while some correlation would support the idea that people are trending towards whatever is most powerful.
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On September 21 2012 23:20 ahole-surprise wrote: It's always interesting to read these threads.
Basically, there are three types of people in this thread.
1. People who give their opinions because it is in their self interest (Terran player who says Terran is harder to play; Zerg player afraid that if everyone agrees Terran is hard, Zerg will be nerfed)
2. People who say that Terran is not the hardest, and point to examples of GM or Pro korean players, and tell people to stop having a "loser attitude." Reminds me of Republicans in the USA who say "be like the millionaire CEO you lazy welfare bum" and who generally are incapable of nuanced thought regarding social circumstances/situations.
3. People who genuinely think Terran is the hardest of the three races - i.e. they're right. Btw I'm a random player.
this. !!
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