The new GM ladder has nearly filled up now, with 189 spots claimed... and the race breakdown is not very even at all. Zerg make up 49.2% of the ladder, protoss 30.2%, and terran a pathetic 20.6%.
The masters ladder isn't looking much better... 4.3% random, 32.9% protoss, 36.6% zerg, and 26.3% terran. You actually have to go all the way down to bronze league to find terran cracking 30% of the population.
BTW what caused me to want to go and look up these stats? In the past week on the ladder in low masters league, I have faced 29 zerg, 11 protoss, and 2 terran. I was wondering if terran still existed outside of the GSL.
Now, this certainly doesn't prove that there's any imbalance... there are a number of reasons unrelated to balance that could be causing this. Maybe people got bored of playing the methodical terran and switched races. Maybe they're inspired by the popular live streaming players like Stephano, Idra, Huk, Destiny, and White-ra... there aren't as many popular terran streamers.
But honestly, I believe a significant part of the population shift is related to game balance. People switch to races that are easier to play and easier to be successful with. When the game was new, the situation was almost the opposite of what it is now (40% terran and 20% zerg in the higher ladders). I didn't buy any of that "people play terran because it's the race they know from the campaign" nonsense. They played terran because things like 5 rax reapers and tanks on ledges meant free wins against zerg, and TvP was looking favorable as well.
My opinion is that there is no racial imbalance at the pro level, but below that level it might take a little more work (more skillful positioning, more scouting, and more micro) to achieve the same results you'd get with the more forgiving zerg.
I can't think of anything specific that's imbalanced or could be changed to help fix this... I think it's just how the game is. As a Street Fighter player, I know sometimes it's just easier to play Zangief than to use a finesse character who has to land a 20 hit combo to equal a single punch that Zangief lands. Maybe reduce bunker build time by 5 seconds, that should fix things.
That, and it could be less people play terran these days. When all-ins don't win anymore and the lategame is so under-developed, I would lose hope too.
On September 21 2012 10:31 Wrathsc2 wrote: its just harder playing at that level as terran imo.
Yeah, and im one of those guys believing game shud be balanced at top. Imo its kinda cool to see terran as the underdog with the "most" potential. Nothing needs fixing
Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
You should used Korean ladder as a better reference. Since Korean ladder is the highest level among all continents ladder. That would be a better judgement.
Seems like an undercover terran qq thread. Terran used to be the highest represented race. It goes through shifts. Zerg has been getting all the buffs lately so of course your FOTMS are going to go over there.
it couldnt possibly be that theres just more better zergs in NA then terrans? you know that could never be the case at all, considering most of the NA pros that are popular are zergs? In all seriousness the "this race is harder to play then others" is kinda flawed and wrong way to think. each race has its own skill sets that are required and some people are just better at certain aspects of the game and so a race feels better or worse for them. for example, if someone is really good at counter attacking, flanking, and controlling the map, they probally would not do so well as protoss because protoss cant be played like that similarly if someone is realy good at micro and multitasking and harass zerg is probally not the best race where as terran would be better.
On September 21 2012 10:33 Kmatt wrote: That, and it could be less people play terran these days. When all-ins don't win anymore and the lategame is so under-developed, I would lose hope too.
A lot of people have thought processes like this, and switch races, that's why terran's not played much.
Terran is definitely unforgiving and requires alot of skill since refined timings and micro are critical for successful play. As you've said, the pro players have no problem with this sort of requirement. However, until high masters most players will not achieve this level of comfort. Is it imbalance? I'm not sure, but its definitely annoying to see protoss in GM league with 70 apm when no terran under 170 could compete at that level.
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
because back when the game wasnt figured out at all and cheese was overly powerful because no one knew how to respond to them properly, zergs kept dying to them and thus were the hardest race to play
On September 21 2012 10:34 blade55555 wrote: I imagine this has been the case on NA with zerg being mostly in GM for the past 6 months and will probably not change until hots.
On korea I think it's a lot more even and I actually don't know about EU. But can't judge racial balance on just GM, especially on the NA ladder
Excellent point, I don't know why I didn't think to check the other ladders. Here's what they look like-
Korea GM: zerg 37.4%, protoss 34.5%, terran 28.2% Korea masters: zerg 27.6%, protoss 33.3%, terran 34.3%, random 4.8%
Europe GM: zerg 37.3%, protoss 36.7%, terran 24.9%, random 1.2% (random GMs, pretty sick) Europe masters: zerg 35.3%, protoss 35.1%, terran 25.5%, random 4%
SEA GM: zerg 32.4%, protoss 38.1%, terran 25.9%, random 3.6% SEA masters: zerg 32.2%, protoss 32.2%, terran 30.7%, random 5%
China GM: zerg 39.3%, protoss 32.5%, terran 24.8%, random 3.4% China masters: zerg 31.9%, protoss 34.3%, terran 28.2%, random 5.6%
Looks like the results are pretty similar with the exception of Korea... a place known to have higher overall skill levels, so that the skill requirements of terran aren't as much of a drawback. But even there the GM league is low on terrans.
Of course, looking at races used on ladders is a horrible way to determine game balance... tournament competition is one of the best ways, and it's looking pretty even there.
And I couldn't agree more with Bippzy's post... there's nothing wrong with having a race that's tougher to learn but has the most potential if played very skillfully.
im just a platinum terran in SEA server. I took a glance at my ranking and... i'm currently 11th in my league and i'm the only terran in the league top 20.
On September 21 2012 10:47 isaachukfan wrote: Mods should lock this troll bait thread before it gets out of hand.
Not intended to be troll bait... I just thought it was worth discussing the very low terran population on the ladder, which was a surprise for me to find out about.
Maybe I could have titled the thread in a way that's less likely to entice morons to jump in and post "LOL NO SHIT, THIS GAME IS IMBA AS FUCK, TERRAN SUCKS ASS AND THAT'S WHY I QUIT THIS POS GAME" but I'm hoping the TL community is a little better than that.
Some of the strategies used by the best terrans take a ton of skill to employ. Some of the mech styles that are comming out against zerg have strong late game armies, but their bread and butter is killing around 40 workers with banshee and hellion harass over the first 14 minutes of the game. This takes a ton of multitasking, micro, and good decision making to perform. Mech doesn't work at all, if you leave the zerg alone. Lower level players cannot utilize a build like this and expect to have good results. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
I'd also blame some of if on Broodlord infestor, if these guys come out in numbers it is a struggle as terran or protoss, just to not die in the next minute or 2. It's really not fun to play against. I've had many great tug of war, back and forth games against zergs, that ended abruptly because of these 2 units. You have to play REALLY well to beat them if you aren't far ahead economically when they come out.
It IS a more difficult race to play. When I switched from Zerg, I was mid masters and promptly dropped to low master. It took about 3 months to get back to mid master as Terran, but I'm now considering switching to Protoss because the prospects for Terran look grim and I play the game for fun anyways, not to fight an uphill battle in 2 of the 3 TvX matchups.
On September 21 2012 10:31 Wrathsc2 wrote: its just harder playing at that level as terran imo.
I would argue that there just aren't that many good NA terrans. Honestly, I can hardly name any terrans on the NA server anymore that post results, while there are plenty of korean terrans that seem to be doing just fine (if not better than all the other races).
On September 21 2012 10:55 dOraWa wrote: It IS a more difficult race to play. When I switched from Zerg, I was mid masters and promptly dropped to low master. It took about 3 months to get back to mid master as Terran, but I'm now considering switching to Protoss because the prospects for Terran look grim and I play the game for fun anyways, not to fight an uphill battle in 2 of the 3 TvX matchups.
I have a crazy theory about this. When you began off racing as terran, it wasnt as good as your main race??! and it took time for it to be as good as your main race???? no way!!
On September 21 2012 10:55 dOraWa wrote: It IS a more difficult race to play. When I switched from Zerg, I was mid masters and promptly dropped to low master. It took about 3 months to get back to mid master as Terran, but I'm now considering switching to Protoss because the prospects for Terran look grim and I play the game for fun anyways, not to fight an uphill battle in 2 of the 3 TvX matchups.
I have a crazy theory about this. When you began off racing as terran, it wasnt as good as your main race??! and it took time for it to be as good as your main race???? no way!!
lmao you are grasping at so many straws dude, it's obvious you don't play terran so why don't you switch to find out exactly how hard it is, or just pipe down with your stupid passive-aggressive bullshit about why people should consider T balanced (even though players better than you will say it has underpowered T3 units compared to the other races, and IS harder than the other races)
you just have to look at the statistics and if you aren't smart enough to do that, gtfo
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
Hahaha no. If you are into statistic and stuff, you'll know that Terran has been the least popular race since season 2(!!!). There were different reasons of course, but Terran was in no way the popular race throughout WoL's life, except season 1.
On September 21 2012 10:55 dOraWa wrote: It IS a more difficult race to play. When I switched from Zerg, I was mid masters and promptly dropped to low master. It took about 3 months to get back to mid master as Terran, but I'm now considering switching to Protoss because the prospects for Terran look grim and I play the game for fun anyways, not to fight an uphill battle in 2 of the 3 TvX matchups.
I have a crazy theory about this. When you began off racing as terran, it wasnt as good as your main race??! and it took time for it to be as good as your main race???? no way!!
lmao you are grasping at so many straws dude, it's obvious you don't play terran so why don't you switch to find out exactly how hard it is, or just pipe down with your stupid passive-aggressive bullshit about why people should consider T balanced (even though players better than you will say it has underpowered T3 units compared to the other races, and IS harder than the other races)
you just have to look at the statistics and if you aren't smart enough to do that, gtfo
Another one of these threads... Honestly, I don't care of the reasoning for this thread, it's only going to degrade into 1 type of discussion, and its not going to be productive.
Terran are under-represented just how Protoss and Zerg was for nearly 2 years; THINGS CHANGE and unless you have some secret formula to gauge the skill level of every player, you'll never know the reasoning, neither will Blizzard.
It's a guessing game, and the best guess the Terrans have, is that they're weak right now/hardest to play; its a joke.
It's pretty simple, really. Terran has been nerfed every "balance" patch since the games inception. Even when a stretch passed where a foreign Terran hadn't won a major live even in 1.5 years, Blizzard continued to nerf Terran because of a few Top level Koreans. None of us have the slightest chance of ever even being 10% as good as Taeja or MVP-- it's like saying: "well it will balance out once you reach Michael Jordan's skill and talent level."
I guess Zergs just magically learned to play like Fruitdealer when he won GSL and they were struggling, right? Nope. Buff after buff, maps got bigger, and Terran got gutted. Now, in HOTS, Terran is receiving nothing interesting-- a shitty spidermine and firebat.
And, as a high masters Terran, I DO find Zerg easier to play. When I have a advantage, I don't have to worry about losing my entire army in .5 seconds to 1 storm, fungal, or surround. I can just play and comfortably know I'll win.
Terran is unpopular because it's the least impressive to look at and has the most middle-ground mechanics. Also, arguably, requires the most 'effort' to play.
When people see a zerg suddenly summon an enormous swarm of 100 zerglings in a few seconds and overwhelm an army... "omg zerg OP, how can they get so many units" - When people see a small group of protoss units, some zealots and archons say, take out a squad of marines, "omg protoss OP, those units look ridiculously strong"
When terran wins? Well the protoss had less units than the terran, and the zerg didn't have enough of an advantage of numbers since they're just flimsy bug creatures.
The aesthetics of the races and the fact that terran doesn't "look" or "feel" overpowered in any regard makes them unappealing, despite any actual balance.
Also humans are boring compared to super tech aliens and swarmy infested armies.
On September 21 2012 10:55 dOraWa wrote: It IS a more difficult race to play. When I switched from Zerg, I was mid masters and promptly dropped to low master. It took about 3 months to get back to mid master as Terran, but I'm now considering switching to Protoss because the prospects for Terran look grim and I play the game for fun anyways, not to fight an uphill battle in 2 of the 3 TvX matchups.
I have a crazy theory about this. When you began off racing as terran, it wasnt as good as your main race??! and it took time for it to be as good as your main race???? no way!!
lmao you are grasping at so many straws dude, it's obvious you don't play terran so why don't you switch to find out exactly how hard it is, or just pipe down with your stupid passive-aggressive bullshit about why people should consider T balanced (even though players better than you will say it has underpowered T3 units compared to the other races, and IS harder than the other races)
you just have to look at the statistics and if you aren't smart enough to do that, gtfo
Someone switches races.
They aren't as good with the new race.
They blame it on balance.
How is pointing out that it's obvious that when you race change you're going to be weaker at the new race, grasping at straws?
What are these statistics? The ones in this thread? Anything under Plat is useless, because balance means nothing below it. Literally nothing. Difficulty for beginners maybe, but not balance.
i am a masters random, whether that makes me qualified to say that simply terran is the most difficult race is up to you.
Whilst I don't think it is imbalanced, i do feel that it has a much higher skill ceiling than the other races, where it only reaches its full potential where players have ridiculous unit control and multitask.
It's even seen in the top foreigners, that in the foreigner scene its a lot easier to be a top foreign protoss, or top foreign zerg.
This isn't to say high level protoss or zerg players are bad, but it just requires more time put into the game to reach a high level with terran, time that most players dont have.
I do not blame people for not playing terran, people like to win. People like to progress and for people with jobs, other commitments; who cant mass ladder so much, when you play p or z its just more likely for you to rise through the leagues rather than stagnating being stuck at a skill level, which is a frustrating feeling in starcraft.
I think part of the blame is blizzards, i think many of the terran players who stopped playing or race switched did so because they felt unfairly targeted by blizzard, how every single patch released seemed to nerf terran in some way. Like the queen change just felt like a kick in the balls for terran players as nobody asked for it but it just has such a drastic effect on tvz.
On September 21 2012 11:05 GolemMadness wrote: "You actually have to go all the way down to bronze league to find terran cracking 30% of the population."
You all realise that this just means that there are less people playing terran, right?
The question is: Why?
I think the game is pretty balanced right now but Terran has more units that require better micro and a set up that requires more multi-tasking at lower levels than the other races and thus people get fed up with it being "harder" - it was fine before because Terran was "harder" but OP so you could win the same, but now it's just harder and there's no advantage. It also probably doesn't help that there isn't really a Terran deathball.
To be honest, I don't want Terran changed, I want Protoss and Zerg to have the opportunity to differentiate themselves more throughout all levels in a variety of ways. HotS seems to do that with Zerg at least a little. Not so sure on Protoss. Problem is, Terran is being regressed.
Because Terran has the highest skill ceiling, Blizzard chose to continually nerf Terran to make Terran overall worse so that Protoss and Zerg have a chance to win major tournaments at the highest levels of play. What Blizzard should have done was to redesign the Protoss and Zerg races so that their skill ceilings were as great as Terran's.
On September 21 2012 10:34 blade55555 wrote: I imagine this has been the case on NA with zerg being mostly in GM for the past 6 months and will probably not change until hots.
On korea I think it's a lot more even and I actually don't know about EU. But can't judge racial balance on just GM, especially on the NA ladder
Excellent point, I don't know why I didn't think to check the other ladders. Here's what they look like-
Korea GM: zerg 37.4%, protoss 34.5%, terran 28.2% Korea masters: zerg 27.6%, protoss 33.3%, terran 34.3%, random 4.8%
Europe GM: zerg 37.3%, protoss 36.7%, terran 24.9%, random 1.2% (random GMs, pretty sick) Europe masters: zerg 35.3%, protoss 35.1%, terran 25.5%, random 4%
SEA GM: zerg 32.4%, protoss 38.1%, terran 25.9%, random 3.6% SEA masters: zerg 32.2%, protoss 32.2%, terran 30.7%, random 5%
China GM: zerg 39.3%, protoss 32.5%, terran 24.8%, random 3.4% China masters: zerg 31.9%, protoss 34.3%, terran 28.2%, random 5.6%
Looks like the results are pretty similar with the exception of Korea... a place known to have higher overall skill levels, so that the skill requirements of terran aren't as much of a drawback. But even there the GM league is low on terrans.
Of course, looking at races used on ladders is a horrible way to determine game balance... tournament competition is one of the best ways, and it's looking pretty even there.
And I couldn't agree more with Bippzy's post... there's nothing wrong with having a race that's tougher to learn but has the most potential if played very skillfully.
On September 21 2012 10:34 blade55555 wrote: I imagine this has been the case on NA with zerg being mostly in GM for the past 6 months and will probably not change until hots.
On korea I think it's a lot more even and I actually don't know about EU. But can't judge racial balance on just GM, especially on the NA ladder
Excellent point, I don't know why I didn't think to check the other ladders. Here's what they look like-
Korea GM: zerg 37.4%, protoss 34.5%, terran 28.2% Korea masters: zerg 27.6%, protoss 33.3%, terran 34.3%, random 4.8%
Europe GM: zerg 37.3%, protoss 36.7%, terran 24.9%, random 1.2% (random GMs, pretty sick) Europe masters: zerg 35.3%, protoss 35.1%, terran 25.5%, random 4%
SEA GM: zerg 32.4%, protoss 38.1%, terran 25.9%, random 3.6% SEA masters: zerg 32.2%, protoss 32.2%, terran 30.7%, random 5%
China GM: zerg 39.3%, protoss 32.5%, terran 24.8%, random 3.4% China masters: zerg 31.9%, protoss 34.3%, terran 28.2%, random 5.6%
Looks like the results are pretty similar with the exception of Korea... a place known to have higher overall skill levels, so that the skill requirements of terran aren't as much of a drawback. But even there the GM league is low on terrans.
Of course, looking at races used on ladders is a horrible way to determine game balance... tournament competition is one of the best ways, and it's looking pretty even there.
And I couldn't agree more with Bippzy's post... there's nothing wrong with having a race that's tougher to learn but has the most potential if played very skillfully.
In fact....
thats how it was in BW.
And it still appears to be the same way; Terran are extremely versatile and diverse, this was working for a while. It seems they are just discouraged.
I wonder what the win rates are for say 10, 50 of the top Terrans worldwide, I would bet they are doing fine; because the Race is fine, and has been the most refined since WoL.
edit: It only makes sense when Terran is the most unflawed race to begin in WoL that they are either nerfed or left out of buffs to get Zerg and Protoss up to speed; it is demoralizing, but its fairly true.
Speaking of BW, there was the same sort of racial distribution imbalance at lower levels there as well, but it wasn't as obvious since people couldn't quickly calculate the distribution.
In BW terran was also underrepresented in part because it was difficult but more in part to TvT being annoying for many people to play since it would take 3x the time of the other matchups. On the other hand protoss was seen as the easy mode race at low levels because although you could do fancy strategies with reaver shuttle micro and high templars, just a-moving zealots and dragoons worked pretty well (even against mine fields, zealots were the manliest units ever).
I don't think there's anything wrong there being some degree of distribution imbalance as it's pretty inevitable. Even if all the races are equally difficult to play, one race is probably going to be more fun. For instance in early WoL a lot of people hated protoss because every PvP was 4g vs 4g.
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
Hahaha no. If you are into statistic and stuff, you'll know that Terran has been the least popular race since season 2(!!!). There were different reasons of course, but Terran was in no way the popular race throughout WoL's life, except season 1.
back in the day =/= WoL's life
regardless my point still stands. People are still making the stupid argument that they think their race is more demanding skill wise, hence why less people play it. Same excuse, different race. People just love to make excuses for the loss, rather than you know.... be a grubby or white-ra, more gg, more skill. I'll be the first to admit that I think terran is slightly under-favored of the 3 races right now, just like zerg was in beta/start of WoL which is the most likely cause of the shift, not because its apparently more "demanding apm wise".
If you play terran be prepared to lose a lot more. Only the highest percentile of terran players see inherent the benefits of playing macro Terran, where as a much bigger % of players (even average players) get a nice little boost through P's late-game composition and Z's macro-mechanic in larvae. While they can be perceived to be poorly 'balanced' I personally think its really naive design to force players from certain races to play in a specific 'style' - i.e. Terran MUST kill X units/drones against a Zerg or he/she gets too far behind and loses to a competent player.
On September 21 2012 11:57 -_- wrote: Nobody chooses their race based on balance. Nobody switches their race based on balance. You just choose whatever looks coolest to you.
But you do stop playing when the game gets frustrating to the point it's not worth playing over newer releases.
It's the players fault not the race sorry. I'm just a spectator who posts actively in the Live Report threads and I've been highly critical of foreign Terrans performances in major tournaments because they can't adapt when the meta-game shifts, since the Queen buff there's only been 1 Terran who has caught my eye and that was last week at WCS Europe. True there is too many 'PatchZergs' out there who will fall off the scene right away when the meta-game shifts again but the TvZ matchup still doesn't explain why there's a 7% difference on average between Protoss and Terran.
im only a diamond terran. almost top 8 ^^. but seriously . ive only touched zerg for about 10 times. maybe 13 and i got to plat easily. macroing is wayy easier since u can build from hatch. injects can be tricky but once u have the apm u can just do em. maybe because plat terran has more trouble w/ zerg. at lower lvl.
for toss. toss macro wud be the easiest.. and then micro. oh wait.
This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
On September 21 2012 11:38 rogzardo wrote: dude didnt u watch iem where mvp fucking kicked all those shitty players ass its total balacne just look at MVpp
OHHH so everyone who isn't MVP just has to do that in order to win a few games on ladder? That's fucking awesome advice thanks man
On September 21 2012 11:57 -_- wrote: Nobody chooses their race based on balance. Nobody switches their race based on balance. You just choose whatever looks coolest to you.
But you do stop playing when the game gets frustrating to the point it's not worth playing over newer releases.
The majority of these people are not being frustrated because of factors of balance, but because they're just losing.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
Talk about completely missing the point. Not everyone has time to practice like a pro guy, this is the NA ladder, a pretty casual place for the most part, the fact that Terran is waaay under represented goes to show you that Terran is not for the casual player
Terran is the hardest race to play, that's why you see the least Terran players of any of the three races in GM and Master league.
Why would you repeatedly smash your face against the wall, hurting yourself over and over, when you just switch races or not play the game at all? This attitude is reflected in the racial distribution numbers across all ladders. HotS will make this amplify this situation and it's pretty safe to say that you can expect the Terran player numbers to drop even lower. I don't think anyone would be surprised if we saw a few professional Terran players either change races or quit shortly after HotS.
I'm not sure what the breaking point would be, but maybe Blizzard will give up trying to balance at all and simply remove the race from the game and focus on Protoss and Zerg since no one will be playing Terran at that point.
Some people here have a really mediocre thought process, it makes absolutely no sense for the entirety of the terran population (terran is under represented in GM and masters in every single server, except for kr masters) to be framed as well, anything, be it whiny or unimpressive or whatever, what makes protoss and zergs different from those that chose terran? Jesus christ the level of retardness is insurmountable.
My personal experience tells that if you don't have the perfect resources and opportunites you shouldn't play terran as a pro, it just takes too much to get there, for one reason or another, and it's not like this is anything new, beating a pretty dead horse really.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
Talk about completely missing the point. Not everyone has time to practice like a pro guy, this is the NA ladder, a pretty casual place for the most part, the fact that Terran is waaay under represented goes to show you that Terran is not for the casual player
A casual player shouldn't give a damn about his rank and you are matched up with other players based on your MMR so those casuals shouldn't give a flying fuck about the distribution of race in the highest levels.
"Terrans are just fine" quoted from David Kim. No matter how many terran exist, he can always give us the 50% winning rate bullshit. With magic constant 50% winning rate all the terrans from mater league are dropping to diamond or changed their race? A little bit curious why he hasnt got fired considering such mess in ladder now.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
exactly sir.. Most terran whiners here just keep saying "We need to get perfect positioning, micro" but when you look back at your replays, most things you do are more decision related mistakes, like losing your army, suiciding banshees and hellions to kill workers, doing the least important stuff. These whiners are so pessimistic that they forget that terran units are actually cost effective, if used in the correct situation it could be better than its z/p counterparts. Other races have troubles also. All you do is look at the statistics that won't help you improve your game...close this thread, it makes me sick also. Shut the fuck up.
I play only Terran and I think Terran being the hardest race to play is true when it comes to micro, positioning, army control, and possibly macro. When it comes to building units though, Terran has it easy as we can just queue units. It's not like Zerg where if you miss an inject, you're doomed. Or like Protoss where if you forget to warp in units, you can't warp in again for a while after your warp in round.
In TvZ, I find that I'm forced to play greedy blindly. A lot of pros do too imo. Look at how many of them are going up to 3 CC with just a handful of production units against Zerg. If the Zerg decides to change it up and baneling bust, imo, there's a good chance that the Zerg will win the game. Stay with 2 CC for a while and the Zerg goes up to 3rd, well they'll just power overwhelm you. And let's not even get to the late game against TvZ and TvP.
As a Terran player, I feel that we have to play in the early to mid to early late game. Go to the super late game and unless you're half as good as the pros, good luck to you trying to win against a tech switching Zerg (BL to Ultras) or Protoss (Colossi to HT).
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
exactly sir.. Most terran whiners here just keep saying "We need to get perfect positioning, micro" but when you look back at your replays, most things you do are more decision related mistakes, like losing your army, suiciding banshees and hellions to kill workers, doing the least important stuff. These whiners are so pessimistic that they forget that terran units are actually cost effective, if used in the correct situation it could be better than its z/p counterparts. Other races have troubles also. All you do is look at the statistics that won't help you improve your game...close this thread, it makes me sick also. Shut the fuck up.
Please show me a game where Terrans have beaten a Zerg recently without keeping their drones or creep in check.
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
Bam. Dropped the knowledge.
Personally thinking about switching but zvz looks more fun to learn than tvt
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
Bam. Dropped the knowledge.
Personally thinking about switching but zvz looks more fun to learn than tvt
I prefer TvT over ZvZ any day. ZvZ is a bitch even with my (small) random advantage.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
exactly sir.. Most terran whiners here just keep saying "We need to get perfect positioning, micro" but when you look back at your replays, most things you do are more decision related mistakes, like losing your army, suiciding banshees and hellions to kill workers, doing the least important stuff. These whiners are so pessimistic that they forget that terran units are actually cost effective, if used in the correct situation it could be better than its z/p counterparts. Other races have troubles also. All you do is look at the statistics that won't help you improve your game...close this thread, it makes me sick also. Shut the fuck up.
I agree that ppl shouldn't blame their amateur losses on racial imbalance, but its funny how you say guys say or agree with things like 'do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude' when just a few posts above you someone quoted MVP saying he thinks terran is the weakest race. During the early days of sc2, zerg whine was just there in the air. Encountering it was just a part of playing sc2 competitively, at any level. Even these days you encounter zergs on ladder who boast about how difficult their race is to play. People getting frustrated and complaining is forgiveable. You know what's not forgiveable-- being so dense as to say "pros don't complain" when there is so much evidence that they too get frustrated and complain. Evidence... that was posted in the very same thread, in the very same page, from the very same player who you so grossly misrepresent.
While qq is not the best strategy in the world why do protoss and zergs feel the need to come in and just hate on everything. Every time the races move in terms of which is strong etc the weakest race gets sad and the stronger races come in and go its not the race you suck get better. No one is really responding to the op anymore, but on that note I think terrans are under represented because the terran late game army is hard to control, and previously terran was stronger and much easier to win with. With the various nerfs terran is now harder to play and no one likes losing/feeling like they are getting worse instead of better, so they switched races. Im not trying to complain about it, ive been having these troubles but its not like I cant switch races, its like playing top tier in a fighting came except its nowhere near that level of difference. Anyways im sure someone is gonna come in and tell me the game is perfectly balanced at all levels and I need to shut the fuck up and play better, you shut the fuck up and play worse so I can get back to masters.
On September 21 2012 11:34 Artifex Magnus wrote: It's only indicative of population... not skill...
True to an extent, but wrong overall. If the proportion of terran players is around 30% at levels below masters (that was the figure given for bronze, but let's assume it's close to that for all levels between bronze and diamond) and the players in masters/grand-masters is more like ~25%, then it is balance or skill or what have you, not just a question of player numbers.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
"Terran is the weakest race"
-MVP
"Terran is the weakest race"
-Taeja
It's been pretty obvious for quite some time that Terran is significantly more difficult to play at pretty much every level above diamond, and it's reflected in the current racial balance on ladder and Terran representation in the top levels of foreign tournaments since pretty much forever. Only the stronger competition and much higher concentration of talent in Korea is producing players who can get enough out of Terran to make it good enough to win at the highest levels.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
"Terran is the weakest race"
-MVP
"Terran is the weakest race"
-Taeja
It's been pretty obvious for quite some time that Terran is significantly more difficult to play at pretty much every level above diamond, and it's reflected in the current racial balance on ladder and Terran representation in the top levels of foreign tournaments since pretty much forever. Only the stronger competition and much higher concentration of talent in Korea is producing players who can get enough out of Terran to make it good enough to win at the highest levels.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are
Who are you responding to? I haven't seen anyone in this thread doing anything like that.
Really just has to do with Terran's lategame being wildly undiscovered.
Only a handful of Terrans are taking the time to learn the late-game as the only reason to with HotS coming out soon is if you have the potential to win a lot of tournaments before then and most players don't.
On September 21 2012 11:34 Artifex Magnus wrote: It's only indicative of population... not skill...
True to an extent, but wrong overall. If the proportion of terran players is around 30% at levels below masters (that was the figure given for bronze, but let's assume it's close to that for all levels between bronze and diamond) and the players in masters/grand-masters is more like ~25%, then it is balance or skill or what have you, not just a question of player numbers.
Exactly. Population doesn't really matter when it comes to the GM league because the league is so small.
Look at it this way- out of the top 100 zerg players in all of North America, nearly all of them qualified to get into GM.
Out of the top 100 terran players in North America, only 40 of them could win consistently enough to qualify.
To be honest, slight imbalances like this our bound to happen - you can't make every race the same difficulty to play across all playing levels. It just so happens terran is tougher to play at masters and grandmaster level but equal at the very top. Kinda cool actually to have a challenging-er race! xD
I am a little happy about that. I am Terran and I hate playing TvT. Now TvT is not happening too often if at all. But what is most surprising, even on Korean ladder where I play in awesome Gold league, there are no longer too many Terrans! There was a time that if I wanted to practice TvT all I needed was to play on KR - it is no longer a case.
I don't want to link it to imbalance, but there is one big problem. Tournaments - ZvZ, PvP, PvZ all day long. As an result I stopped watching small tournaments, there are no Terrans in small online tourneys. Since more or less 4 months I watch only the biggest events, where boring for me matchups are compensated by brilliant commentators.
And the opinion that in lower leagues it seems that winning while playing as P or Z is easier than playing as T? It is almost a tabu topic here at tl.net, but I am going to say something. I used to edit liqupedia for z33k.com (tournament page) for 2 years. I edited pages for tourneys such as Simply Silver (gold and bronze), Golden Age (bronze to gold), Platinum Tribes (bronze to platinum) and Diamonds Are Forever (bronze to diamond). And results were very clear. Most wins - always Zerg, then Protoss, and Terran always had smallest amounts of wins. And these tourneys are really old! This winning distribution situation is much, much older then just few recent patches.
I don't believe there is any imba atm. Lack of Terrans in tourneys is annoying for me as hell, but there are number of reason for that, imbalance is not one of them. But I totally support the opinion that on lower levels playing with Terran is the hardest. Call it whining, maybe it is
On September 21 2012 13:50 shadowboxer wrote: Really just has to do with Terran's lategame being wildly undiscovered.
Only a handful of Terrans are taking the time to learn the late-game as the only reason to with HotS coming out soon is if you have the potential to win a lot of tournaments before then and most players don't.
I would agree that this is a part of the reason. How often do you see EMP used to try to stop infestor/broodlord? Even the pros rarely try to use ghosts. Terran also finds themselves sitting on excess gas in the lategame... well what's a gas-heavy unit that can deal heavy damage to slow moving targets? But ravens are still not too common (I have seen more lately though).
On September 21 2012 13:50 shadowboxer wrote: Really just has to do with Terran's lategame being wildly undiscovered.
Only a handful of Terrans are taking the time to learn the late-game as the only reason to with HotS coming out soon is if you have the potential to win a lot of tournaments before then and most players don't.
I would agree that this is a part of the reason. How often do you see EMP used to try to stop infestor/broodlord? Even the pros rarely try to use ghosts. Terran also finds themselves sitting on excess gas in the lategame... well what's a gas-heavy unit that can deal heavy damage to slow moving targets? But ravens are still not too common (I have seen more lately though).
There is a reason why ghosts aren't used much against infestors. Ghosts rely on being cloaked to be effective in the lategame. You can snipe 1 obs with viking, you cannot snipe 5 overseers with viking. If ghosts are spotted, either a broodling will trap them, lings will trap them, or they will get some EMPs off and die. Either you come out even or you dont get EMP/snipes off and you are guaranteed to lose the next engagement.
You cannot trade ghosts for infestor energy in the late game because the pressure to end the game is on your hand, not the zerg's.
Foreign Scene: Low proportion of terrans compared to Zerg and Protoss.
Korean Scene: Roughly equal proportions of all races.
If we subscribe to the idea that the Korean scene is more skilled than the foreign scene (which it is), we can assume that terran scales better with skill, and is weaker at lower levels.
Therefore, terran is the hardest race to efffectively play. This is basically the only reason which can effectively explain the lack of terrans outside of korea, across every single country and continent.
You can't really argue people all over the world, with the sole exception of koreans, enjoy playing zerg or protoss more than terran.
Looking more and more like BW, where Terrans complain about how hard they have it while the most dominant and accomplished players in the world are Terran.
Toss/Zerg just need increased micro requirements in-battle (toss is argueable, zerg for sure *cough* infestors *cough*) to give them a higher chance of messing up an engagement like terran and more reward for successful engagements like terran.
Terran skill requirement is just a bit too high at that level!
I think the issue, now, is the way that late-game armies work.
If we looked back at the old ladder pool and tournament pool, 3 base is hard to obtain quickly to just power eco and tech due to smaller maps and map design (3 basing really fast on Metalopolis is harder than, say, entombed valley.)
The capital ships/end game units and really-expensive units were not designed to be made en-masse. They cost a ton of money and can often be rolled over without much support, which means they require high eco to make a lot of them work or less of the intended unit. I mean an endgame zerg, IDEALLY is a shit ton of spines, a metric shitton of infestors, corruptors, and a lot of broods. Ofc ling/bane is mixed in but if you were given infinite money for 10 minutes I'd make that army. Protoss armies have 5-7 collosus, >3 archons, >3 HT ready to storm then turn into archons, etc.
The design looks at the tech units as supplementary to the mid-tier and low-tier units (infestor stunlocks for bane/ling, medivac for marines/maurader/reaper/ghost, collosus to boost the otherwise low long range DPS of toss armies, a clutch spell for each race deciding the game, etc). This is how we see allins and mid game armies looking--tech units supplementing base units. Late-game, when we have a ton of eco, the highest of tech units become the metric to work into. A zerg army of 100 supply isn't always equal: Infestor Brood 100 supply is scary as hell. 200 lings, not so much.
It is seen in the terran tech tree that almost ALL the units are supposed to be used in relation to another. Siege tanks support marines for space control and AoE vZ. Vikings give siege tanks vision. Medivacs heal and drop. Ghosts DENY spells from being cast and eliminate their spellcasters, rather than be an offensive spellcaster like the HT. If I were to piece a 100 supply army together: Most of it would be in marine/maurader/hellions with 3-5 siege tanks, some medivacs and vikings, and maybe a few ghosts to lead the way and clear the spellcasters.
The Zerg and Protoss race has a similar way of being. Infestors are made to let ling/bling connect and chunk armies, and add overall DPS. Roaches and Hydras oddly sync well with range upgrade (and if hydras were more durable, a more viable unit in other MUs), corruptors protect broods. etc.
Moving on, the racial designs suggest that: Terran core armies are highest DPS naturally (high tech units add "little" DPS but add survivability and mobility/safety for the core army. By little, I understand the huge damage a siege line can do if you run right at it, but siege tanks can be taken care of with tech units, vikings are weak on the ground, raven PDD is researched and unreliable, thors/BCs do a good amount of damage but act as a high damage buffer to the core damage army in most cases, but nothing as devastating as sending 2 storms that the entire army eats), Zerg has middle-of-the-road (with ways of catching enemy clumps of army to surround and kill and provide ways of controlling the map endgame with siegeing broods), and Protoss core army being lowest DPS (highest damaging high tech units, storms being the most effective AoE spell damage wise, high concentration of AoE and tanky units). I'm suggesting that with the incredible focus on economy which proves to be the best way to win throughout sc2, we have gotten better at holding aggression with incredibly greedy builds and maps have allowed us to also be more economically greedy. With higher economies really early (See: 3 OC before gas, 3 Hatch before gas/lings, CC first openings, Nexus firsting, etc) we see a significantly higher amount of income that Blizz may not have anticipated when originally creating the game in ANY map. Thus allowing us to build more "high tech" units, which favors the races differently than "low tech" units.
Terran domination early in SC2 (afaik, other than cheese) was caused by unit control and the core armies we still see today: Marine siegetank medivac with drops, sieging up the natural, etc. I will also theorize that it was more successful since overall incomes were lower and marines are good units and get their core upgrades fairly quickly in the game. Now that "endgame" is reached faster and faster with higher and higher tier units seeing the field in greater quantities, Z/P are at advantage since their tech is the most offensive and powerful on their own, as opposed to the supplementary based terran highest tech (based on protecting things rather than pure slaughter, raven PDD, Medivacs, BCs, thors)
What's wrong with having a race that's harder to play? BW Terran was also hard as shit to play, but who cares, it's the manly race. It makes winning with it that much more rewarding.
On September 21 2012 14:35 Talack wrote: Terran doesn't need buffs.
Toss/Zerg just need increased micro requirements in-battle (toss is argueable, zerg for sure *cough* infestors *cough*) to give them a higher chance of messing up an engagement like terran and more reward for successful engagements like terran.
Terran skill requirement is just a bit too high at that level!
this is the thing though. everyone claims terran has so much more micro to do etc etc. But its complete crap. no terran matchup comes close in micro requirements to zvz and pvp. protoss and zerg players can micro. Its just in matchups like pvt where the terran bio ball has such high dps its more effective to keep your units together. This is a design point of view where I believe its actually the stimmed marine thats broken, not the other races.
On September 21 2012 14:33 Tachion wrote: Looking more and more like BW, where Terrans complain about how hard they have it while the most dominant and accomplished players in the world are Terran.
Terran was the hardest in BW as well. Mechanically speaking anyways. I don't think terran is really all that much harder to play than the other races in sc2, I just think most people prefer to play a passive style and you just can't do that with terran. You need to be a manly man and bring the heat if you want to play terran well in sc2.
On September 21 2012 13:50 shadowboxer wrote: Really just has to do with Terran's lategame being wildly undiscovered.
Only a handful of Terrans are taking the time to learn the late-game as the only reason to with HotS coming out soon is if you have the potential to win a lot of tournaments before then and most players don't.
another truth. Typical terran players just do the usual builds, falling to the trap of "routine" its getting a bunch of basic units TvZ, marine/tank/medivac/marauder/viking, TvP, MMM/ghost/viking and go aggro and expand until you wear out your opponent, hoping for them to lose their units or crumble under the pressure... Nobody tries to go for the very late game units (Raven/BC/Viking) and a lot of bases and defend instead of the usual expand and aggro... herp derp, most of you just copy the build orders early on and in the late game, you have no idea what you're doing. Just keep making moar units until we lose. I hardly see players who thinks of buying time for the next step... they just keep making more and more marine.... thats just loser, desperado mentality.
On September 21 2012 10:45 Kfcnoob wrote: Terran is definitely unforgiving and requires alot of skill since refined timings and micro are critical for successful play. As you've said, the pro players have no problem with this sort of requirement. However, until high masters most players will not achieve this level of comfort. Is it imbalance? I'm not sure, but its definitely annoying to see protoss in GM league with 70 apm when no terran under 170 could compete at that level.
My god the people who play Terran are just such heros...
But seriously, if you remember there was a time when Terran was dominating and Terrans said it wasn't imbalanced, it was simply that Terran players were just better, and Protoss and Zerg just didn't have anyone like MVP, MMA, MKP or whatever.
And now apparently, those better players are struggling because Protoss (I have yet to hear your explanation for Zerg doing well) is easy mode and this somehow leads to less Terran players?
And what evidence do we actually have that Terran is struggling? Sure Terran isn't winning as much as they used to, but Terran has dominated WOL tournaments up and down (particularly the GSL) from the start. Code S Ro32 this season had 13 Terrans, 10 Protoss and 9 Zergs. And this is happening in a time where Terrans are struggling? Sure Terrans used to have half the players in the GSL, but they certainly aren't doing that poorly...
There are less Terrans on the ladder, because there isn't as many people playing Terran. End of story. It has nothing to do with balance.
If the population is skewed at all levels, it really has nothing to do with balance, and is more an issue that fewer people want to play Terran. Otherwise we'd be seeing Terran represented more highly at lower levels.
That's hardly surprising as terran has been bleeding players long after race distribution evened out and it most likely still dose. The good news is that unless a major drop occurs with either expansion there should be roughly enough players to last next 4 years or so.
One thing about the discussion - you cannot say that a race is not imbalanced and harder to use. Balance means that same amount of effort produces equal results no matter the race.
On September 21 2012 14:57 shogeki wrote: If the population is skewed at all levels, it really has nothing to do with balance, and is more an issue that fewer people want to play Terran. Otherwise we'd be seeing Terran represented more highly at lower levels.
Without claiming that there are definitely big balance issues at play here, that's a pretty silly statement. Why would fewer people want to play terran? Could it perhaps have something to do with balance issues?
On September 21 2012 14:35 Talack wrote: Terran doesn't need buffs.
Toss/Zerg just need increased micro requirements in-battle (toss is argueable, zerg for sure *cough* infestors *cough*) to give them a higher chance of messing up an engagement like terran and more reward for successful engagements like terran.
Terran skill requirement is just a bit too high at that level!
this is the thing though. everyone claims terran has so much more micro to do etc etc. But its complete crap. no terran matchup comes close in micro requirements to zvz and pvp. protoss and zerg players can micro. Its just in matchups like pvt where the terran bio ball has such high dps its more effective to keep your units together. This is a design point of view where I believe its actually the stimmed marine thats broken, not the other races.
On September 21 2012 10:55 dOraWa wrote: It IS a more difficult race to play. When I switched from Zerg, I was mid masters and promptly dropped to low master. It took about 3 months to get back to mid master as Terran, but I'm now considering switching to Protoss because the prospects for Terran look grim and I play the game for fun anyways, not to fight an uphill battle in 2 of the 3 TvX matchups.
I have a crazy theory about this. When you began off racing as terran, it wasnt as good as your main race??! and it took time for it to be as good as your main race???? no way!!
lmao you are grasping at so many straws dude, it's obvious you don't play terran so why don't you switch to find out exactly how hard it is, or just pipe down with your stupid passive-aggressive bullshit about why people should consider T balanced (even though players better than you will say it has underpowered T3 units compared to the other races, and IS harder than the other races)
you just have to look at the statistics and if you aren't smart enough to do that, gtfo
Regardless of the balance of the races Mateshades comment is correct, switching races will make you play at a lower level... which is exactly what happened. You seem to have just jumped down his throat about game imbalance when you could calm down a little bit.
To respond to what you said- It does have the least powerful t3 units and has a higher skill cap than the other units. That being said, I used to main Zerg in masters then started playing terran on second account and I was masters within a week with the race; it's not that hard.
Terran just got so many nerfs and top tier are just too fucking good which screwed most of us up. I originally played Protoss but it too boring and I switched over to Terran. I've found so much fun with it but its just getting harder man.
So funny looking these zergs and protoss trying to defend themselves. Just look at the statistics? In top level maybe they are ok, even though many pros say to buff T, however at levels other than pro, its unbelievably hard to play as T
I think it's a combination of the fact that for the first year or so the races were definitely not evenly distributed, with the majority being terran, so take into account any race switches, players not playing the game anymore and new players coming in choosing zerg or protoss and that contributes to the decline.
But also the fact that T is a much harder race to play at a higher level because of the design of the race. You need to micro to win engagements and be cost efficient and the queue mechanic is also difficult to master.
I speak from experience, I was a GM Zerg that's just hit mid masters on T (took quite a bit of practice, but I enjoy micro, it's so engaging and makes the race so appealing).
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
It's not a 'random' conclusion by any means. Then again, everyone is of course entitled to their own opinion. Personally, I find it a lot more demanding to play than the other 2 races. Also, they're not doing that well in recent tournaments either.
Oh yeah, Terran was popular back in the day you say? Doesn't really impact the situation now at all.
On September 21 2012 12:31 Netsky wrote: Terran is the hardest race to play, that's why you see the least Terran players of any of the three races in GM and Master league.
Why would you repeatedly smash your face against the wall, hurting yourself over and over, when you just switch races or not play the game at all? This attitude is reflected in the racial distribution numbers across all ladders. HotS will make this amplify this situation and it's pretty safe to say that you can expect the Terran player numbers to drop even lower. I don't think anyone would be surprised if we saw a few professional Terran players either change races or quit shortly after HotS.
I'm not sure what the breaking point would be, but maybe Blizzard will give up trying to balance at all and simply remove the race from the game and focus on Protoss and Zerg since no one will be playing Terran at that point.
+1
This is what y'all are forgetting. Y'all are forgetting the psychology of it all. Countless Terrans have quit or changed races due to frustration. People don't like to play a game when the cards are gradually stacking against them. It might not be noble, but it is human nature, and that is what we have been seeing for the past year.
On September 21 2012 10:44 psychotics wrote: it couldnt possibly be that theres just more better zergs in NA then terrans? you know that could never be the case at all, considering most of the NA pros that are popular are zergs? In all seriousness the "this race is harder to play then others" is kinda flawed and wrong way to think. each race has its own skill sets that are required and some people are just better at certain aspects of the game and so a race feels better or worse for them. for example, if someone is really good at counter attacking, flanking, and controlling the map, they probally would not do so well as protoss because protoss cant be played like that similarly if someone is realy good at micro and multitasking and harass zerg is probally not the best race where as terran would be better.
Hasn't this argument been beat to death enough times already? There's really no such thing as what you describe, players don't have the inherent skills like that, it's all just practice.
Thought paterns are skills that are inherent, so actually what i said does exist. SC2 is not all practice it takes certain ways of thinking and approaching the game (problem solving skills, reaction time, mutlitasking, ability to react to presure the list goes on) these are not necessarily learn from hours of practice (while they can be developed). sorry but im not talking about physical skill sets here im talking about mental skills which do exist and are developed in and out of game as well.
On September 21 2012 13:50 shadowboxer wrote: Really just has to do with Terran's lategame being wildly undiscovered.
Only a handful of Terrans are taking the time to learn the late-game as the only reason to with HotS coming out soon is if you have the potential to win a lot of tournaments before then and most players don't.
another truth. Typical terran players just do the usual builds, falling to the trap of "routine" its getting a bunch of basic units TvZ, marine/tank/medivac/marauder/viking, TvP, MMM/ghost/viking and go aggro and expand until you wear out your opponent, hoping for them to lose their units or crumble under the pressure... Nobody tries to go for the very late game units (Raven/BC/Viking) and a lot of bases and defend instead of the usual expand and aggro... herp derp, most of you just copy the build orders early on and in the late game, you have no idea what you're doing. Just keep making moar units until we lose. I hardly see players who thinks of buying time for the next step... they just keep making more and more marine.... thats just loser, desperado mentality.
This is really quite a silly post, no offense. The reason you see so many terrans using the same builds is because all the others have been nerfed, quite literally. Then you mix in the huge sized maps which eliminates even more terrans strategies. Then you mix in the unnecessary queen buff which basically eliminated the final few builds terran had outside of reactor hellion, and you have the current metagame.
You make it sound as if terran players have always been uncreative when it's actually the very opposite, by far Terran has been the most explored race out of the 3. This is also why they have been nerfed the most, at least imo.
At the end of the day, we still see quite a few good games at GSL etc etc. I do personally prefer the older style t v z where there was more action in the early game, but still there are some really good games nonetheless.
The truth is terran does require more apm to play on similar level compared to Z/P this can be frustrating for newer players -> nobod plays terran. Since zerg got ''figured'' out it has become one of the most played races. Also when we are talking about foreigner community there just isnt that much of a role model for T (Tzain,Kas,...?) - if you look at korea its different story. In korea there are not as many good zergs as in EU/NA for example we've seen countless times Scarlett,Stephano,Nerchio,Ret,Dimaga,Sen ... beat code S koreans. What am i getting at is that Terran is more demanding but more rewarding I think anyone here who is high master/gm would agree that beating really good terran or terran PRO is the hardest thing to do(i can speak for zerg).
TvZ: 159 Games 61% winrate TvP 105 Games 47% winrate TvT 87 Games 48% winrate
I think by and large Terran players also play less games. This adds to the ladder having statistically less Terrans. You play less Terran players because less of us are around, and you play less of us because we don't play as many games. From my experience playing all three races I find Terran to be by far the most mentally taxing to play. You have to constantly play extremely fast, your multitasking needs to be on point and you need to be ready to counter power units of your opponent.
I don't think it's a balance issue, it's an interest and fun issue. Terran just isn't very fun to play these days, your options are extremely limited in each matchup. I don't enjoy TvP in any way shape or form, as soon as the game starts I'm on a timer to win. I get regularly trucked over by Zergs when I make a small mistake in my positioning/scouting. TvT is my savior, but I'm lucky if I even get one game of that when I choose to play.
Clearly my winrate shows me that my TvZ is really strong and my TvP is balanced but that doesn't change the frustration of how I lose those games. When I lose a TvT it's usually because I blew the chances I had to come back and rarely is it because my entire army got wiped off the face of the earth in microseconds.
Last thing: These are my feelings and experiences, if you're a Zerg/Protoss player that thinks all Terran are scum and want to bitch about your frustrations in the mu do not target me. Your feelings are your own and totally unrelated to how I feel and why I don't play much anymore.
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
Oh yeah, Terran was popular back in the day you say? Doesn't really impact the situation now at all.
It's an interesting observation is all. Terran representation high = "nope its fine, P and Z players are bad". Terran representation low = "omg its so hard, blizzard please save us"
On the Korean server, overall the zergs are the least played race in Masters and diamond. Grandmasters stats aren't loading correctly, but I would assume the trend carries there as well.
Edit: Least played in every league under them (except plat) as well
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
Oh yeah, Terran was popular back in the day you say? Doesn't really impact the situation now at all.
It's an interesting observation is all. Terran representation high = "nope its fine, P and Z players are bad". Terran representation low = "omg its so hard, blizzard please save us"
Also quite interresting the other way. Terran representation high = " OMFG DEY SO OP NEED NERFS!!!" Terran representation low = " its fine, other races are just more popular. Terran dont know how to lategame bla bla bla bla bla "
If there are less terrans around in every league apart from bronze, I doubt that it has a whole lot to do with some arbitrary difficulty of playing the race. If you play in silver as a terran the game is relatively laid back compared to masters any race.
If I were to jump to a conclusion I would say that blizzard has failed at making the terran race appeal to as many people as zerg or protoss. Appeal could mean a lot of things though. Maybe the community has talked itself into believing terran requires 140 apm in silver league. Wether that is true or not, it certainly puts a dampener on your excitement about playing the race.
Either way, what worries me is that there used to be way more terrans. meaning people played the race and just eventually got tired of it and either quit or swapped races. Again, if this is only in master and GM leagues, it would indicate imbalance, but it isnt. Of course, terran used to be stronger. No matter if they were OP or are now UP, terran used to be stronger, and that is maybe why the race failed to retain some of its players, you dont want to fight in a sinking ship so to speak.
Statistics wise though, those who still do play terran are doing fine, which seems to indicate it is not a weaker race at all. I do not envy the guy (Browder I guess) who is going to have to remedy this somehow without changing the relative strength of the race.
I started playing Zerg on my second account and of course my skill is much lower atm then as T. I also noticed, and that surprised me, that my APM is higher, just a little but still, then while playing T. Maybe because I love to expand and therefore there are plenty of injections to execute
Also what I love while playing as Zerg is ZvT. I still lose a lot of games vs T as Zerg - I am too greedy and Terrans in lower leagues are allining very often xD On the other hand crushing Terrans, if I survive early game is so easy, too easy. Mutalingbaneling is just simply awesome. I understand why so many people are switching.
Although on my main account I am still exclusively Terran. I love playing as Terran - it may have hardest micro, but macro is the easiest.
One possibility: If we assume that there are X percentage of players that switch at any given time, and that WoL started with an excess of Terrans, then there will eventually be a shortage (or at least less) of Terrans.
Example: 5% of each race will switch races every month. Let's say WoL started with 80% Terrans (as an extreme example).
At launch 80% T; 10% Z; 10% P
After one month 5% of 80% Terrans = 16% switch. They go evenly to Z and P 5% of 10% Z and P = 2% switch. They go evenly to T and the other race.
-> Terrans = 80% - 16% + 2% (1% each from Z and P) = 66% -> Zerg = 10% - 2% + 8% + 1% (8% from T, 1% from P) = 17% -> Protoss = 10% - 2% + 8% + 1% (8% from T, 1% from Z) = 17%
And so on. I'm not sure in the long term how this behaves (whether it settles at 33% distribution or goes between extremes - ODE's?), and it's probably not the actual cause, but just putting it out there.
Honestly I'm kinda torn between these theories: 1. Deserved nerfs to Terran meant "launch Terrans" (Terrans in their league because of launch overpoweredness not skill) lost more, perhaps dropped a league and switch en masse because Terran is "harder", when really their skill was just being normalised.
2. Terran is not harder to play than P or Z. Nerfs were deserved, but didn't really affect anything below GM. Master and below Terrans switch en masse because of perceived difficulty and/or weakness because of the constant whining on forums like this.
I like 2 better. Every anecdote I've heard by Random players, or players with multiple accounts suggest to me that there's no difference and that those players can reach the same league with T as they can with P or Z.
On September 21 2012 16:37 Fenris420 wrote: If there are less terrans around in every league apart from bronze, I doubt that it has a whole lot to do with some arbitrary difficulty of playing the race. If you play in silver as a terran the game is relatively laid back compared to masters any race.
If I were to jump to a conclusion I would say that blizzard has failed at making the terran race appeal to as many people as zerg or protoss. Appeal could mean a lot of things though. Maybe the community has talked itself into believing terran requires 140 apm in silver league. Wether that is true or not, it certainly puts a dampener on your excitement about playing the race.
Either way, what worries me is that there used to be way more terrans. meaning people played the race and just eventually got tired of it and either quit or swapped races. Again, if this is only in master and GM leagues, it would indicate imbalance, but it isnt. Of course, terran used to be stronger. No matter if they were OP or are now UP, terran used to be stronger, and that is maybe why the race failed to retain some of its players, you dont want to fight in a sinking ship so to speak.
Statistics wise though, those who still do play terran are doing fine, which seems to indicate it is not a weaker race at all. I do not envy the guy (Browder I guess) who is going to have to remedy this somehow without changing the relative strength of the race.
How are terran players doing fine? There are so many more "good" zergs and toss players in eu/na than terrans. Its pretty ignorant not to agree that zerg is the best race in EU/NA pro level and terran by far weakest. There are only few talented non-koreans who can compete with koreans. So for non-korean progamer terrans it would be wise to change race if hots wasnt coming soon, since blizzard wont balance terran because korean terrans can still win tournaments.
On September 21 2012 16:37 Fenris420 wrote: If there are less terrans around in every league apart from bronze, I doubt that it has a whole lot to do with some arbitrary difficulty of playing the race. If you play in silver as a terran the game is relatively laid back compared to masters any race.
If I were to jump to a conclusion I would say that blizzard has failed at making the terran race appeal to as many people as zerg or protoss. Appeal could mean a lot of things though. Maybe the community has talked itself into believing terran requires 140 apm in silver league. Wether that is true or not, it certainly puts a dampener on your excitement about playing the race.
Either way, what worries me is that there used to be way more terrans. meaning people played the race and just eventually got tired of it and either quit or swapped races. Again, if this is only in master and GM leagues, it would indicate imbalance, but it isnt. Of course, terran used to be stronger. No matter if they were OP or are now UP, terran used to be stronger, and that is maybe why the race failed to retain some of its players, you dont want to fight in a sinking ship so to speak.
Statistics wise though, those who still do play terran are doing fine, which seems to indicate it is not a weaker race at all. I do not envy the guy (Browder I guess) who is going to have to remedy this somehow without changing the relative strength of the race.
Agreed.
I do believe Terran will get their mojo back. With HotS still being pretty raw, the removal of Warhound, continual changes on widow mine, losing player base; they're gonna have to do something and I have a feeling its gonna be pretty interesting.
On September 21 2012 16:37 Fenris420 wrote: If there are less terrans around in every league apart from bronze, I doubt that it has a whole lot to do with some arbitrary difficulty of playing the race. If you play in silver as a terran the game is relatively laid back compared to masters any race.
If I were to jump to a conclusion I would say that blizzard has failed at making the terran race appeal to as many people as zerg or protoss. Appeal could mean a lot of things though. Maybe the community has talked itself into believing terran requires 140 apm in silver league. Wether that is true or not, it certainly puts a dampener on your excitement about playing the race.
Either way, what worries me is that there used to be way more terrans. meaning people played the race and just eventually got tired of it and either quit or swapped races. Again, if this is only in master and GM leagues, it would indicate imbalance, but it isnt. Of course, terran used to be stronger. No matter if they were OP or are now UP, terran used to be stronger, and that is maybe why the race failed to retain some of its players, you dont want to fight in a sinking ship so to speak.
Statistics wise though, those who still do play terran are doing fine, which seems to indicate it is not a weaker race at all. I do not envy the guy (Browder I guess) who is going to have to remedy this somehow without changing the relative strength of the race.
How are terran players doing fine? There are so many more "good" zergs and toss players in eu/na than terrans. Its pretty ignorant not to agree that zerg is the best race in EU/NA pro level and terran by far weakest. There are only few talented non-koreans who can compete with koreans. So for non-korean progamer terrans it would be wise to change race if hots wasnt coming soon, since blizzard wont balance terran because korean terrans can still win tournaments.
You answered it yourself, "there are so many more "good" zergs and toss players in eu/na than Terrans." When Protoss only had very few good players (MC representing it for many months at a time, alone) people still knew Protoss was hella strong. Just because people play other Races or have more good players doesn't mean they're worse; just less appealing, perhaps.
On September 21 2012 16:37 Fenris420 wrote: If there are less terrans around in every league apart from bronze, I doubt that it has a whole lot to do with some arbitrary difficulty of playing the race. If you play in silver as a terran the game is relatively laid back compared to masters any race.
If I were to jump to a conclusion I would say that blizzard has failed at making the terran race appeal to as many people as zerg or protoss. Appeal could mean a lot of things though. Maybe the community has talked itself into believing terran requires 140 apm in silver league. Wether that is true or not, it certainly puts a dampener on your excitement about playing the race.
Either way, what worries me is that there used to be way more terrans. meaning people played the race and just eventually got tired of it and either quit or swapped races. Again, if this is only in master and GM leagues, it would indicate imbalance, but it isnt. Of course, terran used to be stronger. No matter if they were OP or are now UP, terran used to be stronger, and that is maybe why the race failed to retain some of its players, you dont want to fight in a sinking ship so to speak.
Statistics wise though, those who still do play terran are doing fine, which seems to indicate it is not a weaker race at all. I do not envy the guy (Browder I guess) who is going to have to remedy this somehow without changing the relative strength of the race.
How are terran players doing fine? There are so many more "good" zergs and toss players in eu/na than terrans. Its pretty ignorant not to agree that zerg is the best race in EU/NA pro level and terran by far weakest. There are only few talented non-koreans who can compete with koreans. So for non-korean progamer terrans it would be wise to change race if hots wasnt coming soon, since blizzard wont balance terran because korean terrans can still win tournaments.
Well that's the rub isn't it. Everyone draws their line somewhere. For some, we should balance around Korean pros (GSL). You want balance on all pros. Some people call inbalance at Diamond. Where should you draw the line? It's not an easy question to agree on.
As a high master Terran, things have been looking kind of bleak for us ever since the queen patch. Whenever I get pitted against another Terran I'm like "wow, there are other terrans too??".
Different skill floors. To make masters+ with Terran takes more effort/skill/practice than the other races.
A hypothetical test: All diamond+ Z and T players switch from their respective races.
Hypothesis: Most Terran player will reach and surpass their previous rank as a Terran and will do so quickly. Most Zerg players will struggle to reach their previous rank as Zerg and will do so at a slower rate. This would indicate different skill floors for all races.
I would love for something like this to occur. This is just my opinion.
Please look up "confound". Your own post says that Terran is underrepresented in the ladder at all levels. This does not point to imbalance. This points to people not playing Terran, not people losing with Terran...
The proportion of races in the ladders might mean racial imbalance, but i think the win ratio might be a more accurate gauge.
The proportion of people playing certain races at various leagues might show the popularity of the race as opposed to the edge the race has over the others.
I think part of the reason some people might have decided to play zerg is to prep for HOTS cos the new zerg units seem more attractive to work with rather than the terren new units. New Protoss HOTS units also seem more fun. For Terrens, they just beefed up the Mech arsenal IMO.
On September 21 2012 16:45 BoxingKangaroo wrote: One possibility: If we assume that there are X percentage of players that switch at any given time, and that WoL started with an excess of Terrans, then there will eventually be a shortage (or at least less) of Terrans.
Example: ....
Honestly I'm kinda torn between these theories: 1. Deserved nerfs to Terran meant "launch Terrans" (Terrans in their league because of launch overpoweredness not skill) lost more, perhaps dropped a league and switch en masse because Terran is "harder", when really their skill was just being normalised.
2. Terran is not harder to play than P or Z. Nerfs were deserved, but didn't really affect anything below GM. Master and below Terrans switch en masse because of perceived difficulty and/or weakness because of the constant whining on forums like this.
I like 2 better. Every anecdote I've heard by Random players, or players with multiple accounts suggest to me that there's no difference and that those players can reach the same league with T as they can with P or Z.
I think it is mostly a thing of mindset. It's just hard to be in the race that is constantly nerfed (deserved nerfs or not doesn't matter at all). It just feels a little bit like Blizzard is against Terran. This is the first problem of playing Terran: It seems like everyone else is against Terran. The forums still hate on Terran players because of the time when Terran was really OP in early WoL. Blizz is nerfing Terran. Feels like the world hates Terran.
The second reason is more a thing of game design. Terran loses very easily to Storm and Fungal when doing just one wrong move. Protoss and Zerg do lose as well when doing one wrong move (exactly the same as Terran) but it doesn't look so obvious because the armies of Zerg and Toss don't disappear that fast, while Terran armies just explode to Fungal+Banelings or to Storm. This is not meant as imbalance whine because as I said, Zerg and Toss lose exactly the same way, the difference is just the look of it. A Protoss army doing a wrong step and dying to a huge flank still doesn't disappear as fast as a bunch of Marine-Marauder walking into 3-4 Storms.
So after all there is a different feel to Terran. It feels so much more frustrating, even though it is not that different from other races.
These two problems make a lot of Terran players feel worse when losing. And since you'll always lose around 50% of your games this can take away the fun of playing. So players switch to Zerg or Protoss who are not easier to play but feel easier to play.
Even though GM might be a bit skewed: "You actually have to go all the way down to bronze league to find terran cracking 30% of the population." You already answered your own question, a lot less people play terran these days, probably because it's seen as a weaker race, when P was winning a lot, it was ZvP aaaaall day long. As soon as terrans start bashing faces again people will show up.
the warhound would have solved all these problems easily, because it would have dragged terran down to the other races, fair, but not desirable, desirable would have been changes to chargelot/archon/colossus/infestor/broodlord, because having to warpin/inject once a while does not justify how easy to use these units are.
on the other hand, i get more "gg"s every season, being treated like an endangered species sure is nice =)
On September 21 2012 10:34 blade55555 wrote: I imagine this has been the case on NA with zerg being mostly in GM for the past 6 months and will probably not change until hots.
On korea I think it's a lot more even and I actually don't know about EU. But can't judge racial balance on just GM, especially on the NA ladder
Excellent point, I don't know why I didn't think to check the other ladders. Here's what they look like-
Korea GM: zerg 37.4%, protoss 34.5%, terran 28.2% Korea masters: zerg 27.6%, protoss 33.3%, terran 34.3%, random 4.8%
Europe GM: zerg 37.3%, protoss 36.7%, terran 24.9%, random 1.2% (random GMs, pretty sick) Europe masters: zerg 35.3%, protoss 35.1%, terran 25.5%, random 4%
SEA GM: zerg 32.4%, protoss 38.1%, terran 25.9%, random 3.6% SEA masters: zerg 32.2%, protoss 32.2%, terran 30.7%, random 5%
China GM: zerg 39.3%, protoss 32.5%, terran 24.8%, random 3.4% China masters: zerg 31.9%, protoss 34.3%, terran 28.2%, random 5.6%
Looks like the results are pretty similar with the exception of Korea... a place known to have higher overall skill levels, so that the skill requirements of terran aren't as much of a drawback. But even there the GM league is low on terrans.
Of course, looking at races used on ladders is a horrible way to determine game balance... tournament competition is one of the best ways, and it's looking pretty even there.
And I couldn't agree more with Bippzy's post... there's nothing wrong with having a race that's tougher to learn but has the most potential if played very skillfully.
In fact i am pretty sure there is something wrong with it. Every player who installed SC2 and decided " I am a terran " ... will have to play better than the other guys to play an equal game. Just because there are Koreans who are masters at control, they will nerf terran, till you got a "balanced game" ... but i am pretty sure, that the best players chose T as their race when installing SC2. I have no proof for this, but i honestly think that MKP MVP Taeja etc. they are just better than DRG Nestea Puzzle etc.
What i am trying to say, as soon as terran wins, terran gets nerfed. Without putting into consideration that terran is much harder than other races. So they have no other way than to nerf, cause the other races can not respond by playing better, cause their race does not give them the option to (or at least they think so). Im sure if MKP or MVP would play Z or P they would rock the world.
I think they did a good step in HOTS by adding the warhound. Because it makes the skill you need to play T more equivalent to the other races. .... but they scrapped the warhound ... so back to basic.
One story to proof it: I played Master top 5 Terran, switched to Protoss, and did not loose ranking !!!! Think about this ...
On September 21 2012 16:37 Fenris420 wrote: Statistics wise though, those who still do play terran are doing fine, which seems to indicate it is not a weaker race at all. I do not envy the guy (Browder I guess) who is going to have to remedy this somehow without changing the relative strength of the race.
This also shows how terrans are performing worse than their fellow zerg and protoss players. So even if the case was that the were less terrans, they still do perform worse.
On September 21 2012 17:31 stillborn wrote:What i am trying to say, as soon as terran wins, terran gets nerfed. Without putting into consideration that terran is much harder than other races. So they have no other way than to nerf, cause the other races can not respond by playing better, cause their race does not give them the option to (or at least they think so). Im sure if MKP or MVP would play Z or P they would rock the world..
I actually believe this is false. Other races have become unexpectedly stronger than planned due to shifts in metagame and development of that race. Both zerg and protoss have learnt how to better play their race, WHILST being buffed by blizzard through patches. So in fact, blizzard buffed a race that was being played improperly, but has now been figured out, thus rendering the buff unnecessary and just overpowering that race.
I personally believe, the biggest problem is the macro at lower levels. Supplyblocks and idletime on the production buildings are common mistakes in the lower leagues. However while protoss can warpin units and chronoboosting the gateways to have the second round faster and while zerg can just use up their 30 larva to make 60 lings or 30 roaches the terran doesn´t have the ability to suddenly make a lot of units at once. Terran has the slowest production of all races, that´s why mistakes like getting supplyblocked or forgetting to add additional production buildings really hurt the game at lower leagues. In addition to this everyone is watching players like mvp, mkp or taeja at the highest level microing and multitasking the hell out of their units to win aggainst the other races, which makes them think that they have to do the same in order to win which leads to the mentioned macro mistakes.
So, in my opinion there has to be some kind of mentally change in the lower leagues, which will automatically lead to more wins for terrans and then increase the ratio of terrans again. I just remeber myself getting into masters league without much multitasking. It just was direct engagements over and over until the game ended.
I dont think people should really be complaining below masters in the first place. Im starting to play and break into low masters, and like 4 out of 5 zerg dont even scout me between the ~3 and 10 minute mark. They wonder why they lose like 70% of the time, and most of my losses are due to me messing up something stupid like failing to see speed/drop overlords until they have been in my vision for several seconds during an all in, or forgetting warpgate and not noticing the 50/50 floating in bank because i wasnt planning to chrono cyber core for a little while with that opening.
On the other hand all the protosses i face are terrible as well and i have an even higher winrate ZvP even though ive played 15x as many games as protoss because stephano style with decent macro and good scouting will destroy anyone who doesnt play to the standards of a masters player.
Terran mid/late game is tricky, but ending games before the 12 minute mark as a goal, i find it no more difficult to play than P or Z (and actuly more forgiving if you play marine heavy and can micro properly), and it also gives more easy wins.
All in all i am still a horrible player by global standards, but even at this level, people complaining of imbalance of judging their opponents by it (as i get flamed in most of my wins) is just stupid, from people who cant accept that there might be anything wrong with THEM and seek an outside source to blame
I only chose Zerg because it was considered the weakest and only 25% or so used Zerg at release 2 years ago if I remember correctly. I wanted to use the weakest to beat the other 2. Recent strong Zerg presense makes me sad. Maybe I gotta switch to Terran then. It's fun only because your race is considered weak..
I personally know two people that switched from Terran to Zerg.
The first person was diamond switched at the beginning of 2011, so you could wonder about the overall level of play back then. The second person switched at the end of 2011 and was diamond as well. Both players pretty much laughed at how easy zerg is, and kept saying how they could play the game very laid back (or something around those lines). Each of them individually also said how easy ZvZ was. How they didnt really looe ZvZ.
I do not know if Terran is really harder, but it does seem like Terran is the most frustrating to play. Very easy to lose everything in a split second and such. Blizzard also stated that they wanted to give terrans better A-move units.
Make from it what you will, but my experience is that people dont abandon terran purely because the rase is less appealing.
On September 21 2012 17:56 Cyro wrote: I dont think people should really be complaining below masters in the first place. Im starting to play and break into low masters, and like 4 out of 5 zerg dont even scout me between the ~3 and 10 minute mark. They wonder why they lose like 70% of the time, and most of my losses are due to me messing up something stupid or playing 10 minutes after waking up.
On the other hand all the protosses i face are terrible and i have an even higher winrate ZvP even though ive played 15x as many games as protoss because stephano style with decent macro and good scouting will destroy anyone who doesnt play to the standards of a masters player.
Terran mid/late game is tricky, but ending games before the 12 minute mark as a goal, i find it no more difficult to play than P or Z, and it also gives more easy wins.
Sort of glad I'm not the only one that feels this way lol.
terran sucks, it is much much much harder to play than z / p. there's really only a handful of top korean terrans that are really fast/smart enough to hold their own against the best zergs.
TvP is fine tho imo :D just TvZ sucks really hard, need 300 apm to beat a 200 apm zerg
This is because of Blzzards way of balancing: make fancy, overpowered units, so that everybody uses them, then nerf them until they are fair.
the problem with current z is that it is way too easy to get to the lategame 3hatch is a legit strategy on some maps, wtf.... zergs only need to amove, then the terran has to micro like mma to be able to compete. this may be possible at pro level, and maybe it is good that it is balanced there, but at masters level playing z is just too easy and very frustrating for t players.
On September 21 2012 18:01 ROOTdrewbie wrote: terran sucks, it is much much much harder to play than z / p. there's really only a handful of top korean terrans that are really fast/smart enough to hold their own against the best zergs.
TvP is fine tho imo :D just TvZ sucks really hard, need 300 apm to beat a 200 apm zerg
APM is a horrible method of describing multitasking, hand speed or micro ability, my APM is inflated by more than 50% when playing zerg as opposed to protoss and there are many many more arguments against it. If you are not taking redundant actions into account, it is even worse
I played zerg for over a year. About 4 months ago I switched to random or just picking one of the 3 races whichever I feel like playing.
My opinion is that terran is the hardest race to learn and play effectively. I feel this might be partly due to the 2 quite different styles you "must" play vs P and vs Z and T. Overall, the key unit vs toss is ghost, and the key unit vs T and Z is the tank. Using ghosts differs greatly from using tanks and for both styles, 2 control groups are pretty much required. To do well you must stim as well as, preferably pre-battle, have your tanks sieged correctly or land EMPs somewhat correctly.
Compare this to toss and zerg, where basically 1 control group for everything and A-move works relatively well up to a point. You can also have infestors and templars in the same control group with your main army (even though you really shouldn't) and relatively easily use your spells after A-moving everything. And there is no stim on toss or zerg.
Basically the overall style of play and especially micro is not so drastically different when facing different races as toss or zerg.
Generally if race X is easier than race Y, more people are going to play race X.
Using ghosts differs greatly from using tanks and for both styles, 2 control groups are pretty much required.
If you are not using 2 or more control groups you should be working on mechanics instead of complaining of imbalance ಠ_ಠ
It should really be more widespread to use a system like this for protoss, IMO, but whatever you are doing, with any race and pretty much any style, there is use for more than 1 control group.
(1) Blobbed anti ground units with 2.25 speed, zealots, immortals, archons, colossi etc + sentries
(2) Stalkers (AA, 2.91 speed, almost all else is 2.25)
(3) Just Colossi, for manual control, pulling away or focus firing etc
(4) Templar that are with army
^ PvT.
That way you have 1fgx for sentry spells, 2 for stalker control and blink, 4tf for templar spells, and no overlap with either casters, or massively differing move speeds.
On September 21 2012 18:11 gengka wrote: THORZAIN!! KAS!! DEMUSLIM!! QXC!! (damn how come i feel so weak even though i shouted the names out in capital letters?)
On September 21 2012 18:11 gengka wrote: THORZAIN!! KAS!! DEMUSLIM!! QXC!! (damn how come i feel so weak even though i shouted the names out in capital letters?)
I main random, and find it much much harder to play tvz than zvt. The fact that terran used to be the most played race and is now the least, along with the fact that T is over represented in bronze and under represented in masters/gm pretty strongly suggests imbalance. I really hope they get more than one new unit (and a transformation) in hots. Dark days for Terran atm. Anecdotally, all but one of my IRL terran friends have quit or changed races.
That said theres also an argument T might be popular in bronze since its the most cheese proof.
Using ghosts differs greatly from using tanks and for both styles, 2 control groups are pretty much required.
If you are not using 2 or more control groups you should be working on mechanics instead of complaining of imbalance ಠ_ಠ
I'm not complaining of imbalance, sorry if it came across like that. I think the races are fine balance-wise.
I do use several control groups for army control. But basically in my opinion, due to tanks and ghosts being so different and essentially requiring 2 control groups to use effectively even at a lower level, terran is harder to learn and this might be a factor as to why there are less terran. I think the basic micro required to do well as toss or zerg is easier than terran.
The thing i can see here, is that the representation of the terrans are nearly the same on all lvls. Yeah the lower lvls don't matter, but that's beside the point now...
So that means, that the skill lvl stays the same, because if terran would be harder to play on higher lvl, then there would be less terrans on the top lvl, and not just a few less, we talk about statistics. You also want to look at the average person and not some super human beings like "Flash". Flash is someone out of the statistics, because his winrates are too damn high.
So you want to look at each player independently of his skill, because you want to analyze the stats among ther races.
If someone switches, it can be because of a better suited playstyle, some new units, boredom, and many more...
There is no way you can determine race changes in a single season. It doesnt make any sense. You can check each player among the top players, when they changed and for how long, but the reason is still in their brains, and that cant be written down, you can just speculate.
And finally, one of the main reason why the koreans "play better" is that they first search errors they made before they search errors on the enemy. It's simple to blame someone else if you lose, but keep in mind that you are the one who chosoe to play "your race", if you see some problems while playing, then fix them. If you see that your build doesnt work, then refine it. If you see that you cant win a single game if the enemy does no mistake, then you're already depending on a mistake that the enemy does, which will never bring you on a top lvl.
First of all, look that you tried as many builds as possible and mastered those builds. If you didnt, then you didnt do your job properly. What do you think the pros do?
And last but not least: All-Ins are builds too, even if they are said that "they require less skill"...
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
After 300 nerfs, terran became harder to play. I even stopped playing sc2 completely ( Need to get a new pc to be able to play at 200/200...One base things are almost impossible to pull out these days...I had mb 70% wr TvT but against Z and P.... Z mb 20% and P 30% ). I go on on a one base timing...I have to do crazy split marines and micro with stuff against zerg who merely has to send attack move on my units and everything dies ( unless I do decent splits and micro ). I loose with about 130 eapm while the dude has about 60 ... Cmon...... And I don't senslessly spam. I know it's more about the brains in sc2 rather than mechanics compared to how bw was.. I remember in ICCup about 5 years ago I could fool all protoss with sick vulture tank micro early on....I mean cmon.... Goody defeated MMA in a bo3 at MLG.
Terran is the race that takes forever to master but if you do it's very hard to lose. The micro bots demonstrate that with things like 1 marine and 1 medivac > ultra. Now I know that no-one will ever be able to do what the bots do but terran can definately do the most with their units given enough apm and skill. The race is played less because the majority of the players would rather play a race thats easier to get the most out of their units because it's just a casual game for them. In Korea lots of people want to be progamers and thus focus on trying to perfect terran.
I played random for a long time and then chose Terran. The race is so fragile but has super high DPS. This is great for killing structures, but means that you can lose your army in an instant with one wrong move. Discovering safe build orders has been the most difficult part for me, especially considering T can't build static defenses without eating up supply.
On September 21 2012 11:57 -_- wrote: Nobody chooses their race based on balance. Nobody switches their race based on balance. You just choose whatever looks coolest to you.
What do you know about that? I switched to Protoss from Terran because TvP is just silly. It was the same for Jaedong when he started playing Zerg, he had problems vs Zerg as Terran so he switched. A lot of players witch race bacause of balance.
On September 21 2012 18:50 creamyturtle wrote: I played random for a long time and then chose Terran. The race is so fragile but has super high DPS. This is great for killing structures, but means that you can lose your army in an instant with one wrong move. Discovering safe build orders has been the most difficult part for me, especially considering T can't build static defenses without eating up supply.
On September 21 2012 10:33 monkybone wrote: Terran is the hardest race, thus underrepresented. But I believe it does have the same potential as the other races though, it's just harder to utilize.
I agree, not to say other races are easy, but less forgiving in some aspects and have the option of being passive vT, while T cannot be. IMHO, this is why NA/EU players gravitate away from T, while KR is much better represented - T just seems to require a bit more multitask than the other races.
On September 21 2012 10:33 monkybone wrote: Terran is the hardest race, thus underrepresented. But I believe it does have the same potential as the other races though, it's just harder to utilize.
I agree, not to say other races are easy, but less forgiving in some aspects and have the option of being passive vT, while T cannot be. IMHO, this is why NA/EU players gravitate away from T, while KR is much better represented - T just seems to require a bit more multitask than the other races.
So the best thing to do would be to add multitask units to p/z and a move to t, which is partly what theyve done. It seems like so much of the games balancing is based on the marine, the colossi and force fields
its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
If you use solid builds, do not mess up engagements and most importantly macro well, you will do fine, right? Well, for zerg and protoss you probably will. That goes for terran too, but as terran have to take charge of the game and make it go where you want it. That is at least my feeling as a random player, and is my reasoning why fewer terrans are at the top of the ladder, it is just hard to do that.
On September 21 2012 13:50 shadowboxer wrote: Really just has to do with Terran's lategame being wildly undiscovered.
Only a handful of Terrans are taking the time to learn the late-game as the only reason to with HotS coming out soon is if you have the potential to win a lot of tournaments before then and most players don't.
actaully I think late game Terran is all worked out by lots and lots of players pros and below the question is not what to do late game its how to get there
getting to a late game comp in TVT and TVZ is slow process
so many game you see atm Terran moves out about the 12 - 14 min mark vs zerg at which point the zerg if no real damage has been done to them which in most cases it has not are ready for BL or ultra's and are happy to give up supply while slowing the push by the time Terran gets to the base of the zerg with Bio or tank bio and finds BL infestor or ultra infestor and has to pull back or loses his army
switching early mid game army for late game army is hard to do for Terran in TvT and TvZ as you need lot of bases and it hard to defend them well if your trading supply for a later game units
in TvP I have no idea how you switch at all death balls are so scary
don't get me wrong I am not saying late game army is not good for Terran vs P or Z its just hard to get there without going super turtle on 3 base in which case they will both mass expand cause neither race has the fear that Terrans have late game of the other races and on 3 base Terran has pretty much a 1 time army once it dies thats game
Terran is not the hardest race to play, They just were so dominate in the beginning of the game the other races pretty much know how to counter all their builds. We haven't seen any real new interesting Terran play in the past couple months excluding Taeja.
I have noticed this as a big problem as well in the High Master area on NA I face no Terrans. 3 out of 50 games this season, I was waiting for a post like this because I found it quite alarming as well. Also hearing all the Current Terran players dislike for HOTS changes make me even more worried. Look at WCS world finals we have what 5 Terrans maybe 6 if a non Korean Terran can squeeze it out of WCS Asia finals.
Maybe it is balance or lack of innovation or a number of other things but something needs to be done. Kind of need 3 races in Starcraft.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
you need a subscription for WoW, and Counterstrike everyone plays the same race that's why it's balanced.
I used to play WoW too and there are classes that are certainly underpowered in PvP (shaman) so it's the same thing that plague all blizz games.
I didn't know that we measure game balance by how many are playing a specific race. Seems to me that people grab on to whatever they find to try to construct arguments about game balance. Why look at a derivative statistic (at best) of game balance when the cold data (win ratios) are publically available?
It was expected considering how many personalities for example zerg have compared to terran. Stephano, Idra, Destiny, Sheth, Ret... all with something special and good streams. Zerg was always dominating streams and popularity. Zerg was designed to be loved, winning came much later.
On September 21 2012 19:48 Tuczniak wrote: It was expected considering how many personalities for example zerg have compared to terran. Stephano, Idra, Destiny, Sheth, Ret... all with something special and good streams. Zerg was always dominating streams and popularity. Zerg was designed to be loved, winning came much later.
you mean it JUST so happens that those people picked Zerg and it JUST happens that they stream alot.
how was Zerg designed to be "loved"? cuter units? whattt?
I think terran is very unflexible race so it is very prone to being countered. This is the main reason why terran play requires timing pushes. And maps get bigger while players get better at reacting to timing pushes. Also allins and timing pushes are boring to use so terrans lose interest in the game.
I definitely believe Terran is the hardest race to play right now. Against toss, I feel like if I dont end the game before 12 minutes or so I have little chance unless the other guy screws up badly. P gets upgrades faster, then add in chronoboost and it is a huge hole to climb out of. Even starting upgrades earlier, and hitting one after the other, I am usually no better than even. Once P hits his 4-5 collosus and archon/storm (not hard to do if he turtles) he can just amove across the map while I need to be: stutter stepping bio, emp/snipe templar, maneuver vikings. Which is harder?
Against zerg, get fungal growthed once and lose your army to an amove. Worth noting is that since every terran unit except hellion has a special or spell that is essential to its proper use, controlling properly is more complicated than most z or p comps. This is compounded by terrans smaller margin of error. Make a single mistake, and huge chunks disappear for next to no gain.
Terran is slower to switch army comps, and so is very vulnerable to zergs 1 building hard tech switches (BL into ultra, vice versa) or protoss robo to templar, which also takes just one building (I dont count the twilight since you get it anyways). It is much harder, and takes much longer, for Terran to render a big chunk of a p or z army into dead supply (marauders v bls, viking v ultra, viking v archon/templar).
Mules are supposed to be so OP, but I would rather have faster, permanant workers, and earlier. Especially since some of those mules get burned as scans. Yeah, in the late game its a lot of minerals, but marines melt.
Its not impossible to win, and I dont necessarily think the game is imbalanced, but I dont think its far fetched to say that playing T well takes a bit more these days. I like the challenge, but it can be very frustrating to listen to shit talking when some guy barely holds on and gets his herp derp amove tech.
The only real question here is why you would play a bunch of boringass space marines when you can be races that represents the peak of physical or intellectual capability!
You just have to be "better" to compete with Terran against other races on a amateur level. You need better mechanics and the race is just the most unforgiving. It was the same in BW. You didn't see many really good foreign T's because you had to be so good to reach like ~B rank and higher, while it was alot easier with say Protoss because macro and hotkeying was really simple and just the overall mechanics was alot easier to get away with. And there was alooooooooot of Protoss players in the foreigner scene back then.
And just like in sc2 you would fear korean terrans and look at them like if they were gods because you knew the amount of skill they had to sit on if they were so high ranked and was part of famous clans, practice partners to Proleague teams or progamers.
Well, i'm sorry, but i consider imbalance at non-top level absurd. I consider terran to be the hardest race to be good at, but the best race when played well. Demanding that all races have the same 'overall skill'-'race skill' relation (something like that doesn't exist, but suppose overall skill was determinable and projectible to 1 dimension; same for race skill), is impossible without making the races the same. So i think you're whining in a way, namely when you connect the number of people playing a race to balance.
On September 21 2012 19:48 Tuczniak wrote: It was expected considering how many personalities for example zerg have compared to terran. Stephano, Idra, Destiny, Sheth, Ret... all with something special and good streams. Zerg was always dominating streams and popularity. Zerg was designed to be loved, winning came much later.
you mean it JUST so happens that those people picked Zerg and it JUST happens that they stream alot.
how was Zerg designed to be "loved"? cuter units? whattt?
I don't know why Destiny chose Z, he doesn't play good, he doesn't win, but he is interesting personality. Why the most mannered guy (Sheth), the most BM/ragequit guy (IdrA) chose Z? who knows? They have chosen Z in beta or early start, no connection to balance today. Also reason for choosing race are usually very subjective and random.
Usually when someone new to SC2 or some child look at SC2, they like zerg. Especially banelings. Why? ask them.
Well, it's not a surprise for me. I play both Protoss and Terran at top diamond level. Here are some stats from Sc2Gears:
Number of games played: Terran - 127, Protoss - 79 Average APM: Terran - 208, Protoss - 122 Average EAPM: Terran - 138, Protoss - 71 Win ratio in TvP/PvT: Terran - 52%, Protoss -74% Win ratio in mirror matchup: Terran - 51%, Protoss - 43% Win ratio vs Z: Terran - 49%, Protoss - 52% Average win ratio across all matchups: Terran - 51%, Protoss - 59%
What is also worth noticing, that I pretty much don't know any build order for Protoss after 5 minute mark. In PvZ i just go for FFE and try to place 3rd asap, in PvT I go Nexus first Oz style (with Forge and cannons after nexus), then I just do whatever, if I don't die in early game, I win pretty much no matter what I transition into. In PvP I go for 3 gate robo.
As a Terran, I've got at least 2-3 build orders per matchup, depending on the map. I can execute them perfectly, yet I struggle a lot more than when I play Protoss. Even though, I prefer Terran, because it's much more challenging, and it gives me much more satisfaction when I win. Protoss is more of a one-hand relax race. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that if I put as much work in my Protoss as I did in Terran, I'd get to top Masters in a month. It's just so boring compared to Terran.
In my opinion Terran is the race that has the most beautiful and complex strategies and micro possibilities of the three, making it better in the hands of the absolute top players. But because of this it is also by far the hardest to play, so much can go wrong and you need to be on top of your game every single second.
This must be very frustrating to anyone who is not a Code S player, which is people who play on the ladder.
On September 21 2012 19:43 theJob wrote: I didn't know that we measure game balance by how many are playing a specific race. Seems to me that people grab on to whatever they find to try to construct arguments about game balance. Why look at a derivative statistic (at best) of game balance when the cold data (win ratios) are publically available?
You do realize that Match Making will give you 50% winrate, unless you are gm and in gm most of the players have like 55%-60% winrate and top players have more. So better player playing worse race will have same winrate than worse player playing better race. But ofcourse we cant measure what makes a player better. Only way to measure race balance and player skill is that every pro starts playing random and then after total of 1000000 random games played we can see how did each race perform.
To be honest I really really love the situation right now. For me this has been kind of a positive development, just because my TvT sucks balls.
my winratio is so much better now than it was 5 months ago. (although it might have something to do with me going back to Broodwar for this time, which appears to have doubled my mechanical skills).
I personally like that terran is having a hard time atm, tbh it's not that bad when 1.5 came out but still. It feels better when you win.
There's also the problem of no good EU/US terrans. Kas sometimes show some brilliance but it's not enough. Happy is just a one trick pony, always plays the same. Lucifron has showed some good games, but I doubt it he'll continue to.
On September 21 2012 20:10 sCuMBaG wrote: To be honest I really really love the situation right now. For me this has been kind of a positive development, just because my TvT sucks balls.
my winratio is so much better now than it was 5 months ago. (although it might have something to do with me going back to Broodwar for this time, which appears to have doubled my mechanical skills).
Yes that's a good way to look at it, back when zerg was underpowered for nearly 10 months wins meant more and it forced you to refine your play as much as possible. There is a certain appeal to play the "underdog" race.
Think of it in this way, once patches get in action and balance is restored your hard-earned skills will make you rise faster.
On September 21 2012 20:14 Andr3 wrote: I personally like that terran is having a hard time atm, tbh it's not that bad when 1.5 came out but still. It feels better when you win.
There's also the problem of no good EU/US terrans. Kas sometimes show some brilliance but it's not enough. Happy is just a one trick pony, always plays the same. Lucifron has showed some good games, but I doubt it he'll continue to.
Saying "no good [insert race] in [insert continent]" is getting really old and its stupid. Did you know about slivko, vortix or sortof 6months ago? Propably not. Suddendly they got "good" and old "good" terrans stopped being good, for example strelok, cloud, naama, sjow and many others.
IMO Terran is the most difficult race to play late game for these reasons:
1) Terran produces units in the worst way. Lots of Barracks, Factories, or Starports. Zerg gets to make one tech building and they can pop 20 muta, roach, infestor, ulta, etc at once from just their mining bases and a macro hatch. Protoss can max out and wait for cooldown on gateways and instantly repopulate their armies. They also have chrono.
What this means is that Terran is stuck in whatever tech path they choose. If Terran has 10 barracks he can't just switch to 10 factories or starports. There is not enough resources, space, or time, or upgrades.
Z can change army composition on a whim, P can as well to a lesser extent. T is stuck with whatever.
2) Terran battle micro is harder. This is an undeniable fact. Z/P is very 1a + spellcaster, maybe blink or burrow or focus fire. Terran has to split their army to avoid AoE. Has to stim and stutter. Has to siege. Has to cloak shee. Has to EMP/Snipe.
Terran has much more to do in battles, and therefore has more chances to lose their squishy armies if they mess up even one of the micro scenarios I mention.
On September 21 2012 20:14 Andr3 wrote: I personally like that terran is having a hard time atm, tbh it's not that bad when 1.5 came out but still. It feels better when you win.
There's also the problem of no good EU/US terrans. Kas sometimes show some brilliance but it's not enough. Happy is just a one trick pony, always plays the same. Lucifron has showed some good games, but I doubt it he'll continue to.
Saying "no good [insert race] in [insert continent]" is getting really old and its stupid. Did you know about slivko, vortix or sortof 6months ago? Propably not. Suddendly they got "good" and old "good" terrans stopped being good, for example strelok, cloud, naama, sjow and many others.
funny all those names popped out after the queen patch
Korea GM: zerg 37.4%, protoss 34.5%, terran 28.2% Korea masters: zerg 27.6%, protoss 33.3%, terran 34.3%, random 4.8%+
Europe GM: zerg 37.3%, protoss 36.7%, terran 24.9%, random 1.2% (random GMs, pretty sick) Europe masters: zerg 35.3%, protoss 35.1%, terran 25.5%, random 4%
SEA GM: zerg 32.4%, protoss 38.1%, terran 25.9%, random 3.6% SEA masters: zerg 32.2%, protoss 32.2%, terran 30.7%, random 5%
China GM: zerg 39.3%, protoss 32.5%, terran 24.8%, random 3.4% China masters: zerg 31.9%, protoss 34.3%, terran 28.2%, random 5.6%
Looks like the results are pretty similar with the exception of Korea... a place known to have higher overall skill levels, so that the skill requirements of terran aren't as much of a drawback. But even there the GM league is low on terrans.
Of course, looking at races used on ladders is a horrible way to determine game balance... tournament competition is one of the best ways, and it's looking pretty even there.
And I couldn't agree more with Bippzy's post... there's nothing wrong with having a race that's tougher to learn but has the most potential if played very skillfully.
How is that even possible? There are 200 spots in GM, which means the biggest alteration can be .5% 1 out of 200 = 0.5%
It's not possible to have 37.4% zerg, it should be 37% 37.5% or 38%. These statistics have just proven to be inaccurate, once again.
Korea GM: zerg 37.4%, protoss 34.5%, terran 28.2% Korea masters: zerg 27.6%, protoss 33.3%, terran 34.3%, random 4.8%+
Europe GM: zerg 37.3%, protoss 36.7%, terran 24.9%, random 1.2% (random GMs, pretty sick) Europe masters: zerg 35.3%, protoss 35.1%, terran 25.5%, random 4%
SEA GM: zerg 32.4%, protoss 38.1%, terran 25.9%, random 3.6% SEA masters: zerg 32.2%, protoss 32.2%, terran 30.7%, random 5%
China GM: zerg 39.3%, protoss 32.5%, terran 24.8%, random 3.4% China masters: zerg 31.9%, protoss 34.3%, terran 28.2%, random 5.6%
Looks like the results are pretty similar with the exception of Korea... a place known to have higher overall skill levels, so that the skill requirements of terran aren't as much of a drawback. But even there the GM league is low on terrans.
Of course, looking at races used on ladders is a horrible way to determine game balance... tournament competition is one of the best ways, and it's looking pretty even there.
And I couldn't agree more with Bippzy's post... there's nothing wrong with having a race that's tougher to learn but has the most potential if played very skillfully.
How is that even possible? There are 200 spots in GM, which means the biggest alteration can be .5% 1 out of 200 = 0.5%
It's not possible to have 37.4% zerg, it should be 37% 37.5% or 38%. These statistics have just proven to be inaccurate, once again.
It's probably because GM is not full. At least when the data was taken.
On September 21 2012 20:31 Santi wrote: this is a call for terrans to play harder! stop qqing like the other races do and play harder
we are talking about the casual players who play for fun, not for money. and if i have to play harder to be able to stay at a 50% winrate, then the game feels unfair and not rewarding to play.
On September 21 2012 20:31 Santi wrote: this is a call for terrans to play harder! stop qqing like the other races do and play harder
we are talking about the casual players who play for fun, not for money. and if i have to play harder to be able to stay at a 50% winrate, then the game feels unfair and not rewarding to play.
Casual players in GM, so it's little different. And no one has to play harder, no one even has to try to have 50% except low bronze.
In BW, it was pretty much a unanimous consensus that toss was the easiest race to play. In SC2 the easier races are clearly Z/P, so below pro there is going to be some imbalance just because terran has a much higher skill cap and requires better mechanics to play well. some things never change =)
On September 21 2012 20:18 guN-viCe wrote: IMO Terran is the most difficult race to play late game for these reasons:
1) Terran produces units in the worst way. Lots of Barracks, Factories, or Starports. Zerg gets to make one tech building and they can pop 20 muta, roach, infestor, ulta, etc at once from just their mining bases and a macro hatch. Protoss can max out and wait for cooldown on gateways and instantly repopulate their armies. They also have chrono.
What this means is that Terran is stuck in whatever tech path they choose. If Terran has 10 barracks he can't just switch to 10 factories or starports. There is not enough resources, space, or time, or upgrades.
Z can change army composition on a whim, P can as well to a lesser extent. T is stuck with whatever.
2) Terran battle micro is harder. This is an undeniable fact. Z/P is very 1a + spellcaster, maybe blink or burrow or focus fire. Terran has to split their army to avoid AoE. Has to stim and stutter. Has to siege. Has to cloak shee. Has to EMP/Snipe.
Terran has much more to do in battles, and therefore has more chances to lose their squishy armies if they mess up even one of the micro scenarios I mention.
All of this. Also worth noting, our AoE support unit, the tank, requires more micro than p or z. They cant move and do AoE like collosus, they cant(shouldnt) clump up like collosus, their AoE has to be activated unlike collosus. The same applies to ultras. They are not as versatile as infestor.
p and z make their bones against T with easy to use AoE, and a more forgiving and versatile production base. Plus, they can ALWAYS have more harvesters than you. Protoss should ALWAYS have better upgrades as well. It can be discouraging to feel like you start the game from behind, or to get beat by strats that are relatively simpler to execute.
I'm with most terrans and think that we're a bit underpowered at the moment, not necessarily unit-wise but the metagame sucks for terran atm, no good builds/timings compared to P and Z who have a plethora of these. But the reason to why I quit playing terran, and kinda quit playing SC2 all together, wasn't that I felt that the game was imbalanced or too hard to play, but because it was BORING as hell to play terran.
The only times I enjoyed playing terran was when you could do some fun multitasking with dropships, TvT is boring and tedious to play, super long games that usually revolve around who has the better tank position. TvP is just a volatile matchup that end in a 10-second battle at some point. TvZ was the only matchup I enjoyed because of the amount of strategy that it incorporated.
Terran needs something fun, nukes are fun but too impractical. Snipe was fun but got nerfed, Ravens are fun but retardedly hard to play with. All other units that terran has at their disposal are just straight up DPS-units, and it's not fun to run around with a glass cannon that will either blast shit to oblivion or break in a second.
So yeah, the racial imbalance probably has to do with terran being unfavored in the metagame in most matchups, as well as the map pool not really being in their favor. And the race is pretty boring to play. Rant over.
On September 21 2012 20:18 guN-viCe wrote: IMO Terran is the most difficult race to play late game for these reasons:
1) Terran produces units in the worst way. Lots of Barracks, Factories, or Starports. Zerg gets to make one tech building and they can pop 20 muta, roach, infestor, ulta, etc at once from just their mining bases and a macro hatch. Protoss can max out and wait for cooldown on gateways and instantly repopulate their armies. They also have chrono.
What this means is that Terran is stuck in whatever tech path they choose. If Terran has 10 barracks he can't just switch to 10 factories or starports. There is not enough resources, space, or time, or upgrades.
Z can change army composition on a whim, P can as well to a lesser extent. T is stuck with whatever.
2) Terran battle micro is harder. This is an undeniable fact. Z/P is very 1a + spellcaster, maybe blink or burrow or focus fire. Terran has to split their army to avoid AoE. Has to stim and stutter. Has to siege. Has to cloak shee. Has to EMP/Snipe.
Terran has much more to do in battles, and therefore has more chances to lose their squishy armies if they mess up even one of the micro scenarios I mention.
All of this. Also worth noting, our AoE support unit, the tank, requires more micro than p or z. They cant move and do AoE like collosus, they cant(shouldnt) clump up like collosus, their AoE has to be activated unlike collosus. The same applies to ultras. They are not as versatile as infestor.
p and z make their bones against T with easy to use AoE, and a more forgiving and versatile production base. Plus, they can ALWAYS have more harvesters than you. Protoss should ALWAYS have better upgrades as well. It can be discouraging to feel like you start the game from behind, or to get beat by strats that are relatively simpler to execute.
I very much agree. And just because there are a few godly terrans in Korea does NOT mean that the rest of the world is somehow retarded or under-utilizing the race. It means that those Koreans are really just that godly. I dont know how these numbers can show anything but how hard it is to play terran at the same level as a toss or zerg. I'm also a little shocked that David and Dustin still won't acknowledge this, especially since they supposedly play random when they ladder...
On September 21 2012 10:34 blade55555 wrote: I imagine this has been the case on NA with zerg being mostly in GM for the past 6 months and will probably not change until hots.
On korea I think it's a lot more even and I actually don't know about EU. But can't judge racial balance on just GM, especially on the NA ladder
Excellent point, I don't know why I didn't think to check the other ladders. Here's what they look like-
Korea GM: zerg 37.4%, protoss 34.5%, terran 28.2% Korea masters: zerg 27.6%, protoss 33.3%, terran 34.3%, random 4.8%
Europe GM: zerg 37.3%, protoss 36.7%, terran 24.9%, random 1.2% (random GMs, pretty sick) Europe masters: zerg 35.3%, protoss 35.1%, terran 25.5%, random 4%
SEA GM: zerg 32.4%, protoss 38.1%, terran 25.9%, random 3.6% SEA masters: zerg 32.2%, protoss 32.2%, terran 30.7%, random 5%
China GM: zerg 39.3%, protoss 32.5%, terran 24.8%, random 3.4% China masters: zerg 31.9%, protoss 34.3%, terran 28.2%, random 5.6%
Looks like the results are pretty similar with the exception of Korea... a place known to have higher overall skill levels, so that the skill requirements of terran aren't as much of a drawback. But even there the GM league is low on terrans.
Of course, looking at races used on ladders is a horrible way to determine game balance... tournament competition is one of the best ways, and it's looking pretty even there.
And I couldn't agree more with Bippzy's post... there's nothing wrong with having a race that's tougher to learn but has the most potential if played very skillfully.
Most of us know the truth, just let the others fail to accept reality and come up with reasons like "I think the reason for it is that no one really is a huge name Terran player in the foreign scene compared to the super star Zergs and Protoss." Comical.
Are people actually trying to claim Terran isn't the hardest race? Anyone I know who has properly played all the races would be in agreement that that's the case. The onus is often on Terran is to be pro-active as well, which adds additional difficulty I feel, especially at lower levels.
On September 21 2012 20:53 halfies wrote: if there are under 30% terrans at every level on the ladder then it just means less people play it. it has nothing to do with balance.
And the underlying reason why there's less of them has nothing to do with balance? ever heard of FOTM? regardless of whatever the reason is, the one thing that I'm pretty sure most people can agree with is that the average map size is awful for moving tanks, it takes ages to push into a good position vs a zerg that knows how to bait a siege or push the advantage in TvP when toss has 3 or more bases and templars.
If BW were subjected to the balance discussion of SC2 it would get eviscerated. TvP was the most ridiculously difficult match-up in BW, you had to be about Masters level skill equivalent Terran before you could beat even a platinum equivalent Toss. (I know, I had an iCCup account as Terran and was proud if I managed not to drop to D-, played Toss about 5% of my games and promptly got into C-, it's really just easier at low levels.)
Does that mean that BW P was OP? No, in fact on the pro level usually Terran earns that moniker. But it does mean that if you beat a Terran player as Toss around the D level, it only really demonstrates that you're not significantly worse than your opponent. If playing the game isn't about boosting your ego (why should it be unless you're actually at the top?) then I don't see why it can't be fun to play against people who may be worse than you but make up for it by choosing a more forgiving race.
I don't remamber bitching when zerg had tought time and dont remamber quiting sc2 and changing race. Im zerg at heart thats what matters to me I have passion for zerg, that is the only reason I do play zerg.If terran changed because "its hard to win" then its an obv fail that shows terrans were always in for easy win, not for the race itself. Zerg might be the easier race i dont care which is the "better" i love zerg for what it is , mutated bugs queens lings banes speed weak fast units. Shitty units dying to tank fire vaporising in a second or ovewhelming in a second.
I'm a masters zerg. Don't ladder much, but when I do it's mainly ZvZ. Lucky for me, ZvZ is my best MU and ZvT is my worst. But good terrans are really scary to play against. They might be a little harder to play than P/Z but if played correctly, can do really well. I don't think the stats show terrans aren't good, it's just not as many people play it.
On September 21 2012 20:18 guN-viCe wrote: IMO Terran is the most difficult race to play late game for these reasons:
1) Terran produces units in the worst way. Lots of Barracks, Factories, or Starports. Zerg gets to make one tech building and they can pop 20 muta, roach, infestor, ulta, etc at once from just their mining bases and a macro hatch. Protoss can max out and wait for cooldown on gateways and instantly repopulate their armies. They also have chrono.
What this means is that Terran is stuck in whatever tech path they choose. If Terran has 10 barracks he can't just switch to 10 factories or starports. There is not enough resources, space, or time, or upgrades.
Z can change army composition on a whim, P can as well to a lesser extent. T is stuck with whatever.
2) Terran battle micro is harder. This is an undeniable fact. Z/P is very 1a + spellcaster, maybe blink or burrow or focus fire. Terran has to split their army to avoid AoE. Has to stim and stutter. Has to siege. Has to cloak shee. Has to EMP/Snipe.
Terran has much more to do in battles, and therefore has more chances to lose their squishy armies if they mess up even one of the micro scenarios I mention.
All of this. Also worth noting, our AoE support unit, the tank, requires more micro than p or z. They cant move and do AoE like collosus, they cant(shouldnt) clump up like collosus, their AoE has to be activated unlike collosus. The same applies to ultras. They are not as versatile as infestor.
p and z make their bones against T with easy to use AoE, and a more forgiving and versatile production base. Plus, they can ALWAYS have more harvesters than you. Protoss should ALWAYS have better upgrades as well. It can be discouraging to feel like you start the game from behind, or to get beat by strats that are relatively simpler to execute.
The Colossus only makes up for all our main units (Zealots, Stalkers, Sentries) being completely useless vs. bio. It can be discouraging to know you start the game without the ability to built useful units until the 8 or 9 minute mark.
Stalkers kite marines practically indefinitely w/o stim or bunker, zealots chew up marauders. Sentrys cutting you in half or forcefielding out are useful. You can also have immortals. Without stim, I get ripped to pieces and Im not gonna have stim til about 8 minutes... And even then without medivac support (10 minutes) stimming , which is neccesary to fighting your pure gateway mix, hurts me. Right when the medis come out you should be starting (possibly already have), collosus tech. Archons are also possible. To say nothing of warpgate completely negating defender advantage in the event of a bust.
Dont get me wrong, I can still win, but it seems like I am working harder for less right now.
On September 21 2012 21:08 Miotonir wrote: I don't remamber bitching when zerg had tought time and dont remamber quiting sc2 and changing race. Im zerg at heart thats what matters to me I have passion for zerg, that is the only reason I do play zerg.If terran changed because "its hard to win" then its an obv fail that shows terrans were always in for easy win, not for the race itself. Zerg might be the easier race i dont care which is the "better" i love zerg for what it is , mutated bugs queens lings banes speed weak fast units. Shitty units dying to tank fire vaporising in a second or ovewhelming in a second.
2 years ago everybody flamed players for playing terran, the rage and bm on the ladder was insane.
As of now its pretty much as in BW, you didnt get to play many TvT's there either (although i get a fair amount of TvT's on sc2) But its still mostly TvZ and TvP.
When i started playing in the 2nd season after the release, i made the choice to go with Zerg. I only faced Terrans and lost many many many games, and i got frustrated with it. But i realy like playing as the underdog. It gave me motivation to keep on trying.
Every time i played, i faced Terrans and lost badly. Now its shifting and more people play Zerg, things change. On my 2nd account i play Terran and i am climbing ladders rather quickly
On September 21 2012 21:08 Miotonir wrote: I don't remamber bitching when zerg had tought time and dont remamber quiting sc2 and changing race. Im zerg at heart thats what matters to me I have passion for zerg, that is the only reason I do play zerg.If terran changed because "its hard to win" then its an obv fail that shows terrans were always in for easy win, not for the race itself. Zerg might be the easier race i dont care which is the "better" i love zerg for what it is , mutated bugs queens lings banes speed weak fast units. Shitty units dying to tank fire vaporising in a second or ovewhelming in a second.
2 years ago everybody flamed players for playing terran, the rage and bm on the ladder was insane.
As of now its pretty much as in BW, you didnt get to play many TvT's there either (although i get a fair amount of TvT's on sc2) But its still mostly TvZ and TvP.
Flamed? only if u all inned super cheezy style, nobody(of healthy mind) dares to insult good macro terran ever.
I haven't laddered in a while, its just TvZ was my most favorite matchup because of bio micro, but the new infestor ling fast hive style is so boring to play against. At first i was optimistic that presplitting was the way to go, but now zergs get so good with their timings and defense its just Terran isn't like it was back in the day. Also protoss have gotten very good at securing late game tech.
If anything terran has changed from this super hyper aggressive race, to play greedy and use finicky shit to throw off the other player. Like them hellion banshees....
the argument i keep hearing is that balance seems ok at code S level, but unfortunately 99.999% of blizzard's sc2 customers are not playing there.
then the same old argument made for "noob level" diamonds and masters, perfect your macro + multitasking and you will start winning. but why do that as terran, when you can do that as zerg and win MORE?
You have no idea how hard and often TvTs are once you hit mid-top dia on KR. Everyone terran there basically fucked each others chances from advancing, and the zergs and protosses from the same tier are a fucking joke for most of us ~_~. Since the new UI update I still accidentally click on random instead of terran but still manage to do well against other races.
and it also sometimes opens my eyes as to what terrans are doing to the zerg/protosses here O_O (zvt no expand wtf is he doing suddenly marauders hellion banshees marines every fucking scv wtf wtf)
On September 21 2012 21:27 shadymmj wrote: the argument i keep hearing is that balance seems ok at code S level, but unfortunately 99.999% of blizzard's sc2 customers are not playing there.
then the same old argument made for "noob level" diamonds and masters, perfect your macro + multitasking and you will start winning. but why do that as terran, when you can do that as zerg and win MORE?
On September 21 2012 21:12 Twisting wrote: When i started playing in the 2nd season after the release, i made the choice to go with Zerg. I only faced Terrans and lost many many many games, and i got frustrated with it. But i realy like playing as the underdog. It gave me motivation to keep on trying.
Every time i played, i faced Terrans and lost badly. Now its shifting and more people play Zerg, things change. On my 2nd account i play Terran and i am climbing ladders rather quickly
Terran isnt bad for getting out of lower leagues because they have such strong 1 base play. No one else can match the utillity of our mineral only units. It doesnt take much to stop these attacks though, its mostly just preying on ignorance.
Possibly the reason it is shifting to zerg/protoss is bc over the past years there have been numerous buffs to both races while terran gets nothing but nerfs?
The reason those korean T are so revered is because anyone who has made an attempt at playing T can recognize just how incredible it is to do what they do. Maybe harder to play is the wrong phrase; they are very unforgiving though, that is for sure.
TvP , one engagement lost = death, only people with strong will stay , so it's really no wonder people go away from terran!
/e
to just put in more oil into the fire:
2 years ago when sc2 started, zerg WAS harder to play. Zerg players just had the watchtowers ALWAYS they would fight for them and would not just sit back all the time, also have lings in other paths not covered. Nowadays i see zergs in masters league not giving a shit about watchtowers.
zerg got weaker skillwise over all, but the race and balance is keeping them up!
On September 21 2012 21:36 ntssauce wrote: TvP , one engagement lost = death, only people with strong will stay , so it's really no wonder people go away from terran!
You mean more like good micro. We love glass cannon style LOL
Most terrans = dual hxbow DH pre 1.02 with pure mobility and no defenses.
Seriously starcraft itself is pretty stressing to play and only people who want more stress from their source of entertainment stay....or those who have accepted sc as a form of sport/activity rather than entertainment (IE football players/fans, basketball etc etc)
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
Statistics "don't lie" - but there's no shortage of people who fail to interpret stats properly.
First, people ought to know the difference between descriptive stats (i.e., your basic "X% of people had outcome A") and inferential stats (i.e., which actually allow you to generalise from your sample statitistics to your population parameters, thereby allowing you to make statements re: race balance beyond the sample). This much is basic stats.
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.
On September 21 2012 21:36 ntssauce wrote: TvP , one engagement lost = death, only people with strong will stay , so it's really no wonder people go away from terran!
This is the reason I still play T. Even though no one else would know (or even care) that I switched races, to me it would feel like quitting, so I perservere.
i dont like to complain but . tell me a zerg pro player that is not good ? every zerg is good and i dont think is cuz every zerg player is far superior to others i think is just easier then other races @ pro level . imho probably thats the reason there are so many zergs GM
On September 21 2012 21:36 ntssauce wrote: TvP , one engagement lost = death, only people with strong will stay , so it's really no wonder people go away from terran!
I'm pretty sure I used to hear a lot of "PvT , one engagement lost = death. Lose one army and you'll never be able to recover."
I would compare tvz with zvp - once you start getting it its not that difficult. My main race is zerg but I offrace with terrans a bit. And in TvZ I just know how opponent is thinking - you move 5 marines to the enemy xelnaga tower and go back. You do multipronged attacks and toy with zerg army positioning. Draging them from one side to another. In many cases T underestimate how much people fear them in early game.
Maybe people loved Terran more year ago because you didn't need to have long games and could win much earlier. Getting heavy macro made the race a bit boring and less cheesy. Maybe took a bit of fun out of game? Zergs life is boring as well - not many openings, trying to survive. Terrans are overtaking that boringness
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
Statistics "don't lie" - but there's no shortage of people who fail to interpret stats properly.
First, people ought to know the difference between descriptive stats (i.e., your basic "X% of people had outcome A") and inferential stats (i.e., which actually allow you to generalise from your sample statitistics to your population parameters, thereby allowing you to make statements re: race balance beyond the sample). This much is basic stats.
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.
Must disagree with you here. The community functions like a hive mind. Everyone wants to win, whether they play casually or hardcore. No one plays to lose. We have hundreds of thousands of people playing, studying, trying to win. Eventually, on this system, the most effective way to win will become the most popular over time. Hive computing man, there are inferences to be made from the data
Edit to add: the same phenomenon can be seen in call of duty games. The farther from release, the more skewed the weapon use will be in favor of a small handful of the total available pool. Theres a reason everyone in mw3 was using acr/mp7.
I think most terrans are quitting because it is too much stress for too little reward. You can play Protoss or Zerg easily while not being 100% focussed. You may have had a hard work day, you are thinking about other stuff. You turn on some SC2, give it a try. You will probably not have your best ladder session, but with Protoss or Zerg you will have reasonable results, win a couple of games and lose a couple of games (maybe lose a bit more than normal so you will drop slightly in ladder).
With terran, if you are not 100% focussed you have the options of cheesing or losing 90% of your games because you didn't split your marines correctly or because your APM is lower than usual so you can't keep up with your macro like you should be. And always having to focus 100% doing something that should mainly be fun is annoying and impossible for most people. So the logical conclusion is to quit playing SC2 or play another race.
Also, I would be even more interested in the percentage of games that involve terrans, not the percentage of active players playing terran. Because you count as active if you play just 1 or 2 ladder games in a season, but practically you really aren't active. I could imagine these statistics are even more devastating because terrans just don't play as many games as zerg or protoss players on average.
Also many of the popular western pro gamers constantly making jokes about terran players isn't really helping the issue, I think it influences more people than they think it does even if they are not serious about it.
In the end I think it comes down to several different reasons, lack of really charismatic+successful (western) progamers for terran like Stephano or Huk, lack of executable standard strategies that aren't insanely hard to pull off for even low GM players, too much punishment for not being 100% focussed etc.
My conclusion is that it is just not a lot of fun to play terran currently. And not because it is "harder" to be successful, but simply because it is way too punishing. Getting ahead and ahead in a game and then just throwing it away with a dumb mistake is way too easy with terran. It happens for other races, but to a much smaller extent.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
I find this a little amusing coming from a bw perspective: The races were never ever even remotely similar in popularity in BW, that was never used as evidence of imbalance, or a consistent source of, you guessed it, whining. I'd be suprised if terran cracked the 20% barrier in BW, outside of Korea anyway. It was a very unpopular race, it required huge mechanical demands before you actually saw any progress, etc. Everyone knew and accepted that the skill curve wasnt even. That doesnt imply the game is unfair, it implies you need to play a competetive game harder-- and if your not willing to do that, than the game aint for you in the first place. No one has a right to complain that, hardly trying at all, putting no time into sc2, and playing mediocrely as fuck in Gold or diamond league--- that they cant win x match up. People will still do it, but that doesnt imply its intellectually valid.
The races are never going to be equally represented or equally difficult for newbies, move on. Koreans are better than the whiny terrans in the foreign community and you know what they say? TVZ is terran favoured and protoss is a tad op; we get totally opposite discussions here because we spend our time self consciously complaining about balance instead of practicing.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
Nope; still applies.Think about it:
Imagine if we collapsed every league from bronze to GM and we found there were
On September 21 2012 21:58 whatevername wrote: I find this a little amusing coming from a bw perspective: The races were never ever even remotely similar in popularity in BW, that was never used as evidence of imbalance, or a consistent source of, you guessed it, whining. I'd be suprised if terran cracked the 20% barrier in BW, outside of Korea anyway. It was a very unpopular race, it required huge mechanical demands before you actually saw any progress, etc. Everyone knew and accepted that the skill curve wasnt even. That doesnt imply the game is unfair, it implies you need to play a competetive game harder-- and if your not willing to do that, than the game aint for you in the first place. No one has a right to complain that, hardly trying at all, putting no time into sc2, and playing mediocrely as fuck in Gold or diamond league--- that they cant win x match up. People will still do it, but that doesnt imply its intellectually valid.
The races are never going to be equally represented or equally difficult for newbies, move on. Koreans are better than the whiny terrans in the foreign community and you know what they say? TVZ is terran favoured and protoss is a tad op; we get totally opposite discussions here because we spend our time self consciously complaining about balance instead of practicing.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
Nope - you're missing the point completely. The importance of base rates still applies. Think about it:
Imagine if we collapsed every league from bronze to GM and we found there were
In a perfectly balanced scenario, you would expect ~ 4.5x as many zergs as Terrans in GM, and about equal numbers of zergs and tosses. In other words, 20 Terrans, 90 Zergs, 90 Protosses.
This is a wild example, but it's used to demonstrate the principle.
In sum: You can't say that since there are a disproportionate number of race X in GM, that this race is not adequately balanced UNLESS you have information on the base rates.
If the race distribution is skewed down do Bronze league it's a reasonable assumption that there are just less Terran player overall and the distrubtion of player base playing race X and GM spots might be accurate. Even though I think Terran needs a buff, their armies are just to squishy against P and Z (you didnt mico correct for a short amount of time? game lost).
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
1. Rikter, see my previous message and bear in mind that I am talking about why it's erroneous to say that disproportionate numbers of X in GM indicates imbalance.
2. Your previous post doesn't detract anything from what I said. It doesn't matter if everyone "is playing to win" - what does that have to do with anything? If the game is perfectly balanced, but 90% of all players collapsed across all leagues play race X, then you would still see their race being over-represented in the top 200.
On September 21 2012 21:58 whatevername wrote: I find this a little amusing coming from a bw perspective: The races were never ever even remotely similar in popularity in BW, that was never used as evidence of imbalance, or a consistent source of, you guessed it, whining. I'd be suprised if terran cracked the 20% barrier in BW, outside of Korea anyway. It was a very unpopular race, it required huge mechanical demands before you actually saw any progress, etc. Everyone knew and accepted that the skill curve wasnt even. That doesnt imply the game is unfair, it implies you need to play a competetive game harder-- and if your not willing to do that, than the game aint for you in the first place. No one has a right to complain that, hardly trying at all, putting no time into sc2, and playing mediocrely as fuck in Gold or diamond league--- that they cant win x match up. People will still do it, but that doesnt imply its intellectually valid.
The races are never going to be equally represented or equally difficult for newbies, move on. Koreans are better than the whiny terrans in the foreign community and you know what they say? TVZ is terran favoured and protoss is a tad op; we get totally opposite discussions here because we spend our time self consciously complaining about balance instead of practicing.
the thing is, BW was made to ancient standards and if someone in Irvine said that one day BW will have TV channels showing nothing but BW, it would probably amuse the staff at blizzard very much.
i dont know where ur from, but most people play to have fun, even in so-called "competitive games", because they have real life to worry about already. by competitive i mean the real thoroughbreds like quake 3, ut, cs, street fighter, tekken...not COD (lol)
in this day and age, having a race heavily over-represented is never a good thing, except maybe in bronze where it can be forgiven, seeing that many beginners will naturally choose terran. just ask the 50% GM zergs, who likely play ZvZ more than anything else.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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. Ask yourself, why is the population so skewed in the first place? In every game I have ever played, watched, studied, whatever, over the past 20 years, you can always see people trending towards what is effective. The population functions like a hive mind computer, and right now this 'computer' is saying that zerg is more effective
I agree with those who are saying this reflects the relative size of each population, with plenty left for margin of error and limited sample size. I don't think this represents anything more than meets the eye, and that no conclusions can be made in regards to balance at this time.
On September 21 2012 20:14 Andr3 wrote: I personally like that terran is having a hard time atm, tbh it's not that bad when 1.5 came out but still. It feels better when you win.
There's also the problem of no good EU/US terrans. Kas sometimes show some brilliance but it's not enough. Happy is just a one trick pony, always plays the same. Lucifron has showed some good games, but I doubt it he'll continue to.
Saying "no good [insert race] in [insert continent]" is getting really old and its stupid. Did you know about slivko, vortix or sortof 6months ago? Propably not. Suddendly they got "good" and old "good" terrans stopped being good, for example strelok, cloud, naama, sjow and many others.
Actually I knew about Vortix, and he was very solid before 1.5, but you probably don't know that a bit before 1.5 hit he started practicing for real. Slivko was topping ladder pre 1.5 as well. I give you points on Sortof though.
Your example of "old good" terrans is silly. Strelok was on a down hill ever since like 1 year after beta lol. Cloud was never good, I don't know what's he doing in the list. Naama's performance has always been dependent on his opponent's I feel, his play was plenty of times shaky with all the crazy shananigans he did. Sjow deserves to be buried in the past, he made SC2 look terrible with his 90 eapm.
One GOOD terran that was left behind is Brat_OK, but I think it's because he lost motivation. He used to stream a lot and commentate and during that time he was awesome. He always played very standard and had great micro(he was also one of the first terrans in SC2 to do splits, even before mkp).
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
IF 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 (i.e., 100 zergs, 60 protosses, 40 terrans) 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.
On September 21 2012 22:12 zyce wrote: I agree with those who are saying this reflects the relative size of each population, with plenty left for margin of error and limited sample size. I don't think this represents anything more than meets the eye, and that no conclusions can be made in regards to balance at this time.
Try not to think in terms of balance, just more effective vs less effective. Obviously it is possible to win with each race, I think the game is pretty balanced, excepting the queen buff.
Everyone saying those percentages mean nothing, what is your explanation for how they got so skewed in the first place? People have reasons for the things they do. This isnt flipping a coin or something where random chance can give you a skewed result in a small sample. This is the product of conscious decisions over a period of time.
On September 21 2012 21:08 Miotonir wrote: I don't remamber bitching when zerg had tought time and dont remamber quiting sc2 and changing race. Im zerg at heart thats what matters to me I have passion for zerg, that is the only reason I do play zerg.If terran changed because "its hard to win" then its an obv fail that shows terrans were always in for easy win, not for the race itself. Zerg might be the easier race i dont care which is the "better" i love zerg for what it is , mutated bugs queens lings banes speed weak fast units. Shitty units dying to tank fire vaporising in a second or ovewhelming in a second.
2 years ago everybody flamed players for playing terran, the rage and bm on the ladder was insane.
As of now its pretty much as in BW, you didnt get to play many TvT's there either (although i get a fair amount of TvT's on sc2) But its still mostly TvZ and TvP.
Flamed? only if u all inned super cheezy style, nobody(of healthy mind) dares to insult good macro terran ever.
On September 21 2012 21:58 whatevername wrote: I find this a little amusing coming from a bw perspective: The races were never ever even remotely similar in popularity in BW, that was never used as evidence of imbalance, or a consistent source of, you guessed it, whining. I'd be suprised if terran cracked the 20% barrier in BW, outside of Korea anyway. It was a very unpopular race, it required huge mechanical demands before you actually saw any progress, etc. Everyone knew and accepted that the skill curve wasnt even. That doesnt imply the game is unfair, it implies you need to play a competetive game harder-- and if your not willing to do that, than the game aint for you in the first place. No one has a right to complain that, hardly trying at all, putting no time into sc2, and playing mediocrely as fuck in Gold or diamond league--- that they cant win x match up. People will still do it, but that doesnt imply its intellectually valid.
The races are never going to be equally represented or equally difficult for newbies, move on. Koreans are better than the whiny terrans in the foreign community and you know what they say? TVZ is terran favoured and protoss is a tad op; we get totally opposite discussions here because we spend our time self consciously complaining about balance instead of practicing.
the thing is, BW was made to ancient standards and if someone in Irvine said that one day BW will have TV channels showing nothing but BW, it would probably amuse the staff at blizzard very much.
i dont know where ur from, but most people play to have fun, even in so-called "competitive games", because they have real life to worry about already. by competitive i mean the real thoroughbreds like quake 3, ut, cs, street fighter, tekken...not COD (lol)
in this day and age, having a race heavily over-represented is never a good thing, except maybe in bronze where it can be forgiven, seeing that many beginners will naturally choose terran. just ask the 50% GM zergs, who likely play ZvZ more than anything else.
I dont give a crap what standards BW was built to, and yes I'm aware people play to have fun even in competitive games-- they enjoy the competition, they enjoy the stress of the grind. You dont. Thats why you quit and moved onto css or w/e you said. You think zergs and protoss come home from work and just have energetic stress relieving pleasure from sc2? No. I pull my hair out, I am stressed constantly while playing; I find hyper competitive stressful games, perversely, fun. Thats why I liked bw, thats why I like sc2-- and thats why you dont.
Not a problem with the game, you just dont like it.
Those who wish to rail against zerg choose to ignore this point because it would be more self-serving to whine about Terran being UP.
I'm not necessarily saying that there are in fact less Terrans, I'm just saying we can't jump to conclusions and say that the disproportionate race membership rates in GM are proof of imbalance.
On September 21 2012 20:14 Andr3 wrote: I personally like that terran is having a hard time atm, tbh it's not that bad when 1.5 came out but still. It feels better when you win.
There's also the problem of no good EU/US terrans. Kas sometimes show some brilliance but it's not enough. Happy is just a one trick pony, always plays the same. Lucifron has showed some good games, but I doubt it he'll continue to.
Saying "no good [insert race] in [insert continent]" is getting really old and its stupid. Did you know about slivko, vortix or sortof 6months ago? Propably not. Suddendly they got "good" and old "good" terrans stopped being good, for example strelok, cloud, naama, sjow and many others.
Actually I knew about Vortix, and he was very solid before 1.5, but you probably don't know that a bit before 1.5 hit he started practicing for real. Slivko was topping ladder pre 1.5 as well. I give you points on Sortof though.
Your example of "old good" terrans is silly. Strelok was on a down hill ever since like 1 year after beta lol. Cloud was never good, I don't know what's he doing in the list. Naama's performance has always been dependent on his opponent's I feel, his play was plenty of times shaky with all the crazy shananigans he did. Sjow deserves to be buried in the past, he made SC2 look terrible with his 90 eapm.
One GOOD terran that was left behind is Brat_OK, but I think it's because he lost motivation. He used to stream a lot and commentate and during that time he was awesome. He always played very standard and had great micro(he was also one of the first terrans in SC2 to do splits, even before mkp).
The argument isn't silly, EU has shitty terrans.
Hahaha you are being ridiculus. But if we play like this, why not? Mvp, MMA, MKP, Bomber, Taeja, Forgg, Puma, Ryung, Ganzi,... are all better then their Z and P counterparts; Korea just doesn't have good P and Z, hence TvX MUs should be balanced at 55%. Kthx.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
IF 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.
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.
I pointed low amount of terrans on ladder like 3-5 month ago, my thread was closed. Srsly ladder balance directly reflects tournaments results, as we all see there are only few top terrans in eu/na that can do anything to zerg/toss in tournaments. I think one of biggest drop terrans was after ghost nerf, which basicly destroyed terran tvz late game(something similar would happen is blizzard randomly nerfed infestors, totaly new late game army compositions would need to be invented ). Then the next blow was probably queen buff, which really didnt effect pvz or anything else, except early marine presure and hellion harass. Basicly destroying terran early game builds. Forcing yet again for terrans to rediscover differnt build. These changes basicly removed really large chunks of upcoming/new terran players.. And now we see the results, new Prottoss and zerg players start to take over, yet we still have zero new terrans. Its not even about balance, its about blizzard screwing with terran builds, and forcing to rediscover buildorders again and again. It did happen to me to. I was finaly having some success in tvz after few month of sucking and i was doing so with agresive helion/banshee presure into mech(i was holding my own agains eu gm zergs), well queen buff totaly destroyed my opening(before patch i had 55%-60%winrate after, 30%winrate), shortly after that i lost any motivation to continue to play and basicly quit sc2 untill now.
it's pretty obvious that blizzard's attempt to "balance" the game isn't working, sure the game looks alright in korea, but we're not all pro-koreans who spend an avg. of 6 hours a day practicing our marine/marauder micro
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
IF 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 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?
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.
On September 21 2012 22:13 Andr3 wrote:Actually I knew about Vortix, and he was very solid before 1.5, but you probably don't know that a bit before 1.5 hit he started practicing for real. Slivko was topping ladder pre 1.5 as well. I give you points on Sortof though.
Your example of "old good" terrans is silly. Strelok was on a down hill ever since like 1 year after beta lol. Cloud was never good, I don't know what's he doing in the list. Naama's performance has always been dependent on his opponent's I feel, his play was plenty of times shaky with all the crazy shananigans he did. Sjow deserves to be buried in the past, he made SC2 look terrible with his 90 eapm.
One GOOD terran that was left behind is Brat_OK, but I think it's because he lost motivation. He used to stream a lot and commentate and during that time he was awesome. He always played very standard and had great micro(he was also one of the first terrans in SC2 to do splits, even before mkp).
The argument isn't silly, EU has shitty terrans.
What in god's name are you babbling about? If you have no idea about what you're talking about, don't just make up shit. You talk shit about incredibly good EU players based on moot? Just because their results has declined, that doesn't mean they've gotten worse. Have you ever thought that it could've been contributed due to patches and metagame? Please.
Given we're about to move from the terran expansion (WoL) to the zerg one (HoTS), i know a lot of people who have been switching to zerg in anticipation of the new units.
I think if you take a moment to look at the numbers, terran is underepresented in all of the brackets, indicating not that they are definitively worse (not that im arguing that they are/arent) but rather that there are fewer players playing terran now than the other races. I mean shit i remember watching GSL 12 months ago and you'd get to the RO16 and see like 10-12 terrans (at that time it was more due to balance) - but as you've said they're underrepresented the whole way down, it would appear this time that there are just fewer people playing terran at the moment.
just my 2c
also for any terrans out there on the QQ bandwagon, just try and remember that everyone sooner or later has their time in the sun, ultimately we all strive for a balanced game but with new expansions, new units and a constant flux of rebalances and metagame shifts changing tiny tiny things can have absolutely profound effects. (who'd've thought increasing the range of queens ground attacks would break TvZ for so long?)
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
Nope - you're missing the point completely. The importance of base rates still applies. Think about it:
Imagine if we collapsed every league from bronze to GM and we found there were
In a perfectly balanced scenario, you would expect ~ 4.5x as many zergs as Terrans in GM, and about equal numbers of zergs and tosses. In other words, 20 Terrans, 90 Zergs, 90 Protosses.
This is a wild example, but it's used to demonstrate the principle.
In sum: You can't say that since there are a disproportionate number of race X in GM, that this race is not adequately balanced UNLESS you have information on the base rates.
Except there's no reason you should expect a uniform distribution of races at all skill levels, for various reasons. The expectation of each race's representation in GM won't be represented by the 'base rate'.
Game should be balanced at the highest level, well isnt GM the highest level? If so the game is imbalanced and this is shown on all servers. Terran is way harder to play and so unforgiving, 1 mistake and you are dead. Clump marines against infestor - dead. Miss 1 templer with EMP - dead. Not to mention all those protoss and zerg allins on the ladder, its not even fun to play any more. You can bet there will be some retarded gateway allin or other cheese. Same in TvZ the roaches will come and will kill some scvs no matter what and after that zerg makes 30 drones at once. They should buff neosteel frame to be a viable early game defense against gateway allins, nerf creep and queens, remove thor energy and buff ravens, all those small things would help.
On September 21 2012 22:41 Aquila- wrote: Game should be balanced at the highest level, well isnt GM the highest level? If so the game is imbalanced and this is shown on all servers. Terran is way harder to play and so unforgiving, 1 mistake and you are dead. Clump marines against infestor - dead. Miss 1 templer with EMP - dead. Not to mention all those protoss and zerg allins on the ladder, its not even fun to play any more. You can bet there will be some retarded gateway allin or other cheese. Same in TvZ the roaches will come and will kill some scvs no matter what and after that zerg makes 30 drones at once. They should buff neosteel frame to be a viable early game defense against gateway allins, nerf creep and queens, remove thor energy and buff ravens, all those small things would help.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
IF 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 % in TVZ should still be close to 50 if the game is balanced). 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 significantly disproprotionate number of zergs in GM (e.g., 120//40//40) 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 have my opinion is because of annecdotes and my own reasoning (which is falliable) and I would never parade my annecdotes, my reasoning, and my idiosyncratic experiences as hard evidence.
This is the difference between asserting an opinion and misrepresenting statistics to support one's opinion.
[/QUOTE] 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?
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.
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.
tired of the easy pvt wins?
brb waiting until lategame then storming everything that moves
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.
its probablt because that tosses do some kind of retarded allin in tvp everytime terran fe(im mid master, everytime i expand, toss does blinkstalker allin, 7gate allin, dt cheeze and so on) and when terran does 1-1-1, toss whines how imbalanced and retarded terrans are.
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.
I actually agree having 60% Zerg 35 % Protoss to play against is torture,
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.
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.
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?
Thats it right there (bold+UL), thats why i dont play terran - tanks and guys with guns seems so unimaginative - what we might even be witnessing is the shift from people playing terran because terran was really good, to people playing the races they enjoy more because the game is more balanced than it was previously for the same reasons heaps of people didnt all play terran in BW
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
IF 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.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
IF 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 (i.e., 100 zergs, 60 protosses, 40 terrans) in GM.
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.
His point is still stand. The total number of players is not a pie, it fluctuates/drops out/transfers from one to another. Sure, the higher number of players are playing one race, the higher rank that race will represent across all the league, but why does it attract more players in the first place? Is it because of visual appear, high level of casual play (aka easier),...?
But to answer your question, the number of base race is S4: Protoss - 616155, Terran - 617375, Zerg - 460327 S5: Protoss - 94502, Terran - 89046, Zerg - 84001
So Zerg has least number of players, but occupy the highest presentation across all league except bronze...
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.
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.
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?
Thats it right there (bold+UL), thats why i dont play terran - tanks and guys with guns seems so unimaginative - what we might even be witnessing is the shift from people playing terran because terran was really good, to people playing the races they enjoy more because the game is more balanced than it was previously for the same reasons heaps of people didnt all play terran in BW
To me, this type of preference based on stylistic design, rather than in game effectiveness, is not strong enough that the vaaaast majority of the top players are all one particular race. Id bet damn near anything that the buff and nerf history correlate very strongly with population shift from one race to another.
On September 21 2012 19:17 shadymmj wrote: its not a troll thread, this is a legitimate balance thread because STATISTICS DON'T LIE
when you have 2.5x more zergs than terran in GM, in a server that caters to the United States (and no, im not american), you undeniably have got a problem.
most of the hardcore fan base this game has got left are the masters and maybe diamonds, sectors in which terran is vastly underperforming, they are the ones who keep the game active.
thank god I quit for counterstike and wow a long time ago, games which you can enjoy when you have a job and college papers to go through, instead of having to read up on the new terran nerf after i get home.
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.
IF 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!
PS. As to why one race might attract more players in the first place - I can only speak for myself, but I chose to play Protoss before I had a damn opinion on balance in SC2. I chose to play toss because I thought they were the coolest in SC1 in terms of units, music, portraits, dialogue, cinematics, lore etc. etc. etc.
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?
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...
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).
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.
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
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...
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' ?
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.
IF 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.
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.
IF 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.
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...
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
not only that, results of past year of eu/na pro terrans in tourneys have been really bad. So lets put 2+2. terran in ladder underperforming + terran in tourney underperforming = something is wrong with terran ?
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!
Sure. Do you need medical history, DNA, criminal records of each players too? I think Terran is UP because of medical reason, Zerg is OP because they have good gene.
I find this bw terran comparison argument to be not so good when you talk about SC2. SC2 mechanics just don't matter very much at a certain point. In BW if you werent at a certain mechanical level ( and basically no foreigeners or non kespa pros were) you couldnt even take games off of Kespa Pros. Now in SC2, foreigners can easily win Bo3s, and masters players can easily win games off of any top level player. you even see nonpro NA Gmasters players taking games off Koreans sometimes. So because that mechanical wall doesnt exist in SC2, you can't use that as an advantage with ANY race. so saying "Terran is harder, deal with it" should not be a valid argument. If it was true that even if terran was harder you could win with greater mechanics, I would agree with this argument. But because even that won't help you vs Massive aoe/instant unit production machines of Z/P in later game stages, and everything to punish the races early has been nerfed to the ground through both Blizzard directly and the maps getting gigantic and granting free 3rds, something should be done to change either the design or balance of the game, and this is definitely the main reason people have left terran in droves. Its just too hard, and because 25 terran players in the world are capable of playing it to the max does not mean its fun or manageable for everyone else.
On September 21 2012 11:14 xrapture wrote: It's pretty simple, really. Terran has been nerfed every "balance" patch since the games inception. Even when a stretch passed where a foreign Terran hadn't won a major live even in 1.5 years, Blizzard continued to nerf Terran because of a few Top level Koreans. None of us have the slightest chance of ever even being 10% as good as Taeja or MVP-- it's like saying: "well it will balance out once you reach Michael Jordan's skill and talent level."
I guess Zergs just magically learned to play like Fruitdealer when he won GSL and they were struggling, right? Nope. Buff after buff, maps got bigger, and Terran got gutted. Now, in HOTS, Terran is receiving nothing interesting-- a shitty spidermine and firebat.
And, as a high masters Terran, I DO find Zerg easier to play. When I have a advantage, I don't have to worry about losing my entire army in .5 seconds to 1 storm, fungal, or surround. I can just play and comfortably know I'll win.
For like all of 2011, by far the majority of top players (I guess I'm mostly talking about Koreans) were terrans. Now it's a bit more diverse, but either way, there "being less" terrans doesn't mean they're weak. Other things may indicate it, but not the simple fact that there's less of them.
I will note that (as the OP noted), even going down to lower levels, the percentage of Terrans is still low. Were Terrans equally popular as the other races but notably weaker, I would expect an equal number of Terrans as the other races by platinum or so.
They could just be unpopular. Which, of course, would beg the question of why they're unpopular. Are they for some reason un-fun to play as? If this is the case, that's a significantly bigger issue facing Blizzard than a simple balance issue, which can be fixed with numbers changes. Making something fun requires a lot more innovation than that.
I think part of the problem is in the past Blizzard patched issues that they thought were prominent instead of seeing if the metagame would change. Now they're waiting for the metagame to change when it simply wont. If Terran was so OP back in the day, then why did fruitdealer win GSL S1? Nestea won three GSLs, MC, won two. It's ridiculous that back then all the issues that were apparent were fixed with patches instead of just waiting to see if players changed the way they play.
All of 2011 had the original queens though. They arent really playing the same game now that they were then. I can agree that we could be more sure. Blizz gave a bunch of buffs, and the game evolved. It seems like Terran is being left behind. And in this case, the actual player numbers are the key pieces of information, so the fact that there is less of them means something, whether its being underpowered, too difficult to play at full power, too boring, whatever. Thats kind of the debate I guess.
Edit to add: I dont think playing as Terran isnt fun as a general thing. Some people want to be the humans fighting the aliens, after-all. It just seems like you have to work harder for less.
It would be interesting to see an overall statistic that shows how much people are playing terran,toss and zerg. That what you just showed is like saying asia is imbalanced to the rest of the world because of its population. Furtthermore if you look at the top GM spots at every region its clearly that the racial distribution is more even there. But you are toatly right that people get bored by the methodical play style you have to play as terran because T all ins got much weaker. Also you have to invest much more time in playin equal games as you could as protoss because you mostly get in and long eco game as terran due the defensive mechanics the race has to offer.
Terran just has a really steep learning curve. To go from platinum to masters with Zerg is fairly easy. To go from platinum to masters with Protoss is fair. To go from platinum to masters with Terran is really hard. You have to learn mechanics AND build orders/strategy where as Zerg only takes mechanics and Protoss takes only build orders usually.
On September 21 2012 23:59 Kluey wrote: Terran just has a really steep learning curve. To go from platinum to masters with Zerg is fairly easy. To go from platinum to masters with Protoss is fair. To go from platinum to masters with Terran is really hard. You have to learn mechanics AND build orders/strategy where as Zerg only takes mechanics and Protoss takes only build orders usually.
On September 21 2012 10:45 Kfcnoob wrote: Terran is definitely unforgiving and requires alot of skill since refined timings and micro are critical for successful play. As you've said, the pro players have no problem with this sort of requirement. However, until high masters most players will not achieve this level of comfort. Is it imbalance? I'm not sure, but its definitely annoying to see protoss in GM league with 70 apm when no terran under 170 could compete at that level.
This is so true. My thought is that this is imbalance when the skill required is that different between the races.
I switched from terran to zerg not because of balance, but because terran is not that fun to play and also tvt sucks because every game takes 45 minutes. There is no balance issues just look at korea...
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
who cares
On September 21 2012 10:41 FakeDeath wrote: You should used Korean ladder as a better reference. Since Korean ladder is the highest level among all continents ladder. That would be a better judgement.
we are talking about lower leagues, not GM Korea where 10 hours a day play evens everything out
On September 21 2012 14:33 Tachion wrote: Looking more and more like BW, where Terrans complain about how hard they have it while the most dominant and accomplished players in the world are Terran.
Terran was the hardest in BW as well. Mechanically speaking anyways. I don't think terran is really all that much harder to play than the other races in sc2, I just think most people prefer to play a passive style and you just can't do that with terran. You need to be a manly man and bring the heat if you want to play terran well in sc2.
Ahaha I love this post. I think Terran just requires more crisp timings and intentionality in playstyle because the flexibility (not variability) of its macro style is much lower than the other races. Micro yes, but it's not the only race that requires it. I can/have gotten to masters with zerg/protoss without any practiced build orders or timings (with good micro and macro), but that really doesn't work with terran.
On September 21 2012 10:55 dOraWa wrote: It IS a more difficult race to play. When I switched from Zerg, I was mid masters and promptly dropped to low master. It took about 3 months to get back to mid master as Terran, but I'm now considering switching to Protoss because the prospects for Terran look grim and I play the game for fun anyways, not to fight an uphill battle in 2 of the 3 TvX matchups.
I have a crazy theory about this. When you began off racing as terran, it wasnt as good as your main race??! and it took time for it to be as good as your main race???? no way!!
lmao you are grasping at so many straws dude, it's obvious you don't play terran so why don't you switch to find out exactly how hard it is, or just pipe down with your stupid passive-aggressive bullshit about why people should consider T balanced (even though players better than you will say it has underpowered T3 units compared to the other races, and IS harder than the other races)
you just have to look at the statistics and if you aren't smart enough to do that, gtfo
terran is harder. in fact if i switched from zerg to terran id prolly drop from high master to low diamond. but of course your offrace is going to be way worse than a race u never play. unless ur an RTS genius or u play ur offrace quite frequently.
btw to OP, if ur gonna include stats for masters, why not include diamond through bronze. all the players on NA ladder might as well be bronze players compared to the top players.
On September 21 2012 10:40 sekritzzz wrote: Its a bit hilarious how all these people are throwing random conclusions such as "terran is a hard race to play, thus less people play it". Its as if sc2 came out a month ago. For people who didn't know terran was quite popular back in the day.... and zerg was played at a 20%~ rate.
On September 21 2012 10:41 FakeDeath wrote: You should used Korean ladder as a better reference. Since Korean ladder is the highest level among all continents ladder. That would be a better judgement.
we are talking about lower leagues, not GM Korea where 10 hours a day play evens everything out
On September 21 2012 23:59 Kluey wrote: Terran just has a really steep learning curve. To go from platinum to masters with Zerg is fairly easy. To go from platinum to masters with Protoss is fair. To go from platinum to masters with Terran is really hard. You have to learn mechanics AND build orders/strategy where as Zerg only takes mechanics and Protoss takes only build orders usually.
You know this from experience?
Platinum - masters with zerg isn't easy Platinum - masters with toss isn't easy Platinum - masters with terran isn't easy
Getting to top 2% in the region isn't " fairly easy" wtf?
It's painful to read bullshit like what you're writing... "Zerg only takes mechanics, protoss only takes build orders usually"...?
You have build orders with Z too... being in master with toss requires mechanics too.. both of them also requires strategy.. both of them do require some micro, depending on what builds and playstyles they use it requires different amounts of micro.
Or maybe the OP doesnt realize this himself - Include statistics from every server+league or make this into a 'Mericuh thread.
The game itself is pretty balanced, or should I say, impossible to properly fix unless every race had the same mechanics, units, playstyle, strategies and whatnots. Terran is a race that has a very high skill ceiling, and is heavily balanced on player mechanics as the leagues go higher, so bitching about terran being harder to play/imbalanced is really dumb when you think about the magic pro players can do when you hand them terran.
If Blizz buffed terran or nerfed other races (which wouldnt make sense anyways now HoTS is coming out), they would simply be catering to amateur players and risk the pro leagues being extremely imbalanced, as pro players know very well how to abuse these things. This, in turn, would risk the esports part of SC2.
Its almost like bitching about how in football, the midfield in OP because they are in the middle and can attack and defend really well at the same time. Its fucking stupid. Either become more efficient with your mechanics+apm or switch race/quit playing the game.
And dont pull the "I dont have 200+ apm" whine either. Its perfectly ok to hit masters in KR with ~150.
As someone who played zerg from beta I would like to point out that I really think that Terran suck atm. I tried to play them, wining is really hard. I wouldnt complain if they nerf zerg and protoss a bit so I shouldnt meet so many zergs on ladder as now. I just have not understanding for people who switched to zerg, its lowest form of competitive play. Should I switch to Terran during early release or Protoss during beta just because they was extremly op? also I think that Terrans should keep trying to find new ways to approach game, they was comfortable when bfh was utterly retarded back in days? They could kill 30 drones and force zerg to walloff and then say "ok lets just play macro now". Well that was retarded too so they must had learnt that feeling when ur powerless to do something even u know its comig.
On September 21 2012 12:18 JackReacher wrote: This thread is making me sick. Mediocre no-name master league players feeding their ego with excuses for why they lose and why they can't compete with top players and such. Want to know the difference between you and GM/pro Terrans who win tournaments? You cry about imbalance, your race being "the hardest" or any amount of bs needed to rationalize why you aren't playing up to your unrealistic expectations about how good you think you are, while they blame losses on themselves not being good enough, which motivates them to practice more. They end up practicing all day, and you end up on here posting about why you are good but your race is just "unfairly nerfed".
This is simply the mindset of a loser. Do you think Taeja or Mvp have this attitude? They have winner's mindsets. Take a cue from people who know how to win.
"Terran is the weakest race"
-MVP
"Terran is the weakest race"
-Taeja
It's been pretty obvious for quite some time that Terran is significantly more difficult to play at pretty much every level above diamond, and it's reflected in the current racial balance on ladder and Terran representation in the top levels of foreign tournaments since pretty much forever. Only the stronger competition and much higher concentration of talent in Korea is producing players who can get enough out of Terran to make it good enough to win at the highest levels.
It was like this in BW too.
We know how that one turned out.
(hint: it was with Terrans having the most tournament success of all players, kind of like what MVP has already done)