Can Someone Tell Me Why

[Titanium-1686]

@ThiccBuddha-1468

Well, not really. Because your individual experience is influenced by your actions in game. A good example I ran into once one tricking Dva was the huge rise of double bubble. Looking at my ranks averages cannot refute that claim. You either take my word for it, or believe I am lying with no logical basis to that belief. It gets us nowhere regardless.

It depends upon the claim you are making using that experience. If you were to say, “I see double-bubble every 3 games”, then that’s a perfectly fair statement to make based upon your experience, unless those heroes have near-0% pickrates. But it’s important to realize that there’s a difference between what you see and what actually is. If you were simply to say that Winston/Zarya is in every 3 games, I would tell you that you are wrong, because objectively, you would be. Zarya appears more often than once every 3 games right now, and Winston appears less often than once every 3 games right now.

Even if you stick to the “I see” statement, your anecdote can still be easily countered by another anecdote that says something different. Who’s to say one of more valuable than the other?

In short, an anecdote is what someone sees. The statistics are the way things really are.

@ThiccBuddha-1468

But you know, I am going to adamantly maintain the stance that I run into it once every 3 games or so.

And that stance is perfectly fine, given that you acknowledge that it is your experience and that said experience may not be representative of the way things are. Maintaining that position is fine, but it’s not going to get you anywhere because in an argument, the experience of the person you are arguing against will always matter more to them than your own experiences. The fact that you would be so adamant about your experience is exactly why anecdotes are so useless without support from other resources.

@ThiccBuddha-1468

The point is kind of moot because the stats are only part of the story to begin with,

Depends upon what you’re going for. One player’s experience (or simply their perceptions thereof) can be summed up in a single anecdote. The game shouldn’t be balanced around a single person’s personal experience (once again, who can say that theirs is more valuable than anyone else’s?). The game should be balanced around the way things really are, and you’re not going to arrive at that through anecdotes. You find that through statistics, the patch history, and… historical statistics.

About this:

@ThiccBuddha-1468

whatever the math is that people trust for pickrate and not winrate…

A clear interpretation of winrate is muddied by other factors that influence it that do not influence pickrate. If a hero is insanely overpowered, they will be picked on both teams quite often. Their pickrate will skyrocket, and their winrate will be… average. Why? If a hero is on both teams every game, every win for that hero is also a loss for that hero.

I wrote this on the matter a while back:

@Titanium-1686

Speaking of Genji, let’s talk about him. He’s been a hot topic this week.

First, I would like for people to stop pretending that winrates are effective metrics for hero viability in a game where mirror selections are possible. Yes, I know, it’s hip to hate on Genji. I hate Genji too, and his 58% GM winrate this week is low-hanging fruit just begging to be voiced in a debate.

However, to use that winrate as evidence for an argument is nothing more than a bit of confirmation bias derived from a wildly erratic and unpredictable measure.

Symmetra 2.0 and Torbjorn 1.0 both featured 65% winrates when it was almost unanimous among the Overwatch community that these two heroes were flaming garbage, routinely labeled as “troll-picks” because of how underpowered they were.

Without looking, can you guess which hero has the highest winrate in GM this month? I couldn’t. I never would have guessed this character.

Everyone have their predictions?

It’s Pharah.

It’s not Reinhardt, who was hands-down the best Tank for the majority of that time.
It’s not Ana, who was hands-down the best Support for the majority of that time.
It’s not McCree, who was hands-down the best DPS for the majority of that time.

It’s Pharah.

McCree, the undisputed best DPS hero in the game for the past six months has the lowest GM winrate in the game this month with 49%.