PvT win-rates have been protoss favored for years over tens of thousands of games.
Even with a 99% PvT win-rate, a Terran will still win 4 games in a row (albeit rare).
A 55% PvT win-rate will yield a 4-0 for terran once in every 24 matches.
A single PvT match means nothing about balance compared to tens of thousands of games.
If a single match is the deciding metric of balance, then Protoss is simultaneously OP (when Zest beat Byun) and underpowered (when Ty beat Stats), therefore a single match cannot determine balance since it gives contradictory conclusions.
Additional PvT analysis from later on in the thread:
So why is the matchup 50/50 on Alligulac? Protoss is only imba for low skill Terrans. For skilled players it’s clearly balanced so maybe TerranS need to get some skill rather than whine. Blizzard literally said as much instead of a balance patch.
There’s no arguing with these people at some point. Protoss can never win a tournament for the rest of SC2’s lifespan and they’ll still say its OP and needs to be nerfed.
Thinking Protoss is imba when they win the most tournaments, dominate GML at 45% and have a 55% PvT win-rate = unreasonable.
Demanding buffs until Protoss dominates literally every statistic including not just win-rates, tournament wins and Grandmaster league, but premier tournament wins as well = perfectly reasonable.
This is exactly the balance “logic” that killed SC2. Stats played like trash, confirming the amovetoss stereotype meanwhile Protoss apologists are convinced Protoss is underpowered despite their utter domination of everything short of premier event tournaments. Until players like Stats are buffed through the roof, to where their amoves can win 45%+ of Premier events (like Grandmaster league), Protoss players won’t be satisfied.
Meanwhile the game is in shambles. Blizzard is retiring it. It has the fewest # of active players ever recorded. Protoss utterly dominates GML. Zerg is the least played race in general and the least represented race in Masters/Grandmaster. But Protoss still aren’t satisfied and refuse to stop their quest for complete and utter domination of the game, even if it means killing the game in the process.
Yea, and your example doesn’t remotely match how they present data. They show month to month, not an average of one month with the prior month and each period has over a thousand games, more than enough to show relevant trends.
You just spouted off some irrelevant example that has nothing to do with the data because you either didn’t understand it or it didn’t fit your agenda.
PvT is 50/50, has been for at least 2 months, was only outside the norm for a short period after the last patch while the meta settled. Whine Terrans don’t need a balance patch, they need to LTP. Blizzard even took the unprecedented step of telling you that in their latest announcement and you still don’t listen.
What makes you think it’s mine when it’s simply a quote of Aligulac’s own webpage?
That’s exactly how they present the data, as evidenced by not only their description of the data, but the data itself. They specifically state “month-by-month”. They go above and beyond to explain that he uses 2 week periods. Etc. “I refuse to use my eyes” isn’t a valid argument.
If you group by periods, the weighting of each game varies depending on the number of games. This is a simple mathematical fact.
Because the numbers in my theoretical example, which were exaggerated to demonstrate the effect of weighting data by period, don’t match Aligulac, Aligulac doesn’t use periods? LOL. What are you smoking? Put down the pipe, wait for your eyes to uncross and THEN post.
Your irrelevant example demonstrated 2 things, neither of which are true for Aligulac.
the error of small sample size. (Aligulac has over 1000 games played per period).
the error of averaging 2 periods, especially of different sizes. (Aligulac periods are of similar sizes and are presented on their own each month on a trend line, they aren’t averaged with last month and even if they were the similar size would make your point irrelevant).
You demonstrated that there would be an issue if Aligulac did 2 things they don’t do so… what the hell was your point?
I’m glad you mentioned that. Why not use all the games played in 2020? Oh, that’s right, it’s because PvT is 55%+ in that larger sample.
Which is, in effect, what you are doing. You are comparing different time-periods to one another despite varying numbers of games, meaning you are putting more or less weight on any single game depending on how many games there are in a time period. If you compare a time period with fewer games to a time period with more, you are putting more weight on the games from the time period with fewer games. It’s very simple math, as I showed above.
Depends on what question you want to answer. If you want to know something about the current state of play, a year long average over multiple balance patches would be a dumb choice.
Because there was a patch followed by a period of adaptation to a new meta, month to month trend lines give more meaningful information. Pvt was 50/50 but Zerg was crushing toss so toss got a buff targeting PvZ. Terran got hit for 2 months and then the rates went back to 50/50. This could be random noise or it could show actual meta changes as Terran learned to adapt. You can’t necessarily disprove the possibility that toss is favored but when we have a trend line returning to the 50/50 mean following a balance shift, saying the match is Imba is just a gut reaction disconnected from the data. You’re entitled to your feeling but the trend line suggests things are returning to normal, subject to reassessment if it takes another turn.
Quite to the contrary, win-rates vary by chance, meta shifts, and skill representation, so if you want to understand the state of the game you need as large of a sample as possible, from as broad of a time period as possible. If you have a small sample from a small time period, then you don’t know if you are at the peak, average, or low of each of these varying variables.
ONLY if every game is weighted the same, which isn’t the case for your data set. Here is the PvT time-series for the past year (with every game weighted the same):
Chart: https://i.imgur.com/xkynRPN.png
Linear regression: y=0.000224*x + 0.113
X is the current date. Y is the delta from a match (+3 = 3-0. -3 = 0-3). The date has basically zero connection to the performance of PvT. Aka, the PvT performance is basically fixed.
Notice the “+ 0.113”? That’s the mean of PvT performance. That means for every match that Protoss plays, Protoss wins an average of 0.113 more games in that match than Terran. If we assume that every match is a best of three, the win-rate can be estimated by (1.5+0.113)/3 = 53.76%.
If PvT performance isn’t changing with time, and Protoss is favored, then the balance team needs to intervene.
Continuing my analysis of PvT, here is a histogram of match results:
https://i.imgur.com/SvoaTRP.png
When a terran wins, he is most likely to win with 0.5-1.5 more games than he lost. When a Protoss wins, he is most likely to win with 1.5-2.5 more wins than losses. Protoss are MUCH more likely to 4-0 than terran is.