“You can’t prove my flying spaghetti monster doesn’t exist, therefore its real!”
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Playing devil’s advocate for a moment - and being a Terran myself I find myself curious - What would you say would be evidence that proves such a claim?
Personally speaking I don’t think that there really can be evidence that proves such beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I do believe that evidence can be corelated along the lines that a conclusion can feasibly be drawn along those lines, even if it isn’t necessarily provable.
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As sheeps do. Can’t look at facts, have to base judgement off of feelings. That’s ok I dont’ need to pander them for their vote
I said it’s not a silver bullet. But it’s strong enough to be understood as factual. If you want to argue about “proof” I hope you know that to this day even evolution is a theory, but that doesn’t make it not true.
Stop with the plausibility nonsense, you’ve lost buddy - you have no data of anything and are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Nothing you say is based off facts nor objective. you’re trying t take a “logical” arugment approach in a data oriented discussion.
I mean, that is a fair point.
However, unlike the theory of evolution, or the laws of gravity, it can be argued against much more effectively, even if it’s a conclusion that I would naturally agree with as a Terran myself.
For example, you could bring up the fact that Protoss at a pro level have vastly less success than either Terran or Zerg in tournaments almost across the board. They generally have less map wins, less representation from the round of 8 onwards in most premier tournaments, vastly less victories and runner-up positions etc.
Having said that, it’s not a position I myself agree with because I personally believe there are other external factors that are causing said lack of success for Protoss at a pro level.
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Honestly; I don’t think any one thing does.
Riot has published various League statistics that do the most, and in them, it basically breaks down win rate of a character - divided mostly on two axes:
How many games the player’s used the character; what that player’s mmr/rank is; and depends on the trend lines made from hundreds of players’ first through fifth games on a character across various ranks, from performance across increasing game counts, and so on -
Basically, making a way to distinguish between ‘how much familiarity you have with the character’ and ‘how good at the game are you’; which - across sets - would demonstrate ‘how much familiarity with the character affects your win rate changes depending on how good at the game you are’ and ‘how much being a generically good player affects your performance with a character regardless of familiarity’.
Which is too many words, but it’s that sort of well-rounded evidence that I think is most demonstrative - and, to me, would most complete the argument outline presented by barcode 12402 above -
The percentage of the game population that is Terran has increased with time (likely indicating that Terrans stick to the game, therefore, they have more familiarity); and despite this ‘advantage’, the number of Terrans in the upper-mid ranks is heavily divorced from how much of the population is Terran (which implies that seniority on Terran does not equally affect win rate compared to the other races).
But we don’t… know how many of those accounts / players fall into what categories, since we can only look at the actual population and game numbers, not each individual account.
It’s entirely possible, for example, that the number of enfranchised players, who play the game seriously, doesn’t meaningfully change over time, but that an overwhelming number of people who come over, play the campaign through and then one or two games of ladder a month; just play Terran. It’s overwhelmingly unlikely but I would want data that accounts for as many variables like that as possible, to control away factors - though futzing with it too much would similarly result in having tampered with the data, so it’s fairly hard to say what that would look like too.
You could take that data for each race and make fairly strong conclusions - for example, if you only look at players who play ten or more matches a month for three months ; you’d cull out all the people who show up to play once in a blue moon, all the people who are consistently out of practice …
And then that would in turn let you actually put some measurement on on-ramp difficulty of matchups, but getting precise would basically mandate analysis of what is happening in each- of thousands or more- games; or at least of additional values, so that you can find more complex notes, like
“Players with high EAPM do good on Terran but similar players do better with Protoss, even if they have a lower EAPM, until Masters”
which supports some statement about how the different races get different performance gains at different skill levels?
I feel like I’ve stopped making sense.
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Eliwan for president!
I dont have the patience nor the eloquence to write what he wrote.
Sadly, although its well written, logical and sensible, it will be brushed away by bourne (the barcode guy) or wheasy without any notable argumentation so they can continue to say: i won the argument; terran is hardest because they have the lowest average mmr (whatever the hell of an argument that is).
Well, it’s a subjective statement of opinion. It’s impossible to 100% prove anything is easier or harder. Brain surgery is harder than bike riding, but there’s probably at least one brain surgeon that can’t ride a bike.
Goal with that sentence wasn’t really to start an argument, just to lightly tease you.
The irony of this statement is real.
No, they’re absolutely not. Between general MMR screwups from Blizzard - of which there has been plenty - general human error, game design, racial differences, and so many other factors makes MMR/rank alone an unreliable source.
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They absolutely are. Take chess for example , you can make excuses for one or two games or even 10 games but the law of averages is facts. I didn’t say it alone is the silver bullet as I already stated we will never find it but it is a source of truth.
This isn’t chess, it’s a very different game that has many, many more factors that need to be considered.
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No, we actually discuss things. It’s not like:
Sentry: Terran have lower MMR because they’re all new
Bourne: Terran players have been playing longer on average
Sentry: Well, um, sure, they’ve been playing longer, but they’re more casual
Bourne: They play more games on average
Sentry: Yeah, they play more games, but those games are more casual
Bourne: What if you’d found that Terran played less games on average?
Sentry: That’s a STRAWMAN, REEEEEEEEEE!
I did pretty much the Same as He did: i gave you a bunch of explanations/examples why Things can be why they are.
And bottomline is: drawing conclusions Out of average mmr if the races arent Chosen randomly and also If 1 Race is much much much much much more popular and 1 Race is almost extinct in certain leagues is Kinda nuts.
Do you really believe in average mmr ? Do you really believe by picked Up zerg you almost certainly skip Bronze Silver and gold ? Because If you do i am seriously impressed by your improvements in mental gymnastics.
I actually Need to calculate the difference in average mmr Just to See the difference. From the Data i would guess terran is 600 mmr behind zerg on average. Do you really think thats because of Balance ? Dont you think Nobody has ever thought about your “Point”? That is almost so painfully obvious to See. It Just Hurts to See someone pointing Out Something that obvious o.O No one in the sc2 Community has a Problem with that difference. Only you…
Please link me to when evidence I presented swayed you even a millimeter? I must’ve missed that.
Please link me to when evidence i presented swayed you even a millimeter.
Apart from your old claim that EVERY terran needs to get like idk 30% more mmr instantly or whatever your claim was back then. Even you figured it out how nuts it was. Sadly you cant see it with your other claims.
Also it doesnt work that way. YOU need to convince US that your point of view is correct. We dont need to bring anything to the table except arguments why your point of view is flawed. And there are plenty.
You still dodge the good old: Drawing conclusion out of non randomised race selection is pretty dangerous 
You never even tried to argue against it. Please let me know how you figured out to do so much mental gymnastics that you can still see it as a valid measurement. I would actually be inclined to say t is harder if you can present any valid reason of thought.
The problem is:
You say: t is harder because of average mmr.
But we cant actually know how much mmr each and every player would have if they picked another race. If all those 50% terrans in bronze/silver would pick z/p, what would happen? You think (i suppose you do) their mmr would go up.
You see? we dont actually have that data how the mmr actually unfolds for each and every race. Thats why its so hard to draw conclusions out of it. The 3 races just work so differently.
And i calculated the average mmr to be about 2700 for terran and 3000 for zerg. Meaning a terran would be g1 on average and a zerg would be p1 on average (makes sense, as the average player is high g/ low plat). You just cant tell me thats because of balance 
1 whole league. 300 mmr.
thats even too much for claim that you made some time ago. you said something like t players need to be like instead of g3 like g2 or something. But the difference is a whooping 300 mmr.
Another thing i would like to add: If you only look at the first 50% of players (bronze to gold), the average mmr of zerg and terran are more or less the same: I calulated it to approx 2150 mmr for terran and 2200 mmr for zerg.
If you look at the last 50% of players (plat to gm) the average mmr of t and z is nearly the same at approx 3500 mmr.
Thats why i said like 1000 times to you that the distribution of t players is skewing your perception. Because if you actually calculate it for top and bottom 50% the average mmr of t and z is actually the same.
Every piece of evidence you sent me I looked at. I don’t know if you remember this, but it was actually you trying to prove that Terran players were first “new” then “casual” that brought us to Nephest. I then read the data, determined that the opposite was true (you concurred, but continued to move goal posts).
I have many times. If you want to throw out hundreds of thousands of data points because of non randomized selection, you then need to throw out ALL data. It’s MUCH, MUCH more likely that 6 really good Zerg and Terran players picked those races than that 40,000 Terran players were all “just bad” and all the bad players randomly picked Terran.
Yes. This would actually be the correct thing to do. Or you can give an explanation why you still use it.
Also:
Avg mmr across all leagues: t: 2700, z 3000
avg mmr across bottom 50%: t: 2150, z: 2200
avg mmr across top 50%: t: 3500, z:3500
conclusion: terran players have more casual players but they “get” the same mmr as the other races
Good. Then it’s perfectly fine that Protoss never wins GSL or any top tournaments. Okay?
In other words, the MMR disparity is because Terran players are “just bad”
You left out the other part of the sentence. You dont like the truth, ay?
Also, your “conclusion” of my sentence is wrong. Its not about all terran players are bad, they just have more people that are bad. Thats all.
And because of that they are dragging down the average. But that in itself is not an indicator for anything tho. As i have told you 1000 times before and demonstrated it with the avg mmr. They still “get” the same mmr on average.
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Dude, you’ve switched hypotheses so many times now it’s difficult to keep up.
- Terran players are newer
- Terran players are more casual
- Terran players are casual but only half of them? Is that the newest?
Not to mention you didn’t post a source for this and you just edited out the Protoss numbers (probably because they suggest something you didn’t want to face).
Maybe actually adress the points at hand and not something that i might have said or not said.
nonapa
nonapa. com/races?region=-1&mode=1&league=-1&chart=2
You can see the current population of every race for every league. So you can just calculate the average based on their overall population.
//imgur. com/a/zQnRKNV
here is my calc. not pretty but its a quick approximation. i took the avg mmr of every league by (min+max)/2. i didnt want to waste too much time while being at work only to show some kiddo the red pill.
Also the difference between 100% population avg mmr of z and t is rather 200
I didnt do it for protoss because i didnt care because protoss is in the middle. Terran with the highest pop and lowest avg mmr is the one extreme and zerg with the lowest population but highest avg mmr is the other extreme. but i can do it too…but honestly i dont care you just try to cope
So yeah…based on that: a zerg in bottom 50% of the leagues has just the same avg mmr as a terran. the only difference is the population. there are just way way more terrans than there are zergs. Same goes for the higher leagues with the mmr, but the population is even between all 3 ^^
im 200% sure you will still take the blue pill tho.