Some data from prize money point of view regarding race balance since 2003

I collected the data of how much each race earn as prize money from top 12 (non-random, just top 12 except 2003) players from 2003 to 2010. (Source: Liquidpedia)

The table is here:

https://imgur.com/a/MgccAe3

Some summary: Human is the best race in 11 out of past 18 years(including 2019 and 2020 so far), Orc follows with 4 years, Elf 3, and Undead 0.

Undead is the worst race in 11 out of past 18 years (including 2020 so far). Night Elf was the worst for 4 years. Orc was for 3 years. Human has never been the worst.

So I guess it makes sense from a historical point of view why Blizzard would buff Human in the latest PTR and nerf all other races’ tools to counter human. There’s a clear favored race and an unfavored race in the past 18 years.

I just feel bad for people like Lucifer who keeps trying to do something Blizzard does not allow him to do. He probably would not have depression if he picked another race to play.

Edit: I am not an Undead player. I play all 4 races and human the most. I’m just posting these to give people a perspective why there’s such a backlash against buffing human. Also I think Undead pro-players have been treated very unfairly.

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Thank you for this. There are too many Human whiners going around pretending to need buffs, although the opposite is the case. Current World champion is Human after Human vs Human finals.

Even the devs seem to be biased towards Human. If this PTR patch goes live, people will rapidly lose interest in the game as Blizzard keeps buffing the best race and nerf all other 3 races. What a terrible PTR patch. Everyone agrees its terrible. Pro players, Back2Warcraft, the entire community.

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playing UD is so micro dependant when other races can depends on macro…

Get a life, it’s simply because war3 has a very small pool of pros, and it happens that better players are playing hum. For instance in WGL, infi used to beat lyn in orc mirror, beat moon and foggy in elf mirror. If the game is balance, Infi/Th should win much more and they don’t need to offrace to elf/ud/orc in tourney like they did in the past decade.

Infi said they it’s disrespectful to compare him with Happy/120 because he is the superior player with much better multi-tasking and macro.

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What are you talking about that better players play Hu? Is that really your argument here? The data is too overwhelming for that to be true. Also, Lyn has beaten Infi plenty of times in bo3 rdm matches! Moon’s multitasking can also be compared to Infi’s. You are so obviously wanting an edge with your Human it’s crazy. I am myself playing Human alot, but I don’t want the game to be ruined.

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Nope, Lyn cannot beat Infi’s main race by offracing while Infi can destroy Lyn with all four races. Infi can play only random to achieve the 1st place in W3Champions and Netease while with random Lyn can barely made into top 20 on Netease. So clearly Infi is the much better player but he still lose a lot to Lyn’s orc using hum.

Another important point is that we are discussing the current patch. There is no point to looking at the data in the past 18 years. You should only look at the current patch or at most the results since 1.30, that’s data 101 class you have missing: it’s not the more data the better, only look at the recent relevant data!

h ttps://liquipedia.net/warcraft/Warcraft_Gold_League/2019/Winter/Oct_Pro

Group stage 2, group A - Lyn [H] vs Infi [O] 2:1

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The thing about HU is that given enough time it has a HARD counter for almost anything, time which usually isnt a problem thx to its superior defenses and economy.

You go air? no problem, i have giros, tanks, rifles or hawks.

You go ground? no problem, mortar with upgrade destroy anything (specially NE unnarmored), griphons destroy heavy mele in 3 shots, knights with sundering blade (another heavy buff that other races only could dream of) obliterate anything ranged.

Did i talk about magic? yea, spell breakers. Forget about using any spell oriented unit. Spell breakers is one of the best t2 units, still it got control magic upgrade buffed to T2. reason? who knows, because its cool? no idea.

Lets not forget either that they dont even need t3 hard counters because its t2 with caster mortar /breakers whatever is already one of the strongest.

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Blockquote The thing about HU is that given enough time it has a HARD counter for almost anything, time which usually isnt a problem thx to its superior defenses and economy.

This is absolutely true. HU enjoys superior units that can hard counter anything in late games. Once Human player reaches tier 3 and able to mass produce the game is over for others.

Take undead, for example, gyro+knight counters EVERYTHING. Undead players have no solution to this. Either they shut down Human early or they lose. Blizzard wants to “help human player transit into late game”, which basically means giving human player a free win under such condition.

If Blizzard thinks Human should be able to transit into 2 base tier 3 easily, then they should make the units of other races equally good as Human’s.

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Giant, you are wrong regarding your statements. For the past years, human has been statistically significantly superior and still is. Both old data and new data supports my argument. You have what is called selection bias; you pick one player to contradict my statement while ignoring the overall significance AND even my statement contradicting yours (see above match from 2019 where Lyn beat Infi with random). I do agree though that Infi currently is the most successful player with random, but not by far and that does not support your argument about the patch. It would be called an outlier. Using Infi to prove the overall data is faulty for the exact reason you describe! He is simply too good with all races. So let’s look at the overall trend. I happen to be well versed in research and data interpretation and old data can be seen as important since we are still talking about the same game. Ofc newest data is most relevant and is what I’ve been talking about all along. I will accept an apology.

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You realize that Orc is not Infi’s main do you? :rofl:

Sorry I got a PhD in machine learning from a top university and I am working as a data scientist in tech. Don’t know where did you do your education in data but based on what you said you seems like an undergraduate who just learned some stats jargons but lack of the critical thinking to analyse data (even for such a toy problem) I am happy to give you some tips.
“old data can be seen as important since we are still talking about the same game.” Not true, the game has been evolved and the meta has been changed significantly in the past few patches. Like many things in life, the state of the game should be considered a Markov chain, you next patch is only dependent on your current patch not the patches before. I know you will objective this as you probably never learned stochastic process, so I don’t mind showing you a bit more analysis.
So let’s look at the overall trend. As you said hum players are performing well in the previous patches, but based on results this year
h ttps://liquipedia.net/warcraft/Tier_1_Tournaments

h ttps://liquipedia.net/warcraft/Tier_2_Tournaments

2020 performance tournament winners by race:

Undead: 12 wins

Night Elf: 9 Wins

Orc: 4 Wins

Human: 3 Wins

Tier 1 tournaments: 2 NE, 1 ORC, 1 HU, 0 UD

Tier 2 tournaments: 12 UD, 7 NE, 3 ORC, 2 HU

So as you can see, in 2020 is underperforming which clearly contradicts to “the trend” you claim therefore suggest the previous years results have little relevance to the current patch.

For the past years, human has been statistically significantly superior and still is. Both old data and new data supports my argument. You have what is called selection bias;
First I have showed you the data, at top level hum has been performing inferior to elf and ud. And talking about selection bias, it really depends on what group of players are we talking about? Noobs or good players or the best players? As you are talking about prize money, I will have to assume you are selecting the best players as the samples. And in reality the same size is very small in War3, we are talking about roughly a dozen players who are competing at the highest level and it makes little sense to do statistical reference in such a small sample size. If you really think this holds, feel free to show me how you define the problem, what your null-hypothesis is, your math of calculating the confidence interval and so on. I am happy to have a look. So no, Infi is not a outlier in such a small group of elite players.

Using Infi to prove the overall data is faulty for the exact reason you describe! He is simply too good with all races. This is not the logic here, Infi developed his offacing skills because he have to offrace a lot to win in the tournaments which clearly shows hum inferiority. So here I have to question the integrity of the data you posted. As Infi won the 3rd place in the Douyu Thunder Fire Cup by defeating Foggy in a bo5 elf mirror, do you categorize it as prize money winning by hum or by elf? h ttps://warcraft3.info/stats/player/Infi/vs/Foggy
He also beat Lyn’s orc using elf in bo5/bo3 in 2018 WGL winter season finals, in Douyu Thunder Fire Cup, in WGL 2019 Summer& Winter seasons. Did you count his relevant prize money as winning by elf or hum player? Care to show your calculation?
h ttps://warcraft3.info/stats/player/Infi/vs/Lyn

Okay, good for you! My degree is from Uni. Of Chicago.

To be fair, in reality, we need data from all players on bnet to get power if we are to consider the game as a whole, which we don’t have. Wc3 champions data, which I think is valuable, says we should only change Orc vs. Elf and Hu vs. Ud matchups. This is not consistent with the patch.

I personally, think the highest lvl is the most important, because there is where imbalances will matter most.

Also, did you even look at your own links? Top tier finalists from 2019 is favoured for human. 2020, I see 3 HU among best 6 players for NeXt, 3 top 6 in WCG 2020, 2 out of 4 for WGL with Human mirror in finals (all 50%). The two earliest tournaments in 2020 is not successful for human, granted, BUT the amount of human players in top 24 is still tied in highest with elf and orc. Honestly, I dont have time to go through all tournaments. Please take into account not only the winners, but the participants in the playoffs. All tourney matches considered, are human performing poorly? no. Prize money? no. So why are all races except human nerfed and hu buffed?

Regarding prize money, human is leading 2020.

Final note: I disagree that last months is only important. I think at least the last year is important regarding balance since it takes some time for patches to be fully executed by players. This is always going to be a judgment call though. You say meta has changed “significantly” which I’m not sure it has and is definitely up for debate. Same first heroes (except for CL and KOTG spring of 2019) and some FS HH that has barely been executed yet. Human still expands Vs ud, goes AM clap Vs Orc with mass breakers, UD Happy style, Elf mass tier 1 Vs Orc etc etc. Of course the patch should at best be based on the last one, but do you really think the CL patch from June is the only valuable data here? The patch shouldn’t come in another few months then when season has finished. I think valuable info can be drawn from previous year regarding things that hasn’t been changed alot in the game. Like stomp and clap and wisps (where is clap here?). Reg. Infi, I meant that we don’t have data on random players. How can you draw the conclusion that “Human players are better than the rest”, simply based on one player playing random? We need a random tournament to be able to compare the players in this regard. Also, he doesn’t “need” to play random, he just won WGL as human! He is an outlier if you consider all players, good and bad, and if you focus on only top tier, his random data doesn’t even nearly prove your hypothesis that “Wc3 players that play the Human race are better wc3 players than other players.” You should know this.

Feel free to read your own links and dispute my statements in the tourneys of top players from 2019-2020, which is what I am mostly talking about, as well as prize money, if you have time and even interest. I will change my mind if your case is solid I promise!

I am however, not happy (neither is my respectable other) that I’m sitting typing about wc3 balance at 5am (lol!), so I’ll be off and will respond to you with thumbs up. We both need a life, and get new PhDs in wc3 patching. Maybe then we can solve this big world problem: will TC stomp get nerfed by 1 or 2 seconds at tier 3!!!

That is the most ridiculous thing I read from this forum. There’s subreddit called “/r/iamverysmart” made for you. “My IQ is 300 what should i do?”

From your own link Human continues to dominate tier 2 events even with tier 2 players, they did not win the entire tournament simply due to their opponents being tier 1 players. What we are seeing here is tier 2 human players like Sok/Chaemiko/Blade can get to finals while it takes better players like happy/120/Moon/Lawliet/Lyn to do the same.

Tier 1 Human players don’t even participate in tier 2 events due to how easy for them to win tier 1 tournaments, and that’s the only reason human doesn’t win many first places in tier 2 events like they do in tier 1.

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Nope, the one who threw stats jargons without knowing the math is ridiculous. If someone mentioned level of significance you should at least show your derivation of confidence interval, talk is cheap show me the math. Also I have pointed out that your data is suspicious, according to Liquipedia, elf is dominating tier 2 tournaments, period.

Sidenote: I’d be interested in seeing both GiantDwarf and gutiswe making straight up scientific studies of this and seeing how they both go about their data gathering to see what kinds of discrepancies there might be.

That could be a series. We could call it… Datapoint Joust!
…No wait that sounds stupid.

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Its hilarious how almost all pro players responses where something like this:

This patch is terrible and will break Orc vs Elf and only make it worse for Orc vs Human, Elf vs Human and UD vs Human.

The community reaction from B2W, Grubby and others were all similar. Human gets only buffs even though Human is already the most successful race over the vast majority of time.

TH000 and Infi called it what it is, ToD patch. No one asked for buffs to Arcane towers, they are one of the best already. If Elf wants to harass with Warden for example, he has to spend gold to buy a magic immunity potion or otherwise lose all mana.

The goal to help races in certain matchups is correct, but the patch as a whole benefits Human while Human has been dominating all of Wacraft 3 tournamentsa s a whole, several years in a row over multiple patches and several different players.

Clearly, Human is performing way too good given the fact that out of a selection of multiple pro players, Human has been constantly been on top.

Get rid of the Tower buff. Adress Breakers and clap to help Orc vs HU and Elf vs HU matchup. Breakers are a huge issue in Orc vs HU because they straight up counter TC as the only Orc win condition. If Human manages to go even he only needs to get enough Breakers and TC will be useless. Orc will have no ability to win any more fights at that point. Thats how broken this matchup is, even though the data does not reflect it immediately.