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 techsoldaten wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Hell, they didn't even start selling basic things like T-shirts and stuff until very recently.

I still have GW shirts from the 90s. 3 with logos and 1 with Abaddon.

It's a practice that comes and goes.

Should have clarified, they haven't sold merchandise regularly until very recently, not so much a practice that comes and goes as much as "were you lucky to catch it" back in the day

SemperMortis wrote:
So you have graduated from the logical fallacy of a Strawman and ran straight into the Argument from Authority. Congrats and this new fallacious argument. I do not give any merit to how others "track" their stats, and have shown how W/L is meaningless. "But muh speese mehreens only have a 50% W/L ratio!" cool story bud, still placing more than 1/3rd of the time.

My argument is that the data we have isn't organized to easily see if your claim is supported. So you need to organize the data and present your case before we can evaluate the truth of your statements.

Because those 5th-8th places usually contain at least 1-2 more space Marine lists Another wonderful example at the aforementioned Hobart tournament, Space Marines also held 7th and 8th place with white scars and Salamanders, which if my math serves me correctly would make it 5/8ths Space Marines. In fact, atm, 4 of the top 8 spots in ITC rankings belong to space marines.

More anecdotes. Please put in the work to show that this is actually a trend and not just you cherry-picking tournaments that suit your narrative.

YAY, another strawman, when you switched to Argument from Authority I was afraid you wouldn't keep firing off these Strawmen arguments. Show me exactly where I said "NERF ALL DA SPEESE MEHREENS!" in this thread. Ah, I haven't, I have only pointed out that they are doing extremely well for themselves you than jumped into assumption mode faster than you jump into strawman arguments.

So what's your argument then? Space Marines are taking their expected number of places in the top 4 based on your own numbers which shows that they're balanced, not that they're over-tuned.

Woohoo! another strawman. I never claimed Harlies and custodes doing well was a good thing, in fact, I think for the most part custodes are doing too well while harlies need a slight nerf but are mostly doing well because they are anti-speese mehreens which benefits them greatly. Kind of like how the Ork tournament list is counter to most Space Marine lists because it spams cheap throw away infantry that most Space marine lists aren't built to handle.

Every good list plays to the meta unless it becomes so powerful that it becomes the meta. This isn't news and proves nothing.

Pretty sure I answered these last 3 of yours with a statement that amounts to basically you demanding an impossible level of evidence that isn't available anywhere on the web. So what your defense amounts to is "spend tens of thousands of dollars flying around the country to EVERY GT and Major and interview every single attendee and get every single army list, compile them all into scientific paper and than maybe i'll believe you". There is probably over a million players in 40k right now, so all i have to do to convince you is interview 50k people? seems fair LMAO!

So you have no proof and will continue to rely on cherry-picked anecdotes while claiming that your numbers are true and have meaning while any numbers I pick are somehow wrong because the handful of tournaments you attend make you an expert. Your unproven hundreds of tournaments mean nothing as they're still just an anecdote and represent only a bare fraction of the tournament games played at that tournament let alone every tournament worldwide that also ran that same day/weekend. Your stories aren't and never will be proof.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bosskelot wrote:
If I still had my university Dissertation on hand I could give you your coveted and fetishized data that W/L percentage is often misleading and usually meaningless, and that was based around SC2, not even Warhammer.

SC2, you mean a joke of an e-sport with a tiny player base and massive skill gaps between players? Try analyzing something that people actual play with good players from more than one region rather than a failed esport that allowed Koreans to qualify in every region because the game never took off in Europe or NA.

But really, you just need to actually engage and be familiar with any competitive game to know this is the case. There's a wealth of material written on this subject, especially when it concerns e-sports, but there's plenty on Warhammer too. If you were actually engaged and familiar with competitive 40k, which you have admitted you aren't, you would know this and would have read it.

If it's so common why is it so hard for you to link to any of it?

Top 4 or maybe even top 10 finishes are really the only concrete way to measure a factions relative power in this game, because as you somehow refuse to believe despite every competitive player telling you, the majority of tournament attendees are not hyper competitive in-it-to-win-it players. I was facing people playing all Primaris Imperial Fist armies in the middle of 8th tournaments for instance.

That's not what I'm arguing though. I'm arguing that these players play Space Marines to a greater extent than they play other factions and that they do so to such a degree that the skew SM win-rate stats compared to those same stats for other factions. This is what needs proving, not that casual players attend tournaments.

If you want data on this, just go and check tournament results. Scroll down to the bottom half of placings and see what armies are being run and what sorts of lists they're using. There's your fething proof.

Why is it my job to go do that? If it's so obvious you should be able to comb the data and present an argument that doesn't require the reader to do your work for you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bosskelot wrote:
But you're right, it does skew the results. That's why looking at and relying completely upon absolute winrates in 40k is a flawed endeavour.

Also calling competitive players WAAC donkey-caves is pretty distasteful, shockingly ignorant and insulting to other hobbyists.

You can correct for this issue by placing a higher weight on games played deeper into tournaments. This is one of the things that Goonhammers method has sought to do by assigning wins against different factions different values and using that to rank armies. Or is this still not good enough because...

"YAY, another strawman, when you switched to Argument from Authority I was afraid you wouldn't keep firing off these Strawmen arguments. Show me exactly where I said "NERF ALL DA SPEESE MEHREENS!" in this thread. Ah, I haven't, I have only pointed out that they are doing extremely well for themselves you than jumped into assumption mode faster than you jump into strawman arguments.

So what's your argument then? Space Marines are taking their expected number of places in the top 4 based on your own numbers which shows that they're balanced, not that they're over-tuned.
"

There is no argument. The argument is that they don't like marines because marines get all the attention. They are just a dumb beginner army that only newbs play and they are so OP and easy to play that even a newb can win majors with them. These are facts Canadian - they aren't anecdotes.

Look dude. This is a fact. For the majority of 8th eddition marines of almost all types had aprox a 40-45% win rate. Which is phenomenally bad. It had 1 list archetype that worked and it got nerfed "Gman" while having lower win rates than other armies winning archetypes. At that time Ultramarines were consider "OP". LOL

 Xenomancers wrote:
"YAY, another strawman, when you switched to Argument from Authority I was afraid you wouldn't keep firing off these Strawmen arguments. Show me exactly where I said "NERF ALL DA SPEESE MEHREENS!" in this thread. Ah, I haven't, I have only pointed out that they are doing extremely well for themselves you than jumped into assumption mode faster than you jump into strawman arguments.

So what's your argument then? Space Marines are taking their expected number of places in the top 4 based on your own numbers which shows that they're balanced, not that they're over-tuned.
"

There is no argument. The argument is that they don't like marines because marines get all the attention. They are just a dumb beginner army that only newbs play and they are so OP and easy to play that even a newb can win majors with them. These are facts Canadian - they aren't anecdotes.

Look dude. This is a fact. For the majority of 8th eddition marines of almost all types had aprox a 40-45% win rate. Which is phenomenally bad. It had 1 list archetype that worked and it got nerfed "Gman" while having lower win rates than other armies winning archetypes. At that time Ultramarines were consider "OP". LOL

I'm confused by this post. From the lack of quote tags to the rambling paragraphs I have no idea who this is directed to or what case it seeks make.

 Canadian 5th wrote:


SC2, you mean a joke of an e-sport with a tiny player base and massive skill gaps between players? Try analyzing something that people actual play with good players from more than one region rather than a failed esport that allowed Koreans to qualify in every region because the game never took off in Europe or NA.

Holy gak dude, 2 things. First, POT, MEET KETTLE -- you're over here asking for "PROOFS!!!!1!!!!1" on everything and you just throw this little canard out there about SC2 skill gaps with nothing to back it up? Second (and more importantly)... you really think SC2 has fewer players than 40k?! Maybe I'm off-base, but even if SC2 underperformed expectations, the barrier of entry is so, so much lower to play than 40k; and in general, video games/e-sports seem much more popular than tabletop games (I will acknowledge that that's speculation and assert no fact here.) In any case, especially if we look at competitive community size, competitive tabletop is much smaller than competitive e-sports (pick SC2, pick LoL, whatever).

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
"YAY, another strawman, when you switched to Argument from Authority I was afraid you wouldn't keep firing off these Strawmen arguments. Show me exactly where I said "NERF ALL DA SPEESE MEHREENS!" in this thread. Ah, I haven't, I have only pointed out that they are doing extremely well for themselves you than jumped into assumption mode faster than you jump into strawman arguments.

So what's your argument then? Space Marines are taking their expected number of places in the top 4 based on your own numbers which shows that they're balanced, not that they're over-tuned.
"

There is no argument. The argument is that they don't like marines because marines get all the attention. They are just a dumb beginner army that only newbs play and they are so OP and easy to play that even a newb can win majors with them. These are facts Canadian - they aren't anecdotes.

Look dude. This is a fact. For the majority of 8th eddition marines of almost all types had aprox a 40-45% win rate. Which is phenomenally bad. It had 1 list archetype that worked and it got nerfed "Gman" while having lower win rates than other armies winning archetypes. At that time Ultramarines were consider "OP". LOL

I'm confused by this post. From the lack of quote tags to the rambling paragraphs I have no idea who this is directed to or what case it seeks make.

The point is they hate marines to the core. They will ignore all the data that proves your point and pick data they like to support their opinions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:


SC2, you mean a joke of an e-sport with a tiny player base and massive skill gaps between players? Try analyzing something that people actual play with good players from more than one region rather than a failed esport that allowed Koreans to qualify in every region because the game never took off in Europe or NA.

Holy gak dude, 2 things. First, POT, MEET KETTLE -- you're over here asking for "PROOFS!!!!1!!!!1" on everything and you just throw this little canard out there about SC2 skill gaps with nothing to back it up? Second (and more importantly)... you really think SC2 has fewer players than 40k?! Maybe I'm off-base, but even if SC2 underperformed expectations, the barrier of entry is so, so much lower to play than 40k; and in general, video games/e-sports seem much more popular than tabletop games (I will acknowledge that that's speculation and assert no fact here.) In any case, especially if we look at competitive community size, competitive tabletop is much smaller than competitive e-sports (pick SC2, pick LoL, whatever).

Sc2 is so incredibly hard. There are maybe 500 players in the world that can compete at the top level. It requires super human levels of concentration a conditioning.

40k on the other hand is a simple game. I could teach a new player how to beat a "pro player" in a few weeks of game play.

SemperMortis wrote:

dogboy311 wrote:
I’m sure GW pays attention too this. They are a very successful company, the biggest guy on the block by far when you look at it without your TROLL eyes. So I’m sure they understand they customer base more then us. So if you don’t like that, just move on, put your BonHommes on eBay and let someone else enjoy them.

I had to do a double take when I read this, and yep, brand new poster. GW has historically NOT paid attention to his customer base nor understood them. Hell, they didn't even start selling basic things like T-shirts and stuff until very recently. They were literally known as one of the least responsive companies in the games industry, as proven by their sheer lack of Feths to give when asked for rules clarifications "We are a model company not a game company" or some such nonsense. Some broken rules went YEARS without getting fixed in prior editions. As it stands they push out a rules fix and a points adjustment once a year and get an extra FAQ out for new releases. For a lot of companies this would be considered the bare minimum, but for GW this is literally light years better than they used to be. Generally speaking I have anecdotally seen a LOT of players LOVE the game but hate the company. 40k is just about the best IP out there right now, but that has more to do with the original concept rather than how the company was run for the last few decades. Put it this way, if a MMORPG like World of Warcraft ran their game like GW has historically run 40k, they would be out of business and Lineage2 or some other MMORPG would have taken over as the dominant game.

Why because I’m not on the I hate GW train. I’ve played for years man. And have never had any issues with the game, or the company for that matter, maybe it’s because I understand it’s a game of plastic toy soldiers. Also again you have the choice too play this game, or too not play this game. People like the way the company works and have for years, or it would have failed a long time ago. Sorry you don’t like it, then quit, it’s an easy solution.

dogboy311 796430 11066407 wrote:Why because I’m not on the I hate GW train. I’ve played for years man. And have never had any issues with the game, or the company for that matter, maybe it’s because I understand it’s a game of plastic toy soldiers. Also again you have the choice too play this game, or too not play this game. People like the way the company works and have for years, or it would have failed a long time ago. Sorry you don’t like it, then quit, it’s an easy solution.

but if you pay for GW models shouldn't you expect a similar quality of product for similar money? It should not be okey that spending 900$ on one army gives you 3 years of fun, while spending the same on the other does not.

I'd say it is more likely that people have little to no idea how the country works. Most people don't pay that much attention to the products they're buying.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Holy gak dude, 2 things. First, POT, MEET KETTLE -- you're over here asking for "PROOFS!!!!1!!!!1" on everything and you just throw this little canard out there about SC2 skill gaps with nothing to back it up?

https://root4root.com/news/david-vs-goliath-an-in-depth-look-at-region-lock-in-starcraft-ii

"In sum, Korea in the late 2000s was ahead of every other region in terms of developing and growing the very best real-time strategy players. This advantage extended into StarCraft II, with Korean professionals dominating the early days of the game. In 2013, 74% of all prize money flowed to Korean players. The WCS Premiere League that same year - ostensibly featuring separate regions for NA, EU and KR - sent half- or majority-Korean squads from America and Europe in every single season."

"Interestingly, foreigners' larger share of the global prize pool did not coincide with significantly better win rates against their Korean counterparts. In 2013, the top eight Korean players at Blizzcon - sOs, Jaedong, Maru, Bomber, Soulkey, Polt, Dear, and duckdeok - collectively went 82-14 in offline matches against foreigners, translating to an 85% win rate. The corresponding group in 2018 - Maru, Classic, Stats, Zest, TY, Rogue, Dark, and sOs - went 134-33, a fairly similar 80% win rate.

Anecdotal evidence in 2018 also suggested that the skills gap between foreigners and Koreans had not significantly changed. In 2018, Blizzard put on a tournament entitled "GSL vs. The World", in which foreign and Korean players competed head-to-head. While this was eventually won by a foreigner - Serral - three out of the top four finishers were Koreans. The Teams competition showed a similar result, in which Serral won his match while every other foreigner lost. Shortly afterward, Serral himself listed only Koreans when asked to name the next four best players in the world."

"The data shows that the best foreigners have closed the gap considerably with the Koreans. But it's noteworthy that only a handful of top-top players like Serral found consistent success: even Tier-1 foreigners struggle to break the 50% mark. For example, ASUS Assembly Summer 2019, held just weeks prior to GSL vs. The World, featured six Koreans in its round-of-8 in addition to an all-Korean finals. Furthermore, while a 30-40% win-rate against Koreans sounds like a pretty good number, it is in-line with the lifetime winrates of the historically best foreign players in the scene, including such greats as Stephano, Scarlett, NaNiwa, HuK, IdrA, and Snute."

I watched a lot of Pro-SCII myself before its English language coverage basically fell off a cliff. I know what I'm talking about here and have the sources to back myself up.

Second (and more importantly)... you really think SC2 has fewer players than 40k?!

I never said that. I was laughing at how small and imbalanced the SCII scene is compared to other current e-sports.

Look at LoL and you'll see a much more even global meta than what SCII and Broodwar have.

In any case, especially if we look at competitive community size, competitive tabletop is much smaller than competitive e-sports (pick SC2, pick LoL, whatever).

I suspect that this might not actually be true. Given how old SCII is, the skill it takes to play, and the tiny prize pools the scene can't be very large.

https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Players_(All)

I'd need time to check player records and see how many of these players even hit top-32 at tournaments but for how accessible SCII is this is a tiny pool of pro players.

https://liquipedia.net/leagueoflegends/Portallayers/Americas

Now look at the list for LoL and realize that this is missing significant chunks of players (such as most of MRN's roster).

40k will be harder to find a list for but I'll try:

ITC lists 355 rated players:

https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/bcpplayers?league=KkgxAPBvFb&embed=true

This list is likely just for 2021 and we all know what the tournament scene is like so it's probable that the 40k tournament scene is comparable to what SCII has.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
*SNIP

***TRANSLATION*** you have no argument except to demand evidence that is literally unachievable by any person or group of people barring a major company like GW to collect and collate.

Honestly canadian, if you actually played the game let alone play tournaments you might be believed, but since you don't and have stated you haven't played for years your argument is reduced to demanding others either believe you or provide an amount of evidence that is simply not reasonable. You are wrong, everyone with the exception of Space Marine defenders like Xeno know you are wrong.

And xeno, bud, you aren't helping his case by trying to defend him with your own strawmen

SemperMortis wrote:
***TRANSLATION*** you have no argument except to demand evidence that is literally unachievable by any person or group of people barring a major company like GW to collect and collate.

If you wish to refute the Glicko scores* that Goonhammer uses to rank armies you're going to need to gather data and prove that they're wrong. Your anecdotes and suppositions are not a basis by which you can refute evidence-based claims.

*https://www.goonhammer.com/the-february-2021-40k-meta-review/

Sorry Canadian, I think you need to offer proof of that. I expect you to personally conduct surveys of everyone involved in the Goonhammer scoring system to ensure there's no bias, as well as detailing exhaustively how they achieved their results.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Sorry Canadian, I think you need to offer proof of that. I expect you to personally conduct surveys of everyone involved in the Goonhammer scoring system to ensure there's no bias, as well as detailing exhaustively how they achieved their results.

For the system itself Glicko is well understood, so I need do nothing there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system#:~:text=The%20RD%20measures%20the%20accuracy,1500)%20with%2095%25%20confidence.

http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko.pdf

As for Goonhammer's data they're transparent there as well:

"Thanks to the wonderful efforts of tournament organizers and app developers around the world, we have access to what is essentially every meaningful piece of data around competitive games of 40k. The data in this month’s study comes primarily from The ITC Battles App, a brilliant app for tracking games both in and out of tournaments. With tournament activity currently slowed in most areas thanks to the pandemic, we were still able to analyze data on nearly 4,000 games of Warhammer 40k played in January."

You can easily go and look at the data they had access to and see if it fits what's coming out of their model.

Unlike your anecdotes my data is transparent and available. Where is your data?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Sorry Canadian, I think you need to offer proof of that. I expect you to personally conduct surveys of everyone involved in the Goonhammer scoring system to ensure there's no bias, as well as detailing exhaustively how they achieved their results.

For the system itself Glicko is well understood, so I need do nothing there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system#:~:text=The%20RD%20measures%20the%20accuracy,1500)%20with%2095%25%20confidence.

http://www.glicko.net/glicko/glicko.pdf

As for Goonhammer's data they're transparent there as well:

"Thanks to the wonderful efforts of tournament organizers and app developers around the world, we have access to what is essentially every meaningful piece of data around competitive games of 40k. The data in this month’s study comes primarily from The ITC Battles App, a brilliant app for tracking games both in and out of tournaments. With tournament activity currently slowed in most areas thanks to the pandemic, we were still able to analyze data on nearly 4,000 games of Warhammer 40k played in January."

You can easily go and look at the data they had access to and see if it fits what's coming out of their model.

Unlike your anecdotes my data is transparent and available. Where is your data?

Sorry that isn't enough, that is merely hearsay and a random statement with no bearing on fact or truth. We need you to go ahead and conduct those interviews, preferably live on air so we can watch as well and ask questions. until then your argument is invalid no matter how many links you provide.

SemperMortis wrote:
Sorry that isn't enough, that is merely hearsay and a random statement with no bearing on fact or truth. We need you to go ahead and conduct those interviews, preferably live on air so we can watch as well and ask questions. until then your argument is invalid no matter how many links you provide.

I've provided concrete numbers, can you show me literally any data that you or JNA have provided that isn't an anecdote?

Keep in mind that I'm not the one who suggested that SM have a greater percentage of new/casual players than other factions and that this invalidates their w/l record. I brought up things based on data, you brought up a counterpointed based on nothing and have refused to do so much as look at the data you claim proves your point and summarize it. Instead, you've brought up tier lists, without actually linking to any of them or showing the methodology behind how they were created as if it were equivalent to what Goonhammer has done.

When the quality of data is limited and poor, then it is reasonable to make suppositions without data based on logical reasoning. We are not talking about a scientific paper here and the data collected from tournaments would not stand up to that standard of rigor in any case.

And you know that the data you are asking for does not exist, so what do you want to achieve with these demands? It's an unrealistic standard to hold other posters to.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Sorry that isn't enough, that is merely hearsay and a random statement with no bearing on fact or truth. We need you to go ahead and conduct those interviews, preferably live on air so we can watch as well and ask questions. until then your argument is invalid no matter how many links you provide.

I've provided concrete numbers, can you show me literally any data that you or JNA have provided that isn't an anecdote?

Keep in mind that I'm not the one who suggested that SM have a greater percentage of new/casual players than other factions and that this invalidates their w/l record. I brought up things based on data, you brought up a counterpointed based on nothing and have refused to do so much as look at the data you claim proves your point and summarize it. Instead, you've brought up tier lists, without actually linking to any of them or showing the methodology behind how they were created as if it were equivalent to what Goonhammer has done.

A system isn't hard numbers But what I did do was provide HARD numbers from 2 GTs which showed Space Marines of one flavor or another taking all 3 of the top placings AND which had further Marines in the top 8 and used that as justification to say that Marines are in a good place as one of the best factions in the game, I also provided feedback from over 1,200 individuals which said the same thing. All you did was provide a link to a website which agrees with you that W/L is relevant So, i'll be waiting for you to provide those interviews for us to cross examine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
When the quality of data is limited and poor, then it is reasonable to make suppositions without data based on logical reasoning. We are not talking about a scientific paper here and the data collected from tournaments would not stand up to that standard of rigor in any case.

And you know that the data you are asking for does not exist, so what do you want to achieve with these demands? It's an unrealistic standard to hold other posters to.

He knows, he also knows he was proven wrong by the community as a whole, but he wants to continue to argue and the only way he can logically do so is to demand an unreasonable amount of evidence.

 Da Boss wrote:
And you know that the data you are asking for does not exist, so what do you want to achieve with these demands? It's an unrealistic standard to hold other posters to.

Then retract the statement about Marine w/l records being meaningless or append the statement to make it clear that such a stance is purely opinion-based and not backed up by any meaningful data.

It shouldn't be required. And you'll have to define meaningful for me, I don't think I'd be accepting this data collection method as particularly valid for anything other than very limited analysis.

Also, I haven't made any such statements so it would be tricky for me to retract them.

SemperMortis wrote:
A system isn't hard numbers But what I did do was provide HARD numbers from 2 GTs which showed Space Marines of one flavor or another taking all 3 of the top placings AND which had further Marines in the top 8 and used that as justification to say that Marines are in a good place as one of the best factions in the game, I also provided feedback from over 1,200 individuals which said the same thing. All you did was provide a link to a website which agrees with you that W/L is relevant So, i'll be waiting for you to provide those interviews for us to cross examine.

Wow, 2 whole GTs and statements from 1,200 players which is meaningless without any information as to why they submitted the feedback they did. That sure beats an article with transparent sources for the methodology and the data set used to generate their ratings... Not. Please back up your data by using at least as many games as Goonhammer did (~4,000) and with as much transparency as they did (a clearly explained methodology, explanations for why this works better than other systems, and updates monthly so we can continue to monitor the system to see if it fits reality). I'm able to provide that so why is making such a request of you unreasonable?

 Da Boss wrote:
It shouldn't be required. And you'll have to define meaningful for me, I don't think I'd be accepting this data collection method as particularly valid for anything other than very limited analysis.

You don't think ~4,000 games of publicly sourced tournament data is meaningful yet are willing to defend people who've brought even less data to the table? That seems rather unreasonable to me.

Also, I haven't made any such statements so it would be tricky for me to retract them.

I was replying with "what do you want to achieve with these demands" and figured you could use context to figure things out. I guess I overestimated you.

Well, you could have used the correct grammar to communicate what you were trying to say to prevent misunderstanding as is common when trying to communicate. But I guess you are operating on another level to me.

And the quality of data is about more than the number of data points available.
That said, it's better quality than any other available data, but I think it's not really the be all and end all of argument about something so trivial and in a statistical sense complex.

 Da Boss wrote:
.And the quality of data is about more than the number of data points available.
That said, it's better quality than any other available data, but I think it's not really the be all and end all of argument about something so trivial and in a statistical sense complex.

I've advocated for gathering better data and laid out ways I'd go about data collection and sorting if I were in charge of GW but alas we'll never get that. I'll keep following the data and hoping for improvement rather than being swayed by emotion and anecdote-driven arguments.

SC2, you mean a joke of an e-sport with a tiny player base and massive skill gaps between players? Try analyzing something that people actual play with good players from more than one region rather than a failed esport that allowed Koreans to qualify in every region because the game never took off in Europe or NA.

None of these things have any bearing on its status as a "Good" E-sport. In fact, my Dissertation was about how SC2 had failed as a competitive game in a lot of ways, specifically with regards to balance and how the supposed equal W/L percentages hid very real structural and core-design problems. In fact it was Blizzard's slavish fetishization of their W/L data that stopped them from making changes that needed to be made because they didn't perceive a problem (even though Terrans in the pro scene and at higher ranks on the Ladder were abandoning the race in ludicrous numbers to play Zerg instead)

In fact, with the numbers of pro players, the numbers of games being played and specifically all being played at incredibly high levels you could get a very good idea as to what SC2 was like. Trying to denigrate it by saying it was focused on one region is meaningless because that region was still a huge proportion of that games numbers. Do we discount Brood War from what counts as a "good" E-sport, despite it being the ur-example and universally agreed upon to have essentially popularized the whole concept in the first place? Because that was even more Korea-centric than its sequel. In fact, lets look at other e-sports like LoL. A massive game, featuring many different regio- oh wait Korea still wins everything in that game too. Huh. Almost like the infrastructure to train people to be professional e-sport athletes gives one region an edge over everyone else.

If we want to look at the topic of winrates again and how misleading they are we can look at Dota and how it's had periods of intense banning of overpowered or problematic heroes who, when they do make it through the pick-ban phase, end up not having spectacular winrates. This isn't because everyone misunderstands the game and the heroes, it's because when they were let through the opposing team had a plan to counter them completely and utterly, to the exclusion of everything else.

Then again, I don't know why I'm posting this or why this discussion is even being had. You've clearly shown yourself to be incredibly obtuse and ignorant to everyone who challenges you while having 0 direct experience of the issues being discussed. Hell, if we wanna go and rely on winrates again, last I checked Marines had 56% still.

 Bosskelot wrote:
In fact, my Dissertation was about how SC2 had failed as a competitive game in a lot of ways, specifically with regards to balance and how the supposed equal W/L percentages hid very real structural and core-design problems.

You mean to say that obsessing over basic statistics and methodologies might paint a misleading picture of the state of the game, especially if you don't actually play the game to know any better?

Perish the thought.

 catbarf wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
In fact, my Dissertation was about how SC2 had failed as a competitive game in a lot of ways, specifically with regards to balance and how the supposed equal W/L percentages hid very real structural and core-design problems.

You mean to say that obsessing over basic statistics and methodologies might paint a misleading picture of the state of the game, especially if you don't actually play the game to know any better?

Perish the thought.

Right?

There's an even better example from Blizzard again with Overwatch and its infamous Bastion patch.

They basically reworked the character based on nothing more than internal data and algorithms and then released it into the wild where it proceeded to, uh, break the game. For about a week it turned the games pub play into more of a dumpster fire than it already is, but Blizzard refused to understand or believe there was a problem.

Jeff Kaplan, the lead designer, had to be forcibly sat down and play his own damn game in order to see what the problem was because none of the changes and decisions had been made based on actual experience or playtesting and Blizzard's methods of data gathering really had no way to gauge the effect the hero was actually having in-game.

 Da Boss wrote:
It shouldn't be required. And you'll have to define meaningful for me, I don't think I'd be accepting this data collection method as particularly valid for anything other than very limited analysis.

Also, I haven't made any such statements so it would be tricky for me to retract them.

Do you have a peer reviewed study to back up this post?

It's almost like metrics and statistics are guidance, not answers.

Question: If you get shot, do you go to the hospital with a, lets say, 99.9% survival rate? Or do you go to the hospital with a 98% survival rate?

At first glance, knowing nothing else, you'd pick the first, of course.

But if the first is an outpatient clinic, and the second is a trauma center, you definitely picked wrong.

(Textbook example of Simpsons Paradox for anyone interested in learning beginner stats.)

Stats and metrics are amazing for spotting trends, investigating problems, or providing some confidence. But they have very real limits.

 Bosskelot wrote:
None of these things have any bearing on its status as a "Good" E-sport. In fact, my Dissertation was about how SC2 had failed as a competitive game in a lot of ways, specifically with regards to balance and how the supposed equal W/L percentages hid very real structural and core-design problems. In fact it was Blizzard's slavish fetishization of their W/L data that stopped them from making changes that needed to be made because they didn't perceive a problem (even though Terrans in the pro scene and at higher ranks on the Ladder were abandoning the race in ludicrous numbers to play Zerg instead)

I too recall that happening. Blizzard has gone through periods of being good at balancing its games to what they are now which doesn't seem to even care beyond putting out periodic patches to prove that a game isn't dead.

In fact, with the numbers of pro players, the numbers of games being played and specifically all being played at incredibly high levels you could get a very good idea as to what SC2 was like. Trying to denigrate it by saying it was focused on one region is meaningless because that region was still a huge proportion of that games numbers. Do we discount Brood War from what counts as a "good" E-sport, despite it being the ur-example and universally agreed upon to have essentially popularized the whole concept in the first place?

Broodwar is a better game and more important historically than SCII. I can't prove it, but I don't think SCII had much impact on the growth of e-Sports into what they are today.

In fact, lets look at other e-sports like LoL. A massive game, featuring many different regio- oh wait Korea still wins everything in that game too. Huh. Almost like the infrastructure to train people to be professional e-sport athletes gives one region an edge over everyone else.

Korea is still an excellent region but look at the spread of top-4 and top-8 teams at last years worlds and you'll see:

1st - Damwon - Korea
2nd - Suning - China
3rd - G2 - Europe
4th - Top - China
5th - DRX - Korea
6th - JD Gaming - China
7th - Fnatic - Europe
8th - GenG - Korea

Before that we had:

1st - FPX - China
2nd - G2 - Europe
3rd - Invictus - China
4th - SK T1 - Korea
5th - Griffin - Korea
6th - Fnatic - Europe
7th - Splyce - Europe
8th - Damwon - Korea

The only top region not in the top-8 is NA*, beyond that any region can win any season. That is excellent regional balance.

*There are deep structural issues that cause NA to lag behind as the worst of the top-4 regions.

If we want to look at the topic of winrates again and how misleading they are we can look at Dota and how it's had periods of intense banning of overpowered or problematic heroes who, when they do make it through the pick-ban phase, end up not having spectacular winrates. This isn't because everyone misunderstands the game and the heroes, it's because when they were let through the opposing team had a plan to counter them completely and utterly, to the exclusion of everything else.

Yes, meta will always be a massive factor in how powerful something is in practice versus its theoretical power level. There's also the fact that teams often don't practice banned picks and this is borne out in post-game interviews with players and coaches when a permabanned pick does well or flops. Teams, even excellent ones, can also misunderstand a meta and make bans that aren't actually correct so when the bans final do drop we see them for the poor choices that they were.


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 catbarf wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
In fact, my Dissertation was about how SC2 had failed as a competitive game in a lot of ways, specifically with regards to balance and how the supposed equal W/L percentages hid very real structural and core-design problems.

You mean to say that obsessing over basic statistics and methodologies might paint a misleading picture of the state of the game, especially if you don't actually play the game to know any better?

Perish the thought.

It's a good thing I'm not doing that. I've been beating the 40k Glicko drum and not asking for raw W/L data to be considered. The argument I have made is that posters here haven't provided evidence that W/L data is less reliable for Marines than for other factions.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
.And the quality of data is about more than the number of data points available.
That said, it's better quality than any other available data, but I think it's not really the be all and end all of argument about something so trivial and in a statistical sense complex.

I've advocated for gathering better data and laid out ways I'd go about data collection and sorting if I were in charge of GW but alas we'll never get that. I'll keep following the data and hoping for improvement rather than being swayed by emotion and anecdote-driven arguments.

In a discussion of a game played for fun, emotion is a perfectly valid way to look at the game. How it feels is important. It's not like we're optimising space rockets here.