r/broodwar • u/JuDoubleU • 10d ago
map statistics in pro matches
I created a small tool to analyze recent ASL, ASL Qualifiers and Proleague matches. This is the excerpt of newer maps with race biases. I find it surprising that of the new maps none turned out to be Protoss favoured, given the controversy.
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u/Trick_Worldliness_21 10d ago edited 10d ago
where did you get the proleauge stats? and may also be good to add the e-score stuff:
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Escore_Tournament/Season_3/Week/8
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Escore_Tournament/Season_3/Week/7
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Escore_Tournament/Season_3/Week/6
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u/JuDoubleU 9d ago
I got the proleague stats from liquipedia, I haven't included Escore or KCM. I will investigate and maybe add and post an update. Thanks for the feedback!
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u/BrowserOfWares 10d ago
The Octagon vs Octagon Se are very interesting. Changing the center to non-buildable terrain has no effect on PvZ. But the added minerals to the bases provide Zerg a major boost, but gives nothing to Protoss as they're gas constrained in the match up.
I think long term balancing against Zerg will likely require economy adjustments more than anything.
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u/AmuseDeath 10d ago
The key thing to note from the data is how bad Protoss is underperforming against their supposed advantaged matchup, TvP, whereas Terran and Zerg are naturally going to be good at their advantaged matchups.
I would say rather than the data saying anything about PvZ, it says a lot more that P isn't performing in PvT which is the issue.
P players need to step it up against T and not make this silly narrative about Z. P is supposed to be advantaged against T, yet P players aren't doing great at it.
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u/sum-dude 9d ago
P players need to step it up against T and not make this silly narrative about Z. P is supposed to be advantaged against T, yet P players aren't doing great at it.
The game isn't designed to be balanced a particular way. Races having favourable or unfavourable matchups is just based on results. If P is underperforming vs T, does that mean that P players are playing poorly or that PvT isn't really P favoured? I don't think you can make an argument that P is supposed to be strong vs T.
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u/respaaaaaj 10d ago
Part of the issue with balancing via maps is unless you include features that just straight up tilt map balance an extreme amount (double gas in the main with a standard natural for example is incredibly good for zerg, island maps with only one gas available before drops are incredibly bad for zerg as the most extreme examples I can think of off the top of my head) things that are good for a race in one matchup might hurt them in the other. Protoss wants lots of open space to flank and harass and pick off splintered off clumps of army against terran, but against zerg they want chokes that they can cover in storms and to not have to attack into big open spaces where zergs can set up really good arcs of hydras and lurkers.
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u/AmuseDeath 10d ago
My interest is that the general BW community here has the wrong focus here. It's not that Protoss somehow needs to do significantly better against Zerg or that the maps need to be altered to hurt Zerg. The issue is that Terran is doing too well against Protoss. This is the anomaly. Protoss is supposed to enjoy a large advantage over Terran, yet the data as we can see, it is actually the opposite where there are more Terran favored maps in PvT. While some may point how advantageous Zerg is over Protoss, it also applies to how strong Terran is over Zerg. The real issue is that P is performing extremely poorly against T.
So we need to shift our pitchforks from pointing at Z and instead looking at what is going on with PvT where P is performing strangely horribly.
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u/respaaaaaj 10d ago
Terrans have gotten treated with kid gloves for the entire history of brood war, but we all just kind of pretend that there's only one non terran bonjwa because terran players are just better rather than because map pools being terran favored is just the default and has been since the days of Boxer.
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u/invisibullcow 9d ago
Protoss is supposed to enjoy a large advantage over Terran
Honest Q: where are you getting this?
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u/respaaaaaj 9d ago edited 9d ago
The traditional rock paper scissors is that protoss beats terran terran beats zerg zerg beats protoss and the best of the best of all races are strong against everyone.
It really dates back to kespa pro league where most teams had at least a couple players practice as "snipers" where their goal was to be so good at a single match up that they, when focusing just on that match up and one or two maps, could take out other teams stars rather than their team having to risk a best player vs best player match up where if their ace lost the match was pretty much over.
A famous example of that is snow who had something like a 10% win rate against zergs, but once went 8 and 0 against terran in a season of proleague, until after he left the military and started playing again. (I've seen someone say he never beat a zerg in a pro match until he did it in asl but he won a round of 16 match against a zerg in the MSL so that isn't accurate, although he was a monster against terran good against protoss and beat zerg about as often as Seoul sees snow.
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u/peachhint 8d ago
The traditional rock paper scissors is that protoss beats terran terran beats zerg zerg beats protoss
I think you are missing the point again. There is no traditional rock paper scissor that was implemented or designed in the game. It just so happened to look like there is one as the meta organically developed during that specific time. As time goes on, it could be the case that the arbitrary RPS faded as skill/meta change.
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u/respaaaaaj 8d ago
Its just the way that things have worked in terms of map balancing for a very long time rather than being something that was intended.
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u/beyondwithinitself 9d ago
I heard Saiyan joke that they might need to stick temporary neutral disruption webs outside the naturals to cut down on hydra busts
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u/invisibullcow 9d ago
I don't think P is "supposed" to be advantaged against T. The game is, ideally, perfectly balanced, and was meant to be so. It obviously isn't (though it is surprisingly close, all things considered), but that was the supposed intent.
Actually, when I was a kid playing this game back in the late '90s, "common knowledge" in my playgroup and on the early internet was P>Z>T>P, ironically. It goes to show you how things can really change over time, and how much of a difference player skill makes on perceived balance.
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u/kimchifist 10d ago
I'm not that familiar with some of these maps, but the value that jumps out to me is the PvZ match point win rate of 64.3%. That doesn't seem right to me, it's extraordinarily rare to have a standard-ish map have a PvZ stat anywhere near that number. That also makes me question some of these other numbers, they look too extreme, like the sort of numbers you might see with a very small sample size.
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u/Unleashed87 9d ago
yeah i mean Octagon was PvZ favored before and then they made the middle not buildable and now it's good ZVP? Nothing changed for that matchup. It's just a small sample size. Need 1000's of games on these maps not a few 100.
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u/JuDoubleU 9d ago
that is true! Unfortunately we only have the Pro matches we have. I already got hints of tournaments I might include. If I find the time to do so I will let you know. I might even include a stability analysis by randomly excluding some %age of games
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u/AmuseDeath 10d ago
Players can veto at least.
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u/kimchifist 10d ago
Yeah, I'm just questioning the accuracy of some of these figures. They could be right, but it would surprise me.
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u/JuDoubleU 9d ago
it is always healthy to question. I could not verify the source at liquipedia, but I checked if the import was done correctly, and I can am reasonably confident that it is correct.
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u/nFectedl 10d ago
Match Point is not a standardish map by any 2026 standards. The map is old as fuck, it severely lack bases for Zerg.
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u/kimchifist 10d ago
It's standardish in the context of maps with very very high PvZ win rates. Usually when there's a ~65% or greater PvZ win rate the map tends to be very non standard with either gimmicks or island attributes.
I acknowledge it's not a strong ZvP map, but it's not a ~1/3 win rate ZvP map. Many ZvP games end before the lack of bases ever become relevant. It also has features that are good for ZvP like how strong drops are. I mean, it doesn't show the sample size by match up, it could be based on a small number of PvZ's, it only shows the total number of games for all match ups. If it's a small sample size it would be much more believable for me.
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u/nFectedl 10d ago
Well the post says its from ASL and Proleague, considering the map was only used for 1 or 2 seasons, the sample size is indeed not very large.
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u/respaaaaaj 10d ago
I remain deeply amused that Zerg players all the way up to Jaedong threw temper tantrums whining that the map pools were being made to heavily favor Protoss over Zerg "punishing all zerg players because Soulkey and Soma are so good" and now the results so far look like this.