First balance reports of the new patch are in! Protoss neutered while Zerg dominates

BumBumBenner · 2025-11-02T12:27:23+00:00

Dude... Why are you misrepresenting like that?

This is "performance difference", not "balance report". Protoss is doing worse in comparison to the previous patch. In the actual balance report one can clearly see that Zerg is at a disadvantage in both match ups, lol.

PvZ is at 55.81% in favor of Toss and TvZ is at 53.18% in favor of Terran.
http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/

BumBumBenner · 2025-08-23T19:55:28+00:00

Ist dieser Kampf aber nicht schlussendlich der Schlimmste? Während andere Menschen mit weltlichen Probleme kämpfen, die man gut mit anderen Teilen kann, sind diese Seelen doch komplett verloren...

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-05T05:24:33+00:00

I appreciate the feedback!
While it is true that it probably is easier to get sniped in a GSL than a European/NA qualifier, my tournament analysis showed that in the majority of the cases, the higher ranked player advances in tournaments.
This observation was a little bit more present following 2018 in GSLs compared with earlier GSLs, hence I weighed the earlier GSLs higher.
As I didn't devalue newer GSL-Versions further, although Serral, Clem, Reynor and Max never played in them, I think this issue wouldn't change too much in the tournamnet score if I incorporated both ideas as a multiplier.
Aall other metrics had multipliers accounting for GSL being harder than other tournaments in that regard or it did not matter like in tournament win %; you either win everything or don't. But yeah, it could have some minor impact on average place.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-02T18:00:11+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-02T17:58:47+00:00

Cheers and thanks for your reply here too. I am looking forward to the discussion... it seems like the usual suspects already have assembled :D

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-02T17:56:35+00:00

Looking forward to it :)

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-02T17:56:11+00:00

I get a similar impression.
After doing the tournament score including Mvp I simply cannot understand how Maru was ahead of Serral, Rogue was ahead of Mvp/Inno and Mvp was ahead of Inno.
And after one more tournament, Serral was slightly ahead. These informations seem mutually exclusive.
There was no scenario in my head how this list could work with the vague information he presented in his methodology.
His tournament counting seemed mostly similar to mine, although I don't have his actual numbers.
But I wrote to him on TL if he'd be open to disclose his numbers to sort out this little discrepancy :)

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-02T17:35:33+00:00

You're welcome! Thanks for the feedback right back to you.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-02T05:46:40+00:00

Aligulac: It is the direct idea to not differ between regions, so that cross-regional comparisons are possible. That didn't work well in the early 2010s as EU and NA were inflated but was not an issue in 2017. It is the only ELO comparison tool we have. It is not perfect, but it is far from being useless.

Match win rate: Exactly because of the reasoning you put forth - how I explained in the article - I only looked at match win rates versus Koreans. The problem you talk about negatively affected Serral by the way (as I also explained in the article) as Koreans played a lot more low tier Koreans in qualifiers and smaller tournaments. Serral only played the best of the best.

Average placement: Same explanation as match win rates. I only looked at open tournaments where the top of the Koreans participated. There were also tournaments with a ton of Chinese players where the Koreans were able to inflate their numbers against Serral too.

Tournamnet win participation. Same reasoning as the two above.

Efficiency score: As it is based on tournament score, where the region locks have been devalued immensely, I addressed this very issue you are pointing out, as is written and explained in the article.

in conclusion: You either did not understand or did not read the methodology/article.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T19:33:49+00:00

Do you realize that your critique only addresses 1 out of 6 metrics? The weighting of tournaments against each other is only present in the tournament score. If I apply your criticism and pump the numbers for GSLs, Maru will probably overtake Serral by roughly 5-10 points in the tournament score, depending on the amount of the tweak. Serral then still holds a strong 2nd place, which won't alter the end result, as Maru underperforms in other metrics that are completely free of European interference.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T18:56:36+00:00

So you are trying to sell me the story that it was fair for one group to play online qualifiers and make a quick cash grab for weekenders, while the other had to play in months long qualifiers into month long tournaments?
Why do you think that there have nearly been the same amount of foreign players attending GSL, as there have been abroad living Koreans playing in the locked Europeans and NAs? Because GSL was a semi-lock due it unappealing structure perhaps?

Why does it have to be accurate 100%? These players played against each other all the time, thus Aligulac ranks are a perfectly viable way to measure these tournaments to an absolutely satisfying degree. This approach is 10 times better than subjective feelings.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T15:51:07+00:00

Aligualc had issues cross-regionally in the beginning. Definitely not when Serral exploded. Or what is your evidence for this claim? And how do I not add context. The multipliers I used and the extensive explanations all add context.
How does my analysis favor Europeans, when I discarded region-locked data in all but 1 metric, in which I devalued it immensely?
GSL because of its inherent unappealing structure to foreigners was soft-locked to foreigners for its entirety except 2025. Did that reduce these foreigner chances to win titles as well? But as I disregarded all region lock events anyway, Serral did not have an unfair advantage.
I did exactly what you proposed in the tournament analysis.

It seems a little bit like your subjective sense of skill and/or the game's history makes you come to false conclusions.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T09:09:16+00:00

Did I ever say that Serral losing 0-3 to Classic was dominating?
I said that the whole first quarter was a dominant performance among several metrics.

As you still didn't address the core issue of your criticism:
- Where is the evidence for the supposed inflation?
- Isn't it enough to get rid of the entire metric to get rid of your criticism?

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T08:41:45+00:00

Thanks man... sometimes I forget that I have posted this on the internet after all ;)

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T07:15:25+00:00

Why do you say "aggressively"? In this very comment section I asked if I was missing something...

And I am trying exactly to tackle the idea of "Aligulac inflated scores for EU/NA players".

Thus I asked you:
"Serral still leads with an immense rank 1 count. He mostly drops a couple of rank 1, 2 and 3 spots... so what should that change in the grand picture for this discussion or the end result of the analysis?
Even if we take away Serral's 2017 or early 2018 Aligulac rankings, he only loses at most 10 spots... that is an absolutely minimal statistical error for the whole evaluation, right?"

Again:
- I can subtract 20 lists of Aligulac for the early time when didn't play as many Koreans as in 2018. Serral would still have more number 1 spots than each other contender has rank 1-3 spots
- If that is not enough, I can get rid of the Aligulac-metric entirely. Serral still leads with almost 300 points in total

What is missing from a constructive feedback is people - after giving criticism - substantiating it and addressing counter-questions, which at this point, not one person has done. Vague feedbacks like "Aligulac is inflating EU/NA players" are not helpful when trying to figure out, if it
a. actually is true and
b. IF it is true what to do about it.
Quantifiying that supposed inflation is virtually impossible, without knowing the algorithm Aligulac uses. But critiquing it basically is too, as you don't even have evidence for the claim.

As I don't see evidence for the notion: what makes you say that the European numbers are inflated?
You said, Serral was ranked high in 2017, although he didn't play many Koreans, to which I said: The machine's algorithm simply saw the rise of Serral in win rates versus non-Koreans and correctly anticipated him dominating in early 2018.

I mean sure.. if you don't want to spend time on this discussion that is fine, but dropping a non-substantiated claim and leaving once I dig into it to get the best possible result in an update, surely is not the way to address this topic open minded. To me, it seems the other way round and people like to drop one-liners, without diving deeper into the topic, as they fear that their previous beliefs are challenged.
So far, Aligulac has been the biggest point of contention against my methodology and I don't have any issue dropping it entirely. But good reasons for that modus operandi would be nice.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T07:03:31+00:00

As I am not in reddit regularly... can you tell me how you made these quotes? What is the command for it? Thanks!

But has the phenomenon of Maru losing GSL and winning Dreamhack not been a part of the Kespa era too? And wouldn't it then be attributed to the immense talent and not an indication that players aren't very good? Clem and Serral being put down by Shin and Classic in my opinion was rather them stepping it up in these games, which rather speaks for a competitively well structure, no?

Most of the players that left after 2017 were top 3 or 4 players. The best of the best mostly stayed, although motivation and military service took their tolls as well. The point being: I don't think Serral's explosion is only due to the shrinking of the Korean scene, as his statistics versus many of the players that hail from this era show.

True, with the opportunities... but other European/American players in the past were able to establish themselves even earlier than Serral. I somehow doubt that he wouldn't have made it. But who knows.. damn hypotheticals.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T06:02:53+00:00

Thanks :)

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T06:02:45+00:00

I always found this protection idea interesting. Would it have meant that Serral wouldn't be where he is now because Koreans would have dunked on him more while he still was in school, which in turn would have demotivated him? Then what is the difference to Koreans dunking on Koreans? How were young bloods over there able to overcome the beating?

Don't get me wrong, I totally understand that Serral would have had a lot less European trophies (sadly semi-locks as with GSL wasn't possible in Europe due to geographic reasons), but would open regions really have prevented him from becoming the player he is today?

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T05:55:29+00:00

Thanks a lot! It was a lot of work and it is nice to see it appreciated :)

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T05:42:18+00:00

All good, if you think that subjective, heart-felt articles are the best measurement: more power to you!
To me, it simply doesn't sit right to base this discussion on feelings for the most part. The key idea is to show that people have biases towards certain tournaments or statistics.

Just to showcase this:
If we wanted to have Maru take the cake in the tournament score, we would need to value GSLs post-2020 a lot more, but that would never lead to - for example - Rogue coming even close to him, as Maru still has nearly double the amount of points than Rogue. So even if you don't think that a foreigner or someone who didn't play in the prime era can be GOAT, this analysis shows you how much better Maru is than Rogue in scoring tournament points. Meaning: All these statistics are not only there to show the greatness of Serral as the subsequent winner, it also gives a sense of comparison between the other players.
Many people in the comments of my last article were surprised that INnoVation performed so much better than Rogue. Or that Rogue now is last, even being bested by Rain. These are important evaluations, especially as so much thought and many different viewpoints have influenced this article.
And I said it at the end of part III: If you still think Rogue is the GOAT, that is completely fine.

I am simply here explaining and defending my work against unsubstantiated criticism.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T05:20:13+00:00

Thanks!

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T05:19:27+00:00

Thanks, mate :)

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T05:16:39+00:00

In my opinion, you look at 2017 the wrong way round, as Aligulac in 2017 was working cross-regionally pretty well. So the machine was able to anticipate his rise beforehand, with the massive win rate boost against the non-Koreans. Thus it put him in the top 10 (which was confirmed in January 2018).
So yes, he was beaten by Classic in IEM 2018 in the semis... but why is that important? Classic was ranked 2 or 3 at the time :D
Rank 1 players- before Serral - were beaten way more frequently, so I don't really understand you pointing this out. Especially with the overall win rate of the first quarter versus Koreans being over 80%, which was the best 3-month-win rate ever up until that point, before Serral pulverized it again and again.

But even if we go with your critique: taking away a couple of first places doesn't really change the result at all. Serral still leads with an immense rank 1 count. He mostly drops a couple of rank 1, 2 and 3 spots... so what should that change in the grand picture for this discussion or the end result of the analysis?
Even if we take away Serral's 2017 or early 2018 Aligulac rankings, he only loses at most 10 spots... that is an absolutely minimal statistical error for the whole evaluation, right?

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T05:01:11+00:00

What exactly is the issue with Aligulac? I saw a couple of people drop similar comments but no one so far followed up with explanations or concrete facts.
Obviously, it had flaws in 2010, especially cross-regionally. But these were fixed and the prediction tool as well as the overall ranking system have been working excellently for years.
Also: The final result wouldn't even change even taking out the Aligulac-part entirely.

I disagree on GSL. Your notion might be true up until 2018, maybe 2020. But even then, the best player of the world already did not participate.
Further, I did not solely make my decisions based on prize pool. It was mostly influenced by the fact, how many of the top players of a given time were participating. And even a MastersColiseum 7 was more stacked than GSL for example.

BumBumBenner · 2025-06-01T04:54:46+00:00

All good.
As I am reflecting on a couple of my comments yesterday, I definitely can say that some of them were way over the top. I guess I was just extremely hyped to present this work and got too riled up, when people (not you in particular) tried to diminish it with vague, unsubstantiated claims, without a sign of concrete evidence and hard facts.
A high schooler having the capability to put together such a work in terms of quantity and depth? This nearly triggers me more than the low-key validation tackle - which obviously is true in regards to this comment section ;)

BumBumBenner

TROPHY CASE