Why do more skilled games feel marine sided when statistics show that aliens win more often?
Nordic
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
I was having a conversation with @Wob the other day where he expressed that more skilled games felt marine sided. This is something I have heard often from skilled players. Interestingly enough, the data does not support this. Given the slowness of these forums from the holidays, I thought I would make a thread to discuss it.
Using the combined data from the following wonitor links these are the winrates.
Admittedly, winrates only tell part of the story and are not always the best measure. Still though, a player experience I hear often does not match the outcome recorded in the data.
Why do you think the anecdotal player experience does not match up with the outcome shown in the data?
Using the combined data from the following wonitor links these are the winrates.
http://wonitor.hashtagawesome.net/
http://wonitor.tacticalgamer.com
http://www.apheriox.com/wonitor/
http://thirstyonos.com/wonitor/
http://wonitor.dungeongaming.com
http://45.34.5.99 (Diamond Gamers)
http://ghoulsbox.bplaced.de
http://thirstyonos.com/deano/
http://thirstyonos.com/lubker/
http://wonitor.tacticalgamer.com
http://www.apheriox.com/wonitor/
http://thirstyonos.com/wonitor/
http://wonitor.dungeongaming.com
http://45.34.5.99 (Diamond Gamers)
http://ghoulsbox.bplaced.de
http://thirstyonos.com/deano/
http://thirstyonos.com/lubker/
- In all data recorded with 12 or more players, and without comp mod; there were 65,816 games played. Aliens won 51%. Marines won 49%.
- In games with 12 or more players, without comp mod, and with an average server skill of 1800 or more; there were 1,965 games played. Aliens won 50.5%. Marines won 49.3%.
- In games with 12 or more players, without comp mod, and with an average server skill of 2250 or more; there were 111 games played. Aliens won 51.4%. Marines won 48.6%.
Admittedly, winrates only tell part of the story and are not always the best measure. Still though, a player experience I hear often does not match the outcome recorded in the data.
Why do you think the anecdotal player experience does not match up with the outcome shown in the data?
Comments
You could have an alien team that is so bad they can't get a single kill... and it's still possible (albeit unlikely) for them to win via a cheesy base rush... all it takes is for a single marine player (their commander) to screw up.
On the flip side it is impossible for marines to win unless they have the better players.
It is fairly common for marines to dominate the entire game and then lose because their commander fails. Remove all the base rush wins from the data and i bet marines win at least 80% of games.
Where as i do agree with your other points, i do think this one is slightly wrong. Marines rarely win unless they have better players, However if you happen to a get a good or decent commander who can get the team organized to yolo rush the hive before aliens get a second one can help the team win. Granted these are few and far between but they do exist.
Nice to see your still around
If I stop using wonitor and look at the data directly it might be. The data does include the total tres mined for both teams.
I have not seen a "team balance by round length" statistic in the wonitor. But it is possible that games that end between 5-10 minutes are 70% marine wins
Marines are less mobile when it comes to moving around the map, up until phasegates. Then this particular thing turns around completely. Add to that, marines have a more active way of influencing the enemy team due to their range, by forcing them into certain situations.
Aliens on the other hand start out more mobile and keep that real time mobility, yet phase gates trump that by a lot. They also have a more indirect approach to antagonising the enemy and work more with a bait/area control type of control.
Marines can turtle better due to range, while aliens can dynamically hold areas better.
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So in short, the active approach to offense and defense due to the marine range advantage, favours them when all skills are put on the table by skilled players. They have more, force behind them instead of the indirect approach of the aliens, so to speak? That extra "marine umph" is what seems more effective on high level play...
I do agree with you, but clearly something else is happening because otherwise aliens would be dominating early game and marines late game, when it is in fact the other way around.
2 Skulks > 1 marine
3 skulks == 2 marines
I mean ambush does become less of an element when the skill goes up and people know about all ambush spots, Making an individual marine more powerful than an individual skulk? Because the higher the skill, the more movement and closing the distance become a factor, which favors ranged marines mostly, if I had to take a wild guess...
The more skill involved, the more marines tend to dictate encounters?
This is absolute nonsense. Even if evenly skilled, this rarely applies. So many more factors kick in such as, timing, positioning, geometry, which room we're in, support, upgrades etc. I just disagree. It makes it harder, sure, but it's still an important tool.
Maybe this is a bit controversial, but I don't think phasegates add mobility at all. Phasegates is a tool that makes marines reinforce an area faster. You still have to run to defend or attack all your side-objectives. And more importantly, the phasegates are just another piece of PvE, that your marines have to defend. So often what happens is, you get phasegates, and a certain portion of your marine team are stuck protecting that area, meaning they can't put on pressure.
Wheras if you delay phasegates, your marines do have mobility, because they don't have to protect a phasegate - and they also have better upgrades, which means better survivability, which often translates in to better map presence, because all of a sudden you can contest the higher lifeforms.
I've always been frustrated with people insisting that phasegates = map control. Often it's the opposite in my experience. It often manifests in that the moment you get phasegates, everyone stops laneblocking the naturals. When you have no phasegates, laneblocking your naturals is... natural.
Well if you look at the Season 10 div 1 finals, aliens actually turtled just fine. Aliens have a constant and free stream of healing at their hives. It's not uncommon to turtle until you can bust out onos', while wasting the marines t.res on meds and ammo.
And i said ambush becomes less of an element, not that it's no longer important. I see where you'd get that. I did say without ambush, but meant that most encounters in high skill are indeed without ambush. With it being a big part of Skulk play, it weakens the Skulk to some extent early on.
About phasegates, we're talking higher skill levels. They do tend to only use them to indeed get into position quicker and have a much faster response time. They don't use them just for traveling, you still see them lane blocking in combination with PG's. PG's are merely an extension of that and an effective one at that. You definitely have a point where res spend on PG's can be spend on upgrades. The choice lies in, do you have good shooters or do you require that extra armour early on or can you spend that on PG's. It's all tied together and totally dependant on playstyle of a team.
Alien turtles are quite dependant on how much firepower is slammed down onto that hive using focus fire, if the aliens can prevent that by an active defense, they can most definitely turtle quite effectively. However, that is their only way of turtling, if marines can shut that down they will break the shell
Sorry I didn't feel like quote pasting, I'm on my phone here
Implying Gorge rushes aren't literally the best thing ever.
After 60 minutes, mairnes start ARC-ing. Contamination / shifting in whips isn't on the same level as arcing imo, plus marines only need to control one tech point to have all their upgrades researched.
So perhaps if we remove the first 10 minutes of game time or so we'll be able to see more worthy results.
Marines can also start ARCs in minute 0, I don't know where you get that 60 minute mark from.
Contamination is probably the most op ability right now and it's gg when aliens reach biomass 9. Contamination destroys a marine base by itself.
Don't use Pub-play as a reference for balance.
That has a few reasons:
Remember, i am talking about pub here!
1. The more player you get in the server the more the balance goes to the marine side normally. Marines are a little bit stronger individual than aliens. 6vs6 is a good balance between marines need to split up and enough aliens to get map control and pack marines down.
2. The most important point imo: Most players are stronger marines than stronger aliens. So a 2500 Marine-player ist often not stronger than a 2000 Hive-Alien. I saw this many times were good shooters from the marine side with good KDR in the round before are playing suicide-skulks by running against marines instead of doing useful stuff like res-biting.
THis is also a factor with the newbies. they did mostly play any shooter before, but have zero experience in playing a lifeform.
3. Aliens need more teamwork than marines. Normally a 1vs1 is a battle every marine should win unless he gets ambushed.
So to get good marines down you normaly need at least 2 skulks or 1 skulk and a lifeform. In pubs you mostly have no teamwork at all and you have to rely on you own 1vs1 skill. But as i pointed out: Against good marine there is often nothing you can do. even as a lifeform.
Of course, sometimes you have teamwork. But most times not.
As marine you can sneak around the map, trap lifeforms and dont need any help to kill skulks or even maybe a lerk or a gorge.
4. A lot early alien loses i see are due to the fact that most new players think that the onos is the ultimate mega giga hyper super lifeform that can kill everything easily and fast. so they think: "hey, onos is most expensive. when i get an onos i am the best player in the team........"
But because 80% of the players are thinking that aliens have mostly no lifeforms till minute 12 or 13.
Sometimes 1 fade or maybe 1 lerk and 2 gorges. that is NOT enough to survive against good marines. only battleing with skulks against 8-12 marines would lead to 80% marine wins in competetive play.
So marines can have a really easy early game with A2W1 upgrades and one-shooting skulks with a shotgun over and over again.
The newbies dont understand that you CAN NOT turtle until you have onos res because against good marines you will lose the early game really quick and lose the game even before you have 30 res.
5. On the other side a lot alien wins i see are because aliens get suddenly 5-6 onos up and rush every base down. that is because marines are so bad they cannot win with upgrades against a team that contains mostly of skulks and let aliens have more than 4 harvester over a long time.
Conclusion: The game is more marine sided with stronger marines because in comparison with newbs they can easily kill 1-2 skulks at the same engagement and pressure aliens more effective. the game is not designed to turtle you to onos.
against good marines you cannot hold enough rts without lifeforms. good marines with upgrades will completly outtake you.
and without teamworkt you are even more screwed.
#1 is supported by data, but player count is not apart of this question. I am not sure how this is relevant to the question in the OP.
#2, is purely a gut feeling that you have. A lot of players I play with are far better aliens than marines. Does my experience cancel out your experience? No. We have no way of really knowing if players are typically better at marines or aliens. I would love to pull out data that proves or disproves what you say, but I can not.
#3, #4, and #5 are almost irrelevant because the question in the OP is related entirely to high skill games. The problems described are related to low skill play. These high skill games have very few if any low skill players.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but your conclusion seems to sidestep the question I asked in the OP to answer one you would rather answer.
Marines actually more often in the early stages of the game, and less in the later stages. Please look again at the data shown in the graphs I posted earlier. They are in the spoiler. http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/2326321/#Comment_2326321
However, the higher skilled players on the field are closer to this mathematical product, than lower skilled players. Marine have an advantage purely mathematicly, but the game is hard enough for this never to be fully realised. On a certain level it becomes partly realised, forcing aliens early game to either hope for a good ambush or crush a point with overwhelming force.
Higher skilled players have a higher accuracy, better at dodging, better knowledge of mindgames, better knowledge of micro/positioning, better knowledge of macro, better knowledge of the mentality of aiming (forcing the opponent to switch targets), and some players execute these aspects better than others.
As to the impact on the statisics, I feel like the last effort needed for marines is a group effort to kill a hive - this doesnt always happen, which means the marine does not win through means of assault. ARCS, or alien surrender would be the tools for the marines then to win. Some hives, such as Cargo, Silo or Flight Control, are immensly hard to ARC - these tech points are very open, and easier to assault as a marine force, but since the marine team was unable to do this.... yeah.
I was just giving my 2 cents here.
I wanted to explain why some player may seem marines a little bit overpowered. The reasons are explained in my post. I dont want to make a balacne discussion because balance is overall okay at the moment. In my opinion the players are not balanced by themselfs and that is what makes the game feeling unbalanced.
The question was not why some marine players feel overpowered, but why more skilled games feel marine sided. I completely agree that the balance is overall pretty okay, but the feeling of imbalance comes from massive skill differences. That is a subject for another thread though. Thanks for sharing.
I'm with @MoFo1 on this one:
#1: tunnel rushes; cheap, cheezy and they do not reflect the overall skill level
#2: aliens have the long-term advantage. if the aliens can hang on for 12 minutes (even with 1 hive and 2-3 harvesters), they can start popping onoses and turn the tide around
Imo these two factors contribute most to the phenomena, since an inferior (skill-wise) alien team can still consistently win rounds
I specifically did not include comp mod because they have their own balance. Including comp mod increases the sample size significantly, but does not change the outcome significantly.
Without compmod, same as OP:
With Compmod:
I guess that is one way to say it. The claim is: "More skilled games are marine sided." I hear this claim fairly often in game. Here is one example of that claim on the forums. I am indeed saying data does not support that. I think you understood me well, I am just making it absolutely clear.
I hear this claim fairly often in game. Here is one example of that claim on the forums.
I agree that must have an effect. I wish I had data to show exactly how often that happened. I do not though.
I do have data that can show how often one team wins, when the skill is against them. Maybe I will get around to looking at that.
I stated my source. The listed wonitor pages in the OP.
Therefore, every point Rammler made was relevant to the topic.
@Nordic Skilled marines are overwhelmingly powerful in single combat, but they often are unable to execute one or more of their win conditions, despite the option being available, causing them to lose more games after they have won them.