Alongside the Data Peek Series, one of our Data Analysts, Geoffroy Mouret, provided his own analysis of the overall data from Season 1. This is part 2 of a 2 part series. For part 1, click here to learn more about pick rates.
Working with win ratios is a delicate matter. Depending on the level of skill you are playing at, how specialized are the people playing this operator, or even the bomb site you are defending, an operator’s utility might not be accurately represented by his aggregated win ratio.
When Frost was released, she had the highest win ratio by a few %, but this was mostly because she was played by experienced players. When looking at these players’ win ratios, we realized that Rook was actually the operator with whom they won the most. Conversely, if an operator is played at every round (cough Ash cough), his or her win ratio will be around the attacker/defender average win ratio.
With that in mind, overall win ratios for population of a given skill can still highlight glaring balancing issues.
Operators’ Win Ratios per patch (PC Ranked – Top players)
Interestingly enough, despite attackers taking advantage of the new season (a trend that we see here for top players but across our whole population as well), we did not observe much change in that regard after the mid-season patch. Unlike Blackbeard and Pulse in Seasons 2 and 3 of Year 1, Glaz’s progress did not spread to his teammates.
However, while he’s as strong as Blackbeard and Ash at the moment, the frustration of being killed by him shooting you in the foot behind three walls and two smokes can clearly skew your perception. That is why data-driven game balancing must be complemented by other kinds of feedback to provide more fair and balanced options to the player.
In terms of operators that you would not necessarily expect here, Frost and Blackbeard are two operators that do surprisingly well, even more so given their lower pick rates. With an average number of kills per round of 0.74, Frost is a bit behind the likes of Jäger, Pulse or Bandit (all above 0.8). But with 0.3 traps triggered per round on average, she is helping her team quite substantively, especially with all the smokes being thrown around these days.
At last, the buffs to Caveira’s Luison and Echo’s Yokai seemed to have borne fruit as they have risen above the average win ratio of their fellow defenders.
Let us know what you think about these stats or the kind of information that you would like to see in our next episode on Facebook and Twitter. Join the discussion on our subreddit and Forums. In the meantime glhf!
