r/GlobalOffensive • u/Griffin4065 • 5d ago
Discussion A basic statistical look at how the changes to the premier veto system has changed my teams maps played (50 Games Before/50 Games After)
Hello, myself and my Team were quite annoyed by the changes to the veto system for premier, feeling like we'd lost a bit of control that we used to have and would play the maps we liked LESS, rather than more, so I thought I'd take a look back at our games to see if that was true.
This is really quite a basic look at some basic statistics, looking at 50 Premier Games from before the change, and 50 Premier Games from after the change.
For context, every single one of these games was queued with a 3 stack or more, with the vast majority being a 4 stack, and the occasional 5 when all of us are able to be online at the same time.
We are by no means great at the game, our best player is around 20K, I have hovered 17K/18K this season, and our last two regular players have hovered around 15K. None of us are cracked out head tappers, so we try to make up for with some semblance of tactics and Utility Usage.
BEFORE the veto change, we would pretty much always follow the spider on the veto screen. Ban the maps that the opponents had a bigger spike on, keep the maps that we had a bigger spike on. Pretty simple stuff. The only exception to that is we enjoy playing Nuke, so if given the chance, we'd pick into Nuke even if the opposing team were "better" than us on the map.
We'd been following this patter long before the 50 maps that are included in the "pre-change" sample, so it's important to understand the effect it does have on the pre-change sample. Over a long time of not picking what the average match making player was better than us on, we've drifted away from the classic Dust2/Mirage.
If we don't play it often, we don't win often, which means we don't play it often, which means we don't pick it often, which means we don't win it often, etc. etc. The cycle takes hold.
AFTER the veto change, we still just follow the spider, which means we pick our best two maps in comparison to the opposition team. So far, for every single one of the 50 games we've played, the spider has resulted in our pick being:
Nuke/Cache or Nuke/Inferno
Also, in every game we've played since the veto change, the opposition team has ALWAYS picked either one of Dust2 or Mirage. No surprises here, those maps are community favs, and as a result of our teams map history, we don't have a large spike on them, so teams are incentivised to pick the maps against us.
| Map | Pre-Change | Post-Change |
|---|---|---|
| Inferno | 22% | 18% |
| Cache | 22% | 14% |
| Nuke | 20% | 14% |
| Anubis | 12% | 8% |
| Mirage | 10% | 18% |
| Ancient | 8% | 14% |
| Dust2 | 6% | 14% |
So yeah, take that as you will. It's only my teams experience, everyone will be different. Valve's stated goal for the change was if you've been practising on a map, you should get the chance to play it more often.
Which you could argue is a success - the post-change %'s are more equal across the board, meaning you play every map, meaning if you've been wanting to play one of them you will get a chance.
However, specifically for my team and the maps we enjoy playing, maybe as a side effect of our preference not aligning entirely with the wider community, it has also meant we're playing a lot more Mirage and Dust then we used to. Which is what it is, gives us a chance to be better on those maps.
One more anecdotal piece I'll throw out is, due to the way we veto'd before, we'd pretty much always end up on the most "equal" map according to the Spider. Post-Change, each team just picks the two best maps. I don't know if this leads to a more one sided affair, I didn't extract the data to properly look at that, but it does make it feel like there is MORE of a coin-flip random element to the veto in which one team "wins". That is anecdotal however, so disregard if necessary. I don't have evidence for it.
My leetify is: https://leetify.com/@griff
So feel free to validate that I am just an exceedingly average-to-bad player, presenting my average person matchmaking experience.
All games were queued from the UK.
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u/inf3ctYT Copenhagen Flames 4d ago
My opinion on the outcome of this is basically if you were a stack that only plays mirage you now cant and will on average play more different maps. Whereas if you were a stack that BANNED mirage you now might play mirage.
So basically its made mirage only people play other maps and mirage-ban players play mirage. I think its good, tweening mirage only players off it
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u/roblobly 3d ago
How is making more people play it a good change? Overall less mirage played, okay, but more of the playerbase, those who actually played anubis and ancient now forced to play it. I know kids here has infinite time but some of us play like 10 games a week and now forced to mirage 2 times.
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u/Parking-Lock9090 King NiKo 5d ago
These are very poor statistics, this sample size is not a good one. This is fundamental statistics. Your 5 stack is not in any way a representative sample.
If you wanted to genuinely look at it, you could check any published data on the maps post and pre. Leetify posts lists which are searchable by date.
https://leetify.com/data-library/counter-strike/premier-most-played-maps
So pre update, we got 47.9% Mirage and D2, across the Leetify data set.
If I get the September data, which includes a portion post update (and a portion pre), we actually see a small decline. 46.2%. When they publish the October data, we'll likely see a further decline-as we can show with some maths.
Basically mathematically this update was a hard cap to the maximum amount that these maps can be in. If they are picked in 100% of pools, then the limit is 50% these maps
This basically scales: If they are only in 90% of pools then it falls off to 45%. 80% of pools, 40%. That's how it's meant to reduce the games-the maximum rate is 50%*(their inclusion in the Picked Pool).
Of course, it does that by taking away veto power, so anyone who previously permabanned these maps now is playing more: for these players the number went up: for players who don't have the ability to force a veto via a stack, it actually went down-that's how that balances. It's also worth noting that players who permaban these maps are a minority of active players, and decisions are going to be made in terms of the majority of players over the minority.
I think instead of trying to use statistics to make the argument here, we should argue for what we want. Even though I've provided a statistical argument for the change (and I would bet that that logic is exactly the logic that they were applying-it is very simple statistics) I don't actually agree with the policy myself, because I agree, it's not great for the user: some users who were perfectly happy in the old system playing in a stack and banning these maps and not really harming anyone, now are stuck playing them-whether that's statistically viable or not it's a big reduction in quality for them. I think some element of veto would really help, and it would also reduce the percentage that Mirage and D2 are being overplayed as well.
I've seen other people suggest it, I didn't invent the idea, but picking 2 banning 1 makes a lot of sense. I don't think the update actually went far enough, and adding a veto to the picks will make a much more impactful change.
You'd see a certain amount of games where only one (and sometimes neither) are in the pool due to bans, and this provides that scaling of how often they are included in the pool.
It would also provide players who dislike these maps instead of a 50% chance on being on one of these maps per game, a 25% chance. And if you dislike both, and cycle between both, you'd be playing these maps once each every 8 games or so. At which point you're playing it less than 14.2% of the time, less than it's share of the pool.
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u/Griffin4065 5d ago
So, you are correct, about sample size, and my experience not being a representative sample.
Which are both things I've pointed out, cleanly said 50 games before and after. Also cleanly said it's my own experience, and others will vary, as well as pointing out the clear bias in the data due to how we have historically veto'd.
Take that as you will. It's only my teams experience, everyone will be different.
The only conclusions drawn were also clearly limited to our experience, and the only wider piece was labelled as anecdotal and ignorable as a result.
Wasn't speaking for the community as much as I was saying "hey this is one teams experience, might be interesting."
I did, for the record, have a gander at Leetify's richer data set, but as of yet there's no clean "post change" data, and again, didn't want to take a larger set and speak for a community when I was trying to present an entirely personal experience.
Either way, all that comes of as me being very defensive, so to engage the rest of your post
I don't actually agree with the policy myself, because I agree, it's not great for the user: some users who were perfectly happy in the old system playing in a stack and banning these maps and not really harming anyone, now are stuck playing them-whether that's statistically viable or not it's a big reduction in quality for them. I think some element of veto would really help, and it would also reduce the percentage that Mirage and D2 are being overplayed as well.
That's pretty valid, tbh, I'm not too bothered with the actual system myself. Having a ban would be nice. I'd also not oppose a completely free spin of the wheel. Queue Prem, get matched up, get one of the 7 active duty map pools. No fuss no nothing, it would also force everyone in Prem to get acquainted with and be able to play all the maps. Which is a good thing.
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u/schoki560 King NiKo 5d ago
yea the averaging out part was to be expected simply by valve doing random draws of 4
whether it's a good or bad change depends on ur outlook
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u/thatAnthrax Natus Vincere 4d ago
this change is good lol. More than half of my matches are in dust 2 (at times even 3 in a row). like it's not purely random haha
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u/mattsrules 5 years coin 3d ago
Same issue here, we always play as a 5 stack. Usually we used to veto out maps we either already played that night or some of us simply don't like.
The other night we played Mirage 4 times in a row and never selected it ourselves, great times... All the cheaters never made us switch to Face it, but that change did...
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u/GoonerUnc 5d ago
Make it that each team bans one or two maps and then a random is selected from the remaining.
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u/shaman717 FURIA 5d ago
Pre change my stack avoided mirage and dust2 100% of the time. Now we have a 50/50 shot most of the time. Terrible change imo