Meta Diversity: 2014 Worlds vs. 2015 ChiLo City Grudge Match

Netrunner General
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This is continuing the topic of discussion that was started in the Tournament Winning Decklists thread, but I figured it needed a new on-topic home away from that thread. Dodd posted all the play stats for the ChiLo City Grudge Match over on the Netrunner Geeks Facebook page. I thought I would see how they compared to the meta at Worlds a couple of months ago.

I probably don’t need to clarify with you guys, but I’ll post this disclaimer anyway… I do not feel like I have a dog in this fight, I am a stats guy who loves digging into hard evidence and I find myself genuinely curious on the play data here, and I am quite curious to hear folks’ opinions and perspectives from both sides here.

There seems to be a very vocal group of folks who believe that limiting AstroScript to one copy per deck had a positive effect on the balance of the game and affected a healthy change in the diversity of Corps and/or Runners played at this year’s ChiLo City Grudge Match. The natural comparison for me to dig up was the field at Worlds, both because the faction/identity breakdown was readily available and because the field of factions/identities there was much lambasted for its lack of diversity around the internet.

After sitting down and looking at some of the stats, I felt like it was a pretty close comparison with neither side looking particularly more diverse, so I find it odd that one is praised for its diversity and the other criticized for the lack thereof.

So, my question here, one which I recommend you think on before scrolling down and looking at the stats, is… How do you define diversity in a meta?

Where do you need to see balance to feel like the game is in a healthy state? Is it how close the pool is to the top identity? Is it how close the “popular” identities are when compared with the rest of the pack? Is it how evenly spread the factions themselves are? Does none of this matter to you and you just want to look at the pretty numbers? Heh, very well then.

If I get around to it (or somebody wants to grab the numbers from me and do it themselves), I’d love to see some pie charts and bar graphs going on, but it’s well past my bedtime and all I have is an ugly unformatted spreadsheet, so I’m just going to post these here and see about making it look pretty tomorrow.

Context
Worlds had 238 players, ChiLo had 61 players.

Corp Factions
Percentage of players that played each Corp faction

Worlds

ChiLo

Worlds
42.86%: NBN (102 decks)
23.95%: Jinteki (57)
16.81%: Weyland (40)
16.39%: Haas-Bioroid (39)

ChiLo
36.07%: Weyland (22)
32.79%: Jinteki (20)
27.87%: Haas-Bioroid (17)
3.28%: NBN (2)

Runner Factions
Percentage of players that played each Runner faction

Worlds

ChiLo

Worlds
35.71%: Criminal (85)
34.03%: Shaper (81)
30.25%: Anarch (72)

ChiLo
39.34%: Criminal (24)
31.15%: Shaper (19)
29.51%: Anarch (18)

Corp Identities
Percentage of players that played each Corp identity

Worlds
38.24%: Near-Earth Hub (91)
13.45%: Blue Sun (32)
10.92%: Replicating Perfection (26)
10.50%: Engineering the Future (25)
9.24%: Personal Evolution (22)
3.36%: Making News (8)
2.94%: NEXT Design (7)
2.10%: The Foundry(5)
2.10%: GRNDL (5)
1.68%: Tennin Institute (4)
1.26%: Harmony MedTech (3)
1.26%: The World is Yours* (3)
1.26%: Building a Better World (3)
0.84%: Nisei Division (2)
0.42%: Cerebral Imaging (1)
0.42%: Custom Biotics (1)
0.00%: Because We Built It (0)
0.00%: Stronger Together (0)

ChiLo
29.51%: Blue Sun (18)
18.03%: Engineering the Future (11)
14.75%: Replicating Perfection (9)
8.20%: Personal Evolution (5)
4.92%: Building a Better World (3)
3.28%: Cerebral Imaging (2)
3.28%: NEXT Design (2)
3.28%: The Foundry (2)
3.28%: Tennin Institute (2)
3.28%: Industrial Genomics (2)
3.28%: The World is Yours* (2)
1.64%: Harmony MedTech (1)
1.64%: Nisei Division (1)
1.64%: Because We Built It (1)
0.00%: Stronger Together (0)
0.00%: Custom Biotics (0)
0.00%: Making News (0)
0.00%: Near-Earth Hub (0)
0.00%: GRNDL (0)

Runner Identities
Percentage of players that played each Runner identity

Worlds
26.05%: Andy (62)
18.91%: Noise (45)
17.65%: Kate (42)
7.98%: Chaos(19)
5.88%: Quetzal (14)
5.04%: Kit (12)
4.62%: Express (11)
4.20%: Gabe (10)
3.78%: Whizzard (9)
2.52%: Nasir (6)
1.68%: Reina (4)
0.84%: Iain (2)
0.84%: Exile (2)
0.00%: Silhouette (0)
0.00%: Professor (0)

ChiLo
21.31%: Andy (13)
18.03%: Noise (11)
16.39%: Kate (10)
9.84%: Chaos (6)
9.84%: Leela (6)
6.56%: Quetzal (4)
3.28%: Whizzard (2)
3.28%: Gabe (2)
3.28%: Express (2)
3.28%: Kit (2)
1.64%: Reina (1)
1.64%: Iain (1)
1.64%: Nasir (1)
0.00%: Silhouette (0)
0.00%: Exile (0)
0.00%: Professor (0)

Have at it folks, and g’night! :smile:

Major Edit #1: I messed up the formula for one of the rows on the identities page in one of my spreadsheets, causing some minor percentage errors in the identity breakdowns for both sides. Those have been corrected and the percentages above have been edited to depict the correct number. I added a couple of pie charts. I added some numbers for context alongside the percentages.

9 Likes
2

Really interesting post. From my experience of gaming communities like this “diversity” has the following definition:

“more of the things I like playing against and less of the things I don’t like playing against.”

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Sorry, but you can’t compare these data as a basis for a discussion on diversity, it’s like comparing the Worlds with a Professor themed event.

Players who attended ChiLo City Grudge Match :

  • didn’t have the means to test the meta (time,octgn…)
  • didn’t have the will to do it (one time event)
  • didn’t have have the possibility to netdeck a good NBN deck

So they just played something else.

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You pose an interesting question, sir!

Broadly speaking:

When preparing for a competitive event, I want faction choice (and to a similar extent, ID choice within the faction) to be a difficult decision and not a foregone conclusion.

By extention, I would like the field in an average tournament to be representative of the whole breadth of the game, and ideally the top cut be representative of the field (though that’s more dependent of individual player skill, and thus not indicative).

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A good topic well worth thinking about!

When analyzing the data from the Chi-Lo tournament you will probably have to take into account that there will be some noise regarding the preparations done by the players. You will likely have a bunch of players that have prepared for the actual meta, a bunch that has done minimal theorycrafting and a bunch that just wanted to play and brought their regular decks. Combined with the release of new cards, of which some had a reasonable meta-impact, makes comparison hard.

Edit:
Faction representation should be a major part of a a “diverse” meta. While identities has some secondary part, what I think is more important is that each faction has at least two different deck archetypes that are viable for top play.

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I’d be interested to know how many players there was in both events.

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People were already comparing the events at length. He’s just provided the data so people can do so in a more informed way and broken it out into a more appropriate thread. Great post really.

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It’s not against CrimsonWraith :wink: , and the discussion about diversity is surely great. It’s just that I feel like we should have a clean basis to discuss it and not some truncated data.

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Which wasn’t the case here since NBN was under-represented.

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usually its over represented. is it better?

im not sure who said:

but for me its not the case here.

limiting very popular card is not to balance the game, its to make tournament unusual and different. diversity is achieved by guys playing more factions/decks they would not play without the restriction. one day meta shift. thats all.

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I’d rather have the least present corp be at 16.39% rather than 3.28%

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Regardless of intention, the outcome was that an entire faction was removed from the competition.

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u read my whole post? how is that a bad thing when we talk about one time meta shift to play a little bit different game?

my take on it: it was due to usual netdecking syndrome and laziness: neh drt is there, midseason scorch is there, psychobeale is there.

1 Like
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Because it becomes less of the game.

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let me dig all those hysterical posts, that say the game is broken because its neh and andy everywhere…

eot for me. have fun.

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I’m a new player and from the outside looking in this doesn’t look good to me. I’m a competitive player, who got into ANR partly because it looked like a game with rather robust competitive play.

I don’t think I’d want to attend a tourney where one faction gets bombed out of it by a player decided restriction.

It also raises the question of why said faction would get passed over with the removal of 2/3 of a card set.

My personal assumption is more game/faction balance will come when NBN gets it’s own pack. I don’t think I’d play in an event that cuts cards from the corp with one of the smallest pool of cards.

Great info.

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I think the reason is that over the past really really long time, a deck hasn’t been made with NBN that doesn’t include 3x Astro. Every deck runs it, and as many copies as legally allowed. So in an event where it’s restricted to one copy, no one has a clue what to do with that. There aren’t even enough 3/2 agendas left to play a no-advance deck.

So rather than do a buncha cruncha testing with NBN in a restricted environment for a one-off tournament to maybe find a deck that works, it’s easier to take a host of other decks that already have been proven to work. You can practice refining a strategy with a deck that you already know rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with NBN. If your plan is to win the tournament (and if you’re driving for hours and hours to go, one would hope that’s the goal), that is by far the more efficient use of your time.

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[quote=“prozz, post:13, topic:2871, full:true”]neh drt is there, midseason scorch is there, psychobeale is there.
[/quote]
Are they effective or do they rely on the pressure that a potential astrotrain puts on the runner?

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That makes a ton of sense actually.

Honestly, I don’t even know what autoscript based deck really does. I have it built, because I netdecked all the top worlds decks to try and get used to meta stuff as I learn the game. However, I don’t have much of a clue how to really play it.

So I randomly just make servers and put ice down and laugh. Then cry.

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In fact I’m so bad I call it autoscript instead of astroscript.

2 Likes