I finished a bit later than I would have liked, but there ya go.
Why look at control point maps? It’s easier to find meaningful statistical conclusions in control point matches because the win condition is simpler than hybrid/assault/escort maps.
Only 22 stages were played during the OWWC finals, so I wouldn’t take these percentages as a rule of law. That said, it’s pretty clear that teams were operating under the assumption that there exists a positive correlation between drawing first blood and winning a control stage. On multiple occasions, I witnessed teams give up the first capture and stay alive rather than attempt to force a bad team fight. Given a larger data set in Season 2 of the Overwatch League, it would be interesting to adjust first blood and death percentages by hero pick rate.
I’d like to explore an interesting intersection between traditional sports and esports: The importance of data analysis. Specifically, let’s talk about Moneyball / baseball and esports / the video game Overwatch. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been invested into Overwatch’s one-year-old competitive league, so I would make the argument that the league’s teams take data analysis very seriously.
The sports term “Moneyball” has become distorted over the years. These days, many people associate Moneyball with any situation where a team performs data analysis more advanced than counting fingers. …
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