This will be a first in a bunch of these types of posts. I want to improve my skills writing data analysis. However, data projects take a long time to make. So I will be borrowing graphs others have made and adding my own analysis. This post’s graphs come courtesy of an r/DataIsBeautiful post. I also want to link to the creator of the post’s website. He put in a lot of hard work and I want to make sure he gets credit.
Description and Context:
The user has gotten data on CS:GO games. CS:GO stands for Counter Strike: Global Offensive. It is a first-person shooter(FPS) video game created by Valve. Two teams compete in matches on various maps. A team wins a match either by completing the map’s objective or by killing all the opposing team’s players. The game has a long history and has gone through many iterations. Global Offensive or GO is the most current version. CS:GO is a very competitive game and the game uses an algorithm to rank players.
This first graph shows the distributions of wins of the different ranks. Showing that there is a positive relationship between wins and rank. Whether it’s a factor in ranking is hard to say. It makes sense that the more wins a player has the better he is at the game. Experience and practice usually lead to skill. This doesn’t tell us how often players in though. There’s a rank 1 player with nearly 500 wins, but if he played 2000 games then he only really won 25% of his games. That’s not very good. Obviously, raw wins do not tell the whole story. But it certainly suggests that winning games will help your ranking.
The next group of graphs looks at the use of several strategic weapons. The first graph examines the use of smoke grenades in matches. Smoke grenades often referred to as ‘smokes,’ are a useful type of grenade as they obscure vision. It’s hard to shoot your opponent if he’s hidden behind a wall of smoke. Smoke grenades are often used by an attacking team.
This graph shows the average number of smoke grenades thrown in a round by player rank. As you can see, there is a strong correlation between smoke grenade use and rank. Higher rank players throwing twice as many smoke grenades as lower ranked players. This suggests that higher rank players are more strategic. This is an expected result. Newer players do not have the experience to know when to use these types of weapons.
A similar graph is the one showing flash bang use. Flash Bangs are a similar strategic weapon. A flashbang temporarily blinds your opponent if he looks at it when it goes off. This is disorienting your opponent and leaves them vulnerable.
As with smoke grenade, flashbangs are used more by higher ranked players. This understandable. A higher ranked player would naturally be a more strategic player. This is relatively common sense, but it’s nice to see it confirmed.
The final graph looks at the fraction of players who threw no smoke grenades through an entire match by rank.
As the graph shows there is a strong negative correlation. It’s interesting that the correlation does not appear to be linear. Players discover rather quickly that throwing smoke grenades is an important strategy in the game.
While corrolation does not equal causation, If you want to get better at CS:GO, I would recommend throwing more smoke and flashes. And I intend to test out that theory tongiht.