(Figure 1: Pro-Archetype)
(Figure 2: Single Professional Player “Ripmate”)
(Figure 3: Amateur player)
Figure 1 represents Uncanny’s pro-archetype player for weapon bloom with a submachine gun. This pro-archetype is an aggregation of data based on our long-term, continuously expanding analysis of professional Fortnite gameplay. Figure 2 is data analyzed from the gameplay of a single pro-player, Ripmate. Figure 3 is a single match played by an amateur player (aka the CTO).
Description:
Weapon bloom is a concept across almost all FPS and battle royale games. By definition, weapon bloom is the possible spread of your shot. On the screen bloom is represented by contraction and expansion of the cross hairs. How bloom works in Fortnite is that there is an equal chance that your bullet can land anywhere inside of your crosshairs. So in general, the smaller the bloom the more accurate you are.
Your weapon bloom is affected by a multitude of factors: continuously holding the trigger, aiming down the sights, running, lateral movement, crouching, and fire rate to name a few. Being aware and controlling the factors that affect your bloom will help boost your shot accuracy in the game.
About the data:
We’ve analyzed a ton of Fortnite gameplay data of professionals from Twitch and Youtube. Here, we’ve shown you guys weapon bloom as it pertains to the suppressed submachine gun. On the horizontal axis is the size of the bloom in pixels, the larger the number the larger the bloom. On the vertical axis, we have the percentage of blooms of a given size.
We call the distribution of the pro-archetype (figure 1) a bimodal-distribution. In other words, we can see that there are two distinct humps. These two humps indicate that there are at least two different situations happening here. We think the reason that there is a bimodal distribution is due to the fact that this gun is mostly used in close range combat. Therefore, most of the time the user is moving around and not looking down the sights of the gun. The far right “hump” indicates this. This hump is denser, and the weapon bloom is larger indicating that this weapon is used more frequently in hip fire or during high intensity engagements. The leftmost “hump” indicates that, although less frequent, standing still or looking down the weapon’s sights does occur.
Comparing with the pro-archetype:
Using a statistical analysis method called Mann-Whitney U test, we can compare both of Ripmate’s and our Amateur’s match data to our pro-archetype. We set up a hypothesis test where:
H0: There is no difference between distributions
H1: This is a difference between distributions
alpha or confidence level = 0.05
When analyzing Ripmate’s data we get a p-value=0.22. Since this is greater than our confidence level, we cannot reject the null hypothesis and therefore we can claim that the distributions are similar. In other terms, Ripmate plays like the pros. When analyzing the amateur data, we get a p-value=0.000014. Since this is less than our confidence level, we can conclude the opposite. This distribution is too dissimilar to the pro-archetype. Based on this analysis we can now provide an actionable training recommendation.
Summary:
Remember in the description when I said, ‘The smaller the bloom the more accurate you are’? Well this is still true but what we have learned from this data is that it may not be best. After analyzing many different professional matches we have learned that most pros use this particular weapon without looking down the sights. This is an important discovery. It tells us that it may not always be better to have a smaller bloom and that we can now grab context out of this one analysis. We know, by just looking at bloom, if you are in a high intensity engagement or you are sitting back and aiming down the sights. This is the type of data that will guide our coaching. That will provide you with the best gameplay analysis on the market and by being able to benchmark the pros, we can see how the best in the world play down to the very minutiae.
Looking forward:
We are in the process of expanding this analysis, as well as, many more to come. We will be providing optimal blooms for each situation, how to control your bloom, and when it is important to do so. This is just the first step towards providing the best analytics and training services for the esports athlete ever!
Uncanny.gg:
We are building the digital gym equipment for the eSports athlete. We help you win by using computer vision and machine learning to watch you play and provide actionable training recommendations and unique, advanced data analytics. To signup, visit https://www.uncanny.gg