EPT1. Imbalance only affects top Masters players - fallacy + Show Spoiler +
The argument that balance only matters at the highest levels is a fallacy of the highest order.
Just because a player of higher skills can beat someone playing a weaker race does not negate that the race is weaker. Even if an advantage is overcome, it is still an advantage.
Mean that any player of a stronger race in Masters could possibly be there ONLY due to this unfair advantage, whereas playing a different race with the same skill would only have landed them in Diamond, and conversely, they would be taking the places and ruining the MMRs of players of weaker races, forcing them into Diamond when they should have been in Masters.
People say, "Well, it doesn't matter unless you're in Masters. If you just got better, you would be too."
And then what? Then you are suddenly privileged to be affected by the imbalance? That's your reward for working your way up past the imbalance, being shat on by lesser skilled players that are beating you only because of an imba race, finally improving enough to fight past a lot of them into Masters league, just for the privilege to be able to go, "Yup, the game is totally fucking imba" and people believe you?
And then if ANOTHER player agrees with you, says "You're right, it's imba! That race is OP!", and HE'S not Masters, then the hell with him, he hasn't earned the right to PROPERLY be screwed by imbalances!
2. Terran AoE Availability + Show Spoiler +
Terran just has more numerous, easier to use, easier to tech and more powerful Area-of-Effect crowd-control options than the other two races COMBINED
AoE for Toss:
1 Colossus
2 HT
3 Archon
Zerg
1 Baneling
2 Ultra (LOL)
3 Infestor
Terran
1 EMP
2 Nuke
3 HSM
4 Hellion
5 SeigeTank
6 Thor (AA)
7 PF
Check this out: Every single Factory unit has an AOE attack, The barracks has 2 AOE attacks available (from 1 unit), And thei freaking BASE can be upgraded with an AoE attack. The starport has an AoE available. And on top of that, all their units (Except the banshee and maruader?) have smart-fire which is about a hair away from being as good as AoE for crowd control.
Zerg has NO smart-fire units, mostly melee units and horrible AoE units.
Toss has melee and No smart fire, except for the immortal. Though, their AoE units are awesome.
So, anytime it turns into mass vs mass combat - which is almost any SC2 game...Terran SHOULD be at an advantage.
3. Blizzard NP nerf bait & switch + Show Spoiler +
It seems very hard to believe that Blizzard at any point intended for the no Massive targeting for NP nerf would actually be implemented, being that it is OBVIOUSLY the only reasonable use for the ability. This leaves only 2 options for their actual intent with the PTR change as it was:
1. Offset the rage of players at the forthcoming range nerf, making it seem not as bad in comparison.
2. Just dick around with random changes they won't actually implement on the PTR
Given that #2 is something Blizzard is simply not going to waste time and money on, the PR bait & switch of #1 seems more likely. And that sucks.
4. Same-tech counters and lower-tech counters + Show Spoiler +
As pointed out to me by a Masters player I know, in BW, compared to SC2 most (if not all) "counter" units were at least 1 tech level higher than what they countered, if not 2. Whereas in Sc2 we not only have counter units at the same level as the units they counter (maruader vs stalker/roach, lings vs stalker, reaper vs ling, etc) we also have units that counter units of HIGHER tech levels (reaper vs hydra, lings vs immortals).
This isn't an imbalance issue, and not really a game design "issue", just a style and feel change. It takes away from the sort of "arms race feeling of most RTS games, and replaces it with a complex "rock paper scissors" type of strategy.
5. Protoss whines about Robo Necessity + Show Spoiler +
All over the Battle.net forums, and I think I saw some on the forums here, as well, Protoss players seem to be complaining that having observers as their only mobile detection option coming from the Robotics Facility somehow funnels them down a tech path and puts them at an extreme disadvantage to Terran and Zerg. Making them unable to realistically tech Air units at the same speed as the other races.
This simply isn't true, by the numbers.
Assuming you want to go air, AND have mobile detection, and comparing costs side by side:
Terran:
Barracks - 150m/60s
OC - 150m/(35s) - Mobile Detection Option 1
Factory - 150m/100g/60s
Starport - 150m/100g/50s
--Tech Lab for Ravens - 50m/50g/(25s) - for Detection Option 2
Total - 500-650m, 200-250g, 170-195s - Depending on if you build tech lab before Starport, and which options of OC/Tech lab are chosen.
Max Total - 650m, 250g, 195s
Min Total - 500m, 200g, 170s
Zerg (iincluding cost of sacced drones):
Pool - 250m/65s
Lair - 150m/100g/80s
Spire - 250/200/100s
Total - 650m, 300g, 245s
Protoss:
Gateway - 150m/65s
Cyber - 150m/50s
Robo - 200m/100g/(65s)
Stargate - 150m/150g/(60s)
Total - 650m, 250g, 180-240s - Depending on if you Build Robo & Stargate at same time.
Max Total - 650m, 250g, 240s
Min Total - 650m, 250g, 180s
For 50 LESS gas than Zerg, Protoss gets the benefit of being able to build robo and stargate simultaneously after cyber, where Zerg has to wait for both the long time of the lair AND long time of the spire to finish. Not to mention you unlocking gateway, robo AND air units: Zealots, Sentries, Stalkers, Immortals, Warp prisms, Immortals, Phoenixes and Void Rays. Zerg gets lings and mutas ONLY. Protoss is making out like a bandit.
Terran still has it the easiest however, with multiple detection options along the way, AND lower costs. Not to mention Terran's now unlocked marines, hellions, medivacs, banshees, vikings AND ravens. Plus they can trade off the tech lab to access tanks, marauders and reapers as well.
Protoss does NOT have it that hard here. Terran is is a bit ahead, but they seem to be in any direct comparison of efficiency in build order.
6. Blizzard support vs leeching of eSports + Show Spoiler +
As detailed in in this thread, Blizzard really seems more interested in letting the eSports community support and promote Blizzard than vice versa. This should be a 2-way street, not just Blizzard leeching off other people's efforts and money investment to bolster their own profits.
7. Replay sharing STILL not available + Show Spoiler +
This has been a 'coming soon' feature for FAR FAR too long. I, along with so many other people, are sick to death of Bnet2.0 being such a huge step BACKWARDS from Bnet1.0
Blizzard should be looking to things like the steam in-game overlay, other competitive games with integrated community options, MSLive Gaming, XBox live even (ugh), LOL, etc, and integrating, adding and improving options to make SC2 a premiere eSports and community engine, not just slapping together a shoddy, clunky dated interface that their PREVIOUS products worked better than, and calling it a day.
8. Perceived game imbalance that doesn't seem to show up when you look at the numbers + Show Spoiler +
Comparing this chart to this chart I'm having a hard time seeing the effects of any racial imbalance where it would show up, as agreed upon by the community - at the highest levels of play.
If you suppose that a given race was imbalanced, you SHOULD see a higher percentage of that race's players in the upper leagues (Masters and GM), and given that this imbalance would then affect these players more at higher levels, you SHOULD see players at these levels having higher win/loss ratios than their non-imba counterparts. At these levels of play, the balancing factor of MMR should break down as the players hit the ceiling of what MMR can do.
Looking at SC2 Ranks Numbers, we see across all leagues in the past 30 days:
Random = 9.0% (57,106)
Protoss = 32.1% (203,587)
Terran = 33.2% (210,755)
Zerg = 25.7% (163,158)
Making Zerg the least played race, and Terran slightly more played than Toss, with very few players playing randomly.
Looking at the second chart we see, based on Grandmaster League in the past 30 days:
Random 2.4% (26) with 50.5% (18,661) wins and 754 points on average.
Protoss 32.1% (350) with 56.8% (115,201) wins and 832 points on average.
Terran 35.8% (391) with 58.5% (119,518) wins and 856 points on average.
Zerg 29.7% (324) with 56.5% (97,230) wins and 836 points on average.
Meaning all 3 races fall within a 2% margin of win/loss ratio of each other, and are very close on average points. The races' representation in GM League is expected, based on the different OVERALL population of each race, as they correlation almost directly, taking some extra population from Random's percentage, which would reasonable expected to be harder to excel at, being that it would require the player to be near-GM level skill with all 3 races.
Comparing these numbers to the often-cite Sc2Statistics graph of Pro-level wins shown here, considering "tournament winners" to be a sort of league in it's own (you have to beat players to prove a high skill (MMR) over a period of time), it should be realized that even an amazing player of an under-represented race could simply be swept aside by weight of numbers. The better player doesn't always win the match when skill is relatively close, and over the course of repeated matches, if a race is under-represented at the start of a tournament, it's very likely to be under-represented in the finals, as well.
In that context, even these results seem fairly balanced, given that the results are all within only a 5.5% span, even discounting numbers of players in each race category. If anything it may show zerg being a bit too strong, given that they placed second, while being far under-represented, but if so, given that these are individual match results, not overall results, it still remains that the the graph is very close. If viewed in a full, undistorted field the 3 lines would likely look even closer together, but as we're looking at it through a window of only 40-60%, rather than 0-100%, it looks far more telling a division than it really is.
ALTERNATELY, it could be said that imbalance would also affect the LOWER leagues strongly, giving skill-less players a strong advantage over players with equally non-existent skills. Why don't we look there, too!
Random 8.1% (15,173) with 292 average points.
Protoss 32.8% (61,623) with 276 average points.
Terran 39.5% (74,193) with 270 average points.
Zerg 19.5% (36,654) with 283 average points.
Blizzard so kindly removed win/loss rations in lower leagues, so these numbers are less helpful than they could be, but we can see the that race distribution is fairly predictable, again, and the average point totals are fairly close to each other, again.
tl;dr: Imbalances? Not that I can find.
