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This was a thought I had, so I figured I could make it into a blog:
Warcraft III upgraded from Starcraft to introduce a fourth race, but a lot of the match-ups ended up not working quite so well. I don't know if the additional race caused any of this, but I simply doubt if it's at all possible to attain a reasonable level of balance with four different races and three non-mirror match-ups per race. Every change you make to one match-up will have repercussions for the balance of two additional ones.
Starcraft 2 is obviously more successful in this aspect than Warcraft III was, but even so, balance constantly switches depending even on the month or on very minor patch changes by Blizzard. I guess the level of play is still constantly evolving and to the game's credit, very few of the patch changes by Blizzard were really necessary to begin with. Even 'broken' strategies like the reaper openings just after release weren't as dominant anymore after a few weeks of development by the zerg players - and I think with different maps it wouldn't have been a problem at all. Nevertheless, many of the match-ups still suffer from quite severe problems and these haven't always faded away over time; rather, sometimes they are emphasized even more, such as the power of two base all-ins in PvZ. I would say that at this point in time only TvT has no obvious issues with regards to design or balance. Even Brood War wasn't perfect, certain match-ups were imbalanced for long periods of time, mirror match-ups weren't as interesting, ZvP was just hydra busts for entire pro league seasons etc.
So I wanted to argue in favor of a design with only two races. If you have just two, you'll have two mirror match-ups and only one non-mirror match-up. This has some obvious advantages from a production point of view like lower development time, less assets to be created etc. but also gameplay advantages: balancing becomes a lot easier as every balance change you make will affect only the intended match-up and won't cause any spill-over effects. This might allow for more creativity in map-making, as you can avoid common pitfalls in Starcraft II map design caused by the plethora of non-mirrors such as making the third base slightly too open, making it more difficult for protoss to take a third which affects balance quite severely etc. If you only have one non-mirror to consider there will simply be a lot less of this and then you can more easily get away with having small maps, large maps, gimmicky maps and whatnot. It will also improve the quality of mirror match-ups since you have a lot more room to 'balance' units to accommodate interesting gameplay even for mirror match-ups.
Two counter arguments might be the risk of one race being superior and the lack of diversity in general. For the second, yeah, you'll have just three match-ups, but if each one of them is high quality that's still a lot of diversity. Most sports have equal sides, which doesn't hurt them at all. I'm not going to say it's an advantage, but it does not have to be a severe disadvantage. For the first argument, the risk of one race disappearing, I guess that's something that could happen but shouldn't as long as the game is well designed and balanced. I don't have too much varied RTS experience, so I actually don't know of other competitive RTS games with just two factions other than Warcraft II - which had orc being played exclusively at the expense of the human side. However, I think that's a consequence of the races being incredibly similar except for the orc faction being superior. It's not comparable to two completely unique races with different advantages/disadvantages depending on maps, patches, 'metagame' development and such. Three different races can facilitate a rock-paper-scissors dynamic that will prevent any race from being abandoned, but despite a game with two races lacking this, I still think one race disappearing is only a minor risk.
Anyways, those are my thoughts. I know the community consensus is that Starcraft's three races is superior to Warcraft III's four races and I wonder if anyone thinks two races has a chance to be superior to three.
 
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No, Brood War was perfect  It achieved balance through giving each race extremely powerful units. psi storm, reavers, dark swarm, plague, lurker, dt, vulture, mines, tanks, stim marine, irradiate, d matrix. Very powerful spells that make it not matter so much what units each race has, but how each race chooses to use them.
Many call Brood War a total fluke for how diverse it was while maintaining balance. Map changes were the tweeks that allowed the game to evolve and balance the power of very different races.
When I first played SC2 in beta, I thought there were too many units that ignore map features. nydus worm, medivac, warp prism. reapers. I believe balance changes made those units come later in the game, which is a good thing.
A two race game would be too simple. Maybe if they had more complicated tech trees, but then it is too hard for a new player to pick up. You can't have Brood War with 3 perfect races and then lower the ante. People will notice. At the same time, 4-5 races also makes it difficult for new players, without making each race very simple, or forgetting balance altogether.
WCII had two races, and they were more or less mirrors of each other with minor differences in spell casters and later tier units. I think people who still play WCII unanimously agree that orcs are the superior race because of bloodlust? Obviously you probably mean something more diverse than that, but I still think two races is too unambitious, especially for Blizzard. I would even like to see a 4th race in an expansion, since they did attempt to simplify the races and make them more about the meat of the units rather than the imbalance of the spells (as it was in BW). Fungle, Force Field and Point Defense Drone?? Game changing, I guess, but kinda boring.
When SC2 stops balancing the units and starts balancing the maps, that's when we will see SC2 really evolve. However, because of the unit types in SC2, I wonder just how much you can do with the maps, as so many units bypass terrain. Forcefield especially makes map making annoying in SC2. Creep spread also forces a lot of decisions in map making.
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One old Indie RTS that has 2 races(now is dead multiplayer wise) is Tribal Trouble by Oddlabs. This game was very balanced and fun except for two things.
1) Both races were basically exactly the same. Same resources, same units, all except for 1 hero with abilities that were different.
2) The building options didn't have any prerequisites. Units cost very low resource amounts so rushing on small-medium sized maps was common. This made it a little boring to play for those more into SC but those playing this game were into simpler games that didn't take an hour or two just to learn how to play.
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On July 15 2012 00:38 Chef wrote:No, Brood War was perfect It achieved balance through giving each race extremely powerful units. psi storm, reavers, dark swarm, plague, lurker, dt, vulture, mines, tanks, stim marine, irradiate, d matrix. Very powerful spells that make it not matter so much what units each race has, but how each race chooses to use them. Many call Brood War a total fluke for how diverse it was while maintaining balance. Map changes were the tweeks that allowed the game to evolve and balance the power of very different races. When I first played SC2 in beta, I thought there were too many units that ignore map features. nydus worm, medivac, warp prism. reapers. I believe balance changes made those units come later in the game, which is a good thing. A two race game would be too simple. Maybe if they had more complicated tech trees, but then it is too hard for a new player to pick up. You can't have Brood War with 3 perfect races and then lower the ante. People will notice. At the same time, 4-5 races also makes it difficult for new players, without making each race very simple, or forgetting balance altogether. WCII had two races, and they were more or less mirrors of each other with minor differences in spell casters and later tier units. I think people who still play WCII unanimously agree that orcs are the superior race because of bloodlust? Obviously you probably mean something more diverse than that, but I still think two races is too unambitious, especially for Blizzard. I would even like to see a 4th race in an expansion, since they did attempt to simplify the races and make them more about the meat of the units rather than the imbalance of the spells (as it was in BW). Fungle, Force Field and Point Defense Drone?? Game changing, I guess, but kinda boring. When SC2 stops balancing the units and starts balancing the maps, that's when we will see SC2 really evolve. However, because of the unit types in SC2, I wonder just how much you can do with the maps, as so many units bypass terrain. Forcefield especially makes map making annoying in SC2. Creep spread also forces a lot of decisions in map making.
to be honest, TvZ has been imbalanced from the beginning of times to current date on most maps in BW, and PvZ to some extent. Balance is better on some maps than others but lets be honest- BW balance is far from perfect.
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Company of Heroes had 2 sides in vanilla and you could only played non mirror matches. It worked really well IMO and the US vs Wehrmacht match up is one of my favourite RTS match ups. Of course it suffered from Relic balancing it.
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I don't think anyone has truely found a good balance for the number of races. Some people like to show brood war off as the perfect indication for what people should be looking for, but it wasn't perfect due to the fact that many argue one of the races of the three was easier to learn and play (protoss). It is a good thing to look at though.
Only having two races can obviously severely limit the diversity of the game. To avoid this flaw you have to give each of the matchups a lot of viable options, but having too many makes the game very complex and luck based at times.
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Warcraft 2 has two races (and still manages to have one of them be superior to the other despite extreme similarities between units.)
Brood War was the closest to perfect a game has gotten.
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On July 15 2012 00:53 brolaf wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2012 00:38 Chef wrote:No, Brood War was perfect It achieved balance through giving each race extremely powerful units. psi storm, reavers, dark swarm, plague, lurker, dt, vulture, mines, tanks, stim marine, irradiate, d matrix. Very powerful spells that make it not matter so much what units each race has, but how each race chooses to use them. Many call Brood War a total fluke for how diverse it was while maintaining balance. Map changes were the tweeks that allowed the game to evolve and balance the power of very different races. When I first played SC2 in beta, I thought there were too many units that ignore map features. nydus worm, medivac, warp prism. reapers. I believe balance changes made those units come later in the game, which is a good thing. A two race game would be too simple. Maybe if they had more complicated tech trees, but then it is too hard for a new player to pick up. You can't have Brood War with 3 perfect races and then lower the ante. People will notice. At the same time, 4-5 races also makes it difficult for new players, without making each race very simple, or forgetting balance altogether. WCII had two races, and they were more or less mirrors of each other with minor differences in spell casters and later tier units. I think people who still play WCII unanimously agree that orcs are the superior race because of bloodlust? Obviously you probably mean something more diverse than that, but I still think two races is too unambitious, especially for Blizzard. I would even like to see a 4th race in an expansion, since they did attempt to simplify the races and make them more about the meat of the units rather than the imbalance of the spells (as it was in BW). Fungle, Force Field and Point Defense Drone?? Game changing, I guess, but kinda boring. When SC2 stops balancing the units and starts balancing the maps, that's when we will see SC2 really evolve. However, because of the unit types in SC2, I wonder just how much you can do with the maps, as so many units bypass terrain. Forcefield especially makes map making annoying in SC2. Creep spread also forces a lot of decisions in map making. to be honest, TvZ has been imbalanced from the beginning of times to current date on most maps in BW, and PvZ to some extent. Balance is better on some maps than others but lets be honest- BW balance is far from perfect.
When people talk about balance in BW, they shit their pants over things like 54% for one race over another. The better player wins in StarCraft. We only need to look to the best to see that they are not really struggling in 'imba' matchups. Usually their strongest matchup tends to be the one people claim is hardest ;p It is that kind of fighting personality which overcomes perceptions and self-fulfilled prophecies of failure.
so let's not say dumb things like 'Let's be honest.' There have been bad maps, but there have been a lot that got really close to 50%. I think actually hitting 50% is unreasonable, because there will always be skill differences between races at any given point in time.
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I followed the Warcraft III pro scene for a long time and I think that besides one or two matchups (OvU) at the absolute top top level the game was pretty balanced. There were top players and legends from all four races (Moon and Remind for NE, Grubby and Lyn for Orc, Lucifer and Sweet for UD and Sky and Infi for HU)
Taking out yet another race would be pointless and overkill for balance and it would make the game even more boring to watch.
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I remember playing this strategy game with only two races, one black and one white. They were completely identical but one of them still had a winrate of like 55%.
Pretty fun game but the graphics kind of suck.
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Having two races gives the same problem of diversity that chess does, only worse.
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Why don't have just one race then?
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Bloodlust and Death and Decay made Orcs better, Chef.
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On July 15 2012 03:40 Kaal wrote:
Bloodlust and Death and Decay made Orcs better, Chef.
I always thought that Blizzard and DnD in Warcraft 2 had the exact same effect :o
Also SC2 with only Zerg and Terran would be fine for me, Protoss matchups are boring to watch and play 
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On July 15 2012 02:00 Chef wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2012 00:53 brolaf wrote:On July 15 2012 00:38 Chef wrote:No, Brood War was perfect It achieved balance through giving each race extremely powerful units. psi storm, reavers, dark swarm, plague, lurker, dt, vulture, mines, tanks, stim marine, irradiate, d matrix. Very powerful spells that make it not matter so much what units each race has, but how each race chooses to use them. Many call Brood War a total fluke for how diverse it was while maintaining balance. Map changes were the tweeks that allowed the game to evolve and balance the power of very different races. When I first played SC2 in beta, I thought there were too many units that ignore map features. nydus worm, medivac, warp prism. reapers. I believe balance changes made those units come later in the game, which is a good thing. A two race game would be too simple. Maybe if they had more complicated tech trees, but then it is too hard for a new player to pick up. You can't have Brood War with 3 perfect races and then lower the ante. People will notice. At the same time, 4-5 races also makes it difficult for new players, without making each race very simple, or forgetting balance altogether. WCII had two races, and they were more or less mirrors of each other with minor differences in spell casters and later tier units. I think people who still play WCII unanimously agree that orcs are the superior race because of bloodlust? Obviously you probably mean something more diverse than that, but I still think two races is too unambitious, especially for Blizzard. I would even like to see a 4th race in an expansion, since they did attempt to simplify the races and make them more about the meat of the units rather than the imbalance of the spells (as it was in BW). Fungle, Force Field and Point Defense Drone?? Game changing, I guess, but kinda boring. When SC2 stops balancing the units and starts balancing the maps, that's when we will see SC2 really evolve. However, because of the unit types in SC2, I wonder just how much you can do with the maps, as so many units bypass terrain. Forcefield especially makes map making annoying in SC2. Creep spread also forces a lot of decisions in map making. to be honest, TvZ has been imbalanced from the beginning of times to current date on most maps in BW, and PvZ to some extent. Balance is better on some maps than others but lets be honest- BW balance is far from perfect. When people talk about balance in BW, they shit their pants over things like 54% for one race over another. The better player wins in StarCraft. We only need to look to the best to see that they are not really struggling in 'imba' matchups. Usually their strongest matchup tends to be the one people claim is hardest ;p It is that kind of fighting personality which overcomes perceptions and self-fulfilled prophecies of failure. so let's not say dumb things like 'Let's be honest.' There have been bad maps, but there have been a lot that got really close to 50%. I think actually hitting 50% is unreasonable, because there will always be skill differences between races at any given point in time. I dont remember many zergs who have zvt as their strongest matchup.. jaedong during his spree? but other than that not really.
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The original C&C game and Red Alert 1&2 only had two races and Im sure that the side which had the better tanks had the higher winrate.
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3 is the right number of races for an RTS. 2 is too few, 4 is too many. 3 is perfect because every race has and even number of non-mirror match-ups which makes the game more stable for balance. With an even # of non-mirror match-ups if one match-up becomes imbalanced the other match-up, so long as it's balanced, will counter-act that a bit leading to better race diversity. With an odd # of match-ups a race that has >50% of their match-ups favorable will become a dominate race unless their other match-up(s) are really imbalanced against them.
Basically with 2 non-mirrors a race is either Broken (Bad), Relatively Balanced, or Broken (Good) and that middle ground takes up the most space so long as we avoid obvious things that make 80/20 or 90/10 match-ups. Take SC2 right now for example, ZvT is generally seen as imbalanced (if it is or not doesn't matter). If this was a 2 race game everyone would switch to Z to win more. Since it's a 3 race game and TvP is still relatively balanced T is still 'alright' to play and the system keeps racial diversity. Not everyone will end up moving out of T because as Z players grow it makes more and more sense to play P to avoid the mirror match-up vs the largest player base % and as P grows it makes less and less sense to switch out of T because they have no problem vs P. Thus the system retains some racial equality even in the face of some imbalance.
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On July 15 2012 04:04 brolaf wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2012 02:00 Chef wrote:On July 15 2012 00:53 brolaf wrote:On July 15 2012 00:38 Chef wrote:No, Brood War was perfect It achieved balance through giving each race extremely powerful units. psi storm, reavers, dark swarm, plague, lurker, dt, vulture, mines, tanks, stim marine, irradiate, d matrix. Very powerful spells that make it not matter so much what units each race has, but how each race chooses to use them. Many call Brood War a total fluke for how diverse it was while maintaining balance. Map changes were the tweeks that allowed the game to evolve and balance the power of very different races. When I first played SC2 in beta, I thought there were too many units that ignore map features. nydus worm, medivac, warp prism. reapers. I believe balance changes made those units come later in the game, which is a good thing. A two race game would be too simple. Maybe if they had more complicated tech trees, but then it is too hard for a new player to pick up. You can't have Brood War with 3 perfect races and then lower the ante. People will notice. At the same time, 4-5 races also makes it difficult for new players, without making each race very simple, or forgetting balance altogether. WCII had two races, and they were more or less mirrors of each other with minor differences in spell casters and later tier units. I think people who still play WCII unanimously agree that orcs are the superior race because of bloodlust? Obviously you probably mean something more diverse than that, but I still think two races is too unambitious, especially for Blizzard. I would even like to see a 4th race in an expansion, since they did attempt to simplify the races and make them more about the meat of the units rather than the imbalance of the spells (as it was in BW). Fungle, Force Field and Point Defense Drone?? Game changing, I guess, but kinda boring. When SC2 stops balancing the units and starts balancing the maps, that's when we will see SC2 really evolve. However, because of the unit types in SC2, I wonder just how much you can do with the maps, as so many units bypass terrain. Forcefield especially makes map making annoying in SC2. Creep spread also forces a lot of decisions in map making. to be honest, TvZ has been imbalanced from the beginning of times to current date on most maps in BW, and PvZ to some extent. Balance is better on some maps than others but lets be honest- BW balance is far from perfect. When people talk about balance in BW, they shit their pants over things like 54% for one race over another. The better player wins in StarCraft. We only need to look to the best to see that they are not really struggling in 'imba' matchups. Usually their strongest matchup tends to be the one people claim is hardest ;p It is that kind of fighting personality which overcomes perceptions and self-fulfilled prophecies of failure. so let's not say dumb things like 'Let's be honest.' There have been bad maps, but there have been a lot that got really close to 50%. I think actually hitting 50% is unreasonable, because there will always be skill differences between races at any given point in time. I dont remember many zergs who have zvt as their strongest matchup.. jaedong during his spree? but other than that not really.
YellOw, Gorush maybe ?, one of the two between Lux/Yellow[rnc] and... er me ?
ZvT is hard indeed, top zerg tend to lose to top terran, the last two years have looked horrible for zerg player, but still, the match up isn't that bad.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
Brood War wasn't balanced, but its as close as you get, meaning exceptional players could perform exceptional feats with their races and overcome any obstacle.
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On July 15 2012 03:47 BobMcJohnson wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2012 03:40 Kaal wrote:
Bloodlust and Death and Decay made Orcs better, Chef. I always thought that Blizzard and DnD in Warcraft 2 had the exact same effect :o Also SC2 with only Zerg and Terran would be fine for me, Protoss matchups are boring to watch and play
Actually, that's a common misconception, seeing as they both deal AoE damage. However, DnD deals more damage to buildings, while blizzard deals more damage to units. This lead to some high level players playing human, using invisible on wizards, and dropping blizzards on peons or ogres.
However, it's commonly accepted that in the midgame, before wizards are out, orc is at a clear advantage. Heal is not as good as bloodlust under the control of any skilled player.
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Even if you had two races, there still could be imbalance because one side, might say, get to build Krogoths, whereas the other cannot.
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Well C&C traditionally had 2 races and they made them interesting and unique enough. Too bad C&C 4 is garbage, RA3 is mediocre, and I don't high hopes for Generals 2.
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I think 4 races would actually be better than 2 or 3. Mirror matchups for players would go from 1/3 to 1/4. And spectator diversity would go from 6 matchups to 24 matchups. That's a huge improvement upon the spectating experience for very little extra learning cost on the players.
Sure, from a developer perspective, it would be hell to aim to keep 24 matchups all at 50-50 balance. But BW proved that you don't need to make every matchup to be at 50% to have a good competitive game. You just need to make sure that a negative imbalance in one matchup is compensated by a positive imbalance in another matchup.
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United States10328 Posts
On July 15 2012 08:37 jrkirby wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2012 03:47 BobMcJohnson wrote:On July 15 2012 03:40 Kaal wrote:
Bloodlust and Death and Decay made Orcs better, Chef. I always thought that Blizzard and DnD in Warcraft 2 had the exact same effect :o Also SC2 with only Zerg and Terran would be fine for me, Protoss matchups are boring to watch and play Actually, that's a common misconception, seeing as they both deal AoE damage. However, DnD deals more damage to buildings, while blizzard deals more damage to units. This lead to some high level players playing human, using invisible on wizards, and dropping blizzards on peons or ogres. However, it's commonly accepted that in the midgame, before wizards are out, orc is at a clear advantage. Heal is not as good as bloodlust under the control of any skilled player.
Also, orc upgrades were randomly cheaper, right?
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EPT
