EPTDo we even care about balance? - Page 3
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CicadaSC
United States2021 Posts
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Xenixx
United States542 Posts
On October 21 2026 09:05 Slayer91 wrote: You look at statistics then say "show me one game where protoss lost due to race imbalance" that's not how statistics works it's like old arguments of like "show me one case where smoking definitely caused lung cancer" Yes, technically you can't prove it for one individual case but the statistics usually are helpful, if not always definitive We could suggest that only worse players play protoss for the history of the game, sure How well someone played is highly subjective and tainted by our preceptions of good or bad play Someone losing like an idiot could be because they are cutting corners to deal with standard play, and would look bad if they didn't cut those corners in a standard game Here is another example "Find me one game where a chess player won because he had the white pieces" Well every human makes lots of mistakes so we can't definitely prove ANY player won just because he had the white pieces I really think your argument is completely garbage lol - great! Show me a statistically significant number of games where that happens instead of just a single, solitary example. If you take off where maks left it, you now have to go back to the drawing board and describe how the game is totally imbalanced, not just because of one race, but apparently all of the races in the game. And you have to collect and analyze a statistically significant number of games where a Protoss player, who plays better and deserves to win, losses instead because the race just can't win. Are you people masochists or what? I don't disagree that maybe protoss doesn't have the most talented players (one of them Rain is simply not active) but saying we can't prove a loss is due to imbalance is a ridiculous argument I can't wait for you to try. But to be honest, I'd settle for just one of you to answer the question instead. Did these Protoss players who lost in those games, pick a game as you like, play better than their opponents and deserve to win? Do you know why not a single one of you can't do that, why you won't even try to address it? | ||
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Bonyth
Poland626 Posts
On October 21 2026 14:18 Xenixx wrote: But to be honest, I'd settle for just one of you to answer the question instead. Did these Protoss players who lost in those games, pick a game as you like, play better than their opponents and deserve to win? Do you know why not a single one of you can't do that, why you won't even try to address it? Because we are too lazy to check the entire VOD and draw conclusions from it (that may be and will be subjective - you will not accept the argumentation used) for the sake of an argument? | ||
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evilfatsh1t
Australia8932 Posts
On October 21 2026 14:04 CicadaSC wrote: BW is very balanced I think. Flash proves whenever he wants to he can make finals or win the whole thing. Protoss need to up their skill because they don't have a super godly player like T/Z has. It's same with SC2 until Serral came along.You just need a godly player who can fully utilize the tools each race has. protoss absolutely has/had a super godly player. bisu is absolutely goated and even now with the deterioration of pro skill levels, he is good enough to compete against anyone. in proleague or spon matches there is an increased likelihood to play standard and bisu continually shows that in standard games he out performs the matchup average. the problem is when it comes to tournament games and the incentive to play with risk gets greater, protoss doesnt have any favourable matchups in which they can not only be flexible with the amount of different openings they can employ, but be able to maintain priority in the game as well. if you cant get priority in game then youre always on the receiving end of mind games rather than being the instigator, and sooner or later youre going to slip up. but to answer op's question. does balance matter? yes can anything be done about current balance? no map makers have tried and obviously its not easy to give protoss a very subtle advantage enough to offset any "imbalance" without it having disastrous consequences on other match ups. and theres no way anyone would accept an actual balance patch now, so we just have to accept the game for what it is now. sooner or later a protoss player will come along that is blessed with squid game player 456's luck and wins enough guessing games to carry himself to victory | ||
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iopq
United States1191 Posts
On October 21 2026 15:23 evilfatsh1t wrote: map makers have tried and obviously its not easy to give protoss a very subtle advantage enough to offset any "imbalance" without it having disastrous consequences on other match ups I don't know why, we know how to make a balanced map. it's a 3 player map ZvT
ZvP
TvP
I'm not an expert on TvP, so it's a bit vague we have seen maps good for PvZ and they were not as good for ZvT for completely unrelated factors! Like Knock Out has no place for you to place your overlord if you spawn top vs. top spawn or bottom vs. bottom. You could send it the far way, but you automatically lose it vs. bunker rush so that's a huge risk if the middle high grounds had parking spots for overlords it would go a long way to letting people just send the overlord horizontally instead of vertically! Also it has a lot of spawn luck, with Zergs and Protosses preferring to be diagonal away from Terran. | ||
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KameZerg
Sweden1778 Posts
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Rainalcar
Croatia564 Posts
On October 21 2026 15:23 evilfatsh1t wrote: sooner or later a protoss player will come along that is blessed with squid game player 456's luck and wins enough guessing games to carry himself to victory It will happen but it will be a fluke. A protoss winning multiple ASLs in a row is virtually impossible in this balance constellation. You can't dominate the game as Protoss. | ||
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Slayer91
Ireland23454 Posts
On October 21 2026 14:18 Xenixx wrote: lol - great! Show me a statistically significant number of games where that happens instead of just a single, solitary example. If you take off where maks left it, you now have to go back to the drawing board and describe how the game is totally imbalanced, not just because of one race, but apparently all of the races in the game. And you have to collect and analyze a statistically significant number of games where a Protoss player, who plays better and deserves to win, losses instead because the race just can't win. Are you people masochists or what? I can't wait for you to try. But to be honest, I'd settle for just one of you to answer the question instead. Did these Protoss players who lost in those games, pick a game as you like, play better than their opponents and deserve to win? Do you know why not a single one of you can't do that, why you won't even try to address it? Again I don't understand your post You are asking for statistics instead of examples and then ask for singular examples that we can definitively say a better player lost The statistics for the entire history of the game of BW clearly show protoss winning the least everything, overall statistics seems to show T>Z and Z>P, T=P, someone else posted the stats, I think Crimson)Shadow, however, top zergs have no problem winning championships so the T>Z stat is somewhat overlooked. The problem is that the skill expression is enough to overcome imbalance in BW, the obvious example is winning on disfavoured maps. This means for any individual player, similar to the chess example, it's very hard to definitively state out who played better in any game that was lost, the idea of balance must come from a combination of statistics and analysis (similar to chess, we know white is stronger from logic and analysis. If someone wins with white we don't know they played better, as they had an advantage from the start.) For example Snow vs Shine in this seasons ASL, I personally thought Snow played better and deserved to win, but many people disagree with me. My perception was Snow was playing an uphill battle all game and mistakes are game losing while Shine had more leeway. That to me felt like a Black vs White game where the Zerg player was pushing all game for a win while Protoss was just defending despite a standard safe opening, with scouting and holding the 9-7-3 But then many other people here thought Shine played great or Snow made many mistakes so coming up with examples is pointless A general example, if a Zerg uses defilers well to win a TvZ, is it imbalance that defilers are too strong, or did Terran play not well enough ,late game, or is Zerg getting to defilers safely proof he is more skilled than Terran? In my perception, the matchup (and I think stats agree) is imbalanced toward Terran until late game, then it's imbalanced toward Zerg, which is why although we see plenty of games go either way at any point in the game, typically Zerg is fighting uphill until hive and then Terran is fighting uphill So the analytical perspective is that from an even start point, if Zerg wins midgame vs terran or Terran wins late vs zerg, they played better, but even that is a huge generalization. But the flipside is not true, if Terran wins in midgame he might not have played better because he had an advantage and Zerg had an advantage late. We can use the same analysis for BBS vs 12 hatch. If Zerg wins, we deduce that he played better because it's so disfavoured, but if Terran wins, we can't deduce anything since he's expected to win. If we say just for assumption Z>P, if a Protoss loses, we can't for sure P played better, but we also can't say he played worse, because the disfavoured position automatically means we can't judge skill based purely on the result unless the result is in the opposite way of the imbalance So, a better example to look for, is a game where protoss beat zerg but we think protoss played worse, if that happens frequently, it would be a better counterexample to imbalance than the opposite; losing from a disfavoured position is an inconclusive skill test | ||
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TMNT
3390 Posts
You want us to find a game where P plays better but still loses because of balance, but you have to define "playing better" first. Because "playing well" isn't the same for both races (and that's because of balance). I'l give you an example, in a mirror matchup even (where the game is supposed to be absolutely balanced): at lower levels in PvP, there's the 2 Gate Zealot opener which is way harder to hold for a player who does a Dragoon opener than to execute. You watch the game falling apart for the Dragoon opener player and you'd think he's playing worse than the 2 Gate player, but you ignore that is he is playing "worse" because he gets the short end of the stick. And if you reverse the build choice of the two players for a second game, suddenly you'll see the 2 Gate player in the first game playing "worse". Now extrapolate that to non-mirror matchups. You can analyse a game and point out this player should do better here and there, therefore he's not playing better. But him making mistakes and "playing worse" are already governed by the limitations of his race/the matchup. Take PvZ for example: 25+ years have already shown us that getting Ling runby, Hydra bust, surprised attack from Mutas,... are parts of the matchup and can't be avoided 100%. Just like T dying to DT rush for 25 years, albeit at a much lower frequency. If you went to an alternate timeline where Soma and Soulkey play Protoss, you would still see them getting hydra busted by Mini. Maybe they are indeed better players, and P would get 6-8 ASLs instead of 3, but P would still be the worst race. Another example I often raise: imagine the game but P starts with only 3 workers. That is as blatantly imbalanced as it gets. Yet Snow can still beat the Chinese players comfortably (I've seen that before), thus you can point to that and say "See? Player's skills matter most. Protoss just need to up their game". But Snow for sure can't do the same against Soulkey. At peak level when skill gap is almost non-existent, overcoming imbalance becomes impossible. Now imagine the game but the imbalance is very subtle, very small, which is the reality we have. And there you have it: Protoss is the worst race. | ||
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Comedy
477 Posts
On October 21 2026 17:25 Rainalcar wrote: It will happen but it will be a fluke. A protoss winning multiple ASLs in a row is virtually impossible in this balance constellation. You can't dominate the game as Protoss. Snow doesn't dominate the game? PvT 1807 - 860 67.8% PvZ 1890 - 1527 55.3% PvP 441-239 64.9% The problem is he goes on sick runs in escore tournaments where he takes out soma soulkey effort back to back. He just doesn't do it in ASL. He's had series vs soulkey and soma where he was winning, if he just played up to normal standards but choked. He just always chokes in ASL. | ||
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