Do we even care about balance? - Page 4

On October 22 2026 00:05 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:

even TNMT Called him a Bonjwa or some bs without winning a single ASL.

On October 22 2026 00:58 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
Is crazy how tl mods let you insult people this freely.

On October 22 2026 01:57 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:
Yeah i have seen you insults others too without impunity. U getting away with it. Gotta be better and keep it civil.

On October 21 2026 08:39 Xenixx wrote:

I'm not exactly saying it does, I'm saying the game has been understood as finely balanced for that entire period. You're free to challenge that but I hope you have something better than what you have so far to argue that understanding. My patience to entertain zero substance ideas dwindles fast.

The biggest factor in this game, and I feel I have explained this to you before, is individual skill. We do not expect every race to be fairly represented because the races people play are not forced upon them or randomized. Better players win more games. Second to that is the map being played and maps can be wildly imbalanced. Nothing you're saying takes either into account. I've seen all these stats too, you're working backwards from your conclusion. The fact that people aren't winning championships with Protoss or Terran does not mean the cause is from race imbalance, that is totally unreasonable.

And you people keep dodging this, so I will make it plain again, tell me that these Protoss players who lost their ASL games not for any other reason than race imbalance. Tell me you believe that. Or tell me you have game(s) to show us where a worse player won because of race imbalance, no other reason. Let's start there.

Every time I challenge you people this way, you suddenly don't believe what you said before.

On October 22 2026 03:01 ImbaTosS wrote:
Anyone hijacking this thread with debating whether the game is balanced, please don't. This wasn't about balance, it was about whether we care about balance, and if so, why, and to what extent. It's nice that so many people have taken this in the spirit intended, and I really really don't want this to be a fucking "is the game balanced" debate thread.Those suck.

On October 22 2026 03:01 ImbaTosS wrote:
Anyone hijacking this thread with debating whether the game is balanced, please don't. This wasn't about balance, it was about whether we care about balance, and if so, why, and to what extent. It's nice that so many people have taken this in the spirit intended, and I really really don't want this to be a fucking "is the game balanced" debate thread.Those suck.

On October 22 2026 02:16 kidcrash wrote:


The methodology you are asking for is fundamentally unachievable. Starcraft is a game where hundreds if not thousands of micro mistakes snowball into a binary outcome. This analysis is complicated even more by the fact that even the winner can make these micro mistakes. I would go as far to say as even with computer analysis you won't be able to find the information you're looking for at least not with our current technology. At the very least no one has done it with our current technology.

So that means we have to look elsewhere. I think there's a different conclusion to your critique of tournament statistics than the one you're arriving at. I think you're drawing the conclusion that because there's room for interpretation in tournament results that it tells you nothing. This is inherently flawed thinking. You don't need to have 100% accuracy to extrapolate meaningful data. Weather prediction apps don't have 100% accuracy but we still use them to achieve a probability model that gives us better results than just guessing.

My final rebuttal for the use of tournament statistics would be, sample size is King. Both in regards to number of games played and the amount of different players involved. If we can agree on this then my next question would be, what would be a sufficient sample size to enter the realm of being statistically significant for you? I think we're already deep within that number unless you want to start putting an asterisk on things like KSL and kespa era (I would argue along the lines of my second paragraph that while nthe data may not be weighted as heavily it still should be included nonetheless). Weak data is still data.

On October 21 2026 14:58 Bonyth wrote:

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?

On October 22 2026 04:57 Xenixx wrote:

Then the question to you is very simple instead.
Why do you believe it? Why do you believe that Protoss is imbalanced?
You don't have any games in mind that helped you reach the conclusion? Not a single one after playing for 25+ years?
You've never played a game where you lost to a Zerg where you felt that you played better than them and deserved to win?

Is the only reason you believe Protoss is imbalanced because they haven't won as many championships as other races?

On October 22 2026 04:53 Xenixx wrote:(...)

On October 22 2026 04:53 Xenixx wrote:

There's so much wrong with what everyone is saying to me, I have to go at it directly instead of lumping you all in together like I wanted.

The methodology is absolutely achievable, it's just not immediately available. We would all love to pull up, whatever that Korean hosted website was that compiled game stats and me especially would love to start playing with different data sets like skill level, map, builds, you name it. Instead it requires watching and understanding the game being played, and we can all judge for ourselves regardless of whether or not we play at the highest levels. Absolutely true that no one plays this game perfectly, even Flash, but that in no way means we cannot see when a mistake is costly versus when it's not. I know I can, I know a lot of other people can as well. For myself, my ability to watch analyze the games exceeds my ability to actually play it. And besides that, we can see the results of those mistake(s) because we're not playing in real time. We have the time and the tools available to us. No one arguing FOR this position takes a look at anything more than tournament outcomes, apparently, if they even play the game at all (or ever have). That has been made abundantly clear to me.

The heart of the matter with the FOR position is that it's clearly a knee-jerk reaction, a totally vibes based position that people are struggling to justify with their misunderstanding of statistics now. It's clearly just a feeling you have, there's no evidence or reason involved to convince anyone. That's precisely why I keep asking what do you people believe and much more importantly, why do you believe it? It's not lost on me that I can't even get an answer from all you most of the time. It reeks of close-mindedness.

As I said there's a lot of emphasis on stats but there is a constant stream of rookie mistakes being made. You're trying to talk about data collection, and while it may look impossible to you, it's simply not. People do this every day with far less reliable data than we have available to us and they still extrapolate meaningful results. You're contradicting yourself as well when you talk about not needing accurate data but using an outcome as a data point. Obviously, you've never done any data collection but we mustn't get the two confused. And you misunderstand sample size because what you're looking at ignores the people involved because the sample size is actually tiny. This is a sample size of ~15 people. The same ~15 people who have been playing for decades. Unless the people playing don't actually matter to you. Then the tournament sample size is only slightly less than double that at ~30. How could anyone look at tournament championships alone to form any kind of opinion from? It's so goddamned lazy.

Now that comment was for maks because he was looking at overall tournament wins and using that to conclude that not only is Protoss disfavored, that the entire game is imbalanced. He still needs to make the case that the game itself is inherently imbalanced. I think the rest of us are in agreement that it is finely balanced and I was entertaining that notion to see where he was coming from. Happy to drop it, he has nothing and ran away toot sweet. If you're arguing his point(s) or not I'd like to know whether you agree with him. I don't see people disagreeing with him when they comment on it so I assume you do.

He would have to believe that any player any where is expected to take a championship because individual skill doesn't matter and the maps being played doesn't matter either. Only the result matters, that's how he interprets balance. Apparently we're supposed to have 1 Zerg winner, then 1 Terran winner and finally it's 1 Protoss players turn to win before the cycle repeats itself (~33%). The participation trophy generation could not be better personified...
If you agree with that, there are so many factors he and you are just flat out ignoring, and, that is a fundamentally flawed way of thinking about anything let alone this game.
Paralyze has never won a championship, not because he plays Protoss, but because he simply isn't good enough. Otherwise why look at tournament results alone and try to draw conclusions from it?

So the questions on the table for you now are:
Do you believe in individual skill in SCBW? Then how important is it?
Do you believe everyone has the same chance of winning?
Do you believe that in the last season of ASL Protoss players lost their games because of race imbalance? You can pick any single match or any single game to talk about. I was trying, from the getgo, to make it easy for you people and still am. I still think this makes it much more manageable.
If you want to expand the scope beyond ASL22 that's fine, we can talk about a singular game that you think demonstrates this game has a fundamental imbalance for Protoss players. But the question will be the same, first I want you to tell us that you believe that those Protoss players played better and still lost in that/those game(s). Do you believe that Protoss players are losing games where they're playing better than their opponents due to race imbalance (that this cannot be explained very simply by individual skill or map design); they deserved to win?

On October 22 2026 03:01 ImbaTosS wrote:
Anyone hijacking this thread with debating whether the game is balanced, please don't. This wasn't about balance, it was about whether we care about balance, and if so, why, and to what extent. It's nice that so many people have taken this in the spirit intended, and I really really don't want this to be a fucking "is the game balanced" debate thread.Those suck.

On October 21 2026 18:19 Slayer91 wrote:


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

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

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?

On October 21 2026 18:51 TMNT wrote:
@Xenixx: your way of thinking is fundamentally flawed.

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.

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

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.