Do we even care about balance? - Page 6

On October 22 2026 22:00 Soft_General_5023 wrote:
Players get this?

Did any top Protoss ever complained about imbalance? Except Stork, and, well, Bonyth?

I recall Jinjin's video that Snow explicitly denied ZvP imbalance and admited he lost because he played badly.

And then another video when Shuttle admitted he practices only 2 games before ASL group and still winning the group lol.

On October 22 2026 05:47 Darkwhite wrote:

There are many reasons what you are asking is basically incoherent, but the simplest once is build order roulette. In any ZvZ series, you will see one player playing from behind, because they went 12pool vs 12hatch or 9pool vs overpool or whatever. There is a skill component in choosing a good distribution of strategies, but it makes no sense to take one individual game and say that player A made a mistake by opening 12pool.

PvZ also has build order roulette, and Protosses bleed "expected wins" at the start of every game, either by playing overly safely with too many cannons and automatically being behind in the middle game, or by sailing too close to the wind and losing 1 in N games to zergling runbys or hydra busts.

You can't look at any individual game and say the Protoss played better and deserved to win but still lost, because it doesn't make any sense in the context of build order roulette. You similarly can't really look at someone playing literal roulette at a casino and say he "deserved to win that spin", despite betting on black and the ball landing on red. It's incoherent. But roulette bleeds the player's bank. It's built right into the game, and there's no system of betting that gets around it, over time.

You can argue that the second paragraph doesn't correctly describe StarCraft. Nobody can really prove it, after all. But at least you should be able to see that, if true, it's a kind of imbalance that cannot be seen in a single game in isolation, so your burden of proof cannot be met.

On October 23 2026 02:11 TT1 wrote:
that's cus the better the latency is, the smaller the margin of error for clicking away while the attack animation is triggered is, which bugs units (freezes them), so latency increase + good microability of unit (air units) = positive outcome, latency increase + lack of microability of unit due to bugs like stop freeze (it makes so that less is more, less clicks) = negative outcome for unit (like goons), this is my own view at least

On October 22 2026 05:56 kidcrash wrote:


Before I start finding games I want you to lay down specific parameters for me. Because I do believe someone has already found a game in this thread so I don't want the goal posts to move. How many games would suffice before you were convinced?

And on the flip side I want a different set of parameters because I think you're being disingenuous about tournament statistics. Let's say I had 10,000 ASLs to look back at from the future and these tournaments had tens of thousands of players that were all the same caliber. Would you say this is a sufficient sample size to demonstrate race balance? What about 5,000 ASLs? If you think that data is insufficient due to sample size then that's fine. I'd like to hear what number would be sufficient for you. If you truly think that there is no number large enough to provide a proper sample size to be able to tell race balance due to tournament statistics then you're out of your mind.

I hope you realize that "bad players always pick protoss" is a statistic in and of itself and the probability is not in your favor

On October 22 2026 18:56 Slayer91 wrote:


I apologize, my position hasn't really been clear; I'm not really arguing that protoss is disadvantaged (although, I probably believe this, I'm not totally convinced), I'm trying to suggest your approach to disproving this makes absolutely no sense. (No disrespect)

Here's my basic opinions

1. Your test for imbalance by asking someone to provide games where a better player lost is nonsensical
-Individual skill being the biggest factor, does not mean it's the deciding factor in every game. Most pro games are between players of roughly similar skill. The fact that the players you say are the strongest players are regularly losing to worse players (let's guess 30-40% of games to worse players), especially in mirrors, shows that.
-Simple references to chess, and other examples are simple because I was trying to find an analogy for you to understand that an imbalance can be true without being provable for a single case. It's nonsensical to ask for a game where black played better and lost; if he's on the back foot the whole game he has to just defend or lose. The same can be true in Brood War, in any losing position, even in a mirror matchup, when you have limited opportunities you have no option to play well, just to hold on.
-Simple examples like an build order win, or some late game in ZvT, are to show that a player can lose by being on the back foot without obviously playing better or worse . The game state itself was such that it favoured one player.
You yourself stated that Zerg winning by getting to defilers meant it might be the map design favouring zerg, which implies a player can lose without playing worse, due to an imbalance! . So then asking for a test to PROVE the player played worse makes no sense.

If you admit a loss can be 'fixed' by map changes, you are inherently admitting that there is a racial imbalance, but you want to modify the maps to address it.
-You seem to completely disregard the game theory that everyone is quoting at you, because you are convinced that a player must play worse to lose, you ignored the examples of build order losses - where you had no opportunity to play better, which affects any perception of good play.
-Perception of "who played better" is entirely subjective and overall is not a good test to ask of us anyway, because it implies random TL.netters can accurately judge if a pro gamer played well or badly. It's arrogant to assume we can judge better than S+ rank players, unless you really believe the reason we are much worse is mainly mechanics.

2. Your use of statistics is nonsensical
-Other people have provided all the stats, I simply referenced them, this should be clear.
-You constantly jump from overall statistics to jumping into individual parameters. Of course you can isolate N parameters and eventually find a result that will fit your hypothesis by pure chance. What we need to isolate parameters that consistently show a pattern. If the matchup show clear trends across all maps, then it indicates something.


Another couple of things




This is exactly what I said in the post you quoted. You just made exactly the same point as me. Pasting it under for reference. YOU'RE THE ONE trying to boil it down to a simple test asking for a single game or a single series of games.



Like you yourself admit in the ZvT examples - in some situations one race in one matchup in one point in time in the game is disfavoured. That means a player doesn't have to play worse to lose . There are local imbalances. It might be true that over all scenarios it long term balances out to exactly 50:50, this is the unlikely best case scenario on a perfectly balanced map.
This is basic game theory that every progamer understands, you can see any Jinjin video they are always going "It's 60:40 from here" and so on. Yes, some players make obvious mistakes and lose the games, but they are not claiming that the one who lost from a disfavoured position played worse.
The fact that you acknowledge these local imbalances exist, but refuse to accept that a player can lose without having played worse, is a huge contradiction.




I believe this to be a very common delusion among StarCraft fans.
Any time I analyze a replay of a similar or worse players, almost always most of the mistakes I believe I saw are related with decision making, and any challenge I make to those decisions is usually met with heated debate. Why? Because if they believed their decisions were incorrect they wouldn't make them. And if they had a good enough game understanding to not make those bad decisions then they would be higher ranked and not asking for advice on replays.
Any progamer could do that to any of my games - find 100 terrible decisions that are not related to real-time execution error.
Yet, we feel that we can judge decisions by a progamer to be mistakes.
Ok, if you move-command units and lose them, or make mechanical errors, that we can all agree is a mistake.
But many times we say "Player X made a stupid attack here!! So bad!" when he might have made a good decision or on average winning decision that didn't turn out well in that game.

For example, in a recent ASL ZvZ game between Soma and JD, the casters thought JD, who lost to a ling bust, made an evo instead of a sunken to body block lings. Because I'm a Zerg player I knew that JD thought Soma went 9 pool speed+lair when he actually when 9 pool no gas 2nd hatchery on high ground (because gas is close to highground on back rooms, the build makes no sense on any other map), so Soma had 2 hatch lings and caught JD by surprise, he was expecting 1 hatch muta timing and was preparing spore colonies.
Now, in this scenario I happened to catch a caster mis-analyzing a decision, and I'm far from a pro gamer skill, imagine how many times we think a pro made a mistake in a decision when it's actually well justified? And then we think we can judge their skill level accurately?

That example is related with incomplete information, where a bad decision can be good on average based on the most likely occurances, but there are also cases where a decision might have turned out wrong but be on average good, due to some factors playing out better (e.g. your psi storms whiffed slightly and that caused you to lose the fight you should have won etc).




Do you believe in individual skill in SCBW? Then how important is it?
Yes, I believe the better player almost always wins with a large skill gap. Within the pro level, I believe the gap usually closes to something around 60:40, based on the statistics. Within the very top pros, it's more like 55:45 with the better player having a slight advantage only.

Do you believe everyone has the same chance of winning?
No, everyone has strong/weak maps, and strong/weak matchups based on style alone before even getting to any imbalance existing. I also believe it to be almost impossible in principle for the game to be 100% balanced on any map between all races as well.

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.

I don't have a strong belief but gun to my head;
-Snow vs Shine in ASL where he lost the long game vs 9-7-3 into macro
-Both Minis games, I believe he went Nexus first and then Gateway expand into Core and lost to zerglings both times.
Going nexus first and losing is not exactly "playing better and deserving to win" but I believe Mini was at least not worse than his opponent, and the game theory percentages into playing those builds is probably fine.
These sort of questions make no sense which is the frustration with your arguments. Someone losing in a build order is not playing better or worse inherently, but I do think early game there are more game losing plays than game winning plays for protoss which probably amounts to a racial imbalance.
Someone playing extremely safe every game would likely lose macro games most games, which would make them seem like worse players, when they might win the same game from an even position. This is why someone like Mini might choose slightly risky builds.

In retrospect, I probably think PvZ is a fine matchup from an even macro game, but there are advantages in the build order roulette for zerg (9 pool vs overpool vs 11 hatch, then zergling allin vs hydra bust vs muta timing vs pure greed) that can insta win or play from a disadvantage, which gives game theory more wins even if you win many macro games from a slight advantage the times you don't auto-lose.

Questions for you sir:
1. Do you believe a player must take risks to win consistently at the pro level of SC:BW?
2. Do you believe a player who played safe (e.g. Rax expand) losing to a player who has played greedy (e.g. 12 nexus) must have played worse?
3. Do you believe that a player theoretically being able to win any game with perfect skill and no mistakes means no racial imbalance can possibly exist?

On October 22 2026 22:49 M3t4PhYzX wrote:

Afaik in Korean culture, complaining about anything else than your own "bad perfromance" after you've lost is seen quite unfavourably

maybe that's why they don't

On October 23 2026 05:27 Xenixx wrote:
There is a randomness to the outcome of the game based on the build(s) chosen or planned, I already account for this, it's one of the many factors why I don't believe the game is imbalanced for Protoss players. I have also already accounted for all of these things here in text. Written plain as day. Random luck or chance is the same for everyone who plays the game. Or are you suggesting Lady Luck only plays for Terran and Zerg?

On October 23 2026 09:04 Darkwhite wrote:


Except for mirror matchups, the payoff matrices aren't symmetrical. This should be obvious from the roulette example, where luck effectively favors the house. It is true of asymmetric games in general, including PvZ in StarCraft. The only thing that's arguable is whether P or Z has the "house advantage" and how big it is.

To give a concrete example of how your challenge is incoherent, take some Protoss moving out with the first 3 Zealots to scout and/or apply pressure to the Zerg. Assume he loses them all, trading for like 5 Zerglings. In the context of that individual game, this obviously looks like a mistake, but it doesn't make any sense to evaluate the decision in isolation. It has to be evaluated against the distribution of strategies that Zergs tend to play, e.g. pure eco that needs to be pressured and hydra busts that need to be scouted before the first Corsair.

Is moving out with the first 3 Zealots always a mistake? Always correct? Usually a mistake, except against some particular Zergs which tend to be greedy? Correct if it works and a mistake if it doesn't, despite the Protoss not having enough information and being forced to guess?

Nobody knows the true answer. It's a function of Zerg players' habits, which is itself a moving target. So trying to take any particular replay and adjudicating which player made the fewest mistakes and deserved to win is never going to work, unless you already understand the matchup and the balance on such an extremely fine grained level that you can authoritatively say that blindly moving out with 3 Zealots is a misplay. And if you do have that understanding, that specific game isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know.

I have never said that there exists no imbalance in the game, I said quite plainly that maps can be imbalanced, even in the modern era. They certainly were years ago. You should've picked up on the implication in my questions which indicated that people lose for a variety of reasons in this game, one of which can be map design which is biased against or for certain race or races. You should've remembered when I clarified to you that the game is not one set scenario, in which, yes due to a number of factors one player, playing a race may be utterly disadvantaged against another in that scenario. Builds do have hard counters in this game. So I can't see how you were confused about this, probably the problem with arguing off of someone's posts constantly.

On October 23 2026 09:37 Xenixx wrote:

So this is just a you problem, you don't have the framework or skillset to analyze. You can't gather and examine evidence, you can't ask critical questions, you can't look for a link and you can't form or explain your logic. What's that supposed to mean to me? I know I can do it, I know other people can do it.

Why do you believe in something you believe you can't tell whether it actually exists or not? Why am I on a video game forum talking to people who have a faith based position about a competitive game and exhibit magical thinking.

On October 23 2026 15:07 Bonyth wrote:


This reminds me of Bisu vs Soma ASL game set 7. Soma goes for a rather early extractor (the game is being played on that 2 player map with 2 gases in main). Because of the nature of Soma's build, the probe is denied, protoss sits in his wall. And there, as you mentioned, Bisu the progamer, tries to gather and examine evidence, by moving a single unit out of his natural wall-in just by a little bit, to see if more units are streaming in. Maybe for this reason or not, Bisu ultimately fails to close his 1,5 zealot gap (lings cannot go through if zealot is perfectly positioned in the middle). Now, you can say that it was Bisu's error and it was. However, this is just one of many opportunities that zerg has to win the game right away. Protosses hardly have that against zerg.

You tend to say, that the balance depends on the maps and in theory, you are right. You can make island maps, maps with neutral d-webs everywhere, and protoss win rate will improve (ever wondered why they introduced such maps? Vieriety? Or protoss needed to look better?). So, in my opinion, the current understanding of a standard map unfavors protoss.

In another response you say that if one thinks game is imbalanced, one cannot improve (or slower). Half-true. If one doesn't believe skill triumphs over imbalance, the one is stuck. I believe that skill is more important than anything, but I also believe that if you take 3 equally skilled people, and tell them to play all 3 different races, after 3 years of playing the protoss player will be the best out of the 3; after 15 years the protoss player will get the worst win rate. Now, if the protoss player practises for 5 more years (or gets a 5 year head start), there is a good chance he will be the best out of the 3.

On October 22 2026 04:11 evilfatsh1t wrote:

....what were you expecting?

On September 18 2026 11:45 quaristice wrote:
it doesnt really matter if protoss is bad or not. the game is good, all the matchups are still entertaining, and protoss still has a chance in general regardless.

plenty of games with much worse faction/character balance stay competitive and stay hype for 20+ years.

the game is good, it's fun, it's good to watch, it's good to think about

if starcraft 1 came out and the only matchup it included was tvt or zvz it would still easily clear every other rts that's ever come out

On October 23 2026 17:13 Xenixx wrote:
Take your scenario and put it on an island map. That scenario does not exist any longer. Zergs ability to dictate the early game just totally evaporated. We could be really egregious and just take Zerg out of the tournament all together with maps with no natural expansion, and infinite or fastest type minerals in the mains. Zerg is severely hampered on fastest type maps, all the win rates show it. Clearly the map plays a major role not limited to theory. I always look at the win rates for races on maps during & after ASL, because that's always a viable statistic, let me remind you that this season was supposed to have Protoss favored maps. They didn't have the qualifiers on those maps and it didn't pan out that way. That doesn't mean that the maps were definitely P favored and there's racial imbalance or something else going on, it clearly, very simply, means that people were just wrong about the maps. A racial imbalance, by its' very nature, would transcend the maps, all the other factors, because it's an inherent problem with the race, not the map the matchup is being played on. From what I've read here from other people, they're trying to change what balance means and they're, in two cases, straight up equating other problems, like Slayer91 did with map design, to an inherent racial imbalance. I'll put anyone who actually believes that out to pasture.

Map designers know this type of thing as well and they try to design maps that are much more equal in chance to win compared to what I grew up playing with. So I don't have any problem saying they went too far on recent maps-- and by recent, I mean, few years or so --making Zerg way too safe, they did, and they do, but that doesn't explain why Protoss pros are playing poorly and they are playing poorly. They are playing poorly in PvT and often in PvP as well. This reminds me of JinJin's recent video about the state of Protoss showing their #5 ranked player, Tulbo, looking... well, like he did in the clips. If you've seen it, no explanation from me is necessary. That's what I'm constantly getting at. Why do we expect people to win and advance when they're making bad decisions and playing poorly? The last few seasons that this talk has become increasingly louder, not once have there been Protoss players playing at a championship level against Zerg. Perhaps not literally, just that I can remember but I'm no encyclopedia. No question in my mind, there's no racial imbalance, they change these maps around instead and Protoss win rates will go up. On Aiolos, for example, Protoss dominated the match up. A 60% win rate in PvZ indicates favorability for Protoss.