SEL Fall Championship 2024 (SC: Evo Mod)

On November 13 2024 06:40 Waxangel wrote:
Haven't checked in on the mod in a while; good to see the competition is still rolling along like this.

How's balance looking for the tournament? Is it playable by just picking one of each SC2/BW race, or are there some bad match-ups that force you to learn a back-up race?

On November 13 2024 09:32 MrIronGolem27 wrote:


I was going to write a shorter response, but considering this might be a unique opportunity to more thoroughly explain what's been going on with the mod, I've written a wall of text. I apologize that it's a bit disorganized.

Speaking in my capacity as the head organizer for SEL and a member of Team Koprulu (though, until recently, only as a mapmaker): balancing SC: Evo Complete has been tough.

Between May and June, the BW races had relatively slow, expensive tech and ineffective basic combat units and were propped up by having a substantial income advantage (~12% higher mineral income per worker). The idea was that the BW races would have their income advantage reduced to 0% over time and their army and tech made more effective; v1.5 in June reduced the mineral advantage from ~12% to ~9%. Unfortunately, we under-compensated in buffs and the BW races ended up having such awful early game defense that all-ins were the only viable way to play. The Chzzk Cup got ruined over it; BW races had less than a 20% winrate and thousands of Korean viewers left with a poor impression of the mod's balance.

Since August, we've been continued patching up the early game holes and easing the tech progression into the mid- and late-game by continuing to buff the BW races while gradually nerfing the income advantage, which currently sits at ~6%; we tried to reduce this all the way to 0% but there ended up simply being no more room to buff production times to compensate. If you're interested in what those patches look like, you can read about them here.

Currently, BW Zerg is considered a solid race and the strongest of the three BW races, with no problematic matchups (maybe even a bit too strong all-around, especially against SC2 Zerg). The state of BW Terran and BW Protoss are more contentious.

Historically, there have been some matchups that called for a backup race; BW Protoss vs SC2 Protoss used to be so bad that it tended to be won by whoever got to play SC2 Protoss first, and the player forced to play BW first often kept a few all-ins in their back pocket as BW Zerg. The Chzzk Cup was a prime demonstration of this, where herO was knocked out of the lower bracket by a ~5k MMR Protoss executing a BW Zerg 12 pool drone pull (it should be noted BW Drones had 1 range and a faster attack speed than SC2 workers at the time).

When I began the StarCraft Evolution League in August, I instituted a rule requiring all participants to play one BW race and one SC2 race for the entire event. Partly, this was to prevent a particular top player from sandbagging in the finals, but it was also to help us collect more reliable balance data (so we can see what makes a weak race weak) and create an identity around each player. That rule remains in effect for the Fall Championship, so players will not be able to select a backup race.

The balance is greatly improved from the days of the Chzzk Cup, though a number of concerns still remain; for example, the state of BW Protoss vs SC2 Protoss remains uncertain despite some badly needed, massive buffs to the Reaver in the form of anti-Shield bonus damage. Moreover, the 5.0.14 PTR could hit live servers in the middle of the event, and there's no telling what that might do. We are internally discussing some changes which could be pushed in case that happens, but of course, it depends on the actual contents of the 5.0.14 patch.