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On January 20 2011 11:39 Rodeo wrote:
So this brings me to the conclusion. I'll put it in bold. There is no way your personal experience can determine which matchups are balanced. You can't even do it with masses of data. May be Blizzard already secretly records different MMRs for each match-up and even for each map.
But thanks to your posting I now understand why I have an easy time to beat Protoss: Because I lose too much versus Terran.
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I think a balance that does not exceed say 55% for each matchup is good enough. Although in this case i'd more prefer a "triangle" of imbalance than absolute imbalance of one race or underpoweredness of one race
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There are many MMOs out there, but the success of WoW is partly due to the fact that many classes feel different and arent just "reskinned versions of other classes". Warriors use rage to power skills, Rogues have their energy, Hunters now use focus and casters have mana. Other MMOs are "totally symmetrical" (Everquest 2 for example and Rift seems to be so as well), but they are probably more boring, because switching a class will not give you a totally new feeling in the game but only a reskin ... sort of.
The attraction of Starcraft over other RTS is in part due to the real difference between the races and thus there needs to be a large degree of "races not being the same as others". Too many people do not acknowledge that fact and call it imbalance and whine about it. Personally I think it is necessary to keep the game interesting and challenging.
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On January 20 2011 11:39 Rodeo wrote:
The faster the metagame is mapped out, the faster the statistics at the top levels of play will actually matter.
I don't agree with this. BW is ~12 years old now and you still see shifts in the metagame. It's obviously stabilized a lot more than SC2 is currently, but that doesn't mean you should just disregard the data.
You should probably also treat the rating for each race as meaning something different. Your argument seems like an infinite cycle.
I also don't know why you'd want to ignore using more balanced maps in favor of the current map pool for this argument, when it seems to be a consensus that the existing map pool is not balanced (and therefore is skewing data in and of itself). GSL is even replacing half of its map pool with custom maps for that reason.
Is perfect racial balance achievable? No. It's going to always come back to the maps once you get things close enough.
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On January 20 2011 20:46 Craton wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2011 11:39 Rodeo wrote:
The faster the metagame is mapped out, the faster the statistics at the top levels of play will actually matter.
I don't agree with this. BW is ~12 years old now and you still see shifts in the metagame. It's obviously stabilized a lot more than SC2 is currently, but that doesn't mean you should just disregard the data. You should probably also treat the rating for each race as meaning something different. Your argument seems like an infinite cycle. I also don't know why you'd want to ignore using more balanced maps in favor of the current map pool for this argument, when it seems to be a consensus that the existing map pool is not balanced (and therefore is skewing data in and of itself). GSL is even replacing half of its map pool with custom maps for that reason. Is perfect racial balance achievable? No. It's going to always come back to the maps once you get things close enough.
Yeah replacing the map pool may not result in balance (or may), but in any case it would most likely improve balance, which is always a good thing. Improvement is always good. Once that is done to a degree we can then make any racial balance changes if necessary.
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On January 20 2011 14:01 oxxo wrote:
All I know is I like Blizzard's approach with SC2. The way they balanced WC3 was laughable. They'd change multiple variables on multiple units at a time and just hope it'd work. Speculation or fact?
Blizzard is doing a lot of inhouse testing before releasing a patch, including actual matches and numeric simulations. They don't just change something and bring it out. WC3 balance is not too bad, but the stream of tears due to the whining never stopped.
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Perfect balance is an impossible goal, freedom of opinion ensures that much.
General balance that most can agree with is difficult, but not impossible to achieve.
As far as RTS balance goes, SC2 is amazingly well balanced when compared to the rest of the market.
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That was an interesting read, but I have two objections.
First, I think your assumption that there is some kind of true skill level is problematic:
Because decent Z players are losing to slightly less skilled T players, those Z players have a lower MMR than they ought to.
"Ought to" implies that there is a true skill level behind their actual performance as Zerg which doesn't fully show because Zerg is underpowered. But let's assume for a moment that the given player has never played anything but Zerg, so that if he switched to T or P he would drop down rapidly and lose to players with lower rankings for a while. Where's his true skill level then?
My point is, you can't dismiss multi-racers and randomers as you do, because without the assumption that if a Z player switched to T, he would win more (in your scenario of Z being underpowered vs T), the concept of a true skill that should ideally translate into MMR is empty. If a player never switches and we don't consider the possibility of a switch, there's no empirical reality to the assumption of a true skill behind his performance as Z, there's only his performance as Z.
Second, your bold printed conclusion misses the fact that we subjectivey not only experience wins and losses, we also experience how we win or lose. Take a drastic example: Zealots are given 10 armor. Zealots now march over everything, even if Zs and Ts defend brilliantly and even if the attacking P makes every mistake possible, is late on his buildings, forgets pylons, sends his Zealots the wrong way at first etc.
It is possible to differentiate why a game was won or lost. There are lots of criteria that can be used for analyzing replays; were the build orders smooth and clean, were the decisions justified and sound, was the micro accurate, scouting, building placement, expansion choice and timing etc. If someone performs poorer than his opponent in many of these respects but still wins because he just a-moves a powerful unit, that might be an imbalance. There is more information to consider than just the naked binary win/lose criterion. I think we all know the difference between losing to a better player who outplays us, and losing to a weaker player because of a dumb mistake. It feels quite differently.
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oh balance is impossible to achive. The more balanced the game is the more boring it is to watch. (impossible to balance that haha) only if something imbalanced happens the crowed goes wild, its purrfection though if the games allows to stop these imbalances or make them hard to execute.
sc2 is faster then broodwar and the mechaniks are better so you need to be even faster then in bw to deal with a banshee or to deal with a hellion or baneling drop into your eco. But i think people will learn to deal with this stuff and games will get cooler. Saw some bio vs storms, first it suprised the terran and he lost a huge fight terribly and everyone said its over, then the terran simply danced around 5 storms because the protoss didn't wanted to just spam his last storms. And he kept dancing around those storms and all the time destroyed the toss until he could take the toss down.
I am quiet positiv but a bit sad about blizzard fan service balancing to make people stay. (buffing zerg for example)
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Balance is not possible when blizzard wants the game to be balanced for all skill levels.
The only way that would be possible is if every single unit and strat for each race scaled the exact same way as skill increased.
Also I wouldn't say that the game is close to balanced right now, what we have though are people using certain strats that give other races a chance at the late game, instead of just blatantly abusing the imbalances their race(s) may possess.
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You make really nice point.
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Very well written!
How long did Blizzard continue balance patching BW after release though? ;/ I think there will be plenty of changes to create far more balance. It's OK, they got math people on it and shit.
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I admit I haven't read all the comments, but the opening thread misses one very big factor. How many percentage that play each race. If 1/3 played Terran, Zerg and Protoss your theory would work. But it's not like that, and thus your entire foundation upon which you build your assumptions crumble.
If for instance 50% play T and 25% play Z and P, the Zerg players would face more of the match-up where they have the highest lose-percentage. Similar the protoss players would face terran players more and thus win more.
In the end this system would end up with all the P players in top, the T players in the middle and the Z players in the buttom.
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[QUOTE]On January 20 2011 12:08 pwnsftw wrote:
[QUOTE]On January 20 2011 11:39 Rodeo wrote:
Is balance an impossible goal? Or, why  losing to  really means is weak to  .
"I lose to all the time. Blizzard loves and hates . I quit forever."
you do realize that in the early years of starcraft (original) Terran was considered to be vastly in-superior race so ya, they were trying to even out the teams[/QUOTE]
in-superior?
Your post is confusing me.
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I think he may have meant 'inferior'.
*gets out red pen, disapproving look*
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I think that the game can possibly be balanced, but there will always be people complaining about the smallest things. Also, it mights not always be that a race is imbalanced, but one players knowledge or skill might be greater than the others, which might make the game seem more imbalanced than it is.
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Very good post, well thought.
I would also like to add something very important: it is impossible to know when the game gets balanced. Maybe a little thing in a match up is important to do to make it balanced, and it is not impossible that NO ONE on earth EVER finds out what it is, in the end we all think it's imbalance but we're all in a thick fog. Maybe at some point blizzard will PERFECTLY balance SC2, and someone will find a tricky thing to do, everyone will say X race is imbalance and no one will find the answer before blizzard patches it (even if there really is an answer to that but no one, not even blizz finds it) then we'll go into a state of "post-balance". Where something got patched (nerfed) while it shouldn't, now making that race underpowered, and since this little problem got kicked out of the way, no one thinks about it. Many attempt at re-balancing the game will happen but nothing good will come out of it because we were all too busy whining about it instead of finding the answer to it, which would automatically balance the game in a "natural" way.
Also, it could be hard to believe, yet not mathematically impossible that for some reason, the vast majority(like99%) of X race is just less skilled, not because of game balance or mechanics, simply weaker players than the other 2 races. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying it's the case right now (then again, no one knows). We judge players and races by their performance in tournaments and on ladder. If all races are perfectly balanced but the overall X race players are weaker than Y and W race, it means that X race is overpowered but since the majority of its users are weaker, it evens out and looks balanced. Take the same player distribution but in a perfectly balanced SC2, then X race would lose more because its users are weaker. Now these players need to get better to play on equal ground with the other 2 races. Kind of like what happened in GSL1, just an unspecific example to illustrate.
TL;DR
Balance is not something measurable, it's a feeling that depends on many, very biased, criterias and no human being will ever be able to identify true balance.
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Nice idea that an imbalance in tvz mu can cause the imba in zvp and pvt.
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One great player at the pro level can also make a difference at all levels.
I mean, terran was already percieved as good, but just think of terran after MKP came in. Suddenly every terran did his 2rax opening and it worked darn well.
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156 Posts
Good points all round OP, especially pointing out how Blizzard doesn't really have reliable ways of measuring balance (yet claim to be able to, through their "adjusted win percentages").
The remainder of this GSL is going to be pretty much all versus . Terrans have dominated all GSLs, but somehow haven't been able to win. I can't explain this dynamic, but there's no doubt that Terrans have a more stable grip of the later rounds than the other races. The lowest Terran percentage in GSL RO4, was in GSL3 (50% terrans; ).
Now, I don't believe the game can be balanced more than a shuffled deck of cards is balanced for poker. And this is what Blizzard needs to take to heart; give all races equal amount of "hidden threats", just like a poker table, so the game is balanced through mindgames. By means of mindgames, even a complete underdog can win in Starcraft.
But right now, the only race that really has a wide range of mindgames, is Terran.
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EPT
