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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Hg98a.jpg)
Weighing the Consequences: Imbalance and the Birther Movement
Firstly, and for clarification, in this article, there is a difference between “imbalanced” and “broken.” Here, “imbalanced” is defined as: a strategy or race that is superior to all other races or strategies at top levels of play. “Broken,” in this article, is defined as: a matchup or race that is so heavily dependent on one specific strategy that it is the only viable option for the matchup or race.
The StarCraft community is wonderful in a lot of ways. The majority of people are well-mannered, the trolls and haters are few and far between, and the expanse of ideas and communication thereof make StarCraft II a better game to play. The biggest problem today with the StarCraft community is the infatuation with this misconception that there are “balance issues” in StarCraft II. Almost every forum about StarCraft II includes or is bound to eventually include a post about a unit or race being imbalanced or unfair. Professional gamers and other SC2 personalities are often the root of these complaints, and they are so closely scrutinized by thousands of people that their complaints are a model after which lesser-skilled players can construct their complaints. The concept of “imbalance” has become more than a discussion; it has become an obsession, a concept that is ever-present, and it is a danger to the growth of StarCraft II as an E-Sport.
The Imbalance Theory is a lot like the Birther Theory from what seems like so long ago. For those who have never heard of this movement, there was a theory a while ago that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States, violating the Constitution, and thus invalidating his presidency. I should clarify, this theory is not true. It is, in fact, the opposite of true. The reason I bring it up is that regardless of the amount of information President released, it was still brought up again and again and again. Despite releasing his birth certificate to the public, President Obama could not persuade everybody, and this theory still persisted. For months, it proved poisonous to the American political landscape. Imbalance Theory is like Birther Theory in that both have little foundation in fact, both distract attention away from more important discussion, and the concept of both suggest that their proponents have a bigger problem than each respective theory.
This is a real thing, guys-- It really should have had to come to this, either
The Birther Theory stemmed from Obama’s declaration that he was born in Hawaii, which is, in fact, a state. Theorists claimed that Obama’s birth certificate was forged—that he was born in Kenya or Indonesia, rather than Hawaii. Zero evidence based in fact has been produced, but rather theorists relied on doubt-- they merely doubted that the President is legitimately American, and that was enough. Similarly, people who claim there is imbalance in the game, generally, have little to no solid evidence that there are, indeed, balance issues. There is no doubt that it is possible for a game to be imbalanced, but there literally has not been enough time to discover any potential imbalance since retail.
As a case study, in TvZ, the popular Five Barracks Reaper (Rax before Depot) was considered “imbalanced.” Allegedly, there was no way to beat this strategy, and eventually the Reaper was nerfed (like 50 times). By the time Blizzard released the Reaper-nerfing-balance patch, it was irrelevant. Zergs had already been finding ways to deal with the fairly all-in strategy. Five Rax Reaper was still hard to deal with, but so are all clever all-in strategies at high level of play. The FRR play was a lot like the two-base Protoss Six Gate all-in, but people don’t complain about the Gateway play because they found ways to deal with it in a timelier manner. If, after six months, Gold level Terrans were beating Diamond level Zergs with the FRR play (before Masters or Grand Masters), then it would be time for Blizzard to find a solution, but simply saying that something is imbalanced because it’s good is not a solid foundation to change the game.
![[image loading]](http://frogpants.com/thecreep/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/reaper.jpg)
It seemed like such a cool unit too
Additionally, Birther Theorists were mostly either uneducated and gullible or strategically malicious and willing to compromise common sense to promote a cause. They either didn’t know the facts, or they just didn’t care. In the same way, people who believe in Imbalance Theory don’t leave the discussion of balance to Blizzard. A lot of Imbalance Theorists consider Blizzard Balance Employees to be buck-toothed, slack-jawed imbeciles with more money than brains, but they aren’t. Blizzard Employees are intelligent, hard-working professionals who legitimately care about their game. Their goal is to make a game that is fair and fun, and they know a lot better than the common gamer about how to do that.
Perhaps the most common and rational argument that supports Imbalance Theory is that imbalance is not found in high-level results, but in gameplay. Sure win-rates fluctuate with the development of new strategies and styles, but in order to discover the imbalance in the game, one must examine each of these styles, and look for that element of impossibility that favors one race over another. This argument does not hold when one merely considers the amount of time it takes to rationally conclude with empirical evidence that one style, strategy, or race is imbalanced. Consider the advent of the TvP 1/1/1 all-in in early summer, 2011. The next balance change after the 1/1/1 was created came on September 22—a quarter of a year afterwards. The balance changes weren’t even targeted towards the matchup either. By late September, Protoss had already found ways to deal with this powerful, albeit abusive, strategy. Yet the 1/1/1 all in is something like the staple of Imbalance Theory: it is abusive, easy to execute, and yields high results. The balance patch, by the way, increased Immortal range from 5-6, nerfed Blink Stalkers, and buffed Warp Prisms. It also increased the building time of Barracks five seconds, nerfed blue-flame Hellions, and buffed the Seeker Missile. The intention behind these changes had little to do with TvP.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Lovedrop/tsl3/finals/g2p1.jpg)
But dear God is that terrifying!
With regards to the danger Imbalance Theory poses to the game, it is a passive danger. Whenever someone is complaining about imbalance, or talks about imbalance, time, space, and energy is taken away from more important discussion. It is the same way with the Birther Theory: when people were talking about whether President Obama was born in the United States or not, they weren’t talking about how to create jobs, balance the budget, or reduce the Federal debt. People might ask what could be more important than balancing StarCraft II—here’s a list including, but not limited to: 1) figuring out ways to deal with the allegedly “imbalanced” strategy; 2) finding cool new strategies, practicing and perfecting them, and discovering cool little tricks and timings; 3) considering the different matchups, the best ways to approach each, and appreciating the capabilities of every race; 4) discovering what style of play is the perfect fit for an individual; 5) practicing macro; 6) practicing micro; 7) improving play in general; and 8) dissecting certain maps and finding ways to exploit opponents with them. Think of how much better players would be if no one wasted time talking about the alleged unfairness of the game. If a player focuses on improving his or her own play before “improving” the game, that player would be so much better.
There was a counter-conspiracy-theory that arose among uneducated liberals that the grand motivation behind the Birther Theory was racism—that is, the disbelief that a black man could actually win the Presidency. Although “racism” has an incredibly different meaning in the context of Imbalance Theory, the reason people actually complain about balance displays a similar lack of character. When people have a bad matchup, they tend to complain about the other race. If someone is struggling in ZvP, and has lost a long string of games to the Void Ray-Colossus “death-ball,” that person is likely to call the “death-ball” imbalanced. After losing a couple games in stupid ways (DT rushes, 6-gate all-in, etc.), the “death-ball is imbalanced” thought can turn into “Protoss is imbalanced,” and the subscription to Imbalance Theory begins. The connotation for StarCraft II racism is absurdly less serious than that of real-life racism, and the comparison seems a little ridiculous, but a player being pissed-off that he or she can’t win in a certain matchup is not grounds for calling the other race imbalanced.
If the StarCraft II community continues to let balance affect the thought-process of the community, it will continue to fester and grow until what was previously an excuse for losing a game becomes a reason for someone to quit the game. Losing is a part of any competitive game, but placing blame on something one gamer cannot control may eventually convince that gamer that the game can’t be fun because it isn’t fair—even if the game is fair. If a game isn’t fun, casual players won’t play it. Yes, there are times that a game can lose its balance, but those times are few and far between. Most of the time, an “imbalanced” strategy is simply a fresh style players are using that hasn’t been figured out yet. Instead of telling Blizzard to fix what isn’t broken, why not sit down, consider the strategy or matchup that’s causing trouble, and find a way to fix your own play?
EDIT: a sort of TL;DR something I really like:
On January 11 2012 07:56 LightTemplar wrote:
Look for the flaw that lost the game not the flaw in the game.
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This is so well written and hits so many good points. I can't tell you how many times I have to go through the replays with my own team members after they complain about balance during a game and show them all the mistakes that lead to their loss. Not because the other player made (x) unit. As I am going to call it, the Broodwar Mentality that I have had for the past 10~ years is that the mu is not broken. I just did not play as well as I could. And if I still lose after playing at my top game my opponent truely just out classed me and also played an amazing game. Sometimes this is not true but I rarely get mad (unless it is at myself for playing badly) and it helps me see the game much more clearly. I had a 12~% win ratio in PvZ in broodwar. The match up was fine. July SaviOr and JD were the god damn problems. lol
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The reason Protosses complain about Balance is because is because there are 0 Protoss amongst the top 12 players in Korea according to ELO, but there are 8 Protoss amongst the bottom 12.
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On January 11 2012 07:20 meadbert wrote:
The reason Protosses complain about Balance is because is because there are 0 Protoss amongst the top 12 players in Korea according to ELO, but there are 8 Protoss amongst the bottom 12.
Consider, then, that perhaps there is something wrong with the Protoss mindset within the general trend of strategic evolution. Perhaps Protoss should be looking for different ways of dealing with Zerg and Terran strategy instead of blaming the game.
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On January 11 2012 07:24 mbr2321 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2012 07:20 meadbert wrote:
The reason Protosses complain about Balance is because is because there are 0 Protoss amongst the top 12 players in Korea according to ELO, but there are 8 Protoss amongst the bottom 12.
Consider, then, that perhaps there is something wrong with the Protoss mindset within the general trend of strategic evolution. Perhaps Protoss should be looking for different ways of dealing with Zerg and Terran strategy instead of blaming the game.
Just a caution - basically what you're saying is "all the zerg/Terran are good, but all the protoss are bad." The probability of that kind of generalization being true is relatively low. That said, most high level players are very reserved on talking about balance, because they know the game is not fully developed yet and that there are mechanical or strategical improvements that they can make to beat "imba" strategies.
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Well written and very true, if im bad at a match up the answer is to get better not to complain that the race is imba and give up. The problem i have is that pros say imba often with tongue in cheek but people take it seriously. If the game was truely imbalanced then one strategy (or set of strategies) would always be used in a particular match up and would always win, that simply isnt the case and we would see a huge difference in the MU's results across the board in all statistics if it was. Stop quitting and whining start working and winning. If you're looking for a way to understand matches rather than just watching them and seeing one strategy win often watch artosis stream. Nothing is ever impossible and he can always point out his flaw that lost him the game.
Look for the flaw that lost the game not the flaw in the game.
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On January 11 2012 07:47 Bigtony wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2012 07:24 mbr2321 wrote:On January 11 2012 07:20 meadbert wrote:
The reason Protosses complain about Balance is because is because there are 0 Protoss amongst the top 12 players in Korea according to ELO, but there are 8 Protoss amongst the bottom 12.
Consider, then, that perhaps there is something wrong with the Protoss mindset within the general trend of strategic evolution. Perhaps Protoss should be looking for different ways of dealing with Zerg and Terran strategy instead of blaming the game. Just a caution - basically what you're saying is "all the zerg/Terran are good, but all the protoss are bad." The probability of that kind of generalization being true is relatively low. That said, most high level players are very reserved on talking about balance, because they know the game is not fully developed yet and that there are mechanical or strategical improvements that they can make to beat "imba" strategies.
I truly apologize if I wasn't clear in my comment. I'm not trying to say that Protoss players are worse than Terran or Zerg players. My intent behind that comment was to convey that, at the moment, Terran and Zerg at the highest level of play are more innovative than the Protoss at the highest level of play-- a while ago this was not the case. There was a point when Zerg had no answer to Protoss Stargate play (just before MLG Columbus) denying their third, and there was a point when Protoss rofl-stomped Terran with 6 gate pushes off of 2 base (the game that comes to mind is oGsMC vs sCfOu on Shakuras Plateau in one of the GSLs-- sC was on 3 base (one hidden) and had a fortified front that MC just wrecked with FFs and gateway dps).
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
I really like this blog post. Anyone who only read the TL;DR (as I did, at first) should go back and read the whole thing. It's quite well written. It really shines light on the idea of "balance" and how games are won and lost in Sc2. Thanks for writing this, man! 5/5
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Good post. A good balance discussion post a that. Good effort.
I am reminded of this game from the recent Team 8 vs KT in Brood War proleague.
+ Show Spoiler +
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This is a very well written article, and you brought up some valid points.
However, regarding the birther movement, all Obama had to do was release his long form birth certificate to shut everyone up. He was just strategically waiting for the right time to do so...and this decision was what destroyed Donald Trump's run for the presidency.
I would like to point out that a game's success is largely dependent on it's community.
If there is a perceived imbalanced strategy that's allowed to run rampant for long enough, it would destroy the gaming community as well.
For example, take Hilde and Algol from soul calibur 4. These two characters were recently banned from all tournaments across the planet after 3 years of grueling debate. Hilde could ring out any character at any place on a stage with a very easily executed combo. That same combo would inflict roughly 40% of the HP bar in an enclosed stage. Similarly, Algol is the only character that can shoot slow moving projectiles in the universe of soul calibur. This ability allowed him to dominate certain matchups so severely that he could execute 100% health reduction combos.
What started happening in the pro-scene of soul calibur 4....much like it is happening in starcraft 2, was that the top 4 of many tournaments had 2 or 3 hilde players, executing the same combos over and over. This is much like how we have many top 4 terrans using the 1/1/1 strategy. It is uncertain how much the last patch has helped protoss deal with the 1/1/1, but one thing remains fact. Currently in TLPD, the top 15 spots according to ELO of korean pro players, there's only one protoss, MC, who's at rank 14th.
My point is, whether or not imbalance exist doesn't matter. What really matters is whether the game is perceived as balanced. What happened to the Soul calibur 4 community? It was virtually destroyed by Hilde. Less and less players started showing up in big tournaments, and more and more who remained picked hilde. It got so bad that tournaments had to ban hilde to salvage the community. They admit that they might not get people who left to come back, but they were hoping that more people won't leave. This is what's going to happen to starcraft 2 if the developers do not intervene at certain crucial points of the scene development. The job of blizzard is to nudge the metagame or suggest a counter to a problem that most perceive to exists.
http://fightinggamestrategist.wordpress.com/tag/banned-characters/
http://8wayrun.com/threads/algol-hilde-serious-thread.2312/
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Truth is, there are imbalances and always will be.
It is impossible to have a 'perfectly balanced' game, unless there is only one race.
I agree with most of your article, however a lot of the 'imbalance' talk comes with the difficulty of executing the strategy in comparison to the difficulty to defeat the strategy.
People want to feel as though 2 people of the same skill level, on 2 different races, will have a 'tie'. This is in theory ofcourse, but we all know that it isn't true.
So while units and strategies themseleves might not be imbalanced in the game, the balance of skill required to execute/defeat a certain strategy has an ENORMOUS disparity in SC2, hence the ongoing whining.
And the whining is justified, a strategy that is easy to execute should be relatively easy to defeat. But as we all know, this game is a bit of a joke in that respect, and bad players doing shitty easy builds work their way up the ladder.
So sure, think of new strategies to 'beat' these builds. But we WANT a game where your skill level determines your rank, not your ability to exploit a races advantage for easy wins.
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A video game is a closed system. The election of the president of the United States of America is an event that takes place within an open system. Both inevietably show the effects of design flaws owing to human error, but in one case a group of people have essentially ultimate control over the entire issue. That wasn't an illuminati joke.
Pre-release there was no reason to assume that SC2 would be perfect. At that point we could have revealed a crippling imbalance in one or match up, or strategies that were essentially always superiour such that they became exessively ordinary no-brainers.
Even a year after release it's still possible, though it's looking a little more unlikely. Starcraft 2 is made by humans, so there's no reason to expect that it's going to be perfect. Sometimes it's hard to get this across to the SC community because SC1 just happened to have 10 years of slightly accidental balance often based on the interplay of quirky but not game-breaking glitches.
There's no reason lightning has to strike the same place twice.
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On January 11 2012 07:20 meadbert wrote:
The reason Protosses complain about Balance is because is because there are 0 Protoss amongst the top 12 players in Korea according to ELO, but there are 8 Protoss amongst the bottom 12.
What is this has anything to do with the OP? Do Terrans and Zergs complain when they have top 5 ELO? Hell yeah ofc they do. Doesn't matter Nestea won 3 GSLs he still calling the game is imba and he's so good anyway.
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Terrible OP.
First the ad hominem by comparing balance complaints to the birther movement somewhat delegitimize what you attempt to do with funny captions and paragraphs.
Secondly, you seem to have no understanding about why the 1/1/1 slowly phased out. Map changes played just as large a part as the evolution of the 1gate fe and the immortal range boost.
Lastly, you have no sense of context. You ignore the environment surrounding the 5rax reaper and the 1/1/1 time (ignore blanket emps as well).
Your argument would sound better if you used the analogy more sparingly rather than batter us with it.
Questions regarding balance and the viability of the game were and are legitimate. There are metrics which you mock in this post to demonstrate that the game did not appear to be balanced. Those backed up multiple observations of the state of the game. Even pros who had a vested stake in arguing that the game was a legitimate E-sport have been vocal at times. To not conclude that the game was imbalanced or even broken after watching games or looking at various metrics would be as put in a famous article be "blind."
When was BW considered balanced by Bliz? Not in 1.00 but in 1.08.
There have been better arguments citing BW's long run trends as an example of waiting for metagame shifts rather than balance issues.There are multiple issues with this line of argument. For my part, I like the marketing one which can be found in my sig. If a pro like Bisu though that then imagine what a refined Korean audience which you are trying to attract must have thought.
Oddly timed post. Figured by now most have kind of settled on the quality of the game. I suppose the discussion might be interesting so at least the op sounds goodish
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Doesn't matter if the game really is balanced or if it is imbalaced. You can always macro, micro, and execute bluffs / strategies better. People just don't like owning up to themselves and saying, "Maybe it's me that's just bad, not the game".
I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say something like, "I played perfectly". When they really played quite bad.
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The reason Protoss has trouble is imo due to the lack of good early scouting and the fact that they essentially HAVE to get a robo against terran(See MC vs Supernova). If Observers were able to be made out of the nexus after a cybercore or stargate or something they would have more strat variability available to them.
Of course the other issue I have with protoss is that their air is simply a gimmick. You can't go Air Toss and win. Even having voids in your army seems inferior lately as I havnt seen a Toss do that for awhile now. Blizzard wants both mech and bio to viable for Terran so why shouldnt Toss be able to go air as an actual strat rather than a gimmick.
I think it is hard to deny that air is a gimmick for toss. Versus zerg it is typically only used as an opener and then largely ignored and against terran it is even more uncommon. I'd love to be able to see a large toss fleet in the endgame...
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Keep it clean, Sabu113.
No personal attacks such as comments on his icon.
It makes your post seem less legitimate and more of a elitist rant.
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On January 11 2012 10:49 Sabu113 wrote:
When was BW considered balanced by Bliz? Not in 1.00 but in 1.08.
how many 'balance' patches were there after that patch?
that's his point
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On January 11 2012 10:53 neoghaleon55 wrote:
Keep it clean, Sabu113.
No personal attacks such as comments on his icon.
It makes your post seem less legitimate and more of a elitist rant.
After seeing all of these threads, some stereotypes have evolved into heuristics.
And my post was as kind as the OP is.
Edit2:
My point is that the game required changes after release before reaching a final state (as determined by Blizz and commercially accepted by the Korean people). Likewise we recieved a vanilla game last year and there have been clear issues that were not able to refined in the Beta.
I would also state that there is a difference between casual playing balance and competitive balance that is significant. I care only about the later.
The argument about balance on TL was so vicious and important because it attacked the basic legitimacy of the game and ESPORTS (silly caps intended) generally. If victories were due to a poorly designed game then the winners were not heroes and champions but merely people who went to the atm and swiped their race card. That's why you saw such vicious counter attacks such as DJwheat's show following Puma's tripple 1/1/1 victory over MC. In large part, counter arguments regarding balance are like the op and respond in tone and talk about personal mechanics while ignoring the argument of the 'imbalance' crowd, that the game gives such great advantages based on race that it is a poor esport. I believe some of Blizzard's changes and Gom's radical changes (no gold, calm before storm, and somewhat the qualification rejig) were driven by a consciousness that the legitimacy of the game as an esport was at risk and by all indication the problem was not going to right itself. We have recieved mutliple indications that this was true in the more sophisticated Korean scene (once again Bisu, not the only proof but my favorite).
Furthermore, our consumption of RTSs has evolved signifcantly since the early days of Broodwar. Necessarily design and balance philosophy must change with the times. Macro, types of micro, unit roles and build construction have evolved since the early days of StarCraft. I think it is fair to say that the range of possible growth in SC2 is less than that in BW and more predictable, merely because we have learned how to approach an RTS. Consequently, a more active hand in balancing for at minimum the past year makes sense.
I started watching BW right after Saviors reign during the age of Dragons (Incruit OSL<3). Maybe that's why I never had the same questions about legitimacy or competitiveness bother me when Auir failed to prevail after that age or khan went to crap. Likely it was in part because I could barely appreciate watching the game, but I still respected the results even if I thought the map bias was going to tip the scales.
That feeling was not there for a good part of the summer and I think it was a fair and well justified notion.
There were many good and legitimate questions about the balance of this game for the past year. To compare those claims to that of the birthers is insulting. Those claims tend to be put out by a certain group, whose opinions are short sighted if they look at the greater picture. I'll certainly say I've voted with my eyes. I used to stay up to watch all the GSL matches. Now I'm a touch jaded though if there are more games like ForGG Leenock that might .
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Way to bring politics into Starcraft 2. Please keep RL politics away from Sc2.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://msgboard.snopes.com/politics/graphics/longform.jpg)
