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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.
Yeah and the reason for this is MVP, ForGG and Nada aren't playing Protoss. Honestly, the top BW players to all move across are all Terran, they also create all the best strategies, and so Terran is simply going to be better than the rest due to the advances in metagame these guys have made.
In BW Terran used to be the weakest race, then Boxer came a long and changed all that, then Zerg was the weakest race, until Savior arrived, and then Protoss was the weakest race, then Bisu arrived. Note that it was years before each racial revolution happened, and when it happened, suddenly that race was imba. Without any balance changes at all.
When Savior came around, His strategies trickled down into the rookie leagues, and suddenly the entire teamliquid community believed that PvZ was no longer playable. People stopped playing PvZ, it was impossible to win PvZ, Savior broke the game, and blizzard wasn't going to patch it. Suddenly Bisu comes around and ZvP was no longer winnable, except for Zerg this time.
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Moral to take from this: Most players should focus on improving, because they aren't at a level where balance is even relevant.
The wrong moral to take: the game is balanced.
Why? Because the game isn't balanced yet.
Also, these discussions about balance discussions is probably more of a waste of time than balance discussions themselves. And now, I'm gonna stop discussing the usefulness of discussions about discussing balance, because that's way too much balance discussion-ception.
Everyone please just spend you time on better things, pretty please.
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Great OP. Alot of imbalance talk proliferates across all level of plays and people blame imbalance rather then improving their own play. It takes away from the understood value of mechanical and strategical improvement for many players. I know many players who play at a high competitive level who will still just say 'X race is weak because of Y' or some silly justification. I say, yes I get frustrated with X matchup. But if I train more and harder I will always be able to beat anyone. If i am stumped it means my mechanics and/or strategy have hit a wall and I need to work on them.
I find talking about map balance much more relevant and identifiable. You can't completely objectively say a map is good or bad for a certain race in a particular matchup. But you can say that in the current metagame it's bad for whatever reasons. Even then though it promotes players to innovate and drives the game forward.
Finally I guess people love to talk about balance and the different races because SC2 is such a complicated game and there's always so much outside of our scope of focus or current understanding. It's easier to talk about how what we know about should be adjusted then to take into account the plethora of other factors that we don't even think about.
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On January 11 2012 16:24 FlamingTurd wrote:
I really liked the article, however I would give it a 0/5 for the unnecessary political crap and 5/5 for the SC2 part of it.
It's funny that you liked the article for it's balance discussion but your quote is "nerf MMMT"
^^
However I do agree that this article could stand on it's own without the political stuff. You wanna talk about something that divides people more than the balance of sc2?! Try discussing politics...
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I brought this point up in a discussion in last night's LR thread, but I think it is worth repeating.
In almost all games there is some element of randomness and chance. At one extreme there is coin-tossing, which can be considered completely random; and at the other extreme is a game of chess, where randomness is merely confined to how well the players can read the board.
In SC2, the more scouting can be done by the players, the further the randomness is pushed from the coin-toss end to the chess board end.
Although it is fairly obvious that an actual coin-toss is balanced, in SC2 the 'coin-toss' scenarios tend to favour one side more than the other. This seems most pronounced in ZvZ, PvP and PvT. Since we are talking about balance, I shall only focus upon the non-mirror PvT matchup, drawing briefly upon TvZ for comparison.
A common situation in PvT:
A single barracks with two depots is scouted at the terran wall by the probe. The gases are unable to be seen. There are two builds which are most likely from this information:
1. 1 Rax expansion
2. Marine-Tank-Banshee all-in
With two options of what to prepare for (technically there are more options, but this is a simplification), the P player must now flip the metaphorical coin, with the following possibilities (assuming 13 gate with a pylon scout):
1. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. A marine tank banshee all-in IS incoming. This leaves approximately a 50% chance of the protoss player surviving based upon pro-games.
2. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. Terran is 1 rax expanding. The protoss is now behind economically, and approximately even on army/tech.
3. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is marine tank banshee all-inning. Protoss loses due to insufficient economy.
4. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is 1-rax expanding. Protoss is now either behind economically, or has to risk a push which if it fails (50% is a conservative guess based off pro-games) also puts protoss behind economically.
Now we can put approximate odds on each situation:
Situation 1: 50% chance of each player being ahead.
Situation 2: Terran Player is ahead.
Situation 3: Terran Player wins.
Situation 4: 50% chance of each player being ahead.
Excluded from these situations is the possibility of the terran going for a 3-4 rax marine all-in, which further pushes this coin-toss scenario into the terran's favour.
By comparison, in TvZ, unless the Z is being extremely greedy by skipping all forms of army or detection, they can deal with almost any terran build with good micro and positioning. e.g. 11-11 rax (drone micro), reactor hellions (queen blocks), hellion marauder (map presence for early scout). Admittedly 2-port banshee seems to be the exception here, where without blind lair tech or mass spores, it is extremely difficult to hold.
I will admit that I play protoss, and am most likely heavily biased, but I'm fairly certain that with the undebatable existence of coin-tossing in SC2 (think PvP or ZvZ), that sometimes the coin can be biased.
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On January 11 2012 17:32 CortoMontez wrote:
I brought this point up in a discussion in last night's LR thread, but I think it is worth repeating.
In almost all games there is some element of randomness and chance. At one extreme there is coin-tossing, which can be considered completely random; and at the other extreme is a game of chess, where randomness is merely confined to how well the players can read the board.
In SC2, the more scouting can be done by the players, the further the randomness is pushed from the coin-toss end to the chess board end.
Although it is fairly obvious that an actual coin-toss is balanced, in SC2 the 'coin-toss' scenarios tend to favour one side more than the other. This seems most pronounced in ZvZ, PvP and PvT. Since we are talking about balance, I shall only focus upon the non-mirror PvT matchup, drawing briefly upon TvZ for comparison.
A common situation in PvT:
A single barracks with two depots is scouted at the terran wall by the probe. The gases are unable to be seen. There are two builds which are most likely from this information:
1. 1 Rax expansion
2. Marine-Tank-Banshee all-in
With two options of what to prepare for (technically there are more options, but this is a simplification), the P player must now flip the metaphorical coin, with the following possibilities (assuming 13 gate with a pylon scout):
1. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. A marine tank banshee all-in IS incoming. This leaves approximately a 50% chance of the protoss player surviving based upon pro-games.
2. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. Terran is 1 rax expanding. The protoss is now behind economically, and approximately even on army/tech.
3. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is marine tank banshee all-inning. Protoss loses due to insufficient economy.
4. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is 1-rax expanding. Protoss is now either behind economically, or has to risk a push which if it fails (50% is a conservative guess based off pro-games) also puts protoss behind economically.
Now we can put approximate odds on each situation:
Situation 1: 50% chance of each player being ahead.
Situation 2: Terran Player is ahead.
Situation 3: Terran Player wins.
Situation 4: 50% chance of each player being ahead.
Excluded from these situations is the possibility of the terran going for a 3-4 rax marine all-in, which further pushes this coin-toss scenario into the terran's favour.
By comparison, in TvZ, unless the Z is being extremely greedy by skipping all forms of army or detection, they can deal with almost any terran build with good micro and positioning. e.g. 11-11 rax (drone micro), reactor hellions (queen blocks), hellion marauder (map presence for early scout). Admittedly 2-port banshee seems to be the exception here, where without blind lair tech or mass spores, it is extremely difficult to hold.
I will admit that I play protoss, and am most likely heavily biased, but I'm fairly certain that with the undebatable existence of coin-tossing in SC2 (think PvP or ZvZ), that sometimes the coin can be biased.
this is also the point i was trying to make with the Dead or alive 4 christie (rank F character for ability and power) vs ninjas (all rank S). You can see the terran has more TOOLS and the protoss has less. If protoss is a supremely good player and chooses correctly, it only means that the protoss player has created or kept a slight lead from being good. If the protoss player makes a mistake, its a big mistake no matter how small it is on the scale of mistakes alone. I feel this the same with Zerg. You must make zero mistakes. You must perfectly predict and react. If you don't you either lose outright or get behind, and zerg, and to a lesser extent protoss, is the type of race that cannot afford to be behind, simply by how zerg is cost and supply inefficient.
A lot of this Slippery slope or slight advantage for perfect play vs average play Terran/Protoss is evident for PvT and ZvT. Terrans love to complain about things but I lose to mech 8 of 10 times even when I know its coming, simply because the answer is either: Dont let them build up to 200 cap mech, or; outmicro them and have superior tactical ability to wipe both your armies oujt and hope you remax with an army that can meaningfully crush them after losing your entire army. The only times I beat full mech vs Z is when I put spine crawlers out and the terran gets stupid and bunches his banshees and thors all together so chain fungal works, or when I base trade the terran with roach ling while holding my base with spine/BL before we get to lategame.
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Being a gold Terran on NA and silver on EU last season, I kinda lost the will to play because each time I won a game I was met with stuff like:
"lol play are hard race you noob"
"Terran op"
Even had a guy that kept bashing me, while having me on ignore.
Reading QXC's post makes me sad to think of just how many professional players say Terran is OP, and more specific marines. To the point that fx. at HSC4 when there was a Terran player casting they should be very careful what they said else the Protoss/Zerg players almost bullied the Terran player about how OP Terrans are.
I find it silly that Zerg players complaining about drops from Terran, even when they never research burrow or transport for overlords themselves. Protoss that basically have teleport around the map with the warpin, and shields that regen which are very good for hit&run and aren't really countered till mid/late game with ghosts. As a Terran player I could keep listing stuff that seems imbalanced that the other races have.
My point is that ALL races have elements that the other races would love to have, it doesn't make it imbalanced it makes the game more diverse.
While I think its cool to see its annoying as hell to get the SC2Statistics http://imgur.com/a/3yZUQ thrown in your face all the time from players that are not even close to being a professional (leaving from playing SC2), or being a Blizzard employed person with access to the raw statistics data. The people throwing these graphs in your face most of the time talk like the don't even notice the lower 40% of the graph being cropped out.
Hmm maybe only players that play random should be allowed to talk about imbalance. 
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The difference between your analogy between starcraft's imbalance theroies and the birther movement is that whereas the birther's suspicions can't be confirmed or denied without proof, we do have a test server where we can test balance patches. The balance server should be updated with very outrageous changes every week to see their effects. Instead we have changes that stem pretty much out of nowhere and people are discouraged from talking about balance for no real reason other than it's whiney.
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The analogy is absolutely terrible, as it compares something 100% fabricated with something that DEFINITELY exists.
Essentially the OP is saying that imbalance does not in fact exist, and the game would have been perfectly fine the way it was without the need for continuous balance patches. Seriously, I'm sure the GSL landscape wouldn't even become more Terran dominated with - 50% build time reapers that could research nitro pack without a factory, right. I'm sure zergs could deal with pre-nerf reapers today just fine... at the cost of their mid-game economy as nitro pack reapers are essentially earlier hellions that could travel through cliffs.
Even taking a less extreme example, the recent immortal +1 range buff, it's clear that the game "balance" definitely changed in P's favor. With with an additional +1 range buff for a total of 7 range on the immortal, the game probably still wouldn't be broken. However, that would limit the zerg and terran players' game options so much and force them to get out more units for defense against immortal-based pushes, thus ultimately lower their races' win rates on average.
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lololololol
A metaphor or analogy is not something exactly the same as the original, its generally something with similarities that can be used to illustrate something about the original. People need to stop pointing out the differences just because they disagree with the OP, WE KNOW THERE ARE DIFFERENCES, its a metaphor, not a clone
That being said I don't completely support what the OP said and I do feel he stretched the metaphor a little to much, but I think the general attitude of less QQ more improve is something we all know and can all agree on, the rest is just fun for debate, but not going to suddenly explain the works of anything amazing
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Good OP. I like drawing the parallels to the Birther Theory (stupid rednecks)
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the game is pretty balance everywhere else, except in Korea.
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On January 11 2012 18:53 Lizarb wrote:
I find it silly that Zerg players complaining about drops from Terran, even when they never research burrow or transport for overlords themselves. Protoss that basically have teleport around the map with the warpin, and shields that regen which are very good for hit&run and aren't really countered till mid/late game with ghosts. As a Terran player I could keep listing stuff that seems imbalanced that the other races have.
)
Although I do agree Zerg drops are underused, I think the main difference is that with the medivac healing, Terran can find some very abusive spots with drops that are almost always cost effective. With Zerg, drops tend to be fairly all-in if they intend to do similar damage.
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Trying to compare the birther movement to anything else  just makes your  Point extremely hard to get through OP.I'M sure you could have atleast tought of  Another example rather than this horrendus movement.
But onto the topic,like David K. SaiD,there seems to be a consensus,in the AM/EU/Sea scene,Zergs seeM to be better than Terran and Protoss,and in the KR/TW scene, you see Terrans doing better than Z and P.Saying that the Only problem is with Protoss mentality is a huge Way to overlook the actual problem.When someone like Polt & PuMa have such a huge winrate on TvP with mostly 1/1/1,you Start to  wonder if the game is Really balanced.I know them praticed a lot with it but its just disconcerning that since the beggining of the game the top Protoss in the world still struggle with such a build (See SuperNoVa vs MC in GSL2012/1).
But yes,weighing in consequences for a lost game is a pretty dumb conclusion.Even if it was a balance issue it would be only shown in the utmost top of players and would be a recurring issue with a extremely high winrate with some abusive build.
EDIT:TLPD just ruined my post! XD
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Good read. People at he Battlenet forums should read this.
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On January 11 2012 20:57 mrafaeldie12 wrote:Trying to compare the birther movement to anything else just makes your Point extremely hard to get through OP.I' M sure you could have atleast tought of Another example rather than this horrendus movement. But onto the topic,like David K. SaiD,there seems to be a consensus,in the AM/EU/ Sea scene,Zergs seeM to be better than Terran and Protoss,and in the KR/TW scene, you see Terrans doing better than Z and P.Saying that the Only problem is with Protoss mentality is a huge Way to overlook the actual problem.When someone like Polt & PuMa have such a huge winrate on TvP with mostly 1/1/1,you Start to wonder if the game is Really balanced.I know them praticed a lot with it but its just disconcerning that since the beggining of the game the top Protoss in the world still struggle with such a build (See SuperNoVa vs MC in GSL2012/1). But yes,weighing in consequences for a lost game is a pretty dumb conclusion.Even if it was a balance issue it would be only shown in the utmost top of players and would be a recurring issue with a extremely high winrate with some abusive build. EDIT:TLPD just ruined my post! XD
You have way too much time
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On January 11 2012 17:32 CortoMontez wrote:
I brought this point up in a discussion in last night's LR thread, but I think it is worth repeating.
In almost all games there is some element of randomness and chance. At one extreme there is coin-tossing, which can be considered completely random; and at the other extreme is a game of chess, where randomness is merely confined to how well the players can read the board.
In SC2, the more scouting can be done by the players, the further the randomness is pushed from the coin-toss end to the chess board end.
Although it is fairly obvious that an actual coin-toss is balanced, in SC2 the 'coin-toss' scenarios tend to favour one side more than the other. This seems most pronounced in ZvZ, PvP and PvT. Since we are talking about balance, I shall only focus upon the non-mirror PvT matchup, drawing briefly upon TvZ for comparison.
A common situation in PvT:
A single barracks with two depots is scouted at the terran wall by the probe. The gases are unable to be seen. There are two builds which are most likely from this information:
1. 1 Rax expansion
2. Marine-Tank-Banshee all-in
With two options of what to prepare for (technically there are more options, but this is a simplification), the P player must now flip the metaphorical coin, with the following possibilities (assuming 13 gate with a pylon scout):
1. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. A marine tank banshee all-in IS incoming. This leaves approximately a 50% chance of the protoss player surviving based upon pro-games.
2. Proceed to 1 gate expand, assuming marine tank banshee is incoming. Terran is 1 rax expanding. The protoss is now behind economically, and approximately even on army/tech.
3. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is marine tank banshee all-inning. Protoss loses due to insufficient economy.
4. Use any non-expand build, or a safer expand build, assuming 1 rax expand. Terran is 1-rax expanding. Protoss is now either behind economically, or has to risk a push which if it fails (50% is a conservative guess based off pro-games) also puts protoss behind economically.
Now we can put approximate odds on each situation:
Situation 1: 50% chance of each player being ahead.
Situation 2: Terran Player is ahead.
Situation 3: Terran Player wins.
Situation 4: 50% chance of each player being ahead.
Excluded from these situations is the possibility of the terran going for a 3-4 rax marine all-in, which further pushes this coin-toss scenario into the terran's favour.
By comparison, in TvZ, unless the Z is being extremely greedy by skipping all forms of army or detection, they can deal with almost any terran build with good micro and positioning. e.g. 11-11 rax (drone micro), reactor hellions (queen blocks), hellion marauder (map presence for early scout). Admittedly 2-port banshee seems to be the exception here, where without blind lair tech or mass spores, it is extremely difficult to hold.
I will admit that I play protoss, and am most likely heavily biased, but I'm fairly certain that with the undebatable existence of coin-tossing in SC2 (think PvP or ZvZ), that sometimes the coin can be biased.
There is no coinflip in zvz. There are risks and safe builds.Coin flip denotes an if a then b scenario. Sure, I can be Super risky and build 0 units while the other guy builds some and get ahead economically, but that doesn't mean much, because the other guy built units. While I have an economy advantage he either has a tech or army advantage which he can leverage in a number of ways. People like the term coin flip because they can clearly see an advantage. Player A has more drones than player B, player A "won the flip". However, that's completley negates the fact that the other player ALSO has an advantage in another area of the game. It's up to player B to make adequate use of his advantage to not let player A's economy advantage snowball.
An area where this was seen a lot was BW ZvZ. There were three common openings that made people say it was a coin flip. 9 pool, 12 pool, 12 hatch. While the 9 pool had an advantage over 12 hatch, 12 pool had the advantage over 9 pool, and 12 hatch had the advantage over 12 pool. However, people just saw that one player got an economy advantage while living while the other player had an earlier pool (safer) but less drones or hatches. However, that completely ignores things like GAS. 9 pool takes that earlier gas, which is a tech advantage. It was up to the player with a tech advantage to leverage that against the player with the economy advantage. There are plenty of cases where a player in the build that "lost the flip" actually wins the game because he did so.
The same is true for Sc2 ZvZ. Sure, you hear players on their streams complain because "oh, he build 0 units while I was playing safely, he now has a free advantage". While most of those players are indeed far better than me, I would put it to you that just because player B has more economy doesn't mean that he's ahead in all aspects of the game, and if you continue down the same path weather you're in the advantageous position economically or disadvantageous, then you're not playing the game out correctly, which can often happen to players who don't think out their builds enough and play too reactive (something very common among zerg players especially). There are great discussions concerning these concepts in some of Day9's BW podcasts/dailies that go more in depth than I possibly can go if you'd like to hear from a better player.
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While I think yes, a lot of balance discussion is just people not being very good at a matchup, memories of 5RR still haunt my nightmares.  It felt and looked hopeless. If you tried to go speedling, they had enough reapers to kill everything. If you tried to go baneling, they were too slow to catch them and got kited to death. Roaches could fend the reapers off, but the techlab rax that were used for the reapers perfectly set up for a follow-up marauder push that was pretty hard to stop. I'm not whining it was impossible, because we were all a looooot worse back then, and I sure love to see a return of reaper builds in modern day TvZ if only for a short while, to see if people are still struggling as much against it.
That said, comparing balance whiners to birthers is frankly insulting to balance whiners. Birthers are up there with the most idiotic fanatics the world over, believing in something completely stupid for no reason. Balance whiners just tend to be people that get a little bit too annoyed when they lose to something, and at least they (often) try to justify what they're saying rather than just shouting "NOPE" really loud.
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i think the ease of execusion vs defence is a valid argument.
Two different weights can be balanced with an offset pivot.
+ Show Spoiler +
Purely opinion:
As an example Chargelot archon vs Terran. A-move to execute, 200APM to defend.
(ive lost a lot to it, hence my frustration)
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Have to say I’m rather thorn about this OT. I see the point that the post tries to make but it is buried in all the other stuff. The post was very well written but the content not so great (my subjective view point).
The political rant was rather off topic as I see it. The situation with Obama’s place of birth was a political play from the opposition that he then turned and used to his favor. Not to be confused with the very subjective and oftentimes miss-guided discussions about the balance of SC2.
Obviously as a player one should focus on what one self can change/improve rather than complaining about things like balance. Blizzard has a very competent team working on that and they have (I assume) an incredible amount of data on which to base their decisions upon.
Whether or not the game is to be called balanced is to some point in the eye of the beholder. Is the game only balanced when there are equal amount of players of each race at the top of the leader board? I would argue no, since the game will continue to evolve with strategies and trends that come and go. What is perfect balance, and should the primary focus be on optimizing on this? Probably not, then the game would probably be reduced to something like stone, paper, scissors. The game is way too complex for us to have figured it out by now.
Based on this, I would expect this thread to not lead to any great conclusions.
Edit: Conclusion was; Discussions should not have been purpose of this post, blog would have been good.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Palanca-ejemplo.jpg)
