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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 States25550 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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I think in HoTS, to fix the flimsy matchups PvT and I guess PvZ, they need to fix the clumping. I feel the clumping AI in SC2 is REALLY holding back a lot of EPIC games. 1 Storm, or 1 fight that you don't spread your units you lose INSTANTLY. Not saying it shouldn't be that way, but I'd like to see great games that don't just end because of 1 bad engagement. Happens too much.
Also, lurkers and reavers pls =(
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I find the idea of discussing balance in non-obvious cases (MvC2 is an example of an obvious case) to be a bit odd just because of the fact that there are varying skill levels that "balance" will vary by. Suppose the game is Protoss-favored at the current Code A skill level, because the strategies people can execute are more effective for Protoss at the moment, that does not mean the game is imbalanced. Maybe at slightly higher skill levels other superior strategies emerge, and at lower levels, the best Protoss strategies are essentially not possible, and Protoss is the weakest. In this case is Protoss overpowered or underpowered?
Basically we cannot know because the game evolves and until a skill cap is reached, it is impossible to make absolute balance statements. So since only relative balance can even be discussed (balance at a given skill level), it just strikes me as futile to even attempt to come to a concrete conclusion as to what would constitute true balance even if we could easily implement it.
Anyway good post. 
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Actually, reapers are making a huge comeback even at the pro level. They're not necessarily massable units, but triple reaper expand and reaper / hellion / medivac are both viable openers that simply require more micro than your average master league player was capable of back when reapers first were nerfed into oblivion.
The fact that carriers never, ever became viable over a year and a half of trial and error is the only item I question when it comes to balance. I feel like every unit has a use and will eventually find its place, but seeing that the carrier never did, it's probably the only one that absolutely needed to be removed or changed.
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You're article was well-written. However, in my opinion, you create the same false dichotomy everyone who attacks balance theorists does: players can either discuss balance or improve their game. In actuality, the choice is more likely: discuss balance or browse funny pictures about Starcraft.
If the choice was between honesty about balance and productivity in improving your play, choosing between the options would be difficult. But I don't think it is.
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On January 11 2012 11:17 Vehemus wrote:
Actually, reapers are making a huge comeback even at the pro level. They're not necessarily massable units, but triple reaper expand and reaper / hellion / medivac are both viable openers that simply require more micro than your average master league player was capable of back when reapers first were nerfed into oblivion.
The fact that carriers never, ever became viable over a year and a half of trial and error is the only item I question when it comes to balance. I feel like every unit has a use and will eventually find its place, but seeing that the carrier never did, it's probably the only one that absolutely needed to be removed or changed.
Have you seen White-ra's stream?
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No offense, but maybe this should be posted on the B.net forums. Not because the post is of the low quality generally associated with them, but just because I haven't hardly seen anyone call ANYTHING imbalanced or broken on TL.net for a really long time now. We as a community seem to already accept that the game is at least close to balanced and that we should always look inward rather than outward for solutions.
Still, well written, though I think I disagree with comparing "Imbalance Theory" to the Birther Movement; after all, Obama factually was born in the United States, but there's no "fact" that proves that SC2 is perfectly balanced. Again, it's close, that's enough for now, but it's not an all-or-nothing thing like someone's birth place.
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On January 11 2012 07:15 OmniEulogy wrote:
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.
It's much easier to make excuses rather than look for solutions. -_-
It comes to putting yourself in the right mindset in order to excel.
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Seriously everything there is to be said about this topic has been said. The OP basically rehashes an argument Day9 and others have made about there not being enough evidence yet to know for sure if the game is balanced, but adds a weird politics comparison to make it seem like he's bringing a new angle to the topic. All the other posts in this thread have been posted before. How about we just... not do this. The subject is done, at least until the expansion.
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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.
So your argument is this: There was (for a time) no conclusive evidence for the fact that Obama was born in the US, therefore it is similar to the abstract and unprovable concept of balance in sc2?
That analogy is about as good as a magical badger, who can tap-dance moderately well (for a badger), is at tap-dancing on a human professional level.
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Every time somebody tries to suggest that 5 rax reaper was irrelevant by the time Blizzard got around to nerfing it, I stop reading right then and there.
Nobody had solved 5 rax reaper. It was still alive and kicking. Fortunately, everybody was downright terrible at the game at that point in time, so even pros were screwing it up more often than properly executing it.
It was a horrible strategy that was doing horrible things to the MU as a whole, and looking back at the history of Terran nerfs, it was only one of MANY issues that existed at the time.
OPs whole argument becomes irrelevant as soon as he mentions that build IMO.
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On January 11 2012 10:53 mrtomjones wrote:
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...
Terran air is just as gimmicky as toss air, if not even more so. A flying DT and a fighter that only shoots at air targets.
Zerg is pretty much the only race with a general purpose air unit in the mutalisk, its quite similar to BW. I'm not sure what exactly makes it such a great injustice.
Besides, bio is the equivalent of gateway units and mech is the equivalent of robo. Air doesn't really have anything to do with these.
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On January 11 2012 10:49 Sabu113 wrote:
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
While I agree, this post could be written in a less aggressive and more calm manner.
These are good and valid points though.
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I think the reason so many people quit the game revolve around GAME DESIGN not balance.
Sc2 and blizzard sold its soul to the devil because it thought it could attract a more casual (larger) player base by simplifying game mechanics, removing micro relative to bw, speeding up the game pace (macro mechanics mules, inject, chrono) adding simplified unit counters (bonus dmg) and removing terrain advantages. Sc2 is better looking and way more easy than BW. Yes, we have seen huge growth in western e-sports because we attracted that larger casual, (much less patient and hardworking) player base. All at the cost of reducing the "staying power" and "lasting appeal" of the game.
I still love starcraft 2, because compared to every other game out there it has the highest learning curve, greatest strategic depth and biggest challenge of any other RTS. However, All those decisions, to make the game easier, made it much more blurry at top level play. I doubt we will see many repeat GSL winners, I think the jury is out on whether the game has the difficulty and mastery, that will let the top players stay at the top. The player with the best mechanics and decision making should win most of the time. However, In ladder, and elsewhere, I feel there is a problem of mechanically inferior players that copy a timing push, who get out X number of units at X time and simply just win because the copied a pro players build. I think it is too easy to imitate pro players because the mechanical bar is so low.
All of this contributes to each game being not as entertaining.
1. Most sc2 games decide the winner in one climatic battle.
2. It is much more difficult for someone to come back from being "behind" because of the macro mechanics.
3. Micro is far less interesting and less rewarding. B team pro can easily copy A team pro's strategy and execute to a similar degree.
4. Macro is power overwhelming, if you have more units, you can kill your opponent, because, terrain advantages positioning and map control are much weaker.
5. Mechanics are so simple even a bronze league player can almost pull of a Korean pro level timing push early in the game.
6.PvP and Z v Z are uninteresting to all but people who play them, due to game design flaws, not spectator friendly.
TLDR: a bit of a ramble, but basically, Game Design has simplified Starcraft into something everyone CAN play easily, but simultaneously made it into something less interesting TO play or watch. Expansions are expected to reboot franchise, and will lack the "lasting appeal" that a better designed game like Brood War was unless fundamental game design is altered.
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You raised some good points, but the overall idea that balance only applies in the narrow cases is pretty bogus. If something is substantially easier to execute than to defend or counter, it can either be because of strategic failings, or because of imbalances, or both. 5RR was imbalanced because it was so so easy for the terran player to do, and so so hard to defend against. It was too strong for the effort involved, and simply out of balance with what it demanded of your opponent. 1/1/1 similarly. 100% salvageable bunkers too. Defining those as something else because you want to rhetorically, doesn't make the problems they presented to players any less real, nor the abstract-level complaints less valid.
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This is a bit off topic, but I practice "counting" units in images I see or certain points in games just to get better at knowing numbers. In the marine scv tank image + Show Spoiler + I noticed something. Try counting the number of marines. Even at a glance. Tanks are easy. 5. But the marines and SCVs just glob together. There is no real coherence at a quick glance which is really all anyone can afford in the middle of a game. I then counted them one at a time and got 25 or 26, I can't tell without having to go back a third time. You could guess 20 marines, or 25 marines, but if it happens to be 5-10 more or less than what the actual number is, you may have over- or underreacted, which could potentially set you behind and/or lose you the game. I know there is another thread on this topic but I feel like unit clumping and pathing definitely plays a role in balance.
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I'm thinking many cases of "balance" whine is actually instead complaint that these people find certain aspects of the game not very fun and interesting... for example 1-1-1, I dont think toss complain because its impossible to hold off, but more like they find it very lame that they have to play against/watch ppl do these cheeses and its not something they find fun playing against nor watching...
they hate the strength of all ins, timing, mules warpgate, deathball , nondynamic play... etc. but it all comes off interpreted as balance whine most the time
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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.
But, given this perspective, you can then make the exact same argument that protoss is underpowered and it's a balance issue. (I'm not arguing whether or not there is any balance issues) You can't blanket such large and vague generalizations without REALLY good evidence and fairly specific examples. The same is true towards balance complaints.
Each attempt to pin balance/skill deficits on a player should be analyzed objectively, case by case. Problem is, very few if anyone is really qualified to do so. No one is able to predict the meta game shifts or uprising of players, and evolving meta games definitely have a tendency to skew win rates.
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On January 11 2012 12:21 RedDragon571 wrote:
[...]adding simplified unit counters (bonus dmg) [...]
How long will this misconception persist?
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Badly reasoned argument in the OP. The comparison to the Birther movement is absurd. In this case, the OP has somehow shifted the burden of proof that there exist large disparities between Terran pro-players and other players to account for the long term trends.
Proof? Well, the 1/1/1 might be a good example to start with? Knowing four minutes ahead of time that this is going to hit, pro-players still struggle to beat this. The result is really bad games. OP acknowledges this. Yet somehow, manages to completely skip past the point.
And seriously, stop confusing the mindset that maximizes one's morale and motivation to improve with the actual state of the game. It's fucking annoying and a logical fallacy.
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guys...
assault marine building bombs
reaper building bombs
assault marine cliff jump
Reaper cliff jump
[...can leap over cliffs...]
Tyranid-hydralisk
hydralisk
Also, the reaper and assault marine both use DUAL wield pistols.
maybe you're trying to equate real world racism which is why people bring up the birth certificate to in game racism (or race favoritism) to explain why people continually cy imbalance?
If so you could've said it simpler. Also the game isn't balanced, because it should be at all levels of play. brood war is actually quite balanced, that even a new player can learn how to counter build relatively quickly. sc2 requires lots of build order learning and cutting down costs and focus to counter something, or you get rolled. Its that simple. It means that other units and build orders and timings are so strong that unless you know exactly how to beat it, you fail every time but the time you execute the counter 100% perfectly. such as the 3 rax all in. And dustin browder said in his interview "..We want degrees of success in this game..". if by degrees of success, he meant you must have a full 100% degee of success or die, then he succeeded. It took ungodly numbers of games to figure out how to fight off colossus rush with pure raoch and survive. That is not balanced, because the solution doesn't come easily. A game is more balanced where the ability to counter your opponent is neither too hard nor too easy.
We could take innumerable fighting games as examples, and I'll take DoA4. DoA4 routinely had the ninjas at the S rank spot, while christie was routinely rank F. The reason is that christie doesn't have an equal number of counters or crushing blows to ninjas, and she actujally has the least crushing blows and "soft" counters in the game, even though she's faster than all but ninja. To win with christie you had to be ungodly better, and it basically ended up as ninja users have a slight advantage if you were actually better than them in all regards, because while you're better, one luck hit will turn the tables on you simply because a worse player got lucky. This is what idra is talking about for sc2. Now back to DoA4, christie got crushed by almost all other character's moves. She has the same health bar, she has the same or more variations of punches and kicks, but at the end of the day, her tools are still weaker and more prone to being abused by everyone else, particularly ninja users, since ninjas have the best speed in the game and more tools that fake/trick opponents into countering wrong.
So if a ninja user can trick a christie user into countering wrong once, they open up a hug lead with follow up attacks. If a christie user tricks a ninja user into countering wrong once, she gets a "slight" lead advantage, which can then be used again to gain another "slight" advantrage, until she finally wins. In one hand, you have a ninja that can create a big advantage and outright win, or make it much more difficult for you to come back, on the other hand you have christie who must be played supremely at all points or you lose.
I played christie because she was fun and because I liked the fighting style, not because I wanted to win more. if I wanted to win more, I would've taken ninja. I play sc2 zerg too.
take of this what you will, the analogy and the basic concepts behind balance and such translate to sc2 just as much as DoA4.
Its like I said about terrain advantage. No, zerg doesnt need siege tank to abuse terrain like terran, but zerg could use something DIFFERENT and racially their own, by having the ability to crush terran with a counter for taking that terrain, if th zerg acts on time. Thats called giving all races equal opportunity toolsets.
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This is well written, but sections of it badly miss the mark.
"There's too much balance talk, and the preoccupation with imbalance is counterproductive" is an argument I will happily get behind. On the other hand, the insinuation that a series of abusive strategies in the past were not, in fact, imbalanced really sounds an awful lot like a Terran who just wants his 50 damage tanks back.
Should more attention be devoted to the flaws in our gameplay than the flaws in our game? Absolutely. But it's crazy to pretend there aren't - and most especially weren't - flaws in that game as well.
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Sabu113:
+ Show Spoiler +On January 11 2012 10:49 Sabu113 wrote:
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 Hey there. I'm OP :D I introduce myself because I understand that this is important to you, and I don't want to just get into a flame war. I'm sure I sound like a massive tool right now, but I think it's important that, while I disagree with you (as you soon will see), I don't think you're wrong for expressing your opinions. The first thing I want to talk about is the birther analogy. When I wrote this, I was trying to outline a couple of things: firstly, that both are gossip-like discussions that poison the innovation within the communicative landscape of their respective fields; and secondly, that there is no empirical evidence to support either of them. I don't want to imply that people who believe in imbalance are ignorant, and I don't want to imply that it is possible to prove balance. Perhaps a better analogy in that respect is that imbalance is like faith in a higher power-- believing in it and not believing in it are equally baseless in fact. I'll get to FRR later on. Insofar as the 1/1/1 goes, there isn't a whole lot to say. Sure, maps helped out a lot in delaying the push for an extra cycle of units, but that doesn't negate my point that Protoss found a way to deal with the 1/1/1 with the tools it had. Protoss didn't need a balance change-- it just needed time to figure things out. Look at the cute hellion/marine elevator push SlayerS Terrans took to MLG Raleigh-- Zergs didn't really have an answer for it, but shortly afterwards they found a solution, and now it's not a problem anymore. With regards to professional players talking about balance, I think we fundamentally disagree. I want to say though that it is not brave of a pro to tell the public that there are imbalanced aspects of the game. I'm sure you didn't mean to portray it as such, but it's sort of implied in your "Even pros who had a vested stake in arguing that the game was a legitimate E-sport" remark. I will say that, sometimes, when they lose, even professionals get pissed off, and sometimes shift blame elsewhere when they do. With regards to BW, I'd like to hear the multiple issues you have with the arguments better made than mine (which I will yield whole-heartedly)-- simply referring me to a quote by Bisu doesn't quite cut it for me. It's not proof-- it's an opinion. On January 11 2012 10:57 Sabu113 wrote:Show nested quote +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 . Let's look at the NASL finals between MC and PuMa. Both have similar mechanics, both are top-tier players, and one of them showed up with the 1/1/1 (I think that was NASL-- not sure). They are equal caliber players-- even in BW, both of them made about the same impact on the scene, but one of them had an easy-to-execute all-in that beat the other three times. I don't think that means the all-in is imbalanced. I think it means that MC saw something he had never seen before, and he had no idea how to deal with it. This persisted for quite a while, with Protoss trying desperately to find a solution to this 1/1/1 problem. I would agree with you that it would be imbalanced if, today, the 1/1/1 was still an auto-win in TvP, but it isn't. Using the tools it had, Protoss found a way to beat the 1/1/1 while still following a safe gameplan. I don't think I ignored the arguments of the imbalance crowd-- I think I addressed most of them pretty effectively. If there is an argument that I didn't address, I would love to read it. With regards to map imbalance, I think there's a difference between an imbalanced map and a plain shitty map. Look at Blistering Sands-- it seems imbalanced for Zerg because of those pesky rocks at the main's backdoor, but I think this map isn't necessarily imbalanced so much as broken. It heavily favors the Zerg style of play popular at the time (very mobile Muta/Ling force)-- I think that blink stalker play or very heavy-Hellion Mech style would fair just as well. It was also just a shitty map though because it was fucking impossible to take a third. I think this is true with a lot of old, terrible maps. Insofar as gold minerals, again, I don't think this mechanic favors a race so much as a style. You mention that these types of threads follow stereotypes, but I think you should re-examine the design of each race in StarCraft II. I think that every race has the tools to employ successfully multiple styles-- there is no general style of play that is unique to a race. I think that there are styles that are easier to execute for each race, but, at the highest level of play, ease of execution is irrelevant-- if a strategy can work with perfect micro, than it can work at the highest levels of play-- in the same way, if a Zerg wanted to skip zergling speed and play a turtle-style, upgrade-focused play until BL/Infestor play, and if it works, then it shouldn't matter how hard it is to hold off P/T aggression. <-- I recognize this is pretty sloppily organized, but I'm pretty tired and there's a lot more to get through. fOrGG/Leenock was fucking epic-- I only saw game 1 though (meant to get up early but I slept through my alarm). Sad that he lost though 
-_-:
+ Show Spoiler +On January 11 2012 11:20 -_- wrote:
You're article was well-written. However, in my opinion, you create the same false dichotomy everyone who attacks balance theorists does: players can either discuss balance or improve their game. In actuality, the choice is more likely: discuss balance or browse funny pictures about Starcraft. Certainly that is a problem with my argument. I think the difference is that funny pictures about StarCraft don't breed as much disagreement as balance argument. Divisiveness breeds discussion. I realize right now that an OP whining about balance whine is pretty hypocritical and distracts just as much as balance whine does.
Jermstuddog:
+ Show Spoiler +On January 11 2012 11:54 Jermstuddog wrote:
Every time somebody tries to suggest that 5 rax reaper was irrelevant by the time Blizzard got around to nerfing it, I stop reading right then and there.
Nobody had solved 5 rax reaper. It was still alive and kicking. Fortunately, everybody was downright terrible at the game at that point in time, so even pros were screwing it up more often than properly executing it.
It was a horrible strategy that was doing horrible things to the MU as a whole, and looking back at the history of Terran nerfs, it was only one of MANY issues that existed at the time.
OPs whole argument becomes irrelevant as soon as he mentions that build IMO. I respectfully disagree. FRR was a powerful all-in, but Zerg could deal with it. A Zerg properly defending FRR on 2 base will come out of that stage of the game light years ahead in tech and economy. Once Zerg started holding FRR, Terran was pretty screwed. It's the same as if a Terran did zero damage with a proxy 2 rax or if a Protoss did zero damage with a 4gate. FRR was an all in. It was a good all in, but Zerg could beat it. My point about FRR is totally legitimate, and, in reality, the nerf wasn't really necessary. Additionally, saying that the article is totally irrelevant because you disagree with one facet of it is totally irrational. I used multiple examples and arguments to support my thesis so that even if I couldn't convince you with one point, perhaps you would find merit in another. If you're going to dismiss an entire argument on the basis of one point, you probably shouldn't argue very often.
RedDragon571:
+ Show Spoiler +On January 11 2012 12:21 RedDragon571 wrote:
I think the reason so many people quit the game revolve around GAME DESIGN not balance.
Sc2 and blizzard sold its soul to the devil because it thought it could attract a more casual (larger) player base by simplifying game mechanics, removing micro relative to bw, speeding up the game pace (macro mechanics mules, inject, chrono) adding simplified unit counters (bonus dmg) and removing terrain advantages. Sc2 is better looking and way more easy than BW. Yes, we have seen huge growth in western e-sports because we attracted that larger casual, (much less patient and hardworking) player base. All at the cost of reducing the "staying power" and "lasting appeal" of the game.
I still love starcraft 2, because compared to every other game out there it has the highest learning curve, greatest strategic depth and biggest challenge of any other RTS. However, All those decisions, to make the game easier, made it much more blurry at top level play. I doubt we will see many repeat GSL winners, I think the jury is out on whether the game has the difficulty and mastery, that will let the top players stay at the top. The player with the best mechanics and decision making should win most of the time. However, In ladder, and elsewhere, I feel there is a problem of mechanically inferior players that copy a timing push, who get out X number of units at X time and simply just win because the copied a pro players build. I think it is too easy to imitate pro players because the mechanical bar is so low.
All of this contributes to each game being not as entertaining.
1. Most sc2 games decide the winner in one climatic battle.
2. It is much more difficult for someone to come back from being "behind" because of the macro mechanics.
3. Micro is far less interesting and less rewarding. B team pro can easily copy A team pro's strategy and execute to a similar degree.
4. Macro is power overwhelming, if you have more units, you can kill your opponent, because, terrain advantages positioning and map control are much weaker.
5. Mechanics are so simple even a bronze league player can almost pull of a Korean pro level timing push early in the game.
6.PvP and Z v Z are uninteresting to all but people who play them, due to game design flaws, not spectator friendly.
TLDR: a bit of a ramble, but basically, Game Design has simplified Starcraft into something everyone CAN play easily, but simultaneously made it into something less interesting TO play or watch. Expansions are expected to reboot franchise, and will lack the "lasting appeal" that a better designed game like Brood War was unless fundamental game design is altered. I think a lot of what you are arguing falls into a category outside imbalance. I think it takes longer than 2 years (including the Beta) to determine who will be the best of the best, and who will stay on top. I also think that time is the solution to all of the numbers in your list: 1. I remember Day9 making the comment that BW was about finesse and SC2 was about kill shit. I laughed (it was a pretty good joke when he said it)-- In the Beta and early parts of release, everything was about kill shit, but now that the game is developing into the same caliber of finesse exhibited in a lot of BW professional games-- look at Jjakji vs Leenock game 1 of the GSL November finals and fOrGG vs Leenock game 1 of GSL Season 1's Code S Round of 32. I can see most TvZ's being this perfect in a few months. 2. It was pretty damn hard to come from behind in BW too. Especially if, as is the case most of the time in StarCraft II, your opponent has roughly the same skill-level as you. I don't have a better arguement than that, so you may have intellectually bested me on this one. 3. Again, I think in a few months, boxing and a-clicking to the back of an opponents base is going to be gone. You know how a 15 hatch can hold off a 2 rax bunker attack in ZvT? The Zerg is defending a big attack with fewer units than his opponent. I think that, as the professional scene develops, Code S players will be able to win more engagements with fewer units in situations where a Code A player would not be able to win. As it stands now, I think the micro is relatively even amongst players now because the innovative focus has been more on strategy and macro than on control. 4. I think this is sort of a mesh between 1 and 3-- yes more units is better, but I think it's because, right now, the control aspect of the game is underdeveloped, and finesse hasn't either. 5. Better players will still win. There's more to an RTS than mechanics. Intuition and intelligence are often-times more rewarding than perfect mechanics. I also challenge the assertion that mechanics are easier in StarCraft II. Certainly, you have more tools to accomplish macro, but there are also extra functions you have to perform. Queens, Chronoboost, and MULEs are extra mechanics not present in BW that give players more to do. 6. Top of OP I differentiate between imbalance and broken. Also I like ZvZ-- the lategame is awesome.
This is probably longer than OP o.O
EDIT: added spoilers because it was so goddam long
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as far as 1-1-1 goes, maps shiouldnt make or break racial balance. That means you've added another layer of complexity to the system, and if u add more units (SOON IN HOTS LOL!), then that balance is then broken across all levels again.
uits like when people figured out there were subpar talents for WoW PvP opposed to PvE. you reskilled every time u wanted to do something, and it was stupid. Then they came out with "PvP gear".
All of this ciould've been dealt with, not by adding more confounding balance varaibles to the game, but by perfecting the PvP and tweaking the PvE behind the scenes to make it work allperfectly together. Instead they created "dual balance" which is really another way of being lazy and not fixing the system with a more elegant solution thats both less code that can go wrong and easier to balance in the long run.
building on top of garbage will just create a bigger pile of garbage. Splitting balance between tweaking race and tweaking maps will just make more additions create more instability, and therefore, imbalance.
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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.
Also consider that you can look over at the TLPD bar for foreigner results and there are 3 in the top 5. The major vocal pro representation in the community at the moment are primarily protoss players, so you're more likely to hear why/where protoss are struggling and not where protoss are doing very well. That thought process trickles down and all of a sudden it's ok for a gold protoss player to complain about the game being imbalanced because they herd a pro player say on a podcast that they thought something was too powerful when really that gold level player is just bad.
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The way I see it is that a progamer will nearly always beat an average masters player and an established masters player will nearly always beat a diamond player, regardless of how abusive and exploitive the strategies are that they face. Thus only those who have nowhere else to improve in terms of mechanics and understanding should blame their loss on imbalance, and such a person doesn't exist.
On the other hand, one simply cannot deny that Starcraft 2 has certain strategies/tactics/compositions/situations that allow a player of lesser skill to be able to take down a much stronger player, so although I would like to say that skill completely bypasses game design in this game, I cannot honestly do so.
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On January 11 2012 14:25 shizaep wrote:
The way I see it is that a progamer will nearly always beat an average masters player and an established masters player will nearly always beat a diamond player, regardless of how abusive and exploitive the strategies are that they face. Thus only those who have nowhere else to improve in terms of mechanics and understanding should blame their loss on imbalance, and such a person doesn't exist.
On the other hand, one simply cannot deny that Starcraft 2 has certain strategies/tactics/compositions/situations that allow a player of lesser skill to be able to take down a much stronger player, so although I would like to say that skill completely bypasses game design in this game, I cannot honestly do so.
That's an interesting point. I also think the definition of skill can be called into question here. There is more to StarCraft than mechanics. I think that, in order to fairly assess the skill of a player, one must holistically consider their mechanics, intuition, intelligence, and experience (maybe some more factors too, I don't know).
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On January 11 2012 10:49 Sabu113 wrote:
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
1.08 was 20+ knee jerk changes, and was made back in 2001. Blizzard never had an opinion on whether or not the game was balanced after that patch. They just didn't care about making balance changes to it anymore.
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Your right, discussing balance isn't beneficial for ones own mindset and internal game. Unless you think your race is overpowered :D
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@RedDragon571: you doubt we will see many repeat GSL champions??? how about nestea, 3 time champ, mvp 3 time champ, mc 2 time champ, MKP multiple GSL finals. if this is not proof that the top players can stay on top then idk what is.
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On January 11 2012 08:39 Sinensis wrote: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 +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtVAWZv5pI&feature=player_embedded
Ugh that game was painful
EDIT: I really loved the OP. It was a refreshing look at a very overly rehashed subject.
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On January 11 2012 10:55 wrags wrote:Show nested quote +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
patches were far less frequent in sc1
the overwhelming majority of changes were withheld and deployed all at once during brood war
then after brood war there were some major sweeping global changes to high tech units and a huge nerf bat swung at the 4pool
do we have an expansion pack yet?
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Definitely agree. People should stop looking at their losses for imbalance and instead should be faulting their own gameplay.
There's a really great example in the history of sc2 that really highlights what the OP is saying.
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Thread misses a major point: "balance" is as much about the feel of a game feature/mechanic/strategy to the designers as anything. While they hopefully are well-informed and benevolent, they are ultimately opinions.
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I think it's funny that people can't seem to tell the difference between slightly off balance and completely off balance. That's why it's called "balance" and not "auto-win."
Comments like "it's not imbalanced if it's possible to beat it" kind of miss the point. Take something like 2 rax in ZvT this past summer--even before all the build time tweaks it was possible to hold off a 2 rax. But it was pretty hard and required such a commitment of resources or such a non-economic opening that you would most likely die to a well-executed different opening that simply faked 2 rax pressure. This is an imbalance. Is it a game-destroying one? No, of course not. You only needed to be say 10% better than your opponent and you'd be ok. But over the long run, statistically, Terrans were mostly beating Zergs at the highest levels. So it got tweaked and anyway BFH came along.
The point is it's possible for the game to be mildly out of balance. Right now it certainly seems to me that T is a little dominant, Z is pretty good, and P is a little weak. But just a little. Not so much so that no Protoss can ever win in Code S, but enough that by the time you get to the Ro16 you're probably looking at over 50% Terrans.
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On January 11 2012 14:55 psychotics wrote:
@RedDragon571: you doubt we will see many repeat GSL champions??? how about nestea, 3 time champ, mvp 3 time champ, mc 2 time champ, MKP multiple GSL finals. if this is not proof that the top players can stay on top then idk what is.
I understand that, I am asserting that in the future as the game becomes more mapped out, and most styles are solved, the differing factor in player skill will be mechanics. Which I think the skill ceiling may not be near as high as brood war. I think as the game is figured out, Repeat champions will become more and more rare.
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On January 11 2012 12:44 Rkie wrote:This is a bit off topic, but I practice "counting" units in images I see or certain points in games just to get better at knowing numbers. In the marine scv tank image + Show Spoiler + I noticed something. Try counting the number of marines. Even at a glance. Tanks are easy. 5. But the marines and SCVs just glob together. There is no real coherence at a quick glance which is really all anyone can afford in the middle of a game. I then counted them one at a time and got 25 or 26, I can't tell without having to go back a third time. You could guess 20 marines, or 25 marines, but if it happens to be 5-10 more or less than what the actual number is, you may have over- or underreacted, which could potentially set you behind and/or lose you the game. I know there is another thread on this topic but I feel like unit clumping and pathing definitely plays a role in balance.
This is actually a problem with the human brain - we have difficulty recognizing numbers over eight (possibly ten) just at a glance. :O
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Good read, sadly you cannot change human beings
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On January 11 2012 11:03 Aristotle7 wrote:
Way to bring politics into Starcraft 2. Please keep RL politics away from Sc2.
He's not bringing politics into it he's making an analogy.
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This is such a good point, I never considered the fact that newer players will instantly be discouraged to play+watch if there's talk of imbalance all over the place.
Personally I've been close to GM level for a long time but struggle with motivation because of my view on the game as poorly designed and unfair, and how Blizzard has done a poor job putting out balance patches (in my opinion). I would love it if someone wrote an extensive article on how to get over these mental blocks.
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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.
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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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I think that someone who complains about balance first posts here on TL, gets warned, posts on reddit, gets downvoted, and finally goes on the b.net forums where they quickly drift off the front page; so I don't think that the community balance complaints are as big of a deal as they once were. But you're right, people do spend too much time complaining about balance rather than watching their replays and figuring out what went wrong on their side; however, when certain strategies are executed perfectly, and their defenses are also executed perfectly, if the defender ends up behind after defending, than it's difficult to deny imbalance (although builds like this are extremely rare and usually only pro players have insight into perfect execution).
Should us plebian complain about balance? no. Should pro players? maybe. But I guarantee you they are playing more often than they are complaining. Even Idra.
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I'll just be a bit brutal here.
On January 11 2012 06:57 mbr2321 wrote:
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.
That is wrong. No way around it. If you can't approach game analysis strategically, your thinking is likely to be worth nothing. You have to consider strategic interactions, it's just the way it is in games of imperfect information.
Yes, the metagame evolves, and we can keep hoping for miracles, but it is completely plausible to show that (for example) currently Terran has massive advantage over Zerg for the first 10 or so minutes of the game.
And no, this is not a problem that can be measured as something like a "meme", eg, how many times a month we get someone on the blizzard forums complaining about this or that build being overpowered. That is to say, the comparison to political slander is wrong.
We can be analytic about this by, for example, building a choice-response tree for a match up (sequential game) and seeing, as a result, that for the first 10 minutes or so Terran is invulnerable to attacks unless Zerg does a surprise all in (elects for a highly unusual strategy) of some kind, AND that Zerg can die to a variety of Terran attacks that aren't even all-in, and most of which require different counters, on top of seeing them coming (if you just made a round of drones and didn't see it, the game ends there). We can then conclude that T has it really good in the early game and the early middle game against Zerg. The judgement is of course subjective. We can find objective justification, by seeing how often zergs die in ZvT before 11 minute mark, and compare it to how often terrans die in TvZ before the 11 minute mark. However I am not aware of such databases existing currently. It would be highly useful to build such a DB.
In my opinion building a thorough choice-response tree is a totally valid way of doing analysis. And it is potentially even more valid than pure statistic, due to players not being completely rational about their options. And human inability to do all potential standard builds perfectly, even if players always chose their builds and transitions perfectly.
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On January 11 2012 17:32 CortoMontez wrote:+ Show Spoiler +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.
Is this post flamebait or something? The TvP was true about 6 months ago before the 1/1/1 was figured out. It wasn't even still relevant *before* the patch that buffed immortals and nerfed rax build time, because by then Protoss had finally done some innovation and figured out ways to handle it.
Let me specifically pull something out of this:
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.
During the time where 1/1/1 was supreme, everyone was emulating oGsMC's style of play. Not a bad thing to do, being a GSL Champion and all. Problem is, he was the only one really succeeding at the time, literally *EVERYONE* was stealing it. And yes, MC's standard PvT was also an extremely greedy build, though he usually used it to transition into a 2base push rather than a full blown macro game if he could help it. Terrans then figured out that a hardcore 1/1/1 would punish MC's style (and quite a few builds like it) and started doing it. For about 2 months there was a stagnation where Protoss were doing MC's style, then complaining that they were losing to an all-in that was specifically tailored to counter that style. How does that make sense exactly?
The 1/1/1 is old news now, especially since the patch. It can't even stop the build it's designed to counter unless the Protoss is a much weaker player than the Terran.
Now, if you want to get into coin-flip situations in TvP, we could always talk about how a Terran in the late game has to have perfect scouting to keep an eye on colo/templar/archon numbers so that they don't over/undermake vikings and have enough ghosts to EMP everything (which is also 1.5x higher now since the EMP nerf.) It's a legitimate complaint, which is being seen come to prominence on Calm Before the Storm. You can see on the larger macro maps why so many Terrans were relying on all-ins and 2-base timings to kill Protoss -- it's EXTREMELY DIFFICULT (not impossible, not imbalanced, but hard as f***) to keep good enough recon on a Protoss to have a money mix to be able to handle the attack. If the Terran wins the large battle, he can usually do some damage, but not a great deal before enough zealots are instantly warped in to repel it. If the Protoss wins the big battle, the game is pretty much over, as in small numbers a Terran can't recover. Imbalanced? I don't believe so -- as I said, a LOT of pressure is on the Terran to keep up good enough recon to keep it from being a coin flip, but it *is* doable. Just as well-timed overlord sacs are doable. Just as building observers to see what is coming is doable.
Whether all of this is good or bad is up for debate. But in every non-mirror, there's always more of an onus on one race or the other to keep up better scouting and be the reactive race, and which also changes throughout the game (PvT -- Protoss reactive early, Terran reactive mid/late -- TvZ, Zerg reactive early, Terran reactive mid/late, PvZ I'm less versed on but it feels like Protoss reactive early, Zerg reactive mid/late). If the reactive player is more skilled, and more aware of what to do in a certain situation b/c he's played it 1000 times and has fantastic scouting, he can look nearly unbeatable, which can start the cries of imbalance. If the reactive player is less skilled, or less aware of what to do against something, he can start to think that he can never win.....which can also start the cries of imbalance.
If something is genuinely imbalanced, it takes more than a few weeks of working with it to be good. If people spent all the effort they spent whining about whether something is actually imbalanced, and put it into map awareness, build optimization, and working on timings, they would see the game is a lot closer to balanced than they make it out to be. Personally I thought TvZ was unplayable until my map awareness improved and I stopped sieging my tanks late every engagement. To the point that the Zergs I was playing at the time all started whining about how impossible ZvT is. =/
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I do not agree with some points in the OP.
1) Five rax reaper was broken. Just like you said with the 1/1/1 was op it's easy to execute and yields high results. In both theory and practice FRR was broken and blizzard must've confirmed this on their test realm as they balanced reaper eventually.
2) Balance must be discussed for it is important in a strategy game and an ESPORT. If you disregard balance/imbalance (which you seem to ignore but it actually exist) then everyone will eventually switch to the imbalanced race/tactic and only do that, making the game one sided and boring. Which would be like making a rule that you can't pass the ball in basketball but you must score yourself.
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Great effort by the OP, but sadly a futile one as well.
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On January 11 2012 12:21 RedDragon571 wrote:
I think the reason so many people quit the game revolve around GAME DESIGN not balance.
Sc2 and blizzard sold its soul to the devil because it thought it could attract a more casual (larger) player base by simplifying game mechanics, removing micro relative to bw, speeding up the game pace (macro mechanics mules, inject, chrono) adding simplified unit counters (bonus dmg) and removing terrain advantages. Sc2 is better looking and way more easy than BW. Yes, we have seen huge growth in western e-sports because we attracted that larger casual, (much less patient and hardworking) player base. All at the cost of reducing the "staying power" and "lasting appeal" of the game.
I still love starcraft 2, because compared to every other game out there it has the highest learning curve, greatest strategic depth and biggest challenge of any other RTS. However, All those decisions, to make the game easier, made it much more blurry at top level play. I doubt we will see many repeat GSL winners, I think the jury is out on whether the game has the difficulty and mastery, that will let the top players stay at the top. The player with the best mechanics and decision making should win most of the time. However, In ladder, and elsewhere, I feel there is a problem of mechanically inferior players that copy a timing push, who get out X number of units at X time and simply just win because the copied a pro players build. I think it is too easy to imitate pro players because the mechanical bar is so low.
All of this contributes to each game being not as entertaining.
1. Most sc2 games decide the winner in one climatic battle.
2. It is much more difficult for someone to come back from being "behind" because of the macro mechanics.
3. Micro is far less interesting and less rewarding. B team pro can easily copy A team pro's strategy and execute to a similar degree.
4. Macro is power overwhelming, if you have more units, you can kill your opponent, because, terrain advantages positioning and map control are much weaker.
5. Mechanics are so simple even a bronze league player can almost pull of a Korean pro level timing push early in the game.
6.PvP and Z v Z are uninteresting to all but people who play them, due to game design flaws, not spectator friendly.
TLDR: a bit of a ramble, but basically, Game Design has simplified Starcraft into something everyone CAN play easily, but simultaneously made it into something less interesting TO play or watch. Expansions are expected to reboot franchise, and will lack the "lasting appeal" that a better designed game like Brood War was unless fundamental game design is altered.
Yes I agree with most you say, eventho I don't know if it's true, I still feel like this is the case where better player has less options to outplay opponent. This is also the reason I'm not playing so much anymore, but starcraft has reputation of evolving all the time so I still follow the scene and see what's up, maybe play a game or two per day avg. (Would play more if any of my friends who bought sc2 would still play.)
I guess I'mt trying to say that sc2 should be more like BW (maybe, maybe not) and blizzard happily disagrees with this statment.
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Ive had moments of frustration in which I thought the game was imbalanced. but every time that happens, I eventually watch the replay and find 1000 mistakes that I made that attributed to my loss.
In the end, its hard for anyone to declare imbalances because its hard for anyone to play a perfect 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.
I remain of the oppinion that Protoss is just horribly designed...
They will either be terribly op, or terribly up...there is no middle ground.
They rely to much on deathball OR all in timing atacks.
And those can be either to strong or to week. There is no middle ground there. Only thing they can do that is neither, is some cute prism play vs Zerg or light air play vs zerg.
And PvP remains the silliest mu in sc2.
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Op, great job. every time i see or hear about a balance discussion, those were the words i was thinking. BLzzard have done an amazing job of balancing the game in such a short period, however i would like to see the viability of units (aka the reaper) make starcraft more interesting with more strategys etc.
Ps: reading some of the comments is destroying my soul, no matter how intelligent they word it they are elaborately saying, ZOMG GAME SO IMBALANCED PLZ FIX BLI$$
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I only have a few problems with SC2 as it stands:
-The relationship of marines to banelings; at high levels marines can arguably become TOO cost efficient for zerg to deal with but at low levels banelings are WAYY to cost efficient vs a new terran player who doesn't even have half the micro needed for effective splits. It's overall bad game design and no one is the winner.
-The relationship of collosus in PvT, PvZ, and even PvP. PvP it seems whoever has the most collosus late game wins even if macro is relatively even, thats not fun or dynamic. PvT and PvZ, well did you make the counter to collosus? No? well then you INSTANTLY LOSE, did you make too many corrupters or too many vikings? YOU ALSO LOSE. Oh you made just enough and micro'd them well? Then you live, but dont get that much of an edge because now they just switch to something else like archons or HTs. It's not fair that protoss can go collosus with little to no reprecussions when for the other races it's life or death.
-I don't like how Bio is the only viable option TvP besides silly 1-2base timings that incoporate thors/tanks (as if that even counts as "mech")
-I don't like how Blizzard prefers slow strong expensive a-move units to quick cheap micro rewarding units. The phoeniex is a GREATly designed unit, the collosus and thor are NOT.
-I don't like how slow hydras are. I dont like how garbage ultras and carriers are. I wish the carrier was a viable late game unit in all the matchups, much like the collosus so it would be more of a choice: do I go collosus or carriers? (right now you only go collosus out of those two if you dont want to lose)
-I don't like hero units.
-I want more units that promote micro in ALL the races. I remember day9 saying something like in BW good micro could increase the value of the unit by x9 if you had godly micro, in SC2 the max is like 1.5x which is garbage.
-Disgusting blob vs blob armies where the last army standing wins the game. ugh. (you know what im talking about)
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Claiming that something just needs to be "figured out" doesn't mean it's not imbalanced. If I was playing Checkers, and someone replaced one of their pieces with a chess Rook and moved it according to how that piece moves in chess, I'm going to claim imba, regardless if technically the rook can be beaten by a checker piece. Even if the possibility does exist that it can be defeated, it's still not "fair" for the other player, who has to work way harder to make up for it.
-The relationship of collosus in PvT, PvZ, and even PvP. PvP it seems whoever has the most collosus late game wins even if macro is relatively even, thats not fun or dynamic. PvT and PvZ, well did you make the counter to collosus? No? well then you INSTANTLY LOSE, did you make too many corrupters or too many vikings? YOU ALSO LOSE. Oh you made just enough and micro'd them well? Then you live, but dont get that much of an edge because now they just switch to something else like archons or HTs. It's not fair that protoss can go collosus with little to no reprecussions when for the other races it's life or death.
^ I agreed with your other points, except this one. First of all, overmaking vikings is not some huge endgame threat to terrans. Terrans have scan, essentially a wallhack for SC2. If you aren't properly prepared, then you aren't playing Terran properly. Second, vikings can convert and attack ground units, something Terrans seem to forget, like, always. Third, colossi aren't immune to everything except vikings: they take damage from that bioball and those supporting tanks just like everything else on the battlefield. Fourth, if a terran is really shitty at making vikings to counter colossi, they can always go with banshees instead... but they don't, for some reason (range most likely, but fuck, banshees cloak!). Fifth: one word... ghosts.
Also, I don't think you realize just how crippling it is to a Protoss to lose even a small group of colossi. Those things don't grow on trees you know. And tech changes if they don't work? That requires going up a whole tech branch, and making two new buildings just for the sake of producing one unit... hardly what I'd call a flippant "just switch to HT/archon" moment, but actually a real investment of resources to need to pull off. Remember, protoss tech is not linear the way zerg and terran tech is. Of the three races, it's the one that actually has a tech "tree", rather than a tech "stick".
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On January 11 2012 23:52 Gotmog 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. I remain of the oppinion that Protoss is just horribly designed... They will either be terribly op, or terribly up...there is no middle ground. They rely to much on deathball OR all in timing atacks. And those can be either to strong or to week. There is no middle ground there. Only thing they can do that is neither, is some cute prism play vs Zerg or light air play vs zerg. And PvP remains the silliest mu in sc2.
You got the point imho.
But i disagree on PvT. Did you saw Grubby vs. Goody on Tal'darim? It was just a perfect execution of 3gate eco-pressure by Grubby (if you like to call it this way). He put lots of pressure on Goody without being allin or in a "must kill lot or lose" situation.
I feel that this might be the future of PvT but i agree on your point on PvZ because you mostly can not affort to lose you're army even one time against zerg. In this case i might also pick Grubby as an example against Destiny in g2 and g3. Although he won g3 it was a HUGE comeback after loosing his "first" army consisting mostly of sentrys.
Marines and even tanks are way cheaper and more "loseable" than every early P army you can imagine. Ofc it's bad if terran loses his first army but definitly not that over as if protoss does.
This leads to the situation you discribed, when P either wins or lose within their first push ("terribly up/op"). Some kind of recall might fix it, a cheaper sentry (ofc with less energy) could also do good. I'm heavily awaiting HotS in that matter...
edit/ Maybe i didn't figure it out well enought but this post is not supposed to complain but to underline the "bad design of protoss", shown in the lack of mobility and cheap units.
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On January 11 2012 06:57 mbr2321 wrote:
Whenever someone is complaining about imbalance, or talks about imbalance, time, space, and energy is taken away from more important discussion.
That was the most lengthy way I have ever seen someone say that they think the game is balanced and that we need to look at our own play before making imba claims....
I just wasted much of my own time, space, and energy reading this :/
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Let's not kid ourselves--imbalance can and often does really exist.
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On January 11 2012 22:30 confusedcrib wrote:
I think that someone who complains about balance first posts here on TL, gets warned, posts on reddit, gets downvoted, and finally goes on the b.net forums where they quickly drift off the front page;
Too bad this isn't true, balance threads are the most populair ones, those are the threads I always see when I go there (so I stop visiting them). Bnet forums is FULL of balance whiners. And it's so tempting to post there, but mostly there can't be reasoned with.
edit: I kinda lose my respect for players that whine about balance. At least the ones that whine about their own race when they lose. Even if it's unbalanced, you make like 20 errors yourself, go fix those first.
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I'm not sure if I agree with the notion that you "either talk about imbalance" or "you try to solve the issue with your play"
I can only speak for myself, but the few times I have been considering that something might be imbalanced was during the times where I was playing 30-40 games a day for weeks trying to crack a particular build / mu. Those were the times where I would consider complaining out of sheer frustration...
However, the times where I'm playing like 5-10 games some days a week, I couldn't care less cause first of all I know I'm not in any position to judge anything and secondly I haven't invested a huge amount of time into looking at it so it's not nearly as frustrating.
I understand that some people play like 2 games a week and still complain... I just wanted to point out that it's not always the case.
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a well-written piece that speaks truth for much of the community. However, I think a lot of people are drawn to balance talk (even people who don't even play much of the game) because it is a controversial issue that stirs up emotions in casual and pro gamers alike. So assuming that the people who talk about balance might be "more productive" otherwise might not necessarily be true -- if it is drama that they seek first and foremost.
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United Kingdom36158 Posts
On January 12 2012 00:26 kcdc wrote:
Let's not kid ourselves--imbalance can and often does really exist.
This. Basically there are two points:
1) We lost a game because we made mistakes;
2) Some imbalance exists.
People forget that 1 and 2 are not mutually exclusive.
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On January 11 2012 10:34 run.at.me wrote:
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.
Sounds like you only want mirror matches, asymmetrical races will always force they player to EXPLOIT their race because it is the only edge that they can have over the other race who are also EXPLOITING their race. Easy builds as you call it can beat other players because their lack of experience of dealing with those kinds of builds... the element of surprise gives the attacker an advantage and if you want to remove that you might as well remove the fog of war and play some chess.
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If OP is correct this means that, if you look at terran results they have almost never been below 50%, so that would mean terran has the best and most innovative players right?
While terrans have seem the least development build and strategywise, if anything, with toss and zergs having to constantly come up with new buils to counter le fromage du jour shouldnt they be the most innovative and versatile players?
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The idea that many people refuse to accept a "fact" concerning Mr. Obama has nothing to do with SC2. For me, the fact is that SC2 is far from balanced. It's a game, not life, you can blame and fix the system, you don't have to put up with bad design. The problem isn't that people refuse to accept that SC2 is balanced, the problem is that progamers can't progress without ignoring design flaws and as such we lack the "trade union" which would say "Hey Blizzard, fix this, this and this or we'll stop playing your game". The only way to enjoy and improve is to ignore the design flaws, but it’s much more important to fix the obvious issues because it’s a game, not reality, it’s not set in stone.
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The game can be broken or imbalanced for one race or a certain strategy as you stated. The large question is whether it's good gameplay. Look at PvP for instance those changes were a result of gameplay although linked to a certain strategy. I think that gameplay should have the highest priority above balance. That's why the HOTS, the expansion, will improve gameplay not balance.
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I liked the message you were trying to bring, but I have a few things about this read I'd like clarified.
First of all, which race do you(the OP) play? League? What's your background in gaming etc.
Are you in any way affiliated with Blizzard and so on.
It's important to me, when you write this saying people make statements with little research behind it that you make it clear to us who you yourself are, and what should give you credibility in your points. If I just accepted what you wrote, because I'm of the same notion we're at the exactly same point as "Imbalance Theorists".
What kind of research did you exactly do before writing this? Because you seem to think you know a lot about the mindset of players, and what kind of actions should/could be made. Be careful you don't walk down the same path the exact same path the people you're calling out to in this post did. When all comes to all, this read has zero statistics, and is just a bunch of assumptions making it comparable to "Imbalance Theorists" statements.
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I really hate to say this, but I stopped reading when the OP said that 5RR wasn't imbalanced and had been "solved". The reality is that it HADN'T been solved. There was no new build order that fixed it, no modifications to play that made it easier to hold off. Terrans screwed it up because their micro wasn't up to par (just like everyone else). I'm sure that if we'd seen it develop further, Terrans would have refined the build by harassing with one early Reaper to force Zerglings and then building up a critical mass at home. You know, like Protosses do with Corsairs in Broodwar.The reason the build died out wasn't Zerg innovation, it was multiple sweeping changes from increased Reaper build time to delayed Reaper speed to the huge increase in Roach range. Furthermore, there was no reason to assume that it was possible for Zergs to develop a way to counter this build. It hit early enough that there were no tech options beyond Zerglings and Roaches. Zerglings were a fragile option, and only worked as long as Terran didn't have a critical mass of Reapers. Roaches could be kited, and were actually what the build was trying to force in the first place so that the Terran could switch into Marauders and instantly win. Your misconception that it was going "out of fashion" or that Zergs were learning to counter it invalidates your entire post, because it shows that you don't understand that there have been incredibly imbalanced builds. 5RR was the most imbalanced of them all, and saying that it had been figured out is vastly ignorant.
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Should players focus on improving their own skill? --> Yes
Does this have anything, at all, to do with the balance discussion? --> No
Imbalance exists, whether you focus on it or not, you should not, for the sake of your sanity and your skill level, focus on it to the exclusion of practice, but that does not mean that imbalance either doesn't exist, or that individuals who point out imbalance ought to be dismissed as whiners.
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On January 15 2012 23:13 Rockztar wrote:
I liked the message you were trying to bring, but I have a few things about this read I'd like clarified.
First of all, which race do you(the OP) play? League? What's your background in gaming etc.
Are you in any way affiliated with Blizzard and so on.
It's important to me, when you write this saying people make statements with little research behind it that you make it clear to us who you yourself are, and what should give you credibility in your points. If I just accepted what you wrote, because I'm of the same notion we're at the exactly same point as "Imbalance Theorists".
What kind of research did you exactly do before writing this? Because you seem to think you know a lot about the mindset of players, and what kind of actions should/could be made. Be careful you don't walk down the same path the exact same path the people you're calling out to in this post did. When all comes to all, this read has zero statistics, and is just a bunch of assumptions making it comparable to "Imbalance Theorists" statements.
My tag is Morte, I'm a Diamond level Terran on NA who is majoring in International Studies with a double minor in Economics and Political Science at The Ohio State University.
With regards to my background in gaming, in my experience there are two types of gamers-- those who explore the depths of as many games as they can get their hands on, and those who invest all of their time into one game and one community. I am of the latter category. When my brother buys FPS games for x-box, I beat the campaign on easy and never touch them again. Almost all of my extra-curricular time is devoted to StarCraft.
I have no affiliation with Blizzard except a special fondness for their games-- BW, WC3, D2, WoW, and, now StarCraft II.
Essentially, I have no empirical evidence to support my claim-- it's incredibly hard to find empirical evidence that can clearly prove my affirmative or its negative. It's much more of a StarCraft weltanschauung-- a philosophy. It's almost impossible to effectively argue a philosophy, so my OP was more of an attempt to structure the little evidence I have in such a manner that it's understandable, and hopefully, mildly persuasive.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://msgboard.snopes.com/politics/graphics/longform.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Palanca-ejemplo.jpg)
