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Active: 2575 users

Why such difference in balance of SC2 and SC1?

Forum Index > Closed
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SiarX
Profile Joined December 2021
133 Posts
January 11 2025 18:28 GMT
#1
SC2 is still not balanced after so many patches. Yet SC BW managed to achieve great balance with very few (relatively) patches... I wonder why. Maybe the issue is in core design of SC2 races?
Nirli
Profile Joined February 2023
Bulgaria381 Posts
January 11 2025 19:08 GMT
#2
Because BW is the pinnacle of gaming and 1v1 across all games, virtual, tabletop, etc.
tskarzyn
Profile Joined July 2010
United States516 Posts
January 11 2025 20:06 GMT
#3
On January 12 2025 03:28 SiarX wrote:
SC2 is still not balanced after so many patches. Yet SC BW managed to achieve great balance with very few (relatively) patches... I wonder why. Maybe the issue is in core design of SC2 races?


Broodwar PvT is easily more imbalanced than any SC2 MU. The difference between games it not balance. It's difficulty. For example, the difficulty of BW macro being much higher, which gives the better macro player the ability to reap huge dividends from a small difference in skill. Individual battles are also less decisive in BW, making it more difficult for weak players to grind out wins against superior opponents. And so on and so forth. It's so much harder to beat stronger players in BW that the race becomes secondary in many casees.
jimmyjac19
Profile Joined January 2025
1 Post
January 12 2025 09:59 GMT
#4
--- Nuked ---
jztjhgfgh
Profile Joined January 2025
3 Posts
Last Edited: 2025-01-12 10:12:25
January 12 2025 10:03 GMT
#5
--- Nuked ---
prosatan
Profile Joined September 2009
Romania8639 Posts
January 12 2025 12:25 GMT
#6
On January 12 2025 04:08 Nirli wrote:
Because BW is the pinnacle of gaming and 1v1 across all games, virtual, tabletop, etc.

+1 Nirli !
Lee JaeDong Fighting! The only church that illuminates is the one that burns.
THERIDDLER
Profile Joined July 2014
Canada128 Posts
January 12 2025 15:00 GMT
#7
Because BW doesn't have a playerbase of 90% protoss players
Please don't fricken hack, its just a game.
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26612 Posts
January 12 2025 23:21 GMT
#8
On January 12 2025 05:06 tskarzyn wrote:
Show nested quote +
On January 12 2025 03:28 SiarX wrote:
SC2 is still not balanced after so many patches. Yet SC BW managed to achieve great balance with very few (relatively) patches... I wonder why. Maybe the issue is in core design of SC2 races?


Broodwar PvT is easily more imbalanced than any SC2 MU. The difference between games it not balance. It's difficulty. For example, the difficulty of BW macro being much higher, which gives the better macro player the ability to reap huge dividends from a small difference in skill. Individual battles are also less decisive in BW, making it more difficult for weak players to grind out wins against superior opponents. And so on and so forth. It's so much harder to beat stronger players in BW that the race becomes secondary in many casees.

Yeah it’s certainly a big part of it for sure.

And SC2 is still incredibly demanding, but it’s very difficult to pull back from a deficit, or pull ahead much in an even game from macro alone.

Macro is a bit easier, the eco ramps up much faster as well. Even if you can gain an edge, it’ll not be all that big and you’re unlikely to have enough game time for it to count.

I think you see this really illustrated with stylistic divergence between players. I feel in SC2 this often stems from what styles and approach players think are best, whereas in BW it’s people adjusting to their mechanical ability and what they’re best at there. To degrees of course!

Best, Bisu, Snow, Stork and others within say Protoss play very differently because nobody can really be S tier at everything simultaneously. Nobody’s looking at Bisu’s PvZ, or Snow’s Reavers and going ‘hm that’s bad, I don’t think it’s a good way to play’, they just can’t do it all.

In SC2, you somewhat can, so it shifts a little from that to ‘just play like Maru/Serral’ etc. Similar but just that few percentage points better

SC2 is more predictable, maps are pretty similar and you get guaranteed scouts, so that offsets this potential volatility. Players like Serral and Clem can still be dominant. A combination of lacking multi spawn maps, and IMO the underrated factor of most tournaments featuring groups, or double elimination make it really hard now to see the S tier players sniped too much.

However I think some of these factors are somewhat external to the games and balance themselves, which I think is somewhat neglected in these kinda discussions as well.

You’ve only really seen the rise of truly consistent dominant players in SC2 with a move to 2 player maps, with a pretty homogenous map pool and tournament formats that are mostly quite forgiving, and a fall off of prep tournaments as well. Someone like Serral is still probably winning the most regardless, but is he placing top 4 in basically every tournament with a bunch of divergent maps, Bo1s in Premiers etc? Conversely you probably would see a more predictable and dominance-friendly BW if you had very samey ‘standard’ map pools with less spawn RNG, Bo3 in groups and double elims in playoffs more.

This isn’t to undersell SC2’s difficulty mechanical difficulty at all btw, but it comes more in other forms. Because coming back from deficits is that bit harder, and you tend to have a few big impactful engagements being super important, your execution and judgement has to be absolutely on point.

Ultimately hey I think both games are great but I think folks neglect quite a few factors when actually comparing them. Balance being one, but not just game balance but balance in the various factors that make up a good competitive game. Variety versus competitive fairness, or volatility versus predictability, or how fun they are to play versus how fun they are to watch.
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
ejozl
Profile Joined October 2010
Denmark3489 Posts
January 13 2025 08:59 GMT
#9
I want to add to wombat's point that our tournaments rarely is a grindfest anymore either. So the players can rly play at their peak conditions all the time. It's a point made that tournaments shouldn't go on too long, or it would be past Serral's bedtime, while funny, it also just means that we for some reason don't want players to get out of their comfort zones. We also play long bo5, bo7 series, which means that if a race is favoured by only 5% that rly shoots up in a bo5, or bo7. More upsets = more balanced results.
SC2 Archon needs "Terrible, terrible damage" as one of it's quotes.
Blargh
Profile Joined September 2010
United States2103 Posts
January 13 2025 09:39 GMT
#10
I'm just gonna throw this out there, but out of the 17 ASLs that have happened from 2016 to present, I believe Protoss has only won 3 of those tournaments. Plus, the best SC2 player of all time happens to be a Protoss player and doesn't attend live tournaments (MaxPayne)!

But again, BW was largely balanced through map making, which sometimes would ignore some matchups in the design, knowing that players would veto the map if it was blatantly imbalanced. Additionally, since there are no more updates, the only way for there ever to be balance is through the maps.
True_Spike
Profile Joined July 2004
Poland3429 Posts
January 13 2025 10:03 GMT
#11
I don't believe SC1 to be more balanced than SC2 at all.
Waxangel
Profile Blog Joined September 2002
United States33592 Posts
January 13 2025 10:14 GMT
#12
Quasi-trolling from a BW forumer with a false-premise
AdministratorHey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?
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