Why such difference in balance of SC2 and SC1?
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SiarX
50 Posts
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Nirli
Bulgaria331 Posts
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tskarzyn
United States516 Posts
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
1 Post
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jztjhgfgh
3 Posts
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prosatan
Romania7404 Posts
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 ! | ||
THERIDDLER
Canada113 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23406 Posts
On January 12 2025 05:06 tskarzyn wrote: 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. | ||
ejozl
Denmark3311 Posts
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Blargh
United States2098 Posts
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
Poland3409 Posts
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Waxangel
United States33039 Posts
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