Lord_of_Chaos

The reason we lock all balance discussions is because no one seems to realise the complexity of a true balance discussion. You don't have TWO factors that determine game balance, race and skill (of the player), but many many more:
Race balance
Player skill (between each other)
Player skill level (game balance changes based on what each player can do)
Map balance
Individual style preferences (that counter other styles or suits certain maps)
Overall popular styles (consider the effect the bisu style had on pvz)
Strategy evolution (once again bisu is a good example)

Now you weave all this is and take account for it all, you can start determining balance of the game. In reality, this is nothing anyone can do. In reality, any probable race balance today is so small (if there is any) that the other factors can overlap it easily and outweigh it, or conceal it.


To find out a true race balance, you need to divide your test in to a large amount of skill level groups. Let's assume you use ICCup's ranking system for this, then you have D--A+ (not considering olympic here). You need to consider all these separately.

Then you have to consider the amount of players using a certain race for each skill level (where in theory every player will lay stable for the entire season, and everyone will reach their max rank right from the season starts, otherwise the test will be ruined). This is because if you have 50% P and 25% T and 25% Z, then every player will become better vs Protoss, they will win more vs due to more practice vs protoss, without it having to do anything with balance. So you need a perfect 33% for all three races to make good statistics.

Now we haven't even considered maps. You need to have a large enough map pool to make it on average perfectly neutral for all races. A map pool that is not tipped in any race's favour. How do you find these maps? In practice it's impossible, because if you find a map where every race have perfect 50% stats, how do you know that it's not because the races are imbalanced and the map is imbalanced enough to outweigh it? You can't know that.

Then we have popular styles and strategy evolution. On pro level we see one era T own Zergs badly. Because a single Terran came up with a new style that became popular and effective. It took some time for Zergs to catch up and get a new counter. Once a new zerg shows up with a good counter it is quickly popularised and suddenly we get that Zergs own Terrans instead for a new era. And on it goes. To show race imbalance, you need to take in these fluctuations in your statistics in to consideration and in some weigh create a system to see through it. Remember when everyone was whining about Z>P, then Bisu came along and it was suddenly the other way around?

And then perhaps most Zergs lose most of the time vs Terrans. Let's just say that zergs generally lose vs terrans for the sake of discussion. What if I then win more games than I lose vs Terrans? Does this prove that the game is imbalanced, or does my single example prove that it is balanced because it CAN be balanced? Would it show that if all zergs adapted to my style in fact Zergs are stronger than Terrans?


Going further on map balance, which is my main point. We today have maps that make Z>P, T>P, P>Z, P>T, Z>T and T>Z. It shows us that whatever theoretical race imbalance we have, it's useless to discuss because whatever maps we use can be used to outweigh it. If you find statistics that shows that one race beats another more often than not, on a specific skill level or all skill levels, it can be corrected by using different maps. By using proper maps, you can make it so (if you try really really hard) that every race will have perfect 50% statistics. But when new strategies evolve and new styles develop old perfectly balanced maps can become imbalanced and old imbalanced maps balanced. Interesting huh? But my main point is, that any possible race imbalance is so small that it can be outweighed by map imbalance easily, making it correctionable and therefore in practice non-existent.

And since I'm too lazy to post all this is every single god damn balance discussion I prefer to just say "all races are balanced, end of discussion" instead of writing all this every time someone had a bad run vs Terran! We introduced this policy because we had 100s of threads where Ps were whining about Zergs instead of coming up with their own Bisu build (which shut them all up). That's why I find balance discsussions worthless, and posting crap like "omg protoss is so easy on low levels imba bad on high level" becomes tiresome after a while.

Do you see now? I'll let this be open in the meanwhile, but I'm sure it will warrant a lock in a short time.