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Starcraft 2 North America Forum
StarCraft 2: Assessment of Protoss situation in 2020 meta.
Player Dallarian
Europe, October 2020
Table of contents
- Introduction… 3
1.1 Form of the document… 3
1.2 Discussion forum … 3
1.3 Purpose of the document… 3
1.4 Being right. … 3 - Most common arguments… 4
2.1 Protoss is dominating Grandmaster and therefore should be nerfed… 4
2.1.1 Leagues statistics and facts… 4
2.1.2 Data interpretation … 4
2.1.3 Conclusions … 5
2.2 Protoss win/lose tournaments and is OP/weak. … 6
2.3 Protoss have unfair units and mechanics like High Templar, Disruptor, Warp gates. … 7
2.4 Game should be balanced around players, not progamers. … 7
2.5 Game should be fun for players in every league. … 8
2.6 Win ratio … 8
2.7 Protoss is easy to play … 8 - Conclusions … 9
3.1 Balance assessment… 9 - Other materials …10
4.1 References. …10
4.2 List of pictures…10
4.3 Glossary of terms…10
.1. Introduction
.1.1 Form of the document
The document should allow you to read any part of it, without a need of reading previous parts. Feel free to use table of contents and read only interesting parts for you.
.1.2 Discussion forum
Welcome to the Forum!
Each category in gameplay part of the forum (with an exception for clans and groups) have “discussion” in their title. Hence the forum is oriented about disputing with other people. Keeping in mind rules of good discussion is important:
- Respect others’ rights to hold opinions and beliefs that differ from your own. Challenge or criticize the idea, not the person.
- Listen carefully to what others are saying even when you disagree with what is being said. Ask for clarification, share critiques, expand on a point.
- Support your statements. Use evidence and provide a rationale for your points.
- If you are offended by something or think someone else might be, speak up and don’t leave it for someone else to have to respond to it. (1)
I would like you to remember about point 3. Without evidence and support for your opinions, no matter how correct your opinion is, weight of your statements is low. In discussion your goal is usually to convince others to your point of view or make them aware about an existing problem. It is very difficult, to convince others without rationalizing your point.
Current state of the game, including power of units and balance related-problems is an acceptable state for Activision. Of course, they try to polish the game and try to make it fair, patches change properties of the game not without reason. If you want to prove a point, the burden of proof lies on you. It is your responsibility to provide enough valid evidence, for an opinion to be accepted.
.1.3 Purpose of the document
I was a bad, open-minded player when I arrived on the forum. I had an opportunity to read many balance – related threads. That made me more interested about current game situation, pushed me more toward research and discussion. Protoss race is often perceived as easy and unfairly powerful. I have made brief research within the topic, which allowed me to have my own opinion. Aim of the document is to promote constructive discussion within and outside the forum. Another goal is to let me practice creation of semi-professional documents and practicing Vancouver reference system.
.1.4 Being right.
The form of the document is meant to look semi-professional. I have researched a few databases and presented a few facts. However, many of the statements in the document are my thoughts and opinions based on presented facts. Form or anything else does not prevent me from being wrong. I could have done mistakes during my thought process, perhaps I used selective data to justify my point, or made too far going assumptions. Please feel free to engage in the discussion.
.2. Most common arguments
In this part of document, I will confront with most common points and arguments, made around Protoss race I came across recently. It is worth noting, most thoughts based on reference (2) includes data only from servers EU and NA, while data based on reference (3) includes all the servers, but mainly offline events. Also all data regarding popularity of random players is not taken into consideration.
.2.1 Protoss is dominating Grandmaster and therefore should
be nerfed.
As far as I know, the argument is based only on % contribution of players in
Grandmaster league. It is true, that there is observed higher performance of Protoss players currently in Grandmaster (3), but it is difficult to call it dominating.
.2.1.1 Leagues statistics and facts.
Protoss contribution in GM on EU server varies between 34.8%-45.6%, while on NA it is between 27.4%-40.1%. The values are significantly different and league trends do not match each other. For example 2nd August on NA is highest value in past 7 months popularity periodic peak, while on EU it is lowest value since 4 months. (2) Because of it’s nature, distribution of players in GM changes quickly, but overall trend can be observed. Protoss is most popular race within the league. Let’s observe other leagues to learn more about this phenomena.
Within Bronze, Silver and Gold leagues, distribution of players favors Terrans, then Protoss and on last position Zergs. (2)
Platinum league is where distribution of races balances out, you have almost even chance to play against every race. This is a point where I believe we can exclude first impression and tutorials as a reason for playing Terran. (2)
In Diamond Protoss popularity in 2020 vary between 25%-30%. Zerg is most popular race within Diamond league. (2)
Master is League where GMs come from. In Master EU, popularity of both Zerg and Terran are similar, and Protoss have stable 29% share of players. On NA server, Protoss is stable 28%-29% share. Interesting are popularity trends of Zerg and Terran. The data suggest, sometimes some Zergs lose their place in Master and are replaced by Terran players. After some time, the situation is back to normal.(2)
.2.1.2 Data interpretation
What explains trends and popularity within Bronze, Silver and Gold leagues? Terran is tutorial race. It’s core is the most similar to what people are used to from outside of the game. Tanks, marines, Vikings. Futuristic designs, but ideas are old and familiar. It is also 1st race we use in campaign, game mode where a lot of people start their experience with StarCraft 2. There exist correlation between WoL being free to play and popularity of Terran within leagues, but it’s negligible. (2)
After becoming familiar with the most approachable race in the game, players often make decision on which race to play. It can be Terran, Zerg, Protoss or Random. From those players, who abandon playing Terrans, significantly more choose Protoss, rather than Zerg. According to global statistics, Protoss is overall more popular than Zerg. There could be many reasons, including my speculations:
- Representation of world’s increasing interest in new technologies and space, for example popularity of Elon Musk, movies like Interstellar or discovery of gravitational waves.
- People may like an idea of strong powerful units like Zealot, High Templar, Colossus or idea of Golden Armada. Protoss is presented as powerful, strong race. The idea connects with our primal, subconscious instincts to be as strong as possible.
- Ease of mechanics and entry level, compared to Zerg.
- “Cool” architectural and coloristic theme.
As performance I mean win ratio relative to MMR, as specified in the source (3). If you take more data into account and compare different graphs, popularity of Protoss in GM does not corelate with Protoss performance in some tournaments and events, including mainly GM tournaments. Protoss has high performance period in May-September 2020 with peak performance in July 2020. It does not seem to corelate with overall popularity trends within GM and Master leagues.(2)(3)
The data clearly shows, that Protoss Grandmaster and Master leagues share of players do not correlate with race performance. This indicate, Protoss being
strong does not mean worst Zerg and Terran players from low GM and D3 will be replaced with best Protoss players from M1 and D1. Information suggest, % of Protoss contributing to GM league is unlikely to be strictly dependent on current race condition. There can be taken a few reasonable conclusions after analyzing data:
- Popularity of each race is influenced by regional trends, but in larger scale it follows world trends.
- Protoss is a race less popular within higher skilled leagues like Diamond, Master, while being overall more popular than Zerg.
- Zerg is more common within higher level leagues than Protoss, and dominating Diamond league.
- Recent balance changes (Void Ray buff) do not influence share of races (Protoss) within leagues.
- Protoss contribution in share of players increase at the start of the Season 3 2020 in Master league, and Zerg contribution decreases.
.2.1.3 Conclusions
Best players on the world could just prefer playing Protoss, what is possible to probability and other mentioned factors. Number of players in GM is relatively small compared to number of players. Players have different personalities and habits, specially those of different races.
There is no evidence confirming strict correlation between strength of a race and share of races in leagues. Many Protoss victories in tournaments are caused by new strategies, that surprise opponents. This could indicate an increased amount of Protoss smurf accounts in GM, compared to other races.
To sum up all the above, without taking many various factors into consideration, it is incorrect to use Grandmaster share of players as an indicative of game balance.
.2.2 Protoss win/lose tournaments and is OP/weak.
Tournaments measure mainly best players on the world, including best of the best individuals. Many people were amazed by Serral’s performance and perfect control since 2018. Level of his perfectionism is very difficult to achieve, and not many players can think about playing with him on equal terms. It is difficult to say if a player with exact awesome skill was maining a different race, would become another Starcraft star as original race, or would be forced to switch to Zerg. Therefore, number of winners of premier tournaments is not an indicative data.
Even when you compare amount of 1st and 2nd places taken by Protoss players in recent years in premier tournaments, the statistics seem to be fair and balanced, with an exception for 2019 year.
- 32% share of protoss in 2017.
- 33% share of protoss in 2018.
- 14% share of protoss in 2019.
- 29% share of protoss in 2020. (4)
Major tournaments data should be carefully used. Participation used to require physical presence on a “lower prestige event” and therefore factors like transport, location and required time influence presence of best players. If only one top player takes part in such event, it is often an easy win regardless of the race.
I have found no evidence suggesting over or under performance of Protoss this year based on researched data. Data regarding best 4 or 8 players within tournaments could be more specific and descriptive, but it still represent only individuals.
.2.3 Protoss have unfair units and mechanics like High Templar, Disruptor, Warp gates.
Every race has its own, unique mechanics and units, some of them may be considered unfair in specific or general match ups, for example:
Disruptor, Viper, Ghost.
All the units, upgrades and mechanics are tools given you by the game/developers. Your league represents how well you can use the tools within your race. Global win-rate statistics do not suggest a largely unfair long-term advantage for any of the races.
“Unfair” units exist. Try to counter them. A rework to Protoss race could be a nice thing, but since Activision have withdrew staff from many projects, there is no real possibility for this to happen. You cannot do anything about that, except for creating your own balance fix for arcade/custom melee.
.2.4 Game should be balanced around players, not progamers.
People excel at different skills and aspects of the game in Bronze-Diamond leagues and don’t possess full information about the game and playstyles. MMR solves balance in here, you just keep playing to the point when you have 50% win ratio.
In lower leagues, there is a lot of room for players’ improvements, because they lack skills and knowledge to exploit their race and push it to limits. They usually do not know how to use all the tools given to them by devs correctly. Therefore, it is difficult to observe what is fair and what is not fair.
Proplayers make their living by playing Starcraft, they often do their best to be as effective as possible, they push their races to the limits, and if one race has an unfair advantage, it is way easier to spot the fact on high level of plays.
Attempts to punish cheesy/low skill strategies can be made, but if changes came to live based on observation of lower leagues, they might be based on false information and absolutely imbalance highest level of play.
Players can improve from day to day by polishing different aspects of their play. Here is an example from Diamond ladder:
A player often loses a lot to Terran drops with mines and hellions, what causes quick lose to mid-game attack. The player wants to improve his build vs Zerg. He learns a few small skills within a span of few days. Player improves his continuous worker production and then plays a game versus Terran. He loses 11 workers, but it puts him only 1 worker behind his opponent, thanks to better worker production. Economic advantage of opponent do not cause the player to instantly lose the game and can continue into late game. After the game, he
practices early scout in the evening and morning. Then he plays another game versus Terran. Since the player practiced scout, he spots widow mines and expects early drop. He is ready for the attack, splits workers and lose only 2 of them. The player can safely continue the game.
Within a span of 3 days, the player learnt skills that allowed protection from certain type of attack. The player still remains within same, but now loses less often to mentioned attacks.
Basing on player’s previous experience, and experience of many more players between Bronze and Diamond, drops could be considered an unfair powerful strategy and therefore should be nerfed. There could be a few changes suggested, including:
Medivacs require tech lab. Medivcs are more expensive. Medivac size is 5-6 units, instead of 8. Mines burrow longer. Helions do not deal bonus damage to workers.
These changes could seem to be justified in the situation, but would harm Terran players and heavily influence top player’s performance in Terran matchups.
Finding a working solution to any problem in leagues Bronze-Diamond, would
require a lot of work in filtering and analyzing information. It is not worth the effort, and is an impossible solution with current state of Activision’s support. Also it is unlikely, that there will be added another version of the game for less skilled players.
Competitive side of the game is very important for game’s performance. It is vital to keep it in good condition. It is easier and more effective to balance game around pro players.
2.5 Game should be fun for players in every league.
Losing to a drop in Gold league, while playing macro is not fun. This can lead to feeling of disappointment and frustration. It is possible to have fun games in Bronze-Platinum leagues, but it often involves opponent playing similar or macro strategy, which is not always the case.
Starting versus as new player in Starcraft 2, can difficult. You keep losing your first games, because you have no idea what is going on, even if you have previous Coop and Campaign experience.
You can have a nice and satisfying games in low leagues, but it often require your opponent to play similarly to you, which isn’t always the case. If you improve your playstyle, you can start getting satisfaction from defending all sort of evil enemy attacks and strategies, every good scout and other similar different aspects, like landing a successful EMP on group of High Templars.
Result of games in Bronze-Platinum leagues is often dependent on 2 factors. Superior strategy and implementation of it, and usually you win or not. There is not much depth within it. This can lead to a lot of frustration. The higher you can on the ladder, the more even are terms of playing with an opponent. If you want to have fun from playing a game, I would suggest playing Coop, improving on ladder or choosing a game with less focus on competitive aspect of playing.
.2.6 Win ratio
I believe I have seen win-ratio detailed general win-ratio statistics, but I could not the source. However, I believe the statistics rarely were higher than 55% win ratio. As long as win ratio is 45%-55%, the match-ups seem to be fair. For every 20 games, Race1 will win 11 games while Race2 will succeed 9 times. That seem to be good enough for a game with 3 very distinctive and different races. Data accessed suggest, that game is in a good state regarding balance. (3)
.2.7 Protoss is easy to play
It is more popular race on lower leagues than Zerg (2), but ease of playing is not the only factor influencing this fact. Economic comeback mechanism is less efficient than similar mechanisms available for other races. Protoss is the only race, that have to follow timings to produce their basic units efficiently. That cause Protoss to often fall behind with unit production in mid-game. Every race faces its own problems and in lower leagues Terran seem to be a race with easiest mechanics.
It is also worth to note that Protoss player distribution drops from Platinum to Diamond, with an increase for Zerg. It is not impossible, that it could be easier to be a good Zerg rather than a good Protoss. Difficulty of each race throughout leagues is an interesting topic on its own.
.3. Conclusions
.3.1 Balance assessment.
I did not fully analyze pure gameplay of Protoss in all leagues and skill levels. However, while confronting different issues raised by the community, have reached a lot of data and became more familiar with learning process in StarCraft. My overall StarCraft experience with information learnt from hours of watches games allowed to me have an opinion on races’ performance in the current meta.
It is difficult, to deal with some early/mid/late game situations and Protoss is in a weird point regarding balance. There are some certain loss scenarios, but the game is centered on winning and avoiding loss, so it is not a significant problem. It’s worth noting, your average opponent makes more mistakes than Serral and Maru, making late game situations possible to win.
Protoss seem to be doing well in Grandmaster league and on Premier tournaments and is fun to play on lower leagues (no data for Master). After seeing many balance threads, reviewing them, and getting more information on how StarCraft works, I came to conclusion that balance in StarCraft 2 is kept on surprisingly, at least for me, high level and the game seem to be fair. Every race can be strong and actually a lot depends on your skill.
My opinion about Protoss changed. At first, I perceived them as a weak and
difficult race, based on little information I had. Now I perceive them more positively, as a race that can play and win with others using fair strategies.
I have found no evidence suggesting heavy over or under performance. I assess Protoss’ strength in StarCraft 2 as being fair. Activision is putting enough effort to the game to make it feel balanced.
.4. Other materials
.4.1 References.
.1. Centre for reserach on learning & teaching University of Michigan. n.d. Discussion Guidelines – Inclusive Teaching. [online]
Available at: <https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/inclusive-classrooms/discussionguidelines/> [Accessed 7 October 2020].
.2. 1v1 Race Distribution Over Time. [online]
Available at: <https://www.rankedftw.com/stats/races/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&l=-2> [Accessed 7 October 2020].
.3. Conti, Otolia, Netbattler, NCzempin, XavierMarchegay, Grovbolle, Kashim and others. StarCraft 2 Progaming Statistics and Predictions - Balance Report. [online]
Available at: <http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/> [accessed 7 October 2020].
.4. Liquipedia - Premier Tournaments.[online]
Available at: <https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments> [accessed 7 October 2020)]
.4.2 List of pictures.
StarCraft Legacy of the Void logo: https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/470887-lotv-logo-and-font
.4.3 Glossary of terms
- GM – Grandmaster, players among best 200 players at the time on a server.
- NA – North America, used to specify game server.
- EU – Europe, used to specify game server.
- D1,D2,D3 – Different Diamond leagues, number 1 is best, number 3 is worst.
- M1,M2,M3 – Different Master leagues, number 1 is best, number 3 is worst.
- WoL – Wings of Liberty, 1st subtitle to the game and name of Terran campaign.
- LotV – Legacy of the Void, 3rd subtitle to the game and name of Protoss campaign.
- Arcade – Game mode that allows you to play various minigames made by other players.
- Custom melee – Versus game where you influence who is your opponent, allows you to add different modifications.
- Macro – In-game playstyle, which focuses on mining resources, army creation and expanding map control.
- Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond/Master – Different leagues in Starcraft, Bronze has weakest players, and every next league have players with higher skill or performance.
- EMP – In-game ability that affect all units within area. Effective versus High Templar unit.
- Coop – Game mode, where with another player you play special scenario versus AI.
- Versus – Game mode, where you play game with opponent of similar abilities.
THE END
Be aware that not only words, but also your actions speak for you.
I will be happy to see your justified opinions on described topic.
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