What does a company gain from completely rigging balance?

General Discussion
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Protoss in SC2 is maybe the most obvious balance failure in any game. Why make a race that basically has the strengths of zerg, mech and bio all in one? There is no disadvantage to protoss. Terran has units that have the potential to be way more cost efficient, zerg has the better eco, insane tech switches, instant~ remax and unlike in BW, an amazing lategame (viper harpoon has no real counter but keeps annihilating your opponent’s army, blinding cloud, instant win condition with neural).

But protoss has… everything? Protoss deathballs are literally just a mobile mech composition that also can’t be hit by lings due to force fields. Protoss is invulnerable to cheese, and then go on to auto win by a-moving invulnerable deathballs. Both bio and mech can lose the game instantly form one mistake and are completely fragile and have weaknesses, as we saw from nightmare beating clem and bunny. Imagine in a fighting game that one character could evade all the mechanics of the game and you had youtubers defending it saying “You can say that character has easier tools to use, but not that it’s OP.” when they themselves weren’t nearly good enough to beat that type of imbalance nor was the best pro who wasn’t abusing it themselves.

BW zerg is unplayable, and sc2 protoss has a bizarre advantage over the other 2 races. Even in BW protoss units are just more efficient and they have a million more win conditions, let alone in SC2.

What does a company gain from making the most obvious example of something overpowered in all of gaming (outside of user mods or obscure games)?

The problem with making a crutch race for people who are just not as good, is that it will be abused by the 85 “IQ” people who will then ruin the game for someone who is actually good at it by beating them with no counterplay.

It also makes people more likely to quit than to switch to the race that is unbeatable assuming perfect or even sub-masters play in a lot of scenarios.

It reduces the satisfaction of playing the game for people using the braindead crutch race.

It makes less people watch tournaments because their ladder experience is literally just playing against some guy who’s invulnerable for the first 12 minutes and then watching “pro” protosses rally robo units into their death or build tempests against a 2 base scv pull with vikings. Matchfixed games feel utterly wrong compared to the actual experience of the ladder.

Terran sometimes can’t even win the matchfixed games like ByuN vs hero game 2. Then protoss goes on to auto win effortlessly with carriers, but in the finals needs to throw away units for no reason.

I can’t see one single point in making a game this badly imbalanced.

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Terran beats protoss in TvP???

Yes, zerg is weak, but that doesn’t mean bring the others down; bring it up.

Also, I play primarily toss, and I’ve won many games, lost many games. However, in replays, every win I had was either based on poor play from my opponent (building bio against colossi, retreating from a base trade because I warped in 5 stalkers, move commanding the retreat from that very base trade, sieging tanks and leaving them behind for some skytoss or dts to kill them, trying to go for swarm host or lurker because they think its good but not really having the mechanics to use them, the list goes on, really.) Keep in mind that I’ve probably used carriers and tempests about 0.5% of the time i play toss.

Also, I want to see the pro games where people rally immortals to their death. Seriously, show me.

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Not if the Protoss player has 2 braincells that actually rub together. At the bare minimum, the matchup is even between the two races.

If this is the only thing they’re making, sure that can be problematic for the Terran. There’s plenty of reasons to make bio, even against Colossus; timing attacks, drops, Scouting etc. Bio is the central compositon for Terran in TvP (partly because mech is garbage in TvP), and gets augmented with Vikings, Ghosts, Liberators, mines etc to deal with colossus and their supporting cast. Making Bio is only a mistake if you’re Meching.

Winning a base trade vs Toss isn’t exactly easy anyway because Protoss always has the option to kill your bases and then recall and save their base, but sure.

Tanks vs Skytoss. Lol.

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That’s the point. Toss is designed to be tge MOBA race of sc2 to appeal to the more casual players. The balance counsel can’t nerf toss to have equal winrates for equal skill&effort because half the protoss in gm would be kicked to diamond league.

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That is a long writeup for non-issues. Right now, balance shouldn’t even be a blip on your radar because when you’re new (or bad) everything is imbalanced due to you kinda sucking lol.

Even if you get semi decent, it’s easy to fall into the “blame the balance” mentality. It’s a trap. Just like how complaining about smurfs is a trap. The solution is to just get better at the game so you can beat strategies or players who beat you.

There’s loads of resources for this out there. ViBe is pretty good for his bronze to gm series, he teaches a lot of things that are applicable to all races in sc2 and he’s not a condescending nerd which makes his content pretty palpable.

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i stoped reading when i saw this dude think toss is op… was op true, but in last years blizz babysted terrans to death, i wonder why thet still call the game terrancraft 2… im done for terran players complainin about balance when that race was babysited to death all this years

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It’s so incredibly common that it happened in the GSL finals at least once:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO-mW3YhgVY&t=1510s

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That’s hilarious that you genuinely think that.

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Did anyone else see hero f2 his oracles to their death vs reynor. Are we ready for an f2 abuser to win the gsl? This guy can f2, get him a :trophy:!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v7RpY1OWoo&t=18m33s

:laughing:

A likely GSL winner, ladies and gents. :clap: :clap: :clap:

The more I watch this clip the more amazed I am. Hero shades 3 adepts away to Reynor’s third, then f2’s them back to the fight before they can arrive. It’s the same F2 that kills the oracles. I remember the days when making micro mistakes would lose games. My expectations are too high for modern SC2, it would seem. A GSL winner who didn’t use multiple hotkeys! It’s the “new normal” for modern sc2. :rofl:

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Don’t watch the games against SoO :wink:

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What a troll comment. A toss down 40 army supply f2+aclicks through a defensive zerg like a hot knife cutting through butter. Hopefully people give me brownie points for getting GM with mass swarm hosts now that they’ve seen swarm hosts are the worst unit in the game bar none. What was the saying from Idra? “When ahead, make ultralisks to lose.”

It’s not like Hero did anything amazing there either. It’s just F2+aclick and then pick up a colossus on occasion with his warp prism. The bar is set so low for protoss that pvz is quite literally a free win. It sounds insane to say that but here we are. I feel like a crazy person to say something that extreme but have you seen the GSL? Yeah. RIP sc2. I’ve heard maru is going to broodwar, just like Rain did. People can only take so much. Maru has to use god-teir play to beat a a guy who plays like an ape. Forget the GSL, somebody needs to give Maru the “patience” award. His patience and tolerance for BS is out of this flipping universe.

EDIT:

I ran into this gem tonight on the ladder:

This is a 5400 protoss’ early game: https://i.imgur.com/3zmHhfw.png
Loses 2 carriers for free by camping them on top of creep and afking from keyboard: https://i.imgur.com/IYeAF8B.png
No map awareness, loses a base from being out of position: https://i.imgur.com/fH0ajgb.png
Out of position again, loses his natural: https://i.imgur.com/xZNN2pM.png

Despite the horrible early game, he wipes the zerg army with 2/0 upgrades vs the Zerg’s 3/2: https://streamable.com/zix01v

Look at how bad that fight went for him. He A) is down 3 upgrades, B) loses the carriers for free, C) has his zealot reinforcement interrupted by an abduct and D) trades at negative efficiency.

If this guy knew how to make an observer or do some very basic micro, he would never lose another game of PvZ. You fix 1 error and he’s going to win this game despite near flawless play from the zerg. It’s mind boggling. Toss are able to reach top 100 gm with literally zero micro.

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GSL is hosting a SC1+SC2 evolution tournament, so that idea is already in the works. I don’t think it’s going to be a good time for terran because there’s no MMM and apparently Protoss is even stronger in broodwar. Zerg however gets some new fun tools like those scourge that can delete carriers and mutalisks that are actually viable. It’s going to be exceptionally better when Zerg can select more than 12 units at a time.

Her0 won the build order gamble game 1 with the easiest way to defend against swarm hosts and then baited soO into a baneling bust with his wall. I’m pretty sure the thought behind it is that the Zerg wastes all his banelings on the pylon so the adept survives and the backup pylon always makes it so he can still produce units. I thought you wanted to see more strategy in SC2, well this is it. :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s a prerequisite for Zerg to juggle infestors and vipers vs a Protoss deathball and against mech, especially when you’re using hydras. Wake me up when the toss on ladder actually abuse the new mothership to its full potential.

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It’s not a gamble. That’s a workable unit comp vs every zerg army except +1 roach into fast hive for vipers. No risk on the toss part.

Nah, baneling bust is non viable no matter the configuration as long as toss opens stargate. Even 1 base of probe kills wouldn’t be enough. Soo picked a losing build order because he knew there was no way to beat apetoss and just wanted to get it over with.

Laughable. Zergs deliberately throwing games because it’s not worth playing out a PvZ is “strategy”. OK bud. Keep drinking the kool aid. It couldn’t be more obvious unless he pulled a “Naniwa”.

Yikes. GSL sees the writing on the wall. SC2 really doesn’t have a future and that’s clear. GSL funding has crashed and the effort of the korean pros has changed proportionally. I tried to save starcraft. Berry is busy crying that I am a maphacker. That’s the thanks you get when you know what you are doing. You can read probe movements so you’re a hacker. Can’t explain probe movements to berry and can’t explain statistics to the balance counsel.

https://i.imgur.com/JqhtAEA.gif

Every time an empire falls, the elite loot the treasury. They then take their golden parachute to the next empire which they crash and rinse and repeat. That’s the balance counsel in a nutshell. They control popular opinion, driving game design off a cliff, and then take their subscribers to the next game – nothing of value lost. How can I save starcraft when there are so many who seek to destroy it.

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Two words: drama and conflinct.

Negative promotions usually work even much better than positive. I know it is stupid, and we the fans lose the most, but it is what it is.

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they blance for Toss, but in the end somehow only race T benefits from it.

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This here is called a hallucination.

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Dare I say you are bit biased, not al lot, just a little bit.

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Except in this scenario I hadn’t arrived at my opponent’s base, and my opponent had no map control. they probably did it because they thought that was my entire army, as opposed to a small warp-in. Because of that I was able to take out their 4th and cut them off.

Tanks don’t shoot up. even 2 void rays can do a lot of damage. That’s how unit counters work.

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did SoO actually say that or did you assume?

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It’s a losing build order at high level. Everyone knows it won’t beat a protoss who opens stargate. Hero is so confident that it’s a losing build that he puts a pylon in the wall. If you have a good chance at beating someone in a macro game then you go macro because it’s more reliable. Cheese is a gamble that you bring out because you know you aren’t going to win the long game. That map is amazing for protoss in a macro game. The previous game, hero f2+aclicked through a zerg army that had a 40 supply advantage and it cut through it like it was a hot knife going through butter. No, I haven’t talked to soo, but I know exactly what was going through his mind. He’s a high level SC player, he knows how the game works and that includes everything I just outlined above.

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