Getting the balance right in a multiplayer strategy game like StarCraft II is a complicated process, something Blizzard is paying close attention to. To keep tabs on which direction the company should move with tuning and tweaking, Blizzard uses a variety of tools to gauge what the hundreds of thousands of players are doing across millions of games on Battle.net.
Monitoring player feedback on forums is one way it's done, though there are flaws with this method. The loudest voices tend to get the most attention, and in the process posters that rarely say anything who might have constructive and valid to say will get drowned out. Feedback from professional gamers is another useful method, since it's a sure bet that a pro knows the game better than the average user. Blizzard tends to receive replays as well as extremely detailed information from these pro players on exactly how they're using winning strategies.
There is a downside, however, because the professional types tend to only use one race, and many times the input does not represent feedback that would be useful across all levels of skill. "If there is a tiny crack in our game balance, these guys are going to drive a truck right through it," said Blizzard's Dustin Browder, when discussing how tournament play between extremely talented players can sometimes expose flaws.
Everyone who works on balance at Blizzard is a Diamond Random player, and though in-house the team plays hard and tries to find out what's wrong, they need a bigger sample size. For fine tuning resource costs and build times, the team looks at spreadsheets. Though useful in some cases, it unfortunately does not take into account variation during battle, such as a player who happens to be especially good with micromanagement skills or awareness of terrain. The development team often runs in-game simulations between groups of units at high speed to see how things like Immortals, Hydralisks, and Zealots. But again, this is a highly artificial tool that does not compare to the real game situation.
They also look at North American Battle.net numbers, where Terran beat Zerg 51 percent of the time, Protoss beat Terran 53 percent of the time, and Protoss beat Zerg 51 percent of the time. However, this doesn't necessarily account for skill differentiation in games arranged through Battle.net's matchmaking. So Blizzard came up with a highly complex mathematical formula that's applied to match data that kicks out an adjusted win percentage. When all the numbers are adjusted across all leagues in North America, it results in Terran winning 51 percent of the time against Zerg, Protoss winning 53 percent of the time against Zerg, and Protoss winning 60 percent of the time against Terran. That 60 percent is an issue for Blizzard, something they're currently looking at.
According to Blizzard, the highest skill level players are in Korea. Across all leagues the Terrans in Korea win 54 percent of the time against Zerg, Protoss win 51 percent of the time across against Zerg, and Protoss win 56 percent of the time against Terran. But then when you dial down into only the Diamond league in Korea, some statistics are significantly different, perhaps more accurately giving a picture of where the problems are. When talking to specific players on the professional levels about balance, subjectivity comes into play where each will give a different answer, not leading to a clear conclusion.
Blizzard looks into this type of thing by determining whether it's just one specific unit that's way out of balance or something more wide ranging. One thing the team is focusing on right now is the Protoss v Terran relationship, the Stim balance for the Terran, and the Psi Storm balance for the Protoss in the late game. As for other updates, fully customizable key bindings, a premium marketplace for custom maps (which won't be patched in to at least around Heart of the Swarm time, according to Browder), and an improved post-match score screen that will probably also ship with Heart of the Swarm.
Despite the statistics that show some races may be favored, there are still a lot of grey areas that could obscure what's really going on. Blizzard is hard at work clearing that up, and taking its time to patch only when necessary, instead of too swiftly and risking unintended complications. Ultimately, regardless of how many changes are made, "Every race should feel insanely overpowered, yet somehow it still works" said Browder.
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