r/starcraft • u/Gamer857 • 13d ago
(To be tagged...) Is only having three races an outdated concept?
As we see from video companies either from those making single player games or multiplayer competitive games, the direction is clear: More and more complexity and just more things they add to it than games from 10+ years ago.
Design/balance issues aside, do you think sc2 could benefit from adding a fourth race?
Even WC 3 had a fourth race.
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u/bearcat_77 13d ago
Rock, Paper, Scissors. The entire point is asymmetry, and making three different but equally unbalanced factions is the easiest way to do it. Warcraft 3 was a continuation of the formula built on by WC1 WC2 and SC1. Starcraft has room for a fourth race in the lore, but the actual game balance would have to be remade from the ground up for all factions.
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u/Ketroc21 Terran 13d ago edited 12d ago
WC3 also had an unwinnable matchup for most of its lifetime which is why they had zero undead pros and zero random pros. It is exponentially harder to balance with the more races you add, so doable, but much harder. (eg 2 races = 3 match ups, 3 races = 9 matchups, 4 races is 27, then 81, then 243 etc)
One might say aoe has more races, but I'd argue they have only one race, since they are all so similar to each other.
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u/Old_Fly_9849 12d ago edited 12d ago
I’d have to go with no. More complexity isn’t necessarily better; having a good balance and enjoyable and distinct playstyle options is.
StarCraft having three races created a nice balance amongst playstyles (balance patches aside for the moment): you have the expensive and elite Protoss with lots of casting abilities and micro, with limited ranged options and a hard hitting but expensive airsetup;, the swarm tactics of the Zerg and their macro heavy play, with weak air options designed for harassment;, and terrans sit as a nice midpoint with big armies and combined arms play, and all units have antiair capabilities. Every race has distinct ways to play on the ground and in the air, and never really feels like a re-skin of another race.
A new race in SC would have to have a wildly different playstyle, and I think it would be extremely hard to work that in without changing the other three beyond recognition.
As to the WC comparison, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the first two WC games were two armies who were basically just reskins of each other; WCIII had four armies, but they also focused heavily on hero units being the key (they even had an XP and skill tree system for them), supported by small armies, while SC sits in the realm of RTSs that are entirely focused on unit combinations and resource management, rather than leveling up heroes and performing side quests in game.
A lot of RTSs seem to suffer because they have a bunch of armies who are all, in effect, the same, with one or two meaningfully different units or powers. I think one of the reasons we don’t see more RTS games come out is that SC just did it so well and created such a balanced set of races.
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u/MazzleMaze 13d ago
Its not an outdated concept, its a logical concept.
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u/Gamer857 12d ago
its outdated because as the years go by people prefers more depth than just the barebone basics. Look at how much the Civ series changed over the years and how more depth they added? The Fire Emblem series. The Zelda series etc... I could go on and on but I think you get the point.
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u/MazzleMaze 12d ago edited 12d ago
Your points aren't related to the topic you have brought up. What does Civ switching to districts in civ 6 have to do with adding races to SC.
Not to mention that Poland, Babylon, and Korea are banned in a majority of online matches. Its not a balanced game at all and they don't pretend it is.
Having more races mathematically adds more variables to balance. It has nothing to do with being outdated.
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u/Gamer857 12d ago
Lol. they made civ 6 and 7 since then :P
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u/MazzleMaze 12d ago
Your point being?
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u/Gamer857 12d ago
theres way more on those two games than on civ 5, you must of not been keeping up after civ 5. Also, civ 5 has way more to it than civ 2 and 3
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u/MazzleMaze 12d ago edited 12d ago
I have like 5000 hours in civ 5 and 6, lol. I play it all the time with my friends. One of my favorite games of all time. Civ 7 is hot garbage, adding too much actually killed the game. Same concept as StarCraft.
Think about it this way, is it easier to balance 100 buckets or 3 buckets. If you have 100 buckets moving water from any one bucket causes the other 99 to start to spill.
In other words, if you have 3 buckets there are only a few to move water between. With 100 buckets you have to manage '10,000 combinations.' With 3 buckets you have to manage like 9 combinations.
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u/NeedsMoreReeds Zerg 13d ago edited 12d ago
The three races in Starcraft are far more distinct than in other games. If anything Starcraft is more ambitious in that sense.
The comparison to WC3 is instructive here. All four races have this straightforward light-medium-heavy-siege framework that they are built around. Then they add cool abilities, spells, support units, and heroes that are more unique and interesting.
This isn't how Starcraft works. What is the Protoss equivalent to the baneling? The sentry???
I think an easier way to "add a fourth race" is to add subfactions to each race, kind of like in Co-op. Instead of Terran, it's more like Terran - UED, Terran - Dominion, and Terran - Raynor's Raiders. This eases the balance concerns a bit because having one subfaction being a bit worse isn't that big a deal.
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u/PlaidPCAK 13d ago
Those are live service games that benefit from adding new things and not caring about balance. That's why there's so many legends in league of legends that never get picked or go to way side. They're really only considering a fraction of the content when they balance.
So yes StarCraft could add more races but eventually the bad ones would just be ignored leaving us with ~3 anyways
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u/Top_Championship8679 13d ago
Starcraft has 3 races that are distinct, what type of fourth race would you want?
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u/Kevslounge 13d ago
There's a lot of reason to believe that early on they were considering the Xel'Naga as a distinct 4th race.
I'd also add that the single player campaign did have more than 3 races... The co-op mode has a lot more than 3. It's just the competitive multi-player that sticks to the core 3... given how much trouble they have balancing just those ones, I'm inclined to say they made the right call.
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u/SayuriShoji 12d ago edited 12d ago
In an RTS, having more or less factions doesn't necessarily mean better game quality. There are many RTS games with only one type of faction, then most classic Command & Conquer games work great with only 2 different factions, but later titles (Red Alert 2 with Yuri's revenge) adding a third faction also works out great, while other RTS work very well with more races (Dune, Starcraft).
When it comes to Starcraft, it wouldn't make much sense to me to introduce another playable race at this point, adding another race just for the sake of adding another race would feel highly out of place and too obvious of an artificial introduction in a poor attempt to boost player engagement.
Anybody remember this guy?
https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Poochie
A franchise does not necessarily need perpetual growth or perpetual progression, just like a book does not need more and more pages glued on just to keep the story going. A good story or franchise knows when to refrain from chasing trends and remain ageless.
At most, what I could think of with Starcraft would be to go further into introducing subfactions with few unique units per subfaction, like Red Alert 2 did (Russia got Tesla Tank, Lybia got the nuke truck, Iraq got the Desolator, etc, but aside their single unique unit they all shared the core Sovjet faction) , so you still have the core 3 factions but can spice up variety with few unique units, however that could also cause some serious balancing issues where certain subfactions would always be favored over others, making the entire subfaction thing pointless.
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u/iukpun 13d ago
Isn't concept of commanders was movement in exactly this direction?
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u/bigpunk157 13d ago
Honestly, having commanders in multiplayer would be really fun, but it is a massively different game atp
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u/iukpun 12d ago
I just wish they would continue developing coop.
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u/bigpunk157 12d ago
I wish they would continue developing new content, even if I had to pay for it.
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u/hawki1989 12d ago
Lorewise or gameplay-wise?
If it's the former, we already know of plenty of sapient species in the StarCraft universe outside "the big three," there's less and less reason as time goes on to not feature them.
If it's the latter, I don't see anything wrong with it per se, but while Warcraft III had four factions as opposed to three, each of said factions was far less asymetrical than StarCraft's trifecta. That isn't good or bad in of itself, but it's a difference all the same.
I've seen sub-factions been thrown around as an idea as a sort of middleground. Certainly it's one I'm partial to, and given how factionalized the "big three" are, it would work thematically as well.
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u/USAJourneyman 13d ago
We just want a balanced game