Protoss VS Protoss: Why is this everyone's least favorite matchup?

With 3 factions to choose from in Starcraft 2, it is no surprise that different factions facing off against each other generate different kinds of games. One of these matchups however, is far more controversial than any other. The Protoss VS Protoss mirror matchup, or PvP for short. But why exactly is this matchup so controversial, or outright hated by many people?

Rock Paper Scissors

When talking about the PvP matchup people often compare it to Rock Paper Scissors or Poker. The reason for this is that due the certain mechanics inherent to the Protoss faction in Starcraft 2, it is way easier to pull off surprising openers. Combine this with this race’s weakness when it comes to defensive capabilities and a high average unit cost, and you can quickly see that it is really hard to have a “safe” early game in the PVP matchup. This is something that doesn’t have to be the biggest of problems, but in this case, it's a mirror matchup. This means that with both sides being able to build exactly the same units, it's way more important to know how many of them you have as opposed to which ones specifically, once the midgame arrives. This makes comebacks very hard to achieve, only putting more emphasis on getting the opening correctly. For this reason PvP can quickly devolve into a Rock Paper Scissors match, where you simply hope that the opening you picked blindly, counters the opening your opponent is going for.

Is there a fix

Of course with a matchup being so infamous, people have had thousands of ideas of how to make it less so. One thing often being thrown out there is that there should be more defensive options in PvP. So that when you end up locked into an opening that isn’t great against your opponents, you can rely on your defender's advantage to get yourself into the midgame without too many sacrifices. However, the reality is that big gameplay changes at this point are very unlikely, ever since Blizzard stopped actively working on the game. Unfortunately, this likely means we'll be stuck for a while with a matchup, where luck plays a large part in its outcome. But at least these unexpected results can be exciting for the viewers!

Image source: Blizzard