Is competitive balance good or bad for games?

[Dayyālu]

The HoMM mod is living proof that dedicated communities can balance games better than any developers would without it detracting from the gameplay. After all, no developer would playtest their game for two decades, and no, Grimoire is not a strategy!

On this, I wholeheartedly agree!

I was a community member for a old RTS\FPS hybrid, Battlezone 1998. After being dropped by the devs it was kept up by fan forums and by a single lone developer that managed it as a labour of love, with the help of the community. As a result, the MP experience became better and better as broken details and failing unit AI was addressed and balanced. That didn't mean that the factions where "streamlined" or "neutered", it merely meant a closer approach on what worked and what didn't, without losing oneself to endless percentages: fixing broken strategies made the game bloom even better, as it opened a shitton of viable tactics that were subpar when the game was in its initial state.

And of course then they made and sold a HD version, killed the fan patch, killed the fan downloads and killed a fifteen years old community in roughly two weeks.



Should have hosted everything on a Russkie server.

 

[Raghar]

And of course then they made and sold a HD version, killed the fan patch, killed the fan downloads and killed a fifteen years old community in roughly two weeks.

Should have hosted everything on a Russkie server.

Was community retarded? Why didn't they?

Rule n. 1 use pirated version for updates and ballancing. Pirated version is out of control of publisher/developer, thus when they make HD version, they will not be able to kill the old version.

 

[Dayyālu]

Was community retarded? Why didn't they?

The community was North American\Canadian mostly, with some Euro outliers (like me, or the guy who managed the downloads that was a Croat as far as I remember). Sum that with the fact that the bulk of the work was managed by one of the original devs (that didn't complain when the game was pirated tho) and when Rebellion came in with smiles and prizes the pirated downloads were nuked in short order.

Without new blood and with shit-tier mod support, the community dried up and died.

 

[Crash]

I have never cared much for balance. I don't play "balanced" HoMM maps, I don't play balanced Civ maps etc, etc. Either random or "unbalanced" scenario/map, where everyone has to deal with different starting assets. Heck, I even love those random starting position mods for tES games. And I very often randomly roll my characters for RPGs. All that whining about balance feels like players just looking for excuses for their lack of skills

 

[thesheeep]

I have never cared much for balance. I don't play "balanced" HoMM maps, I don't play balanced Civ maps etc, etc. Either random or "unbalanced" scenario/map, where everyone has to deal with different starting assets. Heck, I even love those random starting position mods for tES games. And I very often randomly roll my characters for RPGs. All that whining about balance feels like players just looking for excuses for their lack of skills

Yeah, same here.
One thing I love about many strategy games (no matter if RTS or turn based) are procedurally generated maps.
The way they force you to adjust and play around the weaknesses of your starting position is just great - and pretty much impossible to get in "well-balanced" premade maps.

In WBC3, when you play a random map, everyone is guaranteed a lvl3 (which is max) mine of every resource. But apart from that, anything is possible. You can start surrounded by three more mines of crystal and then, obviously, you better find a way to make use of that, especially if your race isn't usually that depending on crystal. Or you are in a team and can trade those with your ally who needs crystal because he is playing filthy elves.

 

[Matalarata]

procedurally generated maps

Yes! And when some random Vatnik I won't name goes for a level III throne in Dominions but instead of just conquering it, he adds insult to injury and Hellbinds Hearth the Titan defending it. Gaining a game-changing advantage from the throne and what's basically a secondary Pretender God of sort.
Or when you randomly stumble upon a province producing some rare indy mages that can add much needed diversity to your game on turn 2 and, on turn 4, an event spawns an indy lich that proceeds in killing and reanimating the whole province, leaving it forever at 0 resources and population and, as such, unable to recruit the mentioned mages. Obviously they will remain in your recruitment list for that province for the whole 70+ turns game, trolling you with their potential.

 

[Norfleet]

You need pop and resources to recruit leader types, particularly mages now? I remember in the older editions having no problem recruiting mages from depopulated provinces. Was this nerfed?

 

[Matalarata]

Yep, resources and population. Dom5 added both recruitment points (based on the population of a province, used to recruit troops) and commander points (given by infrastructure) to recruit leader types. In some cases you can easily produce two or three commanders per turn from a province (eg. a scout only costs 1 CP) or need multiple turns to recruit one (big mages require 4 points).

In any case, leaders require resources, even mages require 2-3 of those to be produced. Once a province is depopulated and its resources reduced to 0, tough luck!

 

[Johannes]

If a game needs to be house-ruled somehow for MP to make sense, what does that imply for the SP game? Take SMAC for example. Crawlers don't break the balance in MP, since everyone can use them, but for SP they give you a one-sided advantage because the AI can't handle them. SMAC is decently balanced in the sense that there's no huge disparity in factional strength, but are the game mechanics good overall or could they be improved in a way that helps BOTH SP and MP?

Does anyone think SMAC SP is so good because it's great fun to roll over AI with strategies they're incapable of using?

 

[Dzupakazul]

If a game needs to be house-ruled somehow for MP to make sense, what does that imply for the SP game?

There is a community of particularly big Civilization fans called Realms Beyond who noted the need for house-rules to truly feel challenged long ago, so they've been playing those games with variant rules like trying out a Civ3 game on Regent (the "default" difficulty level) with no workers, ever. I think they were also credited with the Naked and Cursed Sorcerer Diablo 1 challenge. Also, games like SMAC, HoMM and Civ also involve the "high score" element. So, yeah, you can abuse Civ4 slavery, classic Civ/SMAC Democracy pop booming or Crawlers, but you will still need to go above and beyond that to grind out a really high score. Even then, some high score competitions have their own houserules - I think that in Civ4 there's a separate category for fastest / best finishes with Huayna Capac and for fastest / best finishes with other leaders.

 

[thesheeep]

Does anyone think SMAC SP is so good because it's great fun to roll over AI with strategies they're incapable of using?

It is simply unrelated to SMAC SP being good or not if the AI is incapable of doing some specific strategy.
What matters is the AI posing a challenge to the player, making it fun to overcome.
Of course, the more strategies it can use, the better, but not being able to do a few is hardly terrible.

but are the game mechanics good overall or could they be improved in a way that helps BOTH SP and MP?

Any improvement to game mechanics will benefit both SP and MP to some degree, usually.
It's just that improvements focused solely on competitive MP balance don't matter much at all on the SP side. While they are actively harmful to SP if all they do is making all factions more symmetric, and some would say that is harmful to MP as well.
Meanwhile, improving SP always improves MP as well.

 

[Matalarata]

Does anyone think SMAC SP is so good because it's great fun to roll over AI with strategies they're incapable of using?

Personally? I think mechanics-wise there are more interesting titles to play sp. The charm of AC came mainly from the setting, the well-researched sci-fi background and the learning process itself. When I first bought it, I had no internet access. My first game I played as Gaians, went full boreholes and high eco damage everywhere. The first time I used crawlers I had probably already sinked 60+ hours in game (I was also 19 and didn't exactly rtfm).

As for crawlers and AI, I'd say that's more a case of a feature they should have axed, but ultimately thought it could provide fun. Setting the AI on an higher level gives it more than enough resources to compensate for the lack of crawlers, although it would be fun to have a supply line of sort to harass, I'd say ultimately their choice was the right one.
It gives more options to play with in sp, hardly alters mp balance (I'll take your words here) and can be easily passed-up or just ignored, for an added challenge, by experienced players.

 

[Absinthe]

I argued that AoW was ruined by having competitive multiplayer balance in mind. I also arghaue that as soon as the devs relented a bit on symmetrical design the game got a lot better.

You even argued that when they made a poorly balanced Necromancer class that they shouldn't fix it because it was somehow better for the game that way. And AoW's problem wasn't that they tried to balance it but the lousy methodology they used and how horribly uncreative their ideas were. AoW 2 and prior have definitely suffered from balance-related issues making some races downright non-choices if you wanted to do multiplayer and the like. It was precisely because the lack of balance resulted in a limited pool of viable options that balance became a larger concern in later games.

Unbalanced as in asymmetrical, non-homogenized, not balanced for an environment where each choice must be equally viable. 4x are naturally prone to be apreciated in SP. Long turn times, long game, aleatory mechanics.

You've used the word "aleatory" in hardly relevant contexts enough times now that I can't help but get the feeling of a little kid hoping to be praised for mastering a new vocab word. And just how is the situation of the AoW 3 Necromancer class supposed to fit into this? The whole argument was predicated on little more than two idiots rejoicing about the downfall of "balance" as though that somehow improved the game and increased strategic options, when in fact it did not and the major complaint was how ludicrously limited a Rogue's strategic options are when confronted with a Necromancer.

I never said it's the only way to go

No, you just strongly implied it at every turn through your continual contempt of balancing and competitive gameplay and your claims that all the best 4X must be unbalanced. It's only very recently that you started making an effort to differentiate between reductive, homogenized balance and asymmetrical balance, and only because the point about balance improving tactical options was repeatedly made to you, so you started shifting tracks from "all balance is bad and symmetrical" to "I swear I only had a problem with symmetrical balance."

just that I think people believing there's a scene in AoW are deluded. You need numbers to have a scene. I ask again, how many players, compared to the total % only play Single Player? I argued that the game would have been better if the devs were to stick to a more loose design document, to allow an higher number of playable, fun, strategies.

AoW 3 hardly has numbers at all. An underwhelming launch of a boring game plus a couple of years will do that. That said, there is a multiplayer "scene" and the game is built around the competitive balance.

No. I argued it leads to a fixed meta with no creativity. 4x are aleatory in nature, of course you'll always be able to use your smarts and creativity.

And I argued right back that balance is used to maintain a diverse array options instead of tunneling down to specific choices. If anything it is the badly balanced games that result in fixed metas when played at a sufficiently high level.

Your problem, Absinthe, is that you think too high of yourself. You also immediately assume someone arguing against your beliefs to be an air-headed moron, as anyone can clearly see from your condescending tone. You also keep trying to shift the focus on me hating balance in general while I made some very specific examples.

It's not that I think too highly of myself. It's just that I think badly of you, namely that you're stupid and that you suffer from unwarranted self-importance. And the reason I think that is because your answers are frequently so devoid of logic and reason they outright fail the principle of falsifiability, you ego-trip relentlessly (and you get sore when others don't respect your little circlejerk or crap), you play the ad-hominem game, and you seem to act like people should agree with your interpretations by default even though you have no actual logic to show for your perspective, so it's more like an appeal to popularity fallacy except without even being popular, which ends up just being delusional tbf. So you're just setting yourself up for ridicule, really. You seem to think that acting like you're a winner is the same thing as actually winning an argument (it's not) and you get upset when you're treated like a fool.

I'm also still waiting for someone else to chime in and comment on AC being a competitive and mp oriented game first, a single player experience second.

Seeing as I already linked a developer's diary where the dev mentions how the factions were competitively balanced and how they deliberately used extreme strategies and multiplayer to fine-tune the balance better, you might have a hard time finding someone embracing your preferred delusion that Alpha Centauri is not a competitively balanced 4X. That's not to say AC doesn't have its problems, but it was a game designed for competitive gameplay.

Correction buddy, I said balance is bad for 4X games. And I wasn't talking about balance in general but symmetrical balance, which is otherwise very, very important in sports.

You shat on League of Legends and Starcraft over the subject of competitive balance and meta implications. Yeah your complaints are really specific to 4X balance, you revisionist dimwit. This is the kinda stunt where I call you a moron because your bullshit seems to hinge on the notion that people will blindly swallow what you say and not pay any attention if you've been contradicting yourself. You're not as clever as you think you are. You're actually pretty stupid.

Yep! That's what makes a single player game fun! A lot of crazy and different mechanics, leading to a number of variables.

And it was already explained how strategies become limited as a result of this kind of crappy non-balance. AoE 2 fire ships being one example. If one option is just worse than another because "fuck balance" you wind up running into a situation where one option just won't be used. In games with bad balance you end up running into this kind of situation where one option blatantly outshines another and arguing "more options is better!" doesn't really hold water in that kind of circumstance. That's not to say you should necessarily reduce options, but you need to make sure that there is a reason to pick them, ie. that the options you have are actually diverse and not simply unnecessary/redundant/etc.

Any kind of equalization or design principle forcing average, symmetrical trands reduces variability. It's mathematical.

Go is a highly symmetrical boardgame and yet the strategic variability is very high. Your logic does not hold water.

Naah, you went all butthurt, started calling us names, posted wall of text after wall of text and, when after months another poster quoted me on the same thread, you immediately jumped in, with the same levels of edginess and addressed me directly.

Initial comment of mine hitting a weak spot of yours? ---> Check
Immediate, frequent and abused use of ad-hominems, Kodex Kredits and fear of Character assassination lol: )? ---> Check
"I naturally shat on..." being the preferred defence mechanism of a prey? ---> Check
PTSD-like reaction when a random poster quotes me months later? ---> Check

You project super hard, kid. I honestly have no idea what comment of yours is even supposed to have hit a "weak spot" of mine. The same argument I had with you was restarted while I was in the thread and now you're whining that I still disagree and answer back when you decided to repeat the same stupid shit, and not too long before this post of yours you were whining that I must have had you on ignore because I hadn't responded to you as much as you wanted or shit. At the end of the day I think you're just looking for excuses to bitch and moan and act like an inconsistent little attention whoring twit honestly. I make mention of you attempting character assassination not because I am somehow "afraid" of your nonsense but just because you clearly invest an inordinate amount of effort in trying to make me look bad and generally ridicule the other side as if it helps you win the argument. Now certainly I also get in my digs at you, but I don't act as if that's the way to win an argument, as if that's what makes me right. I happen to have actual arguments for why you're wrong. You, though, seem to think that acting out, posting ridicule, and engaging in wild digressions are all valid answers to arguments, which is to say you argue like an idiot, which is why you get treated like one.

After that I was annoyed about the continuous off-topic tangent and asked you to man up and bring the conversation somewhere else, which you did, but instead of quoting the thread like a rational man would, you just quote-nested my last message out of context, stating I said GAMES SHOULD NEVER BE BALANCED *Hurr* times and times again.

You wanted me to make a new thread because it was getting off-topic. I agreed and did that. Now you're mad that I didn't start the thread your way. If you wanted the thread to be started your way, why the fuck didn't you just do it yourself instead of asking me? The sheer sense of entitlement you carry is pretty fucking ridiculous.

Believe me son, irl I'm a professional.

Is this like that time one of you two claimed to have been a pro at playing videogames? Word of advice, kid: Saying crap like this only makes you sound even more dubious than you already are.

This is a bad case of butthurt that made you take a tangent, and you utterly refused to see my (and other people) point of view.

So this is a form of "character assassination" as mentioned above. You're whining that I must be butthurt and an unreasonable person, because according to you, if I were a reasonable person, then I should be agreeing that your arguments are somehow good and valid (when my biggest problem with you is that you don't even have any real arguments). You have a serious problem. This is what I mean by you acting as if others should agree with your interpretations by default. The "and other people" is like a crappy argumentum ad populum (your circlejerk is really tiny, kid - it mostly consists of thesheeep sheeping your posts). For fuck's sake, if you want to claim you're right, then present an actual, logical chain of reasoning for why. Don't whine about disrespect, feelings, "acting reasonable," and whatever the fuck else bullshit you like to pull out of your ass to avoid addressing the basic issue that you have no real argument to begin with. Believe it or not, respect is something you have to earn, not something you whine for.

It just happens I'm the only one keeping this convo alive, although I fear I have little else to say and it appears I'm cursed to repeat my points and arguments again and again.

Here we see some unwarranted self-importance on your part, and the curse you speak of is the curse of your own stupidity. It's because you cannot come up with productive, intelligent responses to reasons why you're wrong that you so readily resort to repeating yourself.

You think AoW MP is a legit way of spending your time? Good for you! I disagree and think there are far better activities.

Okay, so if you disagree with AoW MP being a legitimate way to spend your time, then we can more directly rephrase it as "You believe AoW multiplayer is not a legitimate way to spend your time." And judging by your defense of non-competitive play among other things, it can be easily inferred that while you believe there are far better activities than wasting time on multiplayer, you nevertheless find it a perfectly fine use of time to play singleplayer AoW. The point I'm really getting at is that you're a petty, whiny bitch with no real standards who seems to think people shouldn't play the way you don't like. Which, aside from demonstrating that unwarranted sense of self-importance again, sort of ties back into the original argument where you started praising the fact that the new class was badly balanced vs rogues, spouted weird shit about balance being the devil, and claimed that ruining multiplayer balance improved the game somehow. It obviously didn't, but you just have a weird grudge against competitive multiplayer, one you are desperate to present as a somehow reasonable viewpoint, when in fact it is not.

I also think the number of people playing MP 4x is extremely limited, calling it a scene is ridiculous and that 4x games should be balanced for the mode that the great majority of players will experience, not for the few hundreds playing MP. Feel free to disagree bro but, if you fling shit? Yeah, you get shat on.

This is just more bitching and moaning. There actually does exist a community of multiplayer players, which is what we call a "scene." Your complaint is not rooted in language but your compulsive need to delegitimize competitive play in order to satisfy your own conceit that games should ignore competitive players in their design. And this is the roundabout way you try to win the argument. You're dodging the issue of whether balance is good or bad in favor of claiming that competitive players shouldn't matter and shouldn't be catered to, and there are a number of arguments that can be raised to that (like the fact that a well-made competitive multiplayer game is more likely to enjoy a healthy MP community and that you have a poor grasp of how game design affects the target audience, instead pretending target audience is set in stone and game design needs to cater to your notion of it to be a success), but foremost we can re-raise the point that has been consistently raised so far, which is that it is possible to make games with good competitive multiplayer which are also good and fun to play in the singleplayer. There doesn't need to be a trade-off between good competitive and good singleplayer, and this supposed trade-off appears to be the underlying logic to your assertion that games should reject competitive balance because according to you singleplayer is what really matters as you think multiplayer sucks and no one plays it.

 

[ItsChon]

Yes and no. It depends on the game and needs to be taken on a case by case basis. There will always be some imbalance, the question isn't whether they can remove it completely but whether or not the game is competitively viable; which is a more productive argument. Take the Super Smash Bros games, a series that has an amazing competitive scene, and doesn't have the benefit of frequent patches like other games. I doubt many people would say that they're competitively balanced, anyone whose played the game and seen their tier lists knows that. There is also the inclusion of items, and certain maps with RNG effects that throw off the balance. The way that's circumvented is by banning items and only allowing certain maps. They made a game that isn't competitively balanced, competitively viable. Despite that, it's undeniable that the game would have been less fun in a party setting if they didn't have items or some of their more goofy maps. It's a fine line that needs to be ridden carefully.

 

[Johannes]

Eh, needless to say, I almost fully agree with Matalarata here in that balancing a SP focused game for MP foremost harms the game.
So, I won't go over all those arguments again, he does a good job at that.

I would even go one step further and say that MP itself would be way more interesting if factions and strategies would not only be more asymmetrical but also more varied in sheer power and more RPS like in not only units but races themselves.
Imagine a game with, say 10-15 races (yes, that's a lot) and each of them plays between "somewhat" and "very" differently and also mix in RPG by having a main hero unit.
It was fully balanced for being interesting to play in single player mode, but also offers an exhaustive multiplayer mode with persistent MP worlds (co-op and/or vs campaigns, imagine Emperor: Battle For Dune or WBC3 campaign online), matchmaking, leagues, etc. you name it.

Now, one of these races (race A) can be considered the overall best, without an argument.
However, another race (race B), which can be considered one of the worst otherwise, has a much easier time against it due to the build flow and what units it has available.
Additionally, the hero unit is permanent and consistent between matches/across a campaign and as you level it up you can invest in skills improving its combat prowess or skills improving the race as a whole (again, similar to WBC3).

Just like some units are by nature stronger against some others, some of these races are by nature stronger against some others. But each race has weaknesses that at least one race has a strength against.
In single player, this means that each player can set their own challenge by choosing a race, while figuring out strengths and weaknesses of each race AND the overall strength of a faction is an exploration aspect of its own - somewhat similar to Dominions, I'd say.
You can also experiment a lot with your hero/race synergy.
Single-player wise, this would be a dream game (to me, at least). And if it didn't have multiplayer, I'd be fine as well.

But let's say it has MP.
Multiplayer wise, I can already hear "everyone will play race A with hero X because that is strongest".
And if you'd do matchmaking, scoring, etc. like a normal RTS game, I'd agree. Or rather, I'd say that people would still pick whatever race they like most, but complain about it being shit tier, unable to gain ground in leagues, etc. and would stop playing MP.

But let's not do that!
Instead, for scoring and league positioning etc., each faction (and if you want to get extra thorough, each faction/hero combo) gets assigned a score factor against each other faction. This score factor determines your final score after a match, as a multiplicator maybe.
For example, race A has generally the lowest score factor (as it is the strongest), but a higher one if playing against race B.
It will simply be extremely hard to gain a top position league-wise if all you do is play race A - not only number of wins count, the score does, most of all.
Playing race B as your main will be tough, but even gaining as much as a "valiant defeat" against a stronger race to play against will grant you a score that is as good as a victory, winning will actually be extra worthwhile.

Now, balancing how this score is calculated wouldn't be easy, but I'm fairly sure it can be done. Analyzing statistics in beta would help a lot here.
The important thing is that now, not everything is about winning, it is about getting a good score.
And the best thing? Devs could stop reaching for a perfect balance that cannot be achieved anyway, and instead go for way more interesting things to pursue.

None of this means that there can be no balancing done. Of course, it can - if something is too extremely strong or weak, that can be adjusted. A shitty player shouldn't be able to beat a good player, no matter the faction combo, that would be where I draw my "balancing line".
But as soon as you end up trying to make every race work equally well against every other race, you invariably end up making all of them less varied and interesting, too.

I think that could be a very worthwhile experiment to show/test that even in MP, typical competitive balancing isn't necessary.

A game would need to be designed explicitly for that idea for it to make sense. Playing for points instead of to win, in a 1v1 MP game, is perverse. It'd depend on how you score the points how bad it would be, but it'd need very careful work to avoid retarded gameplay.

If points were mainly determined by how quickly you win (or a proxy for that), it turns the game into a stalling game which is not fun to do repeatedly. Or if it's based on territory / economy / etc. then what's stopping the winner from maxing those out before finally reaching the win condition?
No matter what the method, you'll see people go for a strategy that maximizes their score instead of maximizes chance of winning. Does that sound exciting?

Generally it's good design and good sportsmanship that once a winner is clear, the loser can concede and you can start a new game.


If you're gonna determine factors on faction strength vs. each other, better to just adjust the points you get for winning/losing based on also faction disparity and not just skill disparity as is usual. Or you could add some ingame resources to the weaker party of a matchup.

And none of this gets rid of balancing anyway, you still need a method to determine the numbers used by the ladder system, people still can and will whine that the balancing of the ladder is off. And more important than equalising ladder performance, good balancing must be done to ensure the matches are actually fun - that the same matchup doesn't always play out the same way, or be a glorified RPS between starting builds.

 

[thesheeep]

A game would need to be designed explicitly for that idea for it to make sense. Playing for points instead of to win, in a 1v1 MP game, is perverse. It'd depend on how you score the points how bad it would be, but it'd need very careful work to avoid retarded gameplay.

Of course you play to win, as that nets you the most possible points in every scenario you are in.

If points were mainly determined by how quickly you win (or a proxy for that), it turns the game into a stalling game which is not fun to do repeatedly. Or if it's based on territory / economy / etc. then what's stopping the winner from maxing those out before finally reaching the win condition?
No matter what the method, you'll see people go for a strategy that maximizes their score instead of maximizes chance of winning. Does that sound exciting?

I'm not saying I have the perfect method down to determine such a score, but I am absolutely convinced it is possible, and actually easier to do than try to perfectly balance a larger number of unequal factions.

Generally it's good design and good sportsmanship that once a winner is clear, the loser can concede and you can start a new game.

So?...

If you're gonna determine factors on faction strength vs. each other, better to just adjust the points you get for winning/losing based on also faction disparity and not just skill disparity as is usual.

Of course.

One possible way would be to give maximum points for a victory - but no extra points based on how far ahead on economy or whatever you were.
Win = 100%, but if you lose, how well you did could determine if you only get 20% or 75% of that score. And how high the maximum points are, that is determined by faction & hero strength vs. each other.

And more important than equalising ladder performance, good balancing must be done to ensure the matches are actually fun - that the same matchup doesn't always play out the same way, or be a glorified RPS between starting builds.

The whole point is that it becomes acceptable that certain matchups usually end in the same result. Nation A usually wins against nation B.
The fun, for those who want to do that, lies in trying to grab the odd victory as nation B. While still not leaving a match with nothing if they lose.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[BING XI LAO]

Seeing as I already linked a developer's diary where the dev mentions how the factions were competitively balanced and how they deliberately used extreme strategies and multiplayer to fine-tune the balance better, you might have a hard time finding someone embracing your preferred delusion that Alpha Centauri is not a competitively balanced 4X. That's not to say AC doesn't have its problems, but it was a game designed for competitive gameplay.

Singleplayer only shitters BTFO

 

[Johannes]

A game would need to be designed explicitly for that idea for it to make sense. Playing for points instead of to win, in a 1v1 MP game, is perverse. It'd depend on how you score the points how bad it would be, but it'd need very careful work to avoid retarded gameplay.

Of course you play to win, as that nets you the most possible points in every scenario you are in.

No, winning with maximum points is not the same as simply winning. Winning is now on a sliding scale instead of binary.

If points were mainly determined by how quickly you win (or a proxy for that), it turns the game into a stalling game which is not fun to do repeatedly. Or if it's based on territory / economy / etc. then what's stopping the winner from maxing those out before finally reaching the win condition?
No matter what the method, you'll see people go for a strategy that maximizes their score instead of maximizes chance of winning. Does that sound exciting?

I'm not saying I have the perfect method down to determine such a score, but I am absolutely convinced it is possible, and actually easier to do than try to perfectly balance a larger number of unequal factions.

It may be possible but you've got only your feelz to back you up that it's not extremely hard to get right even if you'd design your game from the start to accommoddate the idea.

If you'd even try to think of a good meter of performance outside of winning, in an actual existing game, that'd be something, but you admit you have no idea how to measure it.

And more important than equalising ladder performance, good balancing must be done to ensure the matches are actually fun - that the same matchup doesn't always play out the same way, or be a glorified RPS between starting builds.

The whole point is that it becomes acceptable that certain matchups usually end in the same result. Nation A usually wins against nation B.
The fun, for those who want to do that, lies in trying to grab the odd victory as nation B. While still not leaving a match with nothing if they lose.

What's a ladder ranking, anyhow? It's for matchmaking and bragging rights.

For matchmaking, do you prefer to play games where you win about half the time, or more, or less?
For bragging rights, of course if you reach a certain rank with the strongest or weakest nation, makes it less or more impressive, in a normal ranking system.

 

[mondblut]

In any case, leaders require resources, even mages require 2-3 of those to be produced. Once a province is depopulated and its resources reduced to 0, tough luck!

If you build a castle there, shouldn't it draw resources from the neighboring provinces?

 

[Matalarata]

If you build a castle there, shouldn't it draw resources from the neighboring provinces?

I had a fortress there iirc. The one spawned by the event itself (lich chain of events). Or maybe I built it there myself, can't quite remember atm. Although I do remember that particular province was a wasteland adjacent to my cap, another wasteland and 2-3 sea provinces. Resources remained 0 for the whole game.
I should have dominated one of Ulm smiths!

 

[mondblut]

I had a fortress there iirc. The one spawned by the event itself (lich chain of events). Or maybe I built it there myself, can't quite remember atm. Although I do remember that particular province was a wasteland adjacent to my cap, another wasteland and 2-3 sea provinces. Resources remained 0 for the whole game.

The cap probably pulled it all. Resource pulling, how does it even work, wtf.

 

[thesheeep]

A game would need to be designed explicitly for that idea for it to make sense. Playing for points instead of to win, in a 1v1 MP game, is perverse. It'd depend on how you score the points how bad it would be, but it'd need very careful work to avoid retarded gameplay.

Of course you play to win, as that nets you the most possible points in every scenario you are in.

No, winning with maximum points is not the same as simply winning. Winning is now on a sliding scale instead of binary.

Which changes nothing about how you play.
Except if the scoring system was so bonkers that you'd not just go for victory but do some other weird shit in order to rake in maximum points even if you should lose. Which would be a bad idea if that other weird shit gets in the way of winning.
I really don't see the practical difference here.

If points were mainly determined by how quickly you win (or a proxy for that), it turns the game into a stalling game which is not fun to do repeatedly. Or if it's based on territory / economy / etc. then what's stopping the winner from maxing those out before finally reaching the win condition?
No matter what the method, you'll see people go for a strategy that maximizes their score instead of maximizes chance of winning. Does that sound exciting?

I'm not saying I have the perfect method down to determine such a score, but I am absolutely convinced it is possible, and actually easier to do than try to perfectly balance a larger number of unequal factions.

It may be possible but you've got only your feelz to back you up that it's not extremely hard to get right even if you'd design your game from the start to accommoddate the idea.

If you'd even try to think of a good meter of performance outside of winning, in an actual existing game, that'd be something, but you admit you have no idea how to measure it.

Well, coming up with such a system, or a basic working form, would be a matter of days.
Why would I spent evenings of my free time to convince someone on the internet? I know it would work, and even you admit it may be possible.
My "feelz" have never let me down.
I'm not making such a game, yet, no need to go further right now.

 

[Johannes]

Which changes nothing about how you play.
Except if the scoring system was so bonkers that you'd not just go for victory but do some other weird shit in order to rake in maximum points even if you should lose. Which would be a bad idea if that other weird shit gets in the way of winning.
I really don't see the practical difference here.

Think hockey or football. If a league is based on goal difference only, and not the win record of matches, obviously it changes how you play and plan your games a ton. Even when winning games is obviously linked to scoring goals.

 

[thesheeep]

Which changes nothing about how you play.
Except if the scoring system was so bonkers that you'd not just go for victory but do some other weird shit in order to rake in maximum points even if you should lose. Which would be a bad idea if that other weird shit gets in the way of winning.
I really don't see the practical difference here.

Think hockey or football. If a league is based on goal difference only, and not the win record of matches, obviously it changes how you play and plan your games a ton. Even when winning games is obviously linked to scoring goals.

I have no clue about hockey rules, so I can only comment on football.
In football (and I'm talking about the real one, what US people wrongfully call soccer, not that stuff barely involving feet) there actually is a scoring system, it's just not fine grained (and definitely not balanced ). A victory nets 3 points, a draw 1, a loss 0. So there are at least not only win and loss.
Anyway, if a league was based on goal difference only (as in a ratio of scored to received goals), then each team would try to make as many goals as possible while receiving as few as possible. Which is exactly what happens now, so no difference there. All the different strategies, like walling up after scoring a 1:0 or 2:0 or going all in or being extremely defensive if you are already in the lead league-wise would still be valid.

I also don't think just using scored and received goals as a substitute for an actual score as I supposed in an RTS is the same thing. Such a thing would have to include % of time owning the ball, precision of passes, etc. I'm really no sports expert, so I hope you get what I mean anyway.
This also doesn't cover the situation of unequal teams, it's not like some teams play football, while others bring hockey sticks - though let's be honest, that would be awesome.

The basic point is: There is no change in overall strategy. You still try to win each game using the same methods as before in the same way.
The only difference is that losing still grants you something. So a player who loses all their matches, but just barely so, might end up ranking above or close to another player who won a few matches, but lost all others way more clearly (let's assume an extreme variance in form of the day [why does English have no "Tagesform"? Stupid language!]).
Which is a more realistic order by skill if you ask me.
What shifts, is not the strategy or how you play, but the resulting rank in the league. The best players will still be on top, the worst still at the bottom. But in-between, things get more interesting.

In a way, such a system would make both victories and losses (at least close losses) less extreme.
Now, I think that would lead to more people being interested in playing to begin with, as losses feel less bad (pretty sure about that). A main reason most players don't even dabble in competitive RTS gaming is that they know they suck and would only rake in loss after loss.
There might also be some people being less interested in playing, as victories might feel less good (not sure about that).

Hence I'd love to see such a system implemented and see the results. An experiment. Too psychologic to predict what will happen with certainty before actually doing it.