Is competitive balance good or bad for games?

[Absinthe]

Okay, so I've been having an argument with Matalarata and thesheeep about this in the Age of Wonders 3 thread. It started with me arguing AoW 3's new Necromancer class was poorly conceived, overpowered, and in need of competitive rebalancing, and immediately getting responses from these guys arguing that somehow it was a good thing for the Necro to be broken because that makes the game more fun somehow. It is their opinion that competitive balance is necessarily reductive and homogenizing and bland and evil, and it is my opinion that good asymmetrical balance can be achieved and that games are more fun when the balance is done well. Since the argument has been derailing the thread and turned into a sprawling argument on whether or not 4X games should be designed with balance in mind, I'm making a new thread for it now.

 

[Absinthe]

A gentleman as usual . You really can't see how butthurt this makes you look, right? I thought it was an internet persona of yours but you really think you know what you're talking about.

Son, just because you're busy acting out and projecting heavily doesn't mean others are obligated to see shit your way. If you're busy fellating yourself, I'm not under any obligation to respond.

Yes... and? The basic design principle of a CRPG was lifted from pnp RPGs, which are multi-player in nature by default. Are you arguing things like Mass Effect should be the norm 'coz they have multiplayer like pnp had?

There's making a leap of logic and then there's... this failed abortion of an attempted argument. How about you come down to earth and respond to the shit that was actually said instead of making up random crap and pretending you're making a point somehow?

What's an RPG? 4x? The experience of playing a board game, and I started playing those when you still used to shit your pants, is completely different from a cpu assisted 4x.

For the record, kid, this is what I mean by you fellating yourself or "blatantly dumb and meaningless shit" that is not worth my breath to respond to.

Dominions was a board game to begin with. Did you knew that? It was born as a board game, a physical game. When mechanics became too deep and cumbersome and lenghty to execute, they produced a PC game out of it. Notice how, the only real life applicable example of your thesis is the single game I'm sperging about.

Counter-example: Civilization. You tool.

And it totally defeats your cowmpeteiteiv bullshit theory. It's an unbalanced clusterfuck filled with ifs and buts and hows and whats, and its unique mechanics are due to the lack of the same process you endlessly offend me about.

You really get hung up over the argument of whether or not 4X and board games were designed for multiplayer or not which is a separate argument from whether competitive balance improves or detracts from strategic depth.

Here, have a diagram you autist king.

You *kick* ---------------> Goalpost

Standing by my words is not "kicking the goalpost," son. Just because you picked up a few words on rhetoric doesn't mean you are applying them properly. And your persistent misdirections onto whether games were developed as multiplayer games or not (which is a minor point) from whether or not competitive balance is good or bad for strategic complexity (the original major point) could sooner be described as a form of kicking the goalpost.

I ask again. Can you name a 4x balanced for multiplayer that you also deem solid and fun to play? I ask again since you're so nebulous it isn't even funny, do you consider Alpha Centauri a game that is balanced for multiplayer? Are there civs which have a mathematical advantage over others? I ask all this because I tend to know my limit very well (you should try too) and as I already said:

Well, I have made three consecutive posts referring to Alpha Centauri as an example of a multiplayer-balanced 4X but perhaps fourth time will be the charm: Yes, you fucking moron. I am calling Alpha Centauri a 4X balanced for multiplayer. It was deliberately playtested for competitive balance and playstyle variety. See here. Let me know if you need further clarification on whether I am in fact saying that Alpha Centauri is a fun, competitively balanced game. I think it should be obvious by now, but you seem a bit slow on the uptake here, so if you need me to point it out a few more times until you manage to figure it out, I can oblige.

If you deem AC a valid example of your thesis I'll install it again, ask some buddy to give it a spin and bring your point to one of the related threads, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of actual players here that will chime in. As far as I remember though, it's far from a Multi oriented title, needing lots and lots of gentleman's agreement to be played. Crawlers? Game changing secret projects? I can hardly believe an "anything goes" competitive environment would spontaneusly form, but you could have a point. I admit my ignorance.

Crawler abuse is a somewhat asinine aspect of the game and you can get bored of it after a while but it has no real impact on competitive balance since everyone can do it no problem. And believe it or not but Secret Projects are in fact supposed to confer competitive advantages to the player building them.

No mate, I have been quoted and answered another poster. BING XI LAO, to be precise.

I am talking about your tendency to try to distract from responding to an argument by derailing into new and random shit, not that this is OT from AoW 3. Like how I would point out good balance improves strategic depth and you'd immediately try to spin the argument into crap about whether games were developed with multiplayer balance in mind and try to score a point that way. It's a disingenuous form of argument.

I also pointed out again and again all this is OT. Did you even read my post or I should think I'm arguing with a 9 years old here? Dick measuring ? Character assassination boy, I'm the one trying to score points? Where has the bad bad poster hurt your precious codex persona? Idiot !

Since evidently you need me to point out your own behavior to you: "Are you really so dense?" "exit your mother basement Absinthe" "you're high on your own farts" yada yada dumb shit. Point is, I just found it cute that you wanted to whine about naughty words (namely, the fact that I refer to you as an idiot) and attempt to compare me to a child without the slightest ounce of awareness regarding your own behavior and weird grandstanding about random shit. It's called hypocrisy, son, and you should try doing less of it.

Except.... that's exactly what you did. Either that or you went so butthurt when I talked about doing sport and your mom's basement that you stopped reading and you still don't understand my point which, for the seventh time is this:

That's the point I disputed above and you offered no response to my answer, but now you want to pretend your point is still valid? Either make with the counterargument or admit your point holds no water. If you think repeating yourself in lieu of explaining yourself when you get called out on the flaws in your reasoning is a valid answer, then you're just being a moron.

It's also pointless, when you achieve it you no longer have a game. In any case, I could double up my question with a "could you name an half succesful homogenized MP game"? But you'll aptly ignore it! (serious question, I'm curious)

At no stage was the argument that homogenized MP was the way to go. If you really want to go back to the origin of our balance argument, I said that the Necromancer class needed rebalancing because it was overpowered (every single competitive balance mod by the way agrees) to which the response was a bizarre argument that it was a good thing AoW 3 Necros are OP because somehow that made the game better.

Yep, that's why it sucked so hard in the beginning it wasn't even funny! When they let go of homogenization at least a bit, the game became much better. Really, you prove my point with each post you make and each time you try to sound informed. And then you:

Don't be an idiot. They didn't abandon balancing the game. They simply shifted from a largely symmetrical racial balance to a more asymmetrical racial balance. And a lot of the real improvements were just new specs and throwing in more events and stuff to do on the map to make the game less of a boring slog. There was power creep in the newer specs because the existing specs were so damn underwhelming, and a lot of that stems not so much from balance concern but the Class Uber Alles design where everything else got shafted to remind you how important your class is, with the casualty being your number of interesting gameplay options. I actually happen to be in agreement that homogenization and making everything the same is part of what fucked the game on launch. You can go through the thread and see that I have been very consistent on this point. I just consider that bad balance. You seem to consider that the only form of balance, which is fucking bizarre to me but it seems you won't give up on that notion.

How many players deemed that blatantly balanced around competitive gameplay a fun game though? How many play it MP. How much better would it be if they implemented crazy things? Please don't let me repeat me again and again, read sometimes.

Are you expecting a serious response to your wild speculation? The world's a huge place. The way the game is developed will also no doubt influence which people will want to play it.

 

[Snorkack]

It's a pretty simple equation imho.
Balance in games with (competitive) multiplayer focus = great
Balance in games with singleplayer focus = boring.

It gets problematic for games that can't decide which one they are. Case in point: Diablo 2.

 

[Matalarata]

competitive rebalancing

What AoW III needed to be a better game is competitive rebalancing? That's your thesis right? Everything else you quoted is your butthurt except this last part that's spot on and once again proves my point:

Don't be an idiot. They didn't abandon balancing the game. They simply shifted from a largely symmetrical racial balance to a more asymmetrical racial balance.

Good job not quoting those 100 post in which I debate how I have no problems whatsoever with balance by itself but my thesis is that:

-4x games weren't born as MP affairs at first, but to allow solitary players to play alone in the first place and due to the mechanics of various games becoming too cumbersome and complex. I cited MoM (which you admit having not played) as a basis and asked you for a fun, MP balanced 4x you deemed worthy. You cited Alpha Centauri as an example of a game born for and with Multi Player first in mind, or at least that was your answer. I kindly disagree but since I have never played MP AC I cannot argue my point.

-When a 4x is tweaked for (let's change terms again to suit you) largely symmetrical racial balance (happy?) the whole game suffers and is less fun since a lot of interesting strategies or tactics need to be axed exactly because of that. Again I made numerous examples about having a nation that's underperforming but performs really well in specific circumstances or vs a single specific nation or tactic. I talked about having an advantage in the form of a powerful early unit and how to effectively balance such fun mechanic with say, the number of actual cities you can take before said advantage wanes.

I cited time and again Dominions, a game that was born as a physical board game and subsequently turned into a CPU assisted masterpiece, I will repeat again that I personally think the charm of said game resides in the devs throwing any kind of largely symmetrical racial balance (happy?) out of the window. That's why it's a fun to play 4x MP game I deem worthy to play.

You were the first to go Ad-hominem in the original thread, and I invite anyone reading to just fact-check my words. After being called a coward because I don't play MP (another easily dispellable lie), an idiot, dense and whatever, I answered in kind.

I am talking about your tendency to try to distract from responding to an argument by derailing into new and random shit, not that this is OT from AoW 3. Like how I would point out good balance improves strategic depth and you'd immediately try to spin the argument into crap about whether games were developed with multiplayer balance in mind and try to score a point that way. It's a disingenuous form of argument.

Again with this shit? You're moving the goalpost again? There's internal balance and homogeneous MP balancing to create competitive environment. This shit is under everyone's nose, you can se it being constantly pulled. I'm talking about that specific kind of design formula that dictates that each option should be viable against each other option. Could you please stop putting words in my mouth? Especially in another thread where people should bother to go and actually look them up? I have nothing against balancing out an OP unit or good balance in general. Only with symmetrical MP balance. For multiplayer. I just repeated it again twice, just in case.

You could at least quote some choice paragraph from that thread instead of just going on like nothing happened with the convo. As it stands I find your thread quite ridiculous but, whatever.

 

[Dayyālu]

O I am in fact saying that Alpha Centauri is a fun, competitively balanced game

lol

I have no intention of adding anything to the discussion: I would merely like to point out that AC is a race to abuse far worse than Dominions. In AC; the player that knows how to mechanically break the game (and a fair number of house rules are needed to avoid that) will snowball and win. It's a very bad example for a "competitively balanced game".

Examples of painfully balanced games are... Battle for Wesnoth?

 

[Matalarata]

See here.

Each faction in Alpha Centauri is founded on an ideology, with strengths and weaknesses related to its beliefs. We have several goals in balancing those attributes: Each faction should have certain strategies suggested by its culture. However, the faction should not be "locked in" to those strategies - if the game situation warrants it, a faction should be able to deviate from its optimal path. Also, the faction strengths should give the player interesting things to do without unbalancing the game. Finally, and most important, the faction must be fun to play, ensuring the player has a new and different series of interesting and challenging decisions to make each time he or she plays.

So, this is from the text you linked, this should prove that AC was created as a competitive game first and as a fun single player experience second, right? I'm reading page after page, it's really interesting. Also it never mentions competitive environment of any kind. Nor does it mentions MP in specific. It also talks about player (singular) for the entirety of the part I've read. The first mention of balance I find is this:

There are no all-powerful factions, no unstoppable tactics.

I see no specific mention of AC being developed as a MP game first but I'll keep reading.


Edit: Later on I find this:

Spoiler

At the same time, no faction power should be dominant over the rest. For quite a while, the Lord's Believers, under Sister Miriam, could build Colony Pods at an accelerated rate, expanding their empire quickly and building on their inevitable early lead. We experimented with severe weaknesses to compensate for her power, but this left her vulnerable to the problem described above: She was dependent on her strength. If she found herself on an island, where fast expansion was difficult, her weaknesses dragged her down to the point where her faction was no longer significant. Now, the Believers get a "fanatic attack" bonus when on the offensive, countered by somewhat slow tech research. These attributes balance themselves out nicely - the Believers may have technologically obsolete units, but their fanatic bonus gives them an edge if they initiate an attack. These attributes also suggest a strategy: Go on the offensive and capture techs from your enemies to compensate for your weakness.

This is the kind of balance I have no qualms against. The idea that civs shouldn't be constrained by their own strength is the first real talk about balancing in the document you posted. It's also another example of balancing a strat because otherwise un-fun things could happen (stranded on an island example), not because by itself the mechanic was OP. Admittedly they were sad when they needed to axe it.


Edit 2: Yep, no mentions whatsoever about competitive balancing, just internal balance. Also, MP is only very, very briefly touched. The word player(s) used only once. You know what they talk a bit more about? The AI

 

[Nirvash]

The fucking grand strategy/4x "multiplayer players" are what, the 1% of the userbase?

How can any studio be so utterly retarted to use this 1% as a (or the) main focus of balance is beyond my understanding.

Honestly? If you are one, FUCK YOU for making the whole genre worse.

 

[Absinthe]

Matalarata, this whole argument began on the notion that an overpowered Necromancer class was good for the game because unbalanced TBS is the only way to go, a notion I just consider downright stupid. This argument quickly turned into an argument that competitively balancing a game reduces your options, to which I countered that it's sooner unbalanced content that pigeonholes you into pursuing specific options, making the game less fun, and that the point of good balance is precisely that you should be able to enjoy a variety of options.

Dayyālu, that's a famous screenshot of a Human Hive Infinite City Sprawl strategy, and it's a borderline joke that takes ICS to an extreme (with people joking that he should be spamming water bases too). But while base-spamming is definitely part of the game, especially as the Human Hive, those bases are cramped so close together that they are cutting into each other's tiles and now you have underdeveloped bases, inefficiency, maintenance costs, and bureaucracy drones to contend with. ICS can definitely be done, but there's not much value in taking base-spam to such a ridiculous extreme unless you are playing Morgan or maybe Human Hive, and attempting this sort of strategy can leave you vulnerable as you do it and worsen your development in the long run. If you want a faction that would rather build reasonably spaced big bases than a ton of tiny bases, try playing Peacekeepers or Gaians.

 

[Raapys]

A balanced game isn't bad, but I think a focus on balance is bad. As a developer, you should never be going over your game and tuning it for 'balance', you should be tuning it for fun. In most cases that will include at least some focus on balance, or more specifically challenge, but if balancing something actually ends up removing fun from your game, you've failed.

I was gonna argue next that multiplayer games do need to be tuned for balance, but... let's face it, people are whining about overpowered shit and imbalances in MP-games and MMOs all the time, but they're still playing them. Presumably because they're having fun.

 

[BING XI LAO]

For my part, I think there's good balancing and bad balancing.
Good balancing can involve adding features and making irrelevant options viable, which makes the game more diverse; Bad balancing involves homogenisation of choices and the removal of features for the sake of balance, such as with the peasants who appalled Malarata by calling for FFH2 mod for civ4 to be balanced by having features removed or neutered.

AoW3 making flying units attackable by melee walkers is an example of bad balancing which involves removal/neutering of features (admittedly fliers are strong in regards to AoW3's newly introduced flanking mechanic, but that's not really the point; flying scouts used to have impunity over walking melee troops, and that was a perfectly good feature of the game). I also prefer AoW1 walls, where you cannot get past them by hitting the gates with a sword or autospawning a ladder. An AoW1 walled town with NO GARRISON cannot be captured except by an enemy with wallcrushing wallclimbing flying or a spell that damages walls, such as Fireball. This was another feature that shouldn't have been so thoroughly emasculated.

Dominions sounds rather like a special case to me. Its central appeal is diversity so vast as to be almost numinous; both good and bad balancing would be missing the point (although Malarata did inform me that a Rain of Stones nerf occurred once). The heart of Dominions is - apparently, I haven't yet played it - exploration of a vast fantasy world and trying out all sorts of crazy shit, less so powergaming towards defeating the enemy. Of course Dominions is still about amassing power and defeating enemies, but that aim is less prominent, and the journey is bigger and more varied compared to other games.

Age of Wonders, while it does have a wide array of mechanics and features and stuff going on in general, is ultimately a fighting game. It's less about exploration of a deep world, like Dominions or FFH2. Its lore is mostly stereotypes, although I love the writing of the AoW1 campaign. The heart of the game is asking yourself 'how can I defeat my enemy', and from that central question all sorts of dilemmas and strategic choices emerge. And balance helps with making sure the answers to those questions aren't the same too often.

In FFH2 and Dominions I could have a lot of fun in unbalanced single player just exploring the lore and wacky mechanics. In AoW I could too, but only for a time: I no longer play single player at all. Nowadays the fun I get out of AoW is as a competitive game that's at least somewhat balanced. Sure, sometimes some crazy spell interactions occur, like casting fire halo so my army can walk across a fire lake in the underworld, but mostly it's about competing with other players on a mostly fair playing field.

Matalarata seemed to equate ALL MP oriented balance with homogenisation and feature removal. I think that's unreasonable and if I didn't have such respect for Dominions players I'd have been ruder.

 

[Matalarata]

this whole argument began on the notion that an overpowered Necromancer class was good for the game

Correct! And I stand by that notion. If instead of just having the necro being OP there were also other unbalanced classes or races the game would be even better! Because in a primarily single player environment (this was my main gripe with your argument. 4x are not born as competitive games first and foremost but as ways to allow solitary players to experience board gaming) less balance means more variability. Eg, I can give to the AI the over performing civ to challenge me or take the OP one myself and give tha AI multiple instances of an UP civ for another different challenge. This is the spirit behind MoM, for example. I dare you find someone defending the Gnolls. They were designed as very specific one-trick ponies and they add to the game exactly because of said limitations. The Clackons hardly mix and match well with other races. Cry me a river! It's fun to cover the world in insects even if they are under performing. Explicitly because they are under performing.
If MoM was developed today, I can only shiver thinking about the furries going muh banalance! over the poor Gnolls.

because unbalanced TBS is the only way to go

Could you quote me on that? I just said a 4x is primarily a single player experience. Its aleatory nature hardly complies to any kind of competitive environment and the whole design principle rests on tenets like snowballing advantage wich are exactly the opposite of fair, competitive play.

Sorry but I do not agree. The argument started here:

The best strategy games are all unbalanced and asymetric, case closed, thanks for listening.

Balance is otherwise very important in sports. Solution: leave your mom basement to do some real sport. Come back home to a good, unbalanced, strategy game to find new interesting strategies and rest your weary body while entertaining your mind. If you think something like AoWIII has a "scene" or "competitive play" seriously re-think your life priorities, you're wasting your precious time and fooling yourself.

Which was me trying to enter tongue-in-cheek in the discussion back then. Admittedly, I could have bothered being more diplomatic but come on pal, I was trolling. I also never mentioned you in the specific. You immediately went quite butthurt and this was your answer:

I think the primary complaints of thesheeep and matalarata are rooted in the fact that they are bad players and thus do not understand and refuse to acknowledge that there exists a strong discovery process in well-balanced competitive play.

Matalarata's complaints about the "meta" probably stem from the fact that in those games when you play online you are strongly expected to play in a very specific way (what mediocre players do)

Basically they're (Me and thesheeep) bog-standard bads who bitch about players telling them how to play and wish there were no community of better players to annoy them and drag down their sense of fun.

They usually make their excuses by bitching that they have a life, as if other players do not. In reality, it's just their own low IQ and unwillingness to learn from their failings that makes them bad. The most galling thing about these bads is that they want to ruin what makes these games so fun for other players by destroying tactical depth and complexity in favor of dumb unbalanced shit just so that they don't feel judged for dicking around like retards.

Well you're on the codex, kids, and here there are standards, so if you want to be a retard, you can fuck off somewhere more accommodating to your brand of shittiness. I hear NeoGAF and reddit are recruiting.

All in a single post. And then accused me times and times again to try and score Kodex Kool Kredits. Dat edge

 

[Matalarata]

Sorry for the doublepost, forgot I could edit.

Matalarata seemed to equate ALL MP oriented balance with homogenisation and feature removal.

Nope, that's incorrect. Although I can understand why you believed so, I'm sorry. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a MP mode in 4x or that any kind of MP balance is wrong. I'm saying (again) just that 4x are at their best when deep, sprawly, unbalanced single player affairs and that listening to the vocal community asking for MP balance actively subtracts from the experience. I also rest my case, the great majority of 4x players in general, play them exclusively in SP.

In FFH2 and Dominions I could have a lot of fun in unbalanced single player just exploring the lore and wacky mechanics. In AoW I could too, but only for a time: I no longer play single player at all.

This.

 

[Absinthe]

Well I can argue right back that AoW 3 was certainly born with competitive multiplayer balance in mind. Also that the presence of a Necromancer class that completely shits over the Rogue class's playstyle, units, and abilities until the Rogue develops Shadow Stalkers (which in turn tend to shit over the Necromancer's units) and spams them relentlessly does not somehow make the game better or more fun as you and thesheeep asserted. As for "unbalanced TBS" being the only way to go, you repeatedly refer to balance in disparaging terms and claim the best TBS have to be unbalanced TBS. Your full post was this:

The best strategy games are all unbalanced and asymetric, case closed, thanks for listening.

Balance is otherwise very important in sports. Solution: leave your mom basement to do some real sport. Come back home to a good, unbalanced, strategy game to find new interesting strategies and rest your weary body while entertaining your mind. If you think something like AoWIII has a "scene" or "competitive play" seriously re-think your life priorities, you're wasting your precious time and fooling yourself.

Eidt: also, only in "balanced" games you apply the same strategy over and over, 'cause it's the best one, the reliable one. That's why games like LoL or SCIII have a "meta" (LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL) while MoO is considered a timeless classic and a masterpiece.

Which brings me to why I shat so heavily on your post and thesheeep's: Because you were arguing that competitive balance must mean a fixed meta with no room for creativity, which is only what bad online players tend to experience as they lack the ability to innovate beyond canned, popular strategies. You argued that balance should be relegated to sports, not games, that you were somehow too "good" for competitive gameplay, and that games should be unbalanced because apparently this was the only way you could be free to think up random strategies. I naturally shat on your post for its colossal stupidity, which you bizarrely chose to interpret as butthurt when in reality it's just a bog-standard case of "say something fucking stupid -> get treated like a fucking idiot".

 

[DeepOcean]

Bad balancing: balance is done for the convenience of the game designer.

Good balancing: The balancing is done for the sake of the game.

 

[Matalarata]

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

As for "unbalanced TBS" being the only way to go, you repeatedly refer to balance in disparaging terms and claim the best TBS have to be unbalanced TBS.

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. I never said it's the only way to go 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.

Because you were arguing that competitive balance must mean a fixed meta with no room for creativity

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. 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. 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. Dayyālu doesn't count. He's basically family and if he dares counter my argument, his character in Call of Cthulhu will accidentally suffer a critical, as soon as he tries shooting a rifle.

You argued that balance should be relegated to sports, not games

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.

and that games should be unbalanced because apparently this was the only way you could be free to think up random strategies.

Yep! That's what makes a single player game fun! A lot of crazy and different mechanics, leading to a number of variables. Any kind of equalization or design principle forcing average, symmetrical trands reduces variability. It's mathematical.

I naturally shat on your post for its colossal stupidity, which you bizarrely chose to interpret as butthurt when in reality it's just a bog-standard case of "say something fucking stupid -> get treated like a fucking idiot"

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 ( )? ---> 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


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.





Believe me son, irl I'm a professional. 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. 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. You think AoW MP is a legit way of spending your time? Good for you! I disagree and think there are far better activities. 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.

 

[DakaSha V]

Oh just shut up, pretentious retard

 

[BING XI LAO]

.

You're still equating balance with symmetry, and I still think that's not what (MP or otherwise) balance has to be. It's what lazy or incompetent balance is.

 

[Matalarata]

equating balance with symmetry

I'd say, each time I use the term balance to mean symmetry, the argument gets shifted back to balance in general. Which isn't the point at all. Let's say you balance a unit because it's preferredly used over other units of the sam civ, killing variety, or blatantly outside of its niche (naval warfare in Age of Empire). That's perfectly fine! Now, imagine the FFH team conceding haxing Calabim's flavourful and totally OP mechanic of eating their population, countless hours of fun would have been lost! Or the example you made yourself about Air units in AoW.

It's what lazy or incompetent balance is.

I can agree on it being easier to implement, but it's a specific design principle that has been applied consciously by otherwise capable devs, to the detriment of the game itself (eg AoW III). It remotely links to the PoE debate, although the reason themselves were different (trying to build a competitive product in one case and JS forcing his extremely narrow view on the design principles of PoE) the goal was similar. Please notice I said similar, else in a couple post I'll be accused of trying to define what's an RPG. When any kind of equalizating algorithm is used as a design principle, variety of outcome is reduced and the final result appears bland, boring, predictable. When you plan for outcomes to somehow flatline, guess what? You get a frikkin' flat line.

Every.Fucking.Time.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[thesheeep]

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.

 

[adrix89]

It's a pretty simple equation imho.
Balance in games with (competitive) multiplayer focus = great
Balance in games with singleplayer focus = boring.

It gets problematic for games that can't decide which one they are. Case in point: Diablo 2.

In the case you have a strategy game with more than two players it does not matter as much if one faction is overpowered as an alliance can still keep it in check.

 

[thesheeep]

It's a pretty simple equation imho.
Balance in games with (competitive) multiplayer focus = great
Balance in games with singleplayer focus = boring.

It gets problematic for games that can't decide which one they are. Case in point: Diablo 2.

In the case you have a strategy game with more than two players it does not matter as much if one faction is overpowered as an alliance can still keep it in check.

It would also make 1vs2 or similar matches far more viable as that becomes a possibility not only if you have one guy that is just a better player than the other two.

Plus, as I wrote in my little experiment, if not only victory determines score, ladder placement, etc. even 1vs1/2vs2/etc. doesn't have to enforce equal strength of factions.

 

[mondblut]

games with (competitive) multiplayer focus = boring

balanced tfy

 

[orcinator]

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 faction, 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 multiplayer 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.

That's a retarded idea even if you get people to care more about leagues and shit than individual games(you won't unless the tourney prize is really huge).

In the case you have a strategy game with more than two players it does not matter as much if one faction is overpowered as an alliance can still keep it in check.

Until someone decides to ally with the OP ones, or they ally with each other.

 

[thesheeep]

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 faction, 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 multiplayer 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.

That's a retarded idea even if you get people to care more about leagues and shit than individual games(you won't unless the tourney prize is really huge).

I think it is great that you give up your position immediately by not even providing any arguments.