I really, really, wish Flayra would consider forming a Balance play-test group, people who can dedicate 5-10 hours a week to balance tests. Find people who are willing to try and do, everything, to tip games in their favor, and find these leaky weak points the game has. It's so crazy to me that the playtesters they have do not serve a large function as balance testers as well. I do not understand it, at all.
Anyway as far as running off like a re-re to get harvester kills, if you're going 2:12 doing it- It's time to stop and move with a team. I can get away with it usually just because I can manage going 10-16:1 doing it. It sucks but, as important as it is to kill harvesters and break cyst chain...
...You will be tons more valuable in a group, and playing as a team, than suiciding over and over.
what im wondering is what this game is balanced for, Is it 10 players 16? or 24? I would like UWE to state how many players are playing in a balance test play session and for how long?
In most matches where marines lose it is because they don't play aggressively and instead turtle next to the armory. People are so scared of screwing up their K/D ratios that they don't want to push on the Aliens. Constant harassment and pressure wins Marines games.
In most matches where marines lose it is because they don't play aggressively and instead turtle next to the armory. People are so scared of screwing up their K/D ratios that they don't want to push on the Aliens. Constant harassment and pressure wins Marines games.
I'd venture to say it isn't the kdr they care most about, it's the fact that dying as a marine is far more devastating for the team than losing a lousy skulk.
In most matches where marines lose it is because they don't play aggressively and instead turtle next to the armory. People are so scared of screwing up their K/D ratios that they don't want to push on the Aliens. Constant harassment and pressure wins Marines games.
Interestingly what I find wins marine PUB games is having a competent marine hanging back and responding to all the attacks on the RTs. Its pretty awesome if you have one doing that and one more competent marine being aggressive though.
You should also learn that play-testers do not get to have any say in balancing the game. They're there to play in-house builds to test stability and have tea together in their clubhouse. That's it.
To clarify:
A) When something is painfully obvious that it will break balance, we scream and do have a say. If its anything less, the feedback comes from those many other sources that Flayra blogged about on the main page with visuals included, a few weeks ago. Our primary mission is definitely bugs, but occasionally we are asked for feedback, and of course we are constantly having our own discussions in the internal forums.
B)Tequila, not tea. pssh
That's how it was when I PT'd NS1. You will be asked- Just don't be shocked when it's ignored.
Eh, there's a difference between "ignored" and "disagreed with." Even if the next build doesn't implement a given tester's idea that doesn't mean their contribution to the discussion about the next build was ignored or had no impact. The same goes for discussions in the public forums as well, I might add.
I know that happens too, but I remember back in "The day" SEVERAL of us were outright ignored.
We said: PLEASE DO NOT ADD RES FOR KILL IN CLASSIC NS, IT WILL DESTROY THE GAME.
We were ignored.
Well, if you mean the veteran program, then yeah. If you recall, though, the veteran forums were a chaotic nightmare and it's no surprise that no one wanted to try to find the actual feedback among the troll threads.
Balance is the toughest substance in the known universe. It will scratch diamond, melt tungsten, and cause developers to go bald. It is a topic the elicits emotion and passion from all quarters, even people that don't have the skills to balance a complex game (like me!).
The system we use to measure balance is called Sponitor. (Spark Monitor, geddit?!). Sponitor tells us that for the last four builds, balance has been incredibly stable at 60/40 alien/marine wins. This ratio is quite consistent, though not perfect across maps. Sponitor allows us to see a wealth of information behind that headline figure: Wins by start location, by tech chosen, by game length, kills by lifeform, kills by weapon, length of player life, heatmaps of maps etc etc.
Now, 60/40 is not good enough. It is quite an achievement given the ridiculous degree of antisymmetry in NS2 and lack of balance-playtesting resources,* but we want better and we know you want better. When you start a game, you should have 'ceteris paribus,' a ~50% chance of winning the match. That fosters a healthy sense of competition and reward for skill.
Getting there is very, very difficult. For example: When we launched NS2 on October 31, the first 20,000 games played had a win balance of 50/50. We proudly displayed the graphs! What happened next? We changed nothing, and the game slowly and inexorably slid towards its current 60/40 state. ("Fuuuuuuu!"). This is an example of an external factor, aggregate playerbase skill, causing a shift in the pendulum independent of developer input.
Today we are faced with the challenge of shifting the pendulum back. But we have to be extremely, exceedingly careful. Light-tough is an understatement. An incredibly subtle change, like increasing total shotgun damage, could over time move that win ratio a whole 10 points. Or it could not. But if we move too fast, and the pendulum instantly shifts 5 points, it could end in utter disaster one month down the road.
There will be subtle balance tweaks in Gorgeous. They will not be headline grabbing. You might not even notice some of them in the changelog. But that is a good thing. NS2 is going to be around and supported for a long, long time. Getting to 50/50 will be an ongoing, careful, considered process.
*When I say lack of balance-playtesting, I mean that some games will have hundreds of QA testers playing games 8 hours a day for weeks before launching any balance changes. It's impossible to get statistically valid balance data out of say, 30 games. Even if our wonderful volunteer playtesters didn't sleep for days, it would be tough to get enough games for it to be statistically useful. The game could be perfectly balanced 50/50, I could play 10 games and lose all of them as aliens, and that would mean absolutely nothing.
EDIT - Forgot to add the above *note.
EDIT2 - Fixed the hilarious marine/alien error I made in paragraph two and added clarity to the Sponitor sentence.
The system we use to measure balance is called Sponitor. (Spark Monitor, geddit?!). Sponitor tells us that for the last four builds, balance has been incredibly stable at 60/40 marine/alien wins.
Strayan, in the quote above you said 60/40 marine/alien wins. You mean 40/60 marine/alien wins right??? I cannot imagine you are gathering stats saying marines are winning 60%.
Thank you for the response. I totally understand the fear of swinging the pendulum too fast and maybe even swinging it the other direction. But how long has the game been 10 or more % out of balance? How many patches have gone by and this ratio isn't improving? I count 3 patches. It may be higher. Perhaps UWE is moving into the realm of being over cautious with their balance changes. That is my opinion based on the lack of change in the game and in balance statistics. I know you will get it right someday. I just wish it is sooner, not later.
Mr Choke: you're the self-fulfilling prophesy, it would seem. You set out to fail then blame the game when it happens. I could say something trite like "wtf are you shooting cysts for?! You're alerting the aliens to your presence and not doing anything meaningful, try getting into the hive and taking an upgrade, or go straight for the newly dropped harvesters instead," but there's really no point, I suspect.
If you've already given up on the game mentally (it sounds like you have), then the best bet is to take a break for a while. But for the love of Clorf don't come back with the same attitude of 'marines always lose, what's the point', because if you think like that, you will act like that and not help your team, and you WILL lose.
If you can't bring yourself to work with teammates any more, you're just skewing your own results and you can't count the 20 losses from 25 games. If you had not been taking part in those games, running off on your own and not achieving anything while you do it, then are you sure they would still have been marine losses? Perhaps a more positively minded player would have joined and swung the game the other way round. If that's the case, then I'm afraid to say that at least some of those losses are your fault. I don't mean this to be harsh, but it sounds like you're self-flagellating...
Come on. One person is not going to tank the whole game unless he is commander, which I have stopped being (too frustrated with NS2 to do it right now). I don't always cut cysts, I know what it means to do it and I know that killing harvesters and upgrades is a much better thing to do. Too bad 90% of the time when I attack those, I am by myself and I get killed as I spend 50 clicks hacking down one of them. Can I get another team memter to help? Usually not.
The bottom line is, I am mentally out of it since build 239 went out. My frustration has gotten the better of me and I know I am not playing the game "for the team" like I should. Its gotten to the point that I feel like marines have to play absolutely perfect to win. Which is a goal that can never be achieved on random publlic servers. My current ratio is 26 alien wins out of 34, 76%.
To people telling me "don't play on random servers", I say that is only masking the problem. Most NS2 players are like me. They play on random public servers. I'll tell you something else. I bet most public play guys don't post on this forum. People in this thread post saying they get 50/50 ratios and I just suck because I don't, etc... If you play on the same server with the same core friends game after game, you do not represent me and the majority of players. Aliens are kicking our A$$, game after game. That needs to be considered. We are the majority.
To be fair, while UWE's commitment to address the balance issues is commendable, some fine-tuning 'left and right' like what Hugh is getting at is going to fall woefully short of the kind of balance treatment this game needs right now. Even when the game had a 50-50 winrate in the stats, many players pointed out that this didn't actually mean that the game was balanced, heck even with the 2-hive onos egg the winrates were more even than they are today, yet nobody is going to claim that the onos egg was in any way balanced.
Numbers don't mean all, and it's going to take a lot more than just some tweaking on the side to get the current balance situation right. (And more importantly, make games more fun) The real problem imo is that UWE hasn't given the alien economic model enough attention in the beta, and as long as they continue ignoring its deficiencies balance is always going to remain a pipe-dream.
Balance is the toughest substance in the known universe. It will scratch diamond, melt tungsten, and cause developers to go bald. It is a topic the elicits emotion and passion from all quarters, even people that don't have the skills to balance a complex game (like me!).
The system we use to measure balance is called Sponitor. (Spark Monitor, geddit?!). Sponitor tells us that for the last four builds, balance has been incredibly stable at 60/40 marine/alien wins. This ratio is quite consistent, though not perfect across maps. Sponitor allows us to see a wealth of information behind that headline figure: Wins by start location, by tech chosen, by game length, by kills redivide into lifeforms, weapons, heatmaps of maps etc etc.
Now, 60/40 is not good enough. It is quite an achievement given the ridiculous degree of antisymmetry in NS2 and lack of balance-playtesting resources,* but we want better and we know you want better. When you start a game, you should have 'ceteris paribus,' a ~50% chance of winning the match. That fosters a healthy sense of competition and reward for skill.
Getting there is very, very difficult. For example: When we launched NS2 on October 31, the first 20,000 games played had a win balance of 50/50. We proudly displayed the graphs! What happened next? We changed nothing, and the game slowly and inexorably slid towards its current 60/40 state. ("Fuuuuuuu!"). This is an example of an external factor, aggregate playerbase skill, causing a shift in the pendulum independent of developer input.
Today we are faced with the challenge of shifting the pendulum back. But we have to be extremely, exceedingly careful. Light-tough is an understatement. An incredibly subtle change, like increasing total shotgun damage, could over time move that win ratio a whole 10 points. Or it could not. But if we move too fast, and the pendulum instantly shifts 5 points, it could end in utter disaster one month down the road.
There will be subtle balance tweaks in Gorgeous. They will not be headline grabbing. You might not even notice some of them in the changelog. But that is a good thing. NS2 is going to be around and supported for a long, long time. Getting to 50/50 will be an ongoing, careful, considered process.
*When I say lack of balance-playtesting, I mean that some games will have hundreds of QA testers playing games 8 hours a day for weeks before launching any balance changes. It's impossible to get statistically valid balance data out of say, 30 games. Even if our wonderful volunteer playtesters didn't sleep for days, it would be tough to get enough games for it to be statistically useful. The game could be perfectly balanced 50/50, I could play 10 games and lose all of them as aliens, and that would mean absolutely nothing.
EDIT - Forgot to add the above *note.
Awesome. This is what I suspected, still happy to read. With new content coming, this is an ideal way to tackle balance issue.
You should also learn that play-testers do not get to have any say in balancing the game. They're there to play in-house builds to test stability and have tea together in their clubhouse. That's it.
To clarify:
A) When something is painfully obvious that it will break balance, we scream and do have a say. If its anything less, the feedback comes from those many other sources that Flayra blogged about on the main page with visuals included, a few weeks ago. Our primary mission is definitely bugs, but occasionally we are asked for feedback, and of course we are constantly having our own discussions in the internal forums.
B)Tequila, not tea. pssh
That's how it was when I PT'd NS1. You will be asked- Just don't be shocked when it's ignored.
Eh, there's a difference between "ignored" and "disagreed with." Even if the next build doesn't implement a given tester's idea that doesn't mean their contribution to the discussion about the next build was ignored or had no impact. The same goes for discussions in the public forums as well, I might add.
I know that happens too, but I remember back in "The day" SEVERAL of us were outright ignored.
We said: PLEASE DO NOT ADD RES FOR KILL IN CLASSIC NS, IT WILL DESTROY THE GAME.
We were ignored.
Well, if you mean the veteran program, then yeah. If you recall, though, the veteran forums were a chaotic nightmare and it's no surprise that no one wanted to try to find the actual feedback among the troll threads.
They definitely ruined it for the rest of us that gave a damn, you're certainly right there- Not to say I've never been a troll, or a jerk, but even after 10 years- here I am, being critical, because I care enough. It'd be so much easier for me to just stop posting and play it when I want and never say a word, but I think there's a well of untapped potential in this game, and in UWE, and I want it to succeed.
Strayan, in the quote above you said 60/40 marine/alien wins. You mean 40/60 marine/alien wins right??? I cannot imagine you are gathering stats saying marines are winning 60%.
He's gathering the right stats, according to my experience.
I do the same and everytime I do it I feel bad about it. It is like the marines have to exploit the alien weakness at the start or they are doomed, there are no other viable strategies except for early pressure. I said this before, the game would be much more interesting, if there was a phase of building up in the beginning (for both teams) and rushing during this phase should have immidiate drawbacks if the rush fails.
Right now this rushing is the only viable way for marines to win games.
With very good map layout, you could probably make more "late game" servers where both sides can get 2 tech points and 4ish RT's before they have to fight for resources. I like late game on both teams but I feel like I rarely ever get a game where ONOS and exos come out unless it's in the last 5 minutes and a train of them stomps the other team or it becomes a base rush.
To be fair, while UWE's commitment to address the balance issues is commendable, some fine-tuning 'left and right' like what Hugh is getting at is going to fall woefully short of the kind of balance treatment this game needs right now. Even when the game had a 50-50 winrate in the stats, many players pointed out that this didn't actually mean that the game was balanced, heck even with the 2-hive onos egg the winrates were more even than they are today, yet nobody is going to claim that the onos egg was in any way balanced.
Numbers don't mean all, and it's going to take a lot more than just some tweaking on the side to get the current balance situation right. (And more importantly, make games more fun) The real problem imo is that UWE hasn't given the alien economic model enough attention in the beta, and as long as they continue ignoring its deficiencies balance is always going to remain a pipe-dream.
Do you play with a Mic and do you communicate? I find that I can tell if a team is going to win or lose within 10 seconds if I don't hear any chatter on the mic and no comm or lead player throwing out strats. If I say "hey I'm here killing harvesters, almost down but 1 lurk got me" I am much more likely to get help then if I just sprint back to that location by myself. I usually quit servers where no one is talking or heaven forbid the comm doesn't have a mic.
Also I find lag has a big impact on the game, hit registration is strange and even though I have great aim, I feel like I can onload 2 clips and not kill a lurk. Meanwhile as a lurk I feel like I get killed 1 second after coming around a corner. I think there's issues with the netcode which seem to kill the game on some servers, I give it a break when this is happening.
If your winrate is THAT bad there might be a problem. I only play on randoms and make a habbit of switching sides every game. my win ratio is around 70% and i ahve no trouble getting marine wins. Of course it requires the marines to be assertive early on and as always you have to win more 1vs1 and 2vs2 battles than the other team to ever have a chance. personally I find that good marines will outgun lurks early game and can easily go 10-0, much harder for a great lurk to get 10-0 early game.
If you can't beat a lurk 1vs1 ever as a marine you may need to work on your firing strategy.
*When I say lack of balance-playtesting, I mean that some games will have hundreds of QA testers playing games 8 hours a day for weeks before launching any balance changes. It's impossible to get statistically valid balance data out of say, 30 games. Even if our wonderful volunteer playtesters didn't sleep for days, it would be tough to get enough games for it to be statistically useful. The game could be perfectly balanced 50/50, I could play 10 games and lose all of them as aliens, and that would mean absolutely nothing.
EDIT - Forgot to add the above *note.
with World of Tanks, which has soo many different units that it would never be able to be balanced with internal testers alone. Wargaming puts out a beta build and has beta servers, that way they can grab data for a few weeks on a proposed change with a much bigger userbase before they roll it out.
I feel your pain with an asymmetrical game like this, some mechanics seem to have different skill caps at different levels and then it becomes a question of how to balance the game for both pubs and competitive play (unless you do it through rule sets)
I would be very curious to see the 1vs1 kill rate of lurks vs marines at game start among the top 5% of players for instance. Also I think map design can help a lot, by maybe fielding some bigger or smaller maps with more or less RT's and Tech points to see if the game balances out different on say a big map when both teams can get to endgame with minimal fighting.
In most matches where marines lose it is because they don't play aggressively and instead turtle next to the armory. People are so scared of screwing up their K/D ratios that they don't want to push on the Aliens. Constant harassment and pressure wins Marines games.
I'd venture to say it isn't the kdr they care most about, it's the fact that dying as a marine is far more devastating for the team than losing a lousy skulk.
How so?
Dying as marine consumes no resource (eggs) and it is impossible for marines to become spawn locked. Due to progressive scaling, marines are also far less reliant on pRes, so the lost res affects them less.
On the contrary, aliens can lose a res tower every time it pays for itself, have zero net gain in tres, because each person will have received some res to evolve. Marines need to keep their res towers twice as long to be able to afford upgrades.
On the contrary, aliens can lose a res tower every time it pays for itself, have zero net gain in tres, because each person will have received some res to evolve. Marines need to keep their res towers twice as long to be able to afford upgrades.
I meant the lost res due to being dead.
However the aliens being non reliant on harvesters I feel is a misconception. The loss of a single harvester affects pRes more than it does tRes, and the alien team is far more reliant on pRes than tRes. If the lost harvester would instantly be replaced, sure there isn't really a problem, but that is rarely the case.
On the contrary, aliens can lose a res tower every time it pays for itself, have zero net gain in tres, because each person will have received some res to evolve. Marines need to keep their res towers twice as long to be able to afford upgrades.
ahahaha
Seriously though the marines have it easier, get res locked as a marine comm...recycle to drop a new extractor.
Get res locked as alien...just concede as you cant do anything.
Marines dont need to pay for anything other than extractors, yet aliens have cycsts to factor into teh costs.
Marine deaths have less impact than aliens...especially early game when egg locks often happen as a result of aliens dieing too often.
Marines simply build a new IP and never have to worry.
Alien harvestors have stuff all health when first dropped so losing a harvestor before you make back your investment is harder to do as alien than marine.
To say that aliens still get P-Res ignores that your khamm cant easily afford life form upgrades (ie blink, spores etc) if he has ben replacing harvestors all game.
Marines dont need to pay for anything other than extractors, yet aliens have cycsts to factor into teh costs.
are you for real? aliens can get around the map pretty quick. the only way marines can move quickly is with phase gates, and that's 45 resources just to get the tech and your first 2 up and running. each base you want a chance at defending needs a phase gate or one nearby. there's no way you are going to drop 15 cysts per base.
Today we are faced with the challenge of shifting the pendulum back. But we have to be extremely, exceedingly careful. Light-tough is an understatement. An incredibly subtle change, like increasing total shotgun damage, could over time move that win ratio a whole 10 points. Or it could not. But if we move too fast, and the pendulum instantly shifts 5 points, it could end in utter disaster one month down the road.
Hugh, while I certainly agree that knee-jerk balance decisions can be detrimental to the game, it should also be noted that the imbalance itself takes a toll as well. You guys have done really well to date, given your limited resources. My employer doesn't release patches nearly as often, but we have consoles to deal with as well as PC, so it gets 'complicated'.
What I've found can help when the natives are restless is communication. Post a weekly 'state of the game' note, letting people know what you're working on. Doesn't have to be details, just has to be enough to let people know changes are on the way.
Right now there are many who wonder if a probable cause for the imbalance is known, let alone being worked on. Sure we can all post our opinions on what we think is wrong and how to fix it, but what do the developers think?
Also, you acknowledge that balance needs a light touch, but does that not apply to ANY patch? For example, when gorge spit hit registration was corrected, gorges became a lot more powerful. (which was subsequently changed) So if more preferential changes are made to aliens, won't that make your task to balance the game that much more difficult?
Getting there is very, very difficult. For example: When we launched NS2 on October 31, the first 20,000 games played had a win balance of 50/50. We proudly displayed the graphs! What happened next? We changed nothing, and the game slowly and inexorably slid towards its current 60/40 state. ("Fuuuuuuu!"). This is an example of an external factor, aggregate playerbase skill, causing a shift in the pendulum independent of developer input.
Thanks for the heads up. But I think you are on the wrong track. Remember how in beta the balance favored the aliens? And what crucial changes you could make that did nothing to alter that balance? The 50/50 came with the release. But if you have a player base with 90% new players who didn't know the game, the win/loss are totally random (=50/50).
Now that most players know how the game works, we are back at the realistic balance from beta times. I think the 50/50 after release were just uniform distribution of random events. And if you want to counter that, you need some deep changes.
- Something that draws alien players from the frontline. Give them other stuff to do than harassing. Like marines are drawn from the battle, because they need to build / rebuild. (Gorges building-speedup isn't the solution. Gorges needed to place cysts could be fun and draw enough players from the battle.)
- Advance the alien tech-tree. Or at least make the tech more costly. Aliens need to spend less t-res for important upgrades and abilities than marines need to do. (They don't even need to pay t-res so the players can evolve fade / onos. While marines need to unlock everything with t-res first.)
Marines dont need to pay for anything other than extractors, yet aliens have cycsts to factor into teh costs.
are you for real? aliens can get around the map pretty quick. the only way marines can move quickly is with phase gates, and that's 45 resources just to get the tech and your first 2 up and running. each base you want a chance at defending needs a phase gate or one nearby. there's no way you are going to drop 15 cysts per base.
Drop your guns...its a free speed boost that puts marines on almost equal footing for movement speed.
Sorry but marines get free power, extractors build quicker and start returning more res to the team faster.
@ Savant,
Your assuming the cause of the win:loss shift was related to balance metrics...given the change in ratio happened without there being any balance changes made this seems highly unlikely.
The most likely causes are put down to the human variable and the fact that marine comms can lose a game easier than alien khamms.
This stupidity, like idiot proofing something, is not something you can balance as fools are so damn ingenious.
I do agree that more comms from teh guys would be nice...but with such a small team it would take time away from more pressing tasks (ie optimisation and sleep).
You should also learn that play-testers do not get to have any say in balancing the game. They're there to play in-house builds to test stability and have tea together in their clubhouse. That's it.
To clarify:
A) When something is painfully obvious that it will break balance, we scream and do have a say. If its anything less, the feedback comes from those many other sources that Flayra blogged about on the main page with visuals included, a few weeks ago. Our primary mission is definitely bugs, but occasionally we are asked for feedback, and of course we are constantly having our own discussions in the internal forums.
B)Tequila, not tea. pssh
That's how it was when I PT'd NS1. You will be asked- Just don't be shocked when it's ignored.
Eh, there's a difference between "ignored" and "disagreed with." Even if the next build doesn't implement a given tester's idea that doesn't mean their contribution to the discussion about the next build was ignored or had no impact. The same goes for discussions in the public forums as well, I might add.
I know that happens too, but I remember back in "The day" SEVERAL of us were outright ignored.
We said: PLEASE DO NOT ADD RES FOR KILL IN CLASSIC NS, IT WILL DESTROY THE GAME.
We were ignored.
Well, if you mean the veteran program, then yeah. If you recall, though, the veteran forums were a chaotic nightmare and it's no surprise that no one wanted to try to find the actual feedback among the troll threads.
They definitely ruined it for the rest of us that gave a damn, you're certainly right there- Not to say I've never been a troll, or a jerk, but even after 10 years- here I am, being critical, because I care enough. It'd be so much easier for me to just stop posting and play it when I want and never say a word, but I think there's a well of untapped potential in this game, and in UWE, and I want it to succeed.
Well, that's what I'm saying, though! Keep it up! The internal testers are a QA/bug fixing team first and foremost, and there's no "balance team" both because there's not enough manpower internally and, quite frankly, I think the size of the community isn't quite to the point that you can pick out a large group of players with the skill, dedication and interpersonal skills (that's kind of the key one, there) to make a special team out of it in addition to the existing QA team. There's communities orders of magnitude larger that would have a hard time with that. The PT group, when asked, tries to give some "expert opinion," if you will, but it's just not the main job.
Basically, the point is this: keep the discussion going, be civil, be critical, be rational. The whole of the NS2 community is the balance testing team, and it's not ignored. Just try to be patient because UWE isn't a huge company and the developers can only do so many hundred things at once.
Strayan, in the quote above you said 60/40 marine/alien wins. You mean 40/60 marine/alien wins right??? I cannot imagine you are gathering stats saying marines are winning 60%.
He's gathering the right stats, according to my experience.
There is no way UWE is capturing 60/40 marines winning. NS2Stats says the opposite and it has enough of a server base to not be THAT far off. I wish Hugh can clarify if this was a typo or not.
Strayan, in the quote above you said 60/40 marine/alien wins. You mean 40/60 marine/alien wins right??? I cannot imagine you are gathering stats saying marines are winning 60%.
He's gathering the right stats, according to my experience.
There is no way UWE is capturing 60/40 marines winning. NS2Stats says the opposite and it has enough of a server base to not be THAT far off. I wish Hugh can clarify if this was a typo or not.
For some games like World of Tanks, they have a beta build and beta server. That way core changes can be tested with a bigger user group without the need for a huge QA program. That's the only way tanks can be balanced in world of tanks.
Imo the whole RFK thematic is totally exaggerated. I remember playing on modded ns1 servers without RFK and the games were not any different. If anything, it hurt the aliens more than the marines. Marines could only turtle on some maps in ns1, most of them got an overhaul by version 3.2. Those were maps with hive rooms that had only one exit (ns_bast for example).
Your assuming the cause of the win:loss shift was related to balance metrics...given the change in ratio happened without there being any balance changes made this seems highly unlikely. The most likely causes are put down to the human variable
Sorry, but the "learn to play" myth has been debunked many times, since balance is worse in competitive games. Furthermore, we've *ALREADY* seen the impact that player skill had on the game since the ratio started at 50/50 and went to 60/40 after people 'learned' how to play.
If this was the 3rd day after it was released, you would have a point. It's been three months. The "human variable" is no longer the factor you make it out to be. If it was, we would have balanced competitive games.
I would stress that UWE strongly consider the points of Xarius and Savant.
Percentage points regarding balance can only go so far. First, I'm not sure how UWE's stat tracking system has a 60 marine/40 alien ratio win rate. To me, that goes against everything I've been seeing for about a month and half.
Further more, even a 50/50 win rate does not necessarily mean a game is balanced. I think Xarius again explains the problem well, in this post and Underwhelmed expands upon the problem here
Tweaking small things to get the win rates near 50/50 may give the impression the game is balanced, but is the game dynamic? Are the teams able to use various strategies?
I don't want to say that NS2 isn't fun, because I enjoy it, but it's very clear that the marines must inflict significant damage upon the alien economy very early if they want to have a reliable chance of winning. I don't think UWE can create the kind of gameplay they originally envisioned by making soft-touch balance changes.
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Anyway as far as running off like a re-re to get harvester kills, if you're going 2:12 doing it- It's time to stop and move with a team. I can get away with it usually just because I can manage going 10-16:1 doing it. It sucks but, as important as it is to kill harvesters and break cyst chain...
...You will be tons more valuable in a group, and playing as a team, than suiciding over and over.
I'd venture to say it isn't the kdr they care most about, it's the fact that dying as a marine is far more devastating for the team than losing a lousy skulk.
Interestingly what I find wins marine PUB games is having a competent marine hanging back and responding to all the attacks on the RTs. Its pretty awesome if you have one doing that and one more competent marine being aggressive though.
Well, if you mean the veteran program, then yeah. If you recall, though, the veteran forums were a chaotic nightmare and it's no surprise that no one wanted to try to find the actual feedback among the troll threads.
The system we use to measure balance is called Sponitor. (Spark Monitor, geddit?!). Sponitor tells us that for the last four builds, balance has been incredibly stable at 60/40 alien/marine wins. This ratio is quite consistent, though not perfect across maps. Sponitor allows us to see a wealth of information behind that headline figure: Wins by start location, by tech chosen, by game length, kills by lifeform, kills by weapon, length of player life, heatmaps of maps etc etc.
Now, 60/40 is not good enough. It is quite an achievement given the ridiculous degree of antisymmetry in NS2 and lack of balance-playtesting resources,* but we want better and we know you want better. When you start a game, you should have 'ceteris paribus,' a ~50% chance of winning the match. That fosters a healthy sense of competition and reward for skill.
Getting there is very, very difficult. For example: When we launched NS2 on October 31, the first 20,000 games played had a win balance of 50/50. We proudly displayed the graphs! What happened next? We changed nothing, and the game slowly and inexorably slid towards its current 60/40 state. ("Fuuuuuuu!"). This is an example of an external factor, aggregate playerbase skill, causing a shift in the pendulum independent of developer input.
Today we are faced with the challenge of shifting the pendulum back. But we have to be extremely, exceedingly careful. Light-tough is an understatement. An incredibly subtle change, like increasing total shotgun damage, could over time move that win ratio a whole 10 points. Or it could not. But if we move too fast, and the pendulum instantly shifts 5 points, it could end in utter disaster one month down the road.
There will be subtle balance tweaks in Gorgeous. They will not be headline grabbing. You might not even notice some of them in the changelog. But that is a good thing. NS2 is going to be around and supported for a long, long time. Getting to 50/50 will be an ongoing, careful, considered process.
*When I say lack of balance-playtesting, I mean that some games will have hundreds of QA testers playing games 8 hours a day for weeks before launching any balance changes. It's impossible to get statistically valid balance data out of say, 30 games. Even if our wonderful volunteer playtesters didn't sleep for days, it would be tough to get enough games for it to be statistically useful. The game could be perfectly balanced 50/50, I could play 10 games and lose all of them as aliens, and that would mean absolutely nothing.
EDIT - Forgot to add the above *note.
EDIT2 - Fixed the hilarious marine/alien error I made in paragraph two and added clarity to the Sponitor sentence.
Strayan, in the quote above you said 60/40 marine/alien wins. You mean 40/60 marine/alien wins right??? I cannot imagine you are gathering stats saying marines are winning 60%.
Thank you for the response. I totally understand the fear of swinging the pendulum too fast and maybe even swinging it the other direction. But how long has the game been 10 or more % out of balance? How many patches have gone by and this ratio isn't improving? I count 3 patches. It may be higher. Perhaps UWE is moving into the realm of being over cautious with their balance changes. That is my opinion based on the lack of change in the game and in balance statistics. I know you will get it right someday. I just wish it is sooner, not later.
Come on. One person is not going to tank the whole game unless he is commander, which I have stopped being (too frustrated with NS2 to do it right now). I don't always cut cysts, I know what it means to do it and I know that killing harvesters and upgrades is a much better thing to do. Too bad 90% of the time when I attack those, I am by myself and I get killed as I spend 50 clicks hacking down one of them. Can I get another team memter to help? Usually not.
The bottom line is, I am mentally out of it since build 239 went out. My frustration has gotten the better of me and I know I am not playing the game "for the team" like I should. Its gotten to the point that I feel like marines have to play absolutely perfect to win. Which is a goal that can never be achieved on random publlic servers. My current ratio is 26 alien wins out of 34, 76%.
To people telling me "don't play on random servers", I say that is only masking the problem. Most NS2 players are like me. They play on random public servers. I'll tell you something else. I bet most public play guys don't post on this forum. People in this thread post saying they get 50/50 ratios and I just suck because I don't, etc... If you play on the same server with the same core friends game after game, you do not represent me and the majority of players. Aliens are kicking our A$$, game after game. That needs to be considered. We are the majority.
Numbers don't mean all, and it's going to take a lot more than just some tweaking on the side to get the current balance situation right. (And more importantly, make games more fun) The real problem imo is that UWE hasn't given the alien economic model enough attention in the beta, and as long as they continue ignoring its deficiencies balance is always going to remain a pipe-dream.
Awesome. This is what I suspected, still happy to read. With new content coming, this is an ideal way to tackle balance issue.
They definitely ruined it for the rest of us that gave a damn, you're certainly right there- Not to say I've never been a troll, or a jerk, but even after 10 years- here I am, being critical, because I care enough. It'd be so much easier for me to just stop posting and play it when I want and never say a word, but I think there's a well of untapped potential in this game, and in UWE, and I want it to succeed.
With very good map layout, you could probably make more "late game" servers where both sides can get 2 tech points and 4ish RT's before they have to fight for resources. I like late game on both teams but I feel like I rarely ever get a game where ONOS and exos come out unless it's in the last 5 minutes and a train of them stomps the other team or it becomes a base rush.
Do you play with a Mic and do you communicate? I find that I can tell if a team is going to win or lose within 10 seconds if I don't hear any chatter on the mic and no comm or lead player throwing out strats. If I say "hey I'm here killing harvesters, almost down but 1 lurk got me" I am much more likely to get help then if I just sprint back to that location by myself. I usually quit servers where no one is talking or heaven forbid the comm doesn't have a mic.
Also I find lag has a big impact on the game, hit registration is strange and even though I have great aim, I feel like I can onload 2 clips and not kill a lurk. Meanwhile as a lurk I feel like I get killed 1 second after coming around a corner. I think there's issues with the netcode which seem to kill the game on some servers, I give it a break when this is happening.
If your winrate is THAT bad there might be a problem. I only play on randoms and make a habbit of switching sides every game. my win ratio is around 70% and i ahve no trouble getting marine wins. Of course it requires the marines to be assertive early on and as always you have to win more 1vs1 and 2vs2 battles than the other team to ever have a chance. personally I find that good marines will outgun lurks early game and can easily go 10-0, much harder for a great lurk to get 10-0 early game.
If you can't beat a lurk 1vs1 ever as a marine you may need to work on your firing strategy.
with World of Tanks, which has soo many different units that it would never be able to be balanced with internal testers alone. Wargaming puts out a beta build and has beta servers, that way they can grab data for a few weeks on a proposed change with a much bigger userbase before they roll it out.
I feel your pain with an asymmetrical game like this, some mechanics seem to have different skill caps at different levels and then it becomes a question of how to balance the game for both pubs and competitive play (unless you do it through rule sets)
I would be very curious to see the 1vs1 kill rate of lurks vs marines at game start among the top 5% of players for instance. Also I think map design can help a lot, by maybe fielding some bigger or smaller maps with more or less RT's and Tech points to see if the game balances out different on say a big map when both teams can get to endgame with minimal fighting.
How so?
Dying as marine consumes no resource (eggs) and it is impossible for marines to become spawn locked. Due to progressive scaling, marines are also far less reliant on pRes, so the lost res affects them less.
I meant the lost res due to being dead.
However the aliens being non reliant on harvesters I feel is a misconception. The loss of a single harvester affects pRes more than it does tRes, and the alien team is far more reliant on pRes than tRes. If the lost harvester would instantly be replaced, sure there isn't really a problem, but that is rarely the case.
ahahaha
Seriously though the marines have it easier, get res locked as a marine comm...recycle to drop a new extractor.
Get res locked as alien...just concede as you cant do anything.
Marines dont need to pay for anything other than extractors, yet aliens have cycsts to factor into teh costs.
Marine deaths have less impact than aliens...especially early game when egg locks often happen as a result of aliens dieing too often.
Marines simply build a new IP and never have to worry.
Alien harvestors have stuff all health when first dropped so losing a harvestor before you make back your investment is harder to do as alien than marine.
To say that aliens still get P-Res ignores that your khamm cant easily afford life form upgrades (ie blink, spores etc) if he has ben replacing harvestors all game.
are you for real? aliens can get around the map pretty quick. the only way marines can move quickly is with phase gates, and that's 45 resources just to get the tech and your first 2 up and running. each base you want a chance at defending needs a phase gate or one nearby. there's no way you are going to drop 15 cysts per base.
What I've found can help when the natives are restless is communication. Post a weekly 'state of the game' note, letting people know what you're working on. Doesn't have to be details, just has to be enough to let people know changes are on the way.
Right now there are many who wonder if a probable cause for the imbalance is known, let alone being worked on. Sure we can all post our opinions on what we think is wrong and how to fix it, but what do the developers think?
Also, you acknowledge that balance needs a light touch, but does that not apply to ANY patch? For example, when gorge spit hit registration was corrected, gorges became a lot more powerful. (which was subsequently changed) So if more preferential changes are made to aliens, won't that make your task to balance the game that much more difficult?
Thanks for the heads up. But I think you are on the wrong track. Remember how in beta the balance favored the aliens? And what crucial changes you could make that did nothing to alter that balance? The 50/50 came with the release. But if you have a player base with 90% new players who didn't know the game, the win/loss are totally random (=50/50).
Now that most players know how the game works, we are back at the realistic balance from beta times. I think the 50/50 after release were just uniform distribution of random events. And if you want to counter that, you need some deep changes.
- Something that draws alien players from the frontline. Give them other stuff to do than harassing. Like marines are drawn from the battle, because they need to build / rebuild. (Gorges building-speedup isn't the solution. Gorges needed to place cysts could be fun and draw enough players from the battle.)
- Advance the alien tech-tree. Or at least make the tech more costly. Aliens need to spend less t-res for important upgrades and abilities than marines need to do. (They don't even need to pay t-res so the players can evolve fade / onos. While marines need to unlock everything with t-res first.)
I just think, little changes won't do the trick.
Drop your guns...its a free speed boost that puts marines on almost equal footing for movement speed.
Sorry but marines get free power, extractors build quicker and start returning more res to the team faster.
@ Savant,
Your assuming the cause of the win:loss shift was related to balance metrics...given the change in ratio happened without there being any balance changes made this seems highly unlikely.
The most likely causes are put down to the human variable and the fact that marine comms can lose a game easier than alien khamms.
This stupidity, like idiot proofing something, is not something you can balance as fools are so damn ingenious.
I do agree that more comms from teh guys would be nice...but with such a small team it would take time away from more pressing tasks (ie optimisation and sleep).
Well, that's what I'm saying, though! Keep it up! The internal testers are a QA/bug fixing team first and foremost, and there's no "balance team" both because there's not enough manpower internally and, quite frankly, I think the size of the community isn't quite to the point that you can pick out a large group of players with the skill, dedication and interpersonal skills (that's kind of the key one, there) to make a special team out of it in addition to the existing QA team. There's communities orders of magnitude larger that would have a hard time with that. The PT group, when asked, tries to give some "expert opinion," if you will, but it's just not the main job.
Basically, the point is this: keep the discussion going, be civil, be critical, be rational. The whole of the NS2 community is the balance testing team, and it's not ignored. Just try to be patient because UWE isn't a huge company and the developers can only do so many hundred things at once.
There is no way UWE is capturing 60/40 marines winning. NS2Stats says the opposite and it has enough of a server base to not be THAT far off. I wish Hugh can clarify if this was a typo or not.
For some games like World of Tanks, they have a beta build and beta server. That way core changes can be tested with a bigger user group without the need for a huge QA program. That's the only way tanks can be balanced in world of tanks.
If this was the 3rd day after it was released, you would have a point. It's been three months. The "human variable" is no longer the factor you make it out to be. If it was, we would have balanced competitive games.
I would stress that UWE strongly consider the points of Xarius and Savant.
Percentage points regarding balance can only go so far. First, I'm not sure how UWE's stat tracking system has a 60 marine/40 alien ratio win rate. To me, that goes against everything I've been seeing for about a month and half.
Further more, even a 50/50 win rate does not necessarily mean a game is balanced. I think Xarius again explains the problem well, in this post and Underwhelmed expands upon the problem here
Tweaking small things to get the win rates near 50/50 may give the impression the game is balanced, but is the game dynamic? Are the teams able to use various strategies?
I don't want to say that NS2 isn't fun, because I enjoy it, but it's very clear that the marines must inflict significant damage upon the alien economy very early if they want to have a reliable chance of winning. I don't think UWE can create the kind of gameplay they originally envisioned by making soft-touch balance changes.