1. Depends on how many people would follow your suggestion. If one person does this, he might improve his personal experiences, but it won't make much of an impact on a larger scale. When enough people do it to skew the overall winrate into a seemingly balanced 50/50, you can no longer trust the raw data of public games to evaluate balance changes, and then the influence is pretty substantial I'd say.
I think that even if everyone that regularly reads the forums adopted the strategy of playing marines to try and increase the general enjoyment of the game for all it would not be statistically relevant to the balance process.
I think it would be damn healthy to stop arguing about the exact thresholds of winrate and details of measurement and start worrying about how the game scales.
You can have all your 50/50 overall winrate and the game can still scale horribly in terms of skill, varied map design and game size. Two game setups going 80/20 and 20/80 make it a beautiful 50/50 overall, but it doesn't mean the game is anywhere near to being balanced.
And all that doesn't even start talking about the quality of the gameplay, which is probably even more vital than any numeric balance.
1. Depends on how many people would follow your suggestion. If one person does this, he might improve his personal experiences, but it won't make much of an impact on a larger scale. When enough people do it to skew the overall winrate into a seemingly balanced 50/50, you can no longer trust the raw data of public games to evaluate balance changes, and then the influence is pretty substantial I'd say.
I think that even if everyone that regularly reads the forums adopted the strategy of playing marines to try and increase the general enjoyment of the game for all it would not be statistically relevant to the balance process.
I don't understand that kind of reasoning. If your aim is to increase the general balance for all, then your aim is to obtain or get as close as possibe to a 50/50 winrate, and that effectively means making a statistical significant impact, since it's at 60/40 right now.
If you don't believe it would be statistically relevant, they why do you believe it would be significant enough to improve everyones gaming experience? Either enough people follow the suggestion to make a positive impact and skew the statistics in the process, or not enough people would take up the advice and little would change.
1. Depends on how many people would follow your suggestion. If one person does this, he might improve his personal experiences, but it won't make much of an impact on a larger scale. When enough people do it to skew the overall winrate into a seemingly balanced 50/50, you can no longer trust the raw data of public games to evaluate balance changes, and then the influence is pretty substantial I'd say.
I think that even if everyone that regularly reads the forums adopted the strategy of playing marines to try and increase the general enjoyment of the game for all it would not be statistically relevant to the balance process.
I don't understand that kind of reasoning. If your aim is to increase the general balance for all, then your aim is to obtain or get as close as possibe to a 50/50 winrate, and that effectively means making a statistical significant impact, since it's at 60/40 right now.
If you don't believe it would be statistically relevant, they why do you believe it would be significant enough to improve everyones gaming experience? Either enough people follow the suggestion to make a positive impact and skew the statistics in the process, or not enough people would take up the advice and little would change.
Because it won't happen on every server. You lead me to believe that you think every player reads these forums and that suddenly UWE will think the game got balanced by it's self overnight because the entire player base has decided to be good sports...
No, I don't think everyone reads these forums, and I'm also not implying that. But in order to evaluate these suggestions, I simply think to myself: what would happen if everyone was to follow this advice? How would it affect things? What would be the advantages and disadvantages. This is how I came to my conclusion.
You're saying said suggestion has little disadvatages because there won't be enough people that follow it anyway. To which I say, in that case, it won't have any significant advantage either. So what's the point of suggesting it in the first place?
Again, everyone makes their own choice, I won't tell anyone what to do. I'm merely pointing out the negatives of deliberately playing one side to counter an inherent imbalance by making clear this choice could obscure the very data that can be used for balancing purposes.
No, I don't think everyone reads these forums, and I'm also not implying that. But in order to evaluate these suggestions, I simply think to myself: what would happen if everyone was to follow this advice? How would it affect things? What would be the advantages and disadvantages. This is how I came to my conclusion.
You're saying said suggestion has little disadvatages because there won't be enough people that follow it anyway. To which I say, in that case, it won't have any significant advantage either. So what's the point of suggesting it in the first place?
Again, everyone makes their own choice, I won't tell anyone what to do. I'm merely pointing out the negatives of deliberately playing one side to counter an inherent imbalance.
The point here is to try and make the games enjoyable while UWE makes changes to balance the game. Pointing out the negatives while not trying to do something to help the situation is not the best course of action. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you know you have above average skill, do something to make the game better. Don't "do nothing" because you can find some fault with everything. Doing nothing and simply stacking the Alien side because marines "can't win" does more harm to the game than trying to use your personal skill to swing the win rate back toward center. If a few servers had the "more skilled" people playing the "weaker" side, it would show random gamers that marines can win more often than they expected and encourage them to maybe try "stacking" the "weaker" team themselves for the sake of game play. They can then spread it to more servers...
I know what you're talking about, and what the OP meant. I know it's all with the best intentions. But again, the choice of playing one side more than the other, in order to counter an imbalance inherent to the game, does have a downside too. That's all I'm trying to point out to you.
It's also interesting to note that even a perfectly balanced game will not appear balanced to the actual player, because the sample size will always be too small and the player himself will influence the results.
1. A good player will typically win >50% of his games and vice versa.
2. People do not understand standard deviation on an emotional level.
Consider the coin flip, a perfectly balanced game. Yet every time you lose, there's a 12.5% chance you're going to have a 4 game losing streak. Right now there's probably a NS2 player who has won 10 games in a row as Marine, and one that has lost 10 games in a row as Alien. Whether the game is 55/45 or 50/50 will probably not have an influence on peoples experience of game balance.
That's why most games allow skill to influence the outcome. If one team is twice as good as the other, we'd expect the winrate not to be 50/50 but something like 66/33 for that specific game. I'd still call that unbalanced, but most games allow it because it makes the outcome less dependent on chance.
I think it would be damn healthy to stop arguing about the exact thresholds of winrate and details of measurement and start worrying about how the game scales.
You can have all your 50/50 overall winrate and the game can still scale horribly in terms of skill, varied map design and game size. Two game setups going 80/20 and 20/80 make it a beautiful 50/50 overall, but it doesn't mean the game is anywhere near to being balanced.
And all that doesn't even start talking about the quality of the gameplay, which is probably even more vital than any numeric balance.
I agree, which is why my analysis thread proposes that the winrate be examined on subgroups of the overall matches (e.g. "summit with an average playercount of 16 lasting between 55 and 65 min"). Also, quality and winrate are not unrelated. If one team was indeed winning 80% of the time, I'd suspect we'd see many more people complaining about the poor quality of the game, since quality typically implies balance.
Says the CUSTOMER. Yuno, the person who actually pays for the product? It's like saying that someone would be happy to buy a shirt with loose threads and a missing pocket. 'Good enough' is not how you succeed in business, and I've been in business a very long time. Let me let you in on a little business secret. If you don't give your customers what they want, then someone else will. Especially in this market, when everything is about the next 'big game', you can't afford to air for anything less than perfect.
To me you appear to be approaching this debate from a position that is devoid of any consideration for the business side of this product. If this was a free game and the developers were footing the bill, then 'you get what you pay for'. Don't like it, don't play it. However, when people put down their hard earned cash they expect more than 'good enough'.
Then we agree that 50/50 isn't neccesary, so we can start discussing what would be a reasonable goal.
50/50 *IS* the goal. That's the position you refuse to accept. Just because you can't achieve perfect balance doesn't mean you shouldn't strive for it. You can ALWAYS make a product better since nothing is perfect. If a game developer doesn't approach a game with the ideal that it should be balanced 50/50 then he has already failed.
We would both prefer it to be 55/45 rather than 60/40. We would both in fact prefer it to be 50/50, but I think that is impossible if it is still going to be assymetrical.
That doesn't mean that 50/50 isn't the goal though. While I certainly agree that you can never reach 'perfect' 50/50 balance, you shouldn't give up on that.
Look at it this way. You and I (and the developers) all know the game is biased towards aliens at present. So if a marine team started a game, they could just say "Why bother trying to win since the odds are against us? We should just settle for a loss."
We disagree since I don't feel 'settling' for a substandard state of balance is the way to run a business.
Now you have to ask yourself, what is more likely:
1. Stoneburg is a villain out to destroy the game of NS2 by stopping it from becoming more balanced because.... uhm... he hates when people have fun?
Com'on now, let's put the hyperbole away, shall we? I've never said any such thing.
Believe it or not, I actually respect your position, even if I disagree with parts of it.
My issue is that I keep hearing, time and time again, people who just want everyone to 'settle' for the game as it is, with poor balance and all. If it isn't some people who say people just need to "learn to play" it's others who say "does it matter?"
Yeah, it does matter. I take a strong line on balance since I've been working in the video game business for over a decade now. I've seen some stinkers in terms of titles, and the ones that are poorly balanced don't fare very well.
2. Stoneburg also wants the game to become better and more balanced, but has a different perspective from yours, that may or may not be helpful.
Hey, by all means everyone is entitled to their opinion, and in no way am I trying to suggest that you don't have the right to express it. My point is that I disagree in principle with some key aspects of your arguments.
Whether we agree on 60/40, 53/47 or any other number is not relevant to me, for me the agreement is what matters.
And again it is the number that I have a problem with if it is not 50/50. I personally don't want to entertain any objective that does not strive for 50/50 balance. I feel it is a defeatist attitude that says we have to settle for less.
Given that UWE have come this far in building NS2 (which is a feat in itself) I feel than a goal of anything less than 50/50 balance is counter-productive and will only damage their product going forward.
You can have all your 50/50 overall winrate and the game can still scale horribly in terms of skill, varied map design and game size. Two game setups going 80/20 and 20/80 make it a beautiful 50/50 overall, but it doesn't mean the game is anywhere near to being balanced.
Some of these issues will never be suitably addressed because of the nature of this game. First off, since the developers want to throw players of all skill levels into the same 'pool', you'll never be able to balance the game for that. It's just not possible to make everyone happy in this regard. As for map design, that too is something that falls to the mappers more than the developer. While they have included some maps, and they have tweaked them to improve them, this game will live on with 3rd party maps more than it will with 'official' maps. Lastly, game size is another area where there is nothing to be done, since the developers have not included anything in the game to allow it to scale to varying numbers of players. I'd love for them to have done so, but that was their call. That's something you'll have to ask them about.
And all that doesn't even start talking about the quality of the gameplay, which is probably even more vital than any numeric balance.
Fair enough, but that's a whole other subject now isn't it?
Since we are all just theory crafting here, wouldn't it be easier to devise some sort of scaling for team size once balance has been achieved (and by achieved I don't mean 50-50 because I think we can all admit it will never happen)? It will at least give you some base numbers to work off of to decide how to scale the game.
Also @Savant I don't think you can honestly strive for 50-50 balance while keeping the talent pool mixed. Heck, I doubt you will achieve 50-50 balance in the pub community ever, and it is highly unlikely to be achieved in the competitive level either. I understand that it should be targeted, but there are goals and there are dreams. 50-50 balance is a dream, we shouldn't get hung up on trying to achieve perfection. I think a 10% deviation is perfectly acceptable. Marines are the tougher side and are highly dependent on teamwork. It is close to a tipping point now, as when the marine team gets it's act together, they are formidable. Fighting to achieve perfect balance would probably wind up skewing the game to greatly in favor of Marines as you get closer to the higher end of the skill spectrum.
Since we are all just theory crafting here, wouldn't it be easier to devise some sort of scaling for team size once balance has been achieved (and by achieved I don't mean 50-50 because I think we can all admit it will never happen)? It will at least give you some base numbers to work off of to decide how to scale the game.
The easiest solution is:
- Measure how the winrate depends on player count. You can just do a scatter plot. Perfect scaling would be a flat noisy line.
- Compensate any deviation from the flat line by changing a global game parameter with player count. For example the pres/tres income of one team could vary slightly with player count, e.g. being around 10 per minute per rt at 12 player to 15 per minute with 20 players.
- Repeat until the line is flat.
I don't think you can honestly strive for 50-50 balance while keeping the talent pool mixed. Heck, I doubt you will achieve 50-50 balance in the pub community ever, and it is highly unlikely to be achieved in the competitive level either. I understand that it should be targeted, but there are goals and there are dreams. 50-50 balance is a dream, we shouldn't get hung up on trying to achieve perfection. I think a 10% deviation is perfectly acceptable.
It's not about getting 'hung up' on 50/50, it's about constantly moving in that direction. The only difference is focus. Right now, considering the 60/40 split, I feel focus should be paid to balance above all else until that split is narrowed. However, if the game is 52/48 I still don't think we should 'settle' for unbalanced gameplay.
Remember we're talking about looking at the win ratio over THOUSANDS thousands of games. Any variation due to skill levels and such will be washed out once you get up into the higher numbers of games played. As such, if the imbalance is still there then steps should still be taken to correct it.
It's like having a graphical bug in the game, and saying that just because it doesn't affect gameplay that it is 'good enough'. Well if the armouries had a flashing heart on top instead of a cross it wouldn't affect gameplay, but it would still be something to fix.
I'm not suggesting that you can make a 'perfect game'. I am suggesting that is what you should strive for.
If you strive for perfection and wind up at something 95% of that, then you'll be that much further ahead than if you strive for 90% and end up at 75%. The developers seem to agree in principle too since they have been going after all kinds of minor issues that many people here might have said they shouldn't bother tackling.
Clearly UWE should strive for perfection, but at what cost? I don't think 50/50 is achievable. To even pretend it is achievable is probably a waste of developing time. I think balance is important, even paramount. That said, 50/50 balance won't happen with removing many of the things (asymmetry for one) that make the game great. Marines need more teamwork than aliens, without that teamwork, they will fail. Without that teamwork, the game will never be 50/50.
I would also posit that UWE are "going after all kinds of minor issues" because they are low hanging fruit that they can dispatch easily and thereby release a patch that many people will appreciate while at the same time clearing their plate to work on more important things. This is a Good Thing™.
- Impossible objectives are demotivational, since they guarantee failure.
Totally disagree. People said that man would never walk on the moon and it would be foolish to even try.
Something is only impossible until it is not.
It's not about whether you agree or not, it is just a fact that setting impossible goals is counter productive. When the Kennedy administration set the goal of putting a man on the moon, they knew it was possible and the whole organisation worked toward that common goal.
Says the CUSTOMER. Yuno, the person who actually pays for the product?
I am a customer and I don't agree. I assume that others that post here and disagree are customers too. You are not my spokesperson, and I don't know where you think you get the authority to speak for everyone else. It is YOUR opinion, not "the customer".
It's like saying that someone would be happy to buy a shirt with loose threads and a missing pocket. 'Good enough' is not how you succeed in business, and I've been in business a very long time. Let me let you in on a little business secret. If you don't give your customers what they want, then someone else will. Especially in this market, when everything is about the next 'big game', you can't afford to air for anything less than perfect.
Arguing from authority is not very effective. I run a business. I've worked as a manager, chairman and councillor. That doesn't really matter though, what matter is what works and how it works. Claiming that perfect balance is a must for any product of this sort is just blatantly untrue and incredibly easy to prove wrong. Name a single assymetrical game that had perfect balance? It is impossible.
Your analogy is also false. YOU may percieve lack of perfect balance as a huge flaw, akin to a shirt with loose threads, but others do not. And frankly even low quality products get sold. In fact, most products are "good enough" rather than perfect. Or are you going to claim that nobody would buy a computer with an operating system that isn't 100% reliable (tell Bill Gates)?
To me you appear to be approaching this debate from a position that is devoid of any consideration for the business side of this product. If this was a free game and the developers were footing the bill, then 'you get what you pay for'. Don't like it, don't play it. However, when people put down their hard earned cash they expect more than 'good enough'.
On the contrary, I am approacing this from a professional position. Since the developers have limited resources, they will (like every business) have to prioritize. And they will need to work towards goals that are achievable. You propose that they set a goal that is impossible to achieve from the get go, and claim that if they don't achieve it they are selling a poor product. That's not productive, and it is not professional.
Then we agree that 50/50 isn't neccesary, so we can start discussing what would be a reasonable goal.
50/50 *IS* the goal. That's the position you refuse to accept. Just because you can't achieve perfect balance doesn't mean you shouldn't strive for it. You can ALWAYS make a product better since nothing is perfect. If a game developer doesn't approach a game with the ideal that it should be balanced 50/50 then he has already failed.
We would both prefer it to be 55/45 rather than 60/40. We would both in fact prefer it to be 50/50, but I think that is impossible if it is still going to be assymetrical.
That doesn't mean that 50/50 isn't the goal though. While I certainly agree that you can never reach 'perfect' 50/50 balance, you shouldn't give up on that.
I've made the case plainly why it is a bad idea to try for something impossible. I don't know why you persist in this. Do you really mean that unless it is balanced 50/50 (and for what size games? competetive or public?) you will still be disapponted? In that case I would just write you off, since you won't be satisfied anyway. Why bother trying to please someone who is never going to think it is good enough.
Look at it this way. You and I (and the developers) all know the game is biased towards aliens at present. So if a marine team started a game, they could just say "Why bother trying to win since the odds are against us? We should just settle for a loss."
First off, even if it is 60/40 right now, that still means that Marines win 4 times out of 10. If it was 90/10 you could perhaps argue for giving up. But people compete in a lot of things with a lot worse odds than that. Just look at any sporting event ever.
We disagree since I don't feel 'settling' for a substandard state of balance is the way to run a business.
Well you're not running the business, you're a customer. If you don't like the way they run it, either take your business elsewhere. If you want to change the way they do it, try to influence them in a positive way. The way you are acting makes it easy to just write you off. You make claims that are unsupportable, statements that are blatantly wrong, and demands that are impossible to meet. Why would they take you seriously?
Now you have to ask yourself, what is more likely:
1. Stoneburg is a villain out to destroy the game of NS2 by stopping it from becoming more balanced because.... uhm... he hates when people have fun?
Com'on now, let's put the hyperbole away, shall we? I've never said any such thing.
Believe it or not, I actually respect your position, even if I disagree with parts of it.
Then why do you claim that I have a hidden agenda to make the game worse and that I am using underhanded tactics to achieve it? Doesn't seem respectful at all.
My issue is that I keep hearing, time and time again, people who just want everyone to 'settle' for the game as it is, with poor balance and all. If it isn't some people who say people just need to "learn to play" it's others who say "does it matter?"
And since I have said none of those things, and have spent time actually trying to find a way to achieve increased balance, why would that be directed towards me?
Yeah, it does matter. I take a strong line on balance since I've been working in the video game business for over a decade now. I've seen some stinkers in terms of titles, and the ones that are poorly balanced don't fare very well.
So far in this thread I don't think anyone has argued that balance does not need to be improved, or at least that improving balance would be a good thing. You seem to be arguing against positions that other people do not actually hold.
Whether we agree on 60/40, 53/47 or any other number is not relevant to me, for me the agreement is what matters.
And again it is the number that I have a problem with if it is not 50/50. I personally don't want to entertain any objective that does not strive for 50/50 balance. I feel it is a defeatist attitude that says we have to settle for less.
Once again you are misrepreseting the other point of view. Wanting to improve something is not defeatist. The difference here is rather pragmatism versus idealism. You seem to be offended by the idea of looking at what is realistic to achieve and setting that as a goal, rather than having perfection as a goal. In the political arena that is like saying no to a reform that will help 95% of people, because it won't help 100% of people. It's an exremist view. And one of the problems with those sort of views is that it doesn't allow for compromise, which means that in the end, people with those views get no influence at all.
Given that UWE have come this far in building NS2 (which is a feat in itself) I feel than a goal of anything less than 50/50 balance is counter-productive and will only damage their product going forward.
Balanced for both 2vs2 and 12vs12 in both competetive and public games I suppose? Anything else would be less than perfect, wouldn't it?
Comments
I think that even if everyone that regularly reads the forums adopted the strategy of playing marines to try and increase the general enjoyment of the game for all it would not be statistically relevant to the balance process.
You can have all your 50/50 overall winrate and the game can still scale horribly in terms of skill, varied map design and game size. Two game setups going 80/20 and 20/80 make it a beautiful 50/50 overall, but it doesn't mean the game is anywhere near to being balanced.
And all that doesn't even start talking about the quality of the gameplay, which is probably even more vital than any numeric balance.
I don't understand that kind of reasoning. If your aim is to increase the general balance for all, then your aim is to obtain or get as close as possibe to a 50/50 winrate, and that effectively means making a statistical significant impact, since it's at 60/40 right now.
If you don't believe it would be statistically relevant, they why do you believe it would be significant enough to improve everyones gaming experience? Either enough people follow the suggestion to make a positive impact and skew the statistics in the process, or not enough people would take up the advice and little would change.
Because it won't happen on every server. You lead me to believe that you think every player reads these forums and that suddenly UWE will think the game got balanced by it's self overnight because the entire player base has decided to be good sports...
You're saying said suggestion has little disadvatages because there won't be enough people that follow it anyway. To which I say, in that case, it won't have any significant advantage either. So what's the point of suggesting it in the first place?
Again, everyone makes their own choice, I won't tell anyone what to do. I'm merely pointing out the negatives of deliberately playing one side to counter an inherent imbalance by making clear this choice could obscure the very data that can be used for balancing purposes.
The point here is to try and make the games enjoyable while UWE makes changes to balance the game. Pointing out the negatives while not trying to do something to help the situation is not the best course of action. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you know you have above average skill, do something to make the game better. Don't "do nothing" because you can find some fault with everything. Doing nothing and simply stacking the Alien side because marines "can't win" does more harm to the game than trying to use your personal skill to swing the win rate back toward center. If a few servers had the "more skilled" people playing the "weaker" side, it would show random gamers that marines can win more often than they expected and encourage them to maybe try "stacking" the "weaker" team themselves for the sake of game play. They can then spread it to more servers...
I think you get what I am talking about.
I agree, which is why my analysis thread proposes that the winrate be examined on subgroups of the overall matches (e.g. "summit with an average playercount of 16 lasting between 55 and 65 min"). Also, quality and winrate are not unrelated. If one team was indeed winning 80% of the time, I'd suspect we'd see many more people complaining about the poor quality of the game, since quality typically implies balance.
I don't know why you would start on this basis. I think this post is a good illustration about balance and competitive/public play.
Something is only impossible until it is not.
Says the CUSTOMER. Yuno, the person who actually pays for the product? It's like saying that someone would be happy to buy a shirt with loose threads and a missing pocket. 'Good enough' is not how you succeed in business, and I've been in business a very long time. Let me let you in on a little business secret. If you don't give your customers what they want, then someone else will. Especially in this market, when everything is about the next 'big game', you can't afford to air for anything less than perfect.
To me you appear to be approaching this debate from a position that is devoid of any consideration for the business side of this product. If this was a free game and the developers were footing the bill, then 'you get what you pay for'. Don't like it, don't play it. However, when people put down their hard earned cash they expect more than 'good enough'.
50/50 *IS* the goal. That's the position you refuse to accept. Just because you can't achieve perfect balance doesn't mean you shouldn't strive for it. You can ALWAYS make a product better since nothing is perfect. If a game developer doesn't approach a game with the ideal that it should be balanced 50/50 then he has already failed.
That doesn't mean that 50/50 isn't the goal though. While I certainly agree that you can never reach 'perfect' 50/50 balance, you shouldn't give up on that.
Look at it this way. You and I (and the developers) all know the game is biased towards aliens at present. So if a marine team started a game, they could just say "Why bother trying to win since the odds are against us? We should just settle for a loss."
We disagree since I don't feel 'settling' for a substandard state of balance is the way to run a business.
Com'on now, let's put the hyperbole away, shall we? I've never said any such thing.
Believe it or not, I actually respect your position, even if I disagree with parts of it.
My issue is that I keep hearing, time and time again, people who just want everyone to 'settle' for the game as it is, with poor balance and all. If it isn't some people who say people just need to "learn to play" it's others who say "does it matter?"
Yeah, it does matter. I take a strong line on balance since I've been working in the video game business for over a decade now. I've seen some stinkers in terms of titles, and the ones that are poorly balanced don't fare very well.
Hey, by all means everyone is entitled to their opinion, and in no way am I trying to suggest that you don't have the right to express it. My point is that I disagree in principle with some key aspects of your arguments.
And again it is the number that I have a problem with if it is not 50/50. I personally don't want to entertain any objective that does not strive for 50/50 balance. I feel it is a defeatist attitude that says we have to settle for less.
Given that UWE have come this far in building NS2 (which is a feat in itself) I feel than a goal of anything less than 50/50 balance is counter-productive and will only damage their product going forward.
Fair enough, but that's a whole other subject now isn't it?
Also @Savant I don't think you can honestly strive for 50-50 balance while keeping the talent pool mixed. Heck, I doubt you will achieve 50-50 balance in the pub community ever, and it is highly unlikely to be achieved in the competitive level either. I understand that it should be targeted, but there are goals and there are dreams. 50-50 balance is a dream, we shouldn't get hung up on trying to achieve perfection. I think a 10% deviation is perfectly acceptable. Marines are the tougher side and are highly dependent on teamwork. It is close to a tipping point now, as when the marine team gets it's act together, they are formidable. Fighting to achieve perfect balance would probably wind up skewing the game to greatly in favor of Marines as you get closer to the higher end of the skill spectrum.
The easiest solution is:
- Measure how the winrate depends on player count. You can just do a scatter plot. Perfect scaling would be a flat noisy line.
- Compensate any deviation from the flat line by changing a global game parameter with player count. For example the pres/tres income of one team could vary slightly with player count, e.g. being around 10 per minute per rt at 12 player to 15 per minute with 20 players.
- Repeat until the line is flat.
Remember we're talking about looking at the win ratio over THOUSANDS thousands of games. Any variation due to skill levels and such will be washed out once you get up into the higher numbers of games played. As such, if the imbalance is still there then steps should still be taken to correct it.
It's like having a graphical bug in the game, and saying that just because it doesn't affect gameplay that it is 'good enough'. Well if the armouries had a flashing heart on top instead of a cross it wouldn't affect gameplay, but it would still be something to fix.
I'm not suggesting that you can make a 'perfect game'. I am suggesting that is what you should strive for.
If you strive for perfection and wind up at something 95% of that, then you'll be that much further ahead than if you strive for 90% and end up at 75%. The developers seem to agree in principle too since they have been going after all kinds of minor issues that many people here might have said they shouldn't bother tackling.
I would also posit that UWE are "going after all kinds of minor issues" because they are low hanging fruit that they can dispatch easily and thereby release a patch that many people will appreciate while at the same time clearing their plate to work on more important things. This is a Good Thing™.
I am a customer and I don't agree. I assume that others that post here and disagree are customers too. You are not my spokesperson, and I don't know where you think you get the authority to speak for everyone else. It is YOUR opinion, not "the customer".
Arguing from authority is not very effective. I run a business. I've worked as a manager, chairman and councillor. That doesn't really matter though, what matter is what works and how it works. Claiming that perfect balance is a must for any product of this sort is just blatantly untrue and incredibly easy to prove wrong. Name a single assymetrical game that had perfect balance? It is impossible.
Your analogy is also false. YOU may percieve lack of perfect balance as a huge flaw, akin to a shirt with loose threads, but others do not. And frankly even low quality products get sold. In fact, most products are "good enough" rather than perfect. Or are you going to claim that nobody would buy a computer with an operating system that isn't 100% reliable (tell Bill Gates)?
On the contrary, I am approacing this from a professional position. Since the developers have limited resources, they will (like every business) have to prioritize. And they will need to work towards goals that are achievable. You propose that they set a goal that is impossible to achieve from the get go, and claim that if they don't achieve it they are selling a poor product. That's not productive, and it is not professional.
Are we back to this again?
I've made the case plainly why it is a bad idea to try for something impossible. I don't know why you persist in this. Do you really mean that unless it is balanced 50/50 (and for what size games? competetive or public?) you will still be disapponted? In that case I would just write you off, since you won't be satisfied anyway. Why bother trying to please someone who is never going to think it is good enough.
First off, even if it is 60/40 right now, that still means that Marines win 4 times out of 10. If it was 90/10 you could perhaps argue for giving up. But people compete in a lot of things with a lot worse odds than that. Just look at any sporting event ever.
Well you're not running the business, you're a customer. If you don't like the way they run it, either take your business elsewhere. If you want to change the way they do it, try to influence them in a positive way. The way you are acting makes it easy to just write you off. You make claims that are unsupportable, statements that are blatantly wrong, and demands that are impossible to meet. Why would they take you seriously?
Then why do you claim that I have a hidden agenda to make the game worse and that I am using underhanded tactics to achieve it? Doesn't seem respectful at all.
And since I have said none of those things, and have spent time actually trying to find a way to achieve increased balance, why would that be directed towards me?
So far in this thread I don't think anyone has argued that balance does not need to be improved, or at least that improving balance would be a good thing. You seem to be arguing against positions that other people do not actually hold.
Once again you are misrepreseting the other point of view. Wanting to improve something is not defeatist. The difference here is rather pragmatism versus idealism. You seem to be offended by the idea of looking at what is realistic to achieve and setting that as a goal, rather than having perfection as a goal. In the political arena that is like saying no to a reform that will help 95% of people, because it won't help 100% of people. It's an exremist view. And one of the problems with those sort of views is that it doesn't allow for compromise, which means that in the end, people with those views get no influence at all.
Balanced for both 2vs2 and 12vs12 in both competetive and public games I suppose? Anything else would be less than perfect, wouldn't it?