Balance not the issue
Nordic
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Balance is not the issue entirely</div>I have been playing NS2 for a little while now. It is pretty much all I play now. I think the balance in the most recent game is pretty good. I win/lose on either side pretty evenly. I don't have numbers to back that up though. Usually the game is decided early on and it is a matter of defense. Rarely have I played when there was a major come back. Sometimes there are pretty even games depending on the map but not often. I think that is the biggest issue.
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Marines have such a harder time gaining momentum in my opinion.
Playing Marine commander is so much more challenging than it was in NS1. To me the only viable strategy marines have that if executed properly will win them the game almost every time is GL rushing. I feel like there is never enough time to last out the game to get at least weapons 2 and armor 2. If you go for upgrades there isnt enough res to enter jetpack tech before your base is just overwhelmed and vice versa (if you go for jetpacks and fail you dont have res for upgrades and inevitably get overrun). Or you can try and go for early map control with phases which will delay any upgrades, thus if you lose your map control you have to start all over again, while skulks continue to eat your res nodes away.
Personally i think skulks are way to difficult to kill right now. Back in NS1 the meta game was always Armor 1 first. To me you HAVE to get Weapons 1 first before anything in NS2.
Some suggestions I thought of to balance it more would be to raise the health for extractors/harvesters. skulks can and usually eat res nodes by themselves; raise the HP for extractors to give marines more time to defend their income. Raising the HP for harvesters will make marines have to attack them more in groups which is what has always been done in competitive ns1 (pressure team for marines). That to me seems like a great way to balance the teams.
Another suggestion would be to make skulks more vulnerable. i know that with the absence of the shift aliens always choose early carapace. hopefully with the shift out in the next build we will see much less of that. they are truly pretty hard to kill.
The last idea that I had was to reward more res to marines. Which to me sounds a bit complicated.
I see a lot of marine teams get phase gates real fast and keep control of the map. At that point the aliens are just running trying to destroy things but never able to keep the resnodes. Then the marines win.
Either way, the winning team is decided quick. Your still on how I said balance isn't the issue. I am saying it isn't the issue entirely. I would like to see come backs happen a little easier so the games aren't one sided.
I think that higher health extractors and harvesters would be great.
I never played NS1 and can't reflect on that for suggestions. The effects of the shift hive will be interesting.
Your idea on rewarding more res to marines isn't bad. Marines get res to slow and aliens get res to fast. If we slowed alien res it would slow the games down, and if we increased the speed of marine res it would speed up the game. I hadn't thought of that.
I have yet to lose a game so far this build.
The balance statistics across all NS2 games indicate a material imbalance towards the Kharaa side over the past five builds. We are very aware of it and of course will not release the game with balance off as it is. We are benchmarking against Starcraft 2 - Which has achieved balance of +-5% across races very consistently.
:)
EDIT: Extra tidbit of information, Tram currently shows the most balanced A/M win ratio, followed by Summit, with Mineshaft pulling up the rear.
seems to be fairly balanced if number of RTs per team is similar
I have played 5~ games so not much to go off but they were all pretty long like 20mins or more
Aliens did end up losing most of them but it was always close back and fourth
The balance statistics across all NS2 games indicate a material imbalance towards the Kharaa side over the past five builds. We are very aware of it and of course will not release the game with balance off as it is. We are benchmarking against Starcraft 2 - Which has achieved balance of +-5% across races very consistently.
:)
EDIT: Extra tidbit of information, Tram currently shows the most balanced A/M win ratio, followed by Summit, with Mineshaft pulling up the rear.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What a ridiculous notion, beyond setting the games are not at all similar.
My personal experience lines up with the statistics described.
Balance may not be the only issue, but along with performance it has the biggest impact.
Also, win states balance is only one of several balance goals that NS2 should strive for. Another is ensuring that different tech trees or path are viable. Additionally, making sure all starting map tech nodes are viable is another worthy balance goal.
This is what I wanted to say, the 50% percent win-rate goal is a narrow view of balance, and it's actually an easy problem, because there is <i>lots</i> of solutions to it. The hard balance problem is to get most of the tech tree to be useful, to maximize the number of valid build orders. Starcraft bw reached that by having almost all the units being used, and different viable tech paths. I'm not sure if it's the case in sc2 yet.
Still, it's the imbalances and differences that make this game fun, the trick is to make sure each side has an equal number of imbalances!
I think the best way to put it is that a 50% win rate is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for NS2 to be balanced.
It works for SC2, but they have millions of players across the entire world. NS2 doesn't have that, so the statistics that come in are probably much less indicative of how the game really is...
Statistics are the only way to balance a game.
do you think chess was designed with collected statistics?
how about go? hockey? bowling?
If you don't balance a game for clan matches, it's not competitive.
So you can't count out public games, otherwise the game won't be fun :)
If you don't balance a game for clan matches, it's not competitive.
So you can't count out public games, otherwise the game won't be fun :)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
you can balance a game for competition and the pub players won't notice or care, and will go on playing the game they enjoy
how about go? hockey? bowling?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ok, you got me. The only ways to balance a game are statistics and ensuring the game is completely symmetric.
<!--quoteo(post=1940271:date=May 31 2012, 02:47 AM:name=Scrajm)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Scrajm @ May 31 2012, 02:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1940271"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It has been said on these forums before by good people, but it is worth being repeated since threads like these seems to reappear. I believe both Yuuki and Tremann are getting to this: No game is balanced until the top of the top is even. Statistics can only get you so far, at the end of the day, its flash vs jaedong or MVP vs Nestea which shows if a game is balanced or not. Pub games in any game do not count in any way.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
One person is flawed, one million people are not.
Maybe, depends what the balance was.
Make the fade tougher because he's getting killed to easy by good shotgun players in clan play, public play a good fade becomes impossible to kill and unenjoyable.
Make the fade tougher because he's getting killed to easy by good shotgun players in clan play, public play a good fade becomes impossible to kill and unenjoyable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
well that's because the 'make him tougher for clan play' is a bad solution to begin with
pubbers and clan players are playing the same game, after all - there can be really good pub players too
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/ErAVW.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
I really like the last bit about how intuition is often better for making complex decisions. I know that after playing ns2 for a while I just begin to feel that certain things need changing. I just look for things that frustrate me the most and feel unfair.
For example, I think that the radius for mines to explode is too large. It makes it very difficult to avoid them. If the marines are hold up in a position with mines spammed around then it is really hard for skulks to do anything at all. Even when you see the mines clearly, often they explode when you come within 5 ft of them. It is also true that when playing on marines I just spam mines around randomly, I don't really need to think about where I place them and it always feels cheap when I get a kill that way. I feel like mines are really meant to be placed in sneaky places or around buildings to give skulks a hard time and make them check all the corners etc. In line with this I think that the skulks parasite should destroy a mine in 5 hits rather than 10, to make it easier for a skulk to clear them if they are placed in plain view.
Some more of my gameplay thoughts:
I think the shotgun is too weak. The spread on it is too much. You can often hit a skulk with perfect aim from 5ft away and it doesn't die. In many cases it can take 3 hits at close range.
Also, skulks with cara + leap are super powerful. Maintaining your momentum with the space bar is overpowered imo. I don't know why this system is in place instead of bunnyhop as it just encourages rambo skulks jumping around like crazy. The skulk movement in general is really unpredictable.
I don't really understand how the upgrades are supposed to balance out either. One of the design goals is that nothing should become obsolete. Yet, armour 3 makes skulks obsolete by making it require 4 bites to kill a marine and it also takes longer to kill RTs. I don't understand the purpose of the marine upgrades. All they do is make the marines stronger without anything the aliens can do about it to reverse the situation. If weapon upgrades are supposed to counter cara then just get rid of both and make it balanced at default damage levels. What is the point in having upgrades if you need to research them every game or else you are at a huge disadvantage. Every player will eventually learn the build order and then you may as well remove the option to not upgrade.
I'm not sure of the purpose of jet packs. The game already starts with skulks and marines spamming space bar like crazy and then it goes even further with leap and jet pack. It just becomes a big mess with people flying about everywhere trying to get a lucky hit in. There is no skill based movement, it is just spam.
I think cara is so powerful it will always be chosen as the first upgrade. It doesn't really make any sense not to get it (just like melee 1 before that gave skulks 2 bite kills)
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/ErAVW.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This was actually a very good read, thanks for sharing.
<!--quoteo(post=1940287:date=May 30 2012, 09:31 PM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ May 30 2012, 09:31 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1940287"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really like the last bit about how intuition is often better for making complex decisions. I know that after playing ns2 for a while I just begin to feel that certain things need changing. I just look for things that frustrate me the most and feel unfair.
For example, I think that the radius for mines to explode is too large. It makes it very difficult to avoid them. If the marines are hold up in a position with mines spammed around then it is really hard for skulks to do anything at all. Even when you see the mines clearly, often they explode when you come within 5 ft of them. It is also true that when playing on marines I just spam mines around randomly, I don't really need to think about where I place them and it always feels cheap when I get a kill that way. I feel like mines are really meant to be placed in sneaky places or around buildings to give skulks a hard time and make them check all the corners etc. In line with this I think that the skulks parasite should destroy a mine in 5 hits rather than 10, to make it easier for a skulk to clear them if they are placed in plain view.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree with the mines radius, I think it might be a side effect to the delayed mine explosions. If the range was not there they would simply be useless with the delay. There is also the issue that its very hard to mine pg's and ip's effectively because of the friendly fire explosion radius. I wonder how the mines would work just as trip mines with less friendly fire radius, I think the mines might become more viable that way but it would need to be tested. But probably a discussions for another topic.
<!--quoteo(post=1940287:date=May 30 2012, 09:31 PM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ May 30 2012, 09:31 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1940287"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Some more of my gameplay thoughts:
I think the shotgun is too weak. The spread on it is too much. You can often hit a skulk with perfect aim from 5ft away and it doesn't die. In many cases it can take 3 hits at close range.
Also, skulks with cara + leap are super powerful. Maintaining your momentum with the space bar is overpowered imo. I don't know why this system is in place instead of bunnyhop as it just encourages rambo skulks jumping around like crazy. The skulk movement in general is really unpredictable.
I don't really understand how the upgrades are supposed to balance out either. One of the design goals is that nothing should become obsolete. Yet, armour 3 makes skulks obsolete by making it require 4 bites to kill a marine and it also takes longer to kill RTs. I don't understand the purpose of the marine upgrades. All they do is make the marines stronger without anything the aliens can do about it to reverse the situation. If weapon upgrades are supposed to counter cara then just get rid of both and make it balanced at default damage levels. What is the point in having upgrades if you need to research them every game or else you are at a huge disadvantage. Every player will eventually learn the build order and then you may as well remove the option to not upgrade.
I'm not sure of the purpose of jet packs. The game already starts with skulks and marines spamming space bar like crazy and then it goes even further with leap and jet pack. It just becomes a big mess with people flying about everywhere trying to get a lucky hit in. There is no skill based movement, it is just spam.
I think cara is so powerful it will always be chosen as the first upgrade. It doesn't really make any sense not to get it (just like melee 1 before that gave skulks 2 bite kills)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
One of things that makes carapace so powerful is how much it counter shotguns, it does not affect lmg's that much. It takes 4 shotgun damage to take down 1 carapace armor. Also the other reason why carapace is used so much is because the other upgrades are simply rather weak for the adv lifeforms.
I also agree that the armor changes that were made affected aliens to much, that extra hit might sound insignificant but the feeling of needing 5-6 bites to kill a marine is not very interesting. I think 4 hits were already on the limit there.
The problem with marine upgrades is there is nothing slowing them down in the current build. Since all the key abilities such as medpacks and ammo cost energy you can spend all your team res into upgrades and still support your team fully. I think we can learn from the ns1 mechanics here where the commander had to make choice if they wanted to support their team with a lot of medpacks or go for tech. This also rewarded good marines on the field who managed kill lifeforms without taking hits. This also gives more importance to the resource mechanics.
Regarding carapace/sg balance i would rather see the shotgun moved to the AA, and made better as a overall lifeform counter weapon for non-exo marines with the changing of the damage type to normal. Honestly as it is now i cannot stand using the shotgun as sometimes even 3 shots very close range on skulks fail to kill, and it just seems the rifle is 10x more reliable. Since the GL is now the structure counter i think it would fit the sg well to be more used for killing aliens.
I think this timing is important to try and strike a decent balance for average timings of leap vs shotguns. Early game would be about vanilla skulks vs lmg, and later it would evolve to lerks/skulks with leap possibly vs shotguns, then to fades and fades with blink and so on. I think that leap can be obtained too early, with the current setup of research-able abilities i would rather see the hive need to be augmented first, then abilities could be researched. Then if you lost the augmented hive, you would loose the abilities (unless you had another augmented hive).
Overall I have to say this patch goes a long way in making this game way more enjoyable to play.
Regarding carapace/sg balance i would rather see the shotgun moved to the AA, and made better as a overall lifeform counter weapon for non-exo marines with the changing of the damage type to normal. Honestly as it is now i cannot stand using the shotgun as sometimes even 3 shots very close range on skulks fail to kill, and it just seems the rifle is 10x more reliable. Since the GL is now the structure counter i think it would fit the sg well to be more used for killing aliens.
I think this timing is important to try and strike a decent balance for average timings of leap vs shotguns. Early game would be about vanilla skulks vs lmg, and later it would evolve to lerks/skulks with leap possibly vs shotguns, then to fades and fades with blink and so on. I think that leap can be obtained too early, with the current setup of research-able abilities i would rather see the hive need to be augmented first, then abilities could be researched. Then if you lost the augmented hive, you would loose the abilities (unless you had another augmented hive).
Overall I have to say this patch goes a long way in making this game way more enjoyable to play.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Interesting points, but the problem I see with moving shotguns to AA is that restricts marine choices early game. I think that this could be changed if the pres cost for shotguns would be increased to 25. It's a big chance but you would have a more powerful weapon with a bigger cost, would also make each weapon little bit more important. I also like the sound of balance where the pres cost of 2 shotguns rivals fade cost. I also like the sound of more lmg vs skulk action early game.
The Marines do need however another AA weapon, something else than GL's. I think the key here is making flamer viable.
But I agree Dragon, this patch was definitely a improvement.
how about go? hockey? bowling?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
These are all symmetrical. In asymmetrical games like Starcraft, they need to balance off statistics.
No. Marines don't need infestation Kharaa do. Marines have better map control they just need to LISTEN TO THE COMMANDER! <-- True story.
Edit: Rushing Jetpack is a pretty good tactic, in a game I played we did that and we won because it was still early and they were trying to rush Onos. However, they wasted their PRes on Lerks to take care of us. We just need people on Marines to understand simple tactics and stop going Rambo (1 Rambo is good for Resource Towers though). Marines should understand that alone they are most likely dead, sticking as a team and they should survive (If they can move their crosshair onto a target and left click). It is not like the Kharaa do not work as a team.