Random thought on game balance: player counts?
Savant
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-11-30 Member: 10289Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
This is something that I have been pondering for the last little while as a stopgap measure until balance changes are made. (and if changes don't improve balance, this could also be considered until balance is reached.)
A basic factor in team balance that hasn't really been considered has been player count. While we have a team balance function to keep the teams even, should we be doing that?
In other words, if we have marines only winning 40% of the time, why not make 'balanced teams' on a 16 player server 9 marines and 7 aliens? If those player counts made it so marines won 48% of the time, why not try it as an interim measure? Since this is an asymmetrical game, player counts don't necessarily have to be exactly the same so long as both sides have an equal chance to win.
Again, this is just a random thought, so don't flip out over it folks. I just thought that it would be painfully easy to implement and adjust player counts while waiting for things to get more balanced.
A basic factor in team balance that hasn't really been considered has been player count. While we have a team balance function to keep the teams even, should we be doing that?
In other words, if we have marines only winning 40% of the time, why not make 'balanced teams' on a 16 player server 9 marines and 7 aliens? If those player counts made it so marines won 48% of the time, why not try it as an interim measure? Since this is an asymmetrical game, player counts don't necessarily have to be exactly the same so long as both sides have an equal chance to win.
Again, this is just a random thought, so don't flip out over it folks. I just thought that it would be painfully easy to implement and adjust player counts while waiting for things to get more balanced.
Comments
I'm an experimentalist though: it would need to be tested in some form or another. If it's possible to devise a sensible way of testing with meaningful results, then it should be tested.
It would be a fairly drastic change, though - not something you could release into the wild to see how it goes.
A more moderate step would be to allow marines to have 1 more player than aliens, or even teams, but not allow aliens to have 1 more player than marines.
On the topic of player counts keep in mind absolute player counts not just relative counts. 12v12 seems easier for marines, 6v6 easier for aliens. There probably needs to be some sort of scaling based on player counts. Ideas I've seen thrown around have included:
- Damage and health boosts for players or structures
- Spawn times or egg replacement rates
- Time to build structures
Then again, you can try to balance player counts all you want, if you pitch an All-Star professional Basketball team (or just 1 Michael Jordan) against a group of toddlers, who haven't even learned how to walk, guess what happens next?
Another boring snorefest. Yay.
It could be anything along those lines. My mention of 2 extra marines was totally an arbitrary number.
Sure making it so that marines always had one extra player could also work. (Odd numbered max players)
It would be easy enough to test though if any server ops want to test it. Just lower the server count to an odd number and enforce that the extra player goes marines.
For the developers this would be a PAINFULLY easy thing to implement. All they need do is add in variables for maximum marine players and maximum alien players. Then let the admins decide if they want to test it out. Start with a one player differential and see how it goes. I honestly can't see one or two players swinging the balance extensively unless the games are very small. (in such a case it likely wouldn't work)
This also won't help competitive games at all, since I doubt they want to have extra players who only play half of the games.
Like I said, it's more just a random thought that could serve as a stopgap.
For the vanilla game, it would perhaps be an 'impure,' 'shortcut' way out. In an ideal world, even sized teams will always have a win probability of 0.5. We just need to be careful and considered about getting there
This is of course very important for the competitive community, as well!
This would also seem to satisfy the desire many have to play on the marine team since 'guns' are more familiar to them. So it could be a win-win. With people stacking the marine portal, there would be a couple extra slots.
In a way it almost seems 'too easy', which is why I'd really need to see how it played. Are the variables already in the game to set player limits for each team independent of one another? It would also need to be friendly with autobalance, which it too might not be possible by default. I would think that this would likely be something best rolled in with a server admin mod.
If it's not complex to code, could you not slip the variables into the game in a way that would be easy for server admins to tweak? Disabled by default, it could be something that could potentially also lead to new game modes as well.
We need the variables first though. Is this something that has already been coded?
Everything you need to do this is already exposed in the game Lua
Also, go take a look in the modding forum. Several mods have been made in which the teams are unequally balanced (for instance a mod where a group of marines has to survive assaults by a single super-alien).
You could ask those people to help you out. I imagine they can whip something up in mere minutes.
Generally speaking the balance issues are not about the damage marines deal, the marine weapon damages are actually stronger comparitively than NS1. I have said it time and time again, when you have aliens respawning (by default) at a rate that is atleast 3 to 4 times faster than the marines, you will never have even team balance with even class balance.
Making spawn rate changes would probably take as long as this to code, and as a interium step would be the best place to start.
Remember, there is nothing that says teams have to be symmetric. We're in a game based on asymmetry, so why should we assume teams need to be even?
naturaly due to them lacking one because of the comm.
But I wouldnt mind even in NS2.. aliens are clearly still ahead.
Yeh, still a bandaid fix.
preventing people from joining a full team however.. may help.
It's something that's totally a server option though. Server operators are always looking for something that can help improve gameplay on their servers, and if this is able to, it may be able to fill that role in the interim.
And i am not making it any more complicated that your suggestion is. The point stands that tweaking the spawn rates could be coded and completed in minutes, probably about the same time this change would take.
Your also conceding by making that change that marines should die X times (say 1.3) for every time a skulk dies. No one likes being at a disadvantage, and making a change like this basically stays, yes marines are weaker and you can expect to die more there, which goes against making fun, balanced gameplay. Win rates in the end mean nothing about how fun the game is, which NS2 is living proof of currently (funner to play and loose on marines than play aliens).
When people join the teams only 7 will be allowed to join aliens but 9 will be allowed to join marines. Teams will be asymmetrical, and there will be no autobalance keeping 2 dead marines in the spawn queue. It will be 9 vs 7. Since aliens are a bit stronger, this might negate it enough so that things are more balanced.
Read my followup two posts above yours. As I noted, on large servers we could flip the imbalance the OTHER way. With 24 players perhaps it is 13 aliens vs 11 marines. That's the beauty of it is that it can be adjusted either way. It could also be just a 1 player difference and there would be an odd number of players on the server.
Spawn rates are a whole other animal, and it doesn't take into account that a dead marine is still dead. Spawning faster doesn't help when you are being outpowered by the other team. Superior numbers will always best a superior spawn rate. (especially for marines who can build more IPs.)
Have you ever looked at the scoreboards at the end of a game? Marines die more ALREADY with balanced teams. Usually they die quite a bit more. So your point is moot since that is the status quo now.
It wouldn't since this is not meant to be a replacement for proper balance. Yeah the game was designed to be played with the same number of players, but it was also designed to be balanced 50/50. If the balance isn't there, then it stands to reason that giving a team another player will influence that balance. To what extent remains to be seen, but I've been in a couple games where marines had two more people than marines and the autobalance was turned off. While 2 games out of the hundreds I've played is a really small sample, I didn't find anything amiss.
That's because imbalances from skill typically overwhelm imbalances due to playercount or underlying game mechanics. Adding two random rookies to your side isn't going to help much if your playing against someone like Archaea.
Also, Yuuki largely made this point before, except with respect to any variable in NS2. However, the problem is that some variables are more interconnected than others, of which equal playercounts is a big one in NS2. Your solution is like trying to increase the height of a house by raising its foundation after its been built. Its totally possible, but it would likely be easier and less prone to complications if you just made the roof a little taller instead.
I don't see it that way at all. The player count is actually a variable that was unbalanced throughout NS1 by nature of marines having a commander. This asymmetry existed long ago. Furthermore, at present the teams can be off by 1 player either way before autobalance kicks in. If you have 8vs7 the server won't be keeping a player on the team with 8 sitting in the spawn queue. This is yet another imbalance that is built into the game.
I am suggesting to alter player balance, since it is a variable that is easy to adjust and doesn't require adjusting other game variables. Each additional player will add a percentage to a team's chance to win. What percentage that is would need to be tested. However, I can't see one additional marine in a 15 player game flipping balance from 60/40 for aliens to 40/60. Heck, even if the teams were 9vs7 with two extra marines I can't see balance flipping that far. The impact a player has on the marines is not as significant as the impact an alien player has. It's why it takes 5 marines to take down an Onos.
Seeing as marines tend to win more on the larger servers, it does stand to reason that altering the player count will indeed change the balance. The key is to see how much it affects the game at a given level. Once that is determined we can figure out whether this kind of mod will have any use.
We've *already* gone down this road. NS1 had asymmetric teams since aliens had no commander. So aliens always had an 'extra body' on the playing field.
Yeah losing a player impacts the game, but that is true for either team by nature of how little forgiveness there is in the game.
Let's remember that as it stands right now, any team can have one more player than the other and not trigger the autobalance measure. Add this to reserved slots on many servers. There is never even teams on those servers because the max server count is an even number, and there is an uneven number of reserved slots. So uneven teams are nothing new, they happen all the time.
My suggestion is that we use this to our advantage for sake of balance. Given how many people tend to like playing marine, this also helps provide more slots for them.
Aliens win more often. We all know this. It's an uncontestable fact that marines only win 40% of games right now. So why not give the marine team an extra player and see how that impacts balance. Given the games I have been in (with an extra marine) it can only help. That's why I suggested 2 in my example. IMHO it would take two extra marines to eliminate the 20% difference. We can start at one though and see how it goes.
Just being blunt here, but do you how could you possibly think that 6 skulks match up anywhere near favorable against 8 marines? Against that sort of number disparity, you'd need the absolute derpiest stormtrooper tier marines to lose. Even though crappy marines lose far more than they should against equal numbers of skulks, it's pretty rare to see skulks winning engagements when they're significantly outnumbered.
Honestly, the biggest problem in marine win rate has more to do with terrible pub commanding than any sort of real balance problem. So long as you have 95% of awful pub commanders rushing phase gates and putting off upgrades until 7-8 minutes into the game, you're going to continue to have terrible marine win rates. The standard strategy being employed in most pubs is one that ensures that a subpar aiming marine team will never be able to push effectively.
The most effective thing you can convince a pub marine commander to do is delay phase gates and rush arms lab/armor upgrades. Armor 3 marines are one of the most obnoxious things in the game for aliens to deal with, and you can get it by 6:30 on 3-4 RTs. Marines need to push early to win the game, and you're not going to get significant pushing power out of pub marines that are left at 100/30 for most of the game.
A high player count will almost force the Khammander to go shift hive first because of the fixed egg spawn rate... I like a bit of variety more than fixed patterns.
A high player count game is especially awful on some public servers, if your average pubber marine player runs around randomly and performs actions that were never ordered and are just not sensible to do. Theoretically marines benefit from a higher player count, because 1 or 2 of them could constantly babysit and weld the bases or do a rush/whack-a-bile/save-RTs patrol, 1 or 2 could cap RTs and build, while the others could divide into 2 pressure teams or form one large pressure team for hive pushes... but in reality most of the time there is one guy who has to prevent the majority of his sheep to do something stupid or has to convince them nicely to do something totally basic like welding a burning and smoking phasegate... "Nah, me no welder, me buy second shotgun and die far away in hive."
Oh, there are so many pub anecdotes... Most of the time there is no real teamplay on pubs. There is a German phrase describing, when in a teamwork situation nobody cares and everyone thinks that the others will do the work: "TEAM - toll, ein anderer macht's." (TEAM - nice, another guy does it).
Marine commanding would be a lot less stressful, if marine players actually cared for more than frags, supported the comm and the team and developed a strategic game sense... When that happens, I shall buy everyone a Hughnicorn.
Using our current winrates
0.60a = 0.4m
m=1.5a
Therefore it should really be 7 aliens to 10.5 marines. 9 to 7 is clearly unbalanced to common knowledge. I also recommend adding a mechanic that nerfs one random player's damage, hp, res income, movement speed, FOV etc. by 50% if their team's allowed player limit ends in 0.5.
Sounds like this should fix the game right up.
Oh god this +1
I've been doing more comming than I ever did in NS1, and I'm generally really enjoying it (trying to get as broad a skillset and experience in this game as possible to make myself a better player). However, there's always at least 1 guy on the team moaning at you for something: I hate this - I'm trying my best and want to learn with constructive criticism MOST WELCOME. I'm not an RTS player, so I don't do a lot of things at once particularly well, though I'm definitely improving in this regard. When you have 5 different people asking for meds, ammo, that RT between your close spawns (seriously, I told you I'm not taking the RT, I sent you there to pressure their hive...), upgrades, buildings under attack - yeah for an old FPS-only muppet like me that's tough to keep on top of. At least in 6v6 I can focus on being more careful with structure placement (one of my biggest shortcomings at the moment), accurate medspamming when required and upgrades without having to babysit the 3 extra greens, or worse whites, who won't follow any kind of order and just don't help the team!
I have tried comming in a 20-man server. It's not pretty. How anyone gets any effective comming done in 24p servers is beyond me.
Being at a disadvantage because of tech is completely different from being at a disadvantage because of class balance.