I hate this extremely narrow focus on win/loss statistics to be honest, it really doesn't tell the whole picture. Even IF we were to ever reach a state in which the winrates were more or less 50% with the current trend of minor tweaks, I don't think I would then dare say the game is actually balanced, let alone fun.
Balance isn't just about what side wins more % wise, it's also about HOW each game is won. As it stands, NS 2 has a terrible track record in regards to intra-factional balance. Within the plethora of 'available strategies' that each side supposedly offers, only one or two really stand out for each side. Shade first is barely competitive, half of the alien upgrades aren't competitive, alien third hive is of little importance, exos are generally trash, sentries are rubbish, etc. A game in which half of the 'options' available to you aren't actually viable is in no way 'balanced' even if both teams manage to win roughly an even amount of games.
Lastly, there's arguably several ways in which you can achieve said 50/50 winrate. What happened in the recent patch is a good example of this, messing with the skulk's early game performance has had a CLEAR impact on the alien early game dominance that is a result of their skewed (much more resilient, lower costs and no players being required for structure building) economic model. Yes, you can make the game more balanced by mitigating the alien economic advantage by nerfing skulks, but this comes at A MAJOR trade-off in terms to fun, one that is in no way desirable (you're stuck playing the skulk for the biggest part of any game). If you had instead just fixed the alien economic model, you could have kept skulks the way they were and players wouldn't have had a worse time even though they'd win less.
Basically you end up fixing symptoms rather than underlying cause, and while this will probably allow you to wave some pretty 50/50 statistics, there won't be many players left to wave those figures at.
I have never in my life seen such complaining. You kids aren't going to be happy unless the game is strictly 50-50 winrate. That doesn't happen. A lot of the time it's not even poor balance that causes winrates to be biased. It's called teamstacking, and it happens in every NS2 server. It's also fair to mention that everyone and their mother wants to use the new railgun. Can't be doing that on the alien team, so teams get stacked. Pretty simple, really.
The reality is that the railgun exo is extremely easy to kill compared to its counterparts. Aliens are a lot stronger with well placed gorge tunnels, and early game babblers. The only downside is that skulks are a bit more clunky until they get celerity, and then the difference is negligible. Sure you can say that camo is shit now, and I would argue that it's always been shit compared to the other upgrades. It still doesn't hinder what you want to do with it provided you use your brain effectively.
I play marines only at least 80% of the time. I just find it more fun. I am heavily marine biased as well. But even I know current skulk is not fun. People are too quick to assume that the skulk acceleration bug is the cause. A lot of other things were fixed too in this patch. Max stated in Wasabi's podcast that seeing alien blood with no damage was fixed as well as the orientation and the other alien nerfs such as bile and now you got the lerks with a big "I'M HERE SIGN" when using spikes. Besides what fun is a skulk to play anymore if it feels like a big heavy chore. I checked it out for a bit and it feels so stripped from launch. I will admit I enjoy stomping the skulks on the marine team now but it feels cheap in a way. Not to mention it could cause more people to stop playing alien because they do not find it enjoyable anymore leaving a marine stacked team and more players leaving. Too early to call though but I guess we will see what happens.
Yes, you can make the game more balanced by mitigating the alien economic advantage by nerfing skulks, but this comes at A MAJOR trade-off in terms to fun, one that is in no way desirable (you're stuck playing the skulk for the biggest part of any game). If you had instead just fixed the alien economic model, you could have kept skulks the way they were and players wouldn't have had a worse time even though they'd win less. Basically you end up fixing symptoms rather than underlying cause, and while this will probably allow you to wave some pretty 50/50 statistics, there won't be many players left to wave those figures at.
With great respect, I have to disagree with you here. The skulk was a key reason why aliens had a better economic advantage since they were better able to prevent marines from expanding - and even if they could what little expansion they could muster was often quickly dispatched. You would have to nerf the alien economy to the ground in order to compensate, and then you end up with the balance tipping the other way since it would only take marines a week to figure out that early game harvester assaults would win them the game.
Personally, I think the biggest problem is that UWE has left this imbalance in place for far too long, and so people have become accustomed to the playstyle. Now it's been markedly altered, and despite it being more true to what NS is supposed to be about, people are up in arms since everything 'feels slower'. While there is a small bug to be fixed regarding speed slowing slightly when coming off walls, the reality is that the bigger issue here of hit registration was more important to fix. When a gun is fired at a target, it should hit that target. If it doesn't then that's a problem that needs to be rectified - and that is what they did.
The only way you could try and address without altering the economy would be to make skulks even more fragile. Perhaps 60 health with no armor to start - to compensate for poor hit registration. Would that be a better solution? Aliens were dominating since skulks were dominating. You can't fix that with an economic tweak.
@xarius please explain the skulk 'nerf'. the hitboxes being fixed so the skulk no longer glitches out? the skulk acceleration being lowered so it takes about 0.1 seconds longer to change direction? the new glitch where floor friction was increased?
the only thing which could be construed as a 'nerf' is the reduced acceleration, which as i understand was to stop crazy loop-de-loop gliding pseudo exploit.
ergo you sound like a textbook balance whiner. "yay new patch - time to log onto the forums, see what they're complaining about and then cross reference that with my experience in the whole hour i've played in the new build!".
You can try and scapegoat blame to "new players messing around with gorge" or "new players being good at marine automatically"....or any such non-sense.
But over the last 3 days, marines have been winning about 80% of the games I've played in over multiple servers. Seems the ONLY time the aliens DO win is when all the good players on the server pick that side together...otherwise, if the teams are "even" in terms of skill...marines dominate all game long.
I hate this extremely narrow focus on win/loss statistics to be honest, it really doesn't tell the whole picture. Even IF we were to ever reach a state in which the winrates were more or less 50% with the current trend of minor tweaks, I don't think I would then dare say the game is actually balanced, let alone fun.
Balance isn't just about what side wins more % wise, it's also about HOW each game is won. As it stands, NS 2 has a terrible track record in regards to intra-factional balance. Within the plethora of 'available strategies' that each side supposedly offers, only one or two really stand out for each side. Shade first is barely competitive, half of the alien upgrades aren't competitive, alien third hive is of little importance, exos are generally trash, sentries are rubbish, etc. A game in which half of the 'options' available to you aren't actually viable is in no way 'balanced' even if both teams manage to win roughly an even amount of games.
Lastly, there's arguably several ways in which you can achieve said 50/50 winrate. What happened in the recent patch is a good example of this, messing with the skulk's early game performance has had a CLEAR impact on the alien early game dominance that is a result of their skewed (much more resilient, lower costs and no players being required for structure building) economic model. Yes, you can make the game more balanced by mitigating the alien economic advantage by nerfing skulks, but this comes at A MAJOR trade-off in terms to fun, one that is in no way desirable (you're stuck playing the skulk for the biggest part of any game). If you had instead just fixed the alien economic model, you could have kept skulks the way they were and players wouldn't have had a worse time even though they'd win less.
Basically you end up fixing symptoms rather than underlying cause, and while this will probably allow you to wave some pretty 50/50 statistics, there won't be many players left to wave those figures at.
You have been going on about the alien economic model for a while now this isn't a normal rts its a rtsfps, the different eco models are part of the game! Yes I wish the alien commander was more involved with his team like the marine commander and the alien economy was less resilient then it is right now but that is how it is and if you can stop focusing on it!
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
While I appreciate the work the ns2stats creators have done to provide a public source of NS2 data, the more I've used it the less faith I have in it as a source to measure game-wide balance. I've long used the presumption that although it only captures a small number of the matches played (because its run on only some servers), it didn't matter because it was more or less akin to a random sample of matches. However, I'm starting to question that assumption since I frequently see more filled unmodded servers (no ns2stats) than modded (ns2stats) ones. It also doesn't help that the filled, modded servers are typically ones in which I find a different level of play (e.g. KKG, HBZ, etc).
Also troubling is the fact that the filtering feature seems to give different results to different people based on the same criteria. Even if its a simple case of miscommunication, I've found that stats filtering to be easy to mess up if you're not careful about your selections (e.g. making sure to go through steps like selecting all or none first, then adding or subtracting the desired servers, builds, type, mods, or dates).
On KKG servers, b240 is 60% Marines, 40% Aliens. Before the patch, 45% Marines, 55% Aliens. That's a massive swing.
The biggest changes I'm seeing is hit registration on skulks. I'm so used to seeing dead-on shots miss and this is happening much, much less. Trying to balance a game on misbehaving hit prediction is likely why we're seeing what we're seeing. I reminds me when the NS1 Onos hitbox was tiny. Once fixed, it took way too long for the health to be adjusted and they just dropped like flies.
The ns2stats player base tracker is, in my opinion, all you need to look at; that should be the final word on the success of UWE's after launch support. There was a massive influx of players post-patch (more than I would have expected honestly; this was a real opportunity for the community), followed by a complete collapse. We are now back on the pre-patch trend line, which suggests a slow but real decline in total player base. Unfortunately, I'm now firmly in the out of the game category, as well. I don't say this to whine; I don't think anybody cares (nor should they, as I'm just some guy). Its only interesting to the extent it reflects a trend. With the game so broken, it simply isn't fun for me to play at this point. I will try again after the next patch. If things aren't better, this will move to a once in awhile game for me, rather than a daily. Again, not a threat, just reality. And this argument ignores the fact that marines are winning over 55% of the games post patch, versus a 44% average in the month prior. That's an 11 point swing in 5 days that the deniers allege is, apparently, coincidence.
Perma marines and UWE fan girls can argue the obvious all they want, but the player bleed will continue. Sorry UWE. You broke marines and now you gotta fix it.
FYI: Of course the weekend has something to do with it. That's why I pulled the player histories all the way back to Feb. 1st. Still looks like a solid return to trend to me.
Single exos starting to feel a little like 2 base tres onos drops now, I would like to fist whoever thought buffing the fist was a good idea IRL, the one weakness single exos had is now arguably their greatest strength.
Mine spam is starting to feel a bit like cloak as well, mines got a ghost buff this patch I'm sure of it because it's impossible to set off mines as fade without taking full dmg or even as a leaping skulk where before they would barely do 40-50 dmg as you SS or leaped across them.
The ns2stats player base tracker is, in my opinion, all you need to look at; that should be the final word on the success of UWE's after launch support. There was a massive influx of players post-patch (more than I would have expected honestly; this was a real opportunity for the community), followed by a complete collapse. We are now back on the pre-patch trend line, which suggests a slow but real decline in total player base. Unfortunately, I'm now firmly in the out of the game category, as well. I don't say this to whine; I don't think anybody cares (nor should they, as I'm just some guy). Its only interesting to the extent it reflects a trend. With the game so broken, it simply isn't fun for me to play at this point. I will try again after the next patch. If things aren't better, this will move to a once in awhile game for me, rather than a daily. Again, not a threat, just reality. And this argument ignores the fact that marines are winning over 55% of the games post patch, versus a 44% average in the month prior. That's an 11 point swing in 5 days that the deniers allege is, apparently, coincidence.
Perma marines and UWE fan girls can argue the obvious all they want, but the player bleed will continue. Sorry UWE. You broke marines and now you gotta fix it.
FYI: Of course the weekend has something to do with it. That's why I pulled the player histories all the way back to Feb. 1st. Still looks like a solid return to trend to me.
Comments
Balance isn't just about what side wins more % wise, it's also about HOW each game is won. As it stands, NS 2 has a terrible track record in regards to intra-factional balance. Within the plethora of 'available strategies' that each side supposedly offers, only one or two really stand out for each side. Shade first is barely competitive, half of the alien upgrades aren't competitive, alien third hive is of little importance, exos are generally trash, sentries are rubbish, etc. A game in which half of the 'options' available to you aren't actually viable is in no way 'balanced' even if both teams manage to win roughly an even amount of games.
Lastly, there's arguably several ways in which you can achieve said 50/50 winrate. What happened in the recent patch is a good example of this, messing with the skulk's early game performance has had a CLEAR impact on the alien early game dominance that is a result of their skewed (much more resilient, lower costs and no players being required for structure building) economic model. Yes, you can make the game more balanced by mitigating the alien economic advantage by nerfing skulks, but this comes at A MAJOR trade-off in terms to fun, one that is in no way desirable (you're stuck playing the skulk for the biggest part of any game). If you had instead just fixed the alien economic model, you could have kept skulks the way they were and players wouldn't have had a worse time even though they'd win less.
Basically you end up fixing symptoms rather than underlying cause, and while this will probably allow you to wave some pretty 50/50 statistics, there won't be many players left to wave those figures at.
Can someone please explain? Do people seriously play one side and one side only?
The reality is that the railgun exo is extremely easy to kill compared to its counterparts. Aliens are a lot stronger with well placed gorge tunnels, and early game babblers. The only downside is that skulks are a bit more clunky until they get celerity, and then the difference is negligible. Sure you can say that camo is shit now, and I would argue that it's always been shit compared to the other upgrades. It still doesn't hinder what you want to do with it provided you use your brain effectively.
It's not the game, it's the players.
Personally, I think the biggest problem is that UWE has left this imbalance in place for far too long, and so people have become accustomed to the playstyle. Now it's been markedly altered, and despite it being more true to what NS is supposed to be about, people are up in arms since everything 'feels slower'. While there is a small bug to be fixed regarding speed slowing slightly when coming off walls, the reality is that the bigger issue here of hit registration was more important to fix. When a gun is fired at a target, it should hit that target. If it doesn't then that's a problem that needs to be rectified - and that is what they did.
The only way you could try and address without altering the economy would be to make skulks even more fragile. Perhaps 60 health with no armor to start - to compensate for poor hit registration. Would that be a better solution? Aliens were dominating since skulks were dominating. You can't fix that with an economic tweak.
the only thing which could be construed as a 'nerf' is the reduced acceleration, which as i understand was to stop crazy loop-de-loop gliding pseudo exploit.
ergo you sound like a textbook balance whiner. "yay new patch - time to log onto the forums, see what they're complaining about and then cross reference that with my experience in the whole hour i've played in the new build!".
i blame world of warcraft.
But over the last 3 days, marines have been winning about 80% of the games I've played in over multiple servers. Seems the ONLY time the aliens DO win is when all the good players on the server pick that side together...otherwise, if the teams are "even" in terms of skill...marines dominate all game long.
You have been going on about the alien economic model for a while now this isn't a normal rts its a rtsfps, the different eco models are part of the game! Yes I wish the alien commander was more involved with his team like the marine commander and the alien economy was less resilient then it is right now but that is how it is and if you can stop focusing on it!
Also troubling is the fact that the filtering feature seems to give different results to different people based on the same criteria. Even if its a simple case of miscommunication, I've found that stats filtering to be easy to mess up if you're not careful about your selections (e.g. making sure to go through steps like selecting all or none first, then adding or subtracting the desired servers, builds, type, mods, or dates).
The biggest changes I'm seeing is hit registration on skulks. I'm so used to seeing dead-on shots miss and this is happening much, much less. Trying to balance a game on misbehaving hit prediction is likely why we're seeing what we're seeing. I reminds me when the NS1 Onos hitbox was tiny. Once fixed, it took way too long for the health to be adjusted and they just dropped like flies.
Perma marines and UWE fan girls can argue the obvious all they want, but the player bleed will continue. Sorry UWE. You broke marines and now you gotta fix it.
FYI: Of course the weekend has something to do with it. That's why I pulled the player histories all the way back to Feb. 1st. Still looks like a solid return to trend to me.
Mine spam is starting to feel a bit like cloak as well, mines got a ghost buff this patch I'm sure of it because it's impossible to set off mines as fade without taking full dmg or even as a leaping skulk where before they would barely do 40-50 dmg as you SS or leaped across them.
http://games.opensteamworks.org/Chart/View/4920
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=4920