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Lord Machaar -> RE: Balance Vs. Fun (3/24/2015 18:05:40)
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@Exploding Penguin:
quote:
Also, as a side note, unbalanced is always unfair, but if something is unfair it isn't necessarily always because of balanced. The disease that has plagued ED known as legendary ranks is not unbalanced and almost nothing to do with balance, it just screwed up matchmaking and other things so bad that it's impossible to get into almost completely fair battles these days.
To further expand this idea in my way, the game was having balance troubles even before this ranking system was introduced.
The testers back then were testing classes, which means when there is something wrong, it's surely in the class itself, whether it's an OP skill or combination of OP skills.
When we look now, balance problems are more complex, an X build might work greatly in ranks ranging from 30 to 60 but will never work from 1 to 30 (Stenght builds = More ranks, more points invested in dexterity, more chance to block the oppoenent.). If this build is OP at a certain range it doesn't mean it is OP in all ranges, this results in a very serious problem, which is, that X class might be balanced at ranks ranging from 30 to 60 by a patchnote, but not necessarily from ranks ranging from 1 to 30 (which was already balanced in). This is one. Second thing is, player base went down dramatically, meaning, less and less players, meaning that matches are nowhere near fair, especially at power hours, matchmaking itself is not broken, it's due to the low player base, the system has to match a player searching for a pvp in a decent time, and since it is mainly a pvp game, waiting for too long is not accepted, which means fast battles rather than fair ones.
@Xendran
I watched this video before and I don't remember when but I remember it was related to your youtube channel.
Anyways, the examples shown in the video are awesome, starting with a chess game, the perfect game in the world in terms of balance, passing by star craft and league of legends, but they are nowhere near close to ED for reasons I will explain later on. ED is now between reaching the perfect state of balance and a perfect state of good imbalance.
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An important note about cyclical balance referenced in the Extra Credits video: This is only a good thing if it does NOT require intervention for it to happen. EpicDuel's cyclical balance is an interventionist one that is caused by developer changes, not a natural one that is caused by players counterplaying each other.
Frankly, cyclical balance is impossible for ED at the current state and I will explain why devs have to interefere to fix balance problems.
When we talk about league of legends for example, and as shown in the end of the video, one of the core elements to create a balanced or in a more correct way perfectly imbalanced game, players must have options, many options, LoL certainly has a lot of options to give for players, when weapon "A" is OP for sometime and a lot of players use it, other intelligent players tend to look for ways to encounter it, leading them to search for "B" weapon that counters that weapon "A", then a weapon C appears and so on. Luckily players have a huge number of options, and you need hours and hours to figure out the perfect match.
When we try to approach with this manner how ED's cyclical balance works, at the moment, classes are the core element here, weapons are additives, we talk about cores now, till here, I will say that clyclical balance might be possible, because everything here is "counterable", but still there aren't much options for players to use. Adding ranks which is another thing ED has that sadly affects badly the balance, ranks give advantage, this advantage is not acknowledged by the devs, having ranks doesn't mean you need necessarily skills to win a battle, because ranks sadly aren't "uncounterable". In the past it was the case for promo packs, which means in beta/gamma, when a player having a promo pack weapons faces a non-var player the result was clearly, which means you really didn't need to have skills to win a battle in ED back then, as skills had a small percent affecting the game, this is not the case anymore with the deletion of enhancements, but sadly it was shortly replaced with ranks. To sum up:
Before Omega: You don't need to have skills to win a battle if you have promo pack weapons. A fact each old player knows.
After Omega: You don't need to have skills to win a battle if you 60 ranks in your pocket.
To give an example showing what really I'm talking about, and how cyclical balance will never work in ED without the interfering of devs in it, it's because cyclical balanced as mentioned in the video is consisted of:
a- intelligence of players. Which requires a lot players, the bigger the number, the more chance you find an intelligent player.
b- Options for those players to try and match, sadly not the case for ED.
c- deletion of clear advantages given for certain players (problem we don't see in LoL as skills of X player affect the result more, playing and playing gives the player better skills, comicalbiker plays the game for years now, did he learn skills? sure he did, does it give him any advantage in the game? hell no.
Both of these 3 parametres are violated in ED, for:
a- low player base, lower chance to have intelligent players to look for ways to encounter OP trending classes. Most vets quitted.
b- small amount of options.
a typical player in ED now has:
- This aux: Dread Desolator E or P. http://epicduelwiki.com/w/Dread_Desolator_E
- This sidearm: Azrael's Anguish E or P. http://epicduelwiki.com/w/Azrael%27s_Anguish_E
- This armor: Any armor (Has free passive and active core spots) Active cores : Chairman's Fury or Generator. Passive cores: The new cores in the endless shop.
- This primary: Frozen fury destroyer or Celtic cleaver.
c- ranks, a clear advtange that affects the game directly, which has nothing to encounter it with.
When I hear players saying, well, if X class is OP, no need to nerf it because Players have to find a way to encounter it. What can I say is, in order to counter X thing and to start a cyclical balance without any interferes of DEVs, we need:
- Options; weapons and mainly now cores, since weapons themselves mean nothing now, a coreless weapon is useless. Cores need a lot of time to be made = Resuls: Dead end, Devs have time to create cores for promo packs only.
- Deletion of any clear advantage that make players feel it is useless to look for a solution since X player has an advantage = Ranks.
This leads me to my own conclusion, sure having a balance game like "Starcraft" means that players will eventually find fixed strategic ways to win, and only top players can find efficient strategies to win the game, which is one of the cons of perfectly balanced state, but let me ask you think question, in order to avoid this and search for what so called perfect imbalance and cyclical balance, is it possible for ED? It is not sadly, reaching this state requires a lot and a lot of things, which frankly ED team don't have the abilities to achieve, so the achieveable thing now is a perfect balanced game. Once players find fixed strategies to win battle, do a patchnote, a player even suggested, change skill trees, which they have done, keeping players always in search for that strategy.
On a side note I will try to watch more videos, for myself and not for the game itself, because frankly any support is not appreciated here concerning balance. Devs think they are the almighty and elite leaders of the game, and them only know what's and what's not good for the game, and I'm speciafically talking about balance which is a case sensitive thing and not changing the color of OZ's boot. There are two types of suggestions, saying that devs implemented players' suggestions doesn't necessarily mean they implemented the right ones or most important ones.
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