innociv

Join Date 02/2008

+34

Perceived ("newbie") balance vs. Actual ("pro") balance

A lot of times you have players that don't understand how to play that complain about imbalances, even if the game is balanced.

This was a HUGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE problem for Sins of a Solar Empire and the devs would listen to the whiners and ruin the game for people that actually knew how to play. (siege frigs lol :/) The devs didn't play at the level of the good players either.

I hate to use the word "pro", but it's easier than to keep saying "the top 5% of players".

What tends to happen is it's like, say you have chess.
One player knows how to play.
The other player, not so much, and it's like he can't understand what the other player is doing to win. It's like he only knows half the rules. He doesn't understand his Knight can jump over people. He doesn't know that his pawn and go two spaces forward if it's the pawns first move. He doesn't know his queen can not only move diagonally, but also horizontally and vertically.
The first player knows these things, and uses them to his advantage. The new player doesn't understand how he seems to have such an advantage and screams "IMBA!"

I hope if there is a problem for new players "not getting it" that instead of screwing up the game for the people that know how to play, they focus on making it so those new players can understand it so the two players are NOT playing two different games.
Ones of Sin's big probablems where the hidden armor types, damage types, and other hidden information.

demigod

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I think GPG will do balance just fine. Look at FA it's one of the better balanced RTS you can find. Their only real problem with the balance issues is the sometimes take the change an bit to far an either make an OP unit slightly UP and the other way around. But in general they have done an excellent job on the FA balance, I just wish THQ would give GPG funds to fix the few remaining issues.

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well, lets not get nerbs (my way of saying newbs) into the BetA

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So ignore noobs' balance suggestions? Sounds good to me

. Making it easy for them to learn would be good too.

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problem for Sins of a Solar Empire and the devs would listen to the whiners and ruin the game for people that actually knew how to play.

OK...well I wasn't in the beta for Sins but you yourself are coming across a little whinny at the moment. They want Demigod to sell as well as possible. You can't complain really if developers are trying to appeal to as many people as possible. If enough people were asking for an Assassin that’s able to fly around and fire beams out of their eyes then GPG would probably add it. Now I was just trying to think of something that sounded crazy to balance might of gone a bit of over the top there.

The devs didn't play at the level of the good players

Oh no!! How dare they not play on the same level as people who played like every waking moment. Please tell me this wasn't an actual complaint from the way you wrote it, seemed like your outraged or something which is sort of amusing and sad at the same time.

I hope if there is a problem for new players "not getting it" that instead of screwing up the game for the people that know how to play, they focus on making it so those new players can understand it so the two players are NOT playing two different games.

I doubt your post is going to achieve anything, well unless it’s to make people think less of you. Just wait for the beta, then vocalise your woes.

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I'd have to go with Blue Sun here. It's a little whiny and jumping to conclusions-esque.

I do get where you're coming from, but since they got the FA balancer on their team I'd say they're good to go.

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I agree with the overall sentiment here, an effective tactic should never be removed just because the effective counter(s) are difficult.

However it gets more involved when the balance is -constantly- called into question by the average joe because they're loosing a large portion of their games to such a tactic. Because the average joe plays on public servers with other average joes, so the people using this winning tactic are the same people unable to effectively counter it. While the top players can (hopefully) demonstrate an effective counter to any tactic it should also be considered how "easy" the counter is to compared to the complained about tactic.

I'm gonna cheat here and use a blatantly obvious construct to make my point

Hypothetical Beat 'em up with only two characters

Newbie char - has an attack executed with a single button press that instantly K.Os the opponant, has no way to block
Pro' char - has one very weak attack, has one counter to Newb char's instant kill attack that requires a very complex series of commands. This counter as well as blocking the attack has a 50% chance of K.Oing your opponant in return.

Outcome:

Least skilled players cannot win with the pro char against the newbie char because they can't execute the counter. The pro char is seen as useless and all the lesser skilled players use the newb char with a 50% chance of hitting the one hit K.O button before the other player.

More skilled players cannot loose with the pro char against the newbie char, they execute the block flawlessly untill they get a counter kill, the newbie is seen as the "noob choice" and all the skillfull players choose the pro' char and pummel each other to death with the weak attack with a 50% win chance.
______________________________________________________
Now playing against their own skill level each player actually has a 50% chance of winning if they choose the "right" character. Unfortunately the lesser skilled players will be calling the newbie char overpowered whilst the talented players will be calling him weak and noobish.

Perfect solution
If the newbie char's attack was made as difficult to execute as the pro char's counter and at the same time the pro's counter changed to have a 50% block chance and 100% counter on block, everyone would win 50% of the time with any character in this marvelous little hypothetical world. The newb char was nerfed in the lesser player's eyes and buffed in the talented player's eyes

So yes, don't just listen to complaints about "overpowered" tactics when a talented player can demonstrate a counter. But just the opposite holds true too, if they only listened to the talented player above then the newbie character would have been buffed because in pro matches he always looses. But in the middle of the spectrum the average player would now have an even harder time winning against the newbie char with the pro char.

There you go, a stupidly long post saying listen to both sides of the arguement. Thanks for reading my wasted time

The impossible art is seeing the solution when you're not dealing in absolutes, but a balanced feedback base will get you on the right track.

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A lot of times you have players that don't understand how to play that complain about imbalances, even if the game is balanced. This was a HUGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE problem for Sins of a Solar Empire and the devs would listen to the whiners and ruin the game for people that actually knew how to play. (siege frigs lol :/) The devs didn't play at the level of the good players either. I hate to use the word "pro", but it's easier than to keep saying "the top 5% of players". What tends to happen is it's like, say you have chess. One player knows how to play. The other player, not so much, and it's like he can't understand what the other player is doing to win. It's like he only knows half the rules. He doesn't understand his Knight can jump over people. He doesn't know that his pawn and go two spaces forward if it's the pawns first move. He doesn't know his queen can not only move diagonally, but also horizontally and vertically. The first player knows these things, and uses them to his advantage. The new player doesn't understand how he seems to have such an advantage and screams "IMBA!" I hope if there is a problem for new players "not getting it" that instead of screwing up the game for the people that know how to play, they focus on making it so those new players can understand it so the two players are NOT playing two different games. Ones of Sin's big probablems where the hidden armor types, damage types, and other hidden information.

DENIED!!!!

Next

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I think innociv has a point in saying this, but i don't get what he thinks the devs will do about it? It seems like a problem that doesn't exist and doesn't need to be fixed.

New players will suck and that's always true.

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Whiney?

Whiney for thinking the game should be easy to understand rather than balanced for people that can't understand it?

*Shrugs*

And yeah, FA had much better game mechanics than supcom and had great balance, and afaik Tyo was responsible for at least a good deal of that.

What I mean is like TF2.
TF2 doesn't have anything hidden. It's all there, and it's all well balanced. It's very "Accessible" but at the same time when the good players play clan matches there is a big gap in the skill between that and pubs.
On the other hand, in Sins of a Solar Empire the newbies though the pro's where cheating/abusing exploits and where elitest.
Sorry if there was misunderstanding.

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How about the devs just IGNORE the people who do not spend the time to do the math and do repeated tests in game to PROVE the thing is over powered or under powered.

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Yeah but still the whining is annoying.

It's good for the game to be accessible. That means the new players know you win because you're simply good, and don't accuse you or using some exploit. A good sniper is good in TF2 because he has good aim and shoots people in the head, not because he knows there is some hidden mechanic in the game where if you shoot someone in the left leg you instantly kill them at a low charge level.

And it makes the learning curve less harsh so people are less likely to quit.

It's like, to me, DotA's item combinations are bad because it's senseless memorization that adds to the learning curve. There is no sense to have it, except to punish new players.

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Apologises if I came across a little brash in my last post and your comment about the devs on Sins makes a bit more sense now innociv.

Just finding it a little tiresome that there's always a "I'm worried demigod wouldn't meet my exceptions" or similar threads every time I have a look on here. I might of linked this to one of those sort of threads which was unfair. I suppose its good not to get your hopes up too much but not to this extreme.

Anyway personally I think that people will always claim a game is unbalanced no matter what, they always have to have an excuse. God forbid that it was actually their own fault that they lost.

I just want Demigod to be plain fun, its simple the more fun people have the less likely they are to complain (well I would hope so). I don't think I'll care if I'm classed as the worst player ever or a good one as long as I enjoy playing.

Having a challenge is always great but its nice to play someone new to a game every now and then too, you can take it a bit easier and maybe give a little advice rather "omg your so bad, go home and rethink your life" attitude which seems to plague every new players. I can understand some of your frustration here innociv your just worried that there might be a repeat of past mistakes. Maybe people will consider their feedback more carefully in the beta after reading your post. Maybe.

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I used sins as an example because that was a game that appeared so vastly different to newbies than it did to people who knew what they where talking about.

Waht I was trying to say is that something like that I hope is avoided.

I don't think GPG are people that will listen to newbies balance suggestions because they themselves tend to know better and know what they're saying is ridiculous.
My post wasn't about bashing newbies. What I was trying to say was about the accessibility of the game. Which isn't to say making it like Halo where the top 3% of players are hardly any better than the top 25%, it just means easy to understand what does what, and what has what effect, and what just made you get owned.
New players get steamrolled in Sins of a Solar Empire and don't know what happen to make them lose so badly, they don't get the game AT ALL. To them it looks like something was really overpowered. They jsut saw all those heavy cruisers swarming em.
When you die in TF2 it zooms in on the turret that just shot you up.

But look at WoW.. so much pandering has made it so any class can do anything rather than classes having roles.

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A lot of times you have players that don't understand how to play that complain about imbalances, even if the game is balanced.

This can occur at both lower and upper tiers of gameplay, fyi.

What tends to happen is it's like, say you have chess.
One player knows how to play.
The other player, not so much, and it's like he can't understand what the other player is doing to win. It's like he only knows half the rules. He doesn't understand his Knight can jump over people. He doesn't know that his pawn and go two spaces forward if it's the pawns first move. He doesn't know his queen can not only move diagonally, but also horizontally and vertically.
The first player knows these things, and uses them to his advantage. The new player doesn't understand how he seems to have such an advantage and screams "IMBA!"

I think you're painting a rather lavish picture of what you feel new players are. While there is often a vocal contingent of new players who don't think something is balanced and advocate for it to change, simply saying they are wrong because they are new and "don't get it" assumes you are right for being old and "getting it".

------------------------

My suggestion is this, and it's a simple one:

Anyone who can put forward a thoughtful argument with supporting information in the form of replays and numbers should be listened to. If there's a problem with the replays that they aren't noticing, point it out in a polite manner and show an example of your own and some information to support your own claims.

As someone who is routinely a mediocre player, I don't have "pro skillz" to back up my argument; I rely on looking at the situation and the data available. Most of the time even if I can't play a game at perfect levels, I am capable of visualizing it when explained by other players quite easily.

While the skill level of a player should be taken into account, it's a minimal factor, and dismissing arguments on the basis of skill leads to an equally dangerous niche where only the hardcore stay and the rest who play less competitively leave after getting frustrated.

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Right.. but you don't get why I say that.

I say that because what I'm saying is that tit should be easy for people to understand the rules of chess(which it is, but what if it weren't?), I'm not saying new people don't count, the opposite is more true if anything.

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Blue_Sun: You're an idiot. If Demigod is made to be a strong competitive game, it will gain the following it needs to be popular. You can't defend them catering to the whims of noobs. They're called noobs for a reason. They're shit at the game. Their opinions don't count for much when it comes to balance, period. I don't care if you try to claim the superiority of numbers. If GPG/SD have any artistic integrity at all, they'll know better than to listen to them.

As for the OP...this is actually one of my biggest concerns with SD handling all things Beta and being integrated at nearly every level in development. With FA, GPG actively listened to the top players, and incorporated our balance ideas, resulting in one of the more finely tuned modern RTS, balancewise. What kills the game competitively are the bugs that never got fixed, and the learning curve.

Demigod is going to appeal to the "pro" crowd more than FA did, just because of its game style. It's what those types of players are more accustomed to. Making sure that the game is balanced at the very top level is of paramount importance, and with proper support could help to allow Demigod to break into the e-sports arena (or so I hope). If this approach steps on the toes of a few nubs, so be it. More than likely, though, they won't know the difference, and continue to play in their comp stomps and turtlefests, while the pro players do all kinds of whacky and amazing shit. Its a win-win, and there's no excuse for anything less.

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You can have people who claim to be good at a game suck at balancing, Just look at DeadMG or Funkoff for Supcom/FA.

The devs don't need to make a game that most people will play. If you make a game that is intensely competitive and it becomes the standard of competitive gaming, then a player base of the whole spectrum of skills will appear behind it. You make the game in your image and people decide if they want to play it. If you try and appease people suddenly the Germans control Poland and France!

It's a very real concern, I stopped playing Sins after like the 2nd patch because the balance was all out of whack, I tried making suggestions about changes during the beta but they got swept under the rug. and the game has consistently gone down hill(although the current beta patch looks promising-too bad I already gave up on the game)

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How about we stop worrying about it and trust GPG to make an awesome game? They worked with the best SupCom players in a private beta to perfect the FA balance. GPG knows what they're doing, have some faith.

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Yeah. Counterstrike advertised itself because of the big LAN presence, becuase it was a competitive game.

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I don't think that new or average players are necessarily whining when they complain about imbalances and I hesitate to distinguish between "perceived" and "actual" balance.
for them it is "actual" balance as well as it happens in their games.
(I am not speaking about whining because they just don't know how to counter it, but knowing it and lacking the skill to pull it off.)

Things which can be balanced for top players can be horribly broken for average joe in the same time, thats why games need to be properly balanced for all skill levels even if that means we get some minor imbalances or have to abandon 1 or 2 tactics in the top end of the skill level. For a multiplayer game it is necessary that it is fun for everyone not just for 1% of the players or it will fail. So don't be too selfish and before flaming me remember that I used to be a top player in SupCom.
Top Players can handle some small imbalances without problems anyway and are creative enough to come up with new strategies if a few don't work anymore.

@DroopyTheDog, you aren't DroppyDerHund, are you?

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Nope, 'fraid I've never gone by the german version.

I'm constantly fighting for my nick these days it seems

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Blue_Sun: You're an idiot. If Demigod is made to be a strong competitive game, it will gain the following it needs to be popular.

Great way of starting there, calling someone an idiot is hardily constructive is it. You obviously don't think I'm a complete idiot because you wouldn't of felt you had to justify yourself so much otherwise.

What's nice though is that I agree with you, so this should be nice and short. I just meant I would understand if a company was trying to please everyone. I didn't say I would be happy with the outcome.

Seems I dug my own grave when I said people could be a little nicer to new players.

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There will hopefully always be players that are new to the game.

In addition there will always be a segment of players that maybe aren't that good.

There will unfortunately always be idiots/jerks that whine, complain, troll, flame, rant, rave, you name it, that play the game too. Sometimes these guys are persistent and loud. Sometimes they are excellent players. Sometimes they completely suck. Anonymity makes them bold and gives them power.

Good developers should process all of the information that comes their way. There will be gems of information from all sources be it newbs, noobs, nerbs, and even trolls. So in that sense everyone's opinion counts for something.

What matters is how they react to that information. A developer will not be successful if they simply implement whatever suggestion they receive. They'll have to sort the information, prioritize it, verify, decide whether a change is needed, implement the change locally, test it, re-evaluate the whole process, and if it makes the game better (in their eyes) they will adopt the change.

I think all the OP is saying (in a bit of a rant) is that he hopes that GPG will go through the above (or similar) process when making changes based on user feedback, and that they will not simply react to the voice of the masses.

On a side not, if the "pro" players make up 1% of the user base and the other 99% are clamoring for a fix, can you really blame the developers making a change that 99% of the user base wants?

In the end, its GPG's game.

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I have faith in GPG...that's not my worry...

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Mythor

Join Date 03/2003

If Demigod is made to be a strong competitive game, it will gain the following it needs to be popular.

Sorry but that is absolute rubbish. There are plenty of examples of games that were designed to be "a strong competitive game" that have failed miserably. Fury, just for one off the top of my head.

First and foremost a game must be fun. There ain't no money in selling a dozen copies of the game to the obsessives and everyone else running a mile to get away from it. If they want it to be popular there does need to be the depth there, but having it actually be fun enough to want to learn the depth is a far greater priority.
Everyone's a noob when they start a new game. If you scare them all away with nigh-impossible "competitive" balance it won't gain a following at all.

As for the guy saying we shouldn't allow newbs into the beta - that would exclude everyone who hasn't already played it in Alpha.

And in any event it's best to get as wide a variety of opinions and information as possible. It's then up to the devs if they want to listen to any particular feedback or not - they can't take someone's opinion into account if they're never given the opportunity to hear it, from newbies or the "elite" players.

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