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My novice opinion is that there's a lot of support for testing by playing. We've solved tic tac toe and checkers, but we can't solve chess (at least not by brute force). And if we can't solve a simple game like chess, how can we solve a much more complicated game like SC2?
A favorite professor of mine gave a little aside about solving chess by brute force which I'm reproducing in the spoiler below. If you've got any interest in game theory or chess or any intellectual curiosity whatsoever you should check it out because it's pretty interesting.
+ Show Spoiler + In chess there is a finite upper limit of turns per single game (~6,000). However, a single game can only represent a single chain of events, and all the other possible chains of events go unobserved.
So let's say you see that there are only 6,000 possible moves per game, and since 6,000 is finite, you decide to work through them all (or get a computer to do it). How would that go?
One way of looking at it is to identify all of the moves you can make to open the game (assuming you're white). I think there's 20. Each of eight pawns can move either one space or two spaces, and there are two moves for each of the two knights. Then you can consider all your opponent's possible first moves (also 20, I think). Then you can consider all of your moves for turn 2, and all of your opponent's moves for turn 2, and so on. That's pretty much the foundation of the brute force method. But the problem is: you run out of atoms. The possibilities grow so rapidly that within the first 20 turns there are more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe.
This probably means that we can't solve chess by brute force. Maybe there's some smaller stuff we could manipulate, or maybe we could break down our diagnosis into separate trees where each tree grows out of a single first move and then represents all the actions that may follow. Then we could prune the trees and eliminate strategies that deadend...
In any case, it looks hard to solve chess by brute force, if it can be done at all.
Chess is finite and deals with discrete variables. SC2 is not clearly finite nor discrete, nor can I imagine any finite and discrete approximation of SC2 that would be as simple as chess and yet still resemble SC2. If even a relatively simple game like chess can't be solved by brute force, how can we expect to solve the much more complex game of SC2?
This seems to imply that we can never be certain of an optimal strategy/strategies for SC2, and without mathematically optimal strategies, it seems weird to talk about "balance" in a game theoretic sense. If we had optimal strategies, then we could observe the outcomes of those strategies, and then balance so that each race had multiple optimal strategies and all optimal strategies ended in a tie (or something like that). We could evaluate how deviations from optimal strategies affected our expectations. We could probably come up with some pretty good stuff like: suppose player A only has 350 APM instead of the optimal infinity, and player B only has 300 APM instead of the optimal infinity, then how does the game go if the APM distribution is like this?
On the one hand, this all seems academically interesting but on the other hand it's also sorta dry and never gonna happen. It also seems like it's not really the SC that we know. What's lacking?
Well, what about "metagame" equillibrium? Since matches in SC2 are often repeated games, repetition totally changes equillibria and optimal strategies.
Moreover, SC2, unlike chess, is a game of incomplete information. Together with the fact that SC2 is often played as a repeated game, we have to adjust for the "mind games." I think most good SC1 players would agree that having a grasp on the mind games is as important if not more important than any other single element of gameplay. Consider how many good SC1 foreigners also turned out to be huge poker successes. I'm sure that if you used statistical regression, being a top SC1 player would be a great predictor of poker success.
Consider SC1. It's possible that if we had optimal strategies for SC1 assuming complete information (allied vision without the ability to shoot cloaked units unless you had a detector) and assuming that the game would not be repeated, and then we had perfect players to carry out these optimal strategies, SC1 might be "balanced" something like: Z > T, P > Z, T > P. And these outcomes would occur 100% of the time on all maps (for the sake of argument). However, even if this was the case, and it could well be, we will probably never actually know.
Ultimately, what we do know is: players are not perfect (they cannot flawlessly execute a strategy; they cannot even consistently execute the same strategy); most major tournaments depend on repetition; and players' information is not complete. We cannot solve even the simple case where we assume complete information and no repetition. But suppose we could. Suppose we could even solve the case of incomplete information and repetition. How would we account for imperfections in the players?
We would completely have to retool our models to consider the marginal value of each action. Suppose for our optimal strategies we have "balanced" PvT. That is, P = T where both players' perfectly execute their optimal strategies. But now suppose we have imperfect players. Suppose that one equillibrium, that is the result is again P = T occurs where P's APM is 5,000 and P's APM is 300? The equillibrium isn't feasible.
What about burst APM? Suppose that an equillibrium occurs where P's APM is 200 and T's APM is 250, but in order for it to occur P must be able to have an APM burst of 3,000 at a crucial moment where he's required to build and chrono boost an observer, a probe, a dark templar, a mothership, and an air weapons upgrade in whatever fraction of a second 3,000 APM implies. That's another non-feasible equillibrium.
It would be nice to type a conclusion to this wall of text but whatever
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Take note forum noobies, this is how to post! Kudos sir!
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Not bad, Skeptical, not bad at all.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 24 2010 01:55 Failsafe wrote:My novice opinion is that there's a lot of support for testing by playing. We've solved tic tac toe and checkers, but we can't solve chess (at least not by brute force). And if we can't solve a simple game like chess, how can we solve a much more complicated game like SC2? A favorite professor of mine gave a little aside about solving chess by brute force which I'm reproducing in the spoiler below. If you've got any interest in game theory or chess or any intellectual curiosity whatsoever you should check it out because it's pretty interesting. + Show Spoiler + In chess there is a finite upper limit of turns per single game (~6,000). However, a single game can only represent a single chain of events, and all the other possible chains of events go unobserved.
So let's say you see that there are only 6,000 possible moves per game, and since 6,000 is finite, you decide to work through them all (or get a computer to do it). How would that go?
One way of looking at it is to identify all of the moves you can make to open the game (assuming you're white). I think there's 20. Each of eight pawns can move either one space or two spaces, and there are two moves for each of the two knights. Then you can consider all your opponent's possible first moves (also 20, I think). Then you can consider all of your moves for turn 2, and all of your opponent's moves for turn 2, and so on. That's pretty much the foundation of the brute force method. But the problem is: you run out of atoms. The possibilities grow so rapidly that within the first 20 turns there are more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe.
This probably means that we can't solve chess by brute force. Maybe there's some smaller stuff we could manipulate, or maybe we could break down our diagnosis into separate trees where each tree grows out of a single first move and then represents all the actions that may follow. Then we could prune the trees and eliminate strategies that deadend...
In any case, it looks hard to solve chess by brute force, if it can be done at all.
Chess is finite and deals with discrete variables. SC2 is not clearly finite nor discrete, nor can I imagine any finite and discrete approximation of SC2 that would be as simple as chess and yet still resemble SC2. If even a relatively simple game like chess can't be solved by brute force, how can we expect to solve the much more complex game of SC2? This seems to imply that we can never be certain of an optimal strategy/strategies for SC2, and without mathematically optimal strategies, it seems weird to talk about "balance" in a game theoretic sense. If we had optimal strategies, then we could observe the outcomes of those strategies, and then balance so that each race had multiple optimal strategies and all optimal strategies ended in a tie (or something like that). We could evaluate how deviations from optimal strategies affected our expectations. We could probably come up with some pretty good stuff like: suppose player A only has 350 APM instead of the optimal infinity, and player B only has 300 APM instead of the optimal infinity, then how does the game go if the APM distribution is like this? On the one hand, this all seems academically interesting but on the other hand it's also sorta dry and never gonna happen. It also seems like it's not really the SC that we know. What's lacking? Well, what about "metagame" equillibrium? Since matches in SC2 are often repeated games, repetition totally changes equillibria and optimal strategies. Moreover, SC2, unlike chess, is a game of incomplete information. Together with the fact that SC2 is often played as a repeated game, we have to adjust for the "mind games." I think most good SC1 players would agree that having a grasp on the mind games is as important if not more important than any other single element of gameplay. Consider how many good SC1 foreigners also turned out to be huge poker successes. I'm sure that if you used statistical regression, being a top SC1 player would be a great predictor of poker success. Consider SC1. It's possible that if we had optimal strategies for SC1 assuming complete information (allied vision without the ability to shoot cloaked units unless you had a detector) and assuming that the game would not be repeated, and then we had perfect players to carry out these optimal strategies, SC1 might be "balanced" something like: Z > T, P > Z, T > P. And these outcomes would occur 100% of the time on all maps (for the sake of argument). However, even if this was the case, and it could well be, we will probably never actually know. Ultimately, what we do know is: players are not perfect (they cannot flawlessly execute a strategy; they cannot even consistently execute the same strategy); most major tournaments depend on repetition; and players' information is not complete. We cannot solve even the simple case where we assume complete information and no repetition. But suppose we could. Suppose we could even solve the case of incomplete information and repetition. How would we account for imperfections in the players? We would completely have to retool our models to consider the marginal value of each action. Suppose for our optimal strategies we have "balanced" PvT. That is, P = T where both players' perfectly execute their optimal strategies. But now suppose we have imperfect players. Suppose that one equillibrium, that is the result is again P = T occurs where P's APM is 5,000 and P's APM is 300? The equillibrium isn't feasible. What about burst APM? Suppose that an equillibrium occurs where P's APM is 200 and T's APM is 250, but in order for it to occur P must be able to have an APM burst of 3,000 at a crucial moment where he's required to build and chrono boost an observer, a probe, a dark templar, a mothership, and an air weapons upgrade in whatever fraction of a second 3,000 APM implies. That's another non-feasible equillibrium. It would be nice to type a conclusion to this wall of text but whatever
You could conclude, even though SC1 has such a developed metagame, its impractical to the point of impossible to abstract it in a way we could claim it balanced in a clean game-theory sense because of the complexities of realtime, intricate games of imperfect misinformation. We have simply accepted it as 'balanced', because it seems that way after such extensive play, so Mr. Skeptical is awesome xD. Hope I followed what you said properly :D
Thanks for the encouraging praise as well as interesting discussion everyone. Writing is fun when your stats get wiped multiple times.
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I glammed up my post with those pictures with funny captions everyone seems to like. I hope thats enough of an excuse to bump my post at a time when more people are awake xD.
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On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals.
The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance".
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Personally I think we should get rid of the word "balance" in suche a game with three totally different sides. You could try to compare an apple and an orange as to their "statistical values" (number of vitamines, calories, how long each saturates,...), but that wont tell anyone if you like one/both/neiter of them. A much better word would be "challenging". "Is the game challenging for race X?" should be the real question or "Does unit Y make it too easy (read: less challenging) for race Z to win?"
Personally I think there are a few units and basic racial mechanics which make it very easy for their race to win, but they havent really come to the focus of attention yet, because people really really really love to focus on the obvious things.
An example:
In the case of Protoss too many people complain about the 50 damage which the Immortal deals against armored units and buildings and while that is a lot there are high damage units for every race. The "real culprit" in that case is the Sentry with the Forcefield, which allows this race the unique ability to rearrange the battlefield and lock enemy units out. Combined with the really high damage of Immortals, the ever present choke points on maps near the bases and the rather pathetic hit points / armor of buildings you can take enemy armies apart in easy to swallow bites and demolish bases rather fast. It is simply easier to write down a number than to discuss something vague like a Forcefield, which can be placed brilliantly, badly or not at all. It is this flexibility of the spell which will make it really strong when the players have learned to perfect its use ... and the same is true for Fungal Growth.
The Infestor has an even more powerful ability than the one which the Marauder got flamed for a lot (slowing the movement speed of enemy units). There the cry for nerfage hasnt started, because too few players use it, because the unit requires a lot of microing and Zerg seems to be a race made for "1a2a3a" and thus the mentality of a majority of Zerg players seems like that.
The TV series Babylon 5 is actually a collection of wise words (including my signature) and you can find a quote for almost everything there if you are willing to look past the "crash-boom-bang". One of them is "Life isnt fair, because if it were fair we would deserve all the bad things happening to us." So instead of complaining about the others being too strong, people might start thinking about having a too easy time winning themselves. Its like watching two sports teams with wildly different caliber of players and playing styles and complaining about the match not being fair. It makes no sense to worry about fairness there, so why do it? All we can do is change the ground rules for all of them to keep the match challenging (which is why doping and cheating is illegal in sports). This should be the basic mindset with which we look at units and matchups and the general and specific win-loss statistics will show which race has an easier time winning compared to others. Life is partly about enjoying yourself and while having an easy win may be fun for a short while it will stop being exciting much faster than it will if you are challenged and its an even matchup.
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The OP actually makes a ton of sense to me after taking a class on epistemology. Just wanted to say major props and I'll probably edit for wall of text later.
Also nominating this thread for front page spotlight (though my opinion probably won't mean anything) as this is an actual "philosophy" discussion D:
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On April 25 2010 08:10 shindigs wrote:
The OP actually makes a ton of sense to me after taking a class on epistemology. Just wanted to say major props and I'll probably edit for wall of text later.
Also nominating this thread for front page spotlight (though my opinion probably won't mean anything) as this is an actual "philosophy" discussion D:
If we could bring people to overlook the [Philosophy] tag and start thinking about the actual content we could get a better way of debating here though, so it would definetely make sense to do it. As ImSkeptic wrote:
But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe.
Philosophy can give us insight into our own failures in our ways of thinking and thus make better people. Sadly too few people try that nowadays ...
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On April 25 2010 08:26 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2010 08:10 shindigs wrote:
The OP actually makes a ton of sense to me after taking a class on epistemology. Just wanted to say major props and I'll probably edit for wall of text later.
Also nominating this thread for front page spotlight (though my opinion probably won't mean anything) as this is an actual "philosophy" discussion D: If we could bring people to overlook the [Philosophy] tag and start thinking about the actual content we could get a better way of debating here though, so it would definetely make sense to do it. As ImSkeptic wrote: Show nested quote +But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe. Philosophy can give us insight into our own failures in our ways of thinking and thus make better people. Sadly too few people try that nowadays ...
I agree. Unfortunately the terms "logic" and "philosophy" are thrown away way too often on the Internet.
I really enjoy the branch of epistemology (the study of knowledge and how we form beliefs) and its pretty amazing how this article applied it to balance and StarCraft.
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Well said. I'll admit, I honestly opened this thread up expecting another load of newbie, baseless, misinformed bullshit but was clearly proven wrong.
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I honestly loved this thread enough to register. It's not often you read something like this in a forum and since I very recently encountered this website I wasn't sure what to expect. As a philosophy major I wish i had more to say on this subject but my knowledge of starcraft is limited and game theory isn't something i've focused on ( my focus right now has been on medical ethics and logic). Anyways, great post! I hope to read more from you and i'll definately start reading up on game theory in order to add some meaningful ideas.
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On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance".
I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. My point is that 'true balance' isn't a concept worth looking into, and we should get on with moving discussion from 'balancing a unit' to 'strategizing against a race'. Especially in the early stages of a beta, because I see it might be harmful if changes that are pushed for the community are simply a reflection of the meta-game. Because it just means the patches are changing the game, not individual players. Someone like sAviOr may have just caused Blizzard to increase the time it takes to get hive if this kind of attitude was taken, cutting off us seeing Bisu and his creativity.
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On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can.
So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."?
The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players.
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On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players.
You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now.
That also touches the light in which the first post was made. We need to think about things we, the players, can do instead of what blizzard can do for us. Perfect balance can never be archieved trough the brute force of balance patches, because SC2 has a (near) infinite combination of actions that can be taken.
I personally am a fan of the approach blizzard takes. There is an unbelievable amount of variables and while this is still beta i think they are reaching a fairly balanced game already. That indeed doesn't mean that we should stop talking about balancing but sometimes what the masses want =! what the game needs.
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I think you've identified a popular misconception, then proceeded to fall right into it. Which is odd. A for effort. You're right, balance isn't the core goal, fun and competition are core goals. Balance is a means to an end. As a player, we will never be able to identify if something is balanced or not, at least not the beta. Again, You're absolutely right.
However, as you stated yourself, balance is not the point.
We can't identify whether or not something is imbalanced, but we as players can however, quite easily, identify if something is or is not fun. In which an argument from authority is actually quite valid, because if all the pro gamers are not finding the game fun, it means that the game will not be competitive, no matter how objectively balanced it is. Players can also objectively determine the cause for this lack of fun through analytical reason, because in many cases, it can be attributed to an core attribute of the game that is not subject to change as the metagame changes.
If a player finds that the lack of terran positional play is making the game not fun, we can objectively determine that the way siege tanks are balanced are causing this. Hence a balancing issue. The thesis is now "Siege tanks are underpowered", a statement solely relating to balance, but its core contention is actually one of fun. Hence, it is a perfectly apt
Whether or not the game is fun or not for an individual is irrelevant. However, If the general consensus is that it is unfun, through an imbalance, or rather, a balance in a direction contrary to what we perceive as fun AND one can objectively link this lack of fun to a non metagame element (such as siege tanks just being statistically bad, irrelevant to the current meta) a perfectly valid statement about the balance of the game has been asserted.
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On April 26 2010 01:28 WazZap wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players. You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now.
You didn't read the thread imo.
We're right back at:
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
If a certain build "looks to be overpowered" statistically then it IS overpowered to people with a certain level of experience. "Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet" only applies to balancing the higher levels of skills. Most players aren't going to hang around studying build orders for hour after hour, they're just going to play, and the stuff that's obvious matters a lot more to them than the stuff that's tricky to figure out.
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On April 26 2010 02:33 Funchucks wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 01:28 WazZap wrote:On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players. You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now. You didn't read the thread imo. We're right back at: Show nested quote +
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
If a certain build "looks to be overpowered" statistically then it IS overpowered to people with a certain level of experience. "Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet" only applies to balancing the higher levels of skills. Most players aren't going to hang around studying build orders for hour after hour, they're just going to play, and the stuff that's obvious matters a lot more to them than the stuff that's tricky to figure out.
What you could also get out of the article is that balance is actually very subjectively defined. Whether this definition comes from authority or user input, inevitably the most objective way of looking at balance is through statistics. Even then there are a ton of lurking variables that could skew the statistics so even then the numbers may fail us.
We as a community are even skewed in the perception of balance, because somehow we think the fact that 2 lurkers can annihilate an MM army constitutes a pretty "balanced" game (soft counters and micro aside).
Inevitably I feel that a consensus on balance can be reached once the community figures out some significant standard and dominant builds like Brood War. Until then we'll debate balance until StarCraft 3.
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On April 26 2010 03:41 shindigs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 02:33 Funchucks wrote:On April 26 2010 01:28 WazZap wrote:On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players. You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now. You didn't read the thread imo. We're right back at:
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
If a certain build "looks to be overpowered" statistically then it IS overpowered to people with a certain level of experience. "Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet" only applies to balancing the higher levels of skills. Most players aren't going to hang around studying build orders for hour after hour, they're just going to play, and the stuff that's obvious matters a lot more to them than the stuff that's tricky to figure out. What you could also get out of the article is that balance is actually very subjectively defined. Whether this definition comes from authority or user input, inevitably the most objective way of looking at balance is through statistics. Even then there are a ton of lurking variables that could skew the statistics so even then the numbers may fail us. We as a community are even skewed in the perception of balance, because somehow we think the fact that 2 lurkers can annihilate an MM army constitutes a pretty "balanced" game (soft counters and micro aside). Inevitably I feel that a consensus on balance can be reached once the community figures out some significant standard and dominant builds like Brood War. Until then we'll debate balance until StarCraft 3.
What i tried to say but alot better worded :p
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EPT
