EPTIs balance an impossible goal? - Page 4
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Serpico
4285 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11497 Posts
On January 20 2011 14:34 Angra wrote: Do you honestly believe that adding +10 health here, taking away -5 damage there is going to eventually make the game have absolutely perfect balance while at the same time keeping it a dynamic, interesting, competitive game? Yes. If there are imbalances at the moment, they are obviously so small that they do not spring to the eye at the first glimpse. The best way to try to fix a small problem is to change small stuff. The core game seems to be working just fine, and be at least nearly balanced. Why throw all that down the drain and start to go balls out bunkers changing everything, when the far better way to combat imbalances is to actually change numbers. Of course, if you have the impression that the game at the moment is boring and stupid, that might be different. Also, people seem to have the strange impression that the people at blizzard are living on the northpole without any connection to the outside world at all. I am pretty sure that that is not the case. Generally, it is a much safer way to change stuff without blowing everything up by doing increasingly smaller steps until you reach the end, instead of jumping around like a beheaded kangaroo. | ||
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mols0n
Canada388 Posts
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Unnamed
148 Posts
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iEchoic
United States1776 Posts
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
On January 20 2011 14:46 Angra wrote: I'm not saying to all of a sudden rush out core changes to the game, sorry if I implied that. What I mean is, eventually down the road, all of these number changes most likely aren't really going to do anything to make the game better as a whole. It just seems like a temporary fix to adjust problems that arise, but there's probably going to always be those problems no matter how many times you tweak the numbers on units and stuff because the actual problem lies deeper than stuff like "should marauders do 18, or 20 damage?" There is nothing that suggests a core change is necessary, and there has never been, as far as I can remember, a time in any RTS (not just SC) where a core change to gameplay has ever been necessary to fix balance. Back in SC1, the power of early pools was reduced by increasing the cost of the spawning pool. That simple "stat change" did SO much for the balance of the game. Core changes to the behavior of units or the game itself has proven to be highly unpredictable and usually very bad for balance in past games. BW was balanced entirely with stat changes, just like WC3. In Age of empires 3, the developer tried to balance the game with each expansion by including core changes to the fundamentals of the game. The result was a disaster, and most players of AoE3 will consider vanilla to be the best balanced because it was the simplest. | ||
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juet
10 Posts
Also, here is an idea to measure balance: Take a population of players, have them play games, and split the results of the games into two mutually exclusive sets, an in-sample set and an out-of-sample set. We use the in-sample data to generate ratings, and use the ratings to predict the outcomes of the matches in the out-of-sample data. We generate the ratings in two ways: 1) by using only win/loss data, and 2) by win/loss data as well as race. If we can significantly improve our predictions by incorporating race, then there may be imbalances. | ||
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Subversion
South Africa3627 Posts
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Everize
Poland176 Posts
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[Eternal]Phoenix
United States333 Posts
Of course balance is possible. Balance is such that if both players play perfectly it is a tie or near tie. Yah, you can't measure it, but you can look at how games play out, even at a lower than top teir level. It's pretty clear that, say, a 2 rax on DQ adjacent spawns will play out a certain way as opposed to a 2 rax on shakuras cross spawns. Even if you're not a pro, as long as you can produce reasonably similar games consistently, you can certainly comment on balance. In the end, close spawns metal is going to make taking a 3rd as zerg really really hard vs terran, and it's going to affect you at any reasonably high level of play. Any zerg in master's league knows they're boned if they spawn close on that map. | ||
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udgnim
United States8024 Posts
Brood War was and is balanced by its map pool and it can be completely imbalanced due to poor map creation. Battle Royal is a perfect example of complete imbalance occurring. http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/maps/201_Battle_Royal 95 games played 14 TvZ matches 9 ZvP matches 71 ZvZ matches 1 PvP match I wonder which race the Koreans thought was favored by Battle Royal. | ||
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Geiko
France1939 Posts
On January 20 2011 15:46 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote: How do you write so much while still being so wrong... Of course balance is possible. Balance is such that if both players play perfectly it is a tie or near tie. No one has the ability to play perfectly. What if the game is such that "if both players play perfectly it is a tie or near tie." but if protoss makes a tiny mistake (missing a FF) he immediatly loses whereas terrans can recover from their mistake (for example). Still balanced ? People in this thread talk about balance but have no clue about what it really is. Most people tend to think that mirror matchups are always balanced for example. What if next patch said : - Tanks now do an additional +150 dammage to terran units do you think TvT would be "balanced" ? Bottomline is that this problem is even more complicated than just trying to get 50% W/L average on the ladder | ||
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Zocat
Germany2229 Posts
The unbalance factor is bigger than the daily form factor. By this I mean the fact that a better player, in a perfect game, will lose to a worse player, just because he has a bad day (in BW no player really had more than 80% winchance ever) given that the skill difference isn't to big. On January 20 2011 11:39 Rodeo wrote: Well, here's your answer: If T actually beat Z a little more than 50% of the time, Z players would have, on average, a little lower MMR than they should. That means they would, on average, be matched up against slightly weaker P players. But this also means, considering the MMR sigma (under matchmaking): T beats Z, the sigmas decrease, T's MMR increases, Z's MMR decreases. The next day they're paired again (because sigma is not 0 at the initialization of the ladder), Z has better form, wins against T both sigma increase, Z's MMR inreases, T's MMR decreases. If both players are close enough in the MMR to begin with (small imbalances) they will always be at equal level (the Z will not play weaker P), because the daily form factor would balance the imbalance. So the question is - will the sigma ever reach 0? Probably not, because even if it reaches 0 for some players, the other players with sigma > 0 could be matched against them, and because of daily form they could lose/win and both sigmas increase. And even if the unlikely event has occured that at one point in time every player in the ladder has sigma 0: I honestly dont know (probably hope that no player will every join with a sigma^^)  Because the algorithm doesnt search outside MMR & sigma it would never match people of different MMRs together. So who's the "expected to win" player in that kind of match? None? Then that would mean one MMR will increase and the other will decrease but the sigma would remain unchanged? Of course this whole "daily form" thing is leading me to the same conclusion you have: Balance is an impossible goal, because we would need perfect, error free data to achieve balance. But the daily form factor prevents us having that kind of data  | ||
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teamsolid
Canada3668 Posts
However, if you look at the win %'s over all these years at the professional level, there's definitely a slight overall Z > P > T trend. I don't have the exact numbers, but I think it was something like ZvP 53%, PvT 53%, TvZ 51.5% (don't quote me on this), just slightly over 50% for the advantaged races. Maybe, the cause of these slight imbalances in PvT and TvZ are in fact due to the ZvP matchup. Now obviously the BW pro scene doesn't use MMR and map balance is a far larger contributor to balance, but your theory could still potentially apply at some level. | ||
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[Eternal]Phoenix
United States333 Posts
On January 20 2011 16:12 Geiko wrote: No one has the ability to play perfectly. What if the game is such that "if both players play perfectly it is a tie or near tie." but if protoss makes a tiny mistake (missing a FF) he immediatly loses whereas terrans can recover from their mistake (for example). Still balanced ? People in this thread talk about balance but have no clue about what it really is. Most people tend to think that mirror matchups are always balanced for example. What if next patch said : - Tanks now do an additional +150 dammage to terran units do you think TvT would be "balanced" ? Bottomline is that this problem is even more complicated than just trying to get 50% W/L average on the ladder That's not an issue of balance, that's an issue of creating interesting gameplay. Remember zvz in beta with 1 food 2 armor roach? There was only really 1 strategy on most maps, and it was 1 base roach. The matchup was very balanced, but it was really boring and stupid. I think this forum is too full of people who never played broodwar. Have you ever played TvP at low level? It's really really hard for T, and really really easy for P. Even simple 2 gate goon pressure requires T to play really really well just to live. Just because something is easier for one side than the other doesn't make it imbalanced. What it does is make it imbalanced at a certain level of play. The problem is that people can only play so fast and so well. If at the highest level of play things are still too easy for one side then it's clearly a balance issue. | ||
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Mr.Pyro
Denmark959 Posts
But in regards to gameplay some matchups suffer from some major design flaws that make the matchups just not very enjoyable, like PvT and PvP in my opinion. PvP is pretty much all 4gate and PvT is horribly skewed to have no dynamic gameplay whatsoever. | ||
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lluminium
85 Posts
On January 20 2011 11:43 Pocketpurple wrote: I disagree with your point about maps, I believe maps play a HUGE role in terms of balance. A game on steppes of war is completely different from a game on xel naga. Certain gameplay mechanics become much stronger such as slow tank pushes because on steppes of war slow tank pushes are actually quite fast. Another aspect to consider is that a big reason why Brood War is perceived to be balanced is due to the awesomely creative and experienced map design community. Heck, even now, more than a decade after its release, maps are still regarded as slightly terran, zerg and/or protoss favoured. However, when the racial stats for a map becomes too skewed, it is quickly replaced. Furthermore, the entire map pool changes rather frequently anyways. At the same time, the map-making community is constantly learning from past mistakes, to eventually make the game seem as perfectly balanced as it is today. So, imo it comes down to one simple thing: as long as the map pool stays stagnant and Blizzard maintains a stranglehold on its rotation, the races will continue to be perceived as imbalanced against each other. My 2 cents. Edit: On January 20 2011 16:26 MaD.pYrO wrote: Balance is okay right now. But in regards to gameplay some matchups suffer from some major design flaws that make the matchups just not very enjoyable, like PvT and PvP in my opinion. PvP is pretty much all 4gate and PvT is horribly skewed to have no dynamic gameplay whatsoever. Well said, sir. There is a huge distinction between balance issues and game design flaws. The latter is actually my biggest concern with sc2, and nigh unsolvable regardless of maps or patches in my worthless opinion, but I digress. | ||
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bokeevboke
Singapore1674 Posts
1. Good players play terran. 2. Game is imbalanced. 3. Since good players are smart, they easily see terran's potential and use it. Making it even worse and explode forums with whine/qq. No way to know which one is true. All we can do is wait and enjoy what we have. Remember how everybody thought Z>T right after patch 1.2? And how is TvZ now? | ||
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teamsolid
Canada3668 Posts
On January 20 2011 16:23 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote: Just because something is easier for one side than the other doesn't make it imbalanced. What it does is make it imbalanced at a certain level of play. If a game is imbalanced at a certain level of play, then it is imbalanced, since player skill is widely distributed across all skill levels. For a game to be perfectly balanced, it has to be perfectly balanced at all levels, which is nigh impossible. Now arguably, the best way of balancing a game is to focus on making it balanced at the highest level first, not only because it's important for E-Sports, but also as player skill across the board starts to increase over the years, the game will naturally become closer and closer to balance overall. However, Blizzard being a company that makes most of its sales off people in the Bronze-Gold leagues, they in fact DO need to take into consideration the balance at those levels as well, which is why we saw multiple times changes in patch notes during the beta (e.g. gateway build time nerfed due to proxy gates being too hard to stop at low levels, etc). It's a pretty delicate tightrope for balancing, and honestly I think Blizzard has done an amazing job so far, even though there is always clear room for improvement. | ||
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Geiko
France1939 Posts
On January 20 2011 16:23 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote: That's not an issue of balance, that's an issue of creating interesting gameplay. Remember zvz in beta with 1 food 2 armor roach? There was only really 1 strategy on most maps, and it was 1 base roach. The matchup was very balanced, but it was really boring and stupid. I think this forum is too full of people who never played broodwar. Have you ever played TvP at low level? It's really really hard for T, and really really easy for P. Even simple 2 gate goon pressure requires T to play really really well just to live. Just because something is easier for one side than the other doesn't make it imbalanced. What it does is make it imbalanced at a certain level of play. The problem is that people can only play so fast and so well. If at the highest level of play things are still too easy for one side then it's clearly a balance issue. Balance isn't only about W/L balance between races, it's also about strategy balance. If one strategy dominates a certain matchup, then the game is not balanced (that strategy is said to be "imbalanced"). I really don't know why people would stop at races to define balance. I can go even further and say, "the game is perfectly balanced, players just need to pick the best race and they will all have 50% W/L". I understand this thread is more focused on race imbalance, but balance as a whole is affected by tweaks done by patches so its pointless to only consider this particular aspect of balance. Maybe giving the roach +1 armor will balance all three matchups (it won't but lets say it does), but maybe it will also ruin the strategy balance in ZvZ. Perfect game balance is impossible to measure with figures only, and therefor "perfect" balance is not a possible goal since there will always be a part of interpretation. | ||
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