EPTIs balance an impossible goal? - Page 5
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nb3221a
United States35 Posts
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keioh
France1099 Posts
Seriously speaking, I could definetely tell you were a scientist after the first paragraph where you defined the rules of your dissertation. Overall I think the topic of balance is complicated because there are subtopics : balance in pro game, balance in matchups, balance in race, balance in casual games, and the beloved "balance of my own race" topic. You have options to make the game more balanced at pro level (or at least at high diamond level) because the players there have refined mechanics and can therefore focus on strategic aspect of the game. But those modifications will probably change nothing for platinum to bronze players, where (for example) a 4 gate push can decimate 90% of Z players. Where every units feels weaker, slower. Where mineral are often over 1K. Where timings are maybe known, but never (or so) respected (WHY THE F... DOES THIS 4-GATE PUSH COME 2 MIN LATE I'M DRONING MAN). I truly think there is little way to balance casual play so it should not be taken into account. And before the shitstorm, I am a casual player. Racial balance is imo great if I'm objective. If I think about Z (you would known by now that I'm a Z player  ) I think we lack proper anti-air solutions vs P, and also a DT-like unit, and banshees, and AoE, and that it's not fair that a ball of criminal with rifles can simply walk into my lair and destroy my mighty alien monsters. I hate you marines.Balance in matchups is relatively close to balance in pro game. If I don't consider the conclusion of OP, and if I look to the 2 highest level tournament, what do I see ? 7/8 players on semi-finals are T. If I look generally, there are only 3 consistent Z players, and (I think) even less consistent P players. Now I have two way to think : 1) Well that IS a proof that T>>Z>P, T is overpowered, nerf it, I hate marines. 2) Well I have to take in account that there are matchup's specialists, and the map pool. I should probably look at the tactics that were used. But those parameters are heavily influenced by luck/randomness. This is were I begin to agree with OP's conclusion. I may add that the game is quite new so we also have to take in account the "continuously shifting metagame" (...) There are no magical solutions, but atm my humble opinion is that the map play a way too big role in the reflexion over balance, but again, it's from a Z point of view. I don't remember hearing a T or P blaming the map for having lost (several time) against P or T. | ||
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Zarahtra
Iceland4053 Posts
Terran becomes incredibly strong early game partly because their tier has kicked in and/or their opponent tier hasn't. Lategame however, terran's tier units are not really that good compared to the other 2 races(since they are easier to get) and they have to make up for it with just more stuff in general. This I'd say is the pinnacle of the "balance issue". Ofcourse some maps are just ridiculous... In general though, balance doesn't effect us much, that is to say, our shortcomings as players have by far bigger effect for the majority of gamers. | ||
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Rodeo
United States39 Posts
"Would the problem be easier to analyze for Blizzard if we had separate MMR ratings for each match up?" This would deconvolute things so that the "snowball" effect would cease to occur (which would be nice) but it wouldn't solve the problem. The ladder system would just readjust you to win 50% of the time, at which point you could argue that your race "should" be buffed because you are being matched against opponents who are worse than you but that your win rate is 50% against them due to the imbalance. And the point: The idea of imbalance at different skill levels has come up. I think that's a slight misnomer. What that really reflects is not an imbalance per se, but a difference in learning curve. If it is very easy to learn Terran, as people seem to believe, then you can say there is a low level imbalance. But really what that means is that Terran players move up the curve faster. Skiing and snowboarding aren't imbalanced, it's just that you can learn not to fall on your @#$ more quickly doing one than the other. The word "balance" to me suggests play at high levels. The closer the best players get to optimal (or perhaps "humanly optimal") strategies the more their win/loss rates will actually mean something, whereas the win/loss rate at low levels won't ever necessarily mean anything. Finally, the fact that maps affect balance has come up a couple times. I agree completely, but that fact doesn't change the analysis. Consider "the game" to be the mechanics plus the map pool. Or, alternatively, construct a whole pool of statistics for each map. The problem is the same. I appreciate the constructive comments on this thread. I'm impressed by how many people rappelled all the way down that wall of text ^_^ | ||
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Kpyolysis32
553 Posts
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dlax
United States37 Posts
In addition, the fact that this is a game made by humans, played by humans, means that perfection is not even relevant. There is an advantage in the creativity of people though. As long as there is someone trying to squeak out the tiniest edge, that reveals an imbalance, there is room for improvement. Massive games played by top players WILL reveal these abuses if they exist. The scale of balance will always teeter because that creates the tension and stress we all enjoy from a match. In the end, we have to remember that this is only one of three games, all with their own inevitable patches. That means that the real development of meta game has not even started. | ||
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tarath
United States377 Posts
Then in the discussion it turns out that 80% of the people who replied either didn't read the OP or didn't understand it but decided to treat it as some kind of balance whine or something. @OP, I think that a possible test for balance, even with the MMR system, could be constructed as follows: 1) Assume that player skill is normally distributed 2) Assume that players of a high skill don't tend to play a specific race (this is a big assumption that may not be true but I don't see any way to ever make any mathematically valid predictions without assuming it. That is race A winning 100% of games could always be explained as "good players always choose to play race A). That is assume that the mean and variance of the skill of players of all races are equal or equivalently, that a players skill is independent of his choice of race Under those assumptions you can do the following: A) Based on the # of players of each race and the normal distribution calculate the expected racial distribution of the top 1000 (the 1000 is arbitrary and could be changed). B) Compare that to the observed distribution C) Do a likelihood ratio test where the null hypothesis is that the mapping from player skill to ranking is the same for all races vs the alternative hypothesis that the mapping from player skill to ranking is different for each race. I think this should allow for a mathematical analysis of balance. Thoughts? I think the data required for what I describe might actually be available through sc2 ranks, if what I am proposing seems valid. | ||
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Omnipresent
United States871 Posts
I have a general question and would be interested in peoples thoughts as to how it would change the situation. Would the problem be easier to analyze for Blizzard if we had separate MMR ratings for each match up? This seems like it would be easy to implement (it is all behind the scenes) but may be able to separate balance issues. This would work fine if there was some objective score (skill) to which you could compare the MMR for each matchup. There's really no way to quantify "skill," so that option is pretty much out. Additionally, using MMR depends on the ladder. I think most people will agree that ladder rankings are a pretty poor way of measuring balance. Also, for high level players, specialization matters less than for players of lower skill. Players of lower skill can be good in one matchup but suck hard at another, and it's never consistent across the vast pool of players. In GSL 1 we saw, though, that the only exception to the hardship of Zergs was Fruitdealer, and even he had to be very lucky to actually do what he did. Personally I think that balance is something that CAN be quantified, it just can't be quantified using the ladder system or most players' concerns. I think players should work on improving their game before actually claiming that something is imbalanced. This is really part of the problem with trying to quantify balance. At this point, constant (i.e. weekly) shifts in the meta-game and occasional patches shift the balance equation pretty drastically from week to week. Assuming we want to only use the top players in the world to determine the game's balance, which is probably best, at any given time there is no statistically significant data set that can be analyzed to determine balance. The number of players/games are too small, and the conditions of those games, in terms of meta-game, patches, and setting (tournaments are more serious than ladder) vary too greatly to yield meaningful results. That is, of course, ignoring the fact that the best players from each region rarely play against one another, and that each region tends to have it's own meta-game. It could eventually be possible to quantify balance, but only after all the expansions are out, all patches are complete, maps are consistent, and the meta-game is fairly settled (which may never happen). Under those conditions, you could get the best players from all over the world to play enough games to yield a useful data set, but that sounds unlikely... | ||
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charlie420247
United States692 Posts
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nibbles
United Kingdom179 Posts
A big problem, imo, is that no-one is close to the skill ceiling, despite people originally saying that it would be much lower in SC2 than BW, and even if the game was perfectly balanced now, we don't know how the game will change in the future | ||
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Ghad
Norway2551 Posts
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branflakes14
2082 Posts
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
"Zerg play bad Protoss because they loose against Terran, which lower their MMR..." Wut ? "There is no way your personal experience can determine which matchups are balanced. You can't even do it with masses of data. " Wut ? Basically, you are telling us that no one can say anything about balance, using statistic or personal experience. You are just hiding your own feeling behind your logic. No need to make all that theory, you can compare units to units, timing to timing, skill to skill. In social science, some people use the interview of 10 to 15 persons to make assumption on the whole society. And every good sociologist could tell you, that when you add more and more people to your statistic, it does not gives you more "truth" in any way. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
So why whine about "imbalance"? People should rather embrace the concept of racial advantages. The tough goal then is to create racial advantages for each race and give them the potential to use these advantages. For Starcraft 2 it is - cliffs in important positions to drop siege tanks on or to abuse with blinking stalkers and colossi, - large sized maps to abuse mobility advantages through unit speed, nydus worms and warp prism / pylon proxy-warp-ins. Sadly Blizzard doesnt see this and only adjusts the numbers of the units and that is the frustrating thing about it. Balancing unit stats will never ever work, because you always have a different unit mix - even if you have built the same number of units there are most likely not the same number of your own opposing units in the same position, so the "balance of a fight" is different all the time. So the real issue is giving equal opportunities to the three races. Zerg is lacking early game but they catch up later and no one has as easy a time to switch techs radically. Protoss and Terrans have options (plural for both races) to be very aggressive early on, but without a large number of production facilities and a sufficiently large economy they can not keep up with a Zerg who is throwing waves upon waves of units towards them and replaces casualties faster. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On January 20 2011 19:04 Rabiator wrote: Personally I think that "balance" is a totally ridiculous concept in a game where everyone has different abilities from other players. It can only ever be balanced 100% if people have the same potential of skills (like in an FPS without classes) and the only imbalance then is the spawn location (i.e. who spawns closer to the rocket launcher FIRST) ... even chess is balanced except for the "starting spawn location". So why whine about "imbalance"? People should rather embrace the concept of racial advantages. The tough goal then is to create racial advantages for each race and give them the potential to use these advantages. For Starcraft 2 it is - cliffs in important positions to drop siege tanks on or to abuse with blinking stalkers and colossi, - large sized maps to abuse mobility advantages through unit speed, nydus worms and warp prism / pylon proxy-warp-ins. Sadly Blizzard doesnt see this and only adjusts the numbers of the units and that is the frustrating thing about it. Balancing unit stats will never ever work, because you always have a different unit mix - even if you have built the same number of units there are most likely not the same number of your own opposing units in the same position, so the "balance of a fight" is different all the time. So the real issue is giving equal opportunities to the three races. Zerg is lacking early game but they catch up later and no one has as easy a time to switch techs radically. Protoss and Terrans have options (plural for both races) to be very aggressive early on, but without a large number of production facilities and a sufficiently large economy they can not keep up with a Zerg who is throwing waves upon waves of units towards them and replaces casualties faster. Your point of view seems biased. Zerg has easy time switching techs, but is the longer to tech. They can replace casualties faster, with weaker units and less cost effective units. That is balanced. (drone production on the other time can be discussed as it is way faster for zerg in end game). All your post (talking about you and OP) are like logical ways to evade from reality, which is pretty simple : the game is not unbalanced, but zerg are having a hardest time in early game, and nobody really knows anything about end game because the maps as they are almost never allow a zerg to go for more than 1 or 2 expand. | ||
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Elwar
953 Posts
I like tournament performance personally because I'm more interested in balance at higher levels of play than myself and nearly every other mid-high diamond typical TLer, because I enjoy watching SC2 probably more than playing it. The data from that pretty much all points one way, and its pointed that way pretty much conclusively since SC2 released. But there are very notable outliers, and in the end you will never get complete agreement on balance and more importantly the reasons why one race appears to have more success than others. Maps, ease of use, macro mechanics, unit balance, specific timings et. al. Its complicated. And while I think tournament performance (weighted wins/second/third/fourth etc. places as well as overall distribution in tournaments that required qualifiers) is a pretty reliable indicator, others might not. But I think its important to remember SC2 was released while they were still applying quite dramatic patches for it in the last stages of beta. It wasn't released because Blizzard necessarily thought it was close to balanced. It was released to meet the date they had set at whatever level of balance they had achieved. If it had of had another two months of beta it would most likely have significant differencs. Post-release we are getting quite minor adjustments - as they should be cautious - , but that is not to say that there wont be dramatic changes needed to SC2 between SC2 now and a day before HoTS is released. | ||
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Omnipresent
United States871 Posts
Omg this logic in awful, or how to use the MMR system to return the zerg whine against them. "Zerg play bad Protoss because they loose against Terran, which lower their MMR..." Wut ? I'm tempted to not even respond to this post, as it looks like an attempted troll. The point being made here, in the simplest terms possible, is that quantifying balance based on ladder rankings is impossible. This is both because the skills of ladder players aren't the kind of skills you want to balance the game around, and because of the way MMR and the matchmaking system work. I can't explain it any more clearly that the OP, so I wont even try. But I assure you, he's not trying to complain about imbalance. "There is no way your personal experience can determine which matchups are balanced. You can't even do it with masses of data. " Wut ? Personal experience is a notoriously unreliable way of identifying objective facts. Worse still, you're perception of each matchup is based on your experiences on ladder, which uses the self-correcting MMR system. You have no way of knowing whether the player who beat you yesterday is actually better, his race is imbalanced, or there was some fluke. In other words, your perceptions of a given matchup's balance are both prejudicial and based on a fundamentally flawed system. Data is unreliable in this case because the pertinent data sets are either too small in number or cover too large a period of time (during which there have been patches, map changes, and major meta-game shifts). That is, there aren't enough high ranking games played at any given time, and players are essentially playing a different game now than they were 4 months ago. In social science, some people use the interview of 10 to 15 persons to make assumption on the whole society. This is patently false. You might find some random person calling themselves a "social scientist" doing this, and you might read very specific case studies that only cover 10-15 people, but 10-15 people is not a representative sample for "the whole society" (unless it's like a 60 person "society"). | ||
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DigitalisDestructi
United States488 Posts
 . The perfect AIs should win against humans in all occasions and conditions, of course. Flawless macro should be relatively easy to code. Decision making, on the other hand, can take a while...EDIT: Not to mention the coding for force fields... Nightmare, indeed . | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On January 20 2011 19:17 WhiteDog wrote: Your point of view seems biased. Zerg has easy time switching techs, but is the longer to tech. They can replace casualties faster, with weaker units and less cost effective units. That is balanced. (drone production on the other time can be discussed as it is way faster for zerg in end game). All your post (talking about you and OP) are like logical ways to evade from reality, which is pretty simple : the game is not unbalanced, but zerg are having a hardest time in early game, and nobody really knows anything about end game because the maps as they are almost never allow a zerg to go for more than 1 or 2 expand. I highlighted something which I totally agree with and which is the reason for many many nerfs which would not have been necessary if we had had larger maps. There are two ways to kill fast Reaper and Zealot Warp Gate rushes: 1. nerf the units (but that affects early AND late game) OR 2. make maps larger so the opponent gets scouted later and units need to walk more to get to the enemy. Larger maps for instance make even cannon rushes obsolete, if every Zerg comfortably has a few Zerglings by the time the Drone could have scouted their main base. Losing to that is rather unsatisfactory IMO because there is not much skill involved on the part of the Protoss. P.S.: I am not playing Zerg but Terran, but I do want equal opportunities for all races and the nerf to Siege Tank damage kinda nerfed mech in a big way IMO. Trying to be "fair" I think that the tanks need to be spread out more and the one way to accomplish that is giving the player a bigger area to defend / attack (*1). So basically I want less danger for Zerg in the early game, BUT there needs to be an adjustment for the Terran for late game, because he cant really keep up with the Zerg production and thus the efficiency of the units needs to be reverted to what we had earlier. Currently the stats of the units are adjusted for small maps with two 200 food armies facing each other on one screen ... and then the Zerg wins because he can replenish faster. Personally I find that boring, because even though you can do a lot with micro and correct decisions it doesnt involve as much strategy as I would like. (*1) Containment matches in Starcraft 2 are pretty much nonexistent because the 200 food army is just too powerful and there is no real defenses against big balls (Tanks, Thors and Psi Storm have had their damage / area nerfed, right?) of units to discourage that. @Omnipresent It might be helpful if you left the name of the person in which you quote ... | ||
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