Balanced game

[loppantorkel]

What game mode and what players should the game primarily be balanced for?

[orzel286]

Coop unicums obviously.

[_ramrus_]

1 minute ago, orzel286 said:

Coop unicums obviously.

Investing

[FishDogFoodShack]

voted unicum randoms because lets face it, average-joe balancing leads to braindead ship balancing and vessels like graf zeppelin, conqueror and asashio. The kind of ships that an average player will easily do well in, but a good player, the kind that is ignored when considering the vessel's power, can easily carry WAY beyond what any one ship should, or simply be a miasma that drains the enjoyability out of a match in the case of the mongqueror.

 

Randoms obviously though because they're the primary game mode and always available. Argument can be made for clan battles but with smaller teams I don't think they're as important. Ranked is just randoms with smaller teams since it has no entry requirement.

[MortenTardo]

Any game that has good balance, balance the game around the best players at the top leagues. WG however likes to balance ships around the WORST players complaining that their favorite ship is underperforming when in reality its just as good as any other ship. 

Instead of teaching bad players game mechanics and gameplay they just buff ships to idiotic levels so bad players can preform almost as well as good players. 

[th3freakie]

Me, of course.

[loppantorkel]

9 minutes ago, MortenTardo said:

Any game that has good balance, balance the game around the best players at the top leagues. WG however likes to balance ships around the WORST players complaining that their favorite ship is underperforming when in reality its just as good as any other ship. 

Instead of teaching bad players game mechanics and gameplay they just buff ships to idiotic levels so bad players can preform almost as well as good players. 

I think they're trying to inform players better and better, but you'll always have totally clueless players in mp-games no matter what. You can't put all blame on WG for this.

 

The point that WG is balancing the game around the worst players - cvs is a clear counterargument. Cv gameplay is broken in random because they balanced them around good players. They now need to rework an entire class because players aren't good enough. One unicum cv can wreck the other team if the enemy cv is bad, which is likely. Yes, they need to take the average joe into account when balancing the game, classes and ships.

[FishDogFoodShack]

36 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

I think they're trying to inform players better and better, but you'll always have totally clueless players in mp-games no matter what. You can't put all blame on WG for this.

 

The point that WG is balancing the game around the worst players - cvs is a clear counterargument. Cv gameplay is broken in random because they balanced them around good players. They now need to rework an entire class because players aren't good enough. One unicum cv can wreck the other team if the enemy cv is bad, which is likely. Yes, they need to take the average joe into account when balancing the game, classes and ships.

 

No, CVs are broken in randoms because they're not balanced at all, around anyone. Look at Graf, community balanced with an absurd circular drop pattern explicitly for less experienced players, and it is the forefront example of ridiculously broken CVs. It has had it's margin for error removed/lessened so that average players can more easily perform in it. Good players being able to perform EVEN BETTER in it is a side effect of balancing around average/bad players, because now they don't even need to apply their skills in order to wreck face which you are misinterpreting as the source of the problem. A good player doesn't need a circular drop pattern, 50mm bow or cruiser dispersion on BB guns, they'll find a way to make it work, but they'll fail to do so more often than in a ship with those things.

 

Balancing around average players exacerbates the problem of good players being able to overperform in ships, not the other way around. 

[loppantorkel]

8 minutes ago, FishDogFoodShack said:

 

No, CVs are broken in randoms because they're not balanced at all, around anyone. Look at Graf, community balanced with an absurd circular drop pattern explicitly for less experienced players, and it is the forefront example of ridiculously broken CVs. It has had it's margin for error removed/lessened so that average players can more easily perform in it. Good players being able to perform EVEN BETTER in it is a side effect of balancing around average/bad players, because now they don't even need to apply their skills in order to wreck face which you are misinterpreting as the source of the problem. A good player doesn't need a circular drop pattern, 50mm bow or cruiser dispersion on BB guns, they'll find a way to make it work, but they'll fail to do so more often than in a ship with those things.

 

Balancing around average players exacerbates the problem of good players being able to overperform in ships, not the other way around. 

You mean the last cv to be released after a complete botch up. Why would that be a good example for how cv gameplay was constructed from the start? Sorry, but my initial argument still holds perfectly well.

[Tyrendian89]

I'd say Randoms and a mix between average and unicum. Which I think is what the devs are trying to do, with wildly varying success...

[Egoleter]

Uhm... all of them? And more?

Let us be real here. All players need to have an enjoyable game. Catering to only one group does not make a game balanced.

[Panocek]

WG profits

[FishDogFoodShack]

12 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

You mean the last cv to be released after a complete botch up. Why would that be a good example for how cv gameplay was constructed from the start? Sorry, but my initial argument still holds perfectly well.

 

A good CV player can clean the floor with a bad CV player simply because the class is poorly designed, possesses no analogue to other classes and therefore requires a completely different skillset, and tells the player absolutely nothing about how to play it. Whether or not the class was specifically balanced around better players (they were not) is irrelevant and unrelated. A player could be amazing in CVs and total trash in any other class, it is simply because they know how to abuse the classes' strengths. CVs were not designed around this, it is a side effect of their poor design. Sorry, but your initial argument is complete horseshit.

[loppantorkel]

2 minutes ago, Egoleter said:

Uhm... all of them? And more?

Let us be real here. All players need to have an enjoyable game. Catering to only one group does not make a game balanced.

That's a given, but you'll still end up with a game that can't be perfectly balanced in all modes and toward all players. Some classes and ships are easier than others to learn and the game is somewhat rebalanced with every patch and new ship that's introduced. If focus is put somewhere to 'primarily' balance it for something and toward some level of skill - what would be the best option?

[MortenTardo]

40 minutes ago, Egoleter said:

Uhm... all of them? And more?

Let us be real here. All players need to have an enjoyable game. Catering to only one group does not make a game balanced.

They should always balance for the best imo. Or else you get stuff like Belfast, Kamikaze, Nikolai, GZ, Saipan... List goes on and on. 

Ships like these are Ok-good in bad hands, but are ridiculous in good hands. 

 

Or the Stalingrad. Some testers say its broken OP others say its OK. Guess who thinks what

[Estaca_de_Bares]

46 minutes ago, FishDogFoodShack said:

A player could be amazing in CVs and total trash in any other class, it is simply because they know how to abuse the classes' strengths.

Not to the extremes implied in the quote but *raises hand*.

 

I knew I would be going with the CVs even before the start because of finding their top-down RTS-like UI enough intuitive and familiar, while I struggled with every other class until reaching tier 7 or 8, depending on which one (old Fubuki for DDs in general and proper torpedoing in particular, Gneisenau for BBs and aim/lead, acquiring Takao for CA/CLs then going back to Königsberg and Leander). Still a lot of margin for improvement though.

 

Salute.

[Egoleter]

2 hours ago, loppantorkel said:

That's a given, but you'll still end up with a game that can't be perfectly balanced in all modes and toward all players. Some classes and ships are easier than others to learn and the game is somewhat rebalanced with every patch and new ship that's introduced. If focus is put somewhere to 'primarily' balance it for something and toward some level of skill - what would be the best option?

I would not balance something around skill. Skill is to abstract to be an instrument of measurement and not everyone is equally skilled in every ship.

 

Take me for example (ok, you'll have to take my word for it, as my stats are hidden): I have some ships with solo player winrates beyond 70 % with good damage totals and lots of kills. In the same shipclass, sometimes even the same nation, I have ships that are noticably below 40 % and/or with low damage. Yet in average I am stable around 57 % over all (sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more) for nearly 18 months now. In some ships I am unicum, in others I am a rotten tomato. In total I consider myself adequate.

 

In my time as a supertester I have seen some members of that group being really frustrated with a ship while I was able to make it dance and vice versa.

 

For a skill based balancing, you would first need to find the players who are best suited for it. No matter what group you use as a base for balance.

 

Perfect balance can only be achieved when everything is equal anyway. Even games that are considered to be fairly well balanced, like StarCraft, get adjustments with every patch because there are just to many things you need to factor in.

 

2 hours ago, MortenTardo said:

They should always balance for the best imo. Or else you get stuff like Belfast, Kamikaze, Nikolai, GZ, Saipan... List goes on and on. 

Ships like these are Ok-good in bad hands, but are ridiculous in good hands. 

 

Or the Stalingrad. Some testers say its broken OP others say its OK. Guess who thinks what

Graf Zepellin was a desaster and still is. Not because of the testers input but because of Wargaming putting it into the store and the live servers with massive changes that did not reflect the prior testing results.

 

The supertesters are chosen from all skill levels for a reason. To get input from more then one angle. And your assumption that the input of skillwise bad supertesters lead to ships that are to strong for their tier is wrong. They do not have a stronger voice then the better players among the STs. The problem was Wargamings choice on how they wanted to represent the ships in the game.

 

Most balance decisons, after a ship is implemented, are made based on numbers collected from the server. If a ship is to good it will have statistics on all skill levels to represent that. If it is bad the same applies. The issue here is Wargamings approach to not touch the premium ships even if they are unbalanced. And if Wargaming is hellbend on adding a gimmick to them prior to release they will, no matter how much the supertesters will protest. In that case the small data sample the testers can provide is to small for Wargaming to realize their error and they will not change it once they do. The data often had to much influence in comparison to the written feedback.

 

Yes, sometimes the supertesters give a false impressions in their feedback but because of how diverse the group is (and it isn't exactly small either) those occurences are very rare. And most of the testers, good and bad ones alike, know their stuff about the game mechanisms, or learn them very quickly after they joined. They will not suggest changes that could unbalance the game. They know better.

 

Don't blame the testers for the bad decisions Wargaming made. They really try to provide us with balanced ships all the time. Not their fault that sometimes Wargamings opinion is different from those of the testers. Yet even Wargaming is slowly but steadily improving their work with the STs.

[MortenTardo]

1 hour ago, Egoleter said:

Yes, sometimes the supertesters give a false impressions in their feedback but because of how diverse the group is (and it isn't exactly small either) those occurences are very rare. And most of the testers, good and bad ones alike, know their stuff about the game mechanisms, or learn them very quickly after they joined. They will not suggest changes that could unbalance the game. They know better.

 

Don't blame the testers for the bad decisions Wargaming made. They really try to provide us with balanced ships all the time. Not their fault that sometimes Wargamings opinion is different from those of the testers. Yet even Wargaming is slowly but steadily improving their work with the STs.

I never blamed any ST's for anything. I actually know a few and i have heard that even though they tell WG a ship is broken OP. WG still manage to buff it even more before its launched. So don't say i blame anyone of them. 

 

However. It very much looks like when WG gets their feedback they seem to balance most ships around the feedback from "bad" testers. 

i.e Belfast. Belfast was OP even before the last minute buffs. Yet WG went through with giving it hydro on top of everything else. That is the crap that make the avg player play OK. And its complete broken in the hands of a good player. So it should be balanced for the better player. 

 

 

[loppantorkel]

2 hours ago, Egoleter said:

I would not balance something around skill. Skill is to abstract to be an instrument of measurement and not everyone is equally skilled in every ship.

 

Take me for example (ok, you'll have to take my word for it, as my stats are hidden): I have some ships with solo player winrates beyond 70 % with good damage totals and lots of kills. In the same shipclass, sometimes even the same nation, I have ships that are noticably below 40 % and/or with low damage. Yet in average I am stable around 57 % over all (sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more) for nearly 18 months now. In some ships I am unicum, in others I am a rotten tomato. In total I consider myself adequate.

 

In my time as a supertester I have seen some members of that group being really frustrated with a ship while I was able to make it dance and vice versa.

 

For a skill based balancing, you would first need to find the players who are best suited for it. No matter what group you use as a base for balance.

 

Perfect balance can only be achieved when everything is equal anyway. Even games that are considered to be fairly well balanced, like StarCraft, get adjustments with every patch because there are just to many things you need to factor in.

So WG should give up trying to balance the game because it's impossible to balance? I'm not sure exactly what point you're getting at. They are balancing the game around players of various skill levels. They've stated that the have statistics for different % of top players, average players, etc to see how ships performs. The game is overall fairly balanced, if you exclude cvs. Some obvious other ships are OP too, but they generally don't affect the battles any more than 3-man divs.

 

I'd say that the ships should foremost be balanced for the players who know the game and know how to utilise the ships. Some ships should have narrower spectrum between lowest and highest performance.

[Egoleter]

9 minutes ago, loppantorkel said:

So WG should give up trying to balance the game because it's impossible to balance? I'm not sure exactly what point you're getting at. They are balancing the game around players of various skill levels. They've stated that the have statistics for different % of top players, average players, etc to see how ships performs. The game is overall fairly balanced, if you exclude cvs. Some obvious other ships are OP too, but they generally don't affect the battles any more than 3-man divs.

 

I'd say that the ships should foremost be balanced for the players who know the game and know how to utilise the ships. Some ships should have narrower spectrum between lowest and highest performance.

I am saying that balance in a complex game like this is an ongoing process and one that will never make everyone happy. And that balance by player skill decision is the worst approach you can choose to make changes.

[loppantorkel]

1 minute ago, Egoleter said:

I am saying that balance in a complex game like this is an ongoing process and one that will never make everyone happy. And that balance by player skill decision is the worst approach you can choose to make changes.

If good players are massively overperforming in a certain ship or a certain class of ships, they will need to rebalance that ship or class. If a ship has very low WR and the average players are underperforming, the skill floor of that ship may have to be raised. Of course they need to take player skill into account when balancing ships and classes of ships

[EdiJo]

Of course the balancing must be done assuming that players can use the ship. So: most skilled. 

And of course the balancing must be done for the most played game mode. So: random games. 

 

All other modes have to be balanced by other means, according to the above ship balance: by map choice, available ship classes & numbers, objective design, etc. 

 

 

[Egoleter]

7 hours ago, loppantorkel said:

If good players are massively overperforming in a certain ship or a certain class of ships, they will need to rebalance that ship or class. If a ship has very low WR and the average players are underperforming, the skill floor of that ship may have to be raised. Of course they need to take player skill into account when balancing ships and classes of ships

*sigh*

 

Yes, ships need to be adjusted if they are overperforming. Yet most overperfoming ships are premium ships that WG will not touch. So the point is moot until the day WG changes their minds about that.

 

The rest you described is balance by statistical numbers, which is taking all players who use a ship into account and not a single group of them.

[Up_The_Donald]

16 hours ago, MortenTardo said:

Any game that has good balance, balance the game around the best players at the top leagues. WG however likes to balance ships around the WORST players complaining that their favorite ship is underperforming when in reality its just as good as any other ship. 

Instead of teaching bad players game mechanics and gameplay they just buff ships to idiotic levels so bad players can preform almost as well as good players. 

An illustration of the rationale behind Freemium games.......