BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs) - Page 5

BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Classic game design, maintained to please you...

Moderator: Content Developer

User avatar
Johannes
Posts: 1265
Joined: 17 Sep 2010, 15:49

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Johannes »

Nerfing mm's will make them next to useless, in other games (without huge wind maps at least) than 8v8 DSD.
User avatar
Aether_0001
Posts: 228
Joined: 25 Feb 2008, 03:41

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Aether_0001 »

Hey knorke, want to post that warphole idea in a different thread? I was thinking it could be a setting that affected the entire map, and players could manually select units and have them jump without having to go to an entry hole.

EDIT: Also, nothing can leave through a warphole so sending in lone coms to wrecks would be nooby.
Senna
Posts: 315
Joined: 17 Mar 2009, 00:20

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Senna »

IMO BA is actually well balanced, only need some tweaks balances its on water, BA is very good on t1 and t2, maybe t3 need some tweaks too:

The problem that makes BA to porcy its that krogy and banthas are way too expensive, 37k metal lol u need 6 7 a fus to make them each 3 4 min
maybe bantha less but still expensive; IMO t3 like jug krog and bantha should have less health, less costy and it can make the mod less porcy,
actually if someone want to make krog or even banthas it need porc alot.
Hackfresser
Posts: 86
Joined: 23 Dec 2008, 20:26

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Hackfresser »

...
User avatar
Hobo Joe
Posts: 1001
Joined: 02 Jan 2008, 21:55

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Hobo Joe »

submarine wrote: The reason I stopped playing BA ~1 year ago was mainly its IMHO flawed concept of exponential economic growth. Given a sufficient number of players in a team (on most maps > 5-6) teching up is the only possible strategy (except if the other team is pushing early in a coordinated effort, which will not happen in a random team on the typical 8vs8 players host)
BA is not made for games bigger than 5v5/6v6. There is no simpler way to put this. You can't balance an RTS game that plays well under 1v1 and 8v8 play and everything in between, it will break down at some point, and in BA's case it really breaks down past 5v5.

8V8 DSD is a combination of a porcy map that is made for 5v5 max and a player count that's altogether too high, both for the mod and for the map.



bobbel you should know this, you've been around here long enough to know that 8v8dsd follows trends and is full of bad players who use safe tech tactics rather than playing well. It's not BA going downhill, it's just retarded 8v8dsd metagame exacerbating its own problems.
submarine
AI Developer
Posts: 834
Joined: 31 Jan 2005, 20:04

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by submarine »

Hobo Joe wrote: BA is not made for games bigger than 5v5/6v6. There is no simpler way to put this. You can't balance an RTS game that plays well under 1v1 and 8v8 play and everything in between, it will break down at some point, and in BA's case it really breaks down past 5v5.

8V8 DSD is a combination of a porcy map that is made for 5v5 max and a player count that's altogether too high, both for the mod and for the map.
Though I agree with you that BA is not meant to be played with 6vs6-8vs8 on DSD, Tabula etc. this is obviously the setting the majority of players prefer. IMHO it is stupid and haughty to ridicule "all those 8vs8 DSD noobs" and insist on BA should be played with less players on different maps. The design of a game/mod should follow the wishes of its players. Thus we should think of ways to improve the gaming experience in matches with many players without crippling the fun of smaller games in return.

Besides I do not see a reason why removing Moho Metal Makers breaks 1vs1/2vs2 games since a massive MM+advanced fusion eco is not common in such games anyway (at least that's what I have been told/observed when spectating such games, please correct me if I am wrong)
User avatar
Johannes
Posts: 1265
Joined: 17 Sep 2010, 15:49

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Johannes »

submarine wrote:Though I agree with you that BA is not meant to be played with 6vs6-8vs8 on DSD, Tabula etc. this is obviously the setting the majority of players prefer. IMHO it is stupid and haughty to ridicule "all those 8vs8 DSD noobs" and insist on BA should be played with less players on different maps. The design of a game/mod should follow the wishes of its players.
If majority prefers 8v8 DSD, it might not need much changing? For those who want 8v8 game where you must play aggressive, they can play another map. Like the double DSD or Nuclear Winter for example. Changes to the game should be made only if same effect cannot be achieved with map change.
User avatar
Hobo Joe
Posts: 1001
Joined: 02 Jan 2008, 21:55

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Hobo Joe »

submarine wrote: Though I agree with you that BA is not meant to be played with 6vs6-8vs8 on DSD, Tabula etc. this is obviously the setting the majority of players prefer. IMHO it is stupid and haughty to ridicule "all those 8vs8 DSD noobs" and insist on BA should be played with less players on different maps. The design of a game/mod should follow the wishes of its players. Thus we should think of ways to improve the gaming experience in matches with many players without crippling the fun of smaller games in return.

Besides I do not see a reason why removing Moho Metal Makers breaks 1vs1/2vs2 games since a massive MM+advanced fusion eco is not common in such games anyway (at least that's what I have been told/observed when spectating such games, please correct me if I am wrong)
Changing the mod to pander to 8v8 games won't fix anything, especially if they're dsd. If you cram too many players with a wide skill range into too small of a space, it will never work well. And not only will balancing for crowded 8v8 games ruin balance at all other levels, but it won't really make anything better or worse with 8v8. It obviously 'works' for the people who play only it. The people who play 8v8DSD constantly are the same kind of people who played loads of speedmetal, or loads of DSD special, etc. Those people simply want a fast game where they can build big units and be safe without being 'rushed'. You can't 'balance' a game for that, they just latch onto something and run with it.

Removing/blocking units wouldn't fix anything, even setting comm ends wouldn't fix anything, people would still play games that are too large on maps that are too small, because it's easy and there's no pressure.
User avatar
Yuri
Posts: 137
Joined: 21 Jul 2008, 14:46

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Yuri »

Everybody plays the 8v8 /9v9 LOL/ DSD because it's often the only one filled room. It's filled because of newbs who can nearly always survive to 18+ mins.
Try to wait for the adv fus in 4v4 CC...
User avatar
Gota
Posts: 7151
Joined: 11 Jan 2008, 16:55

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Gota »

just cap it to 10 players max and TASpring will be mighty again.
User avatar
Cheesecan
Posts: 1571
Joined: 07 Feb 2005, 21:30

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Cheesecan »

Image
User avatar
Niobium
Posts: 456
Joined: 07 Dec 2008, 02:35

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Niobium »

It is not surprising that there are so many techers, given the advantages of teching in BA.

Raw Power:
Teching enables you to build moho metal extractors, quickly quadrupling your metal income. It is extremely hard for a T1 player to go against this, even with a preexisting army.

Efficiency:
Teching let's you make more efficient economy buildings, from metal makers giving +20% metal per energy to fusions and advanced fusions which give +35% and +75% energy for cost relative to T1 advanced solars. This T2 efficiency makes it impossible for a T1 player to keep up in eco.

Unit Choice:
The ability to build units and porc that outrange all T1 gives a distinct advantage to a techer, additionally some of the units available are exceptionally strong or cost effective i.e. the viper/pitbull, morty, goliath.

Super units:
With teching comes the ability to build the super units of BA, those with single-player game-winning power: T2 bombers, berthas, nukes.

Defensive Necessity:
By not teching you completely lose the ability to defend yourself against the super units. You cannot build antinukes, you cannot build shields, and any fighters you build are easily outgunned and outnumbered by enemy T2 fighters on a T2 economy.

---

These are just some of the main advantages to teching. Not teching is a blast until you run into someone 4x the size of you, defending themselves with vipers putting out pinpoint 400 DPS at ranges exceeding that of your artillery, while pushing you back with banishers built at the same rate you build stumpies, then you look back at your base to queue T2 but are stopped short when the entire thing blows up from an enemies single-click nuke, the counter for which you couldn't start nor afford.

Being on the receiving end in a scenario like above is a big motivator to switch to teching in future games, all it takes is the memorization of a queue and then you are the one leveling entire bases with giant explosions or carpets made of bombs, or simply pumping out unstoppable numbers of your unit of choice against lowly T1 players.

---

So with the power of teching it is no wonder that in larger games, where allies or the map itself provide initial protection, that there are a lot more players who take the opportunity to tech. But there are group of people who have a problem with all this teching and no fighting, claiming it is not how it is meant to be played, that it is taking the fun out of the game and will be the death of BA.

While they may be right in saying this, these people put the blame in all the wrong places, mostly on the innocent players. They'll blame the players directly, calling them tech-noobs who don't know how to play properly. They'll blame them for playing on porcy maps that encourage teching. Or they'll simply blame them for playing in big games, denouncing large games as providing too much of an opportunity for someone to hide in the back.

But what they have a blind eye towards is the mod itself, they ignore the motivation the mod provides for players to tech in the power that comes with tech, and the demotivation the mod provides for players to stay unteched in the resulting pitiful eco and instant unpreventable deaths. When a mod provides such a powerful and viable option in teching are the players who choose it really to blame for the overall decrease in the quality of the game from the collective popularity of the strategy?

The random collection of TA units that make up BA does not constitute a perfectly designed and balanced game, so one should not be surprised when cracks start to show in certain situations, such as the slow and boring teching strategy becoming dominant in larger games or on particular maps. The task of fixing these cracks and balancing the game in these scenarios is part of moderating a game that naturally changes over time. Importantly these fixes are in no way impossible, there is no hardwritten rule that says any 16 player game always consists of slow and boring strategies without action.

As for discussing what should be done to fix the problem, well that is a discussion for another time, and perhaps for a more actively developed and open-to-change mod than BA.

---

TL;DR: Teching is powerful. Players naturally choose powerful options. Players are not to blame for choosing these options, as degrading to the game as they might be. Problem lies in the mod. Adjustment of teching strength and viability is required but unlikely.
BaNa
Posts: 1562
Joined: 09 Sep 2007, 21:05

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by BaNa »

Cheesecan wrote:Image
thats a pretty good description
User avatar
Hobo Joe
Posts: 1001
Joined: 02 Jan 2008, 21:55

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Hobo Joe »

Niobium wrote: TL;DR: Teching is powerful. Players naturally choose powerful options. Players are not to blame for choosing these options, as degrading to the game as they might be. Problem lies in the mod. Adjustment of teching strength and viability is required but unlikely.
Still only that powerful in oversized games, in smaller games it's a death sentence.



Once again I say we cap autohosts at 5v5 and only allow larger games to be user hosts. That would completely fix the dsd problem.
User avatar
Johannes
Posts: 1265
Joined: 17 Sep 2010, 15:49

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Johannes »

Niobium wrote:Raw Power:
Teching enables you to build moho metal extractors, quickly quadrupling your metal income. It is extremely hard for a T1 player to go against this, even with a preexisting army.

Efficiency:
Teching let's you make more efficient economy buildings, from metal makers giving +20% metal per energy to fusions and advanced fusions which give +35% and +75% energy for cost relative to T1 advanced solars. This T2 efficiency makes it impossible for a T1 player to keep up in eco.
All of this can be adjusted by changing map, except t1 vs t2 mm efficiency. And t1 mm is better anyway from pure economical efficiency viewpoint, since it only has slightly worse transfer ratio, and they are much cheaper and faster to build - t2 mm has to be on for ~5 minutes before its better transfer rate makes up for the cost of making it in comparision to t1 mms.

Ie. smaller, more plentiful number of mexes makes it much more expensive to upgrade all to t2, and wind is on a lot of maps quite a bit cheaper e supply per m/e than any fusions.

How is allowing mapper to choose the economic structure of his map a bad thing for a game?
TL;DR: Teching is powerful. Players naturally choose powerful options. Players are not to blame for choosing these options, as degrading to the game as they might be. Problem lies in the mod. Adjustment of teching strength and viability is required but unlikely.
But players are definitely to blame for not trying to come up with anything new.
User avatar
Wombat
Posts: 3379
Joined: 15 Dec 2008, 15:53

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Wombat »

ye tech is powerful, vs 1 bars and hlt spam.
User avatar
Nixa
Posts: 350
Joined: 05 Oct 2006, 04:32

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Nixa »

Ba is rediculous...

Spring is rediculous...

LAMPE IS REDICULOUS!!!
User avatar
Wombat
Posts: 3379
Joined: 15 Dec 2008, 15:53

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Wombat »

i played 3 small games yesterday, BA is so awesome.
Hackfresser
Posts: 86
Joined: 23 Dec 2008, 20:26

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by Hackfresser »

Niobium wrote:TL;DR: Teching is powerful. Players naturally choose powerful options. Players are not to blame for choosing these options, as degrading to the game as they might be. Problem lies in the mod. Adjustment of teching strength and viability is required but unlikely.
i disagree. the amuont of teching/ecowhoring done on dsd has nothing to do with the power of the strategy but the (perceived! 8) ) length of the e-peen.

whats stronger, getting that early adv fus up or flooding the front with with 40 stumpies? (cost of lab is included here)
dansan
Server Owner & Developer
Posts: 1203
Joined: 29 May 2010, 23:40

Re: BA dynamics (gamelength, techlevel(s), costs)

Post by dansan »

If a technical solution (like lower mm-efficiency or higher t2-lab-cost) is not viable, then IMO a social solution must be searched.

If you're the mamas and papas of BA and know what's best for everybody [0] then act like good parents and make good examples:

* Occupy 2v2-5v5 hosts. Not all together in 1 host to see the Pros battling [1], but so that non-pros can participate.
* Don't yell "noob" all the time. It's humiliating, it's immature and it doesn't help to understand the game. All that drives ppl away from spring/BA[2].
* Overthrow typical dsd8v8 routine (boredom) by doing something that takes out the techers or somehow changes the normal plan[3]. (To teach ppl that BA is about variety of strategy, not perfection of routine.)
* Make a campaign. For example: Every day (or so) 8-10pm CEST there will be a "training host" with two Pros that do not play, but teach (or both, but emphasis is on knowledge transfer). Or make a 2v2-tourney for max. silver-stars and an extra tourney for the Pros. Maybe the TERA servers smurf-DB can be used to separate[4][5]?
* Think of how to make playing {smaller games, more expansion} more attractive, instead of how to make {bigger games, tech} less attractive.
* Do not smurf!

All of the above points are to counter the two problems in Cheesecans flow chart: Newbie-learns-BA-with-DSD and Runs-away-in-shame.


[0] no offense intended
[1] ofc it's more interesting to see ProsVsPros and so on, but this won't help. Especially because ppl like me will never participate in such battles as Pros skills are intimidating.
[2] spring/BA is like GNU/Linux ;)
[3] I just played dsd8v8 and occupied a tech spot, then talked the other techer into pushing with the north ppl together. We killed their techers around 12:30 (they got 2 t2-bombers up). Game over after 19 min, completely t1.
com/warrior-drops can do the same.
[4] just guessing, that their smurf-DB is the biggest...
[5] I know ELO would be cool and stuff, but it's not here...
Post Reply

Return to “Balanced Annihilation”