7.4X Balance Change Reasoning

[Nixa]

People will see and and want to read the sentence before it for a reason why it's there

BTW 8D 7.31 will still exist. Yay! In fact you could go back to any version and take your pick for the one you like most!

[Floris]

/me cheers!
/me cheers!
/me cheers!

/me weeps.



I welcome most of the changes since they make retarded turtle shell tactics work less well. Like destroying a (a techers) base with a few clicks while not even going out of own base.

Another thing I like is the more noob friendlyness in the form of reduced armorclasses, no more enemy comnapping, reduced bertha range and reduced emp range.

I remember the moment we discussed the emp bombers effectiveness in mumble with a couple of experienced players and there was uniformly agreement of its extreme effectiveness. Will cheer again when the emp bomber is back after some major revisits.

About the fighter change i m not so sure yet, does this means a few panthers will rape fighterscreens like flakkers used to before?

I rather prefer (in combination wil less hp) that fighters have a lil less stealthyness and are targetting bombers better than before. Also some improvements of picking (other fighters as) targets. You see that groups of fighters will form chasing just a few enemy fighters and as a result leaving the incomming bombers untouched. But I guess this is way harder to do that the fix if all fighters having 50 hp. And I still welcome the 50hp fix anyway. Oh and now the t2 armfighter == expensive t2 core fighter i guess.

The auto-repair can be based on percentage AND hp. The higher the hp the less percentage healing will occur. It shouldnt be too hard to calc this I bet.

Good to see some real changes to give a try.

lots of luv!

[==Troy==]

It honestly feels like the mod we had around made by Nixa (BBA? ABA? whatever it was called) is now being forced onto the BA players since FA couldnt find anyone more conservative to replace him...

Wasnt it that BA was effectively done as-is, and the main attraction that nothing changes? (with a few, primarily unnoticeable, changes?)

What also makes me worry, is that a new team came in, changed a big portion of the game on their very first attempt, instead of taking it lightly and trying to see how community will respond to their point of view. I am not sure where things will go in the future.

(And that to say, I always hated how BA never changed, but I disagree with most of the changes here, and even feel that its a bit too much for a single update).



Edit : It would also be nice for someone to come up and maintain a "Good Old BA" mod, for those of us who are happy with what we have already.

[Gota]

/What do you want maintained there?if your happy with it play early version and thats it...what maintanance do you need for it?

[scifi]

/What do you want maintained there?if your happy with it play early version and thats it...what maintanance do you need for it?

agreed

tbh i kinda have to agree a bit with Basic here,talking a bit about the pass, the game development stoped a loong while ago, and the mantainer wasnt a developer, his job was to keep up with the engine changes, and fix the mod whenever a groundbreaking change was made.

So now that this is said, maybe you should have consulted more people before actualy changing the game, but i see no problem in this, there are a lot of mods outhere , and as Gota said for the ones that dislike the new BA just play the old version.

Change is change, tbh any completly new overhaul to BA would either include a complete rebalance, taking it from scratch , like analising 1v1, then 2v2 then 3v3 then up the ladder.

But you got to agree that he tryed to make a change in the game for the better, thats positive.

Normaly chaging things from the perspective of how you play in one map, and not how things should work, and how the game should be played can be a bit negative.

But lets see how it goes, im sure this wont affect how new people play the game. I say go for it try it, see how it works, if its worse, then reverse it, Simple as that.

[Manmax]

Nixa, thank you for these explanations. It shows that the fiercely debated changes have been a result of thoughts aiming at improving the gameplay.

I can see why the dev chose to cut down the number of armor classes. There are already so many factors to balance (HP, damages, dps, range, reload time, build time, e and m cost, aoe, now autohealing time etc), it can only help to unify other factors as much as possible.

Regarding Com storage, while it is true that it can help players victims of combom, it is also true that the loss of storage was a punishment for players carelessly playing with their com, and that was warranted IMO.

Other changes must be tried ingame.

[Nixa]

Please note... I have nothing to do with these changes, nor do I agree with all of... so please don't compare these to any of my mods... Kthxbye

Look, simple truth is BA player base hasn't grown in several years now. In fact my original account is number 39XX and accounts are now into and above 200000. Yet the increase in BA players may have doubled in that time at a very large stretch.

[Wombat]

Look, simple truth is BA player base hasn't grown in several years now

it obviously grows, dont tell me u dont see any new faces >> NZ timezone is pretty small. simple truth about pc games is that people dont/cant spend their life playing them.

and what it got to do with anything?

[Nixa]

Going from 300 active players in 2005 to 400 active players in 2011 at any one time is not really what I'd consider growth. You knew exactly what I meant by that post.

[Wombat]

no i totally dont understand.

also in 2005 there was no zk/ca (well, ca could be, but coz of the amouth of changes it doesnt count:D), kernel, cursed, evo, gundam, s44, CT. go figure.

also ppl get old and need to work

not to mention lack of advertising (or rather advertising was 'not welcomed')

also i think spring exploited TA old community long time ago.

[Nixa]

Good points, so now the community has to share the active players which would probably mean BA community hasn't grown. People do get old but generally speaking there should be an increase of players overtime. The account creations suggests that the potential is there even if say 50% are smurfs (which is an extreme). Lack of advertising doesn't help.

But the question needs to be asked - so many account creations but why no more players? (the point I was originally pushing)

[scifi]

Going from 300 active players in 2005 to 400 active players in 2011 at any one time is not really what I'd consider growth. You knew exactly what I meant by that post.

hardly any growth at all cause of the obvious reasons,
not gona do the usual spam of reasons,
ima going to add new ones.

About the new BA.
It may have positive changes, but it isnt enough, nor its the best way to aproach this by starting to balance higher tier units.

Something changed between the days of flash spaming, stumpy spaming, and bomber spam.

So what you have now isnt BA at all, 1v1 is unbalanced, couple useless units, 8v8 is unbalanced, the amount of messy gameplay that it has, it deserves a fresh start a "overall", not just a rebalance, that will fail in the loong run. Only by thinking it over completly can you hope to change BA at all.

So id sugest start clean, rebalancing BA, will only get people mad, even if your balancing method was godlike (witch never is for any game making developer), people would disagree for the most various reasons.

Test with a couple old pros, see whats theyr opinions, then change the main game, voila done.

With a fresh new BA new people enjoy better spring and its other mods.

[Wombat]

why no more players?

but there are new faces D: i dunno, did u mean lack of changes ? 'development'? techA did that and got t167123168 units. dunno if want.

changing models will increase playerbase, lot of ppl say how their friends were like 'EWWWW' after seeing ba for the first time.

and balance ? only old players complain about balance. new one want huge transformers or something. no advertise = no players, simple as that and balancing doesnt help at all.

@ ipfree - what was wrong with 'spring sound remakes' again ?

inc split

[Gota]

Need less units not more.

[Cheesecan]

BA/Spring has retard elitist tendencies, all players have some kind of bizarre nerd fetish about how things should and shouldn't be. You need a marketing ploy where everyone gets a makeover and turns into cool-gota, cool-wombat, etc, new haircut and clean their dirty keyboards with coffee stains all over, then there'll be new players. Now we just need someone to implement this grand plant of mine. I'd prefer a searcher but a planner would do.

[momfreeek]

retard elitist tendencies

eh?

bizarre nerd fetish

"opinion"?

[==Troy==]

The appeal that BA has to me, is effectively constant gameplay. I can come to it at any point of the year, and play it, expecting the gameplay to be essentially the same, with a few tweaks to the damage/health numbers.

If BA takes the same route as NOTA/XTA/SA/etc. then I might as well play those mods, since they have more appeal with their gameplay, while change as much as BA does, so if you took a break, you have to essentially re-learn new tactics that people use.


To address the playerbase argument. Nixa, can you back it up, that people are leaving and not coming to the BA because of the balance? From my point of view, the age of the game, art, and complexity of the interface (including springlobby) are the main issues, since, spring is BA essentially (at this point of time). So balance issues for BA is a minor part at most.

[Nixa]

To address the playerbase argument. Nixa, can you back it up, that people are leaving and not coming to the BA because of the balance? From my point of view, the age of the game, art, and complexity of the interface (including springlobby) are the main issues, since, spring is BA essentially (at this point of time). So balance issues for BA is a minor part at most.

Nope. I never really pointed at BA balance but was more asking the question just as you are now.

However noob bashing and standard "elistest" attitude probably has a large part in people leaving for those that actually make it through the minefield that is spring clients. It doesn't all fall on the mod side - the amount of times I've seen TERA admins kick newbs is hard to believe.

Anyway some of the changes in 7.42 I believe have addressed this issue in some way or another.

But the question needs to be asked - so many account creations but why no more players? (the point I was originally pushing)

[AF]

If big units heal faster than they can be repaired conventionally, then special care has to be taken with reclaim rate, else reclaim speed < repair speed == free resources.

Any autoheal will also result in a net gain. Imagine a cobot is reclaiming a unit, and another conbot is repairing it. Normally you would get whatever the transferral from pure energy repair to energy and metal reclaiming was. Now you have the effect of additional repair rate being brought in, you have extra IN to supply your OUT.

All of course marginal and having little impact of any, afterall the effort to exploit this is probably more than enough to win the game, but on the fringes of huge expensive units where the effort needed is reduced...

Otherwise I support autohealing on large units, so long as reclaiming is toned down, if it were merely another means of reducing Health then it'd be fine, but where metal's involved...

[Niobium]

If big units heal faster than they can be repaired conventionally, then special care has to be taken with reclaim rate, else reclaim speed < repair speed == free resources.

Any autoheal will also result in a net gain. Imagine a cobot is reclaiming a unit, and another conbot is repairing it. Normally you would get whatever the transferral from pure energy repair to energy and metal reclaiming was. Now you have the effect of additional repair rate being brought in, you have extra IN to supply your OUT.

All of course marginal and having little impact of any, afterall the effort to exploit this is probably more than enough to win the game, but on the fringes of huge expensive units where the effort needed is reduced...

There are no free resource exploits, when you are reclaiming a unit you are getting no additional income (until it is fully reclaimed). In addition when you are reclaiming a unit it doesn't idle auto heal, so reclaim and reclaim+repair is the same as it was.

Also, just want to confirm that what was brought in was IDLE autoheal, 1% hp/second after 30 seconds of taking no damage.