An overhaul of BA balance

[Rumpelstiltskin]

have you tried playing 1v1 bot maps lately albator?

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I can underdand that, If you dont like microing, BA is definitly not the game for you, I advise you to go play C&C

you are just trying to mock me.

rezzers gameplay is definitely not in the spirit of TA micro.
That is of course not a good argument why they should not play a major role in the game but i did not say that.
I said i find their SC2 like micro gameplay to be unfun.
It redirected a lot of the focus on them.

When a line of rocks is fighting its now much more about making sure your rezzers survive and repair damaged rockos than avoiding enemy missiles with your rockos.
same goes for plasma bots.
I think its much more fun to focus on maneuver your bots out of missiles or plasma.
The additional focus on fighting around piles of wreckage, where the outcome is much more random (cause its so much harder to predict what shots will go through the piles of wreckage and which ones wont)
is IMO another negative gameplay impact.
Of course units also get stuck in wreckage or fail to turn around them in an predictable manner which adds even more annoying randomness.

a game like XTA which has a lot of this type of microing complements that with slower movement speeds and higher HP values which makes it work.

[Silentwings]

Dodging missiles/plasma is still an important part of t1 kbot play - but you have to dodge with fighting units and with rezbots. As you say, rezbots are important but they are also fragile and pretty mobile, so imo dodging is now more 'fun' (and harder micro) than dodging with just rockos.

As to pathing and wrecks, since spring pathing is chaging alot at the moment it wouldn't make sense to devote huge time & effort to optimizing gameplay in wreck packed areas. Whatever non-trivial was done would probably just have to be re-done a few months later.

T1 kbot wreckage doesn't get in the way in my experience, although t1 veh wreckage certainly can.

[locjaw]

I think being able to adapt to a changing battlefield is a skill almost unique to BA (and other TA mods) and that's what makes this game so awesome. Wreckage is such an integral and fundamental game mechanic! I scream HERESY at efforts to downplay it's importance! Battlefields getting cluttered and becoming hard to navigate is just part of the game. Certain units excel in these situations whereas others fail. Pathing can be a bit aids but I feel that it forces you to adapt and change strategies when wreckage hinders your forces.

I understand your beef with not wanting to use rezzers all the time but when it comes to the small scale battles you get in 1v1s it makes sense that they see a lot of use. The problem might be in the map(s). I find many of them lend to only 1 or 2 viable strategies or are such that the game ends early, before it can diversify. For example, if you play games on larger maps with less people, like doing a 1v1 on a 4v4 map, you're likely to get the macro sized battles you're after where rezzers becomes less important. Maps that are vehicle friendly, have less/smaller choke points, don't favour commander pushing and have larger distances between start locations tend to see less rezzers being used.

It's perfectly legit to say that you don't find the type of gameplay that rezzers lend to enjoyable but many other people do enjoy it, so it's probably not fair to say that it should be changed on that basis. It'd be a different story if no-one liked it

If you dont like microing, BA is definitly not the game for you, I advise you to go play C&C

BA caters for both micro and macro, that comment isn't valid or appropriate in any way.

[albator]

albator wrote:
If you dont like microing, BA is definitly not the game for you, I advise you to go play C&C

BA caters for both micro and macro, that comment isn't valid or appropriate in any way.

The fact BA is about micro does not remove the fact it can be about other things, the fact you say my comment is not valid thus is... not valid.

[albator]

have you tried playing 1v1 bot maps lately albator?

Yes I did, Kbot is all about multi tasking, raidind spot with pewee/ak while you actaully fight with rocko on flatter places and take advantages of hills with plasma kbot while staying hidden from longer range rocko, cause plasma has parabolic traj. Eventaulyl that require a huge amount of micro and you can only achieve that with decent team managment system 'or autogroup widget)

[Nasum]

I'm not so experienced with RTS games or game development to truly comment here but I KNOW that this Extra Credits episode is perfectly suited to this conversation. I seriously recommend watching this if you're interested in game development.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

It discusses the different ways games attempt to balance. Perfect balance means the skill is in the execution; perfect imbalance is about using novel approaches to counter the overpowered tactic/unit/strategy.

An example might be the fact that snipers are very powerful units in large team games if deployed with proper support. A good counter is with bombers. It's not that core has a well balanced unit that plays a very similar role as the sniper, it's about the effective counter using the appropriate units.

From this discussion, it appears to me that in BA the idea of Perfect Imbalance is not applicable to large open maps in 1v1. In other words it's about how well you can execute the known optimal strategy (scouts -> flash -> stumpies). Some people find this "not fun" and prefer the larger games where there are opportunities for using novel approaches because of the Perfect Imbalance.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

This is would be more suitable for a discussion comparing ZK and BA.
I was talking about the TA legacy of low focus on using different unit abilities and a bigger focus on maneuvering groups of units.

The rezzers break that because they require starcraft like micro..
constantly using different abilities of the unit while trying to keep this extremely fragile unit alive on the front line.
I find such gameplay tedious and unfun.
Starcraft perfected it and I liked AA BA cause they mostly followed TA's legacy of focusing on just maneuvering groups and macro economic/expansion descisions.
XTA had Starcraft like Micro but it compensated with higher HP units and slower movement speeds.

[Ares]

Rezzers are just more nimble cons, they are very similar to freakers and farks (also the role of air cons) - which have been around a long time. Even if you removed them other units would fill their role in gameplay - because what they do is so essential.

If your problem is how fragile they are you should try to focus on your vehicle gameplay and only use con vehicles for the frontline repair/reclaim niche. They are high hp, make 20 e and can also build (for basically the same price).

Also, if you spend the money on jeffies the enemy spends on rezzers you should try to snipe them and hold any key metal reclaims until the big guns arrive.