Spring RTS Engine

I'd suggest lock

Of course you would.

Fanger wrote:YOu fail to realize el capitano, that a unit can have its role completely altered in a second, thus making balance purely subjective, usually balance is decided before any units are made, at least on an overall level, individual balance tweaks then occur based on this already established idea.. its SUBJECTIVE, OPINION, it can be changed willy nilly, I can easily take the Maverick, and exchange its role to function like the luger, and make the luger have the role fo the Maverick, I simply need to alter their HP, speed, weapon, and moveinfo, and where they are built from.. and whamo your now building lugers instead of Mavs, and Mavs instead of lugers.. DO you see what I mean its subjective..

That's not a balance decision, that's a gameplay decision. The balance decision comes in when you find everyone building the lugerick because it's far too effective at being a replacement mav.

How effective a particular counter is to a particular tactic is a matter of opinion, if I think AA should be less potent, but aircraft more expensive, you might think AA should be more potent and aircraft less expensive, in both cases the AA still counters the Aircraft, but the numbers of each alter.. its an opinion.. either one will be "balanced" but neither one is right for the situation, its a matter of opinion, you think one is better, because that is your preference, not because it is actually better...

"Better" is subjective, "balanced" is not. You've just said "it may be balanced, but the gameplay is rubbish, IMO", which is not my point at all. My point is that you can measure balance objectively.

Balance is objective, but no one knows exactly how, I don't know of a game developer who in my opinion has it nailed down completely yet, let alone a gamer. My thoughts on balance could probably fill a clip around 10-20 MS word pages right now, and even then I wouldn't be able to call them well researched and decisive.

At best, to prevent game balance as a whole from being understood as game play style preference (which it resembles, but is not) I'd recommend not using the term and instead referring to it's smaller parts, unit interactions, player time consumption, numerical stats, or team quality, game variety. One or another aspect can be very well conceived when the project balance overall is actually very weak.

Dude! Knock it off!

zoom-butt-bie

Why am I even bothering? Insted of rebuttling I will eat a sandwich.


Mmmm...sandwich.

You can only measure balance objectively according to how you believe it should be balanced, your objective measurement is compared to what you believe should be the balance, which is an opinion.. and GAMEPLAY is balance, if the game is not balanced in a manner you find suitable, you wont like the gameplay, that does not mean the game is not balanced, that means its not balanced for you, again OPINION.. Balance is subjective, you have yet to prove me wrong by stating one way it is objective.. How can you distinctly measure a quanity that is based on an opinion or preference..

Zoombie wrote:Why am I even bothering? Insted of rebuttling I will eat a sandwich.


Mmmm...sandwich.

QFT!

Does anyone here dip their french fries in tartar sauce?

You sick sick puppy. I take back everything I said about respecting you.

mayonaise and paprika ftw




and they are CHIPS

pintle wrote:and they are CHIPS

our chips are your crisps. Fries ftw.

And yes, fries + tartar sauce is ownage, but fries +gravy + cheese + mayonnaise is better.

Anyone dip their fries in Wendy's frosties? Er, maybe they call them something else where you're from. Ever been to a wendy's? Eh... well they have this ice cream-ish stuff... dip your fries in it.

Now that is insane... I surprised myself though, thousand Island salad dressing is really good with fries

Salt and vinegar are all you need on chips

I have only met one other person who does that with their Frosties. It's REALLY disturbing to watch...

Chips, crisps, fries, meh, all to confusing. Thats why in Australia we call all three chips. Saves on confusion! Honest...

I don't even know what we are talking about anymroe? Putting ketchup on A.K's or was it eating Pewee's with our frosties?

Fanger wrote:You can only measure balance objectively according to how you believe it should be balanced, your objective measurement is compared to what you believe should be the balance, which is an opinion..

It's like banging my head against a wall. You can make all the "subjective" balance decisions you want, but in the end, if ARM end up winning significantly more than CORE, if Mavs get massed every game, if everybody is always looking to counter the same strategy, then the game is not balanced! It's measurable, it's demonstratable, it's provable, therefore it's objective!

and GAMEPLAY is balance,

No, it's not. Read up on the reflective property sometime.

if the game is not balanced in a manner you find suitable, you wont like the gameplay, that does not mean the game is not balanced, that means its not balanced for you, again OPINION..

A game can be perfectly balanced, yet have poor gameplay. Poor balance is going to negatively reflect a multiplayer game.

Balance is subjective, you have yet to prove me wrong by stating one way it is objective.. How can you distinctly measure a quanity that is based on an opinion or preference..

It's easy. People demonstrated that the defiler was imbalanced by pointing out that the most effective counter against it still cost more than the cost of defilers it destroyed. There was no way to stop the defiler for cost.

In a grander scale, if you want to measure whether the sides are balanced, look at win percentages. IIRC, in Starcraft, the three sides all have win ratios that are within 0.1% of each other. It's something like 49.9% Protos, 50.1% Zerg. I'd say that's strong evidence that those match-ups are balanced.

There is no formula to say "take these units and make them balanced", but you make your decisions and you can then test them objectively to tell if they're valid decisions. Hell, even going "I won't do this because it goes against the gameplay decisions I made for these sides" is not subjective. It may well be that you can't achieve true balance with the units you have and the gameplay requirements you have put in place, and that means you must either remove/add units or change your gameplay decisions.

Gameplay requirements are subjective, balance is not.