TA Derivative Balancing Theory Discussion

[KDR_11k]

I don't read huge blocks of broken English.

obviously u read it to find out its broken :p

Parser break on line 1.

I am gonna cry about it.. cause in half the mods that units in it uses a burst fire function out of 2 fire points.. and spring handles that in a manner that can only be called screwy.. gives this wierd seesaw motion on the turret.. with little wierd interruptions in fire..

why does it have a burst weapon anywho.. shouldnt it ought to just fire constantly..

I recall fixing that for SVN.

[LordMatt]

Line bombing, pelicans, those were broken (and even in themselves not OP once you learnt how to deal with them / do them yourself).

Line bombing was not broken or OP! Implement in spring plx.

luls @ sleksa.

[Neddie]

Sleksa, you were warned. Now you will be punished.

[Zpock]

About crappy units, I think they have their place. This best sums up some points to consider:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr5

There's a ton of stuff over there about designing game rules, in this case a collectors card game but I think it applies generally as well, at least to some extent. IE RTS units = cards, in a way. Either way lots of very interesting reading even tough I only maybe 100 magic cards and not played much of that at all.

Basically a bad unit will be seen by some as a challenge, to see if they can make a unit that is generally considered shitty to do something amazing. This is widely regarded as fascinating, take for example when boxer uses ghosts or medics blind vs carriers in starcraft.

Wszinjs use of stumpies would also kind of fall into this category.

[Fanger]

[Saktoth]

Watching those players use their flashes, and later samsons was mindblowing - within the much bemoaned flash rushing strat were layers of complexity that the best players could delve into and discover.

If Cavedog were a modding team in Spring, the flash would've been modded out of existence long ago.

This is something CA really taught me. Flash were not only nerfed, but a bunch of new anti-raider weaponry, perfect against flash, was added. Most units were actually much more useful, and you had to mix units to be sucessful. But the gameplay was sluggish, boring, and uninspired. Maybe flash are OP. But without them, the game just isnt as interesting.

Now we've prettymuch gone the opposite extreme, static d is useless without mobile backup and gators/flash can easily win the game from very early on. The game plays a lot better for it, too, and we're slowly working our way back to an equilibrium.

[Scratch]

I will address the real problem we have here :

Lack of growth, players & excitement about Spring.

Tired is right in that the TA aspect of spring must be emphasized in order to fight this downwards curve we have of server stats. I played Tribes 1 & 2 for ten years now. I watched it die. Seems every game has a peak and a low, and the low is almost always much bigger than the high.

Imma go head and credit the influx of players we had in '06 to the article that was in PC Gaming Mag, and the fact that spring was still pretty new and just dived into the exposure pool that is the 'net.

Our primary problem is in attracting players. These digressive mods based on the Spring engine aren't helping anybody. Im not going to go and try be friends with these modders, I dont have to play their mod to be able to speak.

The reason Spring is popular is because of TA, like it or not. The only challenging players to play against almost exclusively is those who were OTA. I think it is improper for the designers of other mods such as EE and CA to even be posting in this thread.

Also, to slosh or whatever your name is, I trust the 'best' players because they are known because most players don't stand a chance against them. You can argue this is because they know one tactic very well, and I will argue that after playing on spring for far longer than most spring players, they actually know what they are doing.

Leave the balancing to them. Balancing takes time it is not something you just jump into.

Also, the argument of ingame hours meaning nothing to skill level, that argument is moot as well. A player with ingame hours has experience and knowledge from many, many losses and are valuable allies because they know what they have to do to NOT LOSE.

My opinion is these other mods are waste. We need to try keeping the players we have, nevermind try attracting new ones. Forcing players to learn new shit all the time doesn't help.

[Otherside]

CA isnt a TA based mod rite..

[Pressure Line]

My opinion is these other mods are waste.

Without these 'wasteful' other mods, there would be no need to develop spring. there is nothing in a vanilla TA mod (BA for ex) that requires any of the features that have been introduced in the past year. none of the custom fx, LUA, s3o or scripting work apparently matters at all, we should just stick to playing BA because it is a TA mod balanced by the best players.

If that is what you truly believe, then I am saddened that such a bigoted, narrow-minded person has anything to do with Spring. It's attitudes like that that stifle progressive change everywhere.

[Otherside]

My opinion is these other mods are waste.

Without these 'wasteful' other mods, there would be no need to develop spring. there is nothing in a vanilla TA mod (BA for ex) that requires any of the features that have been introduced in the past year. none of the custom fx, LUA, s3o or scripting work apparently matters at all, we should just stick to playing BA because it is a TA mod balanced by the best players.

If that is what you truly believe, then I am saddened that such a bigoted, narrow-minded person has anything to do with Spring. It's attitudes like that that stifle progressive change everywhere.

+1

why waste a very good engine that keeps on improving and evolving by sticking to a 10 year old game without updating it.. and not use any of springs new features

GG

[SwiftSpear]

About crappy units, I think they have their place. This best sums up some points to consider:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr5

There's a ton of stuff over there about designing game rules, in this case a collectors card game but I think it applies generally as well, at least to some extent. IE RTS units = cards, in a way. Either way lots of very interesting reading even tough I only maybe 100 magic cards and not played much of that at all.

Basically a bad unit will be seen by some as a challenge, to see if they can make a unit that is generally considered shitty to do something amazing. This is widely regarded as fascinating, take for example when boxer uses ghosts or medics blind vs carriers in starcraft.

Wszinjs use of stumpies would also kind of fall into this category.

In context of 10,000 or so units this makes sense... in context of 8 competing units in a tech tier it's retarded to claim there just has to be "some bad ones"

[Forboding Angel]

Felony 1 - mod
http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6693

[KDR_11k]

The reason Spring is popular is because of TA, like it or not. The only challenging players to play against almost exclusively is those who were OTA.

What mod are you playing against them? If you're only playing TA mods of course you'll find only those a challenge who are good at TA mods, duh.

A player with ingame hours has experience and knowledge from many, many losses and are valuable allies because they know what they have to do to NOT LOSE.

Um, no. A player can be playing for 100s of hours and still only play porc and lose. Learning to win is not inevitable, time played is not automatically useful experience gained. It takes intelligence to figure out what you were doing wrong and how to avoid repeating the mistake. Some people learn fast, others learn slow and some never learn. You know how many hours I spent as a kid playing OTA? If time equals skill I could just jump into BA and start owning people but as a kid I always played badly and never bothered to figure out how the units actually work or how to deal with non-metal maps so all that time doesn't count at all.

In context of 10,000 or so units this makes sense... in context of 8 competing units in a tech tier it's retarded to claim there just has to be "some bad ones"

Also remember that TCGs usually limit a player to those cards he actually has so the average player only has access to a subset of the available options and may need to settle for crappier versions because of the metagame. Not an issue for top level gamers of course, they'll just buy all the cards they need and always play with the best ones.

[LordMatt]

The only challenging players to play against almost exclusively is those who were OTA.

This is an important point. Spring does a horrible job of developing more expert players. Most of the good players played OTA online at some point.

[KDR_11k]

I think it's also an issue of marketing, spring is "sold" to people as "TA in 3d". There's more types of RTS fans out there than just TA fans but Spring only attracts one kind.

[Saktoth]

This is an important point. Spring does a horrible job of developing more expert players. Most of the good players played OTA online at some point.

This is unfair. OTA is a 10 year old game. OTA players have had a decade of experience. Most spring players, even some very good spring players, have only had a few months.

There are strategies that just take time to discover and spread within a community- take Nanoshielding, which i only see done in BA by det, though its becoming more popular on sea maps precisely due to dets use of it there.

[tombom]

There are strategies that just take time to discover and spread within a community- take Nanoshielding, which i only see done in BA by det, though its becoming more popular on sea maps precisely due to dets use of it there.

Nanoshielding is an OTA tactic if I remember right. Dragon45 posted it in a list of tips a while back and a load of people replied about how they used it.

[Sleksa]

i was nanoshielding on brazillian when you were sucking your mother's mammaries.

[Hellspawn]

Nanoshielding was here since I started to play Spring.

[Scratch]

The reason Spring is popular is because of TA, like it or not. The only challenging players to play against almost exclusively is those who were OTA.

What mod are you playing against them? If you're only playing TA mods of course you'll find only those a challenge who are good at TA mods, duh.

A player with ingame hours has experience and knowledge from many, many losses and are valuable allies because they know what they have to do to NOT LOSE.

Um, no. A player can be playing for 100s of hours and still only play porc and lose. Learning to win is not inevitable, time played is not automatically useful experience gained. It takes intelligence to figure out what you were doing wrong and how to avoid repeating the mistake. Some people learn fast, others learn slow and some never learn. You know how many hours I spent as a kid playing OTA? If time equals skill I could just jump into BA and start owning people but as a kid I always played badly and never bothered to figure out how the units actually work or how to deal with non-metal maps so all that time doesn't count at all.

This is a piss ass attitude. I'd like you to post how many hours ingame you actually have, and which mod. Then you can talk about what the hours do for you. All the players I know with 650+ hours are actually pretty good. At this point, a player has usually played more than speedmetal also.

Check how many hours the guys have that are balancing this stuff out. I'd bet they have WELL over 1000 hours ingame. I know the more well known players do.

I wasn't ever really good at OTA, but I definetly learned how to manage my units through it. That means all I had to do coming into spring is learn about the units of AA/BA/XTA. Most of the noobs coming into spring can't manage their stuff anywhere close to where I could from OTA.

This brings me to another sad point - the noobs coming in here don't seem to be lasting long. A decision must be made as to whether or not to balance BA (and with a successful BA comes an influx of players into the other smaller mods) towards the vets or the noobs. If the guys in charge try to compromise it, we're fucked.