7.4X Balance Change Reasoning

[albator]

Would be good if there was like a "BAlance" channel with only the ba devs being able to speak but anyone listen. You know like an irc channel where only ops can talk but on mumble. That way nio and those guys can discuss uninterupted but community peeps can listen

It uses to be the case on #badev but it is not passworded anymore

[Wombat]

you have to bring fighter with it so bomber dont get instantaneously kill by t2 fighters

i disagree. i dunno why many people complained about ground mobile aa raping fighters... isnt that their second purpose after defending against gunships ? bombers shouldnt be all-in attack which usually kills key buildings. it should have more tactical purpose - finding gaps in enemy aa, after winning ground. fighters should be purely aa, and only defensive unit. bomber nerf helps a lot
@hlt - remove beamer, double llt, hlt and guardian ! yes i said that. def should be used to slow down flanking raids, not substitute of units.

to be less ridiculous, rocko spam should be countered with storm spam, imo.

when it comes to beamer, could use bit more buildtime, too easy to rush it.

@ emp launcher - i like the current change. same as tac nuke, it canno be stopped, so...

@ razorback - cmon, its not rly any aa, but it could use same nerf as karg.

Now only arm can snipe commander with nuke bomber since t2 bomber does not do the work.

they got same damage, just number of bombs reduced.

@this conversion slider thing - u can abuse it to give u lot of insta E (found by Senna)

and the changes are being debated.

i havent seen any thread about emp bombers or problems with armor classes.

No more hidden changes please.

THIS

fighter problem could be solved with armor class... no wait, it cannot, forgot its pure evil

-------

on side note - bring back delay for chainsaw and mercury. low rate of fire turrets shooting same scouts is completely stupid, dunno why it was removed.

[smoth]

Both threads have discussion of the bombers.

Not much actual discussion of key broken armor classes only people hitting on key notes from the change log. Which IMO is a shame

[Beherith]

The armor class changes have very little overall effect, and mostly just reduced redundancy, so stop spreading false information.

What hidden changes are you talking about? Everything is there clearly on http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/timeline

[smoth]

Not so much trying to echo it. Trying to make people validate or denounce thier claims.

[Wombat]

Both threads have discussion of the bombers.

Not much actual discussion of key broken armor classes

becouse bombers are one of the bigger BA problems.

also its hard to have any discussion about armor classes if the only reason given was that they are not transparent (what is obvious bs since 'bomb resistant' tells much, no ?). i already said its stupid coz it buffs aa turret against ground units, which makes no sense.

The armor class changes have very little overall effect

which units got removed armor class? again, nothing was said about that except chainsaw (niob said that most armor classes got removed)

[smoth]

Read the commits.

[Beherith]

Read the changelog, and dont accuse people of doing hidden changes. If you find anything, please report it. Until then its just harassment with speculation.

[Johannes]

What?but nobody plays 1v1 anymore...Whats the big deal?seriously...Most games are overcrowded team games so balance based on that...
The 1v1 community will never be revived...It's hopeless.

8 1v1 games going on right now.

[Nixa]

good players" are not all the same, the three names I gave (Kixu, Albator and 8D) should give their opinion and BA devs should listen to them with all their attention.

Played a few games with Kixu and had a chat with him last night. He didn't have a problem with many of the changes at all? In fact he rather enjoyed it I believe because ground control now plays a much larger role at least in the games we played.

As for Albator and 8D, they both made their minds up before even trying it - so why should they be remotely considered with attitudes like that?

[Johannes]

So if someone disargees with you enough, he's not worth listening to...

[Wombat]

unbelivablu !

fun fact is im more against these changes after playing, mainly coz of the mm.

also why t1 mex doesnt require e to work anymore ? it matters on big maps, or on pseudopros fav dsd of the 3v3 - ccr. it depends mainly on the t1 mex and t1 energy sources. it was always important factor that influenced early expanding (punished player for overexpanding while not building additional energy source (and not only on the ccr ofc)). also matters on maps with low mex (terra for example).

doesnt make much sense.

[Johannes]

Yep, and also it's a big benefit for making t2 mexes. It's like your usual DSD techer got a free adv solar after his mexes are done, compared to how it was before.

[Nixa]

If they disagree without trying it, then yes.

Look the simple truth here is that most of you came to BA when BA was BA (not AA) and balance was for some reason settled. BA has been stagnant so long that I can understand you wanting to gripe with the changes, but for those of us that grew up with change (AA then early BA versions) know exactly how good it is for the game long term.

It was after all Noize then TFC that had the only real power to stop 8v8 DSD happening before it started with some simple changes to eco that would've never effect small games or 1v1. They didn't and the result is what we have today (whether 8v8 DSD has brought more or lost players can be debated elsewhere).

Truth is this mod isn't balanced, at the T1 level it is OK as a lot of effort was put in basing it solely on 1v1. TBH this has failed too because over the years 1v1's gone from scout spam > gator spam > stumpy spam as each unit was tweaked to make it more useable. Effectively all units in T1 are just damage dealers when it comes to 1v1 and nothing more, with any one more spammable than another in any particular BA revision. So what about T2, well most of the balance was a hand over from AA, and then tweaked very very slowly for largers games (no joke, you got read a large majority of TFC changes and you'll find they're so infinitly small they'll have no gameplay change but they just add up over the releases and bias large games where those units get used). 1v1 is also a terrible way of balancing a mod with over 300 units as only a very small proportion of them get used. Large games are equally as bad, again only the OP units get used. The odd thing is these units are seen as a good thing because they can end the game in which case all other units may as well be removed.

Only in FFA have I seen a large majority of units been used all in one game. I'm not suggesting at all that FFA should be the balance stick but in all honesty out of the choices we currently have it would be the best choice for BA with THIS many units.

For the record, I would wager that I have more 1v1 games under my belt than the majority of people on this forum. If the attitude of teh 1v1 community wasn't so stuck up, "elitest" and closed minded I would still be playing today

@wombat if your main concern is the MM (where they're effectively exactly the same) then clearly you don't have much concern with the rest :S

[Wombat]

some of the lines from the post above support my opinions that:

- ba shouldnt be balanced for 1v1s since its not that popular as team games (especially if u consider number of players (1v1 'community' (lol) is rather closed) not number of games only)
- u cant balance same game for 1v1,2v2-5v5, >8v8
- ppl should stop complaining how ba 1v1 sux, and should make ba1v1 only (knowing their eagerness it will probablt fail lol (1v1 ladder + pro ann)

@wombat if your main concern is the MM (where they're effectively exactly the same) then clearly you don't have much concern with the rest :S

these mms are one of my least concerns, its just stupid that i dont know which are working and which are not. i just said that actual games didnt make me any happier but just added another odd thing to my list.

[Nixa]

some of the lines from the post above support my opinions that:

- ba shouldnt be balanced for 1v1s since its not that popular as team games (especially if u consider number of players (1v1 'community' (lol) is rather closed) not number of games only)
- u cant balance same game for 1v1,2v2-5v5, >8v8
- ppl should stop complaining how ba 1v1 sux, and should make ba1v1 only (knowing their eagerness it will probablt fail lol (1v1 ladder + pro ann)

@wombat if your main concern is the MM (where they're effectively exactly the same) then clearly you don't have much concern with the rest :S

these mms are one of my least concerns, its just stupid that i dont know which are working and which are not. i just said that actual games didnt make me any happier and just added another odd thing.

Right, ok so you agree that BA shouldn't be designed for 1v1 because of the playerbase which is pretty much dead nor should it be designed for multiple player numbers. I can deduce from this that BA should be designed in favour of the largest majority of the community (which is overwhelmingly in favour of large games at this point).

As for the MM, it's not the most refined way currently, but in games where they're built (large games suprise suprise) it drastically reduces command spam. Over 50% of commands in long large games comes from MM turning on and off. It is purely an optimization and gives the added bonus of having control of your E which is a nice feature. Like all things once you get used to it you will see its value.

Edit: none are effectively 'working', each just gives you a capacity of converting E to M which needs to be put in its description.

[Wombat]

command spam is the reason why i dont see mm income ? coz every mm shows 0. i dont think t1 mms cause message spam (i had t1 mms in mind all the time).

so i assume u were talking about t2 mms, and i agree with that. still, i dont see any mm income.

I can deduce from this that BA should be designed in favour of the largest majority of the community

doesnt it make sense ? SC is best example. and whats most important, its impossible to do otherwise.
i think 1v1 players are bigger problem imo (epenis fest) and some ppl simply dont like seriousness which usually follows 1v1s (thats why i mainly play with lion). like i said, its stupid trying to balance BA for all kinds of games. i dont see any reason why there shouldnt be 1v1ba. everybody win - 1v1 players get the gameplay the want, just like ppl who like teamgames.

[dansan]

also why t1 mex doesnt require e to work anymore ?

I think I overheard the reason was to remove a noob-trap.

Yep, and also it's a big benefit for making t2 mexes. It's like your usual DSD techer got a free adv solar after his mexes are done, compared to how it was before.

Does that really matter at that point ingame? Does that really change gameplay?

[Wombat]

noob-trap

could u explain, coz i dont really know how is it nubtrab. lack of pop-out DONT MAKE ADVSOLARMMECO U NUB is bigger nubtrap :D

[Johannes]

You always say people are just averse to any change, but that's not true. I'm only against bad changes that don't do much to address the problems with the game. The changes to fighters and bombers just make the air game more 1-dimensional and boring, even if you won't see as much of that annoying air play now. But the prime problems with air still stay, or are worse after this patch - too much blind RPS, and too little micro possibility.


And 1v1 (or small teams games) is good to base balance on because there you have much less affect from random factors and trends. If you think something new would work well you can try it yourself, in 8v8 you might have to convince 7 other people to follow your advice to properly see if your idea works. In a long small game you'll still see a ton of units, and usually used in much less retarded manner.
And yes it can be considered a big design fault that more units don't see use in 1v1 more often, but you've done nothing to fix this!
I also don't agree you can't have same game balanced for different team sizes, it just takes more thought and skill to consider everything.