Meh. It's not like they are saying we're done. Just means that in this build there are roughly even wins. Bhopefully that will encourage more play until next patch. Don't read too much in to the tweet You know they aren't naive
I would definitely say the b210 IS THE MOST BALANCED BUILD SO FAR. Unfortunately with the increase in speed of overall games, it has lost a lot of fun on both FPS/RTS side. Just reduce the tech rate for each team (res income too high) and you guys have a finished game (minus the exosuit/minor balance issues).
Geeze guys, no one is implying the game is balanced and that there are no problems. The tweet simply shows the recorded stat numbers from 210 have brought the win/loss ratio more in line, and it seems like a step in the right direction. Of course there are all sorts of reasons for those numbers and we are working on getting much more specific information recorded per game, to make better sense of the win numbers.
<!--quoteo(post=1944733:date=Jun 19 2012, 04:08 AM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Jun 19 2012, 04:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1944733"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm a bit curious to all who dislike the win/loss stats what they think a better system to measure the balance of NS2 would be?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's more complicated than win/loss unfortunately when looking at the bigger picture. For example, what percentage of those marine wins were achieved by 20+ arc trains? You can't rely on a single thing like win/loss and say a game is balanced, it's much deeper than that.
I think the stats can be quite skewed because people play one team and win then switch and play the other, and win... and the cycle continues. The balance is a lot better this patch IMO, but there are still a number of things to be improved upon to continue to improve the game play side (balance <> great game play).
Statistics can be awesome, used correctly. But still it can only take you so far. Lets say marines are imba first 10 mins, and aliens imba rest of the game, but still there are 50/50 in wins. But all marine wins come from the first 10 mins, and if aliens manage to survive the first 10 wins, its autowin for them. It doesn't make for what most ppl would consider balanced gameplay, but still it gives 50/50.
But a game is never balanced until its balanced on the top level. It doesn't matter if P wins 60% of the games in bronze league, as long as master league and GSL is balanced.
However, having close to 50/50 in pub is better than not having it, and as long as UWE doesn't settle with only stats, I think its a good start.
<!--quoteo(post=1944732:date=Jun 19 2012, 04:58 AM:name=Squeal_Like_A_Pig)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Squeal_Like_A_Pig @ Jun 19 2012, 04:58 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1944732"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->no one is implying the game is balanced<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Twitter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Twitter)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Wow, the balance in NS2 210 is awesome!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Made me chuckle, but I know you are probably right Cory. No hard feelings! :P
It's good that the stats are a little closer at least, but yea it doesn't say anything about the poor state of the economy (super fast res income, low research costs) or how enjoyable the game is (particularly lategame is a drag for either side, filled with lots of cheese). But 210 IS a step in the right direction and if they manage to address the aforementioned issues, I am absolutely confident NS 2 is going to become as, if not more, amazing than NS 1.
<!--quoteo(post=1944733:date=Jun 18 2012, 11:08 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Jun 18 2012, 11:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1944733"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm a bit curious to all who dislike the win/loss stats what they think a better system to measure the balance of NS2 would be?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Playing NS2 repeatedly with players who consistently attempt to maximize individual effectiveness and teamwork is probably the best way to see how balanced things are. The pub winrates of the varying alien teams means little in terms of game balance. (again, proved by simple means of continuity of a function of lmg damage from 0 -> 100000 and the impact that has on marine winrate from 0% -> 100%)
Instead of putting in some ridiculous FF mechanic on arcs, you should fix the economy instead. You are able to tech up/get all upgrades way too fast which then leaves you nothing else than arcs to spend res on. Its not uncommon in public games that you see full tech, 10+arcs and the marines still have 200+ tres because the comm is slow in pumping the arcs out with additional robo factories.
<!--quoteo(post=1945106:date=Jun 20 2012, 05:56 AM:name=elmo9000)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (elmo9000 @ Jun 20 2012, 05:56 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945106"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Instead of putting in some ridiculous FF mechanic on arcs, you should fix the economy instead. You are able to tech up/get all upgrades way too fast which then leaves you nothing else than arcs to spend res on. Its not uncommon in public games that you see full tech, 10+arcs and the marines still have 200+ tres because the comm is slow in pumping the arcs out with additional robo factories.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
We are still missing like jetpack upgrades and exos + their upgrades which will be a res sink too. But I agree that this patch res is way too plentiful, early game is almost non existent anymore.
It's a consequence of changing energy to TRes, because they have to account for the commander being able to drop meds/ammo/scan/beacon/and all those other things that required energy when he needs to be able to do it, but most of the time while you are gaining res you *don't* need to do these things, so that extra res for those things just accumilates and you have more for upgrades and buildings, and then once you have the buildings down and upgrades researching, you have nothing else to spend your res on except spamming meds/ammo/scans/<b>cysts</b> etc etc, so the problem hasn't gone away at all really, it's just made it much harder to balance the res.
<!--quoteo(post=1945110:date=Jun 20 2012, 09:08 AM:name=paradoxum)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (paradoxum @ Jun 20 2012, 09:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945110"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->We are still missing like jetpack upgrades and exos + their upgrades which will be a res sink too. But I agree that this patch res is way too plentiful, early game is almost non existent anymore.
It's a consequence of changing energy to TRes, because they have to account for the commander being able to drop meds/ammo/scan/beacon/and all those other things that required energy when he needs to be able to do it, but most of the time while you are gaining res you *don't* need to do these things, so that extra res for those things just accumilates and you have more for upgrades and buildings, and then once you have the buildings down and upgrades researching, you have nothing else to spend your res on except spamming meds/ammo/scans/<b>cysts</b> etc etc, so the problem hasn't gone away at all really, it's just made it much harder to balance the res.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I feel its more of a consequence of upping the res production rate for no reason at all, and then leaving upgrades and lots of other stuff cheap as ever. If they would of just taken out energy and leave resource production and prices the way they were it would of been pretty good. Then you would have to think when/if its worth to med/ammo/nano spam the marines or do i save for teching up instead. Now you can have it all without any thought like you were able to with the energy mechanics. This time it all just gets worse later on because you dont have to use the res for anything, and you get more of it than before.
Yea, pls fix economy first before implementing something like FF for arcs. I can already see how this can be exploited by just building cysts in front of them when they roll in.
<!--quoteo(post=1944733:date=Jun 18 2012, 10:08 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Jun 18 2012, 10:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1944733"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm a bit curious to all who dislike the win/loss stats what they think a better system to measure the balance of NS2 would be?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Glad you asked. I would of course measure the win/loss stats, but also the win lost stats for games that end right away, the win loss stats for games that last a long time, and much more.
There is a lot that I could think to do with statistical analysis, and a <i>ton</i> more that someone with a bit of education in stats could do. You feed in a lot of data like whether arcs are used, how long the game lasts, when various different techs finish researching, where the starting positions are, and so on. Then you search for which features have the strongest statistical correlation.
What if it turns out that that the overall game is balanced, BUT:
Games that end within 2 minutes area almost all alien wins. Games that end after 30 minute are almost all marine wins.
Clearly that means that aliens are broken early and marines are broken late.
What if stats reveal that aliens lose a lot when they go shade hive first, or win a lot when they take out an IP within the first two minutes.
A "balanced" game should not be decided early, so ideally there shouldn't be any strong statistically correlation between stats that are detectable in the first few minutes and the end result of the game. There also shouldn't be a super strong correlation between winning and picking a certain strategy or between losing and picking a strategy that is intended to be viable. Ideally, people should be choosing weapons, upgrades, and lifeforms with reasonably even distribution without sacrificing a large percentage of their likelihood of winning.
Also, anything that is strongly correlated to winning should be something that is not possible to do trivially. For example "destroying 3 hives" resulting in 90% wins wouldn't necessarily be a sign of imbalance, but "researching jetpacks and grenade launchers" resulting in 90% wins obviously would be.
I think there are better solutions to the ARC-train problem than friendly-fire! I've copy-pasted one of them below:
The ARC problem is solved by having marines "deploy" them at locations by holding the 'use' key for however long (I imagine the commander will need to assign '<i>ready-to-deploy</i>' status to the ARCs to prevent unwanted deployment). This retains all the intensity of NS1 sieges (more so, if you include the A -> B journey) while still respecting the mobile siege cannon design. Commanders should then be able to undeploy sieges and micro them to wherever they please. For example, with the death of the accompanying marines, the best course of action might be to stay-and-fire or to undeploy-and-retreat.
Not only do I think that the marine deployment model is more fun, it also fixes the ARC-train problem without arbitrary rules. Each ARC has diminishing returns as they become increasingly unlikely to be deployed by the field players which makes for a great soft-cap that doesn't make trains entirely impossible. Rather, they simply become cost-ineffective. This method also respects the goal championed by UWE (and Hugh in the recent dreamhack Q&A) that the game should be primarily about player-player interaction. Currently, the commander can force NPC vs Player combat all too easily. With players "deploying" arcs, this problem disappears. The commander/player relationship also deepens.
*edit* My terminology is pretty confusing: Commanders should be able to 'deploy' and 'undeploy', while marines should merely 'build' ARCs that are deployed.
swalkSay hello to my little friend.Join Date: 2011-01-20Member: 78384Members, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1945130:date=Jun 20 2012, 11:59 AM:name=Tweadle)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tweadle @ Jun 20 2012, 11:59 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945130"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think there are better solutions to the ARC-train problem than friendly-fire! I've copy-pasted one of them below:
The ARC problem is solved by having marines "deploy" them at locations by holding the 'use' key for however long (I imagine the commander will need to assign '<i>ready-to-deploy</i>' status to the ARCs to prevent unwanted deployment). This retains all the intensity of NS1 sieges (more so, if you include the A -> B journey) while still respecting the mobile siege cannon design. Commanders should then be able to undeploy sieges and micro them to wherever they please. For example, with the death of the accompanying marines, the best course of action might be to stay-and-fire or to undeploy-and-retreat.
Not only do I think that the marine deployment model is more fun, it also fixes the ARC-train problem without arbitrary rules. Each ARC has diminishing returns as they become increasingly unlikely to be deployed by the field players which makes for a great soft-cap that doesn't make trains entirely impossible. Rather, they simply become cost-ineffective. This method also respects the goal championed by UWE (and Hugh in the recent dreamhack Q&A) that the game should be primarily about player-player interaction. Currently, the commander can force NPC vs Player combat all too easily. With players "deploying" arcs, this problem disappears. The commander/player relationship also deepens.
*edit* My terminology is pretty confusing: Commanders should be able to 'deploy' and 'undeploy', while marines should merely 'build' ARCs that are deployed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I totally agree with Tweadle on this one, except for one thing maybe; Marines would 'activate' the ARCs :P
rhombusLerk QueenJoin Date: 2011-06-23Member: 106055Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Crazy awesome games despite the tick rate which held up well for 30+ players for a few rounds. Can't wait to see it steady with that many people on Docking..
Ah, some news on the performance-front then? Cause I see 16-player servers' tickrate ocassionally dip into the single digits, can't imagine what would happen with 32.
<!--quoteo(post=1945773:date=Jun 21 2012, 10:28 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Jun 21 2012, 10:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945773"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Ah, some news on the performance-front then? Cause I see 16-player servers' tickrate ocassionally dip into the single digits, can't imagine what would happen with 32.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
fmponeJoin Date: 2011-07-05Member: 108086Members, Squad Five Blue
<!--quoteo(post=1945773:date=Jun 21 2012, 10:28 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Jun 21 2012, 10:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945773"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Ah, some news on the performance-front then? Cause I see 16-player servers' tickrate ocassionally dip into the single digits, can't imagine what would happen with 32.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
it was around 3-6. not great obviously, but still a breakthrough in terms of, we could play games, it was stuttering, but it's something to build on for sure. Not to mention, the game feels completely different, and way more epic, with 32 people.
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1945126:date=Jun 20 2012, 12:45 AM:name=serpico)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (serpico @ Jun 20 2012, 12:45 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945126"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Glad you asked. I would of course measure the win/loss stats, but also the win lost stats for games that end right away, the win loss stats for games that last a long time, and much more.
There is a lot that I could think to do with statistical analysis, and a <i>ton</i> more that someone with a bit of education in stats could do. You feed in a lot of data like whether arcs are used, how long the game lasts, when various different techs finish researching, where the starting positions are, and so on. Then you search for which features have the strongest statistical correlation.
What if it turns out that that the overall game is balanced, BUT:
Games that end within 2 minutes area almost all alien wins. Games that end after 30 minute are almost all marine wins.
Clearly that means that aliens are broken early and marines are broken late.
What if stats reveal that aliens lose a lot when they go shade hive first, or win a lot when they take out an IP within the first two minutes.
A "balanced" game should not be decided early, so ideally there shouldn't be any strong statistically correlation between stats that are detectable in the first few minutes and the end result of the game. There also shouldn't be a super strong correlation between winning and picking a certain strategy or between losing and picking a strategy that is intended to be viable. Ideally, people should be choosing weapons, upgrades, and lifeforms with reasonably even distribution without sacrificing a large percentage of their likelihood of winning.
Also, anything that is strongly correlated to winning should be something that is not possible to do trivially. For example "destroying 3 hives" resulting in 90% wins wouldn't necessarily be a sign of imbalance, but "researching jetpacks and grenade launchers" resulting in 90% wins obviously would be.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Fair points and I totally agree (even made a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114175" target="_blank">fancy post</a> a while ago about this). I'd even add that it would be good to add a flag for matches where cheats we're enabled (to exclude ones where people we're testing/not playing seriously) and a flag for matches on passworded servers (which is a good proxy for competitive scrims/gathers).
However, I think you can get a reasonably accurate idea of how balanced NS2 is if you just controlled for map, match length, playercount, and team skill difference. I did play around with looking for correlations with alien win % over B189-194 and did find significant positive correlations with alien kill %, skulk and lerk avg lifetime and negative correlations with minicyst, hive, marine, and ARC avg lifetime.
The hive relation actually surprised me because it basically said that aliens win less when they had a higher avg hive lifetime. The best reasoning I could think of for that was that in builds with more alien wins % (B189, B192-194), aliens we're able to drop more hives later in the game (because they were winning more) such that it reduced the average hive lifetime per game.
<!--quoteo(post=1945794:date=Jun 21 2012, 11:39 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Jun 21 2012, 11:39 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945794"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Fair points and I totally agree (even made a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114175" target="_blank">fancy post</a> a while ago about this). I'd even add that it would be good to add a flag for matches where cheats we're enabled (to exclude ones where people we're testing/not playing seriously) and a flag for matches on passworded servers (which is a good proxy for competitive scrims/gathers).
However, I think you can get a reasonably accurate idea of how balanced NS2 is if you just controlled for map, match length, playercount, and team skill difference. I did play around with looking for correlations with alien win % over B189-194 and did find significant positive correlations with alien kill %, skulk and lerk avg lifetime and negative correlations with minicyst, hive, marine, and ARC avg lifetime.
The hive relation actually surprised me because it basically said that aliens win less when they had a higher avg hive lifetime. The best reasoning I could think of for that was that in builds with more alien wins % (B189, B192-194), aliens we're able to drop more hives later in the game (because they were winning more) such that it reduced the average hive lifetime per game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow, sounds like I was preaching to the choir. Good work. I agree with your explanation for avg hive life as well. There might also be some worthwhile correlations to check for that don't necessarily involve who wins and loses. For example, one could collect data on individual "duels" by checking for all instances with marine A and alien B where one does damage to the other and one dies before either is damaged by any other source. Once you have your set of isolated "duels" you can check equipment and evolutions and see if any duals are "unwinnable," as this could be a sign of un-fun/unfair gameplay. Sometimes it may be appropriate (Onos vs vanilla marine) but it would be a good tip-off to places where it isn't. You could also check for instances where A kills B and B does 0 damage to A (or visa versa).
Two of my biggest complaints against NS right now are that aliens have crap for endgame effectiveness and also that the games often spend too long ending when they are effectively decided.
I'd quite like to see statistics on the average time until all res nodes are captured, and how frequently the team who captures fewer at that point <i>doesn't lose</i>, and then stats on the average game. Ideally different stats for each bracket of disparity between res nodes captured.
I'd also like to see how frequently aliens win long games <i>excluding</i> games where they were just having a hard time performing the coup de grace against turtling marines. This would be measured by excluding games where aliens collect, say, 3X as much Tres as marines, or something like that (easily tunable).
Comments
--Cory
It's more complicated than win/loss unfortunately when looking at the bigger picture. For example, what percentage of those marine wins were achieved by 20+ arc trains? You can't rely on a single thing like win/loss and say a game is balanced, it's much deeper than that.
But a game is never balanced until its balanced on the top level. It doesn't matter if P wins 60% of the games in bronze league, as long as master league and GSL is balanced.
However, having close to 50/50 in pub is better than not having it, and as long as UWE doesn't settle with only stats, I think its a good start.
<!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=Twitter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Twitter)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Wow, the balance in NS2 210 is awesome!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Made me chuckle, but I know you are probably right Cory. No hard feelings! :P
Playing NS2 repeatedly with players who consistently attempt to maximize individual effectiveness and teamwork is probably the best way to see how balanced things are. The pub winrates of the varying alien teams means little in terms of game balance. (again, proved by simple means of continuity of a function of lmg damage from 0 -> 100000 and the impact that has on marine winrate from 0% -> 100%)
We are still missing like jetpack upgrades and exos + their upgrades which will be a res sink too. But I agree that this patch res is way too plentiful, early game is almost non existent anymore.
It's a consequence of changing energy to TRes, because they have to account for the commander being able to drop meds/ammo/scan/beacon/and all those other things that required energy when he needs to be able to do it, but most of the time while you are gaining res you *don't* need to do these things, so that extra res for those things just accumilates and you have more for upgrades and buildings, and then once you have the buildings down and upgrades researching, you have nothing else to spend your res on except spamming meds/ammo/scans/<b>cysts</b> etc etc, so the problem hasn't gone away at all really, it's just made it much harder to balance the res.
It's a consequence of changing energy to TRes, because they have to account for the commander being able to drop meds/ammo/scan/beacon/and all those other things that required energy when he needs to be able to do it, but most of the time while you are gaining res you *don't* need to do these things, so that extra res for those things just accumilates and you have more for upgrades and buildings, and then once you have the buildings down and upgrades researching, you have nothing else to spend your res on except spamming meds/ammo/scans/<b>cysts</b> etc etc, so the problem hasn't gone away at all really, it's just made it much harder to balance the res.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I feel its more of a consequence of upping the res production rate for no reason at all, and then leaving upgrades and lots of other stuff cheap as ever. If they would of just taken out energy and leave resource production and prices the way they were it would of been pretty good. Then you would have to think when/if its worth to med/ammo/nano spam the marines or do i save for teching up instead. Now you can have it all without any thought like you were able to with the energy mechanics. This time it all just gets worse later on because you dont have to use the res for anything, and you get more of it than before.
Glad you asked. I would of course measure the win/loss stats, but also the win lost stats for games that end right away, the win loss stats for games that last a long time, and much more.
There is a lot that I could think to do with statistical analysis, and a <i>ton</i> more that someone with a bit of education in stats could do. You feed in a lot of data like whether arcs are used, how long the game lasts, when various different techs finish researching, where the starting positions are, and so on. Then you search for which features have the strongest statistical correlation.
What if it turns out that that the overall game is balanced, BUT:
Games that end within 2 minutes area almost all alien wins.
Games that end after 30 minute are almost all marine wins.
Clearly that means that aliens are broken early and marines are broken late.
What if stats reveal that aliens lose a lot when they go shade hive first, or win a lot when they take out an IP within the first two minutes.
A "balanced" game should not be decided early, so ideally there shouldn't be any strong statistically correlation between stats that are detectable in the first few minutes and the end result of the game. There also shouldn't be a super strong correlation between winning and picking a certain strategy or between losing and picking a strategy that is intended to be viable. Ideally, people should be choosing weapons, upgrades, and lifeforms with reasonably even distribution without sacrificing a large percentage of their likelihood of winning.
Also, anything that is strongly correlated to winning should be something that is not possible to do trivially. For example "destroying 3 hives" resulting in 90% wins wouldn't necessarily be a sign of imbalance, but "researching jetpacks and grenade launchers" resulting in 90% wins obviously would be.
The ARC problem is solved by having marines "deploy" them at locations by holding the 'use' key for however long (I imagine the commander will need to assign '<i>ready-to-deploy</i>' status to the ARCs to prevent unwanted deployment). This retains all the intensity of NS1 sieges (more so, if you include the A -> B journey) while still respecting the mobile siege cannon design. Commanders should then be able to undeploy sieges and micro them to wherever they please. For example, with the death of the accompanying marines, the best course of action might be to stay-and-fire or to undeploy-and-retreat.
Not only do I think that the marine deployment model is more fun, it also fixes the ARC-train problem without arbitrary rules. Each ARC has diminishing returns as they become increasingly unlikely to be deployed by the field players which makes for a great soft-cap that doesn't make trains entirely impossible. Rather, they simply become cost-ineffective. This method also respects the goal championed by UWE (and Hugh in the recent dreamhack Q&A) that the game should be primarily about player-player interaction. Currently, the commander can force NPC vs Player combat all too easily. With players "deploying" arcs, this problem disappears. The commander/player relationship also deepens.
*edit* My terminology is pretty confusing: Commanders should be able to 'deploy' and 'undeploy', while marines should merely 'build' ARCs that are deployed.
The ARC problem is solved by having marines "deploy" them at locations by holding the 'use' key for however long (I imagine the commander will need to assign '<i>ready-to-deploy</i>' status to the ARCs to prevent unwanted deployment). This retains all the intensity of NS1 sieges (more so, if you include the A -> B journey) while still respecting the mobile siege cannon design. Commanders should then be able to undeploy sieges and micro them to wherever they please. For example, with the death of the accompanying marines, the best course of action might be to stay-and-fire or to undeploy-and-retreat.
Not only do I think that the marine deployment model is more fun, it also fixes the ARC-train problem without arbitrary rules. Each ARC has diminishing returns as they become increasingly unlikely to be deployed by the field players which makes for a great soft-cap that doesn't make trains entirely impossible. Rather, they simply become cost-ineffective. This method also respects the goal championed by UWE (and Hugh in the recent dreamhack Q&A) that the game should be primarily about player-player interaction. Currently, the commander can force NPC vs Player combat all too easily. With players "deploying" arcs, this problem disappears. The commander/player relationship also deepens.
*edit* My terminology is pretty confusing: Commanders should be able to 'deploy' and 'undeploy', while marines should merely 'build' ARCs that are deployed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I totally agree with Tweadle on this one, except for one thing maybe; Marines would 'activate' the ARCs :P
into the negatives it goes.
it was around 3-6. not great obviously, but still a breakthrough in terms of, we could play games, it was stuttering, but it's something to build on for sure. Not to mention, the game feels completely different, and way more epic, with 32 people.
There is a lot that I could think to do with statistical analysis, and a <i>ton</i> more that someone with a bit of education in stats could do. You feed in a lot of data like whether arcs are used, how long the game lasts, when various different techs finish researching, where the starting positions are, and so on. Then you search for which features have the strongest statistical correlation.
What if it turns out that that the overall game is balanced, BUT:
Games that end within 2 minutes area almost all alien wins.
Games that end after 30 minute are almost all marine wins.
Clearly that means that aliens are broken early and marines are broken late.
What if stats reveal that aliens lose a lot when they go shade hive first, or win a lot when they take out an IP within the first two minutes.
A "balanced" game should not be decided early, so ideally there shouldn't be any strong statistically correlation between stats that are detectable in the first few minutes and the end result of the game. There also shouldn't be a super strong correlation between winning and picking a certain strategy or between losing and picking a strategy that is intended to be viable. Ideally, people should be choosing weapons, upgrades, and lifeforms with reasonably even distribution without sacrificing a large percentage of their likelihood of winning.
Also, anything that is strongly correlated to winning should be something that is not possible to do trivially. For example "destroying 3 hives" resulting in 90% wins wouldn't necessarily be a sign of imbalance, but "researching jetpacks and grenade launchers" resulting in 90% wins obviously would be.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fair points and I totally agree (even made a <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114175" target="_blank">fancy post</a> a while ago about this). I'd even add that it would be good to add a flag for matches where cheats we're enabled (to exclude ones where people we're testing/not playing seriously) and a flag for matches on passworded servers (which is a good proxy for competitive scrims/gathers).
However, I think you can get a reasonably accurate idea of how balanced NS2 is if you just controlled for map, match length, playercount, and team skill difference. I did play around with looking for correlations with alien win % over B189-194 and did find significant positive correlations with alien kill %, skulk and lerk avg lifetime and negative correlations with minicyst, hive, marine, and ARC avg lifetime.
The hive relation actually surprised me because it basically said that aliens win less when they had a higher avg hive lifetime. The best reasoning I could think of for that was that in builds with more alien wins % (B189, B192-194), aliens we're able to drop more hives later in the game (because they were winning more) such that it reduced the average hive lifetime per game.
However, I think you can get a reasonably accurate idea of how balanced NS2 is if you just controlled for map, match length, playercount, and team skill difference. I did play around with looking for correlations with alien win % over B189-194 and did find significant positive correlations with alien kill %, skulk and lerk avg lifetime and negative correlations with minicyst, hive, marine, and ARC avg lifetime.
The hive relation actually surprised me because it basically said that aliens win less when they had a higher avg hive lifetime. The best reasoning I could think of for that was that in builds with more alien wins % (B189, B192-194), aliens we're able to drop more hives later in the game (because they were winning more) such that it reduced the average hive lifetime per game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow, sounds like I was preaching to the choir. Good work. I agree with your explanation for avg hive life as well. There might also be some worthwhile correlations to check for that don't necessarily involve who wins and loses. For example, one could collect data on individual "duels" by checking for all instances with marine A and alien B where one does damage to the other and one dies before either is damaged by any other source. Once you have your set of isolated "duels" you can check equipment and evolutions and see if any duals are "unwinnable," as this could be a sign of un-fun/unfair gameplay. Sometimes it may be appropriate (Onos vs vanilla marine) but it would be a good tip-off to places where it isn't. You could also check for instances where A kills B and B does 0 damage to A (or visa versa).
Two of my biggest complaints against NS right now are that aliens have crap for endgame effectiveness and also that the games often spend too long ending when they are effectively decided.
I'd quite like to see statistics on the average time until all res nodes are captured, and how frequently the team who captures fewer at that point <i>doesn't lose</i>, and then stats on the average game. Ideally different stats for each bracket of disparity between res nodes captured.
I'd also like to see how frequently aliens win long games <i>excluding</i> games where they were just having a hard time performing the coup de grace against turtling marines. This would be measured by excluding games where aliens collect, say, 3X as much Tres as marines, or something like that (easily tunable).
It was porn. Exosuit porn.
--Cory
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Carefull, you'll give the modders ideas!