Asymmetry in NS harder to balance than asymmetry in other games
Sooty
Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11416Members
Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11416Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Or how I learned to to stop worrying and love the imbalances</div>There are 3 races in Starcraft and only 2 races in Natural Selection. This would initially make it seem like Natural Selection is easier to balance, but this is not the case. Obviously the two are different games, but there are some fundamental differences between the two which I believe make Natural Selection much harder to balanace than Starcraft. I know that several other topics are in a similar vein such as this one: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125036" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....howtopic=125036</a>, but I think the issues I am about to mention here have not been mentioned elsewhere. Here goes.
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1) Players are not required to play all three races in Starcraft, but players in Natural Selection sometimes have no choice but to play their weaker race
Take myself as an example - I can't shoot an LMG for nuts, although I consider myself to be a decent alien. Suppose that you have a server who's filled with people similar to myself, there's no way all of us will be able to play as aliens. What's going to happen when the servers' player composition is as such, is that aliens are just going to win most of the games, even if the marines are more coordinated than the aliens. Many a times, I've seen servers just die out because people get bored as aliens win game after game as majority of the 16 players in the server are not good shooters. This leads me to my main point:
2) The learning curve and payoff rate between the two sides are vastly different
I experienced this first hand in my own country's servers, where skulks began by running in straight lines on the floor without holding shift. Where gorges had no idea where to build clogs and hyras and oni didn't know how to run from a distress. The marines won the majority of the games in the first few days.
Less than 2 weeks later, skulks were beginning to climb walls, to jump madly everywhere, to holding shift to be stealthy, and aliens were doing most of the things that you should expect them to do. Knowledge based actions such as running from a distress, saving enough energy to charge away, moving in to attack during marine reload etc. were now being utilized by most players in the server. These non-mechnical improvements which aliens made to their gameplay allowed them to perform much much better than when the game was first released. Even highly mechanical actions with a decently high skill cap, such as shadowstepping, timing bites/swipes and wallhopping used with minimal skill level increased the aliens' effectiveness significantly.
What about the marines? Well, sure. Marines learnt to make use of hallways, to crouch to sneak themselves. But in the end it still mostly boils down to the one mechanic with the highest skill cap in the game - aiming and shooting at ridiculously difficult to see/hit aliens.
I know that others are considering teamwork to be THE deciding factor in this game, and some might even think that one race needs more teamwork than aliens to win (see the thread I linked above). I disagree with this claim, but nevertheless I do agree that learning to have teamwork can be quite difficult depending on the kind of players you frequently play with. But I think that this line of thought misses the point. Both aliens and marines get a ton of mileage from coordination, and perhaps one race does so more than the other. That is besides the point. The races are asymmetrical - the game probably can balanced around one race requiring more teamwork than the other and that is not a problem. The difference between the ability to work in a team and the ability to aim and shoot well is that a player can, by choice, choose to exhibit more teamwork in certain games. They can choose to open their mind to criticism and learn knowledge-based skills that will let them perform better. A player, however, cannot simply choose to start to aim better. This skill requires much more dedicated practice, and is more crucial to one race than the other.
To very briefly link it this to Starcraft, the mechanical skills of SC often translate from one race to another. The same is not true for Natural Selection, compounding the initial problem I mentioned.
3) There is no matchmaking
I was trying to think of potential solutions for the above problems, and I thought that the most obvious solution is to balance the game around teams dedicated to mastering marines competing against teams dedicated to mastering aliens. If we stop judging players by how well they play aliens AND marines, then we can differentiate between highest levels of marine play, highest levels of alien play, and the best players overall looking at the two different races averaged. Players need to be ranked differently for aliens and marines in order for matchmaking to work well. And it is the winrates from these matchmade games across all levels of skill level (pro-level aliens vs pro-level marines; pug-level marines vs pug-level aliens; pub-level marines vs pub-level aliens etc.) that UWE needs to take information from and balance again.
Attempting to balance for all skill levels is laudable, but without stats based on games where the two teams are actually even in skill level (taking into account the fact that players can and often will be playing the two races at different skill levels), any form of balancing for pub play is going to be essentially done with a blindfold. Without matchmaking, balancing for pubs will be extremely difficult. Without matchmaking, even the most balanced game will not prevent unbalanced games from being played.
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I'm quite pessimistic about this, and in the end I have decided that I don't quite care about balance any more. I have tons of fun playing the aliens regardless of wether I'm owning the marines hard or having a really exciting and even game, but the same cannot be said for games in which the aliens get stomped and the marines refuse to end. If balance can't be achieved, then damn balance. UWE, I implore you - make the game FUN for both races regardless of whether they are having a very close match or are winning/losing really hard.
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1) Players are not required to play all three races in Starcraft, but players in Natural Selection sometimes have no choice but to play their weaker race
Take myself as an example - I can't shoot an LMG for nuts, although I consider myself to be a decent alien. Suppose that you have a server who's filled with people similar to myself, there's no way all of us will be able to play as aliens. What's going to happen when the servers' player composition is as such, is that aliens are just going to win most of the games, even if the marines are more coordinated than the aliens. Many a times, I've seen servers just die out because people get bored as aliens win game after game as majority of the 16 players in the server are not good shooters. This leads me to my main point:
2) The learning curve and payoff rate between the two sides are vastly different
I experienced this first hand in my own country's servers, where skulks began by running in straight lines on the floor without holding shift. Where gorges had no idea where to build clogs and hyras and oni didn't know how to run from a distress. The marines won the majority of the games in the first few days.
Less than 2 weeks later, skulks were beginning to climb walls, to jump madly everywhere, to holding shift to be stealthy, and aliens were doing most of the things that you should expect them to do. Knowledge based actions such as running from a distress, saving enough energy to charge away, moving in to attack during marine reload etc. were now being utilized by most players in the server. These non-mechnical improvements which aliens made to their gameplay allowed them to perform much much better than when the game was first released. Even highly mechanical actions with a decently high skill cap, such as shadowstepping, timing bites/swipes and wallhopping used with minimal skill level increased the aliens' effectiveness significantly.
What about the marines? Well, sure. Marines learnt to make use of hallways, to crouch to sneak themselves. But in the end it still mostly boils down to the one mechanic with the highest skill cap in the game - aiming and shooting at ridiculously difficult to see/hit aliens.
I know that others are considering teamwork to be THE deciding factor in this game, and some might even think that one race needs more teamwork than aliens to win (see the thread I linked above). I disagree with this claim, but nevertheless I do agree that learning to have teamwork can be quite difficult depending on the kind of players you frequently play with. But I think that this line of thought misses the point. Both aliens and marines get a ton of mileage from coordination, and perhaps one race does so more than the other. That is besides the point. The races are asymmetrical - the game probably can balanced around one race requiring more teamwork than the other and that is not a problem. The difference between the ability to work in a team and the ability to aim and shoot well is that a player can, by choice, choose to exhibit more teamwork in certain games. They can choose to open their mind to criticism and learn knowledge-based skills that will let them perform better. A player, however, cannot simply choose to start to aim better. This skill requires much more dedicated practice, and is more crucial to one race than the other.
To very briefly link it this to Starcraft, the mechanical skills of SC often translate from one race to another. The same is not true for Natural Selection, compounding the initial problem I mentioned.
3) There is no matchmaking
I was trying to think of potential solutions for the above problems, and I thought that the most obvious solution is to balance the game around teams dedicated to mastering marines competing against teams dedicated to mastering aliens. If we stop judging players by how well they play aliens AND marines, then we can differentiate between highest levels of marine play, highest levels of alien play, and the best players overall looking at the two different races averaged. Players need to be ranked differently for aliens and marines in order for matchmaking to work well. And it is the winrates from these matchmade games across all levels of skill level (pro-level aliens vs pro-level marines; pug-level marines vs pug-level aliens; pub-level marines vs pub-level aliens etc.) that UWE needs to take information from and balance again.
Attempting to balance for all skill levels is laudable, but without stats based on games where the two teams are actually even in skill level (taking into account the fact that players can and often will be playing the two races at different skill levels), any form of balancing for pub play is going to be essentially done with a blindfold. Without matchmaking, balancing for pubs will be extremely difficult. Without matchmaking, even the most balanced game will not prevent unbalanced games from being played.
---------------
I'm quite pessimistic about this, and in the end I have decided that I don't quite care about balance any more. I have tons of fun playing the aliens regardless of wether I'm owning the marines hard or having a really exciting and even game, but the same cannot be said for games in which the aliens get stomped and the marines refuse to end. If balance can't be achieved, then damn balance. UWE, I implore you - make the game FUN for both races regardless of whether they are having a very close match or are winning/losing really hard.
Comments
Good post and I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.
2) the learning curve aka 'one race has to try much harder than the other in order to win' is always a problem. the solution to learning curve imbalances is to add more variables, meaning the encounters are very rarely decided by small learning curve imbalances. for example the ability for skulks to flank using vents, parasite wallhax, ambush from the ceiling, camo, leap upgrade etc are all variables which should increase your effectiveness against marines.
3) imo matchmaking is one of the worst ideas in the history of pc gaming. server choice is extremely important, i remember playing MW2 aka 'forgettable fluff with no server browser' and what happened when a hacker joined your server? the server died. when you find a good server, preferably with active voice comms; you will want to return to that server to play with familiar faces and good admins etc. matchmaking feels like single player, you're thrown into a game with random people with absolutely no control.
i've seen quite a few people misquote UWE's feedback regarding their balance philosophy, and find it very irritating. they read "we balance on public winrates" totally out of context, even though the same post contains other relevant sources like comp winrates, comp feedback, playtester feedback, community feedback and whether it feels right or wrong from a design perspective.
i guess ignorance like that is to be expected on all forums... some people really are of the mindset "I DIED PLZ FIX!".
<!--quoteo(post=2032360:date=Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2032360"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->1) there's only such a thing as a 'weaker race' in starcraft because you get a clear advantage if you focus your time on a single race. in ns2, it's advantageous to play both races and focus on constantly improving your weaker race; therefore you should never allow yourself to be in a situation where you play one race significantly weaker than the other.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I am not sure how you would justify your view here. I derive most fun from playing the aliens, although I'm perfectly willing to join the marines team if no one seems willing to join the alien team. My strength does not like in aiming, so I play around it by being the builder, the meatshield, the welder etc.. I am not sure why you think I should 'never allow' myself to be weaker at playing the marines. I didn't really choose to suck at aiming tbh. I very much want to be good at it. I just cannot justify spending the time practising it, because it means that I'd have to play the marines a lot more than I play the aliens. But like I said, I prefer being the alien.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say "there's only such a thing as a 'weaker race' in starcraft because...", whether I'm weaker at once race or not is not a matter of perspective. I am weaker in the marine race, and not because it's advantageous for me to focus on playing the aliens. I don't get any form of recognition for playing the marines as well as I play the aliens. I simply prefer to play the aliens, and am a much better alien overall than a marine. People who play with me often know my preferences, my strengths and my weaknesses, and they work around it - they accept these things and do not go out of their way to stop me from putting myself in the situation of being weaker at one race.
<!--quoteo(post=2032360:date=Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2032360"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->2) the learning curve aka 'one race has to try much harder than the other in order to win' is always a problem. the solution to learning curve imbalances is to add more variables, meaning the encounters are very rarely decided by small learning curve imbalances. for example the ability for skulks to flank using vents, parasite wallhax, ambush from the ceiling, camo, leap upgrade etc are all variables which should increase your effectiveness against marines.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How do I increase my effectiveness against aliens when I can't aim for nuts, even with skulks running down a hallway (zig zagging and jumping of course)? Maybe I can try to upgrade my CPU to avoid having ~30fps all day hmm...
On a more serious note, I wonder if you can explain why you believe that adding more variables can alleviate learning curve imbalances. Different "variables" or opportunities to utilize skills as I understand your usage of the word to mean, would each have their own learning curves and their own payoff rate. An example - adding in bhop might allows skulks to be on a more even footing, but if since this bhop feature would be a heavily mechanical skill (i.e. players cannot execute it just by knowing that the technique exists - they have to learn the actual input involved to achieve bhop) the designers need to realize that a large portion of the playerbase will never have access to this particular skill.
Then there is the issue of the payoff for a particular skill. A skill such as flanking using vents is easy to learn, and improves your effectiveness greatly. But if you get in range and you're unable to bite marines who know how to dodge your bites, your effectiveness as a skulk is still going to be capped. Fortunately, biting is quite forgiving (glancing blows and huge hitbox by virtue of you having to be in melee range in the first place). The same is not true for marine aiming. I know to aim at my friends' feet, to retreat to a hallway, to listen for footsteps etc. but if I can't aim then I can't aim. I am often very apologetic to my teammates about this, but that's just the way it is. The one skill that has the highest payoff is something that is very difficult to master - for most players I imagine - and this means that you will have a huge range of skill levels in players playing the marine race.
I hope this explanation makes it clearer for you for you to consider!
<!--quoteo(post=2032360:date=Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2032360"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->3) imo matchmaking is one of the worst ideas in the history of pc gaming. server choice is extremely important, i remember playing MW2 aka 'forgettable fluff with no server browser' and what happened when a hacker joined your server? the server died. when you find a good server, preferably with active voice comms; you will want to return to that server to play with familiar faces and good admins etc. matchmaking feels like single player, you're thrown into a game with random people with absolutely no control.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Worst ideas in the history of pc gaming? Pretty sure there's matchmaking in other games too, like... chess? Or rather, the rating system's point is to figure out whether a particular match is fair or not. I guess everyone's entitled to some hyperbole once in a while. Make no mistake, I'm not suggesting that the game needs to implement matchmaking. I am saying that balance is difficult to achieve because there WILL NOT be matchmaking in NS2, simply due to the nature of the game. (Who's to say there'll be no FPSes in the future who will try to implement something like that? Maybe there's already such a game I am not aware of.) So no, I don't see matchmaking appearing in NS2, nor do I think it makes sense for it to be implemented considering the small community of NS2 players in my community, and I am certainly not asking the developers to implement it.
<!--quoteo(post=2032360:date=Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM:name=tarquinbb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (tarquinbb @ Nov 23 2012, 02:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2032360"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i've seen quite a few people misquote UWE's feedback regarding their balance philosophy, and find it very irritating. they read "we balance on public winrates" totally out of context, even though the same post contains other relevant sources like comp winrates, comp feedback, playtester feedback, community feedback and whether it feels right or wrong from a design perspective.
i guess ignorance like that is to be expected on all forums... some people really are of the mindset "I DIED PLZ FIX!".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would appreciate if you could avoid trying to paint others as being ignorant from the get-go, as that paints you as being terribly contrarian for the sake of it. In any case, I'm not sure why you even brought up this point in this thread at this time. Did you think that I was actively misquoting UWE's feedback regarding their balance philosophy? If you could revisit my original post, I assure you that I implied no such thing as you mention here, and I apologize if I was not clear.
What I was trying to say was that balancing on winrates is completely acceptable, but such an act needs to be properly premised. The same is true for ANY other form of measure. Which kind of winrate will you value more - games in which both sides are similarly skilled or those in which the two sides aren't? Which kind of feedback will you value more? Feedback from players about games in which they feel that the skill levels on both teams are balanced, or feedback from players about games in which they are unclear as to which side actually properly played better?
Some forumers express concern that UWE does not have the tools to differentiate between meaningful data and noise. I am one of them. The way I framed my original post (with reference to other threads that talk about the difficulty of balancing the game) was precisely to suggest that there are others who share my concern who provide possibly the wrong explanations for why UWE does not have the tools to make such differentiations. Do you think that my arguments are as flawed as those expressed by those who share my concern?
I am not sure how you would justify your view here. I derive most fun from playing the aliens, although I'm perfectly willing to join the marines team if no one seems willing to join the alien team. My strength does not like in aiming, so I play around it by being the builder, the meatshield, the welder etc.. I am not sure why you think I should 'never allow' myself to be weaker at playing the marines. I didn't really choose to suck at aiming tbh. I very much want to be good at it. I just cannot justify spending the time practising it, because it means that I'd have to play the marines a lot more than I play the aliens. But like I said, I prefer being the alien.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say "there's only such a thing as a 'weaker race' in starcraft because...", whether I'm weaker at once race or not is not a matter of perspective. I am weaker in the marine race, and not because it's advantageous for me to focus on playing the aliens. I don't get any form of recognition for playing the marines as well as I play the aliens. I simply prefer to play the aliens, and am a much better alien overall than a marine. People who play with me often know my preferences, my strengths and my weaknesses, and they work around it - they accept these things and do not go out of their way to stop me from putting myself in the situation of being weaker at one race.
How do I increase my effectiveness against aliens when I can't aim for nuts, even with skulks running down a hallway (zig zagging and jumping of course)? Maybe I can try to upgrade my CPU to avoid having ~30fps all day hmm...
On a more serious note, I wonder if you can explain why you believe that adding more variables can alleviate learning curve imbalances. Different "variables" or opportunities to utilize skills as I understand your usage of the word to mean, would each have their own learning curves and their own payoff rate. An example - adding in bhop might allows skulks to be on a more even footing, but if since this bhop feature would be a heavily mechanical skill (i.e. players cannot execute it just by knowing that the technique exists - they have to learn the actual input involved to achieve bhop) the designers need to realize that a large portion of the playerbase will never have access to this particular skill.
Then there is the issue of the payoff for a particular skill. A skill such as flanking using vents is easy to learn, and improves your effectiveness greatly. But if you get in range and you're unable to bite marines who know how to dodge your bites, your effectiveness as a skulk is still going to be capped. Fortunately, biting is quite forgiving (glancing blows and huge hitbox by virtue of you having to be in melee range in the first place). The same is not true for marine aiming. I know to aim at my friends' feet, to retreat to a hallway, to listen for footsteps etc. but if I can't aim then I can't aim. I am often very apologetic to my teammates about this, but that's just the way it is. The one skill that has the highest payoff is something that is very difficult to master - for most players I imagine - and this means that you will have a huge range of skill levels in players playing the marine race.
I hope this explanation makes it clearer for you for you to consider!
Worst ideas in the history of pc gaming? Pretty sure there's matchmaking in other games too, like... chess? Or rather, the rating system's point is to figure out whether a particular match is fair or not. I guess everyone's entitled to some hyperbole once in a while. Make no mistake, I'm not suggesting that the game needs to implement matchmaking. I am saying that balance is difficult to achieve because there WILL NOT be matchmaking in NS2, simply due to the nature of the game. (Who's to say there'll be no FPSes in the future who will try to implement something like that? Maybe there's already such a game I am not aware of.) So no, I don't see matchmaking appearing in NS2, nor do I think it makes sense for it to be implemented considering the small community of NS2 players in my community, and I am certainly not asking the developers to implement it.
I would appreciate if you could avoid trying to paint others as being ignorant from the get-go, as that paints you as being terribly contrarian for the sake of it. In any case, I'm not sure why you even brought up this point in this thread at this time. Did you think that I was actively misquoting UWE's feedback regarding their balance philosophy? If you could revisit my original post, I assure you that I implied no such thing as you mention here, and I apologize if I was not clear.
What I was trying to say was that balancing on winrates is completely acceptable, but such an act needs to be properly premised. The same is true for ANY other form of measure. Which kind of winrate will you value more - games in which both sides are similarly skilled or those in which the two sides aren't? Which kind of feedback will you value more? Feedback from players about games in which they feel that the skill levels on both teams are balanced, or feedback from players about games in which they are unclear as to which side actually properly played better?
Some forumers express concern that UWE does not have the tools to differentiate between meaningful data and noise. I am one of them. The way I framed my original post (with reference to other threads that talk about the difficulty of balancing the game) was precisely to suggest that there are others who share my concern who provide possibly the wrong explanations for why UWE does not have the tools to make such differentiations. Do you think that my arguments are as flawed as those expressed by those who share my concern?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
no, i'm not implying that you misquoted UWE.
i just disagree with your premise that NS is harder to balance than other games. balance is tough in all games; especially asymmetrical games, but why is the combined effect of no matchmaking, choice to play weaker race or the learning curve more severe in NS2?
the learning curve is a valid point, but even using an example from a 'symmetrical' game like TF2's sniper: if you can't aim as a sniper, you're probably going to be far less effective than the developer intended. the learning curve in starcraft transcends the racial imbalances because the game is incredibly hard to learn, yet every race still has inarguable 'problem' matchups at certain skill brackets.
the community can say "this would be cool!" or the stats could suggest that aliens are OP, but at the end of the day it's UWE who make the decision. they've done a fantastic job with balance patches since release, in that the game is more enjoyable to play - especially involving stuff which wasn't viable like camo or regeneration. i don't see why you're so concerned.
Matchmaking isn't needed, teams are too large and the population isn't large enough to where that would not hurt the game. Drop in and out and a server browser are the way to go, while a good player can affect a lot and a bad player can hurt a lot, you can overcome skill differences with tactical choices in this game, we just need more viable options/strategies. L4D has 2 sides and the competitive community has done a good job of balancing the game, and plenty of pub friends I've played competitive mods with have more fun since both sides can be potent instead of just one, balance is definitely a pursuit that is worthwhile and is possible to achieve while keeping the game fun.