I guess if the stats aren't worthy we'll just go to the source of the problem. . .
Here's a recent game on KKG where teams were randomed showing about the time it became hopeless for Aliens
Game started off normal. . .
Aliens took Repair room / Crusher / Sorting and actually held them for quite a while
Eventually though the amount of pressure Marines were putting on Sorting became untenable
A small group pushed in from behind while the majority were coming down the main ramp
We won the battle, but were forced out as their reinforcements got back quicker than ours
We then switched focus immediately to Central
It was a 5on2 in our favor, but because the gate had gotten up while we needed an all-in at Repair we got booted out instantly
Since they own Central and Repair Crusher / Cavern becomes heavily pressured. . .
Some skulks slip through to harass, but little is accomplished as we are already losing the resource battle
Pressure becomes so great in Cavern / Crusher that we have to pull defenders out of Sorting who were guarding the Gorge and 2nd Hive
We lose 1 more resource tower and the Gorge is forced to run from Sorting when a scout walks in
We refocus to hold onto Sorting, but lose Cavern RT in the next wave
Marines are now constantly rushing Cavern and eventually the same guy that sprinted to pickup his Shotgun 3 times in a row finally 1 shots me as Lerk
By the time anyone can go Fade they have Exos
Rail Guns sniping from the cliff rip down anyone spawning at Cave if they don't mash Right Click to Leap immediately
Other Rail Gun Exos are holding the back entrance to Sorting and are not missing many shots; we're trapped
When enough Exos get done making the walk they finally push into Sorting where the team tries to hold
When it goes down there are only 2 or 3 eggs left at Cave with Marines siting on top of them to prevent Leap
To Quote Master Blaster who commands often on KKG:
(since the content patch)...I have yet to see the Aliens win yet. I'm surprised people are playing. I like the game, I like the community, but this is probably the worse it's been and I've played since build 180
---
xDragon:
Check the scores. . .
For a team that spent nearly all game losing the K/D & points are very, very close to the Marine side
The game right before this went maybe twice as long with a number of Fades never dieing and racking up massive kill counts
That game also resulted in an overwhelming loss for Alien side and with no Exos ever hitting the floor (all JPs + Weapon Support from Comm Drops)
I don't think a skill bias was ever in question especially with so many All Random games going down recently
I was playing in that round Squid. There was no plan for aliens. 1-2 skulks running to 2-4 marine stack. Basicc elements of ns2 in bigger scale (12 vs 12). Also commanded next round for aliens. Egglock in 2min and had to push all res for eggs with 3 rt. Play smaller servers.
The comm was telling us way ahead of time exactly what he was going to do and we were supporting him
Harass skulks would break off whenever they could, but pressure was very high
Guy picking back up his gun multiple times in view of our farthest away hive should be pretty clear indication
I was watching the map closely as I usually field command for Master Blaster and the number of skulks that pulled a head long suicide into bigger marine groups was pretty low that game. . .
Sorry the following game resulted in an egg lock; at the very least we didn't have that on Mineshaft =/
Well, we need a plot of winrate in function of player count. Remember that once you throw away all the information on maps, player count and skill level you can get 50/50 aggregate winrate while having imbalances at every level.
What's most striking from that pic is at 12 min you have no fades and a total of maybe 3 lerks (you, cyclone, and sausages). I still think egg-locking is the biggest issue, but the lack of higher lifeforms at the 10min mark is a game ender. Unfortunately, I see many pub alien players continue to skulk into the late-game.
There really needs to be a better method to help encourage and train new players in using the higher lifeforms (e.g. lerk, fade, onos).
Its like were back to saying Ns2 stats is accurate, lol.....
Care to explain how a significant sample size like ns2stats is not accurate?
If you can do so, you should be teaching at a university and schooling all those silly statisticians on why what they do is completely bogus.
Yeah looks like it was obvious and the devs did it for me, *shrug*.
In this case you may be right as accounting for server size appears to be very important to the results and, apparently, ns2stats has 24 player servers over-represented.
I thought you were making that same old argument that since ns2stats doesn't record every game that it is worthless. This is, of course, completely untrue. Which is why polling a national issue with only 1500 responses can still be amazingly accurate.
Then how do you explain the 54% alien winrate in Competitive? The more reasonable answer is that KKG servers are all 12v12.
as another person who regulars KKG servers, teams get stacked nearly every game. whether it's a known competitive player that people recognize, a group of friends, boys who want to be on the girls team, or purely accidentally, it happens. Even when the admin forces random teams, it usually doesn't make a huge difference because there's only a fewof truly good players (maybe 1-3) in the average game.
Sure, I find the average skill level on the server is better than most (which is why I play here), but it's nothing spectacular. team's almost always inevitably get stacked due to a large difference in skill, and a lack of "truly good players" to balance the teams.
I'm sorry, but saying "wrong" in any context is 'wrong'. They developed the game based on how they wanted to develop the game. It's their baby, and their call on where to take it.
I guarantee that for every person who dislikes the change, there will be another that likes it. Any commentary on these changes is entirely subjective, but I think people need to accept that UWE will be moving forward and not backwards on this. While they did correct an unintended bug in 240, they won't be rolling back the game to where it was before when aliens were winning 60% of the games.
Knowing what I know about game development, I can tell you that they just didn't whip this change up on a cocktail napkin and toss it in the next build. (Well maybe they whipped it up on a napkin, but they would have given it a lot of thought.) Seriously though, these changes came after weeks/months of hand-wringing. If this was the change they made, then they made it since they felt it was the best change for the game.
The real problem, IMHO, is what I said way back in the fall. Whenever you have a situation where one side is too strong, the end result of any change is going to bother people. No one likes nerfs. (or opposing teams buffs that are effectively a nerf) When you get a nerf people will complain about it since they had grown accustomed to the game as it was, and they don't like change. Honestly, I don't blame them.
However, change is going to happen.
What should be noted is that nothing is forever. The game will evolve and grow as the developers fine tune it.
I was offering honest feedback on what I felt was causing the imbalance. I have put a lot of hours into this game, more than I care to admit. That being said, I was trying to be constructive about the problem without forcing a major nerf that realistically isn't helping balance. It's creating this false sense of balance which is creating an unfun game.
While you may think that they put a lot of thought into this, UWE has a tendency to go overboard with their changes a lot of the time due to time constraints. They are a small company and usually try to push as much stuff into an update as possible, sometimes with poor results.
Anyways, this imbalance has existed for a long time, and they've skirted around a real fix for way too long. The economy for aliens is broken, period. It does not scale properly to the number of players that are playing and doesn't give a sense of game play balance. The only thing the last update did was make large servers completely and utterly imbalance towards marines, make the skulk completely unfun to play, and barely balanced comp play and smaller servers.
I play on servers 150% larger than the game is balanced for. Why isn't this game balanced?
If I wanted to play on a 6v6 server, well then I'd much rather play dota, LoL, or something else instead. 6v6 is a snooze fest on NS2.
On the topic at hand... Honestly, it's not that damn hard to understand why aliens suck when servers are populations are greater than 12. If you want to know why, just look at the other 4 dozen threads about it.
welp, while I do think skulks are a bit bad now, 12v12's don't really help the argument.
if aliens (and by aliens I mean the entire team) lose the first engagement, they get egg locked instantly, you can say that they lose early engagements because of the nerf, but I really doubt that pre-240 the situation was any different (still talking about 12v12 servers).
UWE has stated their intention to balance the game for a range of player counts. Your implication that the game is only supposed to be balanced for 8v8 is flat out wrong.
whether it's a known competitive player that people recognize, a group of friends, boys who want to be on the girls team, or purely accidentally, it happens.
Wells here's some food for thought. . .
If you recall I checked out some other servers before posting
I mostly ran the floor, but would also make suggestions if the situation was obvious (I wasn't going to be a mute)
I brought with me the tactics used on KKG and I remember quite clearly after one game the pubs on Alien wanted to know who was commanding Marines because they had never been stomped that badly before. . . they actually continued to comment on it well into the next game
So there is a lot more going on than the server or the regulars on it
Also might be worth noting that KKG used to have a 20on20 and 16on16 server that was only recently changed
I believe they also host a 6on6
---
Speaking of which, in lue of this thread and one other being posted, things have gotten desperate on KKG we started doing Captain Drafts after All Random clearly wasn't changing the results
Unfortunately I have to report that while this is making the games last longer the results are not changing
Aliens will be losing all game and be forced into some very risky All-Ins if they want to try to take back the game
With so many players though movement is at a premium and it is very unlikely you'll get most of your team somewhere without getting spotted
I've also been interviewing more people, but it's mostly been mean spirited remarks in reply to people in this thread saying the game is balanced
So if the stats weren't any indication already, things run very differently on KKG despite having the same balance as other servers
I continue to monitor the ns2 stats despite people claiming them to be poor
If the numbers continue to go up I'll be willing to give proof of trend that I already predict happening
---
CrazyEddie:
Most of ones that use a mic have voice modular software built into their headset so it's not that obvious to non-regulars
So what it shows is that for one reason or the other, KKG 24 player servers have become really unbalanced.
In 239, the KKG servers had the same winratio (55%) as the other ns2stats servers. So 241 seems to have made the game balance much more sensitive to large teamsizes.
The most probable cause being the alien egg-spawning not keeping up with the number of deaths suffered early on in the game - this has long been known, but upto 239, the alien commander could patch it by going shift and building extra eggs.
The increased death rate among skulks have probably meant that aliens in 241 and larger servers, aliens risk going bankrupt trying to compensate.
Or the KKG servers are running some weird mod, though I don't think so.
List of Mods:
NS2Stats
Player Badges
Extended Consistency Checking (Could be a reason that these stats are different)
Maps removed: Docking and Descent
The level of teamwork on the KKG servers are higher than the other pubs out there. The people who play on our servers usually communicate well with each other. With large player counts and marines working together a group of five marines can down a skulk in less than a half second by each putting 2 rounds into the skulk then move onto the next target. Couple this with the alien egg issue and you get accurate stats of NS2. UWE balances this game around the wrong principles(Make it a 50/50 split and the buck stops there). They need to balance it around fun. My reason may be vague since people have a wide range of what fun is, but to me it is simple. Being able to survive longer than half a second in combat is fun, because it provides you with a though process that perhaps... just maybe... you could be the contributing force to winning the game for your team. This is what UWE has ignored with their balance, and I strongly encourage them to look more into the fun process to balance a game and then their 50/50 split will come.
I'm so glad no Australian servers run NS2stats, the amount of stacking (on top of the already 50%+ on Monash) and stat whoring would be insanity knowing every single persons KD is being tracked and ranked against every other player in the world, because KD is the only true indicator of skill.
Oh dear. The 'S' word again. Now we're all wading neck deep in ****.
@MaximumSquid, you think a-lot about game balance. You analyse the issues, you want to get get to the root of perceived game problems, you want to help NS2 get better. Your thinking is a valuable contribution to the forum. But you dress up your arguments with the S word, and that's why your original post is not cricket.
The S word is of course 'statistics.' And boy, can people be fooled with statistics. A subtle assumption here ("Skulk rushes shouldn't count") a loose statement there ("60-40!") and suddenly, people think you know all about things you don't. You walked in here stating numbers as facts. Some people have no doubt believed you. That upsets me, because the numbers you stated are just plain wrong.
NS2Stats.org is a fantastic community initiative. It takes competitive play to a much higher level than would otherwise be possible. It is a brilliant resource for players that want to track their stats - An area where UWE let everyone down. What it is not good at, is calculating the probability of a marine or alien win in a randomly selected NS2 game.
That is not my opinion, it is a mathematical fact. The sample size for Build 240 on NS2Stats.org is 1,228 games. The number of Build 240 games (the 'population') was 10,697. This sample size is sufficient to state with 95% confidence that the ratio of alien wins to marine wins (the 'parameter') was somewhere inside a ~5% range.
Based on NS2Stats.org's data, you could start a thread with the title: "I'm 95% sure Aliens win 44-49% of build 240 games." Of course, saying 'I'm 95% sure' is a bit boring. It lacks punch. You want to just state facts, right? Let's use 99% confidence as a level at which we would accept that you can state a statistic as fact, like you did in your original post. That thread title could be:
"Aliens win 43 - 50% of games in build 240!!!"
And you would be telling the truth. But you didn't say that. Nowhere in your post do you recognise the limits of your data. In build 241, NS2Stats.org data (1,665 games as of this post) are sufficient to estimate with 95% confidence that the proportion of games won by aliens is somewhere between 51% and 47%.
Now that we understand the limits of statistics, just where in those ranges does the true proportion lie? I.e., if the statistical win-rate for aliens is somewhere between 51% and 47%, what is the actual win-rate? Luckily, the parameters (parameters are not statistics!!) of NS2 are not unknown. They are known, because Sponitor (Spark Monitor) records them. And according to Sponitor, the win-rates are as follows:
And for 241,
Lo and behold, NS2Stats.org was right. If you quoted them correctly. 49% - 51% in build 241!
Next time you start a thread about win/loss ratios, you had best be truthful about what you know. If you walk around using statistics in a way that could fool readers of these forums, mods will start taking action.
(Serious note: I dont think NS2stats should be recording any pub games, they end up simply supplying skewed information that of course only inevitably leads to skewed(misleading) perceptions.)
I think the point to take home here is that Only UWE really knows what the true state of game balance is because they are the ones who know all of the information to begin with, Trying to draw conclusions from outside sources is just going to end badly from the get-go.
That's pretty much why we're constantly slamming our heads into our desk everytime someone quotes NS2stats relating to the state of balance. NS2stats provides an amazing service to the competative portion of the community, however do I think they should be providing stats to regular public servers?
I really think they need to take a secondary look at that.
Trying to draw conclusions from outside sources is just going to end badly from the get-go.
It can end well, if the limitations of those outside sources are recognised. A change in NS2Stats.org balance is a relevant discussion point, if mathematical limits of its accuracy are recognised. Hell, I love NS2Stats.org, and people shouldn't read my post as 'NS2Stats.org is not good!' It's 'NS2Stats.org is awesome! But has some limitations.'
I wish Sponitor were publicly available, but it has no front end at the moment. One day we would love to make this data available to everyone so that you know exactly what the state of the game is at any time.
I dont think NS2stats should be recording any pub games, they end up simply supplying skewed information
The NS2Stats.org public balance data is accurate (though I am wary of some modded servers). It's not skewed information. It is just information that must be read in context. I.e when you qoute it, you must recognise the confidence interval that is applicable to the sample size. Which is hard without Sponitor access, because you need to know population size.
You can apply +/- 2.5% as a rough guide for 95% confidence and +/- 3.6% for 99% confidence.
241 seems pretty balanced to me. Skulks are no longer the bricks they were in 240.
The only problem I see now is the 20 res nuclear cannon shotgun. Luckily a lot of players aren't Bruce Willis with it but it is still very much a meatgrinder. I don't even consider getting close to a group of 3+ shotgunners as a Fade. Even if they're distracted it's just not worth the risk. A good shotgunner will put you down swiftly.
Otherwise everything seems good. It's certainly a lot more balanced now than it was back in December. I don't understand what your complaints are for. Maybe you just had stacked teams and/or a series a bad rounds?
I don't usually jump into these, but while your "stats" might show balance, the route you took to achieve that balance was wrong. Well maybe it was a design decision by you guys, therefore not "wrong", but I'm going to try to argue that it was possibly the wrong direction.
I'm not posting those stats to get involved in any discussion regarding in what way the game should be balanced, or to suggest that things are fine as they are. I just don't like to see long discussions about what is or is not working with the game, that is continuously based on the wrong statistical data.
As someone who analysis data as part of my job I can say that the "overall win rate" is garbage metric that gets corrupted by data points that should be ignored.
Not all data is created equally, for example toll comms (can really screw aliens over...but will lose marines games) contaminates data.
If a call centre gets a spike in calls due to some media announcement (non recurring event) then you want to normalise or exclude that data otherwise it will inflate your call volumes incorrectly.
Game length is one metric that should be used to exclude data from the calcs.
Whilst UWE are great programmers and devs...I think their analytical skills need some improvement.
UWE has only ever given an overall figure and no clarity around what parameters they are using to collate this data.
Its about time we go some information around what parameters you guys are using (simply including all data points without cleansing is GIGO).
You need to factor in game length and team numbers at a minimum and create subset that you measure.
UWE are seemingly oversimplifying the data and its not reflective of real games.
Any result with less than 5 minutes needs to be excluded, perhaps also any results over say 45 minutes (or an hour).
Games with less than 7 a side should also be excluded, 12player severs are not what most people play on, 16 player and up is what should be looked at..
This will show how things go when both sides have a decent start and no major stuff up happen (or people get bored and leave server (often happens on longer games)).
Also both sides have a reasonable number of players.
If UWE would at least show the data in a similar manner to how it was presented by OP they could very well stop these discussions in their tracks.
You say something is based on wrong statistical data?
So NS2 stats is not collecting game results correctly?
Just because some data has been normalised or cleansed does not invalidate the data.
People are complaining not because someone threw the stats up...in fact the complaints preceded the stats in this case.
I recall during the beta we supposedly had 50% win rates, alien gameplay is just as broken now with the accel issues as it was then with the bite cone issue (actually getting narrower as it got closer to skulk).
Marines have much better hit reg now and that was needed, but the accel changes have swung the pendulum too far.
As a predominantly alien player I have almost stopped playing entirely as I dont stand a chance against an equally skilled marine...even when I have the drop on them.
I am not the only person saying there are balance issues and the skulks garbage again.
Time to go looking at those stats again in greater detail and work out why you have the public screaming that its unbalanced yet you guys shows stats that are ~50%.
Dont get me wrong UWE you do a great job, I just hate how you simplify stats to the point they are meaningless.
Yes, it was pointed out to me very quickly that despite my best efforts the information I gathered may not be accurate
As such I quickly moved discussion of the problems on the KKG forums directly so the community could better serve to solve the issue
I ran additional tests, ran more interviews, and the like. . . I quickly narrowed the gap Things are still quite bad on the KKG servers, but I'm hopeful
Someone who played there literally all day today tells me they have only seen Aliens win 2 games
I kept the thread going a little while longer because I take responsibility for what I say on the Internet and wanted to keep support open on major threads
You probably have more experience in this area and take justification in what you present just as I do, but I don't think threatening someone who only comes to the forums to give and receive support is in the best of taste
---
For everyone else I'll be only bumping this thread if a reasonable solution can be found
While I would greatly prefer not to, KKG may need to look into running a balance mod
Yes, it was pointed out to me very quickly that despite my best efforts the information I gathered may not be accurate
As such I quickly moved discussion of the problems on the KKG forums directly so the community could better serve to solve the issue
I ran additional tests, ran more interviews, and the like. . . I quickly narrowed the gap Things are still quite bad on the KKG servers, but I'm hopeful
Someone who played there literally all day today tells me they have only seen Aliens win 2 games
I kept the thread going a little while longer because I take responsibility for what I say on the Internet and wanted to keep support open on major threads
You probably have more experience in this area and take justification in what you present just as I do, but I don't think threatening someone who only comes to the forums to give and receive support is in the best of taste
---
For everyone else I'll be only bumping this thread if a reasonable solution can be found
While I would greatly prefer not to KKG may need to look into running a balance mod
Any suggestions are greatly welcomed
-
The game is balanced for 8v8 not 12v12.
24 player games have a big marine slant. Play on a 16 player server.
Comments
Here's a recent game on KKG where teams were randomed showing about the time it became hopeless for Aliens
Game started off normal. . .
Aliens took Repair room / Crusher / Sorting and actually held them for quite a while
Eventually though the amount of pressure Marines were putting on Sorting became untenable
A small group pushed in from behind while the majority were coming down the main ramp
We won the battle, but were forced out as their reinforcements got back quicker than ours
We then switched focus immediately to Central
It was a 5on2 in our favor, but because the gate had gotten up while we needed an all-in at Repair we got booted out instantly
Since they own Central and Repair Crusher / Cavern becomes heavily pressured. . .
Some skulks slip through to harass, but little is accomplished as we are already losing the resource battle
Pressure becomes so great in Cavern / Crusher that we have to pull defenders out of Sorting who were guarding the Gorge and 2nd Hive
We lose 1 more resource tower and the Gorge is forced to run from Sorting when a scout walks in
We refocus to hold onto Sorting, but lose Cavern RT in the next wave
Marines are now constantly rushing Cavern and eventually the same guy that sprinted to pickup his Shotgun 3 times in a row finally 1 shots me as Lerk
By the time anyone can go Fade they have Exos
Rail Guns sniping from the cliff rip down anyone spawning at Cave if they don't mash Right Click to Leap immediately
Other Rail Gun Exos are holding the back entrance to Sorting and are not missing many shots; we're trapped
When enough Exos get done making the walk they finally push into Sorting where the team tries to hold
When it goes down there are only 2 or 3 eggs left at Cave with Marines siting on top of them to prevent Leap
To Quote Master Blaster who commands often on KKG:
---
xDragon:
Check the scores. . .
For a team that spent nearly all game losing the K/D & points are very, very close to the Marine side
The game right before this went maybe twice as long with a number of Fades never dieing and racking up massive kill counts
That game also resulted in an overwhelming loss for Alien side and with no Exos ever hitting the floor (all JPs + Weapon Support from Comm Drops)
I don't think a skill bias was ever in question especially with so many All Random games going down recently
-
Always thought maximum player count should be 16 for ns2
The comm was telling us way ahead of time exactly what he was going to do and we were supporting him
Harass skulks would break off whenever they could, but pressure was very high
Guy picking back up his gun multiple times in view of our farthest away hive should be pretty clear indication
I was watching the map closely as I usually field command for Master Blaster and the number of skulks that pulled a head long suicide into bigger marine groups was pretty low that game. . .
Sorry the following game resulted in an egg lock; at the very least we didn't have that on Mineshaft =/
There really needs to be a better method to help encourage and train new players in using the higher lifeforms (e.g. lerk, fade, onos).
In this case you may be right as accounting for server size appears to be very important to the results and, apparently, ns2stats has 24 player servers over-represented.
I thought you were making that same old argument that since ns2stats doesn't record every game that it is worthless. This is, of course, completely untrue. Which is why polling a national issue with only 1500 responses can still be amazingly accurate.
Anyway, sorry if I mosunderstood your point.
Sure, I find the average skill level on the server is better than most (which is why I play here), but it's nothing spectacular. team's almost always inevitably get stacked due to a large difference in skill, and a lack of "truly good players" to balance the teams.
I was offering honest feedback on what I felt was causing the imbalance. I have put a lot of hours into this game, more than I care to admit. That being said, I was trying to be constructive about the problem without forcing a major nerf that realistically isn't helping balance. It's creating this false sense of balance which is creating an unfun game.
While you may think that they put a lot of thought into this, UWE has a tendency to go overboard with their changes a lot of the time due to time constraints. They are a small company and usually try to push as much stuff into an update as possible, sometimes with poor results.
Anyways, this imbalance has existed for a long time, and they've skirted around a real fix for way too long. The economy for aliens is broken, period. It does not scale properly to the number of players that are playing and doesn't give a sense of game play balance. The only thing the last update did was make large servers completely and utterly imbalance towards marines, make the skulk completely unfun to play, and barely balanced comp play and smaller servers.
Looking at all KKG games for 240/241 on mineshaft brings back a little over 100, or about 33% of the games... Thats not helping your 'balance'.
If I wanted to play on a 6v6 server, well then I'd much rather play dota, LoL, or something else instead. 6v6 is a snooze fest on NS2.
On the topic at hand... Honestly, it's not that damn hard to understand why aliens suck when servers are populations are greater than 12. If you want to know why, just look at the other 4 dozen threads about it.
if aliens (and by aliens I mean the entire team) lose the first engagement, they get egg locked instantly, you can say that they lose early engagements because of the nerf, but I really doubt that pre-240 the situation was any different (still talking about 12v12 servers).
>>implying it's okay for a game to be balanced for a specific number of players
UWE has stated their intention to balance the game for a range of player counts. Your implication that the game is only supposed to be balanced for 8v8 is flat out wrong.
You have girls on your servers?
No wonder they're always full.
Wells here's some food for thought. . .
If you recall I checked out some other servers before posting
I mostly ran the floor, but would also make suggestions if the situation was obvious (I wasn't going to be a mute)
I brought with me the tactics used on KKG and I remember quite clearly after one game the pubs on Alien wanted to know who was commanding Marines because they had never been stomped that badly before. . . they actually continued to comment on it well into the next game
So there is a lot more going on than the server or the regulars on it
Also might be worth noting that KKG used to have a 20on20 and 16on16 server that was only recently changed
I believe they also host a 6on6
---
Speaking of which, in lue of this thread and one other being posted, things have gotten desperate on KKG we started doing Captain Drafts after All Random clearly wasn't changing the results
Unfortunately I have to report that while this is making the games last longer the results are not changing
Aliens will be losing all game and be forced into some very risky All-Ins if they want to try to take back the game
With so many players though movement is at a premium and it is very unlikely you'll get most of your team somewhere without getting spotted
I've also been interviewing more people, but it's mostly been mean spirited remarks in reply to people in this thread saying the game is balanced
So if the stats weren't any indication already, things run very differently on KKG despite having the same balance as other servers
I continue to monitor the ns2 stats despite people claiming them to be poor
If the numbers continue to go up I'll be willing to give proof of trend that I already predict happening
---
CrazyEddie:
Most of ones that use a mic have voice modular software built into their headset so it's not that obvious to non-regulars
-
List of Mods:
NS2Stats
Player Badges
Extended Consistency Checking (Could be a reason that these stats are different)
Maps removed: Docking and Descent
The level of teamwork on the KKG servers are higher than the other pubs out there. The people who play on our servers usually communicate well with each other. With large player counts and marines working together a group of five marines can down a skulk in less than a half second by each putting 2 rounds into the skulk then move onto the next target. Couple this with the alien egg issue and you get accurate stats of NS2. UWE balances this game around the wrong principles(Make it a 50/50 split and the buck stops there). They need to balance it around fun. My reason may be vague since people have a wide range of what fun is, but to me it is simple. Being able to survive longer than half a second in combat is fun, because it provides you with a though process that perhaps... just maybe... you could be the contributing force to winning the game for your team. This is what UWE has ignored with their balance, and I strongly encourage them to look more into the fun process to balance a game and then their 50/50 split will come.
@MaximumSquid, you think a-lot about game balance. You analyse the issues, you want to get get to the root of perceived game problems, you want to help NS2 get better. Your thinking is a valuable contribution to the forum. But you dress up your arguments with the S word, and that's why your original post is not cricket.
The S word is of course 'statistics.' And boy, can people be fooled with statistics. A subtle assumption here ("Skulk rushes shouldn't count") a loose statement there ("60-40!") and suddenly, people think you know all about things you don't. You walked in here stating numbers as facts. Some people have no doubt believed you. That upsets me, because the numbers you stated are just plain wrong.
NS2Stats.org is a fantastic community initiative. It takes competitive play to a much higher level than would otherwise be possible. It is a brilliant resource for players that want to track their stats - An area where UWE let everyone down. What it is not good at, is calculating the probability of a marine or alien win in a randomly selected NS2 game.
That is not my opinion, it is a mathematical fact. The sample size for Build 240 on NS2Stats.org is 1,228 games. The number of Build 240 games (the 'population') was 10,697. This sample size is sufficient to state with 95% confidence that the ratio of alien wins to marine wins (the 'parameter') was somewhere inside a ~5% range.
Based on NS2Stats.org's data, you could start a thread with the title: "I'm 95% sure Aliens win 44-49% of build 240 games." Of course, saying 'I'm 95% sure' is a bit boring. It lacks punch. You want to just state facts, right? Let's use 99% confidence as a level at which we would accept that you can state a statistic as fact, like you did in your original post. That thread title could be:
"Aliens win 43 - 50% of games in build 240!!!"
And you would be telling the truth. But you didn't say that. Nowhere in your post do you recognise the limits of your data. In build 241, NS2Stats.org data (1,665 games as of this post) are sufficient to estimate with 95% confidence that the proportion of games won by aliens is somewhere between 51% and 47%.
Now that we understand the limits of statistics, just where in those ranges does the true proportion lie? I.e., if the statistical win-rate for aliens is somewhere between 51% and 47%, what is the actual win-rate? Luckily, the parameters (parameters are not statistics!!) of NS2 are not unknown. They are known, because Sponitor (Spark Monitor) records them. And according to Sponitor, the win-rates are as follows:
And for 241,
Lo and behold, NS2Stats.org was right. If you quoted them correctly. 49% - 51% in build 241!
Next time you start a thread about win/loss ratios, you had best be truthful about what you know. If you walk around using statistics in a way that could fool readers of these forums, mods will start taking action.
(Serious note: I dont think NS2stats should be recording any pub games, they end up simply supplying skewed information that of course only inevitably leads to skewed(misleading) perceptions.)
I really think they need to take a secondary look at that.
It can end well, if the limitations of those outside sources are recognised. A change in NS2Stats.org balance is a relevant discussion point, if mathematical limits of its accuracy are recognised. Hell, I love NS2Stats.org, and people shouldn't read my post as 'NS2Stats.org is not good!' It's 'NS2Stats.org is awesome! But has some limitations.'
I wish Sponitor were publicly available, but it has no front end at the moment. One day we would love to make this data available to everyone so that you know exactly what the state of the game is at any time.
The NS2Stats.org public balance data is accurate (though I am wary of some modded servers). It's not skewed information. It is just information that must be read in context. I.e when you qoute it, you must recognise the confidence interval that is applicable to the sample size. Which is hard without Sponitor access, because you need to know population size.
You can apply +/- 2.5% as a rough guide for 95% confidence and +/- 3.6% for 99% confidence.
People that want to read up more on the relationship between statistics and parameters, here is a wikipedia article on confidence levels and confidence intervals.
The only problem I see now is the 20 res nuclear cannon shotgun. Luckily a lot of players aren't Bruce Willis with it but it is still very much a meatgrinder. I don't even consider getting close to a group of 3+ shotgunners as a Fade. Even if they're distracted it's just not worth the risk. A good shotgunner will put you down swiftly.
Otherwise everything seems good. It's certainly a lot more balanced now than it was back in December. I don't understand what your complaints are for. Maybe you just had stacked teams and/or a series a bad rounds?
As someone who analysis data as part of my job I can say that the "overall win rate" is garbage metric that gets corrupted by data points that should be ignored.
Not all data is created equally, for example toll comms (can really screw aliens over...but will lose marines games) contaminates data.
If a call centre gets a spike in calls due to some media announcement (non recurring event) then you want to normalise or exclude that data otherwise it will inflate your call volumes incorrectly.
Game length is one metric that should be used to exclude data from the calcs.
Whilst UWE are great programmers and devs...I think their analytical skills need some improvement.
UWE has only ever given an overall figure and no clarity around what parameters they are using to collate this data.
Its about time we go some information around what parameters you guys are using (simply including all data points without cleansing is GIGO).
You need to factor in game length and team numbers at a minimum and create subset that you measure.
UWE are seemingly oversimplifying the data and its not reflective of real games.
Any result with less than 5 minutes needs to be excluded, perhaps also any results over say 45 minutes (or an hour).
Games with less than 7 a side should also be excluded, 12player severs are not what most people play on, 16 player and up is what should be looked at..
This will show how things go when both sides have a decent start and no major stuff up happen (or people get bored and leave server (often happens on longer games)).
Also both sides have a reasonable number of players.
If UWE would at least show the data in a similar manner to how it was presented by OP they could very well stop these discussions in their tracks.
You say something is based on wrong statistical data?
So NS2 stats is not collecting game results correctly?
Just because some data has been normalised or cleansed does not invalidate the data.
People are complaining not because someone threw the stats up...in fact the complaints preceded the stats in this case.
I recall during the beta we supposedly had 50% win rates, alien gameplay is just as broken now with the accel issues as it was then with the bite cone issue (actually getting narrower as it got closer to skulk).
Marines have much better hit reg now and that was needed, but the accel changes have swung the pendulum too far.
As a predominantly alien player I have almost stopped playing entirely as I dont stand a chance against an equally skilled marine...even when I have the drop on them.
I am not the only person saying there are balance issues and the skulks garbage again.
Time to go looking at those stats again in greater detail and work out why you have the public screaming that its unbalanced yet you guys shows stats that are ~50%.
Dont get me wrong UWE you do a great job, I just hate how you simplify stats to the point they are meaningless.
Yes, it was pointed out to me very quickly that despite my best efforts the information I gathered may not be accurate
As such I quickly moved discussion of the problems on the KKG forums directly so the community could better serve to solve the issue
I ran additional tests, ran more interviews, and the like. . . I quickly narrowed the gap
Things are still quite bad on the KKG servers, but I'm hopeful
Someone who played there literally all day today tells me they have only seen Aliens win 2 games
I kept the thread going a little while longer because I take responsibility for what I say on the Internet and wanted to keep support open on major threads
You probably have more experience in this area and take justification in what you present just as I do, but I don't think threatening someone who only comes to the forums to give and receive support is in the best of taste
---
For everyone else I'll be only bumping this thread if a reasonable solution can be found
While I would greatly prefer not to, KKG may need to look into running a balance mod
Any suggestions are greatly welcomed
-
The game is balanced for 8v8 not 12v12.
24 player games have a big marine slant. Play on a 16 player server.