brilliant thread is made about balance, or more precisely, imbalance, and its value in gaming.
people make 6 pages of replies about a race being imbalanced.
i believe the point has been lost. sadly.
brilliant thread is made about balance, or more precisely, imbalance, and its value in gaming.
people make 6 pages of replies about a race being imbalanced.
i believe the point has been lost. sadly.
Through the darkness of futures past,
The magician longs to see
One chants out between two worlds:
Fire, walk with me.
Because rapescallion is not balanced(still easier to say balance, saying imbalance without the context is to odd, and it is imbalanced, but to far imbalance) in any way. This thread was more directed at the people who bitch about vagabond and spider, which have counters.
rapescallion, is countered by everything.
The point is not lost, the point is a class has strengths and weekeneses that balance out with other races via counters.
Very good video but the problem therein lies that WCS mod isn't close to being balanced...and doesn't deviate by the normal 10-15% "jedi curve" it arks...hard. Much harder. It's like compariing WoW to Eve Online's learning curve...once the training wheels are off (and in css we all know there aren't ne) the curve is to steep and people stop wanting to play.
Races kdr evens out somewhat, although that's one of the reasons I've mentioned it's not that good of a mark. If we'd take human for example - it's kdr is underrated due to all bad people, but it's still one of the better ones. Thus, while it's not perfect, it does show a thing or two.
My bad for misreading, but what I was trying to point out that raps is not really that well defined by its ultimate - as I've mentioned, I barely ever use it when I play as normally it goes better without it.
It doesn't mean everything, but it does represent a few things. Yes, it's nowhere near perfect and I've seen it abused plenty of times, but it is slightly different for races than for people - all of these races have been played for a long, long, long time and experienced everything. Remember that kdr is counted from all the deaths and kills that have been taken, so while they're nowhere near perfect, they have some truth in them... Furthermore, notice the gap of the kdr between rapscalion and the next "worst" race.
Just barely. Yes, I realize that - I've finished a few calc classes and I'm an economics major, so that should already tell you that I know a thing or two, but now you're just trying to point out anything rather than addressing the actual point. The combination of skills for FP is just much better than raps - and they're actually both surprise races... If you do a heads on approach with FP and not try to be sneaky and make a surprise, you're playing it wrong. Both these races are ambush races - it's just that one of them is better at it and has much better chances of doing well with... And that's not raps.
I'm actually not arguing for anything (maybe ulti fix would be nice, but that's all) - I'm just trying to point out that it's underpowered, unbalanced and it fits our servers quite well :P
No, it was not lost. The only reason why I started to chim in is because some people said rapscalion wasn't weaker than other races. I don't mind that race and I am not arguing for any changes. Besides, to quite you yourself: "This is internet, what else did you expect?"
"They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard."Our subject isn't cool, but he thinks it anyway - he may not have a clue, and he may not have style, but everything he lacks, well, he makes up in denial!Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back.
I will grant you this, forgot about raps flickering not being 100%Originally Posted by Starsmine
The problem with the rest of your post is, you have the dice all falling for the FP and against the Raps. Yes, if he fails his skills, and the FP doesn't fail his, FP will be better.A flame pred has 40% chance to drop their weapon and a 35% chance to set them on fire. Both will keep the flame pred alive if the guy they are trying to knife has not yet droped, giving the flame pred the ability to either run or get another go at it. If the flame pred fails he blows up hugging the guy he was trying to kill.
Rapscallion has 22% chance to crit, if he fails to crit he is dead, running away is difficult, very difficult, they can see you and they dont have anything blocking their vision, slowing them down, or preventing them from shooting like a flame pred would. Their ultimate is useless as all it does is bring attention to their self, makes too much noise and is visible through walls.
Another problem is, Raps skill has one condition for working upon hitting. Does the enemy have <= 165/195 health upon trigger. If so, the enemy is dead. For flame pred, fire: is their sight impaired enough, will they spray and win, do you have the lace so they can't escape, or worse, will they just be able to normally outspeed you even on fire (Santa, enough speed on bunny hopping), if they have low enough health, this will kill them, however. For weapon drop: does their secondary gun have enough ammo, do they have auto pick-up, again, can they escape, do they even HAVE a gun, if they get knocked to a knife, do YOU have enough HP, this will never lead directly to death.
I do agree with their ultimate being useless for escaping.
Sorry, I too missed that. I interpreted what you were saying was that it was weak, not that it didn't define it. I also don't see what you not using the ultimate has to do with it not being defined. A few people have chosen not to use Vagabond's ulti in the past, doesn't mean the race isn't (largely) defined by the ultimate.Originally Posted by Erdenay
KDR represents a few things, I agree. Kills, deaths and the ratio of them. It shows how many kills players have gotten, and how many times players have died on those races. It also, as you rightly mentioned, have been played for a long, long time, with varied skills, glitches and races on server. Also, KDR does not determine good and bad races, unless you are only worried about, again, kills and deaths. If this is the case, then I'll concede the point.
Making me go look at the stats of the various races brings some interesting things to light. Only 9 races have been "played more" than Raps. As such, I assume this means it's counting time the race is in the server, and not each instance totaled. Either that, or for being so weak and useless, it bloody well liked. Also, the second lowest KDR, Magician, is a race that gets a large number of kills AFTER it has first died once, something that is not shown with KDR. The next, Hell Hunter, actually has less total kills than Raps, and has been released for 6 months longer than Raps. Heck, Archmage has 19,000 less kills than Raps, and he had more than 7 months head start. Raps actually has more kills than 7 races that were released prior to it. Granted, 5 of those races have less kills than some players do total. Also, of the 23 races with less playtime than Raps, 2 have died more times, which again, leads to to conclude "massed playtime" rather than "total playtime". There are also some oddities, including, random races killing with into_the_void, and various other skills they don't actually have. And then we have Free
On the numbers topic, I can say the same for you. Your point with the numbers seemed to be "changing the way we look at the numbers (1 time in 10 vs 1 in 3 and 1 in 5) makes the gap look larger". I probably would have been better off saying something like "2 in (very slightly more than) 9 vs 3 in 9" so they'd be on the same scale. Another point is, like I said, 1 time in 10 proccing really shouldn't be considered that much better, and if you think otherwise, we're just going to disagree, so I really had nothing to say. As for education, I can go on for days about that, but I digress. I figured you had some background.
As for which has a better chance, one of these has a better chance of not being seen before the ambush, and therefore doing a safer attack run, and it isn't the FP. I assume we can play the hypothetical situation game for some time, if you we want to continue play "which is better".
The correct statement is "people make 6 pages of replies about races being IMPROPERLY (im)balanced." which is exactly the point, I believe.
I did meant earlier in the thread that it's weak, but I also meant that, although after re-reading, I can easily see how it was missed. If you'll notice, most of the best people as raps don't use it much (if any) - just because that it's not that useful. Ask masskid. And yes, but it is different when you choose not to use ulti because you don't know how to work it well enough versus not using because it's not that useful and that your race works better without most of the time.
Agreed, nothing to argue here.
Well, notice that raps has 40 levels and it takes a while to max it... So that is the main reason for that.
How's magician kdr does not reflect that? It still goes into the kdr count... There's no separate bird category.
Yes and all of those races are fairly fast to level, unpopular and have been played less time (even though both races are actually pretty good).
As for that ultimate, I believe that if you kill a race that is in the black hole but is alive (when your teammates are sucked into it, but don't die), you get that kill as killed by into the void.
1 death? Ugh.. Okay? I'm assuming that zero was testing something there.
Fair enough - I didn't intentionally change the numbers, but I can see how they do make it look better for my argument than it actually is (even if it's not that big). As far as the actual odds go - flame pred has other skills that complement the fire while raps does not, so flame pred has much better statistic chances to use one of his skills on the enemy, although since we were discussing only 1 skill against the other, I do have to concede that.
Yes, this is situational and subjective, but I base it on a lot of previous experience and stats, although as you've said yourself, we could go on about this for days due to the fact that what we are currently discussing is not actually *factual*.
"They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard."Our subject isn't cool, but he thinks it anyway - he may not have a clue, and he may not have style, but everything he lacks, well, he makes up in denial!Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back.
Can't argue with people not using the ultimate because they feel it isn't useful.
"And yes, but it is different when you choose not to use ulti because you don't know how to work it well enough versus not using because it's not that useful and that your race works better without most of the time."
Actually, I'd argue those are the same thing in this case. If you don't know, or care, or want to, or are in a position to use it in it's most powerful, it will work better if you don't use it.
Before going into the psychostats things, looking at the things again, I realize, they didn't start counting till 2011-05-13, only a month and a half before Raps, so doesn't show as much as I thought.
"How's magician kdr does not reflect that? It still goes into the kdr count... There's no separate bird category."
I'm not sure what I was trying for that. I probably had some idea when I wrote it, but can't think of it right now. Probably has something to do with the ability for an incredible power increase after death.
"Yes and all of those races are fairly fast to level, unpopular and have been played less time (even though both races are actually pretty good)."
Well, other than genocide on the fast to level. Faster, yes. Unpopular, but still more popular than raps. Then we run into the problem I mentioned at the start of this section.
"As for that ultimate, I believe that if you kill a race that is in the black hole but is alive (when your teammates are sucked into it, but don't die), you get that kill as killed by into the void."
Ok, the rest of these? Bunches of 0s removed.
suicidebomber 23 1,269
into_the_void 4 475
hegrenade 1 293
Or better yet, from FP's list:
hegrenade 7 324
into_the_void 4 960
ak47 2 22,540
glock 1 4,305
raiden_thundrbolt 1 2,457
athena_relm 1 2,106
m4a1 1 31,731
scout 1 3,477
Methinks there may be something wrong here. Anyone who knows Psychostats able to clear up this?
And then we have free, which has 1 death. But if you look on the human page, he's killed it twice. Also related: Free's player Name? Rapscallion. He has been on 4 times, 2 games, 2 rounds, 1 map. He's been on for 3 seconds, but the time between the first seen and last seen was 25 seconds. I have no idea what's going on here![]()
If that's true, I question what people were doing. 23 kills via suicide bomber, and none with guns? Also, do you know how you get the "world" kills?