Race Balancing

[Axiom Guard]

I have read the post about Slaying the Vaga-Monsters.

That said, I would like to expand on RACE BALANCE a bit (if nothing else, just for another viewpoint to think about).


In every single game I have ever played anywhere, FPS or anything else; game balance is the most important aspect of the game. A good for instance is Team Fortress 2. It has invisible spies, super fast scouts, sentry-building engineers, etc. But it is very well balanced and tweaked over the years so that there is no real advantage to any class a person would choose except the player's own expertise. But a truly rounded player can play any class and do just as well with any of them, and this allows him to choose a class based on how the enemy is playing rather than just because they are good with one race.

The same should be true with this game. But it is not. Some races really are better, so much so that people have complained for years about them. If the races are not balanced, then the game is not balanced. Most races are just played to level them up in order to get one of the most powerful races. Why even have them if they are so weak that they are largely unplayed?

If you asked players to rank the best races, it would be relatively universal about which ones were picked the most as the very best. If that's true, then there's a balance issue; and it should be addressed. Reducing the health or increasing the timer to be able to do things would go a long way toward making the game more balanced; much like how the human's teleport was nerfed a very long time ago by greatly increasing the time to be able to teleport. Previous to this, a human was a better match for some of the strongest races. I don't remember the timer setting for arch-mage, but a quick setting made that race very powerful as well. If the most overwhelming races such as vaga had longer timers or greatly reduced health, then they would be more reasonable and better balanced.

And that's what should be happening with all races. They should be tweaked and re-tweaked until you get to a proper balance where when polling players about the best race the result is more random and less obvious.

This isn't just my opinion. It's the way ALL GAME CREATORS manage the balance of game play. Every single publisher spends hundreds of hours tweaking every aspect of the game until it is as well-rounded as possible. Then it is up to the players to become expert at what they enjoy most. Otherwise you end up with tons of races that are rarely ever used and some that are always used in almost every game because of inbalance. The tweaking of each race is a wise and mature aspect of creating a fun, balanced gaming environment.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

I have read the post about Slaying the Vaga-Monsters.

That said, I would like to expand on RACE BALANCE a bit (if nothing else, just for another viewpoint to think about).


In every single game I have ever played anywhere, FPS or anything else; game balance is the most important aspect of the game. A good for instance is Team Fortress 2. It has invisible spies, super fast scouts, sentry-building engineers, etc. But it is very well balanced and tweaked over the years so that there is no real advantage to any class a person would choose except the player's own expertise. But a truly rounded player can play any class and do just as well with any of them, and this allows him to choose a class based on how the enemy is playing rather than just because they are good with one race.

The same should be true with this game. But it is not. Some races really are better, so much so that people have complained for years about them. If the races are not balanced, then the game is not balanced. Most races are just played to level them up in order to get one of the most powerful races. Why even have them if they are so weak that they are largely unplayed?

If you asked players to rank the best races, it would be relatively universal about which ones were picked the most as the very best. If that's true, then there's a balance issue; and it should be addressed. Reducing the health or increasing the timer to be able to do things would go a long way toward making the game more balanced; much like how the human's teleport was nerfed a very long time ago by greatly increasing the time to be able to teleport. Previous to this, a human was a better match for some of the strongest races. I don't remember the timer setting for arch-mage, but a quick setting made that race very powerful as well. If the most overwhelming races such as vaga had longer timers or greatly reduced health, then they would be more reasonable and better balanced.

And that's what should be happening with all races. They should be tweaked and re-tweaked until you get to a proper balance where when polling players about the best race the result is more random and less obvious.

This isn't just my opinion. It's the way ALL GAME CREATORS manage the balance of game play. Every single publisher spends hundreds of hours tweaking every aspect of the game until it is as well-rounded as possible. Then it is up to the players to become expert at what they enjoy most. Otherwise you end up with tons of races that are rarely ever used and some that are always used in almost every game because of inbalance. The tweaking of each race is a wise and mature aspect of creating a fun, balanced gaming environment.

well written post!

some races are meant to be more powerful than others. that's why you need to work harder to level up enough to unlock them. and besides, one of the most powerful races is unlocked at level 0, anyway. WCS is perfectly balanced at the moment, other than evasion proccing a bit too often. If you are smart and know how to shoot, you can take pretty much any race out there and do well. Will you do better with a more powerful race? maybe. but claiming that it is imbalanced or wrong because you don't understand ibis WCS is foolish.

when did you start playing ibis WCS?

[Axiom Guard]

well written post!

some races are meant to be more powerful than others. that's why you need to work harder to level up enough to unlock them. and besides, one of the most powerful races is unlocked at level 0, anyway. WCS is perfectly balanced at the moment, other than evasion proccing a bit too often. If you are smart and know how to shoot, you can take pretty much any race out there and do well. Will you do better with a more powerful race? maybe. but claiming that it is imbalanced or wrong because you don't understand ibis WCS is foolish.

when did you start playing ibis WCS?

Quite a while ago. I have all the races. I recently started playing CS again, and this was one of my first stops.

Once again if you hold a poll about which races are the most powerful, then it will be obvious to you from the return data on that poll that there is imbalance. If there were not, then players would simply choose what they most enjoy playing. But if you are honest with yourself, you know which races will be picked over and over and over again in such a poll. And this suggests a huge balance problem. Game balance should be the highest priority. It's what makes games great.

[What]

This has already been talked about before, and nothing needs to be balanced. Some races are easier to play than others, but there is always a counter for another race. Sure the vagas are pretty powerful, and so is molecule, but they can all be effectively countered by another race or someone who is just good at the game. "Balance" would make the game to vanilla and uninteresting. Moreover, "balancing" a slew of races with different and unique abilities is not possible in the way you describe since there would be far too many variables to account for. I've seen plenty of the better players use some of the so called weaker races and do damn well.

[Axiom Guard]

I just played and I was the only player with a positive ratio on the losing team. It didn't matter, we got our asses kicked up and down and all around.

If you personally don't care about game balance, that's fine I guess. But the fact of the matter remains; every game developer that ever sold a game spent an immense amount of time on game balance. It can and should be done. And it doesn't need to mean nerfing races, although that's one way. It could also mean increasing the powers of other races, such as a faster timer for the ultimates, etc.


It would *NOT* be boring. The best games in all human history have always been the closest matches that were won by a field goal or a final last ditch effort throw of a basketball at the buzzer. EVERY PLAYER enjoyed EVERY MINUTE of the game because it was so close, and all the time everyone knew that it could go either way. What's boring is watching an MMA fight go 15 seconds. What's boring is a 44-9 superbowl. What's boring is when you're in a WCS game and the score is 19-4 and there's no real hope for a victory at all. The winners get a little joy I guess, but NOTHING AT ALL compared to how people would feel if it ended up being 20-19. THAT is game balance, and THAT is the best entertainment you can ever enjoy.

[CYBER]

Hey axiom, first of all, complements on the good post. Although this same subject has been touched upon many times before, I'm actually genuinely happy that you posted your case in a well written format, and didn't simply go on a rage wagon to scrap the strong races.

That being said, let me tell you something.
WCS is NOT balanced. It will never be. But that's just the beauty of it.
There is no ONE race that overcomes all of them. It is true however that there are races that are indubitably stronger than other races in SOME aspects.
It all falls under the "Perfect Imbalance" concept.
See here and you'll see exactly where we stand:



This is VERY obvious to notice in our server when you see people going to races with immunities, or buying laces and so forth to counter vagas.
Heck, if im playing a molecule, and half the other team decided to jump on shadow hunter? I'd definitely consider swapping my race because no amount of anti_wards would ever be sufficient. Not to mention that shadow hunters can shoot through your 100% invulnerable state.

If all the races are equally strong, there's no point of swapping races and working harder to unlock new ones (unless you want to be a level-ranking whore).
And that's really the core of our server: changing tactics and races to counter everyone else.
If a perfect balance is reached, it will just be a game of grinding instead of true genuine tactical gameplay.

ANOTHER concept we need to touch on here is taking into account the PLAYER using a race. As a game designer, it is VERY hard to take into account WHO's using that race, due to the fact that there are infinite possibilities of using each race in each player's own gamestyle.

For example, try to see how many players who've had Vagabond and Vagalion unlocked AND maxxed since forever, and yet are easily destroyed by other players.
The race ITSELF is not OP, but put it into a decent player's hands, with their own gameplay, and you have yourself a problem for the poor bastards.

For example, take that same vagabond and put it in Spasm or Masskid or Blamm's (or *humbly* even my) hands and you'd be hating on vagabond for the rest of the game. Heck Shady might do well against noobs, get owned by a few. However, vaga vs vaga, me and shady will bash heads forever, not because one of us is better than the other or better than the other players, but because we know each other as players and we READ each other's gameplay constantly. Another case of Player vs Player, not race vs race.

Vagabond is considered to be a stronger and more survival-ish race than vagaLION, however, put me against Wolfenstinger as a Bond vs Lion, and I can already admit to you that I'd get my ass whooped from mondays to sundays...

Heck, I've seen Brett MASSACRE people with Undead, Wolf holding an entire hostage room ALONE vs 7 other players (including humans, vagabond-me, and nebulas) only with a "crappy" genocide.

So to answer your question : is wcs unbalanced? Oh hell yeah. Is it TOOO unbalanced? Not really, only if you underestimate the races you play.

Sure rapscallions are argued to be weak, but holy fuck do these fuckers help at getting those "op" vagas stuck out of the blue. You just need to know how to play each race, and that can only come by getting your ass kicked daily until you change your OWN gameplay to fit the race.
You do NOT change the race to fit every player's gameplay, even if the gameplay itself is a universal tactic used by many.

Also, you need to take into account the people you are playing with. Most of the bitching that comes from the server is no longer a problem with the races, but the team distributions of those players USING those races. Swap a couple players around? And i can ASSURE you that the Vaga or human or molecule that was DESTROYING said team will have a harder fucking time keeping up.

There are times where I'd be wrecking an enemy team with a vaga because no one is countering me, and some random faggot i've never heard of starts flanking me and owning me. I check the hidden player names and I discover it's Tom Erdenay that just joined and playing solely to counter my ass. Surely enough, my team loses their first round... ONE player can make a difference, no matter what race they're on. Because he plays support and synergies with his team flawlessly.

Heck, playing a magician on a winning team will most likely get you killed and be counter intuitive. Put a couple bird-proccing magicians and a "camping" bloodmage on that team, and that OP vaga and molecule or even spidey will have the hardest time catching up to those birds...

tl/dr:
Chill on this thought for now: There is no one race that you can play all the time unless you wish to be countered all the time. Counter the counters. Play smart. And... well... hope that you'll find a loophole in the enemy's team structure.... And fyi, that loophole changes every game and every round. Be vigilant, and most importantly: enjoy the imbalanced game. It's more of a challenge than grinding...
How many games of the perfectly balanced Tic-Tac-Toe can you play before you figure out that if everyone was playing with optimal strategies, no one wins. There's no challenge or fun in it.
And this is why our servers will always be amazing.
Peace. and Thank you for your post, and for reading this, i hope.

[Axiom Guard]

Thanks Cyber. That was an amazing post and it does change my mind about balancing.

I would still argue that some races are exceedingly powerful and should be adjusted. But you have changed my mind about quite a bit of where I was coming from.


Could you please consider very slight modifications? There is a valid reason why players routinely call out for certain races to be toned down.




And again, thank you so much for your time and kind consideration. I'm not just bitching. I'm also trying to help. So Thanks!

[CYBER]

Thanks Cyber. That was an amazing post and it does change my mind about balancing.

I would still argue that some races are exceedingly powerful and should be adjusted. But you have changed my mind about quite a bit of where I was coming from.


Could you please consider very slight modifications? There is a valid reason why players routinely call out for certain races to be toned down.




And again, thank you so much for your time and kind consideration. I'm not just bitching. I'm also trying to help. So Thanks!

Glad I could help. We get these types of posts a lot, and they usually get side tracked with people bitching about the bitchers.
But yeah, try to find your own game style. U'll find it.

Arguably some races need a bit of a tone down, but only because they're doing shit they're not supposed to do in their own description:
ex: human's bash. Spidey's TOOO high evasion.
And some shit needs a tiny buff, like the void's proc rate and MAYBE the bird, just by like 5-10%... and perhaps hiding the rapscallion rings...

but other than that. Everything's all gd.

[acolyte_to_jippity]

Glad I could help. We get these types of posts a lot, and they usually get side tracked with people bitching about the bitchers.
But yeah, try to find your own game style. U'll find it.

Arguably some races need a bit of a tone down, but only because they're doing shit they're not supposed to do in their own description:
ex: human's bash. Spidey's TOOO high evasion.
And some shit needs a tiny buff, like the void's proc rate and MAYBE the bird, just by like 5-10%... and perhaps hiding the rapscallion rings...

but other than that. Everything's all gd.

what's wrong w/ bash?

[maynard]

WCS is balanced fine... as it's not meant 2 have every race at the exact same level of power... and those races that are far more powerful have limitations set for them.

Tf2 and everything else you're mentioning is irrelevant, as it has nothing 2 do with our server and what we went for.