Then you would have "gotten" me, and I would be "hurt", and then you would have "succeeded", because you're, at this point, attempting to "hurt" me, right?
Uncommon SenseMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Trying to strip away variables to make a balanced competitive pvp game leads to all players having to play the same character...
Player skill sure...nobody will deny that as being important.
Trying to crunch the data on a primary level will not amount to anything in such a broad range of parameters.
You can compare a +5 sword to a +5mace all you want but it in the grand scheme of things it will mean little to nothing.
economy, timezone, group dynamics, social motivations and the number 1 chaotic force human behavior.
In an MMO with a plethora of interactions trying to chart it typically leads to a meta that does not play out in the game environment.
Trying to strip away variables to make a balanced competitive pvp game leads to all players having to play the same character...
Player skill sure...nobody will deny that as being important.
Trying to crunch the data on a primary level will not amount to anything in such a broad range of parameters.
You can compare a +5 sword to a +5mace all you want but it in the grand scheme of things it will mean little to nothing.
economy, timezone, group dynamics, social motivations and the number 1 chaotic force human behavior.
In an MMO with a plethora of interactions trying to chart it typically leads to a meta that does not play out in the game environment.
If only this was true!
But it is unfortunately developer skill dependent, which means that every time a developer fails, it is more likely that someone will come to this conclusion, and hence assume that any developer who promises to do it, is exaggerating.
Fortunately at least one genre is past that. Maybe Intrepid will bring the PvX MMO past it too.
Trying to strip away variables to make a balanced competitive pvp game leads to all players having to play the same character...
Player skill sure...nobody will deny that as being important.
Trying to crunch the data on a primary level will not amount to anything in such a broad range of parameters.
You can compare a +5 sword to a +5mace all you want but it in the grand scheme of things it will mean little to nothing.
economy, timezone, group dynamics, social motivations and the number 1 chaotic force human behavior.
In an MMO with a plethora of interactions trying to chart it typically leads to a meta that does not play out in the game environment.
If only this was true!
But it is unfortunately developer skill dependent, which means that every time a developer fails, it is more likely that someone will come to this conclusion, and hence assume that any developer who promises to do it, is exaggerating.
Fortunately at least one genre is past that. Maybe Intrepid will bring the PvX MMO past it too.
Praise be to the fite gaem
Praise be
edit:
One day Rae, other people will play fighting games and then they'll realize why people who play fighting games use fighting games to talk about other games.
In the end, my point was that in a complex game, the abilities of any given character, assuming you do not break the rules described, matter way less than the length of the list. Ashes' design intent appears to be explicitly based around 'having control of the list and keeping the list itself within a reasonable length', which is how balanced fighting games are currently designed. You can see it in their patch notes. Players can look at an ability, use their experience to say 'this breaks a rule/breaks the fractal' and then go 'this character is otherwise average and has a Fractal Break therefore this is a top tier' (Sol, Nagoriyuki original form if Ram hadn't been unbalanced, Ramlethal because she did turn out unbalanced). They can also suggest fixes to make the move or ability no longer a Fractal Break, and patch notes often consist of nothing more than 'a list of things that are known Fractal Breaks, or buffs to characters whose abilities are not up to spec relative to the fractal'.
Now, you said that you don't see even a remote chance of Ashes following such a process. Is this a general lack of faith in Intrepid based on their design systems and information provided so far? I.e. you're not giving them the benefit of the doubt or taking them at face value because of the possibility that they will allow players to make substandard builds. I'm neutral here, and should get out of your way.
Moving on to actual stuff though then.
I don't see 6.5 trillion matchups. I see the list. Now I admit, it's a LONG LIST, but it's not 6.5 million datapoints long. Rough estimate is that if the rules are followed, there would be around 128 points on the list. Basically that there are 2 different potential entries on the list for each Class. Is this acceptable?
Couple of things up until this point:
The class design we saw so far was, as far as I understand, explicitly not intentional balanced game design. As in, they were giving classes abilities because they wanted to test game systems, not because they were trying to design within a fractal. I, at this point, only have impressions they're trying to design cool abilities and classes, rather than trying to deliberately create long-term healthy fractalized design systems that'll hold up with bunches of augments, passives, actives, etc. I'll think on it more.
As to how you got "2 different potential entries on the list for each Class", that's extremely confusing and low to me. Can you elaborate more there?
But so say what you're saying is true, and that the archetypes all sort of meld together, and so there's really only 2 really distinct builds worth thinking about per archetype.
This puts us at 2 builds per archetype, and 2^8 = 256 teams, and 33k matchups. We're not at incomprehensible numbers, but we're still at way-too-many-to-balance, (and that's at 2 builds per archetype, which I don't really buy).
So, as a single team, you're still worrying about 256 matchups, and you're hoping that none of those are lopsided, and chances are some of them are.
A meaningfully bad matchup almost always exists because someone got a Fractal Break for that matchup, not because of any specific ephemeral 'balance is hard and there's a lot to balance' concept. Sometimes one character Fractal Breaks the entire cast. Sometimes they Fractal Break just one other character or some subset of other characters.
But the definition of what makes a matchup worse than 6:4 in almost every modern game is 'someone broke the fractal for this character or this matchup', not some specific 'well this character's zoning is pretty oppressive'.
That's my stance. Matchup charts, at least in recent years, are the outcomes of this. Sure, uneven matchups exist, but there's uneven and then there's lopsided. You can use methodology to avoid 'lopsided'. You can tweak from there (as you suggest and I agree) to help 'uneven'. But 'uneven' is still in the range where things like 'I have one more friend nearby', 'you can't possibly know what I'm setting up for', and 'this map will let me do this weird thing' matter enough to flip the unevenness of the matchup and not just 'make it bearable for the underdog', when skilled players are involved.
So I outright don't believe in the same things as you.
I don't believe that curated games have lopsided matchups.
GG Rev 2. Nothing worse than 6:4. Tekken 7, nothing worse than 6:4, SFV, nothing worse than 6:4, Under Night, nothing worse than 6:4 (there used to be one character, and everyone told them so, and now it's fixed).
Avoid the Fractal Break and you avoid lopsided matchups. That's my stance. The list matters, not the number of combinations.
SFV has 40 characters, 1 V Trigger and 1 V Skill for each, a total of 4 ways to play each character (at the level of Ashes Augments at least), for 160. That means it has 25600 matchups, right?
If 6:4 isn't lopsided, then there you go. The reason? SFV's list is somewhere between 47 and 80 (New characters just released and tech is still being figured out). They fixed their Fractal Breaks except for one, and that one exists because of the ease of execution on the characters that have it (they're underpowered because their moves can't be allowed to be too strong).
Yeah - sorry let me say: I fully support your conclusion that the methodology works. If you can be disciplined about your design space, and make sure that you're limiting yourself to this constrained space, then I think you can make it happen (and SF5 is evidence of this).
I think it gets harder in 8v8 than 1v1 (where now you have to worry about how teammates interact with each other, than just how 1 character interacts with one other character), and I think it gets harder when you have passive skills (player's choice) interacting with active skills (player's choice), interacting with weapons (player's choice) interacting with ...
Then, it gets harder again when the players start complaining on the forums that such-and-such weapon is underpowered, and ask for it to be made stronger in some way.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying that Intrepid wants to put the RPG back in MMORPG and they want to make sure that RNG is always a factor. I'm saying that I think it's a longshot that it works out like this, but I really, really hope I'm wrong!
I honestly don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, I really want to play Ashes. On the other hand, games where the Devs fail the Fractal Break check are almost always really upsetting unless the break is in your favor, and I'm 'unlucky' so it's either never in mine, or they notice it and care enough to fix it.
So to me, Ashes, if done incorrectly, since I value playing my style more than winning, is a dice roll. Will my group combo be OP and unnoticed? I don't even want that, you know why. No fun in beating someone when 'the game already beat them for you'.
I share your concerns about the concept of what their strive for balance can mean to the point where I stand ready to complain at every turn, but at the end of the day, as noted, if Intrepid wants the game to be moreso random than competitive or moreso 'rewarding of numbers/organization' than cohesion/preparation, then that's a focused design choice that can be represented through their lens for balance, and it would simply mean that their concept of balance differs from yours or mine or that of many other people who come around.
Data says that they are now at 34% approval rating on Conservative Extrapolates (i.e. all the stuff that people who defend the game as-is want to stay) amongst potential newcomers, which is pretty good since so many of the newcomers are underinformed and trying to push minor agendas.
In short, don't bother hoping you're wrong. Hope you're right. Far too right. So right that within two weeks of Alpha-2 a really clear decision will be made and there will be no confusion.
Analysis recently has been really annoying for a weird reason.
Intrepid could make 4 announcements just to clarify information and 80% of the threads on these forums would not even be made. Imagine how much new data we could be getting!
You have still not realized the futility of a matchup chart in Ashes.
That said, the goal of a siege will not always be to win the siege.
this is deliciously rich
Actually - despite his insistence on an over-abundance of critical thinking, @Noaani is correct, in this particular aspect; When you can't outright *win* a Siege, you can still then target specific buildings in the city to destroy - inhibiting trade, storage capacities, and other Node-based services.
Hypothetically speaking? If Nodes require specific buildings to maintain their status, it's even possible to de-level a Node in favor of another claiming it's lock-out status-level - assuming that you can't outright destroy the Node's city during the battle.
I definitely don't mean this to be a counter to your point either, this is just another step. 8x8 with one of each is still small compared to what they have in front of them.
The problem with balancing for 8v8 is that there will likely be many many edge cases for that many combinations. Because of the vast number of these edge cases, Intrepid won't be able to test every single one to ensure that it is not broken, let alone balanced. It's just not mathematically possible to test every possible 8v8 matchup with different builds, archetypes, etc. I'd rather they try to achieve balance at a smaller scale, on something that is reasonably testable.
The steps you laid out seems fine actually, but I just doubt that they would be able to resolve some of the steps in 8v8 due to the massive number of combinations.
In many years of playing that game, the 1v1 I took part in could be counted on one hand.
I took part in literally hundreds of 2v1, both as a part of the 2, and as the 1.
So, I can actually believe you, and anyone who always play with others, that they would almost never be in a 1v1 situation in open world. I don't have a source, but however from my personal experience, most people solo farm in MMOs. I thought this was commonly accepted as true, just like how most people don't read the quest text in MMOs, but I guess not.
Regardless, if it's true that most people solo farm, then it follows that 1v1s should be the most common format, because anyone who chooses to group up can have a range of people in their group which spreads the probabilities out.
In many years of playing that game, the 1v1 I took part in could be counted on one hand.
I took part in literally hundreds of 2v1, both as a part of the 2, and as the 1.
So, I can actually believe you, and anyone who always play with others, that they would almost never be in a 1v1 situation in open world. I don't have a source, but however from my personal experience, most people solo farm in MMOs. I thought this was commonly accepted as true, just like how most people don't read the quest text in MMOs, but I guess not.
Regardless, if it's true that most people solo farm, then it follows that 1v1s should be the most common format, because anyone who chooses to group up can have a range of people in their group which spreads the probabilities out.
In my experience, in a PvP game like Ashes (in this case, Archeage), people don't really go out solo farming because PvP.
In Archeage, there were PvP free zones, and people would solo farm in them. The bulk of players were never alone in PvP areas though.
While none of us can say for sure how it will work out in Ashes, I really don't see a lot of people going out to farm solo in a game where players can come along and take your stuff. Archeage didn't really even have a penalty on death in PvP, and people still didn't go out on their own.
0
Options
Uncommon SenseMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Trying to strip away variables to make a balanced competitive pvp game leads to all players having to play the same character...
Player skill sure...nobody will deny that as being important.
Trying to crunch the data on a primary level will not amount to anything in such a broad range of parameters.
You can compare a +5 sword to a +5mace all you want but it in the grand scheme of things it will mean little to nothing.
economy, timezone, group dynamics, social motivations and the number 1 chaotic force human behavior.
In an MMO with a plethora of interactions trying to chart it typically leads to a meta that does not play out in the game environment.
If only this was true!
But it is unfortunately developer skill dependent, which means that every time a developer fails, it is more likely that someone will come to this conclusion, and hence assume that any developer who promises to do it, is exaggerating.
Fortunately at least one genre is past that. Maybe Intrepid will bring the PvX MMO past it too.
It is true. Whether the developer fails or not still does not account for the human condition. Balance is boring...
Perfect imbalance is what is required to make a long lasting engaging game environment. The meta shifts and evolves. The players you get set in their way or over invest in their game plan inevitably fall aside or move on out of frustration due to not being able to control outcomes. (the ...this game is bad because it did not follow my idealizations, kind of people)
I've seen what this 'optimal' meta elitist mindset does in almost any game and in pretty much every MMO. It turns into toxic stone walling...and some players quit as a result.
By the time you make the perfect group composition to fly through a dungeon, raid a village or siege a city. half will have to leave in 1hr, Your pet takes a dump on the carpet. the tendies are burning in the oven, and your best mate forgot about raid night and turns up late and drunk....
Or you could relax your chart optimized meta dynamics find a readily available group and do that same amount of content in just the same amount of time overall...
By all means crunch the numbers and do the math if that's what you enjoy. I enjoy theory crafting myself...But more as an underdog/black sheep. That's how I challenge my game play. Not falling into a cookie cutter tray.
You have still not realized the futility of a matchup chart in Ashes.
That said, the goal of a siege will not always be to win the siege.
this is deliciously rich
Actually - despite his insistence on an over-abundance of critical thinking, @Noaani is correct, in this particular aspect; When you can't outright *win* a Siege, you can still then target specific buildings in the city to destroy - inhibiting trade, storage capacities, and other Node-based services.
Hypothetically speaking? If Nodes require specific buildings to maintain their status, it's even possible to de-level a Node in favor of another claiming it's lock-out status-level - assuming that you can't outright destroy the Node's city during the battle.
Thanks for pointing this out! I double-checked the wiki, and you're totally right. Here's the relevant passage:
Attackers may not be capable of destroying a node during a siege. Instead they may carry out precision attacks to disable specific service-oriented buildings within the node. These buildings can be targeted with siege weapons and bombs.[54]
Node buildings (including player housing) have hit points and can be damaged during sieges. If buildings suffer more than approximately 25% damage, any NPCs or services offered by that building will not be available until the building is repaired.[44]
So, if I'm understanding correctly, the idea is "if the attackers are just trying to destroy the stables, but the defenders are trying to win the siege, then matchup theory doesn't apply".
The answer there is "so?"
In a fighting game, one player can make their goal whatever they want! So if I'm playing Ryu and my opponent is Chun-Li, rather than trying to win, I can make my objective "land a sweep". In my eyes, I "win" if i land a sweep, and in my opponents eyes, they win if the game tells them they win. So, we can both win the same match. And yeah, this isn't the stuff that matchup charts traditionally cover, granted.
This is also totally irrelevant to any of what I was trying to say!
The entire reason I was talking about matchups and matchup charts wasn't to attempt to catalog a means to understand strategy in ashes or create optimal teams. It was a definition of balance! "If the game is balanced, that means that if someone were to create a matchup chart (somehow), then that matchup chart would not contain lopsided matchups".
If you say "what about instances where people aren't trying to win, and are instead trying to do other stuff?"
I would say "what about them? what does that have to do with whether or not the game is balanced?"
This is, broadly, the trouble with arguing with someone while literally "not caring about their point".
It's also worth pointing out that a game that is "balanced at high skill levels of play" might be horribly unbalanced at intermediate skill levels of play. As in, once you're really good, and you understand how perform difficult-to-execute, high-reward options, then the game works as it does. But at intermediate levels of play, there might be options that are easy-to-execute, high-reward, difficult-to-counter, and telegraphed.
These sorts of options don't show up in high-level play very often because we call them "execution tests", and good players pass those tests. Intermediate (and beginner players), on the other hand, fail those tests, and so the characters (or builds, in ashe's case), that can create a lot of those sorts of tests for other players will feel very strong (imbalanced) in beginner / intermediate levels of play, but either weak/balanced at high levels of play.
I don't think Intrepid should attempt perfect balance.
There are too many variables to ever be able to account for them all, so the answer is to not account for them all, to look at what is happening in the live game, and to make adjustments if things are getting out of hand.
This will mean that the game will often (and for a large amount of teams) be imbalanced.
I hit the same conclusion, at most they will end up doing a lot of pruning reactive balancing. Toning down things that are being too dominant and buffing certain things that never get used. At best they will just try to keep everything close to an average point.
I don't think they could get to"perfect balance" even if they did want to..
This is also why I didn't understand your desire to make a matchup chart from the beginning either. IS has said they won't be balancing 1v1, and they're going to be making it rock, paper, scissors, and on top of that that all the augments, weapon options, various builds. As you said there are just too many variables, A matchup chart for the intent of a tier list like the one for smash you mentioned shouldn't work. Yes I get there would be tons of rows, but if there is a R,P,S effect no single build should float to the top, because there will always be a counter. One certain style of build may be better than most but there should also be a number of ways to counter it.
At least I feel like that is the best case scenario to take a GW1 approach of there are so many build options that there isn't a "best" to prevent a gridlock of top five fighters like smash has.
I definitely don't mean this to be a counter to your point either, this is just another step. 8x8 with one of each is still small compared to what they have in front of them.
The problem with balancing for 8v8 is that there will likely be many many edge cases for that many combinations. Because of the vast number of these edge cases, Intrepid won't be able to test every single one to ensure that it is not broken, let alone balanced. It's just not mathematically possible to test every possible 8v8 matchup with different builds, archetypes, etc. I'd rather they try to achieve balance at a smaller scale, on something that is reasonably testable.
The steps you laid out seems fine actually, but I just doubt that they would be able to resolve some of the steps in 8v8 due to the massive number of combinations.
In many years of playing that game, the 1v1 I took part in could be counted on one hand.
I took part in literally hundreds of 2v1, both as a part of the 2, and as the 1.
So, I can actually believe you, and anyone who always play with others, that they would almost never be in a 1v1 situation in open world. I don't have a source, but however from my personal experience, most people solo farm in MMOs. I thought this was commonly accepted as true, just like how most people don't read the quest text in MMOs, but I guess not.
Regardless, if it's true that most people solo farm, then it follows that 1v1s should be the most common format, because anyone who chooses to group up can have a range of people in their group which spreads the probabilities out.
If it helps at all, when I told Noaani that I had had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World in the Closed Beta (in another thread), they told me that people were only willing to do that because it was the closed beta and that it would be different when the game went live.
I've had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World since the game went live 🤷
I'm pretty sure I'll have hundreds of open world 1v1s in Ashes when that goes live, in the Alpha 2, and when the game gets released 🤞
I'll certainly have more than 5
It can be really hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you're not familiar with
I definitely don't mean this to be a counter to your point either, this is just another step. 8x8 with one of each is still small compared to what they have in front of them.
The problem with balancing for 8v8 is that there will likely be many many edge cases for that many combinations. Because of the vast number of these edge cases, Intrepid won't be able to test every single one to ensure that it is not broken, let alone balanced. It's just not mathematically possible to test every possible 8v8 matchup with different builds, archetypes, etc. I'd rather they try to achieve balance at a smaller scale, on something that is reasonably testable.
The steps you laid out seems fine actually, but I just doubt that they would be able to resolve some of the steps in 8v8 due to the massive number of combinations.
In many years of playing that game, the 1v1 I took part in could be counted on one hand.
I took part in literally hundreds of 2v1, both as a part of the 2, and as the 1.
So, I can actually believe you, and anyone who always play with others, that they would almost never be in a 1v1 situation in open world. I don't have a source, but however from my personal experience, most people solo farm in MMOs. I thought this was commonly accepted as true, just like how most people don't read the quest text in MMOs, but I guess not.
Regardless, if it's true that most people solo farm, then it follows that 1v1s should be the most common format, because anyone who chooses to group up can have a range of people in their group which spreads the probabilities out.
If it helps at all, when I told Noaani that I had had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World in the Closed Beta (in another thread), they told me that people were only willing to do that because it was the closed beta and that it would be different when the game went live.
I've had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World since the game went live 🤷
I'm pretty sure I'll have hundreds of open world 1v1s in Ashes when that goes live, in the Alpha 2, and when the game gets released 🤞
I'll certainly have more than 5
It can be really hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you're not familiar with
People will probably treat open world PVP in Ashes a little bit different with both the dropping of your loot and corruption systems involved, when new world has neither of those things... You're effectively just fighting over who gets to mind that iron node.
I definitely don't mean this to be a counter to your point either, this is just another step. 8x8 with one of each is still small compared to what they have in front of them.
The problem with balancing for 8v8 is that there will likely be many many edge cases for that many combinations. Because of the vast number of these edge cases, Intrepid won't be able to test every single one to ensure that it is not broken, let alone balanced. It's just not mathematically possible to test every possible 8v8 matchup with different builds, archetypes, etc. I'd rather they try to achieve balance at a smaller scale, on something that is reasonably testable.
The steps you laid out seems fine actually, but I just doubt that they would be able to resolve some of the steps in 8v8 due to the massive number of combinations.
In many years of playing that game, the 1v1 I took part in could be counted on one hand.
I took part in literally hundreds of 2v1, both as a part of the 2, and as the 1.
So, I can actually believe you, and anyone who always play with others, that they would almost never be in a 1v1 situation in open world. I don't have a source, but however from my personal experience, most people solo farm in MMOs. I thought this was commonly accepted as true, just like how most people don't read the quest text in MMOs, but I guess not.
Regardless, if it's true that most people solo farm, then it follows that 1v1s should be the most common format, because anyone who chooses to group up can have a range of people in their group which spreads the probabilities out.
If it helps at all, when I told Noaani that I had had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World in the Closed Beta (in another thread), they told me that people were only willing to do that because it was the closed beta and that it would be different when the game went live.
I've had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World since the game went live 🤷
I'm pretty sure I'll have hundreds of open world 1v1s in Ashes when that goes live, in the Alpha 2, and when the game gets released 🤞
I'll certainly have more than 5
It can be really hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you're not familiar with
People will probably treat open world PVP in Ashes a little bit different with both the dropping of your loot and corruption systems involved, when new world has neither of those things... You're effectively just fighting over who gets to mind that iron node.
Yeah, absolutely. But, there are folks like me who
think we'll win
like dueling
want the other guy's stuff
want the area to ourselves
and so if some guy comes to my turf, we're tusslin'
If I come across some other guy on the road, we're tusslin'
This is especially the case because I tend to play way more than the average player, and so my character tends to be much stronger than the average player's. I also tend to be much more skilled than the average player (because of my extensive background in competitive gaming). This makes fighting everyone I see both fun and profitable.
I don't think Intrepid should attempt perfect balance.
There are too many variables to ever be able to account for them all, so the answer is to not account for them all, to look at what is happening in the live game, and to make adjustments if things are getting out of hand.
This will mean that the game will often (and for a large amount of teams) be imbalanced.
I hit the same conclusion, at most they will end up doing a lot of pruning reactive balancing. Toning down things that are being too dominant and buffing certain things that never get used. At best they will just try to keep everything close to an average point.
I don't think they could get to"perfect balance" even if they did want to..
This is also why I didn't understand your desire to make a matchup chart from the beginning either. IS has said they won't be balancing 1v1, and they're going to be making it rock, paper, scissors, and on top of that that all the augments, weapon options, various builds. As you said there are just too many variables, A matchup chart for the intent of a tier list like the one for smash you mentioned shouldn't work. Yes I get there would be tons of rows, but if there is a R,P,S effect no single build should float to the top, because there will always be a counter. One certain style of build may be better than most but there should also be a number of ways to counter it.
At least I feel like that is the best case scenario to take a GW1 approach of there are so many build options that there isn't a "best" to prevent a gridlock of top five fighters like smash has.
Do you understand, at this point, that it was never my intent to make a matchup chart? That I was never suggesting that making one would be useful in any way? Rather, the claim was "if a game is balanced, then it would theoretically have a matchup chart filled non-lopsided matchups. But, because a game like ashes would have too many matchups, as shown by this calculation, that this is impossible to verify, thus it will almost certainly be imbalanced".
It is true. Whether the developer fails or not still does not account for the human condition. Balance is boring...
Perfect imbalance is what is required to make a long lasting engaging game environment. The meta shifts and evolves. The players you get set in their way or over invest in their game plan inevitably fall aside or move on out of frustration due to not being able to control outcomes. (the ...this game is bad because it did not follow my idealizations, kind of people)
I have a ton of observational data that tells me you are wrong. Even putting aside my personal bias of balance being more fun, I can't interpret my data differently. Unfortunately it is a bunch of fighting game examples, so you are just going to have to trust my word as someone who aspired to be a journalist for that scene and some statistical data if I can find it for you.
Example SFV vs Dragonball Fighter
I choose these two games because 1.SFV gets your very complaint to the letter in the community historically. 'All these characters feel samey! We want less balance/more distinction!' They are a minority in the community and so aren't really listened to by the devs but it was consistent. 2. DBFZ had much less complaints about this comparatively in my heavily anecdotal opinion. The conversation in that community was more about imbalance and 'cool touch of death combos'. 3. They both are popular franchises with a lot of money behind them and good developers constantly making content for their respective games and supporting their tournaments. Therefore, I think these are fair representations of my perspective of humanity vs yours.
Steam numbers aren't the best source for console heavy games like my two examples but its the easiest data to find and the trends I expected in the data hold true.
So first thing to note here is that historically speaking they have a similar population pool if we ignore dbfz's first month but include sfv's first month. We will count this as 'dbfz having a larger potential for peaks' and make no other assumptions about that fact for sake of brevity.
The second thing to note here is that the dbfz breaks their balance quite more often than sfv. They had a lot more defined stringent meta at the top levels of play and there was a general community sense of imbalance from the get go. After sfv's first two seasons they tended to have some shifts in balance but not earth shattering, and by season 4 reached a state of balance basically everyone was happy with (a very rare feat to achieve.)
As you can see the numbers for SFV stay extremely consistent and even trend slightly upward overtime. They peak when a new character (like any fighting game) is released but the drop offs get nowhere near as steep as in DBFZ.
DBFZ otoh has an extremely high volatility comparatively. The lowest points happen when the meta is more settled and entrenched (you will just have to believe me on my explanation for those drops as a modestly experienced observer of that community unless you wanna trawl through years of twitter feeds and replies of top players.)
So we have two games of very popular franchises with different patterns. A fairly well balanced game with some character and ability variety that historically and consistently has had no consensus on what character is top tier at top levels which exhibits extremely high player base stability; and a historically less balanced game with a decent consensus on top tier characters in any given season at higher levels with about the same character variety but with technically even more customization ability via team selection and order that keeps having comparatively larger drop offs and had to make a huge balance patch recently to try and fix community perception.
My conclusion is that people say things like you are saying, but ultimately a more balanced game leads to a more stable less toxic community and player base and if done right less hard lines around meta.
You can argue that dbfz wasn't perfectly imbalanced enough, but I would have to ask you what that would look like in this example, because the concept is otherwise extremely amorphous I could just go 'that's SFV and what Azherae has been talking about you just have different definitions of what balance is.'
I've seen what this 'optimal' meta elitist mindset does in almost any game and in pretty much every MMO. It turns into toxic stone walling...and some players quit as a result.
Right except Azherae is talking about the solution to that. I have seen a very strong difference in communities toxcity levels when a game is balanced in the way she was describing vs 'imbalanced.' The type of people you are talking about have less to lord over people and the amount of complaining or circle-jerking is a lot less. It still exists, but it's lower.
I think dbfz and sfv are both very successful fighting games. I would go so far as to say that economically speaking making a game based on your principle isn't flawed. But 'balance to the level Azherae is talking about is boring and people leave' is demonstrably false. If anything they slowly grow as a community.
Ashes mechanically needs a stable player base. I will therefore prompt a rhetorical question not meant to be answered. 'What model suits Ashes needs better. Aiming for 'perfect imbalance' creating boom and bust cycles with rotating hard meta, or more balance with stable cycles and softer meta?'
Trying to strip away variables to make a balanced competitive pvp game leads to all players having to play the same character...
Player skill sure...nobody will deny that as being important.
Trying to crunch the data on a primary level will not amount to anything in such a broad range of parameters.
You can compare a +5 sword to a +5mace all you want but it in the grand scheme of things it will mean little to nothing.
economy, timezone, group dynamics, social motivations and the number 1 chaotic force human behavior.
In an MMO with a plethora of interactions trying to chart it typically leads to a meta that does not play out in the game environment.
If only this was true!
But it is unfortunately developer skill dependent, which means that every time a developer fails, it is more likely that someone will come to this conclusion, and hence assume that any developer who promises to do it, is exaggerating.
Fortunately at least one genre is past that. Maybe Intrepid will bring the PvX MMO past it too.
It is true. Whether the developer fails or not still does not account for the human condition. Balance is boring...
Perfect imbalance is what is required to make a long lasting engaging game environment. The meta shifts and evolves. The players you get set in their way or over invest in their game plan inevitably fall aside or move on out of frustration due to not being able to control outcomes. (the ...this game is bad because it did not follow my idealizations, kind of people)
I've seen what this 'optimal' meta elitist mindset does in almost any game and in pretty much every MMO. It turns into toxic stone walling...and some players quit as a result.
By the time you make the perfect group composition to fly through a dungeon, raid a village or siege a city. half will have to leave in 1hr, Your pet takes a dump on the carpet. the tendies are burning in the oven, and your best mate forgot about raid night and turns up late and drunk....
Or you could relax your chart optimized meta dynamics find a readily available group and do that same amount of content in just the same amount of time overall...
By all means crunch the numbers and do the math if that's what you enjoy. I enjoy theory crafting myself...But more as an underdog/black sheep. That's how I challenge my game play. Not falling into a cookie cutter tray.
I don't perceive these two things as having anything to do with each other. In fact, that goes double down, literally.
I accept that elitist mindsets can waste time and having less strict group requirements can be better.
I accept that elitist mindsets can be toxic when they lead to rejection.
I don't see a connection with long lasting game environments directly, but sure, if everyone was elitist in the two above ways, it would probably happen.
I don't see what this has to do with balance, except the opposite. If the balance is bad, it happens more. If the balance is good, I see it as happening less.
I don't see what this has to do with being an underdog or black sheep, but I am enough of one that I fractured and rebuilt an entire card game's online community because of the principles I'm describing, so there's that?
In my experience, balance isn't boring, stagnation is boring and stagnation comes when people feel like they have solved something down to a few options. Stagnation does not come when people feel like they have solved something down to 20 of 25 options.
There's a selection pressure in gaming built up over old games that seems to cause this. However I have a 4 year 1000+ participant historical case study if you want to read through a forum archive? (Game no longer online since Wizards of the Coast re-released it after the popularity rise and had to send their Cease and Desist to our online platform, then released the game without following any of the principles and it failed again. Sad).
Let me know if you need the dataset and I'll poke my sysadmin. If you just want the research results they're here at the old chintzy looking half-broken free site but it's unhelpful without the forum data and the hundreds(?) of thousands of duels in the database for context so forgive me if it comes off as just 'declaring you're wrong because of some random old unofficial website'.
Trying to strip away variables to make a balanced competitive pvp game leads to all players having to play the same character...
Player skill sure...nobody will deny that as being important.
Trying to crunch the data on a primary level will not amount to anything in such a broad range of parameters.
You can compare a +5 sword to a +5mace all you want but it in the grand scheme of things it will mean little to nothing.
economy, timezone, group dynamics, social motivations and the number 1 chaotic force human behavior.
In an MMO with a plethora of interactions trying to chart it typically leads to a meta that does not play out in the game environment.
If only this was true!
But it is unfortunately developer skill dependent, which means that every time a developer fails, it is more likely that someone will come to this conclusion, and hence assume that any developer who promises to do it, is exaggerating.
Fortunately at least one genre is past that. Maybe Intrepid will bring the PvX MMO past it too.
It is true. Whether the developer fails or not still does not account for the human condition. Balance is boring...
Perfect imbalance is what is required to make a long lasting engaging game environment. The meta shifts and evolves. The players you get set in their way or over invest in their game plan inevitably fall aside or move on out of frustration due to not being able to control outcomes. (the ...this game is bad because it did not follow my idealizations, kind of people)
I've seen what this 'optimal' meta elitist mindset does in almost any game and in pretty much every MMO. It turns into toxic stone walling...and some players quit as a result.
By the time you make the perfect group composition to fly through a dungeon, raid a village or siege a city. half will have to leave in 1hr, Your pet takes a dump on the carpet. the tendies are burning in the oven, and your best mate forgot about raid night and turns up late and drunk....
Or you could relax your chart optimized meta dynamics find a readily available group and do that same amount of content in just the same amount of time overall...
By all means crunch the numbers and do the math if that's what you enjoy. I enjoy theory crafting myself...But more as an underdog/black sheep. That's how I challenge my game play. Not falling into a cookie cutter tray.
I don't perceive these two things as having anything to do with each other. In fact, that goes double down, literally.
I accept that elitist mindsets can waste time and having less strict group requirements can be better.
I accept that elitist mindsets can be toxic when they lead to rejection.
I don't see a connection with long lasting game environments directly, but sure, if everyone was elitist in the two above ways, it would probably happen.
I don't see what this has to do with balance, except the opposite. If the balance is bad, it happens more. If the balance is good, I see it as happening less.
I don't see what this has to do with being an underdog or black sheep, but I am enough of one that I fractured and rebuilt an entire card game's online community because of the principles I'm describing, so there's that?
In my experience, balance isn't boring, stagnation is boring and stagnation comes when people feel like they have solved something down to a few options. Stagnation does not come when people feel like they have solved something down to 20 of 25 options.
There's a selection pressure in gaming built up over old games that seems to cause this. However I have a 4 year 1000+ participant historical case study if you want to read through a forum archive? (Game no longer online since Wizards of the Coast re-released it after the popularity rise and had to send their Cease and Desist to our online platform, then released the game without following any of the principles and it failed again. Sad).
Let me know if you need the dataset and I'll poke my sysadmin. If you just want the research results they're here at the old chintzy looking half-broken free site but it's unhelpful without the forum data and the hundreds(?) of thousands of duels in the database for context so forgive me if it comes off as just 'declaring you're wrong because of some random old unofficial website'.
Man... nostalgia.
Yeah!
The key is that when you have a balanced, diverse environment, you get to simultaneously "play what you want", and "play effectively".
When your game is imbalanced, you only get to "play what you want" and "play effectively" if "what you want" is "the current effective build/team in the balance patch". Otherwise, you have to choose! You can always "play what you want", but then it might not especially be effective. You can always choose to play effective stuff (with varying amounts of painful investment), but you might not find the playstyle fun.
Smash melee is a great game, but only if you really like playing Fox, Falco, Marth, Puff, Shiek, and Falcon (and maybe Peach/Pikachu). If you want to play other characters you can, but it's going to be a struggle.
If everything is very well balanced, the predominant advice goes from "play one of these 3 viable classes with these specific builds" for unbalanced games, to "all the classes and builds are the same odds competitively, so just play whatever class fits your personal preferences or style".
If everything is very well balanced, the predominant advice goes from "play one of these 3 viable classes with these specific builds" for unbalanced games, to "all the classes and builds are the same odds competitively, so just play whatever class fits your personal preferences or style".
If it helps at all, when I told Noaani that I had had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World in the Closed Beta (in another thread), they told me that people were only willing to do that because it was the closed beta and that it would be different when the game went live.
Actually, the point was that it was a beta test, and you can't use beta tests as a measure of what will happen when a game goes live. This is a fundamental of testing online games.
It is so fundamental that it was more important for me to point out than the fact that New World is a very different game to Ashes. In New World, PvP is effectively 100% optional. Additionally, with no real penalty to PvP death (even less of a penalty than Archeage had), I really question why you are even bringing up New World at all in this discussion.
In Ashes, PvP is unavoidable, and has actual loss associated with it. As such, people will try very hard to avoid death in PvP in Ashes.
In New World, PvP is totally optional, and has no actual loss associated with it. As such, people will make no real effort to avoid death in PvP, and may even use it as a means of fast travel (which also sometimes did happen in Archeage).
But sure, use New World as an example as to why 1v1 PvP in Ashes will be prevalent. Honestly, it makes you look like you know what you are talking about!
I find it amusing how you ended this post by saying that it can be hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with, and then reply to another poster with this.
This is especially the case because I tend to play way more than the average player, and so my character tends to be much stronger than the average player's. I also tend to be much more skilled than the average player (because of my extensive background in competitive gaming). This makes fighting everyone I see both fun and profitable.
You are basically saying that you think you will see more 1v1 PvP because you play the game differently to other people.
So, from my perspective, you think 1v1 will be a common form of PvP because you can't imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with.
Play a little thought exercise with yourself here. Imagine you live in a node in Ashes, and you like to harvest trees to sell for wood. Every time you are in the forest, some guy comes past and kills you, takes some of your wood, and then carries on.
It happens often, as this player is online more than you are. Sometimes he even kills you while you are travelling down the road, sometimes while you are killing mobs.
What are you going to do about that?
I can tell you what most people will do about that, and it doesn't involve moving on.
If it helps at all, when I told Noaani that I had had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World in the Closed Beta (in another thread), they told me that people were only willing to do that because it was the closed beta and that it would be different when the game went live.
Actually, the point was that it was a beta test, and you can't use beta tests as a measure of what will happen when a game goes live. This is a fundamental of testing online games.
It is so fundamental that it was more important for me to point out than the fact that New World is a very different game to Ashes. In New World, PvP is effectively 100% optional. Additionally, with no real penalty to PvP death (even less of a penalty than Archeage had), I really question why you are even bringing up New World at all in this discussion.
In Ashes, PvP is unavoidable, and has actual loss associated with it. As such, people will try very hard to avoid death in PvP in Ashes.
In New World, PvP is totally optional, and has no actual loss associated with it. As such, people will make no real effort to avoid death in PvP, and may even use it as a means of fast travel (which also sometimes did happen in Archeage).
But sure, use New World as an example as to why 1v1 PvP in Ashes will be prevalent. Honestly, it makes you look like you know what you are talking about!
I find it amusing how you ended this post by saying that it can be hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with, and then reply to another poster with this.
This is especially the case because I tend to play way more than the average player, and so my character tends to be much stronger than the average player's. I also tend to be much more skilled than the average player (because of my extensive background in competitive gaming). This makes fighting everyone I see both fun and profitable.
You are basically saying that you think you will see more 1v1 PvP because you play the game differently to other people.
So, from my perspective, you think 1v1 will be a common form of PvP because you can't imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with.
Play a little thought exercise with yourself here. Imagine you live in a node in Ashes, and you like to harvest trees to sell for wood. Every time you are in the forest, some guy comes past and kills you, takes some of your wood, and then carries on.
It happens often, as this player is online more than you are. Sometimes he even kills you while you are travelling down the road, sometimes while you are killing mobs.
What are you going to do about that?
I can tell you what most people will do about that, and it doesn't involve moving on.
If it helps at all, when I told Noaani that I had had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World in the Closed Beta (in another thread), they told me that people were only willing to do that because it was the closed beta and that it would be different when the game went live.
Actually, the point was that it was a beta test, and you can't use beta tests as a measure of what will happen when a game goes live. This is a fundamental of testing online games.
It is so fundamental that it was more important for me to point out than the fact that New World is a very different game to Ashes. In New World, PvP is effectively 100% optional. Additionally, with no real penalty to PvP death (even less of a penalty than Archeage had), I really question why you are even bringing up New World at all in this discussion.
In Ashes, PvP is unavoidable, and has actual loss associated with it. As such, people will try very hard to avoid death in PvP in Ashes.
In New World, PvP is totally optional, and has no actual loss associated with it. As such, people will make no real effort to avoid death in PvP, and may even use it as a means of fast travel (which also sometimes did happen in Archeage).
But sure, use New World as an example as to why 1v1 PvP in Ashes will be prevalent. Honestly, it makes you look like you know what you are talking about!
I find it amusing how you ended this post by saying that it can be hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with, and then reply to another poster with this.
This is especially the case because I tend to play way more than the average player, and so my character tends to be much stronger than the average player's. I also tend to be much more skilled than the average player (because of my extensive background in competitive gaming). This makes fighting everyone I see both fun and profitable.
You are basically saying that you think you will see more 1v1 PvP because you play the game differently to other people.
So, from my perspective, you think 1v1 will be a common form of PvP because you can't imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with.
Play a little thought exercise with yourself here. Imagine you live in a node in Ashes, and you like to harvest trees to sell for wood. Every time you are in the forest, some guy comes past and kills you, takes some of your wood, and then carries on.
It happens often, as this player is online more than you are. Sometimes he even kills you while you are travelling down the road, sometimes while you are killing mobs.
What are you going to do about that?
I can tell you what most people will do about that, and it doesn't involve moving on.
Do you care what my point is?
Are you just bitter that I don't care about any point that is formed on a misconception about the game?
If someone came in here and wrote a piece on how they don't think this game would work because for some reason they think the game is an RTS and they don't think an RTS would work with the corruption system, I am obviously not going to care about what they are saying. I am going to point out that this game is not an RTS, give them some time to rethink their opinion with this new information.
You've put yourself in a similar (though less drastic) situation a few times now, and my position has been the same. try and find out what the missing piece of information is, correct it, then see where that takes you. You have an insistence of continuing to draw people in to a discussion on the game as if it were an RTS, rather than allowing people to try and find out what the missing piece of information you have is.
So, whether I care or not about your point depends on whether you have a missing piece (or incorrect piece) of information or not.
This is a super easy question. Do you care what my point is? Yes or no
It seems like you just want to argue with me, because you don't actually care about understanding my point, as evidenced by you continuing to argue with me and then literally writing "I don't care what your point is."
So let me make something super clear.
If you find yourself attempting to have a conversation with me, and you've gotten yourself into a place where your don't actually care about trying to figure out what I'm trying to say, and you're just trying to find things to pick apart or argue with, just go do something else. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in being understood and understanding. I'm interested in folks that care about my point.
You've put yourself in a similar (though less drastic) situation a few times now, and my position has been the same. try and find out what the missing piece of information is, correct it, then see where that takes you.
a few times huh? which are those then?
I suppose you might say when you let me know you can sell certs to NPC hunters to generate gold? Even though, my position the whole time, was that there was going to be a gold faucet, and that the first thing I wrote after gaining that information was that I didn't know what this new information changed?
Anything else?
You keep mentioning that sieges are going to be open world. I don't see how this matters given they'll have player caps. If they won't have player caps, then yeah, it won't particularly matter how balanced the game is if the fights are just going to be 250 v 324.
You keep mentioning that matchup charts are irrelevant, but you still don't understand why I'm talking about matchup charts, and so you think saying stuff like "but ashes will have a lot of 2v1s not 1v1s" is somehow relevant in some way. It isn't. You mention that folks don't necessarily have to try to win sieges as though that's relevant to a conversation about game balance. It isn't.
This happens because you fundamentally don't (or didn't) understand what I'm talking about. You don't care to understand my point. You're just scanning for things I'm saying and looking for things to say that are contrary. It's exhausting.
This is a super easy question. Do you care what my point is? Yes or no
It seems like you just want to argue with me, because you don't actually care about understanding my point, as evidenced by you continuing to argue with me and then literally writing "I don't care what your point is."
I don't care what anyone's point is until I understand what it is that leads them to that point.
You asking me now "do I care what your point is" is kind of pointless, because you are not saying "which" point it is that you want me to answer to.
If that point you are asking me about is in relation to you comparing an MMO to a fighting game, then no, I don't. If you feel you have a point to make that is greater than a comparison to a fighting game, then make your point without that comparison, as the comparison is inappropriate.
If your point is something else entirely, then you have to say more than "do you care about my point", because in context, I have no idea what you are talking about if not the above.
You keep mentioning that sieges are going to be open world. I don't see how this matters given they'll have player caps. If they won't have player caps, then yeah, it won't particularly matter how balanced the game is if the fights are just going to be 250 v 324.
As I said to you earlier, we know battlegrounds will have a cap on players (you should assume it is 500, not 250), but we have no reason to assume there will only be one battleground per siege. I pointed this out to you earlier.
As such, we can't really make assumptions on the game as a whole based on the specific assumption that both sides will be capped out on a siege. This is especially true given Steven want's a world where players can be roaming around the game world, see a siege in progress, and opt to join in. This isn't possible if the siege is capped.
That is simply not an assumption we can make, and so any point made using that as a base is not something I care about, as it is fundamentally the same as someone saying that an RTS will not work with the corruption system.
Comments
When I typed that, I knew it would be the only part of the post you replied to.
It is absolutely on brand.
Then you would have "gotten" me, and I would be "hurt", and then you would have "succeeded", because you're, at this point, attempting to "hurt" me, right?
Player skill sure...nobody will deny that as being important.
Trying to crunch the data on a primary level will not amount to anything in such a broad range of parameters.
You can compare a +5 sword to a +5mace all you want but it in the grand scheme of things it will mean little to nothing.
economy, timezone, group dynamics, social motivations and the number 1 chaotic force human behavior.
In an MMO with a plethora of interactions trying to chart it typically leads to a meta that does not play out in the game environment.
If only this was true!
But it is unfortunately developer skill dependent, which means that every time a developer fails, it is more likely that someone will come to this conclusion, and hence assume that any developer who promises to do it, is exaggerating.
Fortunately at least one genre is past that. Maybe Intrepid will bring the PvX MMO past it too.
Praise be to the fite gaem
Praise be
edit:
One day Rae, other people will play fighting games and then they'll realize why people who play fighting games use fighting games to talk about other games.
I honestly don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, I really want to play Ashes. On the other hand, games where the Devs fail the Fractal Break check are almost always really upsetting unless the break is in your favor, and I'm 'unlucky' so it's either never in mine, or they notice it and care enough to fix it.
So to me, Ashes, if done incorrectly, since I value playing my style more than winning, is a dice roll. Will my group combo be OP and unnoticed? I don't even want that, you know why. No fun in beating someone when 'the game already beat them for you'.
I share your concerns about the concept of what their strive for balance can mean to the point where I stand ready to complain at every turn, but at the end of the day, as noted, if Intrepid wants the game to be moreso random than competitive or moreso 'rewarding of numbers/organization' than cohesion/preparation, then that's a focused design choice that can be represented through their lens for balance, and it would simply mean that their concept of balance differs from yours or mine or that of many other people who come around.
Data says that they are now at 34% approval rating on Conservative Extrapolates (i.e. all the stuff that people who defend the game as-is want to stay) amongst potential newcomers, which is pretty good since so many of the newcomers are underinformed and trying to push minor agendas.
In short, don't bother hoping you're wrong. Hope you're right. Far too right. So right that within two weeks of Alpha-2 a really clear decision will be made and there will be no confusion.
Analysis recently has been really annoying for a weird reason.
Intrepid could make 4 announcements just to clarify information and 80% of the threads on these forums would not even be made. Imagine how much new data we could be getting!
Actually - despite his insistence on an over-abundance of critical thinking, @Noaani is correct, in this particular aspect; When you can't outright *win* a Siege, you can still then target specific buildings in the city to destroy - inhibiting trade, storage capacities, and other Node-based services.
Hypothetically speaking? If Nodes require specific buildings to maintain their status, it's even possible to de-level a Node in favor of another claiming it's lock-out status-level - assuming that you can't outright destroy the Node's city during the battle.
The steps you laid out seems fine actually, but I just doubt that they would be able to resolve some of the steps in 8v8 due to the massive number of combinations.
So, I can actually believe you, and anyone who always play with others, that they would almost never be in a 1v1 situation in open world. I don't have a source, but however from my personal experience, most people solo farm in MMOs. I thought this was commonly accepted as true, just like how most people don't read the quest text in MMOs, but I guess not.
Regardless, if it's true that most people solo farm, then it follows that 1v1s should be the most common format, because anyone who chooses to group up can have a range of people in their group which spreads the probabilities out.
In my experience, in a PvP game like Ashes (in this case, Archeage), people don't really go out solo farming because PvP.
In Archeage, there were PvP free zones, and people would solo farm in them. The bulk of players were never alone in PvP areas though.
While none of us can say for sure how it will work out in Ashes, I really don't see a lot of people going out to farm solo in a game where players can come along and take your stuff. Archeage didn't really even have a penalty on death in PvP, and people still didn't go out on their own.
It is true. Whether the developer fails or not still does not account for the human condition. Balance is boring...
Perfect imbalance is what is required to make a long lasting engaging game environment. The meta shifts and evolves. The players you get set in their way or over invest in their game plan inevitably fall aside or move on out of frustration due to not being able to control outcomes. (the ...this game is bad because it did not follow my idealizations, kind of people)
I've seen what this 'optimal' meta elitist mindset does in almost any game and in pretty much every MMO. It turns into toxic stone walling...and some players quit as a result.
By the time you make the perfect group composition to fly through a dungeon, raid a village or siege a city. half will have to leave in 1hr, Your pet takes a dump on the carpet. the tendies are burning in the oven, and your best mate forgot about raid night and turns up late and drunk....
Or you could relax your chart optimized meta dynamics find a readily available group and do that same amount of content in just the same amount of time overall...
By all means crunch the numbers and do the math if that's what you enjoy. I enjoy theory crafting myself...But more as an underdog/black sheep. That's how I challenge my game play. Not falling into a cookie cutter tray.
Ha! Joke's on you, cos I don't even have any frien..... Oh.
So, if I'm understanding correctly, the idea is "if the attackers are just trying to destroy the stables, but the defenders are trying to win the siege, then matchup theory doesn't apply".
The answer there is "so?"
In a fighting game, one player can make their goal whatever they want! So if I'm playing Ryu and my opponent is Chun-Li, rather than trying to win, I can make my objective "land a sweep". In my eyes, I "win" if i land a sweep, and in my opponents eyes, they win if the game tells them they win. So, we can both win the same match. And yeah, this isn't the stuff that matchup charts traditionally cover, granted.
This is also totally irrelevant to any of what I was trying to say!
The entire reason I was talking about matchups and matchup charts wasn't to attempt to catalog a means to understand strategy in ashes or create optimal teams. It was a definition of balance! "If the game is balanced, that means that if someone were to create a matchup chart (somehow), then that matchup chart would not contain lopsided matchups".
If you say "what about instances where people aren't trying to win, and are instead trying to do other stuff?"
I would say "what about them? what does that have to do with whether or not the game is balanced?"
This is, broadly, the trouble with arguing with someone while literally "not caring about their point".
It's also worth pointing out that a game that is "balanced at high skill levels of play" might be horribly unbalanced at intermediate skill levels of play. As in, once you're really good, and you understand how perform difficult-to-execute, high-reward options, then the game works as it does. But at intermediate levels of play, there might be options that are easy-to-execute, high-reward, difficult-to-counter, and telegraphed.
These sorts of options don't show up in high-level play very often because we call them "execution tests", and good players pass those tests. Intermediate (and beginner players), on the other hand, fail those tests, and so the characters (or builds, in ashe's case), that can create a lot of those sorts of tests for other players will feel very strong (imbalanced) in beginner / intermediate levels of play, but either weak/balanced at high levels of play.
I hit the same conclusion, at most they will end up doing a lot of pruning reactive balancing. Toning down things that are being too dominant and buffing certain things that never get used. At best they will just try to keep everything close to an average point.
I don't think they could get to"perfect balance" even if they did want to..
This is also why I didn't understand your desire to make a matchup chart from the beginning either. IS has said they won't be balancing 1v1, and they're going to be making it rock, paper, scissors, and on top of that that all the augments, weapon options, various builds. As you said there are just too many variables, A matchup chart for the intent of a tier list like the one for smash you mentioned shouldn't work. Yes I get there would be tons of rows, but if there is a R,P,S effect no single build should float to the top, because there will always be a counter. One certain style of build may be better than most but there should also be a number of ways to counter it.
At least I feel like that is the best case scenario to take a GW1 approach of there are so many build options that there isn't a "best" to prevent a gridlock of top five fighters like smash has.
If it helps at all, when I told Noaani that I had had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World in the Closed Beta (in another thread), they told me that people were only willing to do that because it was the closed beta and that it would be different when the game went live.
I've had hundreds of open world 1v1s in New World since the game went live 🤷
I'm pretty sure I'll have hundreds of open world 1v1s in Ashes when that goes live, in the Alpha 2, and when the game gets released 🤞
I'll certainly have more than 5
It can be really hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you're not familiar with
People will probably treat open world PVP in Ashes a little bit different with both the dropping of your loot and corruption systems involved, when new world has neither of those things... You're effectively just fighting over who gets to mind that iron node.
Yeah, absolutely. But, there are folks like me who
- think we'll win
- like dueling
- want the other guy's stuff
- want the area to ourselves
and so if some guy comes to my turf, we're tusslin'If I come across some other guy on the road, we're tusslin'
This is especially the case because I tend to play way more than the average player, and so my character tends to be much stronger than the average player's. I also tend to be much more skilled than the average player (because of my extensive background in competitive gaming). This makes fighting everyone I see both fun and profitable.
Do you understand, at this point, that it was never my intent to make a matchup chart? That I was never suggesting that making one would be useful in any way? Rather, the claim was "if a game is balanced, then it would theoretically have a matchup chart filled non-lopsided matchups. But, because a game like ashes would have too many matchups, as shown by this calculation, that this is impossible to verify, thus it will almost certainly be imbalanced".
Then folks got absolutely lost
I have a ton of observational data that tells me you are wrong. Even putting aside my personal bias of balance being more fun, I can't interpret my data differently. Unfortunately it is a bunch of fighting game examples, so you are just going to have to trust my word as someone who aspired to be a journalist for that scene and some statistical data if I can find it for you.
Example SFV vs Dragonball Fighter
I choose these two games because 1.SFV gets your very complaint to the letter in the community historically. 'All these characters feel samey! We want less balance/more distinction!' They are a minority in the community and so aren't really listened to by the devs but it was consistent. 2. DBFZ had much less complaints about this comparatively in my heavily anecdotal opinion. The conversation in that community was more about imbalance and 'cool touch of death combos'. 3. They both are popular franchises with a lot of money behind them and good developers constantly making content for their respective games and supporting their tournaments. Therefore, I think these are fair representations of my perspective of humanity vs yours.
Steam numbers aren't the best source for console heavy games like my two examples but its the easiest data to find and the trends I expected in the data hold true.
https://steamcharts.com/app/310950 SFV
https://steamcharts.com/app/678950 DBFZ
So first thing to note here is that historically speaking they have a similar population pool if we ignore dbfz's first month but include sfv's first month. We will count this as 'dbfz having a larger potential for peaks' and make no other assumptions about that fact for sake of brevity.
The second thing to note here is that the dbfz breaks their balance quite more often than sfv. They had a lot more defined stringent meta at the top levels of play and there was a general community sense of imbalance from the get go. After sfv's first two seasons they tended to have some shifts in balance but not earth shattering, and by season 4 reached a state of balance basically everyone was happy with (a very rare feat to achieve.)
As you can see the numbers for SFV stay extremely consistent and even trend slightly upward overtime. They peak when a new character (like any fighting game) is released but the drop offs get nowhere near as steep as in DBFZ.
DBFZ otoh has an extremely high volatility comparatively. The lowest points happen when the meta is more settled and entrenched (you will just have to believe me on my explanation for those drops as a modestly experienced observer of that community unless you wanna trawl through years of twitter feeds and replies of top players.)
So we have two games of very popular franchises with different patterns. A fairly well balanced game with some character and ability variety that historically and consistently has had no consensus on what character is top tier at top levels which exhibits extremely high player base stability; and a historically less balanced game with a decent consensus on top tier characters in any given season at higher levels with about the same character variety but with technically even more customization ability via team selection and order that keeps having comparatively larger drop offs and had to make a huge balance patch recently to try and fix community perception.
My conclusion is that people say things like you are saying, but ultimately a more balanced game leads to a more stable less toxic community and player base and if done right less hard lines around meta.
You can argue that dbfz wasn't perfectly imbalanced enough, but I would have to ask you what that would look like in this example, because the concept is otherwise extremely amorphous I could just go 'that's SFV and what Azherae has been talking about you just have different definitions of what balance is.'
Right except Azherae is talking about the solution to that. I have seen a very strong difference in communities toxcity levels when a game is balanced in the way she was describing vs 'imbalanced.' The type of people you are talking about have less to lord over people and the amount of complaining or circle-jerking is a lot less. It still exists, but it's lower.
I think dbfz and sfv are both very successful fighting games. I would go so far as to say that economically speaking making a game based on your principle isn't flawed. But 'balance to the level Azherae is talking about is boring and people leave' is demonstrably false. If anything they slowly grow as a community.
Ashes mechanically needs a stable player base. I will therefore prompt a rhetorical question not meant to be answered. 'What model suits Ashes needs better. Aiming for 'perfect imbalance' creating boom and bust cycles with rotating hard meta, or more balance with stable cycles and softer meta?'
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
I don't perceive these two things as having anything to do with each other. In fact, that goes double down, literally.
I accept that elitist mindsets can waste time and having less strict group requirements can be better.
I accept that elitist mindsets can be toxic when they lead to rejection.
I don't see a connection with long lasting game environments directly, but sure, if everyone was elitist in the two above ways, it would probably happen.
I don't see what this has to do with balance, except the opposite. If the balance is bad, it happens more. If the balance is good, I see it as happening less.
I don't see what this has to do with being an underdog or black sheep, but I am enough of one that I fractured and rebuilt an entire card game's online community because of the principles I'm describing, so there's that?
In my experience, balance isn't boring, stagnation is boring and stagnation comes when people feel like they have solved something down to a few options. Stagnation does not come when people feel like they have solved something down to 20 of 25 options.
There's a selection pressure in gaming built up over old games that seems to cause this. However I have a 4 year 1000+ participant historical case study if you want to read through a forum archive? (Game no longer online since Wizards of the Coast re-released it after the popularity rise and had to send their Cease and Desist to our online platform, then released the game without following any of the principles and it failed again. Sad).
Let me know if you need the dataset and I'll poke my sysadmin. If you just want the research results they're here at the old chintzy looking half-broken free site but it's unhelpful without the forum data and the hundreds(?) of thousands of duels in the database for context so forgive me if it comes off as just 'declaring you're wrong because of some random old unofficial website'.
Man... nostalgia.
Yeah!
The key is that when you have a balanced, diverse environment, you get to simultaneously "play what you want", and "play effectively".
When your game is imbalanced, you only get to "play what you want" and "play effectively" if "what you want" is "the current effective build/team in the balance patch". Otherwise, you have to choose! You can always "play what you want", but then it might not especially be effective. You can always choose to play effective stuff (with varying amounts of painful investment), but you might not find the playstyle fun.
Smash melee is a great game, but only if you really like playing Fox, Falco, Marth, Puff, Shiek, and Falcon (and maybe Peach/Pikachu). If you want to play other characters you can, but it's going to be a struggle.
Guess which is better for player retention.
The second one right?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
It is so fundamental that it was more important for me to point out than the fact that New World is a very different game to Ashes. In New World, PvP is effectively 100% optional. Additionally, with no real penalty to PvP death (even less of a penalty than Archeage had), I really question why you are even bringing up New World at all in this discussion.
In Ashes, PvP is unavoidable, and has actual loss associated with it. As such, people will try very hard to avoid death in PvP in Ashes.
In New World, PvP is totally optional, and has no actual loss associated with it. As such, people will make no real effort to avoid death in PvP, and may even use it as a means of fast travel (which also sometimes did happen in Archeage).
But sure, use New World as an example as to why 1v1 PvP in Ashes will be prevalent. Honestly, it makes you look like you know what you are talking about!
I find it amusing how you ended this post by saying that it can be hard to imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with, and then reply to another poster with this. You are basically saying that you think you will see more 1v1 PvP because you play the game differently to other people.
So, from my perspective, you think 1v1 will be a common form of PvP because you can't imagine other people playing games in ways you are not familiar with.
Play a little thought exercise with yourself here. Imagine you live in a node in Ashes, and you like to harvest trees to sell for wood. Every time you are in the forest, some guy comes past and kills you, takes some of your wood, and then carries on.
It happens often, as this player is online more than you are. Sometimes he even kills you while you are travelling down the road, sometimes while you are killing mobs.
What are you going to do about that?
I can tell you what most people will do about that, and it doesn't involve moving on.
Do you care what my point is?
Are you just bitter that I don't care about any point that is formed on a misconception about the game?
If someone came in here and wrote a piece on how they don't think this game would work because for some reason they think the game is an RTS and they don't think an RTS would work with the corruption system, I am obviously not going to care about what they are saying. I am going to point out that this game is not an RTS, give them some time to rethink their opinion with this new information.
You've put yourself in a similar (though less drastic) situation a few times now, and my position has been the same. try and find out what the missing piece of information is, correct it, then see where that takes you. You have an insistence of continuing to draw people in to a discussion on the game as if it were an RTS, rather than allowing people to try and find out what the missing piece of information you have is.
So, whether I care or not about your point depends on whether you have a missing piece (or incorrect piece) of information or not.
It seems like you just want to argue with me, because you don't actually care about understanding my point, as evidenced by you continuing to argue with me and then literally writing "I don't care what your point is."
So let me make something super clear.
If you find yourself attempting to have a conversation with me, and you've gotten yourself into a place where your don't actually care about trying to figure out what I'm trying to say, and you're just trying to find things to pick apart or argue with, just go do something else. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in being understood and understanding. I'm interested in folks that care about my point.
a few times huh? which are those then?
I suppose you might say when you let me know you can sell certs to NPC hunters to generate gold? Even though, my position the whole time, was that there was going to be a gold faucet, and that the first thing I wrote after gaining that information was that I didn't know what this new information changed?
Anything else?
You keep mentioning that sieges are going to be open world. I don't see how this matters given they'll have player caps. If they won't have player caps, then yeah, it won't particularly matter how balanced the game is if the fights are just going to be 250 v 324.
You keep mentioning that matchup charts are irrelevant, but you still don't understand why I'm talking about matchup charts, and so you think saying stuff like "but ashes will have a lot of 2v1s not 1v1s" is somehow relevant in some way. It isn't. You mention that folks don't necessarily have to try to win sieges as though that's relevant to a conversation about game balance. It isn't.
This happens because you fundamentally don't (or didn't) understand what I'm talking about. You don't care to understand my point. You're just scanning for things I'm saying and looking for things to say that are contrary. It's exhausting.
You asking me now "do I care what your point is" is kind of pointless, because you are not saying "which" point it is that you want me to answer to.
If that point you are asking me about is in relation to you comparing an MMO to a fighting game, then no, I don't. If you feel you have a point to make that is greater than a comparison to a fighting game, then make your point without that comparison, as the comparison is inappropriate.
If your point is something else entirely, then you have to say more than "do you care about my point", because in context, I have no idea what you are talking about if not the above. As I said to you earlier, we know battlegrounds will have a cap on players (you should assume it is 500, not 250), but we have no reason to assume there will only be one battleground per siege. I pointed this out to you earlier.
As such, we can't really make assumptions on the game as a whole based on the specific assumption that both sides will be capped out on a siege. This is especially true given Steven want's a world where players can be roaming around the game world, see a siege in progress, and opt to join in. This isn't possible if the siege is capped.
That is simply not an assumption we can make, and so any point made using that as a base is not something I care about, as it is fundamentally the same as someone saying that an RTS will not work with the corruption system.