About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

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Aug 11, 2009 18:27

Subject: About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

kralux

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Joined: Jun 01, 2009,
Location: California, USA
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Some of you noticed the unit balancing changes that occurred over the past couple of days.
Our goal is to make this game the best strategy game possible and this means superb balancing between the races and units.

The Sapiens were slightly too powerful so far with the marauder/helicopters combo defeating almost any other race. We took corrective action to make the helicopter less overpowering. Same thing with the marauders.
We also eliminated a frustrating loophole that happened when Sapiens would pump out many engineers and literally freeze the board for the Titans.
Finally to even out the Khraleans we decided to let the Pinzer have some weak air attack. The goal here is not to make the Pinzer an air fighter but at least to let it defend itself and kill off a weak heli (since many of the Khralean units cannot attack air).

We hope this makes UniWar an even better game and we remain committed to balancing this game as much as possible.

Feel free to give us constructive feedback

The UniWar Team

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Aug 31, 2009 11:22

Aug 12, 2009 00:27

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

zCRP

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Joined: Jun 12, 2009,
Location: Milan, Italy
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I like improvements and attempts to make the game more balanced. I just think each change should last at least a few days to allow thorough evaluation, while there have been (I think) 3 changes just in the last two days...

Aug 12, 2009 00:52

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

_jnc_

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It seems quite strange indeed that the changes happen so quickly now. Off course you can't know the full effect on thousands of players beforehand. But I thought they would test changes for themselves offline before implementing?

Like, zCRP, in our "quatros arenas" game one turn I would come forward with my pinzers against your helis, but wait, now they're only 1 def again!

It's a bit of a strange way to do the updates I think. Why don't the dev's just announce the changes, let's say, two days in advance?

Aug 12, 2009 01:08

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

zCRP

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The best way to analyze balance changes would probably be through simulation. Make lots of different bots, then simulate thousands of games and look at outcome distributions. If that's not possible, or bot games are meaningless, I guess balance changes should nonetheless be evaluated by looking at how game statistics change. eg, make one single change, then let ppl play for 1-2 weeks, and look at how average outcomes have been affected.

Aug 12, 2009 01:09

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

zCRP

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Also, for the sake of fairness, changes should not affect ongoing games, but only apply to newly started ones.

Aug 12, 2009 01:19

Subject: About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

Hachiman

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Joined: Jun 25, 2009,
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How about we remember to say 'thank you' for the devs continuing to improve the game, rather than just whine about very minor issues?

I think the updates are awesome.

I think scaling back the Pinzer air attack is good too, because I was worried this would unbalance things too far the other way.

Aug 12, 2009 02:35

Subject: About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

Anonymous

*shrugs* You just have to accept that this game is a work in progress, and changes may happen, and you might get screwed if you have a game in progress when a change happens. So you lose a game or two.. Ratings points are easy to get back.

This isn't Blizzard, after all, it's a small team doing what they can. I bet Uniwar isn't even their full time job. There's gonna be issues but it's still the best multiplayer experience on the iphone bar none.

Also, there's really no way to test changes without putting real humans to work. Bots are nowhere near as conniving or evil as a human player can be, especially those who have a knack for finding exploits (bots won't come up with creative uses for EMP spam and buried underlings for example.) You just have to pay attention to what the players are up to and listen to the complaints.

Aug 12, 2009 02:41

Subject: About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

Anonymous

And should also mention, Uniwar isn't exactly a top selling game in the app store either. Hopefully there's respectable sales numbers but I bet the devs aren't exactly raking in a fortune here. If it's like the returns on other games of about the same popularity they may not be making anywhere near what their time is worth. So let's just be thankful they're maintaining it at all, and doing a really good job of it, and perhaps try to keep the demands reigned in a bit.

Aug 12, 2009 14:37

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

mrbobinnit

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Joined: Aug 11, 2009,
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Quite. My thanks for the efforts that are still going into this game.

Aug 13, 2009 06:19

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

_jnc_

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Joined: Jun 15, 2009,
Location: Switzerland
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I feel a strong need to apologize in case I seemed like one of those never satisfied and always complaining people! I only thought that the way the changes were implemented seemed rather improvised and a bit odd. But I'm sure there has been a long process of discussion within the team, and I very much like what they did.
Not changing the speeder but only nerfing helis and EMP is exactly what I had wished for, and I'm really looking forward to my first Titans-Sapiens encounter on deadmonk.
And as for the selling and maintenance: I suggested somewhere in another thread that I (among others) would be very happy to pay a humble amount if the Uniwar devs should ever get the feeling they're not adequately rewarded for their work!

Aug 14, 2009 21:23

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

glackattack

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Joined: Jul 12, 2009,
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The best way to judge the "balance" of the races is to look at the relative frequency with which players select them. If each race is selected about a third of the time, the races are balanced. If any race is selected half the time, thta race is too powerful.

Aug 16, 2009 19:08

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

q

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Joined: Aug 14, 2009,
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No.. You can't tell by popularity alone. A race could be chosen the most because it's the easiest to use, which is certainly true in the sapiens case since they're the most straightforward. Titans have to be played carefully and defensively most of the time, which isn't appealing to many and takes time to learn, and with khraleans you have to learn to rotate the units and use buried underlings and gang-up bonuses. Sapiens take some strategy too especially when you and the opponent are both more experienced but from the beginning they're the easiest to just churn out units and bash the other guy.

Plus lots of people, given the choice of human, bug or robot, are going to play the human. That's just preference, it doesn't mean the balance is out of whack.

Aug 16, 2009 21:13

Subject: Re:About the Recent Unit Balancing Changes...

santimun

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Joined: Jun 14, 2009,
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I will give feedback after I spend sometime with the Krahleans. While it does throw off a game when ulpdates take effect in the middle of the game. I do appreciate the continuing effort to make the game more balanced! Starcraft went through A LOT of updates b4 it got to the awesomeness that made it last over 10 years! Not that I'm comparing the two games but the amount of updates involved.

Keep up the great work devs but seriously consider having updates not effect in game matches.

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