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Balance seems a bit off in favour of bugs
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wookieontheweb

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wookieontheweb

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Bugs seems to have it easy at the moment, at least at the level I play 1600 - 1900. In S/T battles where I lose against K I will revenge and win, and my opponents revenge me and win when I was K.

- It has been argued that maps are the cause of much of the imbalance but that could be a solution for almost all balance issues i.e. go through and "fix" all the maps. At the moment I'd estimate as many as 80% of maps seem to favour K.
- It is harder for S as the plague is harsh but K do well against T too.
- Something fairly recent (12-18 months) in the balance changes has caused the tip because I thought not too long ago K was being crushed.
- The balance is not far off. It's certainly not the case that K always win or have fool proof strategies, it just feels much harder for the other 2 races.

I can't put my finger on exactly what it is. My personal theory is that K simply have many more cheap and effective options open to them e.g. ant + wyrm, swarmer + borfly, salamander + leviathon, etc. So they can work with any map layout more effectively than the other races.

My personal suggestion would be to reduce borfly armour piercing vs air a bit more, but really I'm just asking the balance team to look at it.

Also I'm not just having a go at K, none of this is in my interest as I've recently started a 2 player team with double bugs and life is easy, maybe we've just been lucky, but it just seems to exacerbate this balance issue (especially against S&T teams). If someone has a 4 player bugs only team I expect it will show this imbalance even more.

Balance thread http://forum.uniwar.com/posts/list/2879.page (Which seems to have reduced K effectiveness repeatedly in the last 9 months)

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simsverd

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simsverd

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The balance between the races are pretty good. Maps play a much bigger role than minor tweaks.

Some units are harder to use than others, and high level players are better at utilizing units - better positioning, better gangup, better shielding etc etc - and we know that things can seem as "issues" for lower ranked players are not so at the top level - wich is where you must balance the game.

We are currently discussing
- tweaks for more varied K vs K
- more usability for the kraken

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StarryBlink

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StarryBlink

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I think the game balance now is as its best since it was born.
We can argue that Uniwar reach the absolute balance now.

Previously I would say kharl beat titan, titan beat sap, and sap beat kharl in general.
Today it seem to depend on maps. But in general, very well balanced.

Any balance adjustment from this point, you have to be very cautious.


For the balance team.
I suggest you mark the current unit stats distinctively form previous versions.
So in the future, if you make some balance adjustments and get lost.
You'll know where to return.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jul 29, 2018 05:58

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simsverd

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simsverd

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  StarryBlink wrote:
Previously I would say kharl beat titan, titan beat sap, and sap beat kharl in general.
Today it seem to depend on maps. But in general, very well balanced.

Any balance adjustment from this point, you have to be very cautious.

thx

we like to do incremental changes and observe the effect before doing more.

The balance are good, and we are now mostly discussing tweaks to have specific effects without changing race balance to much.. for example tweaks that make certain units being buildt more to add more variety

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Pento

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Pento

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I disagree.
It's not well balanced.
All in favour for k.
An experienced Krahl Player will only lose against an excellent and lucky Sapien or Titan player.


People who don't see it, don't want to see it.

duaneski |TT|

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duaneski |TT|

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I do think the bugs are very strong right now.

Specifically their end game is brutal.

But honestly, I kinda gotta Blame the map makers :p so many maps are congested messes, and that plays right into the khral wheelhouse.

I'm still winning my fair share of mirrored (revenge) KVT against 2300 level players... so I don't think tvk is impossible. But it certainly feels harder than the kvt game hah
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wookieontheweb

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wookieontheweb

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But honestly, I kinda gotta Blame the map makers :p so many maps are congested messes, and that plays right into the khral wheelhouse.


This was the point of my first statement ...

- It has been argued that maps are the cause of much of the imbalance but that could be a solution for almost all balance issues i.e. go through and "fix" all the maps. At the moment I'd estimate as many as 80% of maps seem to favour K.


If this is the case then surely it means that bugs are better in the majority of maps that are constructed and hence balance should be adjusted to favour the most common type of map, not expect all map makers to limit themselves to a very narrow set of vague definitions on what makes a map balanced for all races. i.e. if "many maps are congested messes" then the other races need options to handle these style of maps.

I know this is probably heresy but what about reducing the cost of the base units, marine and mecha to 90 credits?

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フ乇千千卩卄79

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フ乇千千卩卄79

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First and form most we must remember that bugs are the favored race. Bugs are named after Xavis brother. Second the unit diversity that bugs have is immense, they are very capable of dominating any of the fields of battle. Titans and saps have very similar in that they rely heavy on the ghu game. That being said I do believe that currently race balance is damn near perfect especially after the kraken buff. That being said balance is achieved in a vacume. It's the maps that presents the chaos that offsets the balance. All maps to some degree are unbalanced without a certain amount of map unbalance most games would just be build ups. So yes many maps are in essence unbalanced. The trick to maps is to give each race an advantage i.e. a road for ghu, or a tree 3 tiles from a base for underlings to jump on in one move. So yes I believe that the races are balanced and yes I believe maps especially poorly made maps can change the course of the race balance. #supportmapmakers
The Impaler

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The Impaler

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I hate to add to the "mapmakers need to fix it" camp, but unfortunately I I am. open plain maps arent as fun to look at,but khral get killed on open maps. mapmakers need to be weary of swamps in too good of place, and trees 3 tiles away from where an underling might be. and cities. these are the main positives for khral.

The problem is actually that plague is an INCREDIBLY complex mechanic, compared to all the others in the game. it involves time value of money, resource sacrifice on both sides, forcing unit buys (ie engineer), and proper posotion, and proper quarantine, and unit priorities etc etc.

when you have something this complex, you will have pockets throughout the ranked pool that understand it to varying degrees. eg from 1500-2100, helicopters are terrible buys vs khral if plague is possible, cus they get wrecked by the plague (100$/turn) 2200+ players are better at positioning and helicopter becomes a main counter to salamander (even though salamander is also a counter to helicopters)

I am (or was in the past anyway) one of the top 20 players, and even at my peak i didnt feel even close to optimizing plague both as sapiens and khral. a topic this complex can only be balanced to a specific point - are khrals wrecking saps in the top 16+ rounds of tournaments?

i think the answer is no.

we would need a super computer to estimate any more accurately than that.

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The Impaler

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The Impaler

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  Pento wrote:I disagree.
It's not well balanced.
All in favour for k.
An experienced Krahl Player will only lose against an excellent and lucky Sapien or Titan player.


People who don't see it, don't want to see it.


how do i delete someone else's post?^ ;P

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wookieontheweb

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wookieontheweb

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I wish Devs would show a stats table per map (at least for 1v1) e.g.


Then it would be much easier to identify which maps were imbalanced and we could have a much better discussion about why.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Aug 31, 2018 09:57


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フ乇千千卩卄79

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フ乇千千卩卄79

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  wookieontheweb wrote:I wish Devs would show a stats table per map (at least for 1v1) e.g.


Then it would be much easier to identify which maps were imbalanced and we could have a much better discussion about why.



Not sure how much help that would actually be. Their is a lot of factors that could contribute to a false positive.
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wookieontheweb

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wookieontheweb

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I think over time the outliers (e.g. timeouts) would be drowned out by the normal games completed. Those numbers represent 776 games completed which is about when many disliked maps get voted into oblivion (looking through your map list I'm lucky if I get 200 games played!). In the artificial example here if you had 100+ up and 50+ down, then those stats would indicate to me that most of those down are coming from the KvT match-up.

I think this highlights the fact that even if you are really diligent with your map testing (as I know you are) and play 50 test games before you release it, then you will only have tried each match-up 3 times (assuming you're careful and don't test one race more than others). Something like this would then give you a clue as to something you've missed and where that something might be.

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duaneski |TT|

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duaneski |TT|

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  wookieontheweb wrote:I think over time the outliers (e.g. timeouts) would be drowned out by the normal games completed. Those numbers represent 776 games completed which is about when many disliked maps get voted into oblivion (looking through your map list I'm lucky if I get 200 games played!). In the artificial example here if you had 100+ up and 50+ down, then those stats would indicate to me that most of those down are coming from the KvT match-up.

I think this highlights the fact that even if you are really diligent with your map testing (as I know you are) and play 50 test games before you release it, then you will only have tried each match-up 3 times (assuming you're careful and don't test one race more than others). Something like this would then give you a clue as to something you've missed and where that something might be.


MAN YESSS!! Honestly I think we NEED that.

I would add the ability to sort by player level.

Because I tell ya one thing. Balanced at 2500 might well be imbalanced at 1600. If we could look at a map by skill range, and by race... I think we could really start to say "yeah. Across the board Khral is winning on this map" or "seems pretty balanced at higher level play. Is there something we can do to help out the lower level games where titans win 80% of the time, without impacting the upper level games?"

Anyway. I've been wanting those stats forever hope we get them.

Back to the discussion at hand... map balance. Yeah. It's incredibly complex. But as Impy said, if there's concern that khral are too strong, then open plains are a pretty simple way to give the khral a nerf. Open spaces used to be present in every map. Now it's almost uncommon... which is why I said what I said.

We all try our best with what we know to make a fun, unique, and balanced maps. While I do think there is a lack of open maps, I think this is something that will evolve over time to the right place...

I don't think that balancing the races towards how maps are made is the correct approach, anyway. Khral should be good at some things. And it's what makes them interesting to play, that they approach maps in a different way than saps or titans.

If we take that away, by giving saps and titans more tools to do the same thing, we make the game more boring.

I think one of the big losses to this game being fun was when titans lost their identity as the turtle race. (When blasters arrived..) but ah well.
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n!/s

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  StarryBlink wrote:I think the game balance now is as its best since it was born.
We can argue that Uniwar reach the absolute balance now.

Previously I would say kharl beat titan, titan beat sap, and sap beat kharl in general.
Today it seem to depend on maps. But in general, very well balanced.

Any balance adjustment from this point, you have to be very cautious.


For the balance team.
I suggest you mark the current unit stats distinctively form previous versions.
So in the future, if you make some balance adjustments and get lost.
You'll know where to return.


yes, hit that sweet "revert commit" button
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