My balance concerns - Not really about balance but how it's done.

First, let me talk of my personal experience.
I'm not doing this to brag, but to show that I'm not talking out of my ***.

I come from supcom, almost left it until FA came out, and was really glad how the balance was fixed compared to the vanilla one.

Then I've initiated the "Community Bug Fix Patch" and the "Community Balance Patch" projects, that led to the 3603 patch (and current steam version).

Since two years, I'm the initiator of the Forged Alliance Forever project, his lead programmer, and the lead balance guy.

By lead balance guy, I mean "the guy who supervise what is done, and code it if necessary". Not the guy deciding everything. But I often decide who I listen to
We've done several iteration of balance teams, and currently it's some people voted by the community.


I think I'm the guy with the biggest knowledge of how balancing a game in the line of TA is working. I know the time it takes, what it need and who to listen to (or not).

A balance period, by the way, usually need more time (3 months usually) that the time left for PA to be released, while the base of the game is more sane. That fact worry me already.

I was silent for months to avoid useless discussions (I have enough of that to deal with on FAF), but I still want PA to be at least playable at release, and I feel we are very far from that.

One thing that is worry me the most is that top players are needed to balance a game.
They have the deepest knowledge of the game, they play competitively, and they probably knows better what is good or not gameplay-wise.
Also, on a game like PA, you avoid all faction-related issues (some players like their factions the most), so they are also unbiased for PA.

And like it or not, all the current top players who play games like TA/FA/PA are currently on FAF.
And I've noticed that most of them are not interested in PA.

I don't have a solution for that, but some really basic balance errors that even me can notice are present since the first alpha.

ie. the initial build order.

One of the main change of FA over Supcom, was to change the mex/mex/pgen/pgen/factory BO to factory/mex/mex/pgen/pgen.
It sounds like nothing, but the whole dynamic of the game changed with that. It means that instead of watching some fancy construction beam for 3 minutes before having to do something, you watch it for 20 seconds, and you can start scouting, raiding, ...

In PA, it's even more important : Scouting is insanely hard. First because the map is random, the positions are random, but also because moving a scout around the map need dozen of clicks and many camera changes.

It means that instead of doing that tedious task while your ACU is building your starting base, you have to do it at the same time you should start expanding. It goes from "doing nothing & waiting" to "oh my god I can't click fast enough and now I have an headache" in no time.

That was just a example, I could get the list go on for pages, but that's not the subject here. The subject is "when Uber will start listening to the right people ?".

I'm hoping a whole map projection view comes into this game.
Scout means, "click, click click, pan, click, pan, click, click, click, pan".
It straight up costs too many actions right now.
That is a lack of control.

See my post on UI Design Principles:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/principles-of-ui-design-the-4-cs.52756/

I think that happens when:
Core functions are coded and stable.
And more than 70% of the unit roster is being played with.
oh. I guess after that projection view is in too?
Is it not too soon to be discussing balance?

I agree that a lot of problems come from the lack of overview, while the game is supposed to be focused on large scale. And like the OP said in https://forums.uberent.com/threads/uber-do-you-agree-pa-needs-a-huge-ui-update.52662/ it's worrying that it took so much time for Uber to acknowledge a problem that was quite obvious since the teaser for kickstarter. (I think it was the subject of one of my first post about PA in another forum).

But then, when it will be the time?

I feel that if we have to wait for all units to be implemented, there will be no time to balance the game.
I'm also worried about that "let's talk about unit ideas" thread while he actual roster is so dull..

I know Uber is counting on the fact that they can do it post-launch, but I don't think they realize how important the first impression is, even more on a multi-player only game.
(ie. the articles and tests about PA will be based on that, not on what it could be 6 months later).

Some people already feel that the game is beyond salvation.
They are exaggerating, of course, but it's to give you the overall feeling outside the PA community that already pay the game.

Ie. by watching livestream, you can see how the pace of game feel uninteresting.
Feel is important. I'm not saying the game IS uninteresting, but watching a cast is boring. That doesn't help to promote a multiplayer game.

Also, they are so many wrong things in the game (again this thread is not about listing them), that the blatant stuff can be solved before all units are in.

I'd disagree that scouting itself is particularly hard, I usually have more than enough time to set up a route or two after queuing a few buildings. The real problem can be finding the locations of your enemies afterwards. Bases in the FOW are dark and troublesome to spot without significant zoom. A simple FOW tint in the player colour would go a huge way towards adding better awareness of player locations and map control.

Please, it was just an exemple. I don't want this thread to derail in yet again a useless balance discussion.

+1 not that hard.

Also OP maybe some proof of credentials???

Not the topic.

Community Bug fix patch:
http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26935

Patch 3603 (check the credits at the end):
http://supremecommander.filefront.com/file/;102949

And FAF... well, I don't think any to prove anything about it, just check http://www.faforever.com

I would add that I brought FA back to live:
http://www.faforever.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4749&p=50917#p50917

Out of curiosity, why aren't FAF's top players interested in PA?

I would imagine that it's because they're good at FA, not PA. They're at the top of their game and don't want to have to start back at the beginning. If they have some sort of excuse, like "Oh I don't like the balance of PA" or "The UI is unintuitive and unrefined", it's just an excuse, nothing else. I don't worry too much about PA, I'm very optimistic about how Uber is handling this game so far.


On that note, what's REALLY the purpose of this discussion here...? You said "When will Uber listen to the right people", but that makes it sound like Uber can't make good design decisions on their own -- something which is clearly not true, because the game is outstanding even in its current buggy unbalanced implementation.

I for one, will sit back and only speak up when I feel there's an important topic that isn't actively being addressed in the community or by the devs. And, of course, report bugs and issues to help with the debugging process.


edit: reread your post, thought I would add something else: You say that top players are needed to balance a game. I...well, this may have some truth to it, but I would still maintain that the OVERALL playerbase is needed to HELP INFORM Uber's decisions on balance. Just because all the pros say to nerf the dox doesn't necessarily mean dox are OP, it just means that the top players are seeing doxen being too strong. But what about the less skilled players? Many of the less-skilled players prefer ants, because only the skilled players can micro doxen effectively to be better than ants, thus making ants superior in all but the most serious games.

I'm explaining my experience at balancing (or leading a balance team) in a game similar to PA for 2 years.

I know it's not something that most people want to hear (that only top players are able to have a good overview of the balance), but it's the reality of things, in every RTS ever made.
Agreeing or not is actually irrelevant. (unless you have a experience similar to share?)

And I though it has to be said, because, indeed, I personally don't see PA going in the right direction (not in the wrong either, it's just running around like a headless chicken patch after patch), and we are getting really close to release. Too close for confort.

I don't know what they don't like about PA. They were quite excited about it (some backed a lot), but they just gave up quite fast.

I've given them the thread, so they might be able to answer you in detail.

+1 for what Pilot says

Also, I don't think everyone else has to be ignored, but their opinion is what I'm calling "Public relation balance change". Not dramatic, probably even cosmetic, but enough to please them.

Probably something I shouldn't say out loud, but again, it's the reality of things.

They do that a lot in another big RTS game I won't cite

I'm not playing PA, because it's only a "light" version of Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. You have only one faction and only two tech levels. The planets are all flat and the UI, there isn't a UI. Ok this will come later, but i joined the beta to talk about the balance. All i found was an alpha game.

I won't say PA will be a bad game, no it can be great when all is ready. My problem is that i don't need an other game like Supreme Commander 2 with less strategic opportunities.

(Voodoo Rank 1# 1vs1 Ranked player in SupCom and Forged Alliance)

this is different from not being interested in PA, isn't it? This is not being interested in the current beta build. You bought the beta, you're interested in how the game turns out, right?

I can't say this is shocking.

I think the problem is that Uber is doing a LOT of things simultaneously and that balance itself is kind of left in the dark, hoping to get some attention but being left out. I mean, big props to Uber to get so much done in such a short time, but i think that release is going to be a tech-ready release, not a true and final balance release.

For balance, a major problem so far is that the base game is only just done, while at least 3 game-changers are still not in the game and that quite a few more niche or role-specific units need to be added. Balance is something that currently shifts so fast that it's almost insane to keep up.

Ultimately, i feel a Gamma is needed to make up for the lack of actual game-play testing in Beta (which is what Beta is for). Unless of course Uber pulls another miracle and they can start to focus on gameplay sooner rather than later.

EDIT: i do get the feeling Uber lost quite a bit of time squishing some things like Linux, IOS and windows 32bit bugs and compatibility. I get the feeling they anticipated they'd be further by now.

Yes i will wait for the release and decide then if it's worth it or not.

I just hope they know that reviewers (pro or not) will test that release, not the one 6 months later. And once the metacritic is out & low, there is no recovery from that.

Since they're all industry veterans, they know.

I would think the guys from Spring are better balancers. After all they've experimented with far more than tweaks. How often does FAF add or remove units?

Also FAF balance focuses heavily on interfactional problems. Those won't exist here.

No idea. I was under the impression that they were avoiding balance discussions/problems by splitting it into several versions of it.
It was actually quite confusing when I've tried to play TASpring some years ago. I gave up because of that.

No idea what is their level of competitiveness there either.

But I may mistaken, I didn't look further. And it's not a contest about who does the best job

But to be specific, we never truly added any unit in the game, but about 60% of them were useless (ie most of the t3 navy, most of t2 land, almost all t2 air, all the scu, "game enders"...) before we've started working it, so we've indirectly added a lot of them

To this day, I would say that only mass fabs are still useless, but we either have to change their role or how they work entirely, or just remove them.