A thought...Just give me a moment...I'm not being alarmist I promise

I thought we will get some of that with choose commanders and commander abilities?

Yeah - entirety is kind of ridiculous in it's expense. (although pretty much everything is untouchable unless the opponent can get up avengers, and it gives a huge advantage to have advanced Radar).

Obsolescence?

Are nukes expense criticised? Because they are a clear game winner if you hit your opponent, and there isn't actually a decent counter

For clarity, the plan as far as we know it would not allow the choosing of abilities, they would be locked ona commander by commander basis, those who wish to learn more about the proposal can view my summarization in the Backer's Lounge HERE.

This is more of a fundamental problem than one of just balance but you got the jist of it.

Things like the Basic and Advanced Power Generators, Extractors, Radar, Ant/Leveler(more debated) Orbital Intel Satellites for example.

Because they don't have any interesting gameplay, they're completely binary and that's essentially a side-effect of how powerful they are.

Mike

Oh right I see.

I'm interested how they will balance nukes and orbital. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Somebody somewhere posted a blogpost that was in favor of a perfectly mirrored balance. I can't find it right now. Somebody remembers it? It was pretty good.
One point of it was that multiple factions actually don't change much. It just creates multiple games within the game for each matchup. Doesnt really help with anything apart from making it much harder to balance.

Could you show me where i can read more about this Metal Spot Allocation Rework?

hmm chess is very limited. Limited amount of units and unit types, limited amount of squares, no ressource System, only 1v1 and so on. And still very hard to master. Not comparable to PA. PA will never only be decided by who clicks most. PA will never be mastered. You always can get faster, have better tactics and better strategy.

First of all, they say that chess at the high-end is very drawish, which is actually false. Games played at the highest level by chess computers draw less than grandmaster games. Second, if you play chess not on classic time controls (at least 2h per person), but on rapid time controls (~20m per person) the game becomes a lot more volatile. Chess is already moving more towards rapid and blitz use.

There are chess variants like Fisher chess which have randomized piece placements invalidating memorization of opening theory. There are also variants with more piece power that in theory should lead to less draws. (Capablance chess) Although interesting, these variants aren't played very much because chess is perfectly fine for most of the players. Professional chess players do play Fisher chess tournaments and nobody cares about those, it just has no chance of displacing the real game.

I think someone like David Sirlin has a particular perspective (I have read his arguments before) and unsurprisingly he will zoom in right away on the parts of chess that relate to his metier. That doesn't mean he is wrong, and it's perfectly fine to come up with new variants and promote them, but I don't think the issues with chess are anywhere near severe enough to contemplate changing the game. (or in reality it would be: switching to a new game)

Reading the article, I actually do agree with one of Sirlin's suggestions. Just a recap, he promoted the following changes to chess:
- stalemate draws removed, if you run out of legal moves you lose. I actually think this is an interesting idea as the effects will be minor and it will create more winning endgames since many king+pawn vs king endings are drawn because of the stalemate rule.
- different armies/rosters. I think this complicates the game too much and is not as elegant as the fisher chess solution of simply shuffling.
- "dueling" ... no comment
- "touchdown rule", if the king gets to the opponent's half of the board that player wins. Effectively means removal of the endgame. It seems completely ridiculous to me, but then I do like endgames.

I don't think that Sirlin knows chess very well though. I mean, he clearly misunderstands the concept of asymmetry, stating that the only asymmetry in chess is that white moves first. This is his rationale for introducing asymmetric armies. Nevertheless, chess is still an asymmetric game because both players will accrue different advantages and weaknesses throughout the game, effectively creating asymmetry even despite starting with the same army. For instance, bishop versus knight is an example, two bishops of different colors, different pawn structures, piece sacrifices, pawn sacrifices, the list goes on. I think chess suffers for its symmetrical qualities only some of the time, most noticeably in very open games that are purely about exploitation of piece power with tactics, which is pure calculation with no strategy. Or alternatively in very closed games. But none of these happen that often, most of the time there is balance.

Also, note that adding different armies will just lead to balance problems. I think balancing a game without many unique factions is already an arduous enough task. In chess, for instance, you're trying to create a balance between open and closed games and you have to balance piece power as well to emphasize both strategic(long-term) and tactical(short-term/volatile) elements.

http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=411247&currentpage=2#33 is an interesting perspective on this I think. (sorry for linking to team liquid ^^)

In short, you add more depth to strategy by tying it to mechanical skill. Optimal strategies will differ based on your level of play. This does add more complexity to balancing the game though. In Starcraft II lower level players frequently have to suffer as they become collateral damage of a high level balance change.

And on the video, I don't know if I agree with their framing completely, actually. Cyclical imbalance sounds very fun, until the imbalance overwhelms the game and everything becomes pre-determined. moba games keep up the pretense that hero choice is arbitrary, with all heroes presumed equal, but they have to add draft modes to the game simply to not let it overwhelm competitive play.

They do have a point, the way I would frame it is by saying that with enough different possibilities you will never eventually exhaust the game and end up with a dominant strategy, there will always be new developments. It's difficult to create a game like this however, and there are past examples of games that were perfectly fine until at one point disaster struck and innovation stopped happening. Many games take it as an article of faith that their game will never be exhausted, but as in real life it's wise to get some insurance. (especially if the game becomes popular and millions of people start to play it, although that's obviously desirable for other reasons )

What I would prefer is that the mechanical requirements(APM, multitasking) are kept as low as possible while focusing more on implementing guessing games throughout the main game. The guessing games should have small determination at the start of the game but much larger later in the game. Guessing games should become mindgames. It is about trying to outsmart your opponent. When the decisions have both long term and short term advantages and disadvantages, are tactical and strategical they force players into asymmetrical situations. Do you trade resources for scouting or can you guess what your opponent is up to?
If every decision is an RPS in itself then there is no right predetermined choice but the more skilled player will be more likely to make the correct decisions from experience and innovation.

I think maybe I should clarify myself after some reflection on the subject: in that I don't think PA will or can even end up in the type of 'rut' that chess is in, according to Sirlin (due to its differences in core game play mechanics), but it IS possible that we will reach a parallel state, specific to PA, that puts the game in a similar end-game predicament. That's what I was trying to get at. The whole purpose was to think on how to avoid stagnation and its byproduct - boredom.

And, like I meant to get across in my second post, its probably not going to happen unless people all of a sudden stop giving a damn about the game, which would be highly uncharacteristic of the dev team and the community.

Its all long term speculation bullshit, I know, since the games only in beta, but I didn't really hear anyone speaking about it so I thought I'd throw it out there. Its fun to talk about something other than TRVE FULLSCREEN NAO!, bugs, and new units every now and again. Right?

Are you talking about stagnation within a particular match? Boring endgame scenarios as opposed to a boring metagame?

There really isn't any more details than what I've already said thought. Neutrino knows that there are issues with the current system and he's said he wants to revamp the system entirely, no guarantees thought, the best bet to find out more is to find the threads that deal with metal allocation that popped up sometime in the last month or so.

Mike

cold you please find it? you got me curious now... and don't tell me to search for it, you and I both know your only chance of ever finding a post is to have at least seen it, better yet comented on it (this way you remeber more keywords better).

I'd like to read that too.

Is it this one?

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2012/7/18/a-discussion-of-balance.html

EDIT:
The article is by a guy that created chest 2. He makes counterarguments to Extra Credits's Perfect Imbalance. Both sides raises interesting points. The article is about.

I tried, but I have no idea what to search for and I don't have the time to search through all my posts of the last few month. I guess it was maybe 2 or 3 month ago at max.

EDIT:
No I dont think it was that post.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/debunking-asymmetry-aka-one-faction-n-factions.51501/

"asymmetry" was a good keyword

I freakin loved extra creditz and some of their works will forever stay in my good books, but now I think they're just meh as this sets a new record for corruption in extra creditz. All that they say about the imbalance of LoL is true (I've made many a post about it) but then he ends up defending it as the way to go. WOW. considering how much money RIOT racks up he's probably set for life now. god dammit!! I hate corruption, I hate it!! it's probably the one thing I hate most in the world!!!!


Now here's my point of view : Starcraft did reach a stalemate in it's playing style and ExtraCreditz blames it on balance, how can you, without providing the slightest shred of proof blame it all one one element, obviously something that made the whole nature of the game when it wasn't it's intent at all probably isn't the element over which it's creator had the most control. I say it's a mix of many small things that escaped it's creator's sight and hence control. First off stracraft is not a complex game, same with chess, as EC quite nicely illustrates both are games readily acessible to the broad public because they are easy : even if you aren't capable of pulling off the best strategy, you understand what's there to be unveiled, what potential is there and you grasp what you're supposed to do.

(as he perfecly puts it, the profesinal version of playing those games is making every attempt as being the closest possible to machine perfection applying the strategy that other people have worked out before us.)

chess and SC mainly are simple because there's few units (in starcraft we're going to acess there are few available different units and also few in play at the same time). There are 6 different units and 16 units in play on you side in chess and an average for each race of 17 units and an average of 100 units in play on your side in stacraft.

(considering for 200 supply, units on average (counting the cheaper units more times) cost ~2 supply, you're going to be able to play with around 100 units that's not counting the maximum that you arn't going to use to play anyways.)

how is this not considered by EC as one of the elements that led these games to their stalemates? With this number of units no wonder a "right way" poped up and stayed.

I'd be tempted to say a "right way" could pop up in centuries for FA as well. It may take a long time because of the number of units in play and how that makes calculating an ideal longer but it'll happen... if I didn't know better.

The possibility of there ever being stalemates in FA is thwarted by the upgrades on the commander and other HUGELY offseting items (carefull, I'm not using the word imbalance, I'm saying offset, by which i mean imbalance within the same player's arsenal). The most important of these obviously bieng the teleport option (which, as such is readily available in an equal manner to each faction).

If whilst playing chess you start taking your king off the board and placing him wherever suits you best your opponent will be like "you can't do that!!"

Decades and decades of chess and noone ever thought it'd be a good idea to have a version where you could teleport the king? no? not even try it?
well no, of course it wouldn't fit the conjucture of the rest of the game, there'd be no way to make it into an interesting feature (or balance it and boy does chess require it's balance).

yet the number of units, the scale (the fact it's real time) the danger your commander still risks anyways makes this feature fit, and better yet be balanced, in supcom.

this is an example and the former was an exageration and an extrapolation but it illustrates that Stracraft and chess have a sort of locked state due to their choice of small scale that leads them to need perfect balance not to be shunned by the masses and ultimately leads them to their stalemate.

I believe this is the reason that pushes Neutrino to see the different commanders as a must for the game. However sadly this means we have shifted (however subtly) into pay to win, the same way LoL has. FA has prooven that Pay to win is not necessary to have balance and a forever rejuvenating game.

I say there's no need to fix what wasn't broken, there's no need for pay to win, there's no need for imbalance. more precicely : except indirect imbalance.
if the offset is not given to one player but to all then you have acheived (indirect) imbalance through balance.

the commander upgrades and the experimentals (with the Paragon being the absolute best, now I see why Zep chose Aeon)

I'm not calling to bring back the experimentals and the upgrades, they are just a mask for the indirect imbalance, indirect imbalances can have any shape and form so long as they are MASSIVELY superior to other units (I think metal planet weapons and asteroids fit the bill here, not to mention teleport which has been confirmed) so as to create an offset that you leave in the hands of the player to use to his wild biddings and paint a new tableau every time.

the mistake must not be made to put those offsets in the hands of one player in the match : the one with real world money.

Oh wow. I remember that post now, but I thought you meant another one.

An example of a good asymmetric game is Battlefield - I would never get the enjoyment out of battlefield that I do if I couldn't sit in a vehicle repairing it, or hang out with teammate and heal and revive them to support them capturing a flag.