Internal Playtest – Unit Balance Changes, Econ Changes, Combat vs Turrets, Nav Fixes

Or maybe people would just start criticizing the metrics.

I tried to do that by adding a separate section of personal conjecture, but people hopped on the "hate on Brian train" and ignored my points, missed my main points, and told me to factor in things that I already had factored in.

Nothing I said in my conjecture was an opinion of just me. It all was backed up by every person I've ever spoken to about balance issues and the apparent current direction.

I suspect they threw out the ouija board Nanolathe sent them after it kept giving the message "NO DIRECT UPGRADES"

I am very much looking forward to Nanolathe Annihilation when we can mod the server.

Almost all of my previous playtest recaps have included some of my personal speculations in some form or another. Every single time I switched over to my personal opinion, I quantified that.

The devs don't want us to stop speculating. They want us to give feedback. They ask for our feedback. But they seem to get mad when we don't like the feedback. *shrugs*

I am well aware it's an experiment. I say that with every post.

Well you can always criticise the use of individual metrics or tools as they aren't likely to cover all aspects of game balance.
Playtesting is a good method but it is also very time consuming.
Game balance isn't easy. Let me quote Sirlin.

Edit:That said. We should still look at cookbooks/methods for balancing in pursuit of more objective ways of measuring and achieving balance IMHO.

Wtf. I read through Sirlins article again and this comes up:

Fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuu....
I WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU BALANCE THE GAME!!!!
.
.
.
Grmbl...
Mm... IMO I think it is better if you surface unconscious knowledge and that you in that way can you verify it more easily.
Don't you agree?

to help address the concerns regarding advanced recoverability, perhaps drop the cost of advanced factories back to prior levels (maybe even a bit cheaper) but leave the cost of advance units very high.

still slows the transition to advanced, and blurs the line between when you get advanced.

have t2 mex really expensive to slow the progression to heavy advanced.

Thank you for the well thought out feedback.

On the T2 eco x3 change: Originally we had exactly one goal in mind with this: make it easier to build your second T2 factory. In T1 wars, you might build 4 or 5, but in T2, it seemed like a LONG time to get to multiple T2 factories, and when you did, you ended up with maybe a couple of each flavor, never a row of several. So Scathis came up with this, because we also didn't want to make T2 come sooner. (If anything, we think it might be better if it came later).

We'd still like there to be a t1 harassing unit.

I don't have the exact numbers used, but Advanced Air nerf is intended to be a more subtle change. A while ago we buffed the health a lot, and buffed the fighters a lot. Also, gunships could run in past a lot of coverage to get to a commander to snipe. We don't those things to disappear, but maybe not be quite so easy.

Anti-nukes: I'm glad you like it. We also want nukes to have a place in the game, but as I said on the stream, one nuke threatens all your territory, and anti-nukes have a limited range.

Nukes - Interesting point we'll discuss it.

I still like support that idea, and at least mods will come out championing that idea.

Anyway, thanks Brian on these details from the streams, really they are "let's see", it isn't like changes can be made seen and unmade just so we know, so it is good we get to see. I actually bet we might just see a x3 t2 eco, then a t1-equal t2, just to see the difference. It is times like this I wish we had the launcher so they could push 2 builds of balance and let people vote on pros and cons of each.

Meta -

Thanks for responding.

The point at which I disagree with Burnt here is Air. It needs to be slower. Naval needs to be faster. Right now, air dominance means game dominance - it means you can stick with this one strat every time and you'll win much more than you will lose to a clever counterplay.

I'm going to advocate again for the removal of the T2 Fighter. Just get rid of it. Watch people use t1 air a lot more.

I like the eco x3 change. It makes sense that the second stage of production should progress as quickly as the first once it's reached.

Can't say I like forward-firing dox being completely removed though because I'm concerned that now tanks will be the sole assaulting category of ground units, where dox are now just back-water distance bombarders. It seems like it should be the other way around. Maybe there could be t1 vehicle artillery and a grenadier unit while keeping the original dox, so that tanks and mechs can both be equally viable as assaulting units.

Then leave the dox as it is and use that extra artillery bot model that you have lying in the game files.

Yes but if they didn't stream the experimental builds we couldn't give feedback until it was live. Isn't it better that we can give feedback before?

He speaks for me in this matter.

I do think we should try it to see how it goes, but the current balance WITH TOWERS MADE MORE EXPENSIVE needs to be kept in a box somewhere just in case.

Tbh, I think it's a crazy idea, but i like crazy Let's give it a shot. See how it REALLY plays out. (we all know the playerbase is much better at flushing out balance issues into the open than ya'lls local playtests are).

And for the love of all that is holy, please keep streaming these playtests. Even strong negative feedback is better than outrage upon release right?

That's another thing Planetside 2's devs did wrong. They threw stuff at the community that noone wanted and drastically changed the game without telling us first. It was awful. Keep with what works, meta! This works!

FYI:
I LOVE the Development updates no matter if I agree with the potential changes or not.
They made me buy this game and not because I agreed with a certain feature set or the not, but because they expressed the enthusiasm and commitment of the game-developers and are giving wonderful insight into the process of game-development.

I.e.:
I am the living proof that streaming "stuff in progress" wins you customers and I know that I am not alone.

The transparent aproach to development is basically what made your kickstarter succeed, not any illusions of interactive development (there is a huge difference here!) - something you should keep in mind.

If you are worried that you are alienating potential new-comers don't be.
Just keep slapping that "experimental" tag onto your videos.

I'd even encourage you guys to post these development videos more publicly (with the afore-mentioned disclaimer)- They keep people invested in your product even though bugs/performance/development-progress might currently prevent them from making a purchase.

Development and progress updates are currently the main thing keeping my hype active for many of the other kickstarter projects out there and I am 90% sure that you can dismantle any fears come release with a neat trailer or two.

If you need more proof go look at Valve's Dota2 and Cyborg Matt's Update reports (there was a neat talk by Valve comparing impacts on ingame purchases to test-server "releases" and his "updates").
These play-tests are valuable "free" PR/content.

You are after all developing a somewhat complex game for what is most likely an experienced RTS player crowd (at least at this stage in development) so I'd say it is pretty safe to assume that we can usually tell the difference between "experiments" and releases.

I'd even argue that the more transparent you make development, the less you need to worry about misperceptions since you establish the rule that your development is constantly in flux.

TLDR:
"nevar stap poasting/streaming"

Perhaps a system for deploying canary builds could be implemented Uber? Airmech does this and it helps iron out balance issues significantly prior to releasing them to the general public.

How are we gonna be able to give feedback before we have even tried it? We can give feedback on the current version but new changes that seem radical to us have to be looked at holistically and be actually tested by in context with the other balance changes.

PA haven't been released yet so it seems a little early to do so for PA but it could be good once PA is released. If the devs would want to test other radical changes by allowing players to test different branches I guess it could work if the players could play different versions of PA as well.

*shrugs*

Apparently not.

I like the ideas behind this change, but I think the change itself might have some oversights.
Consider the cost of building a T2 factory. 5500 metal give or take a bit, in order to keep it at the same place in the game. Cost of the first fabber is apparently multiplied by 3, so there's 3600 metal into that.

Equivalent opportunity cost here is around 40 T1 tanks. That's pretty reasonable for an initial cost of going T2 I would think. Those tanks could put some hurt on you if you're rushing T2, maybe delaying until 9 or 10 minutes instead of having T2 at 6 minutes as in the current build will be necessary.
But then the problems start.
Once the first energy plant and the first metal extractor are built, the player rushing T2 has an enormous economic advantage. T2, with a 25% higher initial investment cost, will pay itself off nearly 200% faster than it does already. Many players believe rushing T2 is currently too rewarding, myself included.

Fighting over a handful of mex spots when limited to T1 (especially on medium and larger maps) means nothing once T2 mex are available, which generate metal at ten or eleven times the rate of a T1 mex.

So lets say that player 2 here has delayed their T2 factory by 2-4 minutes in favor of producing T1 armies. By the time they've built their T2 factory, player 1's economy is almost a magnitude greater. That's pretty nuts, and it means player 1 is very far ahead of player 2 in terms of firepower after just a couple minutes. The only way to effectively counter it other than going T2 yourself is to either destroy the T2 factory before it's built, totally destroy player 1's eco while it's still under construction or to snipe the first fabricator once it comes out of the factory (which will probably be very difficult). Expanding on T1 eco is not a counter here; player 2 will only be able to expand faster than player 1 for a few minutes, after which point player 1's investment will quickly beat out player 2's and surpass it.

Taking out the factory is very binary. Now the situation is reversed; player 2's factory is potentially far ahead of player 1, and the chance of recovery is slim. Taking out the first fabricator is also fairly binary, but not nearly as effective and also unreliable.
Taking out chunks of player 1's economy is less binary, but player 1 still has defender's advantage, especially with the current state of turrets and radar. Chances are that will be improved, and harassment will probably delay the T2 factory in this case and give player 2 a fairly even playing field in the meantime. But eventually, someone's going to get T2 first, and then one player will be able to pull ahead economically very quickly.

T1 units after this point are still less cost effective, and won't be built nearly as often unless the cost effectiveness of T2 units is significantly reduced

Since the efficiency of fabbers is increased significantly along with the factories, assisting factories en mass will still be proportionally effective. the assisting fabber per factory ratio isn't improved here, but the relative cost of building a new factory is. So lines of T2 factories can be built more easily, yes...
But the reason for that is because going T2 will allow a player to build all structures that a player still in T1 can, several times more easily.

So what's my solution to the no-congo-lines-of-T2-factories problem? Make fabbers considerably less efficient than factories (or make factories considerably more efficient than fabbers, or some combination of balance changes for each that will lead to this). Assisting factories is now not a trivial choice over building new ones, without causing a massive spike in the rate of economic growth at any point in the game, which I believe is very very bad for early and mid game, and that such all-or-nothing solutions should be restricted to end-game so that games aren't decided within the first ten minutes and can stay fun and engaging throughout for all players.

I have other thoughts on T2, relating to how it's so much more efficient than T1 currently, but I think it's time I get some sleep, so that's all I have to say about it right now. Most of what I wrote there actually applies even in the current build IMO, which is why rushing T2 is the go-to strategy for most players. I think T2 eco should probably be pushed in the other direction entirely.

I hope this is taken only as feedback. I think it's great to experiment, this is just what I think of the past few trials.

TL;DR I suggest you rush T2 within 8 or so minutes in your next experimental playtest, I have a feeling it will work out well.