Balance Mods and Matchmaking

I know @Corang was working on a simplified setup; I'm guessing the major balance mods are aimed at more advanced players, and and I'm sure in the future there will be mods with even more depth. Perhaps balance mods could have something like the tags, and player growth could follow a progression from simplified (few ways to go wrong) to more involved.

And because some people MIGHT do something(To my knowledge nothing of the sort happened in SupCom's Long Mod life) we should accept mods being hidden away until some arbitrary point that does nothing to affect the possibility of the thing they're trying to prevent happening?

Like I said, the solution doesn't change anything about the problem it is being implemented to prevent, it just limits the overall visibility of mods. Frankly I'm getting tired of trying to be sold on "solutions" to problems that don't actually address the problems.

Mike

I just saw this, Brad what exactly are you saying here? There are more than a few ways I can see this being taken as a modder, most of them are bad news for modders so some clarification would be good.

Mike

I was just about to say that in none on the mod scenes so far I have seen had anything remotely as bad as some people are describing it could be and the whole thing just feels like paranoia.

That's not entirely true, remember all mods will show up in the server browser, this makes joining molded games very simple, and if one player has a preference for one mod then people will join his game and get to play that one mod, then if someone likes another... people get to try that one out! I know one might get a bit more of a general populous but I am pretty confident that both will be played by a lot of people depending on how someone feels. Eventually it'll be akin to trying to get a fresh experience, like playing a new game for a bit when you get bored of the old balance.

The thing that concerns me is that this experience which you're forcing onto the playerbase is considered by a sizeable number of people to be bland and uninteresting, as a glance at the steam forum will confirm. It would be a shame for someone to get the game, play it for an hour or two, and then leave because they found the "Actual Planetary Annihilation Experience" boring and mods weren't in an obvious location.

It's also weird because when you think about it, why should Uber be concerned about people playing mods over vanilla, even right out of the box? The Player already purchased the game, past that Uber shouldn't be terribly concerned over What the player is doing, especially given how Balance mods are still compatible with the Armory Commanders.

I'm still going to wait on clarification thought.

Mike

You keep saying this vanilla balance isn't interesting, but I'm still not seeing it. It is possible that I and all the good people I play against are missing something, but I suspect it is more likely that you're just doing it wrong.

Either way, balance mods will get their proper place in PA whether you complain about vanilla balance or not. Uber has plans to fund the future of the game by splitting the profit from the sale of mods. Why, after all the initial sales are done, do you think they will be trying to hide or somehow unfairly compete with the one remaining source of profit that they have? I'm sort of expecting the usual group of complainers to be back a year from now yelling at Uber for pushing mods too hard since it's what they profit from.

Even worse: everything is the exact same looking and description, and name!

Or if they were all scathis' face!

Inclusion into the Mod Marketplace would be a stupid move for a balance mod. There is already enough of an uphill battle to get people into balance mods to the point where they're comfortable with it and slapping a price tag on it up front is going to turn even more people away.

The potential problem I'm seeing in Uber's comments is very similar to the situation with ladders and all the other stuff people wanted/expected from 1.0 in that, people will have already abandoned the game because it was lacking in long term appeal before those long term things released. Yeah it's great that within 6-12 months we might be able to make some great total conversions that are super fun and what not, but without players to play them what's the point? Or even, what if the modders have moved on by then?

Even then exactly what kind of mods are best suited for the Marketplace is still way up in the air simply because we know nothing about Uber's plans other than the vague idea that they want to do it and it's also heavily dependent on how far reaching mods can be but I can tell you right now that it will never be all inclusive simply because no matter what model they go with there will always be mod types that aren't compatible.

You can say that Uber will be "pushing mods hard" but when I look at a lot of the assumptions and expectations that have been defeated recently along with Uber's recent comments and apparent attitude towards Modder's concerns about visibility you'll need more to back up your argument.

Mike

No one said you needed to put a price on it.

We were talking specifically about the sale of mods.

Even then, it all loops around anyways, if Uber can't make money off mods that lessens the priority of mod related developments which hamper's Modding's potential long term.

Mike

Not necessarily all mods need to cost money, and not all need to be free- that's what you need to see. Chances are there will be paid mods at some point (they'd require a lot of work before hand) these could be overhauls, things that add an entire faction, etc... basically- really big mods. The majority are no doubt going to be free.

(I'm assuming the mod marketplace will show both free and paid mods)

Where did I ever say it would/should be black and white like that? I specifically said that Balance mods are probably not suitable for being paid-for mods in most cases and that trying to decide now what mods would or wouldn't be suitable entirely depends on exactly how Uber chooses to handle this concept.

Mike

I've got a good idea to solve the mod issue.
In the lobby modded games will have a large 'modded' tag on them, but once you click to get into the game you will get a popup window like this. (Behold my epic paint skills.)

This should solve the issue of not knowing what mod is being used in the match. Also since the author name is shown people would know if it is an inappropriate knockoff (Brad's nighmare mod disguised as another mod). Problem solved.

While good in concept, there's no way to verify authorship of a mod.

If the mod is linked to the ingame names of the people who created it then another person would not be able to use a duplicate name. For example a mod author would add their mod to the Uber mod store using their ingame account details, and the person who submitted it would be able to add any other users who worked on the mod to that list.
Since we all have a unique ingame name wouldn't this be proof enough of who created it?

Names are unique but easily forgeable. Perhaps you meant account?

I'm expecting the "signature" field to be used with a form of public key crypto, similar to TLS/SSL. Either mod authors would have a certificate signed by Uber, or mods would be signed during the publishing process though Uber mod marketplace.

He didn't gave his oppinion about it, he said what he tought over what he read on the forum of steam wich are other peoples oppinions mostly i assume. I believe he is concerned about the playerbase, with reasons. Those people on the steam forum are also part of the community of this game. It would be sad to see them leave already.

And i agree with him. Ubers balancing methods is not always as player-friendly as it looks man (x3 or /3 and unexplainable stuff like that), i know for fact that the poor WiP-uberbalance costed this game a lot of GOOD people(im not sure how you meant good, but i know how i did). They just completely stopped playing and/or went mia. I mean, ofcourse a WiP is not finished. But this really is more testing for uber then its fun for players in some cases. Some changes are just bad and we still have to play with them, even tough we hate them. For example that T2 rush patch that neglected all T1 except the T1 engineer. That balancetest helped us see that T2 rush is boring and so is trowing T1 out of the game, great, im happy we wont see it in 1.0 then. But some players already wrecked their keyboard on anger here because it was just no fun to wait for t2 and then win, not being able to do much else. While they had played in alpha when there where big armys of units T1 and T2, they had fun, then T2rush patch came, they quit the game because balance was bad and it stayed like that way too long forcing them to quit basicly, because the game they loved changed into what they started to hate, for testing purposes they quit the game entirely.

These people are players i played with between alpha and now and they might have stuck around if they got a balance that is more close to finished and where the downsides of WiP balance aren't trown in your face every single game. In my opinion it shouldn't be the case that it gets better because the people who don't like it are now gone and therefor everyone likes it, thats just bullshit, this is TA ''spiritual successor'' or whatever and that comes with expectations for a reason!

New Players have no idea whats up because they watched the tutorial and they only know what mex and energy is. They make metal and energy, get overun by 9001 ants. By the time they know how to spam 9001 tanks themselves, the bots can go underwater and get buffed left right and center making 9001 tanks worthless and they die again. They will always suck at the game, because when they finally learned it, it changes toomuch to understand what to do next patch. I can understand that is not a lot of fun and mods could /should be a solution.

For those guys, a more finished balance that changes only 1 or 2 small things each update seems way smarter to keep the players with the game. I mean come on, you got to atleast agree that stuart98 is actually right for this moment and players that want to play with a balance that is more finished just to see what can happen to a game like PA, when they finally set the numbers somewhere in the middle between OP and UP, would be only good for the community. Because now all they can play with is a WiP balance that changes a lot, those big changes prove that it isn't quite finished. So what stuart says is just as much a reality as what you are saying captain and i believe his opinion is not crazy, very much real and activly costing PA playerbase lots of players constandly. Making the mod more visible will help the small playerbase of balance mods start growing from the players that would otherwise most certainly quit till atleast 1.0. If you make it look like a clear mod-only-section players wont ever be confused between ''the real deal'' and mods. Altough atm ''the real deal'' sometimes might even benefit if people tought statera or rcbm where ''the real deal'' because they probably got their numbers more close to final atm and they use constant finetuning instead of changes in extremes and therefor the modded games are very interesting and they allow for more total variety in unit choice. Where in uberbalance your pretty much forced to do certain things (making 1 bot, 1 air atleast,and as much vehicles factorys as you can and maybe make t2 vehicles if your winning, or if your opponent also does it. And a very long list of things you can't do because if you will you die, like starting with naval if you could do something else etc.). I mean just because the units make sence, it doesnt make the game balanced and denying the WiPness of Uberbalance will only cost more players. In reality everyone should know that uber is constandly making pretty massive changes to balance and the current balance is not the eventual balance, just a test version with extreme numbers that help eventual balancing ''on the feel'' afaik. If you need time to learn to play, dont go with uberbalance, but then go to statera or rcbm and you will have a much easier time getting better in general.

I realise that this wall of text cost me somuch time to put together that it might not even make sence so again but in short: I think in general uber balance is changing a lot and it scares away people for different reasons. Balance mods change aswell, but differently wich seems more easy to learn and more easy to keep up with while still giving a good strategical depth. To me it would make a lot of sence to show them on the gamelist, but make sure people realise what exactly is being hosted.

1 thing i want to add to this is that i believe that both uberbalance and balancemods eventually will be a lot of fun to play and have a good chance of being really well balanced no matter what gametype or system you play.