Maps and game balancing

Hi,

First, let me say I am very excited with PA, given the fantastic team working on it. I've been waiting for such a game to be developed for a very long time.

However, there is a but. Which is why I still haven't bought the game. Please forgive me if this point has been raised already, but I didn't find any reference.

It's probably that there is something I don't understand in this new game philosophy, but how can you have fair, interesting, balanced multiplayer games, on maps that have no symetry whatsoever (and that are automaticaly generated if I got that right) ? In pretty all RTS games, players are on equal opposing sides of maps which have been carefully thought through, and it doesn't look to be the case at all with PA. Why ?

Also, 3D planets are a good idea. But won't I get lost and/or sick, looking all over the planet and rotating it all the time, just to go to where my units are, and see what is happening on the other side? (The whole point of the strategic view is to see the whole map and units with a single zoom-out, and I don't see how it can be achieved with a 3D planet).

Again, I am very sorry for asking this, as I know those are key parts of the PA concept. But I do believe others have the same worries.

Cheers!

Great question. Perhaps they could add an option to the map generator to make the planets symmetrical?

I hope the majority of players will actually not use that option.
Symmetrical maps are too contrived for my liking.

Although, yes... I guess it HAS to be there... for some reason :roll:

Maybe Uber will take a stand and not put it in. Ohh I do hope so!

I could see the need for symmetrical for tournament games but personally I think the scale is too small for PA. Rather than making planets symmetrical why not just focus on starting locations... Start each player off on a different side of the sun with their own planet & moon (or gas giant and multiple moons) and then let them fight it out

Should give people enough time to decide how best to defend their planet regardless of differences in biomes.

Symmetrical is likely going to be an option.

However, don't forget that just because it CAN be procedurally generated, that it MUST be auto generated. It's been quite clearly stated that maps can be generated and then edited after the fact, and saved and shared with others. A ladder with only pre-generated maps will be a definite possibility. Also possible will likely be a mixed-mode approach -starting planet is pre-made and balanced, and the rest of the solar system is randomly generated.

Keep in mind that there's a lot that we don't know that prevents us from actually answering this question with precision.

For one, we don't know how start points are going to work. We don't know if we're going to chose them ourselves, if they'll be random, if there will be pre-determined start points that we can choose from, or what have you. We also don't know how metal extraction is going to work, exactly: for all we know, they could have mass deposits like in SupCom, or go with a much different system, allowing you to build mass collectors anywhere you want, with efficiency based on proximity to other collectors and ground type.

Do keep in mind that procedural generation, while it may seem randomized and effectively will be randomized, is not actually randomization. Planets will be constructed with guidelines based on the code that I believe will be balanced with certain prerequisites.

Also note that we have no knowledge about leaderboards in this game. They might also decide to procedurally generate planets for most games, but then have league games, which are preset. Or not.

There's a lot of ifs there that are unknown. The best answer I can give you is that perfect symmetry is not necessary for good game balance. Most of the multi-player games will undoubtedly come down to skill.

You can look at it like you would for a typical three-player map in an RTS game. The map can still be played by two players, and the third section would not need to be symmetrical to the other two to play out balanced. It would be less important on how many mexes you can put in that third section (I'm talking reasonable numbers: 2-4, or something), and more important on who gets there first.

Heck, even though starcraft uses symetrical maps, games don't always play out symmetrically. Four player maps provide extra means for bases, that a player may or may not take advantage of. One could say that, to be extremely fair, these other sections should not be allowed in competitive play, but you can imagine how boring that would get. Same for a map with only one xel'naga tower (if there is one. It's been forever since I've played).

Now, I'll admit that this doesn't account for if mex deposits are closer to one player than they are to the other. But at the same time, as long as starting positions begin relatively equal, and mass generation is relatively evenly spaced throughout the planet, then will it matter that the planet was symmetrical or not?

The best way I can think to answer your question is that perfect symmetry is not necessary for complete balance.

It's.............beautiful *sniff*

Mike

Why not?
Starcraft, which is the most played RTS is a competitive environmental has players start game with completely different unit set.
So it IS possible to have a game played in a competitive manner without having complete symmetry.
You could argue that race are carefully designed against each other.
But that's forgetting that the planet generator can be carefully designed with guideline and constrains to ensure a fair gameplay.

I highly dislike symmetric maps. It's what makes Red Alert 2 maps so nice, and most of EA's RTS'es' maps so bland, forgettable, and basically never played.

That being said, of course, the option should exist. No reason not to.

Well, I do agree that you can have fair games on asymetrical maps, when those maps have been carefully designed to be balanced. But can you have fair games on maps that are neither symetrical, nor carefully designed (as maps on PA will mostly be computer generated)?

I have no doubt that this has been a topic of heavy internal discussion for Uber, and given the team's history with high-end RTS games, I guess there is a perfectly thought through answer for this problem. But I don't see what it is.

What about this:
Reuse some already once generated maps. the statisics, after some games, will tell you if it is an good map or not. once beeing over a certain limit it can be considered an ranked play ready map.
this way it should be possible to get asymetrical maps with good balacing.
also there will be different tactics for different maps. for example close proximity to the enemy will result in an different match than a far one. in theory you should be able to look at the numer of used unit types and the game duration to clasify the map even more.

I think that as the maps are going to be stored as JSON blobs (correct me if im wrong) it will be relatively easy (albeit arduous) to manually edit maps to create more symmetrical ones (depending on the data structure, it could be as simple as copy/pasting 1 block over the others)

But like others have said, I am really looking forward to having non-symmetrical maps as it will stop more advanced players having such great initial setups which usually are at least a little bit map-dependant.

To be honest, I don't plan to play this game much with multiple players starting one 1 planet - it seems more logical to me to have more smaller planets, each with 1 player to encourage full-use of the game mechanics. I am sure we will be able to set some pre-requisites in the lobby for planets where players can start to have the same amount of mass points (if thats how it works) etc. to keep the general balance.

No doubt there will be many games played with 4+ players on the same planet (esp. if there are 40 player games - something i still can't quite get my head around time scale wise) but as these will often be part of a bigger game, the balance should only be a problem until 1 player has dominated the entire planet, and thats without any built in balancing stuff, which i am sure will be copiously included, and will presumably be a big part of alpha/beta.

Mike

Let's not jump to conclusions. I think it's reasonable to assume there will be 'maps' in the game, just like pretty much every other RTS. Just because there's a procedural generation system doesn't mean there won't be pre-generated ones as well.

As someone who plays 4x and large-scale strategy games, asymmetric maps are something I've used to. They really aren't as big of a deal as most people make out, especially in a map without corners. Part of being a skilled player is adapting to non-standard terrain.

Clearly resource clusters would give a massive advantage if they were unevenly spaced, but map generators can account for that. Equally, a simple system of choosing where to start would solve the majority of problems. Person who picks first has the advantage of choosing the very best starting spot, the person who chooses second has the advantage of choosing the range of the battle. He can choose to start right on top of his enemy(with a certain minimum distance, obviously), or on the other side of the planet, whichever best suits his playstyle. Both are useful advantages, coin toss decides who gets which.

The whole age of empires franchise and the empire earth franchise all work off randomly generated maps. Some C&C games had an option to randomly generate maps, and most of theirs weren't symetric anyway.

A mirrored map is not required to have a fair game. Unless each player only has 1 viable option (oh hey, starcraft II) against another player, it's just a matter of looking at the map and picking a strategy that works well with it.

If anything, it's going to force players to keep learning new tricks instead of forcing them to learn the same trick better and better. It should make eSports way more exciting.

I like this point of view. A lot

(and I did buy the game yesterday. Can't wait for the beta now )

Lovely post pluisjen. I'd go so far as to say that Starcraft and Starcraft II is a perfect example of all that's wrong with Real-Time "Strategy" today.

The thing is that either uber will give us the possibility to make symmetrical maps or someone will mod them in. It is very unlikely that competitive players will even touch asymmetrical maps, liked it or not.

It would be neat if there was a way to generate a map without seeing it. Set the planet sizes, number of players, symmetrical/asymmetrical -> play. I bet that even competitive players would love this feature as it makes the games more interesting because you can't memorize stuff but you can still have fair 50:50 games.

It's good that you know all competetive players. I guess you missed the part about "we'll just get a different class of competetive players" I mentioned in my previous post.

What about all the past RTS'es, then? Command & Conquer before Generals, Age of Empires, et cetera, et cetera.

eSports and such nonsense have messed up RTS'es big time. Competitive (which is a rather silly concept anyway, in my opinion; define 'competitive'?) should be with assymetric maps.