Competitive player

Yes, random generated stuff can not be designed (that is kind of the point of it). I can not really follow why metrics are bad design. Take for example Half life two, when a player died they sent a metric information to the valve servers. Valve was able to generate heat maps where player had enormous problems and evened it out.
Why should a mapper not be able to take such a random map and refine it? Or why should it not be possible to down vote a map that is 50:50 because it is not as fun to play on it?

I know even if a map is 50:50 it does not have to be great to play on it. but it is much more likely than on others.
Symmetry is for me a lazy way to ensure no people will say that it is an unfair match. But I agree that it will be a needed option. I just hope it is not a general must in a ranked match :|

Like in valve's case it can help identify bad design.

But you can't just look at a random sample size and say "it's balanced" because that isn't taking into account all the potential benefits and disadvantages a particular piece of terrain gives. It helps to make sure it is even, but balance starts with good design.

Even if you design a map it is impossible to foresee all the possibilities. That is were we agree metrics would help to find issues.
But benefit or disadvantage would actually appear, in a fixed starting Position scenario, in the statistics.

as would better maps

I do not mean that they would look pretty or that they are always fun to play on. but that it is 50:50 chance of winning.

I am exited on what the devs will try. I guess it will need some tries to even the system out. maybe even switching to premade maps totally. (though I hope not)

PS: fridayis not coming fast enough!

Jon has already stated that he's keen to experiment with players picking their own start locations.

If this is true I highly doubt two players on an entire planet would choose such starting positions as in your first example. And if the player wished to start in such a disadvantageous position that's his own lookout.

I would argue that being fun to play on (if true for both players) is more important than being exactly 50:50 in terms of "map balance".

It seems like all people want is an optional checkbox in the planet generator that says 'Make my planet symmetrical', that way we get both the freshness of randomly generated maps and the superior balance of symmetry without having either of them shoved down our throats.

As far as ranked goes, I think thats what the Alpha should determine; what the competetive players seem to like the best. Then run with it!

The thing is if stuff is procedualy generated, its gonna be 'fresh' anyway.

Im reserveing judgementon this now, because I believe a lot of it will depend on the implementation.

If all planets have a seed, so, can be recreated, then you could vote at the end of the game, good/bad map, then re-use that seed.

There is nothing wrong with good/bad start positions, if you are playing someone who is ranked higher, perhaps they get the bad/worse/disadvantaged start position - dare I say, like golf handicaps - I don't play, in case you are wondering (outlaw golf does not count :lol: )

I think it would be great, to see a lesser experienced player have a small bump to help them, at the beginning, who ever said war should be fair, its war, #dealwithit ha ha.

Don't get me wrong, a ladder match might need to be more balanced, but when I play AI I typically choose 2-3 on hard with a mix of AI model, aggressive/turtle, if every game was equally balanced, where would be the challenge?

Slim

/forum

EDIT: besides, terrain is a lot in war, but it isn't everything. If you have the ability to pick your starting location then that becomes as much of the strategy as the actual battle.

Almost all (in fact, all that I can think of, but that doesn't mean others don't exist) of the large competitively played games are symmetrical.

Supcom, Starcraft, Unreal tournament, Counter strike, TF2, COD, BF2 etc etc....

Almost all games with big comp scenes play almost exclusively mirrored maps.

Lets stop being so stupid about this, seriously. All there needs to be a checkbox so people can either generate them or not. Stop trying to stop people from having the option just because you don't like it, *mod edited*. The option should be there.

End of story.

I've never been able to quite pinpoint exactly what it was about AoE2 that made it such an incredibly fun game. I have played it more than any other game in my life (and I played TA/SupCom/Diablo ALOT, so that is really saying something).

Even though when I think about specific design elements I prefer

a streaming econ vs unit gatherers
stream building vs debit building
no tech trees
Random maps (I dont like them for skirmishes cause it makes me want to keep restarting til I get a favorable resource start)

AoE2 intellectually shouldn't be any fun for me, and yet I go back and play it for months on end every couple years.

Except there will be an actual time investment from making a random generator that creates a mirrored planet. Which means that another feature will have to be cut in favor of this one.

It's not as easy as "just give people options" when someone has to actually pay for the ability to give options. Especially not if you're on a tight budget.

Hear, hear.

bilateral symmetry is nice, what about radial symmetry?

Incorrect. 1v1 Quake, UT, and Warsow are some examples of competitive games in which maps are inherently imbalanced in favor of one or the other. In the best 1v1 maps, there is only one red armor (best defensive powerup) and one megahealth (best health powerup), meaning that the person that gets control of these two has the advantage and will win any up-front confrontation. But people recover and win from this all the time, multiple times per game, as long as they play their strategy properly.
As an example, here's a (well known) video analysis of two high-level players fighting against each other in Quake 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58
Action starts at 4 minutes. An instant imbalance right at the start of the game, and yet Rapha was able to make a comeback through careful play.

So how is it that in a 1v1 map like this, the players have an even chance of winning despite the asymmetric nature of the map? One player has more "resources" from the start (rocket launcher and red armor) that gives them a distinct advantage. The answer was to wear down that advantage until the other player was in a more tenable position to provoke a direct fight.

Likewise, in real life warfare, maps are not symmetrical at all, nor are armies equally supplied. And yet there are plenty of examples of how battles have been won by those who were at the disadvantage.

If we want PA to be competitive (and by extension, a fair, balanced game), we need to take these things into account. The number one thing to keep in mind is that symmetry is NOT required for a balanced game. Why is symmetry so important in games like Starcraft? There are two main reasons:

Firstly, resources. The player with the greatest income is the one that can supply their army better, and as such has the advantage in strength. One can make the start of the game balanced by giving each player the exact same resource accessibility (as in, quantity and time to acquire), but the moment one player loses the resource advantage, they are on the road to a loss. They do have some time to turn this advantage around, through clever attacks, defends, etc, so that the amount of extra resources the enemy gains is offset before they have a chance to capitalize on it, and that's what much of Starcraft (and games like it) boils down to.

In TA, and to a lesser extent, FA, the time the player has to safely convert this advantage is extended through various means. The primary limited resource, metal, is scattered in patches that can be easily taken, but in small quantities don't provide a significant resource advantage unless the time they are held in excess is quite large. This means that losing a few resource locations isn't a big hit unless you let it be for a long time. Additionally, there are ways to temporarily offset this imbalance, such as metal makers. They are hugely inefficient in comparison to metal patches, but again, they give the player a bigger time buffer to stage a comeback. Point of all of this is that the amount of time that a player has a resource advantage needs to be much larger in a TA style game before it becomes a problem.

This means that as long as an asymmetrical map has a relatively even distribution of resources, the players will maintain a similar balance, provided they play effectively, for a decent amount of time.

Moving on to the second point, symmetry is important when it comes to combat and base defense. We'll start with base defense. In a game like Starcraft, the terrain of the map is critically important for defense. If the player's base is in a wide open area, without any chokepoints, they are extremely vulnerable to mass attacks, such as those from zerg. Therefore, maps are instantly restricted into having a very uniform base composition, that is required to cater to the strengths of each race to keep balance.

But in PA, every player has the same selection of units available. This means that the units can be designed with a huge amount of variety, tailored for every situation they may encounter. An open base can be defended by cheaper turrets that do wide area damage, and a mobile army that can respond to attacks from any direction easily. Why would the player choose this spot for a base? More room to expand, more resource availability, etc. The key is that they are able to defend it if they need to, due to the unit variety available to them. Likewise, a player who prefers a more closed-off base would be able to focus on more heavy-hitting defenses to cover choke points, with a beefier army to hold those locations. Of course, they have to live with the disadvantage of having limited expandability, resource access, and a base that can be taken down more easily once overwhelmed.

To sum it up, the key is that the variety of units afforded to the PA player allows for them to adjust their defenses to accommodate for what may be considered an "imbalanced" starting location due to an asymmetric map. (This advantage would be much harder to achieve in a game with unique units per faction, as each faction suddenly has an area where they are preferred.)

As for general combat, again, the unit variety is the key to how a player fights, but it also relies on a player to fight intelligently. They first need to choose their battle locations carefully, then they need to plan a contingency to keep their units useful if their battle plans change, and then they need to be prepared with a backup plan in case another battle location is chosen.

For example, a player may decide to attack some terrain held by an opponent that has a lot of hills, so they choose a variety of spider bots. This means they can maneuver in the hills easily and should have the upper hand in the battle. But the enemy has already pushed out of this area to an open plain with a swarm of cheap tanks, putting the player's spider bots at a distinct disadvantage. Since the map is asymmetric, the player can't rely on the fact that they will have equivalent hills to fall back to, so the player will need to use some more sparse hill terrain to slow the enemy advance while they prepare a contingency battle group that can take advantage of the enemy army. (Perhaps some bombers.)

The key here is that PA has a lot of features that work towards making asymmetric games very balanced as compared to other RTSs. But more importantly, it gives the more strategic player the advantage, which would be the point of a strategy game.

I once said that many RTS players are stuck in a rut when it comes to things like unit micro, different units per faction, and resource management. Add map symmetry to that list. Just because these aspects feature prominently in previous RTSs doesn't mean that they should be the de facto standard, especially when the nonstandard methods (such as asymmetric maps) can provide much deeper and more meaningful gameplay.

I love you, if not for the whole post, then only for your last three paragraphs.

Very good sylvesterink, very good.

I don't think using a shooter is a good example for this. Shooters obviously play very different from RTS.
Your point of having a wide variety of units to deal with different terrain sounds very good. Just make the army at the players disposal adapt to the terrain. It's a great thing.
However while this might solve some problems, asymetrical maps are still pretty dangerous, especially if created by a generator. Just because it is possible to win with a disadvantage does not mean that it is fun to start a game with a disadvantage.

Maps will still be generated balanced... just not symmetrical.

Balanced and Asymmetrical aren't mutually exclusive words you know?

They play very differently, but the high level concepts might as well be the same when designing any type of game. Identify the problem, identify the cause of the problem, consider the simplest solutions and work from there. Most people seem to forget this.

In any case, I'm not saying that the player has to win with a disadvantage, but rather that the player needs to realize that there are advantages to go along with the disadvantages. That's why I pointed out the ways in which building a base in an open area would be advantageous, and the ways having a fortified base would be disadvantageous.

To apply this, consider: What are the biggest possible disadvantages that the player can start out with in a game on an asymmetric map? (And would choosing a starting location solve it?)

@nanolathe:
symmetrical maps are balanced with little effort. Even a computer can do it. Asymmetrical maps however are not easy to balance. You can easily screw up. If the mapgenerator can create aysmmetrical balanced maps I am all for it. But making such maps is not easy. In fact it is so hard that most RTS today simply go with symmetrical maps.

I admit I cannot come up with a ton of things out of the blue. I am not really into making maps. Obviously all players need to have the exact same amount of resources around them. That includes reclaimable rocks as well as mex-points. You need enough space to build stuff. But I am certain I am forgetting lots of things right now and I am afraid that's exactly why I am hesitant with asymmetrical maps.

SC2's factions are pretty asymmetrical to each other. It works. But the factions are not created randomly. They are created by humans using lots and lots of math and trial and error. The base-values of some of the units are more than 10 years old. So yeah ofc asymmetrical stuff can work. But it is hard.

Gonna need to try it. Adding in symmetrical mapgeneration later on should not be the big problem anyway.

This is the concept that resulted in today's mostly symmetrical maps. They are the simplest solution to the problem of players crying about imbalanced maps.