The real possibility of a large PA esports community

http://www.twitch.tv/liquidtlo/b/559415779

It is not so essential for unit balance as there is just one faction however the maps themselves need to be somewhat balanced for esports. I would argue symmetry in metal spots but they is a different topic.

There you go: symmetry. In other words: dumbing down of the map generator. Just look at SC or MOBA maps. DOTA has essentially a single map, from what I've heard, so there you have it. Other suggestions that will eventually be made is unit-caps, restricting the game to small systems so that matches don't take ages, and so on.

The majority of the suggestions on how to make PA more esports-friendly, if adopted in any other form than as an optional choice, will have a dumbing down effect.

(I've stopped reading there).

You can't seriously compare a total random game with a game were decisions are made by human being.

I suggest you to read this :
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw (to understand what "playing to win" and competitive game are)
and this:
http://www.moserware.com/2010/03/computing-your-skill.html
(don't focus on the graphics, this is skill explained for your grandma)

Instead of telling me to read Sirlin, you should be telling Sirlin to read me. I have an entire essay titled "On the Relative Irrelevance of Balance" published in a 400-page book. I know Sirlin and he knows me, and we don't see eye to eye, and I am certainly not going to be convinced otherwise be some dude on the internet who can't even bother to finish reading the post he is replying to.

I don't see how you writing a biased article means too much for your case. :S

I think no crashing or lag is more important than balance(this is basic things). Maybe there could have something like auto pause if one player lost connect(good for 1v1), but this could be abused by **** players.

And the spawn point and mex should be more fair for team-plays as spawn in the middle of two enemies is not really fair in my opinion(I am not asking for absolute symmetry maps as they means less variety so I think to make the map more symmetry but not 100%)

For the balance, I just hope we can have all the different styles(maybe use "styles" is better)that is doable to win. I think it is boring if every first couple mins(maybe more) is the same every game.

That wasn't necessary squishy. At the end of the day we are all biased.

This is exactly why I came to the conclusion that the 5min forced dox dumbs down the game. It forces me to adopt strategies I wouldn't usually consider.

Well I'm just saying that you can't prove balance has nothing to do with esports when you wrote an article already with the bias that balance has nothing to do with esports. :/

Sorry if it seemed too much, but biased articles don't prove too much, and aren't any different than us pointing out our own opinions. Just because it's an article doesn't make it true.

I know. Its an opinion piece, based on some research. Don't hate, people publish them all the time.

I don't really hate much, I just think the argument "I wrote an article, therefore my opinion is better than yours" is silly and is the vibe I get sometimes. If that wasn't the point then my mistake.

The existence of an article does not mean much. There are many articles on many things and they are often contradictory. Although it would be an interesting article to read.

obviously balance is key, but we also have to have all the constituent parts to make the game more competitive; ladders, ranking systems, first-class spectator support, easy streaming and that kind of stuff. this is why we're still high on the idea of a "competitive" themed update.

i look at league whenever i think about competitive gaming. there's a lot of great stuff going on there, including an excellent ranking system. i want that in PA.

We definitely don't need super perfect balance at launch, that is something that will come with time. But balance is definitely something we'll want to be getting to a pretty good level not too long after release.

PA has a few advantages in this though. The one faction setup means that any cheese strat or OP thing that can be done, can be done by everyone, it's not like a situation where one faction becomes OP, and then players who specialised in a different faction are forced to relearn.

The biggest balance problem currently is the randomness of metal spawns really. That can probably be fixed through either experimentation until we get some seeds that generate reasonably balanced planets, or if we gain the ability to at least manually place Mex points in the system editor eventually.

Balance doesn't need to be there at the start, but we will definitely require balance eventually to make the game appealing to esports.

I remember when Dawn of War was being played as an E-sport, then along came Dark Crusade with its bork'd balance, and bam, practically gone overnight.

i don't know, man. does balance have to be perfect? why can't there be op things? why can't everything be OP?

Yeah, balance certainly doesn't have to be perfect, if we're talking about E-sports, the main thing is that viewing a match is entertaining.

You can have 'OP' units in a game and still have it be entertaining, heck, pretty much every game has those, and intentional imbalance can somethimes be great to get metas rolling. (like LoL does from time to time, or MTG)

I think the two important things are that the balance facilitates enough different styles that "spam x unit" doesn't take over (because that becomes less interesting to spectate), and at least some planets or systems that give the players an even chance, since in E-sports, losing because of a bad spawn isn't as much fun to play or to watch, though spawning on different, identical planets, or running tournaments as best out of x number of matches can both mitigate the random spawn issue.

When we say balance is perfect, brad, we mean the meta isn't dominated by one strat all the time

Lol, Balance is still super important, but it's more balance of playstyles in the case of E-sports, rather than specifically having every unit perfect in its role and not a single unit OP or UP. Basically, a unit that is eeever so slightly OP, people can use a different style set up to counter the use of that unit and win. Make a unit juuust that little bit better than that though, and you move out of the territorry of slightly OP unit that can be countered, to slightly more OP unit that can't be viably countered except through cloning the playstyle it sets up.

In any case, it's more about making sure there's room for gameplay that's fun to watch. I guess an rts with a single dominant playstyle could still be fun to watch, though I'd imagine it'd be a much harder sell.

The fun thing with PA, in comparison to SC2 is that everyone plays the same set of units. That's why if you guys decide to make 1 unit slightly, or even very, OP it won't matter... Everyone has it and everyone can use it

On the other hand: 1 OP unit does call for a stale game, i.e. everyone will use that said unit in favor of anything else as it can end a battle/game quickly. So balance between units is needed to give it the variety of playstyles we all want!

And @icycalm : After reading your replies here (and that hate-thread you started a while back): you are entitled to your own opinion, but depsite the fact that you did or did not write the essays you claim to have, you are a very difficult person to talk to. You believe your opinion is fact and truth, and anyone disagreeing will by you be rerouted to something YOU wrote... Sorry bro, but that is not a healthy way to start or continue a discussion...