A Big Discussion on Balance. Part 1

[Skrat]

@VindexNoob Thanks for the feedback!

If the majority believe that Absolver is a well-balanced unit that doesn’t need rebalancing, then that’s fine.

I like your suggestion to make the firing range the same for both guns for Othuum and Ythotha’s.

As for sniper bots, I’m not sure it’s worth making them cheaper. They really do require a lot of micro, and you simply can’t do without it when playing as Sera or Aeon. Perhaps they need to increase the range to 70, or at least reduce the build time. But I’d like to hear other people’s views.

[FtXCommando]

@Nuggets said:

@FtXCommando said:

Stealthed asf doesn’t give Cyb an advantage against anybody except incompetent players. By default you should be screening your ASF with spy planes for intel, Cybran just has the ability to cause that to harm you with an even worse first engagement than the other factions.

Thats just wrong. It happens to everyone that you suddenly get jumped because you forgot enemy is cybran. Yes, you should be screening with scouts, but scouts can also be shot down, you dont pay attention for 2 seconds and its over.
Now I'm not saying cybran or worse or better, as I'm not sure myself, but I just disagree with that stealth doesnt give an advantage.

If your spy planes got shot down then stop being aggressive and pull back, if you didn’t then you should be confident in having around 33-50% more ASF than the opponent so the bad turn potential won’t cause a loss.

I have never forgotten my opponent’s faction, this is literally one of the first things I scout and remember in a game.

These are just bad air plays which should only be happening in scenarios where air needs to make bad plays because the game is in a really bad spot. If you’re doing this in non “do or die” scenarios you’re just a bad air user/player.

[Nuggets]

@FtXCommando Yes thats what you should do in theory but in practice its rarely that simple. While I agree that its a blunder / bad when you get jumped by the asf, it still happens to everyone excluding you apparently. Also just because you know what the optimal move against stealth is, doesnt change the fact that stealth gives cybran an advantage, even if its only lowering the enemies attack opportunities, and thats only in a straight ASF vs ASF fight. You can also use stealth to go around and snipe your resto / strat / torp or whatever

[FtXCommando]

Yeah, you can abuse enemy laziness with cyb stealth. I personally do not have any problem with cyb asf, yes. Like I said I never pick cyb in a tournament for air because I don’t value stealth asf much, it’s really not a big deal when you play properly. It’s more of a problem when you’re doing a 1v1 or a 2v2 and have a litany of things to manage and cannot spend the time properly screening air. But that’s also a problem for all factions until omni is up in 1v1 and 2v2 and unattended air fights happen in these game modes often in general.

I strictly see cyb stealth as reinforcing really interesting gameplay in t3 air stage and have no desire to make it less pervasive. Like I said it’s way better for almost every faction to have stealth asf instead but if that’s not gonna happen then they should just stay where they are.

[Skrat]

@FtXCommando Titan is absolutely not okay. Their only advantage vs t2 is speed. 8 ilshies (2 880 mass and 14 400) equal in strength 6 titans (2 880 mass and 31 512 energy). In 9 out of 10 cases, you can’t afford to fall back to give time for Titans to recharge your shields. Otherwise, you’ll lose your mexes/reclaim or simply be killed. And without recharging the shield, the Titans will easily lose to Loya, Harbs or Outhuum, even if you spend more mass on them

[FtXCommando]

In 9 out of 10 cases you say? Pretty crazy I was winning games with pure titan spam 2 years ago before they got their bt changed then. I think you’re confusing you deciding to not retreat them with you can’t retreat them. Can’t believe I’m losing my mexes and reclaim over a 15 second shield recharge time, pretty insane gameplay I must be in. I thought you just mentioned how fast titans are why am I simply being killed now? They can just run away, even against loya since you should be hovering around max range anyway.

Titans have a huge speed advantage against ilshies, you should trade equivalently when you are playing terribly and just walk them into the literal t2.5 assault bot. Harbs and othuums crush titans? They crush loya too, I don’t get it.

Titan got renerfed after everyone realized it was worth making and went back to its old statline with the bt. Loya got another buff because it was still seen as too bad relative to titan. It needs to revert back to titan because titan is the normalized level a t3 raid bot should be, loyalists are just too strong against the top end of t2 thanks to its dual stun tools. It’s fine against titan in terms of dps, titans just require more micro to stand up to them which is fine, bricks need more micro to stand up to percies too.

[Skrat]

@FtXCommando Yes, if the Loya go to raid for kill your mexes, and you retreat with your Titans, to recharge your shields, you’ll lose your mexes in those 15 seconds!

I don't see how the Titans' speed advantage will help you if your ACU is under attack by an enemy ACU with ilshies. But I know that Loya, Harbs or Outhum will be able to help you

Harbs and Othuums are stronger than Loya as well. But when Harbs and Othuums fighting vs Loya, their losses will be far greater than in a battle against the Titans.

If your suggestion is to weaken Loya rather than make the Titans stronger, then perhaps it is worth considering.

[FtXCommando]

Losing a t2 mex to win the loya reclaim is worth the trade. Especially since if the loya is just sitting there doing damage to the mex I could have gotten free damage in on the loya with said titan.

Why is your ACU unsupported exploring the world at t3 stage. I used to do shield + gun + t3 acu as a support for titan spam that arrives later to deal with the now sizable enemy t3 army and build a firebase. I would love it if my ACU gets swarmed because now i can converge all my titans there and get a giant reclaim pile to snowball with. Possible because of the speed advantage allowing me to dictate when to take a good fight, and that’s why titan spam was meta back then.

Far greater? I doubt it. Maybe lose like 1-2 more. Nobody is charging loyalists into harbs/othuums.

[IndexLibrorum]

@ETFreeman said in A Big Discussion on Balance. Part 1:

I agree on:
Mercy buff
Czar buff - maybe laser aoe increase?
Spearhead nerf - maybe, the're really good
Othuum - i'd prefer +0.1-0.2 speed buff

Dont agree on global 2x on stealth e drain, seems quite harsh
The rest idk

And the real issue: loya is completely op vs ilshavoh on open maps, so or should have stun nerfed or some other solution for sera provided

Seconded. 2x energy sounds like a lot. Could explore other options, such as a speed nerf when stealthed.

Would love to see more mercy, thing never gets built now because it's just not good.

[KnownSniper]

Just gonna answer the OP.

First of all i don't get the logic of ignoring the paragon because there are, in your opinion, more pressing issues regarding balance. If there is an easy and simple solution to fix the current paragon problem it can just be quickly implemented. Also some issues are way harder to tackle than others; A good example being the SACU rework which arguably is the most important balance rework but it requires so much attention/detail/time to work on it to properly balance it, in combination with the classic lack of manpower in the balance team, that it sometimes makes more sense to just try to quickly fix a few smaller/simpler issues.

Funnily enough out of the 8 issues you mentioned that you deem more important than the paragon change i think at least 3 aren't even issues to begin with and the other 5 are either as important or just slightly more important than the para change.

So clearly we have different opinions on what's important to change. You say you spoke to multiple people that agree with you. I have also spoken to multiple people that think para's have been broken OP for years now and the only reason why you don't notice it often is because game enders are rare to come across.

So who's to say who's right and what's more important? A ladder player would think the stealth/titan/othuum issues are more important. A teamgame player would think the novax/czar issues are more important and a seton's player would think the novax/stealth/paragon issues are more important. All of this shows that, going back to the beginning, it makes no sense to ignore an improvement to the game because somebody else thinks there are better improvements to make.

Now regarding the individual balance issues you mentioned.

• Mercies: They aren't completely ineffective, they can be pretty good, but it's extremely rare to see it happen so they should see some sort of rework yes.
• Absolvers: They are already super strong and are a sleeper unit that people refuse to discover. Thinking about buffing it is nuts imo.
• Czars: They are probably the most balanced air t4 in the game right now. They tend to perform relatively average but have potential to be absolutely insane because they're very flexible.
• Titans: They are pretty fine right now. It being weaker than a loya doesn't mean it's bad, because a percy is stronger than a brick after all. Somehow u listed the e drain as a negative while ignoring it's because it has a shield, which is basically always a good thing (the shield is why harbs are one of the most dominant t3 units). It also has a big role of protecting percies against slop while loya's have a role of charging into percies to try and stun them. Titans also have mobile shield support while loya's don't. I do agree titans are on the weaker side, but i don't think that's any issue given the current UEF roster (not every unit has to be as strong as another factions unit) and the titan covers a few specific roles.
• Spearheads: They are a great example as to why the absolver could be a sleeper unit. For years and years players in faf thought the spearhead was bad and almost nobody ever made them. Now most people see them as being too strong even though they basically didnt get a single buff. They should probably get a nerf though, it mostly being hp so its easier to try and snipe them like other long range units.
• Novax: nowadays everyone agrees it's an annoying unit, it's not really OP though. Just an annoyance that makes the game unfun, so it probably at some point needs a big overhaul (not just making it useless) but it's gonna be quite some work.
• Othuum: right before i left the balance team i already buffed the turn rate/maneuverability. I wanted to make it more but at the time ppl were against it because it would look unnatural (iirc)
• Stealth: not sure what to think. Stealth is super good but the lack of shields (which are insane) needs to be replaced by something good. Also after 30+ min in a teamgame you can't stealth your asf while building more asf if you didnt make spare pgens to overflow. 250 asf (a relatively normal amount) is -7.5k e drain. You also have to keep in mind that cybran asf are worse than the others without stealth

And last but not least: Paragon

Paragon is the most broken game ender and it has always been that way. The reason why it's broken isn't because of the game ender vs game ender balance, but because of the game ender vs non game ender balance.

Let's take setons for an example (it's very similar on almost all other maps but this makes it easier to explain):
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a mavor they still lose the game because the map control of the ponds is more important than the mavor.
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a scathis they still lose the game because the map control of the ponds is more important than the scathis.
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a yolo they still lose the game because the map control of the ponds is more important than the yolo. Yolo has a bigger chance to win though than scathis/mavor) since the assist buff it received.
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a paragon the map control is completely irrelevant and they auto win the game.

Now quite some people would say "Well you shouldn't have let them build a para" and that's one of the most wrong/stupid statements ever. Eventually lategame you can build a game ender, even a paragon, in a few min and because of defenders advantage it is extremely hard to deny it. This counts for every game ender.

The issue is that for every non paragon game ender you have a chance of winning if you don't have a game ender yourself, while this isn't the case for para's. So for some reason, for a meager 25k more mass than a mavor/scathis, a paragon is allowed to win the game while u sit and turtle in a corner and people somehow accept that as not being completely and utterly broken.

I've seen so many games, even recently one on sentons, where quite literally the entire team loses all of their slots over a 30min game. Mid lost, beach lost, rock lost, air lost. But because they had an aeon player they just gambled on a para while sitting in the corner and eventually they won. No other game ender even comes close to this being possible.

And once again this is purely about game ender vs NON game ender gameplay. game ender vs game ender is more balanced. Para's are insanely OP in this situation and it requires fixing.

Yapper out.

[IndexLibrorum]

Much to agree with what you wrote, but to comment on this:

@KnownSniper said in A Big Discussion on Balance. Part 1:

Also after 30+ min in a teamgame you can't stealth your asf while building more asf if you didnt make spare pgens to overflow. 250 asf (a relatively normal amount) is -7.5k e drain. You also have to keep in mind that cybran asf are worse than the others without stealth

At almost all rating levels, 3x T3 pgens worth of power is no concern at minute 30, so this point feels kind of moot.

[FtXCommando]

Paying 10k more mass for equivalent units is not moot, by this logic late game costs for anything don’t need to follow any expectations and we could just make UEF t3 arty cost 8k more mass because it’s moot

[Skrat]

@KnownSniper Thanks for the feedback!

I’m glad that different players are sharing their opinion, which is exactly why this post was created.

As for priorities, I realise that some issues (such as the SACU rebalance) are very difficult to rebalance, which is why I didn’t even mention it in this post. In any case, the balance issues with T2/T3 units are more pressing than those with the Paragon, as the latter is rarely seen in game, in contrast to Titans or Mercy.

I agree with you about Mercy, Novax (especially if they do change the firing mechanics and make single-shot damage, as Ftx mentioned above) and Spearheads. And I hope they’ll increase the turn rate or overall speed for the Othuum, if the first option seems too unnatural.

• As for Absolver, I agree that it can deal massive damage to shields, which is pretty cool given the cost, but its scope of application is far too limited. And it’ll never be as popular as Spearhead. Perhaps they should replace the shield damage with an EMP, rather than giving them both weapons. At the very least, it would be interesting to give it a go

• I agree that the CZAR is the most versatile Tier 4 unit, but because it’s so slow, you can easily protect yourself from it, and it doesn’t have stealth like the Soul Ripper to appear invisibly. I’m not suggesting upping the speed x2, but instead of 0–8, making it 0–10 or 0-11 that would be interesting for my opinion

• Titans. I agree that not every unit has to be as strong as another factions unit. But you can’t always make Percy straight away. Especially when you play 1v1 or 2v2/3v3 on an open map with a lot of mexes. You’ll have to spend a lot more mass on your Titans to stop a raid by any other T3 unit. I’m not suggesting make x2 DPS for Titans, but they do need a small buff

• Stealth. I agree that the Cybran ASF is weaker than the others without stealth. Perhaps the ASF is the one unit that shouldn’t be changed. But I don’t understand why you’re against making other types of stealth units more expensive. Especially the Mermaid and T3 Gunships/Strats. Increasing the energy drain from 100 to 200 (using the Mermaid as an example) will not make the unit unplayable.

About the paragon. I like the suggestion of Drimer (GodFuper) on GitHub. I think it could be a compromise.

[FtXCommando]

That paragon suggestion is not feasible in a teamgame. There is no fluid dynamic for a team to understand when overflow ends or begins so what you’ll have is everybody overbuilding engineers and then once the paragon player has resolved his overflow now the entire team has a 30k mass surplus in engineers to deal with. The optimal way to play and minimize inefficiency would still be donating all eco to the team while one player utilizes the paragon /some donated bp and not doing that would just operate as a noob trap due to inefficient bp scaling.

I would personally find it extremely frustrating to never have an understanding of where my economy stands until it’s too late and the paragon overflow stops if I was on the team with the paragon.