Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community
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Even if I don't respond to some threads I read every single post that is made in the Balance subforum but sadly good suggestions are few and far between. Even then from the top of my head things that are on my radar (some not high priority) that come from the forums: UEF ACU bubble shield, Sparky, the Kennels, UEF Jamming (was previously denied like a year ago). Most of these just aren't a high priority so they are pushed away sometimes.
Regarding the topic of locking the threads, I am quite honestly a bit lost here. There have been like 5 threads that have been locked this year and if you are referring to the most recent one made by Arran (which I think might be the first thread I even locked) then it turned into a complete shit show and wouldn't produce anything. Taking 2 unit stats from 2 units, comparing them, and drawing a conclusion is not how you propose a balance suggestion.
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I think that’s making a pretty ridiculous mountain out of a molehill, I can go and do the necessary lua commits in like 2 hours. In the general scheme of FAF getting biannual patches I really find it hard to imagine that the issue is that people can’t find the time to discuss engie stations and tanks and it’s an either or situation.
If balance team needs more ppl to actually do repo work then just say so, I don’t even mind doing it.
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@ftxcommando You don't need to be a Balance team member to make a PR on the Github, go do it with some sane values and I might tweak it and merge it.
I just didn't have time to do that one as well before this patch that I didn't want to delay even further.
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@tex said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
Thing is IMO, its much less of an issue when 2 factions dont even have engi stations. Falls under faction balance more then ‘faction A’s main tank is weaker’ when everyone has tanks
To be fair in main game FA, that is why Sera & Aeon have higher BP T3 engies (also I'd give Sera sacrifice and rework mechanic my 2 cents) but that neither here nor there.
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Thank you guys for explaining. I will probably make some balance PR's later : )
@Tagada The thread-locking concern was not specifically regarding any particular past person or thread, and btw, there have been notably more locked threads than you thought. It's a general trend I've been noticing (and sometimes experiencing first-hand) regardless of the most-recently locked thread.
I have read the balance thread guidelines multiple times, but I suspect that there is a more effective way to communicate balance suggestions/problems. @Tagada, could you describe in detail what you think are the most important things to cover when presenting a balance problem/solution, and also some useful clarifications on what type of stuff is versus isn't helpful/persuasive? Thanks.
pfp credit to gieb
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@tagada said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
You don't need to be a Balance team member to make a PR on the Github, go do it with some sane values and I might tweak it and merge it.
Is there like a list of things that should be changed?
Or how are people not on the balance team supposed to make PRs for stuff the balance team has decided?
Or should people just make PRs based on forum posts? -
took me some time to realise what's the thread about
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@zeldafanboy said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
Balance is supposed to make the game fair for everyone, it's not supposed to completely change the tactics from patch to patch. There's no reason to shake up a balanced metagame for the sake of change
I would have 1000x more fun with the game if there were frequent balance patches that made some significant changes to the meta. A month where t1 transports can carry ACU, a month where reclaim is reduced, a month where t3 rush is good again, etc. It would keep things fresh instead of every game following the same recipe where you can do the standard thing or try one of the very few cheese options we've all seen 1000 times. The problem is almost everyone is too casual to keep up with that pace of change, and the balance team isn't capable of providing it.
It wouldn't matter much if the changes were actually balanced. By the time the broken stuff was found it would rotate out anyway. The game would become more about looking at the unit roster and coming up with a strategy rather than who can execute the known strategies better. It would be similar to the way map gen was supposed to reduce the importance of sandboxed build orders.
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I'm still waiting for that "community realizes beetles are actually good and starts using them" moment that was promised to me over a year ago, where is it? I was told that beetles are super good, that I don't know better and all the good players will figure it out any day now. What happened to that?
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@thomashiatt said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
a month where t3 rush is good again
Atm we're on a 8 year trial period for this one.
@mazornoob said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
I'm still waiting for that "community realizes beetles are actually good and starts using them" moment that was promised to me over a year ago, where is it? I was told that beetles are super good, that I don't know better and all the good players will figure it out any day now. What happened to that?
Got put together with the "wtf billy is shit reeeeee" camp
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@thewheelie said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
@mazornoob said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
I'm still waiting for that "community realizes beetles are actually good and starts using them" moment that was promised to me over a year ago, where is it? I was told that beetles are super good, that I don't know better and all the good players will figure it out any day now. What happened to that?
Got put together with the "wtf billy is shit reeeeee" camp
That's the kind of faux-smug bullshit that caused balance stagnation this thread is complaining about. Your whole idea of beetle usage is based on personal preference and that one meme game of beetles killing mexes of a turtling team without radar. Any complaints about them or other stuff is met with "lmao you don't know better I'm the BALANCE GOD here". We set high standards for posting on the balance forums to discourage stupid and lazy takes, maybe these standards should apply to the balance team as well?
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I shouldnt need to respond to a lazy take of you with full research. Not my fault you put words in my mouth i never said and then criticize those imaginary words. Maybe if you wouldnt go in full aggro mode at every possible opportunity people would respond to you more seriously. You know, like what happened to strykers posts.
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@penguin_ at one point there were a ton of threads of "x is op, pls nerf" on the balance forum, the current guidelines are result of that.
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I’ve had ACU pillar pushes stopped by beetles so idk why you haven’t seen them.
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@thewheelie said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
I shouldnt need to respond to a lazy take of you with full research. Not my fault you put words in my mouth i never said and then criticize those imaginary words. Maybe if you wouldnt go in full aggro mode at every possible opportunity people would respond to you more seriously. You know, like what happened to strykers posts.
Also you, in a beetle balance thread ways back:
beetles are already good since the latest patch. It will just time for people to notice just like it took half a year for ppl to realise mongoose were busted
I can't believe you got me to go dig it up. I'm still waiting for people to realize beetles are busted. I'm not copying my diatribes on why beetles aren't good, go find them where I got that comment from.
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Personally, I'm a fan of taking suggestions that seem reasonable and implementing them, and then adjusting as needed. I feel there's too much nitpicking over trying to make changes perfect and then they just don't get implemented.
That said, how do I get on the balance team because I'd totally be down to throw some commits on the beta branch and try them out.
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You join balance team by being voted as a member by current balance team. You also don’t just throw random commits in because commits like that are supposed to be voted on by the whole team.
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@mazornoob said in Resistance to change VS What's best for the game/community:
I can't believe you got me to go dig it up. I'm still waiting for people to realize beetles are busted. I'm not copying my diatribes on why beetles aren't good, go find them where I got that comment from.
Yea? I don't see anything wrong with what i said. I'm clearly talking about your comments in this topic. You started by complaining about what i said in the past because in your eyes it didn't became true. But that's false from the get go since i've seen a significant increase in beetle usage in games i'm in. I point it out, not in the most "professional" way, but on the same wave length as you wrote your post, and then you go full fucking clown on me. Spewing personal attacks and putting words in my mouth i never said.
The perfect example of why your thought process is wrong is the recent trend of billy's. Stryker made a post about it being too bad and asked around what other people thought and most people, including a certain 2300 and other 1700+ players agreed with him. Billy hasn't been changed for a long time, way longer than you've been complaining about the new beetle, so you can reliably say that people always thought it was bad.
Now to prove them wrong i started spamming billy in quite a few games and because it worked so well enough people copied it so that you atleast see a billy every 5 games, which is substantially higher than seeing sera double nano/gun or cybran lazer/cloak.
The important part here is that it was easily showable in teamgames for billy's considering a billy's primary use is using it on large t3 armies, which is currently the meta for teamgames. The primary use for beetles however are t2 armies, which is extremely offmeta for teamgames atm. Still i've seen a fair quantity of acu snipes or other uses for beetles since teamgame equals acu fights on the edge of radar range equals no intel on beetles coming for your acu. And that's without it being the primary strength.
I still don't even understand how you think the new beetles are worse at all from a gameplay perspective compared to the old ones. When the old ones were literally uncounterable if you saw them too late and they relied on luck and cheese, while the new beetles rely on intel sniping, unit positioning, baiting armies in, etc. From a pure gameplay point of view the new beetles are, in my opinion, infinitely better than the old ones.
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I’ve seen beetles kill aggressive ACU pushes 2-3 times, including against Tagada and myself. I’ve also seen Farm use beetles to kill air grids via stealth drops. I’ve also seen like 5-6 beetles made to go walk into giant pillar blobs because one explosion kills like 4-5 pillars which is hugely efficient.
Beetles being seen all the time would not only make them less useful (people begin countering cheese that becomes meta) but they’d also be insanely oppressive to play against if they get buffed because they’re intentionally difficult units to find or gauge enemy usage of. They aren’t supposed to be used all the time.
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To actually have a post responding to the OP:
The reason why so few balance threads succeed is because the majority of better players (the ones with the highest chance of succeeding since they have the most knowledge on the topic) will have a talk with a balance team member instead of making the post. Ftx for example regularly talks with me or sometimes tagada to convey his ideas. Because of this the people that have the highest chance of "succeeding" a balance thread don't really tend to make them, which leads to an artificial lowering of succeeded threads.
The other reason is that multiple of these ideas were actually discussed and accepted (the t1 radar for example), but that there isn't enough manpower to change it (because aside from mostly tagada there isn't exactly a lot of github activity going on).
