Points of Imbalance.
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@moses_the_red said in Points of Imbalance.:
I have to keep repeating this, because I don't think people have really accepted this yet
I fail to see a correlation between these two phenomena (the first being: you repeating claims on this forum, and the second being: people coming to accept that those claims are accurate).
To me It looks like you keep writing stuff and people keep disbelieving you.
@moses_the_red said in Points of Imbalance.:
What's most hilarious about all this, is I hunted down the discussion thread for that patch, and there was very little relevant discussion about these nerfs. People didn't realize how massive those changes were, and seemed not to consider the impact such changes would have on T3/T4 balance.
@moses_the_red says he has researched this subject and found out that, at the time of the 3696 patch (which was known informally as the "T3 rebalance"), there was "very little relevant discussion" about the nerf to T3 units, and that "People didn't realize how massive those changes were."
I disagree. In fact, contemporaneous documents contradict his claims:
Petric made a video to make people aware of the changes: "Now let's discuss the biggest focus of this patch: the long-in-the-works T3 rebalance that was started by Zock in 2015 or so."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emz9WwAOoxM&t=6m17sDuring the first four months of 2018, there were literally thousands of games played on the FAF Beta branch (5000+ hits in the vault, I didn't bother to check how many were team games as opposed to 1 person sandboxing by themselves).
During the beta period, tournaments were held to increase awareness and to conduct testing regarding the balance changes.
There was a forum thread about the balance changes with 283 posts. The very first response to that thread brought up bricks and percivals. https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=15809
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Petric made a video to make people aware of the changes: "Now let's discuss the biggest focus of this patch: the long-in-the-works T3 rebalance that was started by Zock in 2015 or so."
I admittedly haven't watched the entire thing, but it seems very focused on T2/t3 balance, and seems to ignore T3/T4 balance. I'll watch the rest of it later to ensure that I didn't miss that discussion.
There was a forum thread about the balance changes with 283 posts. The very first response to that thread brought up bricks and percivals. https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=15809
That's the thread I was referring to. Yeah, they considered the balance between bricks and percies (which I haven't been saying is a problem) but going through that thread I didn't see significant concern for whether it would throw T3/T4 balance off - which is the claim that I'm making.
I also didn't see much discussion about the magnitude of those changes, about how they're multiplicative, about how effective a post nerf unit would be against a pre nerf unit.
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@moses_the_red said in Points of Imbalance.:
What's most hilarious about all this, is I hunted down the discussion thread for that patch, and there was very little relevant discussion about these nerfs. People didn't realize how massive those changes were, and seemed not to consider the impact such changes would have on T3/T4 balance.
I think its clear it was a sloppy patch. They may have "fixed" T2/T3 balance, but they drastically reduced the effectiveness of T3 land versus both T4 and static structures in order to do it.
You can hear Petric talk in the video about the changes in relation to T3. GC lost the ability to trigger its claws as fast. Monkey got a cost increase in addition to bt nerf. Other units like T3 mobile arty and sniper bots were nerfed after they were found to be a bit too strong vs T3 bots. Ythotha got a cost increase and had its dps shifted so if can't one shot Percies/Bricks. That's not to say these changes put them back in line with old balance, that wasn't the point. T4 IS stronger now once it gets up, that's intentional. T4s are no longer a cheese strategy but a proper unit. The video explains it better, but to say it was a sloppy patch and that there wasn't any concern or that people didn't notice changes for T3/T4 balance is just wrong.
Even with the changes, T3 land still beats T4 mass for mass with a good formation, especially with shields. And that's not considering that while your opponent makes T4 you can win much of the map with T3, if not kill his whole base. Even when the T4 gets out it's an uphill battle to retake the map since you only have one experimental that can only be in one place. T3 is also helped by ACU (which is the main thing early T3 has to contend with) being nerfed in some upgrades and having Overcharge made more expensive in power and storage. Also The build time increase is not trivial and has a direct cost in how long it takes to get up an experimental. You can't spread out an exp, you can't drop it (T3 drops have actually been made stronger with the ASF/scout nerf). And so on.
And people don't generally talk about post nerf units vs pre-nerf units because the two will never meet.
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GC Claw activation time. I think it could activate it's claws faster, perhaps 1.5x faster. Currently the claws feel more like goodies than an actual weapon. Another way to make the claws feel more dangerous would be to have them both trigger before the face laser, resulting in some fake alpha damage.
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@Evan_ said in Points of Imbalance.:
You can hear Petric talk in the video about the changes in relation to T3. GC lost the ability to trigger its claws as fast. Monkey got a cost increase in addition to bt nerf. Other units like T3 mobile arty and sniper bots were nerfed after they were found to be a bit too strong vs T3 bots.
You neglect to mention that it was a 1/19th cost increase that the ML received. It now takes 10 seconds more mass production to build if you're rushing it. Its a completely negligible nerf.
Yeah, T3 mobile arty did get a nerf... not in that patch, the actually buffed mobile arty in that patch... but much later it got a nerf. Doesn't matter though as the issue is that T4 is just better in certain circumstances. So much better that people don't bother to build significant T3 land assault bots.
Ythotha got a cost increase and had its dps shifted so if can't one shot Percies/Bricks. That's not to say these changes put them back in line with old balance, that wasn't the point. T4 IS stronger now once it gets up, that's intentional. T4s are no longer a cheese strategy but a proper unit. The video explains it better, but to say it was a sloppy patch and that there wasn't any concern or that people didn't notice changes for T3/T4 balance is just wrong.
Looks to me like the Ythota just got nerfed in general, but the nerfs were fairly slight.
Look, here's the issue with your "cheese strategy" claim. Gyle and other casters actually recorded lots of games from pre-2018 and made them publicly available. When I got through those games, I see top tier players spamming lots of T4 units. They weren't a cheese strategy, but they weren't T3 land either.
Making them a "proper unit" means that they're stepping on the role of T3 land - which I think is a terrible way to deal with them - but if everyone's dead set on making them a normal unit rather than a suckerpunch (which isn't necessarily cheese) then for god's sake, drastically increase their build times. Right now they're no less cheesey when rushed than they ever were, but in addition to being a cheesy rush unit they're also mass competitive with T3 land assault bots which causes them to replace T3 assault bots in some situations.
Even with the changes, T3 land still beats T4 mass for mass with a good formation, especially with shields.
If its rushed, you aren't going to have the T3 land to beat it. If its not rushed they'll have T3 land too. Beyond that T4 assault bots don't need to beat T3 land to be relevant. They have other major advantages. In a lot of cases you can just run a T4 assault bot by a mass of bricks or percies, and if you build enough splash units you'll be just fine when the assault bots eventually make it to your base. Your opponent will have substantially less time to react however.
And that's not considering that while your opponent makes T4 you can win much of the map with T3, if not kill his whole base. Even when the T4 gets out it's an uphill battle to retake the map since you only have one experimental that can only be in one place.
You say this, and this is great in theory, but if you read through more of this thread you'll find that I've linked several replays where pro players are indeed building token amounts of T3 land and then spamming T4 bots.
And its happening on maps that aren't popular in team game circles so the absurd idea that we shouldn't balance around maps that people actually play doesn't apply.
T3 is also helped by ACU (which is the main thing early T3 has to contend with) being nerfed in some upgrades and having Overcharge made more expensive in power and storage. Also The build time increase is not trivial and has a direct cost in how long it takes to get up an experimental. You can't spread out an exp, you can't drop it (T3 drops have actually been made stronger with the ASF/scout nerf). And so on.
Jesus man, nerfing OC means that rushed T4 bots are even more powerful... not less.
And people don't generally talk about post nerf units vs pre-nerf units because the two will never meet.
Yeah, but that's an issue, because its one of the simplest objective ways to determine how extreme a set of proposed changes are. If you test them and find that you've double the effectiveness of a unit with your changes that might be enough to convince you that what your doing might have impacts beyond what you intend.
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@moses_the_red said in Points of Imbalance.:
You neglect to mention that it was a 1/19th cost increase that the ML received. It now takes 10 seconds more mass production to build if you're rushing it. Its a completely negligible nerf.
Yeah, T3 mobile arty did get a nerf... not in that patch, the actually buffed mobile arty in that patch... but much later it got a nerf. Doesn't matter though as the issue is that T4 is just better in certain circumstances. So much better that people don't bother to build significant T3 land assault bots.
The point was that you claimed it was a sloppy patch that nerfed T3 land without making any meaningful change to anything else. And 1k mass is not negligible. It's a mass cost increase on top of a build-time increase on top of the fact that equal mass in T3 already stomps it anyways.
Ythotha got a cost increase and had its dps shifted so if can't one shot Percies/Bricks. That's not to say these changes put them back in line with old balance, that wasn't the point. T4 IS stronger now once it gets up, that's intentional. T4s are no longer a cheese strategy but a proper unit. The video explains it better, but to say it was a sloppy patch and that there wasn't any concern or that people didn't notice changes for T3/T4 balance is just wrong.
Looks to me like the Ythota just got nerfed in general, but the nerfs were fairly slight.
Look, here's the issue with your "cheese strategy" claim. Gyle and other casters actually recorded lots of games from pre-2018 and made them publicly available. When I got through those games, I see top tier players spamming lots of T4 units. They weren't a cheese strategy, but they weren't T3 land either.
The reason people built them both before and after the nerf is because they had other advantages that T3 land didn't have, not because they actually won an equal fight vs T3 land. If people built them solely to win an even fight vs t3 bots then we wouldn't see many T4's at all before the nerf, as T3 land was much more powerful then.
Making them a "proper unit" means that they're stepping on the role of T3 land - which I think is a terrible way to deal with them - but if everyone's dead set on making them a normal unit rather than a suckerpunch (which isn't necessarily cheese) then for god's sake, drastically increase their build times. Right now they're no less cheesey when rushed than they ever were, but in addition to being a cheesy rush unit they're also mass competitive with T3 land assault bots which causes them to replace T3 assault bots in some situations.
You still have not shown how T4s are now mass competitive with assault bots. They certainly aren't good enough to rush and are much harder to get in the blink of an eye with the change to reclaim time and build time.
Even with the changes, T3 land still beats T4 mass for mass with a good formation, especially with shields.
If its rushed, you aren't going to have the T3 land to beat it. If its not rushed they'll have T3 land too. Beyond that T4 assault bots don't need to beat T3 land to be relevant. They have other major advantages.
You can't "rush" 26000 mass. If a T4 is rushed, it means giving up much of the map and then having to retake it with one T4 and whatever you can make after. Even then you're still going to lose. Experimental buildtime was massively increased while T3 assault bot buildtime was decreased. It is not hard to build up an equal fighting force of T3, especially when 10k mass in T3 can already start winning map control while 10k mass in an experimental can't do anything.
"If it's not rushed they'll have T3 land too" which means that T3 land is actively fighting on both sides leaving a lot of reclaim, and the person who starts a 26000 mass investment is going to be at a serious disadvantage in trying to get any of that mass until the exp is out. In most cases that means being out-ecoed and put at a severe disadvantage. By the time the T4 shows up most of the reclaim will be gone. Yes, T3 land Synergizes well with a T4, but it has to more than makeup for the ground you lose to push out an experimental in the T3 stage.
EXPs outshine T3 land in the late t3 stage where you can get them up without creating a noticeable enough difference to lose too much ground, and where concentrated dps/hp is more important than efficiency. At some point and in some situations it's just more sensible to use T4 over T3, this was true before the patch and is true after. It doesn't mean stepping on the roles of another unit. There are plenty of times where it is a much better idea to make bricks than a monkey, or to make harbs over a GC.
And yeah you can probably keep a few T3 mobile arty alive in your base, you'll just lose the rest of the map, all the reclaim and mexes, ect. You don't have to actually break into the opponent's base with T3, if you push them back enough they're basically crippled without expansions even if the experimental does get up.
In a lot of cases you can just run a T4 assault bot by a mass of bricks or percies, and if you build enough splash units you'll be just fine when the assault bots eventually make it to your base. Your opponent will have substantially less time to react however.
If the map is really that open that you can circle a T4 around T3 land then it's either a really open expansion map where T3 land/air excels or a 20k turtle map. Besides which you can reposition T3 land fairly quickly and safely with transports. There's no way that a T4 can realistically avoid having to fight T3 land just by trying to go around it.
And that's not considering that while your opponent makes T4 you can win much of the map with T3, if not kill his whole base. Even when the T4 gets out it's an uphill battle to retake the map since you only have one experimental that can only be in one place.
You say this, and this is great in theory, but if you read through more of this thread you'll find that I've linked several replays where pro players are indeed building token amounts of T3 land and then spamming T4 bots.
It isn't theory. It's a basic fact that you can't sink 26000 mass into a unit at the early t3 stage and not be prepared to give up a substantial part of the map. If YOU read through the thread you'll see one of the players in the game himself as well as others directly replying to your point, and explaining why they chose to team-build a megalith rather than making bricks.
Jesus man, nerfing OC means that rushed T4 bots are even more powerful... not less.
If you're trying to get up an exp on minimal t3 land then the main thing you have to fend off T3 land is your com. Outside of ML vs ACU + shields (which ACU still wins), ACU does slightly worse vs T4 now, but using your Com to kill a GC walking in was already a last resort option and there's still a much better choice (making T3 land, which wins mass for mass). What does matter is the increased cost to protect your 20k or 26k investment while it's being built.
And people don't generally talk about post nerf units vs pre-nerf units because the two will never meet.
Yeah, but that's an issue, because its one of the simplest objective ways to determine how extreme a set of proposed changes are. If you test them and find that you've double the effectiveness of a unit with your changes that might be enough to convince you that what your doing might have impacts beyond what you intend.
By your own logic though it's completely pointless. Did you need to actually test new brick vs old brick to form your opinions on T3 balance? Is it not enough to compare old brick vs exp with new brick vs exp? Testing something like this incurs a lot of time and organizational cost for something with arguably little benefit.
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You weren't a real gapper in 2013-2015 if u didn't have a min 14 ML rush bo. You weren't getting the bricks/percies out to stop it, that was the whole strength of it.
Actually that was just generally what the ML was for in any situation. I realize I already did this but let's break it down again because it seems you forgot.
Pre-2018 T4 Gameplay:
Fatty - Use it to force people to walk into your percy/parashield legion.ML - You rush it as an attempt to end the game before T3 numbers rise to more than a handful and enemy ACU isn't rambo.
Mega - Viable reaction to percy spam, but will lose to percy + fatty + para mix
GC - Only Aeon option against percy/brick (still not as good as those two in mass equivalent numbers)
Chicken - Only Seraphim option against percy/brick (still not as good as those two in mass equivalent numbers)
The only time you would make it for ANOTHER reason is that you just won some major t3 land pile in reclaim and want to convert it into a unit within the next 30 seconds.
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The debate over Experimental balance has continued nowhere for ages and is clogging up this thread. Please bring some progress to the discussion.
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With the 3718 patch labs got a major change up. My impression for each faction's labs are as follows:
UEF; cheap + speedy + low hp
Cybran; Moderate speed, HP and cost but lowest DPS
Aeon; Expensive, slow, high DPS, high HP
Seraphim; Still halfway between a LAB and scout, slow, low HP, low cost, long range, turret can fire 360 now!
These changes add a lot of meaningful diversity to how you use LABs.
Now onto my main point --> Aeon tanks are the slowest and now they have the slowest LAB too. Perhaps swap the speeds of UEF and Aeon LABS and adjust their costs accordingly? This proposed change is to prevent Aeon lacking map control in the early game owing to insufficient unit speed across the board. -
Straight up, if you think the t3 land nerf was bad for the health of the game you're probably not informed enough to be able to contribute to a reasonable discussion. I cannot reasonably beliieve that anyone would want to go back to pre nerf, that's insane. Wanting to go back to every single game being a t3 rush and watching a single harbinger or two smoke hundreds of t1 and t2 tanks with hardly any effort because of "i like t3 stage" is not a heatlhy state of mind.
@Arran said in Points of Imbalance.:
These changes add a lot of meaningful diversity to how you use LABs.
Now onto my main point --> Aeon tanks are the slowest and now they have the slowest LAB too. Perhaps swap the speeds of UEF and Aeon LABS and adjust their costs accordingly? This proposed change is to prevent Aeon lacking map control in the early game owing to insufficient unit speed across the board.I don't see how 0.2 speed is going to "cripple" your raid ability outside of the largest of 10km maps. It's a bit of a waste of breath trying to instantly ask for changes on a patch without replays or etc.
Also, as most people have said: You need to come to the reality that factions (especially yours, because I know you main aeon) are not supposed to be good at every aspect of the game. Aeon have a defensive early t1 and then threaten to crush the entire game out unless enemy can make a reasonable counter, why should aeon crush both early AND late?
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I agree 0.2 speed is unlikely to matter 'much', however a slow lab is just a bad tank, thus my concerns. Only time will tell if this is really an issue but forum threads are places to potentially catch problems before they become problems.
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Not only that, his idea that aeon getting UEF lab would be a buff is hilariously wrong. In fact, it would be an extreme nerf to their early game. The whole point of the flare being a pseudo tank-lab now is that it can PRECISELY act as a holdover to secure far reaching expansions which is where the aurora fails. 2 flares should be able to dispatch any tank so long as some attention is paid, mech marines are intended to lose not only to tanks but also to labs. They are meant to run away from anything that isn't an engie.
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@biass said in Points of Imbalance.:
Straight up, if you think the t3 land nerf was bad for the health of the game you're probably not informed enough to be able to contribute to a reasonable discussion. I cannot reasonably beliieve that anyone would want to go back to pre nerf, that's insane. Wanting to go back to every single game being a t3 rush and watching a single harbinger or two smoke hundreds of t1 and t2 tanks with hardly any effort because of "i like t3 stage" is not a heatlhy state of mind.
@Arran said in Points of Imbalance.:
These changes add a lot of meaningful diversity to how you use LABs.
Now onto my main point --> Aeon tanks are the slowest and now they have the slowest LAB too. Perhaps swap the speeds of UEF and Aeon LABS and adjust their costs accordingly? This proposed change is to prevent Aeon lacking map control in the early game owing to insufficient unit speed across the board.I don't see how 0.2 speed is going to "cripple" your raid ability outside of the largest of 10km maps. It's a bit of a waste of breath trying to instantly ask for changes on a patch without replays or etc.
Also, as most people have said: You need to come to the reality that factions (especially yours, because I know you main aeon) are not supposed to be good at every aspect of the game. Aeon have a defensive early t1 and then threaten to crush the entire game out unless enemy can make a reasonable counter, why should aeon crush both early AND late?
Don't know why I bother with you, you're happy to make bad faith arguments that misrepresent a position... however...
No one is arguing that we roll back 3696, the argument is whether assault experimentals should be nerfed to "finish the job" that the 3696 patch began.
We nerfed T3 assault bots primarily to fix them in relation to T2 bots - which you can see if you go back and look at discussions of that patch - but we never bothered to apply the correction to the next higher tier.
And that's why it was a sloppy patch. I don't necessarily disagree with the changes, its just that if you're gong to make such changes you have to finish the job. Nerfing T3 bots as hard as that patch did while leaving T4 unchanged aside from build timers and the world's most negligible mass increase just doesn't fix the problem.
Its not like people weren't building T4 assault bots like mad before the 2018 patch, to just nerf to T3 and ignore its relationship to T4 was negligent.
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Funnily enough after that patch everyone and his mother was complaining that t4's were massively overnerfed with the bt change and that they were completely useless
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So see thread signature:
If anything happened here is why T3 (Assault Bots and similar units) might feel truly meh is I don’t know how intended this. But raw damage nerf on percy, is 1450 which is just ackward ass damage.Pillars have 1500 HP. Percys could two shot a com a 3k. Now 3 shot. And witj such a low fire cycle that 50 adds up.
Harbringers time to kill is almost double (Almost like the Percy change) with its raw damage.
Aeon Snipers take 3 shots to kill 2 vs previously 3 due to see RIP overkill damage. Sera Sniper takes 2 Shots to Kill Ishies now.
And Siege Tank need an extra shot to kill a Blaze or Yenzenye health unit. So hears ranges I’d make.
Percy > 1500. Only relavent vs Pillar but removes ackward overkill also makes a couple percies far more threatening to a commander as 2 fire cyclces = RIP Com
Siege Tank > main guns to 70 Damage removing ackward 10-50 HP left on on cover targets. And makes MU v Pillars. Doesn’t really change vs Ishis or Rhinos HP
Harbringer just decrease raw damage to 100 but increase fire rate to 3.33 (or conversely go to 200 stay the same fire rate depending if Harbringers utility vs Low Tech wants to be related).
Like those changes alone would basically remove ackward hp or overkill for these units vs T2 Main Tanks (Except Percy vs Rhinos).
That said, I mean the ackwardness of HP left of these units is that intentional?
I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.
Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project
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ACU has regen so regardless of 1450 or 1500 dmg it's gonna take 3 shots except in the absurdly lucky scenario of 2 shots hitting at the exact same tick.
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Ah fair point still likely move it 1500 (or maybe 1550 but that almost pre nerf percy so nah. So think 1500 still be correct. Sense its also unlikely an ACU be exactly 3k too.)
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@Dragun101 said in Points of Imbalance.:
That said, I mean the ackwardness of HP left of these units is that intentional?
Probably.
A percy shot leaving 50 health left means the next one has roughly 1400 damage in overkill. (on a pillar)This nerfs the effectiveness in building percivals in the early t3 stage, allowing titans (which used to be criminally underpowered) to have a bit of time in the limelight.
However in my opinion this role can still be filled by pillar/mong, so you still don't see my poor boys
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That make sense Biass, sense the T3 MBT (Siege, Heavy Assault Bots and Harbringers. Lesser extent Sniper Bots. Didn’t check Loyalists/Titans but I imagine it’ll be true there too)
All do ackward amount of overkill damage. To the the point it like has to be intentional. Either on part of OG Developers or our balance team.
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This thread is getting some renewed attention from https://forum.faforever.com/topic/814/balance-thread-guidelines-feedback regarding T4, so continuing from there I have a thought or two:
- Monkeylord is about as good as mass equivalent number of bricks.
- Bricks and percies are in general mass-effective against T4.
- Monkeylord is not more mass effective against other T4 because it has way less range and can't micro against them.
- Therefore, there's no reason to build Monkeylords instead of mass equivalent numbers of Bricks.
My reasoning here is, Aeon and Sera don't have an equivalent of Bricks or Percies, so they have to build T4 to attack. In exchange they have snipers, which are great against T3 armies. Fatboy has huge range and can kite enemy T4s as long as it has space to retreat to, so UEF have a reason to build it over Percies.
To some extent same goes for Megalith, but Monkeylord doesn't seem to have any advantages over T3 spam. Maybe it's harder to strat since no mobile shields? Then again, ML has a total of 45k HP versus cumulative 67,5k of 15 bricks.
