Points of Imbalance.

@FtXCommando said in Points of Imbalance.:

#13058558

Just a general teamgame I found on a decent map that sees usage of all tech levels.

All 4 players you mentioned above are eco and chill dudes playing an eco and chill teamgame on an eco and chill map. Nothing you describes surprises me.

So are you at the point where you're ready to throw Isis into the "Maps we don't want to bother thinking about" category?

Seems like it, I provide you an example of the issue I'm talking about on a very popular relatively well respected team map, and you're linking me an open map as a response.

Is Isis a shit map that the balance team doesn't want to have to address gameplay issues on?

I'm not contesting that they're used on maps where you have to defend 30 mass points spread across all of creation.

I think isis drastically simplifies the game and then players that have a predisposition to play deeply risk averse/are not going hard in the game leads to an even more drastic simplification yeah.

@FtXCommando said in Points of Imbalance.:

  I think isis drastically simplifies the game and then players that have a predisposition to play deeply risk averse/are not going hard in the game leads to an even more drastic simplification yeah.

So where exactly do you draw the line.

How can I know which maps you think should just be thrown under the bus forever. Ignored. No effort made to correct issues even if the fixes are relatively minor and won't have a significant impact on other game types?

If I see it played in the custom games tab perhaps its safe to assume that you think nothing should ever be done to correct issues on those maps that the balance team itself created?

I draw the line at the maps I put into team matchmaker pools. Funny enough Isis is one since I think it's a solid new player map at introducing the value of communication/reading the game in the form of early game cheese against tougher opponents. Not really sure If I want to have Isis in higher rated pools or not, will need to see how stuff goes once matchmaker is implemented.

Regardless, I wouldn't adjust the whole game just because I have an introductory map that specifically and intentionally reduces game options.

@FtXCommando said in Points of Imbalance.:

I think isis drastically simplifies the game and then players that have a predisposition to play deeply risk averse/are not going hard in the game leads to an even more drastic simplification yeah.

I tend to think of Fields of Isis as perhaps the second most iconic FAF map after Seton's. Its less popular now than it used to be, but it dominated through the GPG era and into the early FAF era.

I can't believe I'm hearing that we're ready to classify it as trash and justify making no attempt at fixing its issues.

And Black Forest is an iconic AOE2 map, it isn't the consideration in balance even though certain factions have an extreme advantage on it.

I can't believe I'm hearing that we're ready to classify it as trash

You are the only one here making the connection of casual=trash

Also I'd hardly classify funeral plains as "open map" since it has tons of hills/ridges on the sides blocking the efficiency of massed spam/pushes while the middle is hard to push through due to the fact ACUs tend to hover around there + it's the easiest spot to pincer enemy attacks at and convert them into a mass donation. It's like calling Canis an open 2v2 map just because it has some flat terrain in middle.

Open map to me is more like playing Wonder Open in a 2v2 where massive tank spam must be done or you will get raided to shit. It's the inverse of closed map, rather than make no tanks I make nothing but tanks.

@BlackYps said in Points of Imbalance.:

I can't believe I'm hearing that we're ready to classify it as trash

You are the only one here making the connection of casual=trash

You're saying that you don't want to bother dealing with its issues. Its no longer in consideration for the balance team.

That's calling it trash man.

The only thing that's trash is this balance team, assuming that what I'm hearing here is its actual policy.

"We broke those other maps when we made sloppy changes without considering the consequences? So what, fuck em", is an incredibly lazy policy to take towards the game's most popular maps.

the goal is to balance the game towards an expansion heavy playstyle, while keeping it from drowning in midless yolo (T1) spam and ideally at high strategic diversity, while keeping an eye on teamgames on (somewhat) competetive maps.
gap/2gap/astro/pass is not one of them.

@HoujouSatoko said in Points of Imbalance.:

the goal is to balance the game towards an expansion heavy playstyle, while keeping it from drowning in midless yolo (T1) spam and ideally at high strategic diversity, while keeping an eye on teamgames on (somewhat) competetive maps.
gap/2gap/astro/pass is not one of them.

You forgot Isis, Four Corners... a lot of other maps.

@HoujouSatoko said in Points of Imbalance.:

the goal is to balance the game towards an expansion heavy playstyle, while keeping it from drowning in midless yolo (T1) spam and ideally at high strategic diversity, while keeping an eye on teamgames on (somewhat) competetive maps.
gap/2gap/astro/pass is not one of them.

This is a cop out. The changes being proposed are not gong to break games on an expansion heavy map.

It seems the balance team just doesn't want to bother fixing what it broke.

I'm sure if you keep calling the balance team trash they'll suddenly pivot and change what you want.

@biass said in Points of Imbalance.:

If you're going to just shit up another thread then I will ask for you to be banned from posting.

@moses_the_red. Please give the balance team more time and leeway. They are hard working (I hear :P) and very busy. I think there is room for improvement in T3 land especially after such a large change last patch. However, every large change will require small tweaks and this is unsurprising. There is nothing overly OP or UP that I have found so far. The largest discrepancies I've already commented on in the original post. While there is always room for improvement, the smaller the discrepancy, the longer it will take to make changes. The best we can do is politely ask them to consider our points and concerns then hope they take our suggestions on board.

I like how during our tests I tried to explicitly point out things that I didn't want Moses to misinterpret yet he has still done it.
So to summarize the tests we have done I've concluded that:
in a straight up fight with little micro Bricks win very heavily vs ML
In a fight where player does micro his ML well but not perfectly and he also can approach only from 1 side (99% of situations in a real game) Bricks win vs ML with around 8 bricks remaining.
With near perfect ML micro and ML approaching from 1 side it is possible for the ML to win but it's really really close and it comes down to micro and pathfinding of bricks.
If ML is allowed to run circles around bricks and poke from every side and the player micro's ML well then ML wins.

So from that we can see that in ~90% of situations ML looses to bricks pretty badly, when the player manages to micro near perfectly the ML draws or wins, and in the 0.1% of weird situations where ML is running circles around enemy forces it wins easily.

Few more things to consider: The micro that ML requires is basically going into range of bricks while turning and starting running away at the same time so the bricks can easily disengage and thus buy the defending player a lot of time to make more units, finish his own experimental, make pds air or w/e. So if you want to attack with ML, then ML looses 100% of the time making it an inefficient investment mass for mass.
I hope this cleared things up a bit.

I did some more tests: spoiler T4 lose vs t3! what a surprise
Bricks vs Chicken -> Bricks win
Bricks vs GC -> Bricks win
Bricks vs Mega -> Bricks win
replay: #13098578

I don' think I need to add that if I would use percivals they would crush even harder vs Chicken and GC and probably do around the same vs Mega.
Can we know finish the discussion of omg T3 was nerfed and now I am sure they get raped by T4.
I also think that it's fine leaving ML as it is since it gets countered by everything else easily compared to other T4's so allowing it to be efficient vs T3 formations given very good micro is fine by me.

@Tagada said in Points of Imbalance.:

I did some more tests: spoiler T4 lose vs t3! what a surprise
Bricks vs Chicken -> Bricks win
Bricks vs GC -> Bricks win
Bricks vs Mega -> Bricks win
replay: #13098578

I don' think I need to add that if I would use percivals they would crush even harder vs Chicken and GC and probably do around the same vs Mega.
Can we know finish the discussion of omg T3 was nerfed and now I am sure they get raped by T4.
I also think that it's fine leaving ML as it is since it gets countered by everything else easily compared to other T4's so allowing it to be efficient vs T3 formations given very good micro is fine by me.

If T3 land is really in a good place, why aren't you making it?

Replay: #12924870

You make some, but you're spending more mass by far in T4, and you're probably spending more mass in T1 than T3 land as well.

In real game situations, you are yourself devoting very little of your total mass to T3 unit production - favoring T4, T3 static arty, nukes and even T1 over it on a per mass basis.

Doesn't make much sense if its in a good place does it?

Better players than me can explain but:
Land is Slow. So making deploying a land army in mass takes alot of time or transports
Firebases. Or more specifically A failed T3 Engagement can backfire so painfully
Map Control is Generally establish, so engaging on fronts to take proxies or expansions is harder and might take more mass than you give

And likely also efficient usage of BP, creating and deploying the Bricks/T3 Army takes more time/effort/etc to build than just amassing T4 Units or Arty. So even if equal mass of bricks > ML or otherwise. The relative time to make, deploy and otherwise the bricks is harder than the monkey mayhe/IDunno. Shitty 1k global

That was the saddest excuse for a funeral plains game I've ever witnessed.