Balancing attempts can unbalance ?

[name]

I think this thread is a good demonstration of what happens and is part of the reason why I didn't really wish to give more specifics earlier.

I don't actually want to discuss the implications/viability of any new unit unless there's a serious chance that it'll get tested.

Well doesn't your title of "Multiplayer Contributor" indicate you have enough of the relevant reputation with the development team that you could commit a balance change for the next development release to ensure it gets testing? If not, is there an active authority on balance changes that you could appeal to?

[Yomar]

I think this thread is a good demonstration of what happens and is part of the reason why I didn't really wish to give more specifics earlier.

I don't actually want to discuss the implications/viability of any new unit unless there's a serious chance that it'll get tested.

Well doesn't your title of "Multiplayer Contributor" indicate you have enough of the relevant reputation with the development team that you could commit a balance change for the next development release to ensure it gets testing? If not, is there an active authority on balance changes that you could appeal to?

Yes, very interresting question, and it also gave me an idea, why not creating a parrarel version of the game called something like Wesnoth test or experimental version with the specific purpose of testing ballance changes and new units or factions.

[Flameslash]

Yes, very interresting question, and it also gave me an idea, why not creating a parrarel version of the game called something like Wesnoth test or experimental version with the specific purpose of testing ballance changes and new units or factions.

Isn't that basically what the development versions (odd numbers) are?

[Velensk]

Yes, that is exactly the kind of thing that the odd numbered versions are supposed to be for.

There has never been a problem with making it possible to test changes, there's never been a problem making such changes available (you don't even need a new version of wesnoth, an add-on could do it easily). The part I've found to be exhausting and occasionally futile is getting enough of the community on the same page to actually do the testing and then enough of the community on the same page after to come to some kind of conclusion about the results.

Since you ask about my title, I was given it for the time when I was asked to maintain the mainline maps. I basically means that my opinion is respected. Independent of the title I believe I could make commits to the repository so I could probably get changes through to the development branch. The question is if I could get enough good players playing on the next development version with the changes to get useful feedback (as I'm not going to have time to spend many hours on the server fishing around/recruiting for games and playing myself). If I was fairly confident that every time I showed up I could get a game in I might consider it but my general experience with this kind of thing is that you end up just waiting around for an indefinite amount of time and sometimes even if you spend hours you don't get a game. If I open it up to anyone and not just people I know are good I'm much more likely (but still not guaranteed) to get a game but it's much more likely that the games I get will be useless from a testing perspective.

[name]

So then it sounds like the solution would be to do following sequence of three things:

1. Commit experimental balance change to the next development release without testing.
2. Make a big post wherever there is a lot of forum traffic explaining the change, how it will be part of the next stable release if no problem is found, ask for replays.
3. Wait.

Now it is their move. If experienced players never show up to complain and post their replays, let the change roll into the next stable release. When and if they do complain and post replays, you win, you have your feedback and you can make adjustments. Even if the feedback does not happen until the first couple stable releases, there is inevitably several more stable releases to come for adjustments or a balance rollback if need be.

As a bonus, if anything goes wrong you can blame it all on me. "It was all Cold Steel's idea, burn him, burn HIM!"

[White_Drag0n]

I'm not sure is it satire or not. But the solution sounds so unprofessional, I doubt it will get accepted.

[name]

It is a serious suggestion. And it is completely reasonable, as it is no different from how any feature is developed. New features are committed to the development branch. People report bugs (or they do not). Reported bugs are fixed. Unreported bugs remain until reported. Either way, when the development branch matures it and all its changes become the new stable branch. Any bugs not reported before then are fixed in the next stable release.

[Flameslash]

I'd steer clear of new units until all the current one can be animated. As it is, there's sprites from 2011 that are still being animated, so I doubt the Art Department would appreciate the extra work.

[Gyra_Solune]

I'd steer clear of new units until all the current one can be animated. As it is, there's sprites from 2011 that are still being animated, so I doubt the Art Department would appreciate the extra work.

I don't think art ought to be a higher priority than making sure the multiplayer is balanced (which, after 'everything actually works', should be the highest priority) - and there's plenty of existing okay-enough art for most purposes. Making units animated is nice, but I'd hardly say it's essential, especially since animation is typically fleeting and not as critical as making sure the base frame you're going to be looking at for most of the playtime is nice-looking.

I do sort of agree with the previous sentiment though - the only way to test the viability of a change on the level of adding a new unit would be to just add it in, get it roughly working to do where you want it with a more limited sample of testers (this will take more extensive communication with people you trust to know what they're doing) to a point where you and other authorities on the matter believe it to be good, and then see how the community starts to react once it's official. If it doesn't work, change it or remove it and try other measures. If it does work, mission solved! Worry about other things later - those come with time.

Theorizing is a good way to get a handle on what you want, but I think eventually an idea should be put forth and turned into a concrete plan, and, for that matter, you should be okay with what may look like 'stepping out of line' to try to convince people that your idea is good and should be a part of this. It'd be one thing if you were like me, just some random person, but you're more or less the primary person in charge of handling multiplayer affairs, or so I'd believe. You clearly see a problem so be bold about a way to fix it!

[Ben24626]

From what I've heard getting balance improving changes into default with the current requirements is basically impossible. It seems ideas need to be tested and then a bunch of good ladder players have to agree on something. As far as I can tell no one really bothers to test and rarely can people agree on exactly what changes should be made so nothing is done. For a game that is severely imbalanced for a 1v1 perspective (for example the worst faction undead get destroyed by knalgian, are at disadvantage vs elf, and have advantage over no one, whilst best faction loyal trumps drake, knalgian, elf with no bad matchups (some poeple will disagree with what I have just said, thus proving my point that everyone agreeing will never happen)) making some changes that not everyone agrees with is actually the optimal path to take as a) you will never find a solution everyone agrees with and b) doing nothing is worse than making changes that either increase balance or get overturned/tweaked after it is revealed they aren't good changes.

My proposal is that one person who is prepared to be available to monitor the changes he employs is given free reign to change default era as he sees fit. The counter argument to this is that it should be done by more than person so a more democratic proposal is reached but for reasons (as well as the example of the ladder council which from what I've heard of a disaster) already outlined this is a pipe dream. People I would nominate for this role (off the top of my head) would be Bonobo(Mint) or Horus.

[Eagle_11]

good ladder players have to agree on something.

why would they agree on anything at all that changes their established free-wins ? (see. certain faction match-ups mentioned at the post above)

the real source of the problem is that the developers(or whomever is in charge of mp) wants to have an 'complete' game, for that sake they refuse to develop anything beyond 'compact' scale, as that would take longer to get completed. Things seem to be let consciously be as they are.

[Ben24626]

good ladder players have to agree on something.

why would they agree on anything at all that changes their established free-wins ? (see. certain faction match-ups mentioned at the post above)

They would agree because they signed up to a group who's purpose was to improve balance (the ladder council that is) and because imbalance benefits them as much as it hurts them (sometimes they get bad matchups too).

the real source of the problem is that the developers(or whomever is in charge of mp) wants to have an 'complete' game, for that sake they refuse to develop anything beyond 'compact' scale, as that would take longer to get completed. Things seem to be let consciously be as they are.

I don't know what u mean by complete, an altered default era would me just as complete so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

[ForPeace]

I think that main problem with balancing Default Era is not the lack of balance itself but the fact that some match-ups can favor either side on different maps so balancing trials might turn out to be very uneffective. Let's give for example a match-up said to be favoring undead vs drakes. On narrow maps where drakes cannot use their mobility to avoid adepts (i.e. Den of Onis or Sablestone Delta), they get demolished by 19-2 magical attacks (noticing the -50% drakes' cold resistance) at night, however on bigger maps with much open space (Hamlets, Weldyn Channel, Ruphus Isle, many others) they can abuse their mobility to avoid fighting at night and be able to beat undead fighting only when they want and when adept attacks aren't so scary. Now if going logically we buff drakes cold resistance undead would be in a big trouble on bigger maps as adepts would make way less damage than they need to stand drake attacks at day, but on smaller maps drakes might stand some chance vs undead. (This would also make this match-up lose its flavour with adepts destroying all the units at night and possibly affect the way most players play it). It's just impossible to find a golden mean considering diversity of maps and how it affects the balance. The other examples of match-ups much depending on the map are drakes vs loyalists, northerners vs rebels, loyalists vs undead, northerners vs drakes, loyalists vs rebels.

So apparently factions (as well as less standard playstyles like HODOR or Saurian rush) have maps that fit them better or worse and changing only units' statistics won't make the game much more balanced. We can begin improving maps' balance but we would need many tests on various sets of maps and match-ups and there are some maps which don't seem to be able to become more balanced without spoiling their flavor, such as Elensefar Courtyard or Aetherdmaw.

For a game that is severely imbalanced for a 1v1 perspective (for example the worst faction undead get destroyed by knalgian, are at disadvantage vs elf, and have advantage over no one, whilst best faction loyal trumps drake, knalgian, elf with no bad matchups (some poeple will disagree with what I have just said, thus proving my point that everyone agreeing will never happen)) making some changes that not everyone agrees with is actually the optimal path to take as a) you will never find a solution everyone agrees with and b) doing nothing is worse than making changes that either increase balance or get overturned/tweaked after it is revealed they aren't good changes.

You were right Ben, I strongly disagree with your factions judgement. In my opinion undead aren't the worst faction, they can do well vs drakes and loyalists, sometimes vs knalgans and orcs and I think undead vs elf on some circumstances is the worst match-up in whole era. Loyalists have hard time countering Saurian rush and undead are usually in favor vs them. You are right that various players have different opinions of match-ups and they are likely to dislike the possible changes.

So in general, I think that if any balance changes are going to be made, they should not change the current state of game as well as the way players play the match-ups too much.

[Ben24626]

I think that main problem with balancing Default Era is not the lack of balance itself but the fact that some match-ups can favor either side on different maps so balancing trials might turn out to be very uneffective. Let's give for example a match-up said to be favoring undead vs drakes. On narrow maps where drakes cannot use their mobility to avoid adepts (i.e. Den of Onis or Sablestone Delta), they get demolished by 19-2 magical attacks (noticing the -50% drakes' cold resistance) at night, however on bigger maps with much open space (Hamlets, Weldyn Channel, Ruphus Isle, many others) they can abuse their mobility to avoid fighting at night and be able to beat undead fighting only when they want and when adept attacks aren't so scary. Now if going logically we buff drakes cold resistance undead would be in a big trouble on bigger maps as adepts would make way less damage than they need to stand drake attacks at day, but on smaller maps drakes might stand some chance vs undead. (This would also make this match-up lose its flavour with adepts destroying all the units at night and possibly affect the way most players play it). It's just impossible to find a golden mean considering diversity of maps and how it affects the balance. The other examples of match-ups much depending on the map are drakes vs loyalists, northerners vs rebels, loyalists vs undead, northerners vs drakes, loyalists vs rebels.

So apparently factions (as well as less standard playstyles like HODOR or Saurian rush) have maps that fit them better or worse and changing only units' statistics won't make the game much more balanced. We can begin improving maps' balance but we would need many tests on various sets of maps and match-ups and there are some maps which don't seem to be able to become more balanced without spoiling their flavor, such as Elensefar Courtyard or Aetherdmaw.

For a game that is severely imbalanced for a 1v1 perspective (for example the worst faction undead get destroyed by knalgian, are at disadvantage vs elf, and have advantage over no one, whilst best faction loyal trumps drake, knalgian, elf with no bad matchups (some poeple will disagree with what I have just said, thus proving my point that everyone agreeing will never happen)) making some changes that not everyone agrees with is actually the optimal path to take as a) you will never find a solution everyone agrees with and b) doing nothing is worse than making changes that either increase balance or get overturned/tweaked after it is revealed they aren't good changes.

You were right Ben, I strongly disagree with your factions judgement. In my opinion undead aren't the worst faction, they can do well vs drakes and loyalists, sometimes vs knalgans and orcs and I think undead vs elf on some circumstances is the worst match-up in whole era. Loyalists have hard time countering Saurian rush and undead are usually in favor vs them. You are right that various players have different opinions of match-ups and they are likely to dislike the possible changes.

So in general, I think that if any balance changes are going to be made, they should not change the current state of game as well as the way players play the match-ups too much.

To your first point that maps affect the balance of a matchup yes that's true, but even considering that some matchups are imbalanced more often than not.

As to your second point, that doing nothing is better than making potentially bad changes, I disagree because changes can be tweaked or removed, to play with 1-2 small changes to an era is not so hard to adjust to and in fact makes things more interesting imo.