The need for a Balance Team

[Superowl15]

As for my opinion on the current situation on with balance, I got acquainted with this game not long ago, but I can say that a team will cope better with balance than a monopoly

[Refumee]

I fully support a 5 to 7 balance team from people who come from different groups.
With groups I mean, SP, UMC or MP content.

Why I am thinking that?
The Battle for Wesnoth is a community project (as far as I know). It lives from the content the players create or the players who play the game. So the community should have a word about balancing, in my opinion. Or better said they should have a voice to state their opinion.

What I observe is several balances changes. And I observed what happened with those changes.

MP community isn't affected by it, cause they don't like the changes and uses their own era and balances changes.
SP community is hit hard by MP balances changes, cause mainline and UMC campaigns getting harder or easier.

Nowadays I am playing LoW with friends and realised that some scenarios are really hard and others easier than they should be.
Scenarios were I should use arcane damage, real hard.
Scenarios were I meet lvl 3 recruits quite easy.
What happened? Arcane resistance is improved by a alot of units. Why? Don't know.
Lvl 3 units pricing is risen by around 20 gold compared to earlier iterations. Campaigns are quite old, they can't keep up with such balances changes.
Those are just my observations.

Therefore I support a group with different members from the community that understand what is happening in their distinct area SP, MP and UMC.

I also need to add that I am a SP guy that recognises that there is a need for PVP balance as well, if we want to bring this community forward.

Edit: Having members in the balance team from different areas would also increase advertisment and acceptance of the balancing within the community.

[DuncanDill]

I fully support the idea of a balance team, with 6 members with a subset of a duo for each part:
SP, MP, Hybrid
I think Dalas and Hejne should stay, Dalas+FD (as he got the most votes as an sp person), Hejne+Dwarftough (as he got the most votes and an mp member, though I would have worries with these as they don't get along well) finally Mech+LK(they are both experienced in mp and sp umc, and already work together quite well).

[Roge_Tebnelok]

I fully support the idea of a balance team, with 6 members with a subset of a duo for each part:
SP, MP, Hybrid
I think Dalas and Hejne should stay, Dalas+FD (as he got the most votes as an sp person), Hejne+Dwarftough (as he got the most votes and an mp member, though I would have worries with these as they don't get along well) finally Mech+LK(they are both experienced in mp and sp umc, and already work together quite well).

The number has to be odd to avoid ties. SkyEnd probably should be the seventh member.

[DuncanDill]

I fully support the idea of a balance team, with 6 members with a subset of a duo for each part:
SP, MP, Hybrid
I think Dalas and Hejne should stay, Dalas+FD (as he got the most votes as an sp person), Hejne+Dwarftough (as he got the most votes and an mp member, though I would have worries with these as they don't get along well) finally Mech+LK(they are both experienced in mp and sp umc, and already work together quite well).

The number has to be odd to avoid ties. SkyEnd probably should be the seventh member.

I agree

[Spannerbag]

Stupid question: why do MP & SP have to share identical mainline units?
Cheers,
-- Spannerbag

[Lord-Knightmare]

Stupid question: why do MP & SP have to share identical mainline units?
Cheers,
-- Spannerbag

Because splitting them would destroy one of BfW core foundations: the KISS.
It's confusing to have coexisting of units that look exactly the same on map but have different stats.
The true essence of the Zen is the perfect balance of Yin and Yang existing in perfect harmony without conflict or individual desire.
Thus, the balance team must come to exist.

[lhybrideur]

I don't really have an opinion on this subject, but whatever the number of people in charge of balance, I think it should happen slower that what has been the case in the two previous stable versions.
By slower, I do not mean that not as many changes should happen, but that changes should be done gradually.
What do I mean by that sentence: instead of having all the changes applied at once, I would rather have less changes but applied more often.
How to do that: what Hej has done this time: making a "balance change" add-on that allows to test the changes over an extended period of time, but less extended than waiting for the next stable version.
But contrary to what Hej did with the 1.19 balance changes, I would do it gradually: not more than one or two changes per unit per version of the add-on.
Please excuse me if this is too far from the subject of the post.

[Mirion147]

How to do that: what Hej has done this time: making a "balance change" add-on that allows to test the changes over an extended period of time, but less extended than waiting for the next stable version.
But contrary to what Hej did with the 1.19 balance changes, I would do it gradually: not more than one or two changes per unit per version of the add-on.
Please excuse me if this is too far from the subject of the post.

I think depending on what those changes are, (and what is likely to happen given the nostalgia/classic tendencies of many of the nominees,) this is a good approach. But in the case of larger scale adjustments (like the arcane rework) doing small amounts at a time won't work. Additionally, if there was a plan to give factions more identity and reduce sameness, it would require changes to happen congruently. The bigger the change from the status quo, the more needs to be done at once in order to still maintain balance.

[Spannerbag]

Stupid question: why do MP & SP have to share identical mainline units?

Because splitting them would destroy one of BfW core foundations: the KISS.
It's confusing to have coexisting of units that look exactly the same on map but have different stats.
The true essence of the Zen is the perfect balance of Yin and Yang existing in perfect harmony without conflict or individual desire.
Thus, the balance team must come to exist.

Good answer.

I would gently make the point that over-simplification in one area can spawn complexity and unexpected effects elsewhere.
IMHO whilst I appreciate that "one size fits all" is straightforward this seems to incur pain where balancing is required because mp and sp have different dynamics (I'm no mp expert but I seem to recall that levelling up in mp is usually more difficult than in sp, especially for valuable units such as leaders or healers).
Oh well, whenever the next rebalancing happens I'll see if I need to change anything.

Wesnoth needs to be a Zen free zone!

...existing in perfect harmony without conflict...

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply, much appreciated.

Cheers!
-- Spannerbag

[gnombat]

Stupid question: why do MP & SP have to share identical mainline units?

Oh well, whenever the next rebalancing happens I'll see if I need to change anything.

Note that, as a UMC campaign author, you don't have to use units which are identical to those in mainline; you could simply copy the mainline units to your own campaign and then make whatever adjustments to their statistics, etc., that you like.

I haven't seen many campaigns try to do this, but I wonder if it might be the best strategy for the long term...

[egallager]

• Team Composition:
  • The Balance Team will consist of either 5 or 7 members (having an odd-numbered team avoids ties).
  • The SP Lead and MP Lead will have guaranteed spots on this team as long as they remain a SP/MP Lead.
  • 3-5 additional members will be chosen from a list of qualified volunteers, including experienced balancers, 1v1 experts, and prominent add-on creators. This diversity of expertise will help bring a variety of perspectives to the table.
  • The team is chosen by the Project Manager out of volunteers, keeping in mind the candidates' qualifications and experience

• Decision-Making Process:
  • Decisions on unit balance would be made via majority voting within the 5-7 person team, replacing the current approval system for unit balance (SP Lead/MP Lead approval)
  • The Project Manager retains veto power over balance changes.
  • The balance team's jurisdiction is mainline unit stats for SP and MP, and MP map balance, creation and refinements.

It would be nice if GitHub provided a native UI for this kind of decision-making process; I've proposed something similar in the past:
https://github.com/bagder/github-feedback/pull/4

[ForestDragon]

Note that, as a UMC campaign author, you don't have to use units which are identical to those in mainline; you could simply copy the mainline units to your own campaign and then make whatever adjustments to their statistics, etc., that you like.

I haven't seen many campaigns try to do this, but I wonder if it might be the best strategy for the long term...

Such drastic measures were almost never needed in previous versions, and from my observations the overwhelming majority of modders either use the mainline units in their mainline form for convenience, or units that are fully custom instead of slightly-edited mainline ones.

[Spannerbag]

Note that, as a UMC campaign author, you don't have to use units which are identical to those in mainline; you could simply copy the mainline units to your own campaign and then make whatever adjustments to their statistics, etc., that you like.

I haven't seen many campaigns try to do this, but I wonder if it might be the best strategy for the long term...

Edit: load of irrelevant off-topic waffle deleted.

Heh, one of my many pending projects is - if it hasn't already been done - to create a fully customisable single player era that by default replicates current mainline units.

One day, maybe...

Cheers,
-- Spannerbag

[Pentarctagon]

So it doesn't seem like I'm ignoring this - I think at this point it's going to happen. Just waiting for some responses to DMs.