The need for a Balance Team

[Skyend]

Let's be honest, a balance team without matto, besides me the only active mp player and the highest experienced mp player (not just 1v1, but 2v2, 3v3...), while he is the 3rd, in my opinion the 2nd highest skilled player among the candidates seems to be a bad idea. (+he knows lore and is playing all campaigns)

Anyway i do actually only plan to join this if SkyEnd does too. ~matto

I might not join without matto either, it would be frustrating to discuss when there is nobody else with mp xp.
Overall there're only 3 among the candidates with actually mp xp whereas one isn't and wasn't that active afaik, and I'm not talking about Hejnewar.
(No offend to anyone)

Anyway, because of multiple personal reasons I need a rest, for 1-2 weeks from wesnoth's social contacts.

This shouldn't force pent to choose us, but to inform ppl and him about it (even tho he at least got a glimpse about my current state).

Hopefully ppl can convince matto.

[name]

I support this idea and I think now is the perfect time to try it out.

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.

I highly recommend keeping the actual team member selection process / discussions out in the open. Transparency can do a lot to prevent further controversies and is in the spirit of an open source project like Wesnoth.

[Augenzueg]

My biggest issue with a balance team is the the fact that both game modes (SP/MP) would have the same costs/mechanics. Imo the easiest way to handle this is to create a new era. Crank all the values by ten. Then make micro adjustments from there. Then I'd see a balance team working and fully support it. After some time, when the numbers get fixed it could be introduced to regular wesnoth in a later patch.

I'm no expert on this game but those are my 2 cents.

[DuncanDill]

My biggest issue with a balance team is the the fact that both game modes (SP/MP) would have the same costs/mechanics. Imo the easiest way to handle this is to create a new era. Crank all the values by ten. Then make micro adjustments from there. Then I'd see a balance team working and fully support it. After some time, when the numbers get fixed it could be introduced to regular wesnoth in a later patch.

I'm no expert on this game but those are my 2 cents.

That's a.... strange? idea.

[Augenzueg]

Yeah. I've played a lot more modern competitive games and the biggest issue is overtuning. With how small the current values are I'm not sure how big of a problem overtuning can/will be.
For example, if you lower the cost of a unit by one gold. You have that gold for a tempo spike 4-8 turns later. If everything is multiplied by 10 then things can get micro adjusted and fixed with a lot more accuracy.

The biggest struggle is how long this would take.

[ForestDragon]

Such an idea (10x stats) would break every single add-on with custom units that ever exists due to the mismatch

[clmates]

Hi

In favour of building that balnce team, I cant be joined to that, do not have enough criteria to add value there, but you should count on experienced players like Skyend, Matto, and will be good if old veterans like Dauntless ot TBS could be available for that.

[nuclearm1nd]

Hi

I am in favor of splitting SP/MP eras. I believe it would be much easier to balance that way.

I don't quite understand how developers are going to test balance changes to SP. Currently, Wesnoth has 17 mainline campaigns, if I am not mistaken. Are there going to be people responsible for re-playing all the campaigns (on all difficulties?) after each change to balance? Or are developers going to assume that AI is not that smart and campaigns should be playable if changes are not that significant? Or will devs come up with some way to automate SP campaign balance testing?

Anyway, if there is going to be balance team who will make decisions on MP balance, I believe matto and SkyEnd should absolutely be members of that team.

Also, I suggest there should be a special channel for discussing balancing on official discord

[DuncanDill]

Hi

I am in favor of splitting SP/MP eras. I believe it would be much easier to balance that way.

I don't quite understand how developers are going to test balance changes to SP. Currently, Wesnoth has 17 mainline campaigns, if I am not mistaken. Are there going to be people responsible for re-playing all the campaigns (on all difficulties?) after each change to balance? Or are developers going to assume that AI is not that smart and campaigns should be playable if changes are not that significant? Or will devs come up with some way to automate SP campaign balance testing?

Anyway, if there is going to be balance team who will make decisions on MP balance, I believe matto and SkyEnd should absolutely be members of that team.

Also, I suggest there should be a special channel for discussing balancing on official discord

Join WMG, we have one

[CrossBreed]

I'm also strongly in favor of forming a balance team.
Balancing decisions are hard. Getting them wrong can mess up the experience big time. To avoid that, decisions should be guarded by a majority vote of a committee. The committee should include as many experts as available (which I assume are already quite few ).

In my opinion, balancing should be driven by PvP only:

• Many SP campaigns already use non-default or reduced/extended default eras.
• Campaigns already come with a difficulty setting which mostly affects starting gold, carryover etc. These can be easily adjusted to address effects of default era changes.
• IMHO, campaigns already feel very unbalanced. Aspects such as the AI used, the player's recall list, the gold carried over or them having lost a powerful loyal unit early on have such a big impact on the later campaign that it becomes impossible to provide a balanced experience. In comparison, I believe the impact of balancing changes are neglectable.
• Units can appear on the player side in one campaign and on the enemy side in another. Changing a unit can at the same time be beneficial for one campaign and detrimental to another.

Regarding splitting SP/MP eras, I do see some value in keeping them the same. A player that has gotten to know a faction in SP and seeing identical units in MP will have a more polished experience.

[Skyend]

The ask for the balance team was an outrage against 1.18 countless and bad changes.

Therefore you can assume the following values/bases:

• no split between sp and mp

• fun > balance (all and 6mp leader)

• going back to an earlier version 1.10-1.16

• tweaking with few units/changes with little change for default

• Maybe try to balance AoH and gold cost of higher lvl units with umc/camoaigns in mind

[ZEN-CAT]

Hi guys though I am not playing Wesnoth as much as I used to I support the idea of that balancing team. Like many others here I feel like balancing should be a team effort. I played enough MP matches with SkyEnd and especially with matto to say that they are surely capabale of that task.

[Pentarctagon]

• going back to an earlier version 1.10-1.16

That would be problematic since it will be just as disruptive to UMC as going from 1.16 to 1.18 was. The Dunefolk are also staying in Default era unless someone comes through with an After the Fall era to put them in instead, so this wouldn't be viable for that reason anyway.

[Skyend]

Dune will be fixed, then it can stay in default. Be kicked out, and or added in After the Fall Era.
Going back to 1.10-1.16 will not be made in a disruptive UMC way. It's just the base to work on.

[Rears]

I recently returned to the game and was a bit surprised at the direction the game went with the new unit stats in version 1.18 compared to 1.16. I don't know who is responsible for this, but in my opinion, the balance should not be handled by one person, but by a group. That's why I support the formation of a large team, it would help make future updates less controversial and more logical. Regarding the proposed candidates, I think SkyEnd, Dashomew/Matto, Bolyarich/igorbat, dwarftough/catbegemot/Below and ForestDragon seem to be the most experienced and qualified people to join the team, if we analyze their role in our small community.