OpenRA Balance Council

[Clockwork]

After casually suggesting this idea in the battlefield of the general discussion thread, I felt encouraged to work on my idea by noobmapmaker agreeing and I've decided to put forward a case on why this is the best course of action.

My idea:

5 or 7 player council containing high level players with a good knowledge of what needs to be done balance wise. Ideas will be sent to the group and the players will discuss. It's an odd number so there will never be a split vote. 4 or 6 will be regular members "jury", and one is the "judge" and will report back the community on the outcomes and post on GitHub what has been decided so the devs have precise information the community wants added.

Why?:

Well it's pretty clear recently that we cannot be left to our own devices to discuss balance. Either someone suggests a stupid idea with no thought gone into the balance or how it would affect the game. These threads bring out the worst in people like me (yes I hold my hold my hands up) and others. Threads that are accurate, have a reasonable idea and that it wouldn't just mess up balance can be random and can cause either
A. endless discussion because the community is so divided and will lead to endless discussion as nobody will yield.
B. Flame wars erupt between players because of heightened tension. (Bounty issue)
C. Nothing actually happens.
D. In extreme cases (the Huey episode) the topic causes such a divide the devs think its too toxic to implement.

And what does this mean? Nobody can agree on anything so the whole progress of the game is just stumped.

But Happy how will you decide who is on this council?

I will not be taking any part cause I don't know the first thing on how to balance. All I do is give my opinions on issues that are straightforward enough for even me to see the answer. I rely on you smart people on GitHub to make my game enjoyable and so far it's been a blast. The problem is the key to making it even more enjoyable has been warped and that is what I'm trying to fix here.

Because of the above point who goes on the council is out of my control. There will be problems. People can just volunteer and walk in - how do you know if a complete idiot is now part of the most important cog in this machine? People can vote in people in - this communities so small we already saw the voter turnout in the map contest, how do we know this wont just do the above point?

My answer, ask the people who are the main contributors in balance theory already and the work behind the scenes already, who am I talking about?
SoScared
Microbit
abcdefg30
Frame Limiter
Anyothers I don't know I visit Github once a month so twice in total
Even after that there are plenty of high tier players with years of experience that know the inside and outs of this game

This is just my answer I wont be apart of any of it, just the idea behind it

But what about people who think they should be on this council but don't get a shot?

Tough shit really I don't think we're in the right place for that concern.

But what if the actions of the council go against the majority?

Well tough shit again, these 5-7 people are the most experienced and know the game in and out they know more about it then I ever will and I already know quite a bit, even if its not correct in your head it is probably the best course of action.

Why do I think this should happen?

Well now instead of endless debates we can have definitive answers and get cogs of RA moving faster than ever.

As to how suggestions will come to the council I don't know, maybe some sort of PM or even anonymously but not an open thread to avoid more of the recent events.


Thank you for readings please leave comments and if this is to become reality it needs all the foundations correct. Please don't turn it into a debate though, I'm hoping someone will pick this up and run with it cough SoScared cough.

[Sleipnir]

The behaviour from some people on the forum over the last couple of weeks shows a general misunderstanding of the way that we handle balancing in OpenRA. Community feedback is obviously an important factor, but it is not a democracy, and design by committee is an excellent way to kill a game.

We currently trust SoScared and AoAGeneral to distill feedback from the competitive community into a coherent vision, and their suggestions then drive the balance changes in RA and TD respectively. They earned this trust through years of interaction with both the player and the dev communities, and I see no reason to change this arrangement while they remain happy to do the job.

That is simplifying things a bit, and I don't mean to minimize the valued input from other people involved on Github, but the current climate doesn't appear to leave much room for sublety. The key point is that the arguments going on here recently do not have nearly as much influence as some people might like to think. Chill out everybody.

[Clockwork]

The key point is that the arguments going on here recently do not have nearly as much influence as some people might like to think. Chill out everybody.

That point just made me feel like a right idiot. We're the equivalent of monkeys throwing our shit at each other.

[anjew]

We're the equivalent of monkeys throwing our shit at each other.

Personally I think the key point is:

We currently trust SoScared and AoAGeneral to distill feedback from the competitive community into a coherent vision, and their suggestions then drive the balance changes in RA and TD respectively.

It means don't shut up but instead of throwing shit, be more persuasive because at the end of the day the person you are arguing with doesn't make the decision but the person who does may be listening

[OMnom]

We're the equivalent of monkeys throwing our shit at each other.

Personally I think the key point is:

We currently trust SoScared and AoAGeneral to distill feedback from the competitive community into a coherent vision, and their suggestions then drive the balance changes in RA and TD respectively.

It means don't shut up but instead of throwing shit, be more persuasive because at the end of the day the person you are arguing with doesn't make the decision but the person who does may be listening

This is why I personally started being more critical of users posting poorly made threads and posts. There's no point in creating a thread / posting with poor argument, because its not going to do a damn thing. Hell, making a great thread probably won't do anything thing either. They're all tears in the rain. But at the end of the day, I would like to think that the higher-quality thread would have more potential, as compared to the threads where people just shoot off their ideas.

If we could organize ourselves and our ideas, we could communicate with SoS and AoA rather than just giving them 100% of the balance reins. Put some actual thought and argument behind our posts, and maybe someone will listen more closely to what we have to say. If there weren't so many useless threads littering the forum, it'd be a lot easier to keep track of the good ideas.

[zinc]

A few months back someone--I can't remember who--suggested loadable modifiers for the game in a similar way to how we now load custom maps. Great idea imo.

I think this would perhaps help with game balancing (game could be taken in different directions and you would see what would become popular with the players) as well as (I suspect) giving a much bigger role to additional (non-original) units like flame helis or whatever else.

[anjew]

If we could organize ourselves and our ideas, we could communicate with SoS and AoA rather than just giving them 100% of the balance reins. Put some actual thought and argument behind our posts, and maybe someone will listen more closely to what we have to say. If there weren't so many useless threads littering the forum, it'd be a lot easier to keep track of the good ideas.

My suggestion under a year ago was to make a new subforum for balancing with some sort of standard to join, in order to get higher quality discussion. I still stand by this. No thread would be guaranteed to change anything but at least the post would be organised and moderated
The irc discussion was here: http://logs.openra.net/?year=2016&month ... 6#14:37:32

[OMnom]

If we could organize ourselves and our ideas, we could communicate with SoS and AoA rather than just giving them 100% of the balance reins. Put some actual thought and argument behind our posts, and maybe someone will listen more closely to what we have to say. If there weren't so many useless threads littering the forum, it'd be a lot easier to keep track of the good ideas.

My suggestion under a year ago was to make a new subforum for balancing with some sort of standard to join, in order to get higher quality discussion. I still stand by this. No thread would be guaranteed to change anything but at least the post would be organised and moderated
The irc discussion was here: http://logs.openra.net/?year=2016&month ... 6#14:37:32

100% agree.

However, as Sleipnir has already said, the user input does not have nearly as much of an impact as people currently think, and making such a subforum would lead people to think otherwise. As such, the best possible course of action right now is to ask people to follow a basic standard when it comes to discussing changes, especially balance. The bounty thread is one example of where the lack of a standard ruined what was potentially a fruitful thread.

[noobmapmaker]

Obviously not up to me, but a subforum for balancing threads sounds good to me. Either invite-only and quality posting only. Or public and let everyone voice their thoughts - while being though on the matter, but no personal bickering.

Maybe discussing the balance is part of the fun in OpenRA

[Smitty]

We currently trust SoScared and AoAGeneral to distill feedback from the competitive community into a coherent vision, and their suggestions then drive the balance changes in RA and TD respectively. They earned this trust through years of interaction with both the player and the dev communities, and I see no reason to change this arrangement while they remain happy to do the job.

I know Omnom has stated his intention to file balance pr's and other players and myself are considering the same. Would you rather us work through SoScared for everything balance or go ahead and file pr's?

[Clockwork]

If you guys work through SoS it's practically what I've suggested but less democracy as Sleipnir has pointed out.

[Chimpo]

I think i mentioned before, but to put a hard edge on this topic some metric of balance would be extremely helpful (not whether it is balanced to your taste but whether it is objectively fair). Currently the easiest way is to apply some statistical analysis to the 1v1 tournies but I am sure there must be some statistical tools that could be applied across team games (that is how faction composition affects the outcome). This atleast would give some guide.

I'm no experts on stats, but a guide would be extremely handy (imho).

[zinc]

But you need to consider map types, ability of the player, and experience with the different factions.

Raw stats could be misleading. For example, many top players may be less good with Soviets, but perhaps they have significantly less experience using them. Or perhaps most of the top players use allies and so victories over lesser soviet players don't mean much. Or when you start playing, Soviets may be harder to play, and so they are a disadvantage for a certain level of player, but not when you get good at the game.

Also 1v1 tends to be a different style of game. So perhaps it creates unique balance issues which don't really show up in team games.

It may be easier just to ask top soviet players (or players that play 50/50 with the factions) if they think there are issues and what they are. Or look at their stats in particular.

[Chimpo]

But you need to consider map types, ability of the player, and experience with the different factions.

Raw stats could be misleading. For example, many top players may be less good with Soviets, but perhaps they have significantly less experience using them. Or perhaps most of the top players use allies and so victories over lesser soviet players don't mean much. Or when you start playing, Soviets may be harder to play, and so they are a disadvantage for a certain level of player, but not when you get good at the game.

Also 1v1 tends to be a different style of game. So perhaps it creates unique balance issues which don't really show up in team games.

It may be easier just to ask top soviet players (or players that play 50/50 with the factions) if they think there are issues and what they are. Or look at their stats in particular.

Well the beauty of stats is that you get enough data across different players on different maps then those factors dissolve away, the problem with 1v1 is that hardly anyone plays soviets - that's why I thought a look at team games would give much more data.

[zinc]

I'm thinking you would need to collect data on players' ability and their amount of experience with Soviets, and that would be difficult to get in practice. And without those details, I don't see that a large amount of *other data* on game results would be reliable.