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Author Topic: The State of Balance  (Read 13216 times)
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tank130 Offline
Sugar Daddy
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Posts: 8889


« Reply #40 on: June 24, 2014, 10:37:54 am »

Actually shab, Balance was being handled by Hicks at the time of doc removal and the coding was handled by Nikomas.

Last I checked both of these dev members were highly active players in the mod.

Other then Hicks & Nikomas, you had tank130 who would only comment on shit he actually used but even that was normally ignored. Eirrmod is not and will probably never be an active player, but he NEVER involves himself in balance discussions.

Unknown occasionally pokes his head in for discussion, but he had zero input when Docs were removed other than to say "hey, let's give it a whirl"



There is no way the Dev team could ever play enough games to try every unit, every faction, in every scenario. That is why they had hoped the community would give their input like they usually do.
The community was complaining about balance and doctrine balance, but when it came time to actually test the problem, the players fucked off and QQ about having no docs. So the test was useless and we are sitting exactly where we were a year ago arguing weather the unit is out of balance or the doctrine is out of balance.

It still makes me laugh that some of the community still think the Dev team is like a group of guys in an office somewhere.......lol. Like there is some kind of test room and cohesion of design and development.

What it really is, is 1 or 2 guys sifting through long winded forum posts trying to separate the hyperbole from the wordiness and excessive use of the English language, and the real facts about the issues.

90% of what Wind posts is very accurate, The problem is it is buried in 400 lines of hyperbole and grandstanding of "I told you so", so it basically gets looked over or ignored.

Shab, you may have had something good to offer, but it is buried in a post of rambling wall of text and something about zerging starships or something.

Meh.... just my opinion. Who am I to criticize a long winded posted after reviewing this one......lol
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Quote
Geez, while Wind was banned I forgot that he is, in fact, totally insufferable
I'm not going to lie Tig, 9/10 times you open your mouth, I'm overwhelmed with the urge to put my foot in it.
TheWindCriesMary Offline
The Ethics Police
EIR Veteran
Posts: 2630


« Reply #41 on: June 24, 2014, 01:12:29 pm »

Actually shab, Balance was being handled by Hicks at the time of doc removal and the coding was handled by Nikomas.

Last I checked both of these dev members were highly active players in the mod.

The problem is that isn't and wasn't the case. There's a huge chasm of metagame awareness between guys who play 2-3 games a week and those who regularly get that many in a single day.

Quote
There is no way the Dev team could ever play enough games to try every unit, every faction, in every scenario. That is why they had hoped the community would give their input like they usually do.
The community was complaining about balance and doctrine balance, but when it came time to actually test the problem, the players fucked off and QQ about having no docs. So the test was useless and we are sitting exactly where we were a year ago arguing weather the unit is out of balance or the doctrine is out of balance.

This is neither fair nor accurate. An active player need not play with every unit and faction to get a feel for the metagame as a whole. Does this mean someone can never play PE and balance PE units reliably well? No, they would need to play some PE to get a feel for the faction as a whole.

BUT, having the BT  be an active player does do two things:

a) Prevents changes that are baffling to experienced players who are familiar with the current metagame and the mod as a whole (aka. giving Airborne shit tons of smoke on deployment, AVRE's that fire every 45 seconds, super terminator lol officers and 5 g43s)

b) Allowing massive, game breaking changes to stay in the game for more than a few days or weeks. Why? Because they get to see first hand how a bad change has dramatically decreased the quality and balance of the game day in and day out and would see how crucial fixing it is. EiR has a lot of strengths, but one consistent disadvantage it's faced for a long time is having its balance decisions devised, discussed and executed in an isolated tower. It's not that balance has to happen out in the open and be crowdsourced, but the people in the tower should almost exclusively be active, current, personally invested players. Sometimes the changes are fine, but there's not a whole lot of connection because more often than not the balance lead may not play for months at a time (beyond a day or two after their patch)  and the guys actually on the front lines who face the repercussions have to live with those changes for a long time after.

The worst part is sometimes these changes last for months and effectively, over the course of that time, turn people off the mod altogether for large periods because they give up hope they will ever be fixed.

Quote
It still makes me laugh that some of the community still think the Dev team is like a group of guys in an office somewhere.......lol. Like there is some kind of test room and cohesion of design and development.

THIS! This is exactly why a basic process for balancing that was followed via a strategy of "less is more" would help you guys immensely. It's not that a lot doesn't get done, it's that the sheer level of wild ambition and sporadic enthusiasm that isn't sustainable eventually crushes your spirits and leads to less.

A really concise plan and a simple strategy built around: "we will make small changes, regularly, over long periods of time" is actually less work, hassle and stress than big boom and bust periods of "we will do tons of work all the time....oh wait it's 3 months in and we're falling behind and people are complaining, this is too stressful" while also yielded more result in the long run.


 You have limited resources, that's an obstacle for sure. But only if it's not managed. Many of us work or have worked in small startups at one point in our career and know how process and a clear, defined and manageable strategy becomes more crucial, NOT less, when you have a small team with limited resources to work with.

It's achievable and it will be easier, better and less stressful for everyone involved. The mod would be happier and your time would yield more.


« Last Edit: June 24, 2014, 02:09:39 pm by TheWindCriesMary » Logged

Vermillion Hawk: Do you ever make a post that doesnt make you come across as an extreme douchebag?

Just sayin'
tank130 Offline
Sugar Daddy
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Posts: 8889


« Reply #42 on: June 24, 2014, 02:35:45 pm »

You have limited resources, that's an obstacle for sure. But only if it's not managed. Many of us work or have worked in small startups at one point in our career and know how process and a clear, defined and manageable strategy becomes more crucial, NOT less, when you have a small team with limited resources to work with.

It's achievable and it will be easier, better and less stressful for everyone involved. The mod would be happier and your time would yield more.

sigh............ I started my business with just me. One employee. Then I hired an assistant for 3 years. Then some more, then some more until today I have 117 employees.

Each of these employees belongs to a department. Before I had 117 people, we had small departs. In fact, we started with just one. As the 25 years of my career progressed, these small departments grew to larger departments.

Are you really going to suggest you have more experience managing small teams? Or any teams for that matter. And don't even bother with the bullshit of "this is a game it's different".

Managing people is managing people. I was probably managing people when your ass was still in diapers. You know nothing compared to my knowledge & experience of managing a team - don't even go there Wind.

You have far more knowledge of the units in the game, their stats, how to use them, etc, etc. Don't even for a second think you can tell me how to manage and organize a team......lol you really have let your ego get the best of your judgement on that one Wind.
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TheWindCriesMary Offline
The Ethics Police
EIR Veteran
Posts: 2630


« Reply #43 on: June 24, 2014, 02:55:54 pm »

Tank I'm not going to continue this discussion with you if you can't keep personal attacks out of it. This conversation is unfortunately now over and I'm going to focus on the rest of the people in this thread who are willing/able to discuss opposing viewpoints without losing their temper, going on the offensive and descending into trash talk.
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TheWindCriesMary Offline
The Ethics Police
EIR Veteran
Posts: 2630


« Reply #44 on: June 24, 2014, 03:11:08 pm »

I do understand its thankless and hard job to do beūng a degeloper of a game wheęe evryone is bitching about this and that but come on just play eirr a little bit often before and after balance desicions to get a taste of real meta game and than i truly believe regular players will get more confidence in dev team. After you will taste what does it feels to be stuck in retarded game for weeks where officers zerg around like rambos or avre can shoot down fucking star ship like a boss etc etc. Maybe than hot fixes will he done faster so as balance changes.

I think this hits on a legitimate concern that doesn't really have an easy solution. On one hand it takes a lot of sacrifice (thankless at times) to code and develop, but if coding and developing is happening without playing then the playerbase (that is also important) feels like the reality of the actual finished product isn't incorporated into the big decisions that affect its future.

I think this is why dev/coding that happens in a tower is one thing, but having balance happen from a non-active group is more problematic. The balance team should ideally be a liason between the most active players and the crucial devs versus having a vast disconnect between the two which is unfortunately the current situation.
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tank130 Offline
Sugar Daddy
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Posts: 8889


« Reply #45 on: June 24, 2014, 06:14:39 pm »

Not a personal attack at all Wind. The reality is your experience with management is nothing compared to mine, just like my knowledge of game balance is less then yours. You have never hesitated in pointing out my lesser skill when discussing game balance issues either. If you are not capable of recognizing your limits, then that is unfortunate.

To place walls of text on a game forum claiming your expertise at management is the solution is acceptable to you, then clearly you should be able to handle a disagreement with that claim. It is not a personal attack at all.

In fact, it is the same thing as someone disagreeing with your point of view in regards to balance. Or better put, how dismissive you are to someone you consider less skilled then you when discussing balance.




So back to the issue at hand.

While your suggestion of :
Quote
The balance team should ideally be a liason between the most active players and the crucial devs versus having a vast disconnect between the two which is unfortunately the current situation.
Sounds great in theory or in a forum post, but the reality is it does not work and never has. Over several years this has been attempted and failed hard - every-time.

Even when we had a team (several teams in fact) of players that played often, the discussion of balance was ridiculous and resulted in the same thing we have now. No one in this community has ever been happy with balance, yet 50% of this community has been on the balance team at one point or another.

Claiming that small incremental balance changes, with far more patching is a solution is also going to fail. It has been attempted for the past 2 years to get regular patching and it has failed. Even when I was at the helm pushing everyday for patching, the results stand for themselves.

Coders do not want to patch tiny little patches every two weeks or even every month. They also don't want to code shit they think is incorrect or going to just result in a change later.
You can grandstand all day about what the correct procedure is, but it is pointless unless you can put together a team that thinks exactly as you do, will do what you want when you want it done, and for free.

You are back in the mod for only a month or so now and you are right back telling the dev team they are doing it wrong. In one quick thread you have succeeded in creating another dev team vs community attitude. With comments like:
Quote
EiR has a lot of strengths, but one consistent disadvantage it's faced for a long time is having its balance decisions devised, discussed and executed in an isolated tower. It's not that balance has to happen out in the open and be crowdsourced, but the people in the tower should almost exclusively be active, current, personally invested players.
you once again are creating a division.

Why do you need to make the derogatory remarks like "in the tower"? Seriously man, knock it of the rhetoric and stop talking down to people. Especially down to the people that actually make this mod happen.
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Smokaz Offline
Honoured Member
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Posts: 11418



« Reply #46 on: June 24, 2014, 06:53:33 pm »

You guys have received a response from the balance team lead and the thread now is rapidly heading into the eirr toilet.

There will be no fingers pointed since nobody really went into trashcan mode.

Any balance forum thread that bleeds out into the type of discussion that now is taking place will simply be locked until I am demoted or instructed otherwise.

"Does that mean it's idea for a general discussion thread?"

I have zero faith that a thread about what's now seeping into the discussion would bring anything positive at all.

and I'm sure that I have every single dev/moderator/asshole's backing when I say: criticisms on how patches are being produced, how what little is active of the team is doing their job and general methodology does

a) not help
b) not help
c) not help

and will for sure:

d) demotivate people.

So, gg thread.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2014, 06:55:49 pm by Smokaz » Logged

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