State of Balance

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[DasNoob]

Everybody gets an A+ for quick short essay writing skills in this thread.

Put all E-peens away please 

Keep it to comments about the mod, not the people.

[petewinny23]

On a side note I played an axis game before and wow those pIV are a little OP.......not because of their stats or their survivability or anything previously mentioned in other balance threads........purely because u can field 3 of them before u need to spend pp on another!!!!!! My point: reduce it to 2 it reflects more accurately the tanks available at the time.....end of PIV OP discussion!

Heck the stats leader boards for pIV PeteWinny23 after 2 games 49XP......a little to easy dont u think?  why?
ROFLMAO

Wait a minute, P4s are OP now?

[jackmccrack]

the mod is great

the people are great

lets have great fun

[AmPM]

Umm...you can do the same thing with a Sherman, or a Mortar...or infantry....

Hell, my last game I had some vet 2 Assault Grens go from 40 to 71 XP.

[acker]

I would also like the data Scyn produced to be broken down more before people draw conclusions.

The account IP addresses would have to be singled out, and reduced. People with multiple companies would merely be treated as 1 faction, the faction they play the most as. People with less than a certain number of games should be excluded from the count altogether.

Then, the labels "Allied" and "Axis" would have to be broken down into their respective factions. The labels "Allies" and "Axis" are somewhat misleading; Allies refers to both Brits and Americans, while Axis refers to Panzer Elite and Wehrmacht. In a somewhat relevant example posted 3 months ago by EIRRMOD, the numbers "286 Allied, 329 Axis" would somewhat-obscure the fact that there were 192 Wehrmacht players, 161 Brit players, 137 PE players, and 125 American players. This was a more extreme example, and the stats definitely won't line up like that, but the factions should be separated anyways.

Then you'd have to monitor account activity. Set it to, say, active companies that battled at least three times in the last two weeks or something. Some number that could single out people who actually play. If this is too taxing on MySQL, then I suppose this step could be omitted, but it would be much less accurate.

That should get a more accurate figure that would probably reflect scrapking's idea for a survey concerning factional preference. I don't know what the figure would be, but no one around here does. If Scyn/EIRRMOD could go over the numbers in their free time, it would be helpful.

[scrapking]

We the dev team appreciate the objectivity and opinions of whats being said, that being the case we like any team will go over all that is here and assimilate what we think are relvant points into our ongoing discussions about the state of the game.

We all strongly believe that balance is close, but we are also aware that it cannot be perfect, bear in mind there will always be a new way to squezze more out of somthing, abuse somthing, pervert the intention of somthing for gain.  You cannot code out humanity or intelligence.

Henca balance is and will always be an ogoing affair, right now its a huge focus as doctrines role out but once thats achieved as a milestone well then we have the warmap which will again need for balance changes.

At this stage we can see some clear changes that need to be effected, lets be honest here and upfront to the point where we accept that there are some clear needs for certain things to be adjusted.

As to what and how well that will be revealed in patch notes. Thanks again to all repsondants on what has so far been a very polite and well discussed thread with lots of considerate posts.

As Always

NEVYEN

I guess I am talking less about balance in a particular random game being played, and more about playerbase balance.  The thing is, while balance within the game being may or may not be spot on - and a challenging task - and yet another task to balance at various points along the linear doctrinal development again - I acknowledge all this.  My own expectations on this have been far surpassed.

However.  Two important things.


Is there a widespread disparity of interest in playing any given faction (or doctrine) over another?  I suggest that there is.

Is there a reason for it?  Or more importantly, can game balance as mentioned previously be altered so as to alter the "disparity of interest"?  I suggest that it can.

If you own a store that strives to sell equal amounts of Coke and Pepsi, and keep all of your carbonated beverage lovers reasonably happy - but 90% of everyone who comes in prefers Coke to Pepsi... until you run out of Coke and people drink Pepsi only because their options are limited...  you can make the Coke more expensive, make the Pepsi cheaper, put some nicotine in the Pepsi, or some laxatives in the Coke...    

Or you can do nothing, I suppose, but that seems like a shame to me.

[AmPM]

Of course making the Allies more powerful might help with player numbers, but it ruins balance.

Again, the faction isn't really out of balance, its just not interesting to play.

[scrapking]

Of course making the Allies more powerful might help with player numbers, but it ruins balance.

Again, the faction isn't really out of balance, its just not interesting to play.

Agreed.  And I'm not pretending to have a solution to it, but rather to provoke others into recognizing it as a problem in general, spouting forth good ideas (like your own in this thread) which might help.  I'm only trying to draw attention to it, I don't have any great ideas for addressing it myself.

[petewinny23]

The CW faction is interesting to play.......although difficult!!!!

[Smokaz]

Playerbase balance is skewed to hell and hard to fix. It's not like we can force anyone to realize that playing all factions equally is to the benefit of the mod and useful even if you have one faction as your favorite.
 
Subjectively browsing through the leaderboard top 20 list of names, thinking back on my many games I find myself thinking (without mentioning names): ((These are player accounts where they have proven that they play that faction/doctrine very well imo))

- There are 4 good british players
- There are 7 good american players (but more who are not on the leaderboard)
- There are 15 good wehrmacht players, and certainly more names I can think of who are not leaderboard
- there are 7 good PE players in the PE leaderboard

*Im thinking of specifically good at that faction and interested in developing their company, not generally good

As usual, it is wehrmacht who tips the scales. There are just too many wehrmacht players, and not only too many wehrmacht accounts but too many primarily wehrmacht players who mainly and routinely severely limits themself to playing on their wehrmacht accounts.

Nerfing wehrmacht is not the way to go imo, its the other three factions who has to be made EQUALLY INTERESTING to playing wehrmacht.

The question(s) that needs to be asked, and answered.. "How can we either entice more players to join and play the non-wehrmacht factions, how can we get the wehrmacht-only players to get interested in the other factions and how can we make the other factions equally interesting to wehrmacht?"

Or something like that. But the bottom line is, wehrmacht is everyone's favorite bunny on a regular basis in the launcher. Its wehr here, we're here, and wehr is here. We need to get some wehr the hell out of here.

[DasNoob]

I haven't played WM since December... I can't believe so many players are still playing that boring faction TBH.  I will admit that I enjoy the axis side more from a cultural "cool" factor standpoint.  But PE are much more satisfying then WM.  Each victory I achieve has been tough.

[Nevyen]

Thats somthing we consider on a regualr basis  so we will always work on that angle.

That it may not be self evident right now is unfortunate but it will always be at the forefront of our minds.

Thanks for the thought and time put into the posts.


Cheers Nev

[spinn72]

lol by the leaderboard you can gather 4 things:

1.  Whermact is very good, at least the players are fantastic.  I think only 2 in the leaderboard don't have positive win loss ratios.
2.  PE is winning a lot too, but mainly because of teaming up with whermact gives them that extra advantage by Fast Halftracks/awesome turreted tanks and such.
3.  Rangers are extremely survivable
4.  Whittman47 has very little to do and loves playing EIRR .

[Lt_Apollo]

hey i went back to wher soly becuase i found PE just not right for me, i was good at wher in old EiR and as PE well things just havent worked out. wher is fun as i can do my part in holding the line insted of lurking waiting for an opertunity to flank or attack, it just feels like player wher you affect the battle more you can do more and its actualy fun to put effort into the frontline. idk the other fractions dont have that. i play deffensive witch i love, i like relying on grenadiers, i like motors, i like p4s, i hate mg42s and paks but use them to great effect, I LOVE MY DUAL STUKAS OF DEATH. idk wher is fun, brits are easy, americans are crappy (exept for there 1 unit the ranger) and PE is difficualt but rewarding.

[salan]

In old eir the americans were always the under dogs till mid/late war when the players started getting their t4s, why anyone assumes this has changed is beyond me.  Out of the door the axis are more inviting, and more fun to play.

at the end of the game, the allies can more then make up for it.  Not much has changed, except so far you still don't have all the doctrines opened up.

been playing both sides lately, see the same issues for both sides to overcome.  elite infantry, spam support weapons, tank swarms.  Its not really that different for either side.

[Smokaz]

Balance itself now is better than ever save for a few hotspots, but faction player representation is as worse as ever as well.

[Rocksitter]

 Let people play what side they want ..

 If you want to play both side go for it but dont try to tell me what faction to play..

[Akranadas]

Doctrines shouldn't be need to be balanced.

[Smokaz]

It's okay rocksitter, nobody forces you to leave mediocrity.

[Rocksitter]

 Then stop whining about what factions people play ,maybe you want to set up there battalions for them as well...