Proposed: A Few Simple Rules To Ensure Balancing Integrity

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[TheWindCriesMary]

Hello everyone.

The following thread contains one or two proposed changes to how balance is currently attempted for this mod. I have made sure to clear authorization for the right to make this post under the condition I don't go into naming the names of the people on the balance team and what I think about their personal qualifications and level of integrity and self-awareness. I'm ok with living by that.

Before I get to the proposed solution, here is a brief run down of how balance works on this forum for those who might be wondering because they haven't made the right friends in the right places to A) get the information, or B) be on the balance team.

Keep in mind this information isn't confidential - just not told to to most of the mod for some inexplicable reason.

How EiR Balancing Is Currently Approached:

1) The 'Balance Team'

The Balance team consists of about 10 individuals (It varies depending on activity, and on the fact that some people can 'post in' and 'view' the forum but can't vote, etc.). Three of these full members are players from the community, while the rest are a part of the mod team in some capacity. They can post topics about units/abillities that they think are unbalanced, and then a discussion follows about the pros/cons of that idea. Then a vote takes place to implement the proposed change. For design changes a 90% vote is needed, while for resource nerfs/buffs 60% is needed.

Here are the problems with this system:

1) Attendance Allows Disproportionate Power to be Levied By The More Vocal/Active Elements

Unfortunately, despite the fact that large portions of the Balance team might not be present, large and dramatic changes to units can still be made via this system.

Case in point: a recent tripple nerf to Churchill crocs was made when over half of the Balance Team was apparently AWOL. I've heard this both from those people themselves, and from high-ranking people on the dev team who have confirmed the suspicion.

This means that, although the balance team is meant to avoid biased oversights like this one, less than 40% of the balance team (and practically none of the devs) were able to pass a dramatic change to a unit that none of them, aside from one, uses. Sound like a problem?

2) Community/non-dev Balance Team Members Are Chosen For Reasons Outside of Their Impartiality and/or Playing Ability

How much someone contributes to the community is a fine thing. It does not, however, necessarily make someone a good balance team member. Balance member status should not be a reward of influence to someone who has helped out the mod. It should not be a political boon. It should not even be given to the best players in the mod neccesarily, because many of the best players are the best players because they pick the right strategies/doctrines.

 Balance is about being able to separate your player role from your balance role. A good balance member is equally fond of playing with all four armies, and if he isn't, then he is extremely cautious about chiming in on those that he doesn't.

3) Balance Team Members Can Protect Their Chosen Armies and Nerf Their Least Favorites Without Fear Of Reprisal or Loss of Credibility

This is the biggest problem with the way the balance team works: conflict of interest. As long as the balance team has competitive players on it who do not play the armies they are allowed to suggest and vote nerfs for, there is an inevitable conflict of interest that cannot be ignored. Unfortunately this obvious conflict has been approached with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Also, it is almost impossible for any person to impartially suggest balance changes when they will then spend the rest of their time in the mod trying to win and maintain their reputation for winning.  This is human nature, and no matter how much we want to wish that the people chosen for the Balance team (aside from the devs who don't really play) are going to somehow overcome that - it is just never the case. We can't even expect them not to be biased - it wouldn't be fair.

What we can do, however, is put in a proper system of checks and balances to mitigate the impact of that bias.

The Proposal To Fix These Inherent Flaws:


 1. In order to suggest a nerf to any unit, ability, or doctrine a community balance team member must provide screen-shot evidence of 5 separate games that clearly show he/she using that unit/abillity in battle.

 2. All votes on any unit made by a community balance team member must be accompanied by 3 screenshots showing the unit in use by the player voting. If these are not provided, they cannot vote on that specific change/unit.

 3. In order for any vote to pass in the balance forum, 80% of the entire balance team must vote. If they are AWOL or on vacation for a few weeks, the vote continues until they get back.  People who cannot manage to be active enough to vote, shouldn't be on the balance team by virtue of the fact that being currently active is all but a necessity for being able to make informed balance votes.

 4. All balance members voting on an issue must have played 3 EiR games in the past 12 days (for reasons above)

5. Any balance team member who is caught making making statements like "I didn't realize how strong those were. Say goodbye to those once I make a post in the balance team forum about this" during or after a game shall be immediately removed from the Balance team upon the provision of screenshot proof from the witnessing party. (The people who have done/still do this know who they are)


Now I know what some people might say: "This is absolutely ridiculous, we would never get any balancing done with these absurd requirements! I should be able to nerf units I never play with because I am a member of the balance team and therefore should be trusted!"

To this I say deal with it. Balancing should require you to walk a mile in the shoes of the unit you want to nerf. Even if you play the 5 games and STILL feel it's overpowered, then it's still a win-win because now you are even more qualified to discuss the unit then you were before.

As for the idea that having to wait for people to play games with the unit in question will unrealistically slow down balancing, the answer is simple: if someone can't be bothered to play a handful of games with a unit they want nerfed, then they shouldn't be making balance decisions in the first place. Plain and simple - it's a self-weeding process. You'll weed out the real balance members from the phony clowns this way.

Also, as a result of these proposed changes you will get ONLY the following:

A) Players who are serious about unbiased balancing and who will play the units they want to change before suggesting/voting changes.

B) Players who are too lazy to play the unit/ability in question, and will therefore willingly be removing themselves from the discussion about that unit. They will instead stick to discussing the units they actually play.

It's a beautiful thing.

There is absolutely no downside to this idea other than the fact that it will take longer, but balance shouldn't be about trying to quick fix everything by shooting blindly in the dark. Slow, methodical, precise balancing beats clumsy clubfisted attempts 10 times out of 10.


These are reasonable proposals that would bring some integrity to the way balance is done on this mod. And I can bet you Tank's entire donations from 2010 that it would see a lot less people leaving the mod out of frustration. Clear, transparent, and accountable balancing is the hallmark of a mod that takes its player base seriously.

-Wind

[WildZontar]

Yes, EiRR has a chance again 

[Malgoroth]

Eh. What I said makes no sense so I'm gonna delete it.

[Spartan_Marine88]

Im just going to add a one thing i think NEEDS to happen as well.

When a unit in question is on the board, games involving said unit must take games (not those unit vs unit 'tests' that go on in so many mods/developing games) Number crunching is fine, but there are so many variables that it must come down to actual game time.

ex: crocs op, so lets test it against an army focusing on storms, ok that yields this result, now what about upgunned hotchkisses, hmm how about marders, pak 40's etc. (btw at grens rape crocs)

[Demon767]

Im just going to add a one thing i think NEEDS to happen as well.

When a unit in question is on the board, games involving said unit must take games (not those unit vs unit 'tests' that go on in so many mods/developing games) Number crunching is fine, but there are so many variables that it must come down to actual game time.

ex: crocs op, so lets test it against an army focusing on storms, ok that yields this result, now what about upgunned hotchkisses, hmm how about marders, pak 40's etc. (btw at grens rape crocs)

lmao yer if we had people payed to use there time to do this. no ones gonna do this, whole bunch of wasted times for people with LIVES. only time is actual gameplay. so scrap your idea

[Spartan_Marine88]

lmao yer if we had people payed to use there time to do this. no ones gonna do this, whole bunch of wasted times for people with LIVES. only time is actual gameplay. so scrap your idea

Well, if they don't have 2 hours (4+ games) to test a unit agains't each other, then the devs shouldn't be balancing units.

As well, as it should be a consensus among the devs/balance team, they shouldn't really have a problem finding a game. Although whether balance decisions should even be made without the final doctrines is a whole nother topic.

And if time to balance is an issue for you, get the fuck off the balance team

[Mysthalin]

Three very important flaws in your post :

Conjecture of what you assume happens in the balance team(for which you have no evidence other than hearsay).

Assumption that balance team members do not play all 4 armies(for which statement, not knowing who these members are - you have zero evidence to prove).

Complete disregard for the variable of time (say what you will - unlocking a churchil crocodile takes 10 games, assuming you win every single one. An extra 5 on top of that ends up being 15 games. Assuming a game takes about 1 hour to fill up and another 30 minutes to play, that's an average of 22.5 hours just to meet your proposed requirements, without any consideration of past experience. How much time can you dedicate to games? 3 hours? So that's 2 games a day. A week of testing any single unit that you had specifically played countless games with before? That would mean that a patch that consists of 4 unit buffs/nerfs could take upwards from a month to be agreed to. Such inefficiency in balancing would completely drive the community away.

This isn't an issue of a Balance Team member being unwilling to devote time. This is an issue of the balancing process becoming realistically far too slow to be of any efficiency whatsoever due to an enormously massive amount of red tape.

And finally - I'll actually paraphrase BigDick because he had a very very sensible point.
Would you have preffered the Croc to not get an increase in manpower and population costs, but that instead it's fuel price would have gone to 500+? It wouldn't have been a tripple nerf, so you wouldn't have any reason to bitch about it.

[BigDick]

please vote and cross

[] BigDick for balance lead dictator  

[Demon767]

you mean

Dicktator?

[Heartmann]

you mean

Dicktator?

<------ Im with stupid!

^^

anyway i see both Winds point and Myst, there is a problem between dedicated work and fun game time essence that is EiR Since its more of a hobby, who would want to dedicate so much time to it? Although seeing as it is a hobby and something you probably do cherish why not take it seriously and as the good fellas in the army says "Redo and do it right"

[Mysthalin]

I am not talking about the unwillingness of the BT to devote time and effort.
I am talking about the sheer amount of extra time and red tape that would have to be waded through before any consensus could be achieved. The maths are fairly simple to do and understand.

[Unkn0wn]

Mysth raises a fair point, while Wind's proposals sound good in theory, it is clear that he does not have the needed experience with development and balance to realise that such a change would completely cripple the balance team's ability to make needed changes in a timely manner.

Not to mention the amount of criticism they would get for taking so long (not even calculating in the time it will take for some coder to actually get to making the RGD changes when a change is finally decided upon) to fix an obvious balance issue. Our current mechanism may be far from perfect, with an occasional mistake being made, but at least it enables us to react swiftly with a good enough estimation of where balance lies.

Because, let's be honest here. Even if we had this utopian balance system in place we would STILL have people complaining with every patch log we put out. People will ALWAYS get the impression the balance team doesn't know what they're doing even when in fact they do, simply because players have their emotions clouding their balance judgement. That's definitely one of the most important lessons I've learned being part of this development team for 4 years now.

Now if we were a game company and our balance team was getting paid for spending days on balance, then I guess we could go about this a more 'professional way' like you are suggesting, but we're not. We're a group of dedicated volunteers doing 'only' the best they can aside of their daytime jobs, studies and life in general.
And quite honestly, I don't think our balance (particularly pricing anyway) is in such a poor state at all right now, we've had a lot worse in the past.

That being said, there'll probably be some changes to the balance team mechanism, or a complete overhaul in the near future anyway.

[TheWindCriesMary]

Three very important flaws in your post :

Oh Myst sometimes I truly love how clueless you are. This will be fun....

Conjecture of what you assume happens in the balance team(for which you have no evidence other than hearsay).

Of which I have a detailed rundown provided from one of the lead members of the Dev and balance team. This has been corroborated by a second member of the balance team.

Thanks for coming out, you might do better next time!

Assumption that balance team members do not play all 4 armies(for which statement, not knowing who these members are - you have zero evidence to prove).

I have a full and up to date list of all the members of the Balance team. Which is why this part was included in my thread:

I have made sure to clear authorization for the right to make this post under the condition I don't go into naming the names of the people on the balance team and what I think about their personal qualifications and level of integrity and self-awareness.

Remember what we said about reading threads carefully? I explicitly stated that the only reason I'm not going into naming names of the people on the balance team who I think are COMPLETELY UNQUALIFIED TO BE ON THE BALANCE TEAM is because I had to make that concession in order to get permission to write this post. Believe me, I would love to go into detail about how much some of the people on the team are incredibly dimwitted and incapable of reading and understanding a thread or formulating a half-decent argument that isn't rife with ill-conceived attempts to get revenge, but sadly I cant. Oh well!

And finally - I'll actually paraphrase BigDick because he had a very very sensible point.
Would you have preffered the Croc to not get an increase in manpower and population costs, but that instead it's fuel price would have gone to 500+? It wouldn't have been a tripple nerf, so you wouldn't have any reason to bitch about it.

Remember the part about gradual, moderate, nerfs being preferable to large jumps in a short period of time? Yeah you might want to reread that part again.

I don't mind if a unit ends up at 500 fuel, as long as it went through due process to get there. The proper way to balance a unit to 500 fuel would be through a transparent testing process that showed a rational and thoroughly vetted process of examination.

Gradual steps with clear evidence to support each additional phase of the testing. Also, get it through your painfully small brain that the croc in and of itself is irrelevant.

And lastly the issue about time:


Yes it would take a long time to get a croc. If we do nothing to develop a system where balance team members are able to test the units they need to vote on.

So our solution? Do nothing! Continue to let woefully inadequate players vote on units they don't use. Let them decide the 'right' amount of resources and pop for a unit in the current metagame despite the fact that they have only one experience of that unit in the meta game: being on the wrong end of it.

But Wind, it would take too long the other way! And we are unwilling to even try to brainstorm a way around the huge time constraints because...well....it would be unfair! We can be trusted! We are qualified!

Sadly, you are not qualified. If putting some integrity back into balance was a priority, there would be 4 Balance team test accounts that all were clearly marked 'BALANCE TEST 1' and so forth that any member of the balance team could play with. This would allow them to quickly and easy test any unit they needed before a vote came up.

Granted this would still require them to play 5 games for each unit they start a thread on - but there is absolutely no argument for saying that someone shouldn't play that many games minimum before arguing to change a unit.


Better luck next time. Get some real arguments and come back.


-Wind

[Smokaz]

Can you name someone you would think would be fitting for this job, wind? That's what it all boils down to isnt it?

I hope they exist, at least for the sake of argument

[TheIcelandicManiac]

<---------------"hint" 

[PonySlaystation]

How exactly is this needed? The EiR balance is fine, it has improved a lot since the release and if something comes up they are usually quick to fix it.

A major change like this would be good if balance right now was a big issue, but it's not. Royal Engineers are not even in the game yet so there's no reason to use them and it was probably just a temporary fix.

I'm pretty sure they listen to the community and test the units involved. I haven't really seen them do any bad balance decisions like the CoH developers always seem to do.

Oh, so the CoH balance is perfect? well let's introduce two super OP factions to the game to ruin it.

Oh, so the CoH balance is playable again? let's introduce super OP ToV units to the game to ruin it again.

Oh, so the axis heroes in CoH:O are OP? well let's completely change the way riflemen gain veterancy, that seems logical.

[RoyalHants]

Oh, so the CoH balance is perfect? well let's introduce two super OP factions to the game to ruin it. To make more money from sales

Oh, so the CoH balance is playable again? let's introduce super OP ToV units to the game to ruin it again. To make even more money from sales

Oh, so the axis heroes in CoH:O are OP? well let's completely change the way riflemen gain veterancy, that seems logical. to make even more mon...... wait

[Mysthalin]

Wind, two things :

1) I don't know where you get the idea I'm out on a personal vendetta against you for some assumed "thumping" you have allegedly lain down on me. Of course, if it makes you feel like you've achieved something in life by thinking that - carry on. I'm personally not all that bothered about penis-swinging on the internet.

2) From your post it is clear you assume I'm a balance team member(first time you accidentally point fingers like that, isn't it?). Of course, there's no way for me to prove to you that I'm not(much the same way there is no way for you to prove that I am), but I've replied to your post because - as unknown points out : your demands on the balance team are absolutely irrational. So much red tape and beurocracy for each change would be illogical for even a real life firm in it's day-to-day proceedings of real cash transfers - where any mistake could lead to millions of dollars being wasted. On something that is a mere hobby, where nobody can afford to work 40+ a week... That is just utterly non-sensical.

[AmPM]

Either way, EIRR will still be fucked up and always swing towards one extreme or another.

Why? Because the system encourages spamming, afterall, you can only have so many hardcounters to a unit type.

[Spartan_Marine88]

Complete disregard for the variable of time (say what you will - unlocking a churchil crocodile takes 10 games, assuming you win every single one. An extra 5 on top of that ends up being 15 games. Assuming a game takes about 1 hour to fill up and another 30 minutes to play, that's an average of 22.5 hours just to meet your proposed requirements, without any consideration of past experience. How much time can you dedicate to games? 3 hours? So that's 2 games a day. A week of testing any single unit that you had specifically played countless games with before? That would mean that a patch that consists of 4 unit buffs/nerfs could take upwards from a month to be agreed to. Such inefficiency in balancing would completely drive the community away.

1 simple point

1. For tests such as this, the devs and certain members of the balance team can just give themselves the required units. They do have the power, so your required 3 months have been cut down to nothing.


Edit: just to add, if you were to follow winds rules you should already HAVE the unit in your army