Play Balancing [LONG]

(xion) #1

perhaps it’s just my dumb luck, but every large server i go on tends toward the axis or the allies in a very imbalanced way, don’t get me wrong, i’ve had some great EVEN fights, but lately it’s been one side with all the XP and mine with all the coverts and mortars. This is more of a newb issue so i won’t digress…

my topic for discussion here is twofold, first: how can we balance our maps in a way that gives a team with a little less skill a chance to succeed? For example, we all know what it feels like to be axis on battery and tell people not to go on the beach, or not to open the door, but they always do, that’s a good thing IMHO :slight_smile: this gives the other team a chance to make it out of the slaughterhouse, but what gets me is when you’re a decent player on axis who KNOWS that your team is going to do this, your completely powerless to stop it! But enough about that map, i feel it’s nearly perfectly balanced, while also giving the allies a real sense of fear, it’s SEEMS like an impossible task to make it up the beach against a million panzers and airstrikes :wink:

The addition of a covert ops is great! battery really gives this class a chance to directly help the objective. In fact, even the mere harrasing of the command centers and the satchel help to slow the allied / axis offensives, so the class can be helpful on many different levels. One thing I’m trying to plan for is giving ALL classes at least 3 seperate roles they can play on a map. Mainly i’m thinking about fun factor, but more importantly i’m trying to make it fun EVEN if your team is getting beat to a bloody pulp.

Which brings me to my second question: is it worth it to spend tons (and i mean tons!) of time trying to theorize and plan a map to be balanced in all these subtle ways? Or is it better to just let the two sides have at it and disregard things like multiple pathways to objectives, protected spawns, covert objectives, etc…OR as i figure, maybe it’s better to just focus on fun factor, and let teams balance themselves (XP shuffle works well b.t.w) it’s always more fun to have an all-out battle on even ground! (and win of course :wink:

(wudan) #2

I think it’s important to have your options open. Otherwise, on servers with many players, there’d be no way to get through to the objective.

I don’t think you have to be anal about it until the beta testing phase, just keep the balance in mind as you go and keep your options open.

(=SWAT=Shadow Fox) #3

Its very hard to make a map that is balanced perfectly. You would have to make it a mirror map. Same for both sides to a T. Ive seen a couple of maps like this for rctw and they were great for awhile but like all maps they got put on the shelve. GOOD LUCK

(xion) #4

it seems like the BIG maps are the ones that become very popular, i’m curious how big one can get :slight_smile: on a completly off-topic side note, has anyone taken a look at the modeling and brushwork for oasis (on the first allied spawn)? it’s freakin awesome!

(SCDS_reyalP) #5

I’m guessing that is mostly a lloyd map. :notworthy:

As far as balancing goes, I think you should give a lot of thought to in design, and then see how wrong you were in playtesting :stuck_out_tongue: Things like multiple paths to the objective are necessary, while at the same time you need choke points to concentrate the action. Setting up the travel time between various points is important as well. Don’t get TOO caught up in it though, because playtesting will always show you things you didn’t expect.

One thing a lot of q3 mappers have done is to do a rough layout (with big brushes, no decorations, very little texturing) and use that to get they layout, item placement and game flow. This is a little bit harder in RTCW or ET because the small stuff can be important as cover, and the building layout can be more complex.

No amount of map balance will make up for skill imbalance. I think the current issue on ET maps is that there are pretty much two classes of player: Those who have played RTCW for a long time, and the everyone else. Having just a few vet RTCW players on one team can make a huge difference. As time goes on, the skill gap will become much less.

All of the above is just my opinion, I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.

I’m not a huge fan of big maps myself :stuck_out_tongue: . Doing a huge map as your first effort is also very likely to give you performance problem.

(sock) #6

The map oasis is mainly Q-fraggel’s baby. There was 4 mappers who worked on the map at one time or another.

Sock
:moo:

(=SWAT=Shadow Fox) #7

Good point on the skill levels of rctw players and et players. This is true and im sure everyone has seen it many times. But as I read before xp shuffle is an option but it needs to be either voted on, witch almost never passes or has to be enforced by the admin. If there is another way plz tell me cuz Id rather have a good game over winning anyday.

(damocles) #8

I find that large servers are the problem themselves. Whenever I play a game of roughly 10vs10 it is usually pretty well balanced, and is usually a close fought battle. But when I play on the larger servers (eg 14vs14 or more) then it’s ridiculously hard for the attacking side to win because there are just so many defenders holed up around the objectives.

(kotkis) #9

This may be too early to say anything concentrated on map-balance, but as I’ve played a few Clan Wars and enjoyed them very much I’ve also noticed a problem on two of the current maps.

Goldrush and Fueldump are freaking hard to win as allies and this causes a lot of loooooooong matches. With the currenct CB-rules one match can take 3 hours with 3 SW-rounds played in one map. So if the map is either Goldrush or Fueldump it’s very possible that this will happen (which would also mean that the game ends 0-0 due the fact that neihter one of the clans succeeds to do the objective).

So I’d like to point a guestion for the SD-team: are you willing to change the gamesystem in a way or anohter to balance the map if this is going to be a problem in future? It’d probably help if the tank went little faster or if it’d stand a bit more damage before getting broken.

Anyway this is way too early to know how the gamesystem will take place and therefore we must just wait and see if the problem disappears, but I’d feel a bit more calm if you would answer my question first. And please, think the clan gamers! :rolleyes:

(sock) #10

I played a stopwatch clan match last night on Fueldump (6v6) and the first round was like over in less than 5 mins. There is alot of cools strats u can do with Fueldump and likewise there will be others found with the other maps.

You must remember these maps are not about balance, they are about 1 side attacking and 1 side defending. They are “assault” style maps. Take the original map “beach” and tell me where the balance is? Allies start on a beach with very little cover, Axis start nice and cosy in a bunker with mg42 nests. Yep, that sounds balanced to me! :wink:

The challenge of the maps comes from the fact both team have to work together, complete objectives and feel like (at the end of the match) they have achieved something together. Finding the perfect set of challenge’s is what mappers should be aiming for.

Sock
:moo:

(kotkis) #11

Well maybe I’m wrong about Fueldump, but you must admit that Goldrush takes a hell of a lot time to get trough and full-defs are very common. This means that a weaker team can do a tactical movement and choose Goldrush just to play a draw and gain points from the better team. In my opinion maps should be easier for Allies than for Axis to complete because of the SW-system used in most CWs. But like I said before, it’s too early to speculate these kind of things yet.

And anyway, you didn’t answer my question :confused:

(xion) #12

good advice! one thing i like is that the overall player classes are actually MORE balanced than the previous RTCW. Meds used to be unstopable, especially in clan matches, now it seems like ANYONE, even a stocked up med can be knocked down just as fast. Even with the addition of the covert class, it remains balanced. - Perhaps my favorite covert moment was on oasis when i opened the door for an engineer while the axis still held the flag, together we just walzed into the gun area, he planted both guns and we won :slight_smile: that’s the kind of balancing i like!

sock: fueldump has some pretty rad brushwork in the depot yard :slight_smile:

(sock) #13

There are no plans to change the game balance of certain maps. All the changes you have asked for can be changed in the current script.

Sock
:moo:

(Wicky) #14

But maybe can we have an option to XP shuffle teams AFTER the campaign ends? Because if you shuffle in mid of a map, the map restarts , and if we xp-shuffle at the start of the next campaign, everyone has 0 XP so it has become pointless. I’m talking mainly about public servers, an option for the host where he can choose to have the team’s experience evened at the start of each campaign.

The best game of all the times, and on top it’s free - what an overkill :stuck_out_tongue:

Wicky

(sock) #15

I’m sure you can do this already, because I’ve been on servers which did a XP shuffle at the end of campaigns, but I will check this and get back to you. I certainly agree with forcing a XP shuffle at the end of the campaign. Nothing worse than joining a public server with unbalanced teams or people who will not swap around.

Thanks, the caves are my favourite bit of brushwork in fueldump.

Sock
:moo:

(Freedom[]Tickler) #16

I sat down and tried to think through this very issue, and came to a very simple conclusion: If the professionally competitive fraggers love it, its a great map.

Balance shld be (imo) considered from the perspective of competition, not pub servers. There are too many factors as to why pub games become unbalanced to be able to design a map around them.

When i started mapping for q3 ctf, I asked myself why, of the 7 original q3 ctf maps, Caseys 3wave map CourtYard Conundrum was hands down the most popular map for clan matches/scrims and pick-up games, for years. I tried to develop a formula for mapping based on what I thought those qualitis were.

With out boring anyone w/ my theories, I have to say that ET maps are absolutely amazing, and I believe the result of competitive players making them.

Of the 6 ET maps, Gold Rush has alot of component steps before the allies can even get to the “flag” , let alone “cap”, where as the other 5 maps can be won by a coup de main by bypassing the other component steps. This makes the likelyhood for a longer game, but definitely not a predetermined outcome.

$.02

(Pog'S) #17

Personnally I think the easiest way and more historically accurate way of balancing a map is to tweak the respawn delay.

This would simulate waves of reinforcement and actual numbers of soldiers on the battlefield :
In almost all famous (or unknown) battles, after 1940 of course, Allies had a huge number superiority. They had a well organized logistics that lacked Germans for exemple during the Battle of Normandy. Mainly due to incessant harassment of bombers that prevent supply convoys to go fast during daytime (as well as Resistance actions).

So i guess that if respawn delays can be tweaked, this is a quick and easy way to rebalance an unfair map.

I agree with sock : Allies were mostly attackers so they had a more difficult and risky role than axis defenders (especially in Normandy bocages).

(Freedom[]Tickler) #18

I dont think a map can be labeled as unfair/unbalanced based on pub server play - nor do any of these claims reflect my experiences on pub servers.

If, how ever, 8v8 clan matches expose something of a balance issue on the maps - then it is specific to the competitive clan match scene. Catering to the competitive clan scene is a good idea, esp for the longevity of the game.

So in this narrowly defined aspect, we can talk about balance issues. Ive read numerous threads on the merits of 8v8 7v7 or 6v6 clan matches for ET - read what map elements players thought bottlenecked maps when both teams are comprised of experienced players. Alot of the suggestions would require modding the game - which is an unlikely solution.

I think we shld look at making maps designed for comp play - we shld agree on the ideal number of players per team, and how the need for the various classes are represented by the map elements.

Traditionally, competitive play has centered around 1v1 DM, TDM and CTF. This is relatively new ground using objective, team based assault/defence play. All that may be needed is to rethink the terms under which league play is governed - balance the play using allied / axis max lives and hand tweaked respawn times, or other things that do not require modding the game or having to make maps w/ a set formula.