CB and their development cycle

Think the discussion can be done without devolving to personal attacks.

 

It can be. It probably won’t be which is a shame. I’ve edited my post at any rate.

 

At some point, one will have to deal in a definitive manner with that toxic and rabid Hecaton... He is on my short ignored users list but I keep seeing some of his "messages" when I'm not logged in with my account and his behaviour is far from anything acceptable.

EDIT : @psychoticstorm our messages crossed, my point stands.

 

To be brutally honest here, it is healthy for any game that there are differences in cost between unit A in army X and unit B in army Y even when they have similar role or functions. Because it helps to create different playstyles and to avoid homogeniezation. For example, a given army may have to pay premiun to have access to pitchers, while other have them plenty and cheap, and others do not have access to this tool. This create character, and it is good for the game. So there is no need to make 'all equal and fair to the very decimal of a point cost'... which is something that people would advocate if such a thread exist.

The act of balance should be purely treated from the actual vast data of ITS armies. Taking in account the % of troops and profiles choosen for a given sectorial across all games, and the corresponding % Win ratio of such sectorials intersected with the % of the actual troops included and their opponent data. This is the kind of analisys that allows you to see if a given profile needs to change. Please take in account that:

Heavily overperfoming and heavily overrepresented -> Needs to be looken upon ASAP. This is skewing the gaming experience of everyone involved in the game and may be even defining a meta that some armies directly has no tool/answers to it.
Normal performing and heavily overrepresented -> The profile may not need changes but the sectorial as a whole needs to be looken upon as this piece has become a needed linchpin of it that can not function without, and therefore is strangling design space.
Normal performing and normal represented -> The ideal, nothing to touch for the moment here.
Normal perfoming and heavily underrepresented -> Why this troop is not attractive to players? There is a similar piece on the sectorial with a similar role but straightly better/cheaper/both? Tweaks, and some bells and whistles may be needed to making this more attractive to players.
Heavily overperforming and heavily underrepresented -> This may be a "tech piece" that shines through at specific scenarios. If that is the case and it was indeed the intetion behind the piece, nothing to touch here but keep monitoring the situation.
Heavily underperforming and heavily overrepresented -> Needs to be looken upon ASAP, as this piece is not only being perceived as a neccesary linchpin that the army can not function without it, it is also draggin behind the sectorial as it can not really perfom on the table.
Heavily underperfoming and heavily underrepresented -> Needs to be looken upon ASAP. It feels bad to have miniatures whose sole role is to look cool in the shelves and gather dust.

This is the kind of analisys and thought process any game needs for balance: the actual data of the actual players playing the actual game during a long time of period to propely have an snapshot of the reality to work with.

 

To be fair, armies having access to Pitchers or not is a different design axis than one army paying 1 point for a load out with it and another army paying 10 points for that specific equipment.
Both are valid axis to balance on, even if the examples themselves are exaggerated.

Infinity has worked well designing on homogeneous pricing with access restrictions. Most other games tend to do both, of course, where for example the British Elephant in the Room allows that one grossly overrepresented and overdeveloped army to have very cheap heavily armoured units while most other armies get basically no units with better than coin flip armour save chances if they're nit extremely narrowly designed and pricy units.

I'd also hazard that a unit can be designed to be overrepresented. It's one of my pet peeves with CB design; the unit that ends up being overrepresented seem to be so primarily by chance of which unit best conforms to the over-arching meta that results from ITS mission design, table xy-density, table z-space, and pure cost:chance ratio.

The same can be true for Zhans- I mean units that are overrepresented and underperforming. By forcing these units to be chosen you are creating a balancing tool that legitimises intentionally overperforming units - though by Infinity's design you can probably not have too many such in terms of AVA unless SWC is used to prevent entire lists filled with them.

Bottom line is I don't think the point system is bad, but if you've got one you kinda need to stick to it - or at least make the breaks in it expected.
E.g. PanO TAGs being inexplicably cheap wouldn't be untowards as they've pre-explained why that would be the case.

 

Good thing that's not happening then.

Well when it starts with "You are not a worthy enough person to critique the game" from people like pstorm it's disingenuous of you to expect respect back when none is given.

 

Well then maybe you can start admitting that people have a right to critique the design state of the game; saying they have no right to do so *is* a personal attack.

 

It's ok, he thinks that you can insult people who disagree with him, but if someone insults him or the people who agree with him back, he has a problem with it.

 

Perhaps you could begin by speaking politely and plainly, garnering and earning respect. Then you might see some of it come your way. As it is, no one will show you the respect you believe that you are due as your attitude is so atrocious.

No it’s not. It’d be a blanket statement at worst and would have resulted in the removal of accounts from this forum by now if it was the case. I do not believe that it has been definitively stated that you CANNOT criticise CB or critique the design state of the game. It’d only be a personal attack if you, personally or someone else, personally, had been told they couldn’t. I believe you’re reading into things that just aren’t there.

I’ve been told to edit my posts. Actually in answer to one of yours. I’ve seen others who have been here far longer than I have asked to edit their posts. It’s not about who is insulting who, it’s about the fact that the forums have been disturbed by those actions and people may not necessarily want to see them.

Now. I forgot to ask earlier, if anyone is going to Gen Con, can you please ask about Tag Raid? I’m wondering what the state of profiles that were meant to be part of Infinity will be moving forwards. I know they were going to be taken out but I’d like to know if that’s still happening or not. Any answers are appreciated.

 

My attitude is not atrocious; you just think that I have to give deference to certain people while only receiving disrespect in return. Fuck all that.

It's not a blanket statement because it's only applied to some people.

Pstorm and Mao have both said they don't think that any criticism of CB by customers is valid, because customers are to low of a lifeform to be able to do so.

Enforcing civility above correctness is just perverse.

 

Nope. I expect no deference to anyone only politeness. To everyone. Then you’ll receive it in turn.

I would like these people to be listed then so we know who has been personally slighted.

I’m certain they haven’t said that. Unless I missed something that would surely have erupted the thread into a flame war the likes of which only god has ever seen.

No enforcement. Only expectance. Civility leads to understanding and acceptance of those whose opinions differ from us. It allows us to disagree in good faith. It promotes further civilised discussion. Enforcing correctness would be equally as vile. Whose correctness? Yours? Theirs? It doesn’t matter. Those that think this way will burn the world because someone thinks differently to them.

Thank you for the discussion on this topic. I think we’ve derailed the thread enough though. Once again, anyone going to Gen Con, please let me know about Tag Raid. Any other information about anything else would also be welcomed! I do like spoilers…

 

No, I am expecting you to keep up the minimal requirements for a civil discussion, something you do not do.

I do not care about your high and mighty attitude and I do not care about you dismissing everybody who does not follow your viewpoint 100%, what I do care is how you express this on the forum and how you treat other forum posters, company employees, affiliates and common forum members.

The bar for the forum conversation etiquette is so low that only people that are trying purposefully to fail, will fail to pass it...

And this is not only for Hecaton but for all involved.

 

Saying "Fuck all that" isn't exactly the height of incivility.

My attitude isn't high and mighty and I don't dismiss people who don't share my viewpoint. Your viewpoints (and Mao's) are just often *particularly* wrong.

The problem, of course, is that you try to enforce civility without enforcing respect. Mao, for example, disrespects other posters in almost every post he makes. I'm not sure you're clear on the difference, honestly...

 

First and foremost I am not referring to the last post I quoted but your recent posting behavior, secondly respect is earned not enforced.

I am expecting forum members to maintain a civil discussion, respect is not needed and at worse you can always agree to disagree.

As for my viewpoints? I will agree that English is not my primary language, but, I try and write so plainly that I am astonished on how you derive some of the conclusions on what I wrote and how far from what I wrote are.

 

Mind that underperfoming in the kind of game balance I am talking about does not mean the actual unit impact in the game by itself is bad, like spending an order on a fusilier/keisotsu/zanshi/kappa/ghoul is usually a bad idea when you can spend an order in a more elite troop. That is expected.

Underperforming in the game balance actually means: The act of including the unit in your army makes you have a significant worse win ratio by the mere act of including the unit in your army compared to the win ratio your army has when the unit is not included.

So this is why a Zanshi, or any other line trooper, should technically fall in the “normal performing, and overrepresented” or the “normal performing, normal representation” category: They’re expected to appear, and their appearance should not really impact the win ratio of its army neither up nor down. If a line trooper is actually overrepresented but underperforming this mean that the army works better when there are no line troopers at all but players are actually forced to include them by the structure of their sectorial. And this is something that should be looked upon.

For example, and please mind that this is a pure theorical example as I have no access to any data, imagine that Svalaheirma Winter Force ITS data reflects that when SWF brings one or more fusiliers they have a significant worse win ratio than when they bring none. But the majority of players do in fact brings fusiliers to their games, and usually more than one. This would imply that the majority players feels that they need to bring fusiliers as they’re a linchpin to have an army structure, but once they do they actual perform worse than those small amount of players who in reality does not bring any fusilier at all. This is something that would need to be looken upon, specially because the ideal case scenario for a line trooper would be normal performing and either over represented or normally represented.

 

I think that if you set the criteria to "significant" you'll probably not catch any units that qualify since players will simply notice and not play it. Then there's the thing where since the game is defacto using a points system, CB has already eliminated a big source for units acting like this. This is not saying units that follow the point system are all equally good, just that the extremes are removed.

I'm a bit tired to fully articulate my thoughts here, but essentially I think balancing can't be done to units. A faction will likely trend to perform better with a particular subset of units and it's that subset you need to look at in comparison to other subsets that do not perform well, as well as look at units that are simply not selected for and thus do not end up in subsets at all.

 

It really isn’t though. It’s a completely sane stance which ultimately needs no justification.

 

Then there is a big problem which is being brushed aside.
The formula cannot produce “incorrect” values, merely undesirable ones. If the formula produces incorrect values, it’s the formula that is incorrect, not the output.
Saying “the formula was wrong in just this one instance” is not an explanation, it is a transparent lie about mathematics. The formula is always correct or always incorrect, it’s not possible to be wrong sometimes.

 

I think he meant the formula was either applied incorrectly, or some variable was incorrectly accounted for, in regards to the bulleteer. A big problem is being brushed aside, but its more likely one of proofreading and curation, than it is an issue with the formula itself.

 

If a unit has been noticed by the players of being heavily underperfoming, in the sense that when they include it their whole army perfomance is heavily affected. And at the same time they feel not forced to include, so they leave it at the shelves collecting dust... it will fall into the latest of categories: "Heavily underperfoming and heavily underrepresented", and it should be something to be looked at why it's that.

A unit that is usually not selected not because they're underperfoming by themselves, but either because there are other units that heavily overperform and players naturally gravitate to those or because there is a general perception of the unit being lacking, falls into the "normal perfoming and heavily underrepresented". Specially when the data shows that the few times that are being selected, the win ratio of the army tends to reach the expected results. In this case it should be asked why the troop is not attractive to players, and some small adjustments may be needed to make it attractive/interesting. We have a recently case studio for it that shows this perfectly: O12/Starmada's Bronze. They were not attractive to players, and in the few times it actually was used in the table it's army perfomance was neither crippling because of the inclusion of the Bronze, nor spectacullar. The small adjustments that it was made: Lower their point cost by 2, raise the CC by 1, improve their innate link options without nerfing their wildcard potential, and provinding a new SWC profile. The results? Now it is attractive to players and it can again fall into the "normal represented". Time will tell if it is also a normal perfoming (which I think it will do) or a heavily overperforming.

Of course you could say that any adjustment, either nerfing or buffing, will make another small subset of units to move out from one category and fall into another because players perception or the actual changes having unexpected effects as the meta changes. This is expected. Living game balance is a constant act of analisys and juggling with the armies profiles/compositions until the end of time as the game evolves and iterates. And have the side effect of avoiding the sense of stale meta. At the end of the day we are just evolved monkeys that look for having a thrilling fun time playing games, and we found more attractive games that have a certain rate of change over time rather than games that are either static (dead meta, our pattern-recognition seeking brain gets bored) or too much frenetic with the changes (no meta, our pattern-recognition seeking brain gets stressed)