Why does this keep happening

[soldit]

OK, WA isn't out yet i know but we can almost garauntee that it will be IMBA in some way. This is not a whine or speculation i'm just saying that this happens to every game and i wonder why. Is it because the devs just don't think of the strategies that hardcore or even uber n00b players do? When they released 1.3 did they not notice that defilers were overpowered and that by spamming them you had a good chance of winning even against skilled players? WA will almost definately need patching as somebody will discover a tactic or race that's just naturally better than the others without recourse to much skill. I just don't get it, who balances these games for relic? I thought it was industry standard to recruit hardcore gamers to test and balance their stuff for them.

[General Blaze]

Lemme put it this way:

When you try to introduce something new in a game, potential imbalances creep up easily even with beta testing. Take War 3 for example with the nightelves and Starcraft Zerg. They started off WTF pwning everything. War 3's elves still do that, though not as bad now but Starcraft Zerg's now finely balanced after years of patching.

Hell, Tekken 4-5 had the same problem when they introduced Steve Fox. The British Boxer who cannot kick but his kick buttons causes him to strafe left and right. First thought to be useless, then later to be broken.

And let's not forget Street Fighter's Akuma (or Gouki to some of you people). He started to be a cheap ass character until they nerfed his defence to conpensate his high attack power.

[soldit]

Yes but that still doesn't answer the question. Don't devs think to them selves, "what will happen if i just mass this unit? - will i keep winning regardless of the enemy tactic?" or "what will happen if a player does skipps this unit and automatically goes to tier 2 in under 3 minutes - is this virtually unstoppable? etc etc

[FatalTheRabbit]

I've always thought it had something to do with "thinking inside the box". The people who test probably have preconceived notions of how the race is to be played, and they don't really deviate from that much in their testing like a fresh minded consumer would.

[General Blaze]

Plus, game testing isn't exactly a glamorous job. Internal testers have to put up with MORE BUGS, glitches and imbalances than open BETA testers or consumers for that matter. Sometimes, they had to fix the REALLY serious ones and by doing so, overlooking some of the minor but annoying potential imbalances.

[Capt. Invictus]

Heh, better than blizz and WoW.

Does spamming your own vehicles work? artillery doesnt affect tanks much, do they? Or maybe some deep-striking infantry at their base while they're attacking yours? Missiles kill buildings faster than arty.

[Moe]

Yes but that still doesn't answer the question. Don't devs think to them selves, "what will happen if i just mass this unit? - will i keep winning regardless of the enemy tactic?" or "what will happen if a player does skipps this unit and automatically goes to tier 2 in under 3 minutes - is this virtually unstoppable? etc etc

The answer is math. Do you have any idea how many possible strategies there are? It's impossible to try out every permutation. Hell, even after an open AND a closed beta there were problems. Games are very complex. I suggest you try and mod in a new race, and see how well the balancing goes there.

[Mordach]

Touchè, Moe.

It's really hard for game dev's/testers to keep a lookout for EVERY possible strategy, bugs, imba and whatnot, and then fix stuff afterwards... Sometimes it takes a fresh mind to discover the source of problems right under your nose. :comp:

BUT I trust Relic has done a good job with WA and 1.4, and so we won't have any superOP tactics any more. Now wouldn't that be x-mas?? :santa:

Except for fast-tech-to-Baneblade OMFG imba IG. Or Mega-Armoured-Nobz teleport-spam OMFG imba Orks. Or any of the other OMFG imbas players will be sure to whine about until they find a decent way of countering and then silently slip out a backdoor "accidentally" hitting the "rant-off" button on their way out.

[TBS]

or even better, work from scratch - reset every stat in the game (health, DPS, cost, pop) to 0 and then try to get it balanced. Its amazing how close most games get to balance when you consider how many different strategies, combinations of units and possible match ups there are.

However many strategies you test out there will always be someone who comes up with something new when you unleash the game on a wider audience...testers are also limited by the fact that theres only a (relatively) small number of them so they will adapt to each others styles of play.

[pUnkrO]

its their Job.Thats y we pay them.. Balance has first priority in strategy games..the animations come after.. it seems they r not interested much in balance ..but better days may come.. we all hope for that..btw in 1 year 3 patches

[TBS]

Actually, I like to think that the first priority is actually coding a game that works...thats a highly non-trivial task. Its not like they just buy some software from microsoft, run the "Make an RTS game" wizard and ask the paperclip for help if they get stuck.

Also, its been 4 patches so far (the first one was needed to fix a serious production error which prevented different versions of the game from being able to play with each other...again, a non-trivial problem but people forget about it because it doesnt make any balance tweaks) and the fifth patch is due out later this week.

Finally, this is the way it is with all RTS games - no game is balanced on release or even after a couple of patches.

[General Blaze]

Finally, this is the way it is with all RTS games - no game is balanced on release or even after a couple of patches.

I think most of us know that, and that sole reason probably put off a lot of players from touching any RTS. 9/10 times the game needs more patching than an FPS and the balance issues are more serious due to the slipperry slope nature of RTSs, something that fighting games and FPSs rarely have (with the exception of Counter Strike and Marvel Vs Capcom 2. Those games have slippery slopes of something fierce.)

[Wushuki]

The races in DoW differ much more from each other then the races in, for example, warcraft 3 do. In warcraft 3 each race had a light and a heavy melee unit, a cheap ranged unit and so on. Though the units were still very different from each other, they at least had a base-line to follow.

In Dow the base-line is more vague. For example, the eldar has very specialized infantry, while the orks have cheaper units mostly based on melee. Because of those major differences I think that DoW is harder to balance out then many other RTS games.

[DougyM]

If your taking that route the hardest game to ballance in the rts genre is probably starcraft.

Its donkeys years old but its like a damn demi god in korea with massive coverage and tournaments...

3 hugely different races that put dow's "differences" to shame realy.

(i am not saying i prefer SC im just saying that SC races are more diverse even though they are practicaly 40k races)

Each dow race has its usual cheap scouts, walker vehicle, heavy tank, assault inf. etc...

Compare that to Sc's though and each race doesnt just have its version of each category...

ie. all 5 races have walkers
dread's
defiler
eldar thingy... forget its name
killa kan
sentinel

tanks

raider
preadator
prism tank
leman russ looted
leman russ

etc. etc.

[CTQ]

Which took a while to balance, right?

[DatonKallandor]

Starcraft is STILL being patched. Also Starcraft had 3 races (as opposed to DoWs soon-to-be 5), which had extremely limited attack and movement routines (no shoot on the run, only 3 different armor types, no squads, no real CC).


Daton

[Question]

Sometimes its time constraints.Observe the SC conceal bug which was well known in the beta,but was not able to be patched before retail.

[Redash]

Woot

[TBS]

Redash: cut the spam.

[Hirmetrium]

you forget the toehr element of balance - the game type. its easy to balance a 1v1 game only, because no one will ever combine units in large quantities, but in team you can have a chance to go so far up the tech tree and build REALLy powerful units that it can become imbalanced. the same details of 1v1 quail in comparason to a 4v4. marine packs will trash anything, which is why dark reavers are so effective - to balance in team, but in 1v1 where your facing 1/2 squards of marines they could stand as an imbalanced unit.

IMO DoW is a game geared highly for 2v2+, but its widely playable in solo(NAT problems, CPU foes etc).

think of frost wyrms in war 3. effective in team(where mass>them), but considerably imbalanced for 1v1. ofc there are counters, but nothing hardcore that can stop its power and cold attack in solo.

im prob talking bullshit, but you can see what im getting at :P

[Takalth]

Another interesting balance issue is the question of what skill level you want to balance the game at. For example, say Chaos Lord and farseer started at the same cost:

Noobs will clash in a physical combat that shows that the chaos lord is a heck of a lot better than the farseer, thus, the Chaos Lord is overpowered.

More experienced player will fire off a couple spells, then the two heroes will clash, and the chaos lord will end up getting more done. Chaos Lord is overpowered.

Ultra-skilled players will be turning fleet of foot on and off, disrupting enemy troops, placing spells perfectly, and using fleet of foot to keep their units in minimal close combat with the chaos lord, an option that the chaos player doesn't have. Therefore, Farseer is overpowered.

When you start analyzing this on a multi-unit level, the way that skill plays into the balance can be immense. The fact is, not every unit requires equal amount of skill to be used to its full effect, and if you balance at the highest skill level, the majority of your players suffer from an imbalance. If you balance at a medium skill level, expect a few units to be completely unstoppable in the hands of masters.

This doesn't explain a few obvious imbalances like the defiler, but it is a difficult issue to deal with.

[Gale_Force15]

Well said Talkath. Some people don't seem to be able to realize that some "IMBA" incidents are really just a good player on the other end.

[Demonhorde]

Takalth: hit the hammer on the nail. It's extremly hard t ofigure out how units will behave in the hands of peopel who use them with complex strategys. Some people just rush with mass units and leave them standing. Others do hit and runs etc. Added on that are the tab keys t oactivate effects like grenades etc in timley fashion. So like he said its extemly hard t ounderstand how diff players use the game dynamics. And how the end result will be.

[Inst]

they haven't changed balance in a long while. Mostly bug hunting, + starcraft ladder is haxx0red to the max.

Some issues that need to be fixed:

Ghosts are nearly useless against Zerg. Nuke is very unreliable. Lockdown should come with a passive upgrade to Ghosts, in order to encourage Terrans to employ the lockdown upgrade.

EMP is very weak against Zerg and Terran, since most of the time there are better ways to negate casters.

Carriers are very weak unless massed, and in that situation, mass scouts would probably do the job better and for less.

Scout ground attack is pathetic. Needs to be buffed to at least 10 damage. A more interesting solution would be to lower the damage to 4 or 5, then change it to 3 hits(matching the graphics and the sound).

Zerg can't use Ultralisks because of broodling ownage. Would be nice for broodlings to be changed to 190 damage + spawns instead of insta kill.

[General Blaze]

And there you have it. Living proof that no matter what you do or how long you patch a game, you're not going to please everyone.

[ConanBuddah]

Game developers know their games aren't probably ever going to be balanced perfectly..

Relic is no exception.

But relic is doing its best to balance the game and you can't ask for more than that!

[First And Only]

The answer to why RTS games are never super balanced (without having tons of cash and tons of time) is because of all of the above reasons you guys mentioned and some more.

Firstly, the concept of 'game balance,' while as clear as day to you and I, is actually a foreign concept to a large amount of the game industry. There are a lot of higher ups in the industry who don't quite understand what game balance is. Often we are mistaken as QA testers. In the video game industry, game balance sometimes isn't taken as seriously as it should be.

We all know balance is something that can make or break an RTS, but the higher ups in video game companies, especially those who make the financial decisions, don't know this.

Because of this, not much time or budget is put into game balance for any game. Game balance is just not respected enough yet.

What further hurts the game balance process, is that there are no credentials that will tell a company that you are good at game balance. It's really all about critical thinking, experience, and talent. Unfortunately the only way you can really know if someone is good or bad at balancing a game, is after they've already started working for long enough.

Due to the high risk involved, less money is obviously allocated to balance teams in game companies.

Another major reason game balance is the worst in the RTS genre is just because of the sheer compelxity of the genre. An RTS game by default will be far more difficult to balance than any FPS or action game.

Yet another important factor is that before release, the game undergoes many many many changes. Imagine trying to balance an RTS without tech trees. All of a sudden we have tech trees now. Ok now the tech trees are totally different. Ok now every race gets this many starting units. Now these maps are totally different. etc

It's not like the balance team of any game gets to play the release version of the game for months before release. The team really gets less time in reality due to the nature of how much a game changes over development.


**************
And the biggest reason no RTS is super balanced when it hits release is due to math and statistics. A balance team is a small sample size, playing X amount of games for Y amount of time against Z amount of players. This is always a statistically small enough sample such that you can easily miss a lot of things. No company in the world has the resources to afford a super duper sized balance team.

Open betas are a means to help alleviate this, but in the end the time constraint gets in the way and thus doesn't compeltely solve the problem.

The best an ycompany can do is to be look out for people who are as good balance testers as they can be, and hope they get enough money from their publisher or profits to support the game further.

But in the end, if you're not sitting on a mountain of cash, you're not going to be able to get it perfect.


Relic is actually pretty good though. The designers take game balance pretty seriously and are very helpful, it's just the money and time issues that get in the way, as it does with everything in any industry.

[General Blaze]

Most helpful post ever, First and only.

You should get something special just for that post.

(no, i'm not being sarcastic. i'm serious.)

[Boomstar]

Yeah good post there FaO.

Er I got not much to say .

[Andaius]

Yes very good post First and Only.

Off topic: I just tried out the "stat" bar sig and is it normal that some of my posted appear to not have sigs anymore and other do?

[ÜberJumper]

First and Only pretty well nailed it... although I would point out that RTS games are pretty small (generally) market wise. Certainly there are "Big" titles, but even the biggest titles still are being patched years later. Even less incentive for developers to patch the game.

Eventually someone will come up with a system that balances things on the fly (or at least before the start of every game). For example, all the unit's stats will be downloaded as you log into an online service. Would make it easier to test balance changes without rolling out a full blown patch (something which often takes a lot of time and money). Yet you could still have the default unit values handy for the single player (or skirmish) campaign.

That's another thing which must be carefully considered for this type of game... how the balance changes effect the Single Player campaign. Is the AI coded to expect certain values for its units? I think Relic's moved past that, but that might have been a consideration in the past.

So maybe one day, we'll have the default, shipped balance for units, and the online/competitive balance stored seperately.

Andaius:

Your signature will show once per page in a thread.

[Takalth]

Interesting thought, kind of like tons of tiny patches. I would definitely want a changeLog every time they played with my settings, and I would like to see a major patch every time it was more than a tiny number change (such as the 1.4 change in stormboyz armor type).

It would be frustrating in ways, but it would also be cool because you would have to improvise your strategy a lot more instead of finding the perfect rushing formula and the exact time to build or upgrade listening posts formula (as you see a lot in current games).

[General Blaze]

Problem is not everyone knows/cares about said problems First & Only described, especially the consumers themselves. The truth is, they shouldn't get worked up about it and what really matters is their enjoyment of their purchase. However, the way the industry works currently, it's becoming increasingly harder to satisfy the crowd and even if your game is very well balanced right out of the box, if it doesn't sell well, you're out of the game. Uber's idea sounds like a novel one though. I for one would love to see it in action.