The joy of being unbalanced
November 20, 2014 2:42 PM Subscribe
Common sense dictates that video games should be balanced. Of course they should be! Why wouldn't they? Well, it turns out there are actually some pretty cool things that can happen when a game isn't balanced. - The Unbalanced Design of Super Smash Brothers
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble
Wish this article would go further in-depth as to WHY character rankings moved around as much as they did. It's implied that players' use of these characters shifted over time, but how/why?
posted by raihan_ at 2:54 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by raihan_ at 2:54 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
I guess there's sort of an interesting philosophical point about deep problem spaces that persist versus a series of such spaces. Even if each element of the series is as complex as the static one, players will converge to the slowest evolving kernel.
And as the other point of the FPP goes, balancing is in some sense about removing complexity. A coin flip is as balanced as it gets, after all. Or more directly analogous, rock paper scissors.
posted by PMdixon at 2:57 PM on November 20, 2014 [3 favorites]
And as the other point of the FPP goes, balancing is in some sense about removing complexity. A coin flip is as balanced as it gets, after all. Or more directly analogous, rock paper scissors.
posted by PMdixon at 2:57 PM on November 20, 2014 [3 favorites]
This is actually one of the major design philosophy differences between DOTA2 and LOL.
LOL creates a fair game by creating balanced champions. Frequent tweaks, about once a month aiming to keep all champions within a range of baseline power values ensures every one is competitive.
DOTA2 creates a fair game by creating unbalanced heroes. If everyone is overpowered in their own way, then no one can claim the game is unfair. Icefrog releases a balance patch every 6 months or so.
Ultimately it's about which one leads to a more fun and dynamic game, and often times people are surprised when fair does not necessarily mean fun. I certainly find deeply unbalanced games to be the most fun - for example Dawn of War 2 on release and for the first 6 months where stuff was just crazy, then they "balanced" things down the line bringing the various units and roles into parity with each other and everything became boring.
(Historically, LOL has to follow this design model because players grind / pay money to unlock champions, so the perception that one champion was too strong would harm the game a lot - they could repeatedly lose to a "strong" champion they don't have access to and get frustrated. In DOTA2, where all heroes are free to play, if a hero is perceived to be too strong the advice is "well go play it" and then you when you play it, you will find you're beaten by enemies who understand how to counter it, then you can learn from that experience yourself)
posted by xdvesper at 2:58 PM on November 20, 2014 [9 favorites]
LOL creates a fair game by creating balanced champions. Frequent tweaks, about once a month aiming to keep all champions within a range of baseline power values ensures every one is competitive.
DOTA2 creates a fair game by creating unbalanced heroes. If everyone is overpowered in their own way, then no one can claim the game is unfair. Icefrog releases a balance patch every 6 months or so.
Ultimately it's about which one leads to a more fun and dynamic game, and often times people are surprised when fair does not necessarily mean fun. I certainly find deeply unbalanced games to be the most fun - for example Dawn of War 2 on release and for the first 6 months where stuff was just crazy, then they "balanced" things down the line bringing the various units and roles into parity with each other and everything became boring.
(Historically, LOL has to follow this design model because players grind / pay money to unlock champions, so the perception that one champion was too strong would harm the game a lot - they could repeatedly lose to a "strong" champion they don't have access to and get frustrated. In DOTA2, where all heroes are free to play, if a hero is perceived to be too strong the advice is "well go play it" and then you when you play it, you will find you're beaten by enemies who understand how to counter it, then you can learn from that experience yourself)
posted by xdvesper at 2:58 PM on November 20, 2014 [9 favorites]
Can someone tell me what "ranking" means? Does it mean how often someone playing that character wins a game?
posted by small_ruminant
In games with multiple characters there are "tier lists" or "rankings" which are the generally agreed upon power levels of characters based on their performance in tournaments or just general perception. Think of it as stack rankings in Microsoft, where people are ranked relative to each other, not on an absolute basis. In the graph, Sheik is ranked #1 until 2006 when Fox overtook her.
Wish this article would go further in-depth as to WHY character rankings moved around as much as they did. It's implied that players' use of these characters shifted over time, but how/why?
posted by raihan_ at 2:54 PM
From my experience in other related games, some things like
1) Unknown techniques may arise months or years later. For example, maybe it took a year for someone to figure out you could chain two abilities together in a certain fashion for a character: as more and more people figure out how to use it effectively, its power ranking could go up. In an opposite fashion, people could discover how to counter a previously strong character, so its ranking could go down.
2) It's an ecosystem, so everything is interlinked since rankings are relative. Say after the above happens, character A becomes more powerful after certain techniques are learned and his rank goes up from 10 to 5 and gets played a whole lot more. If another character B happens to be a counter to character A, and was rank 20 previously - this indirectly makes character B more powerful, and his ranking may move upwards from rank 20 to rank 15. Stuff like this is is extremely complex and I would liken it to trying to do a post-hoc analysis of trends in stock markets - you can try create a narrative of "well there was a weakness in the China numbers which lead to A and B falling and bla bla" but really, who knows. It's all investor sentiment in the end.
posted by xdvesper at 3:11 PM on November 20, 2014 [7 favorites]
posted by small_ruminant
In games with multiple characters there are "tier lists" or "rankings" which are the generally agreed upon power levels of characters based on their performance in tournaments or just general perception. Think of it as stack rankings in Microsoft, where people are ranked relative to each other, not on an absolute basis. In the graph, Sheik is ranked #1 until 2006 when Fox overtook her.
Wish this article would go further in-depth as to WHY character rankings moved around as much as they did. It's implied that players' use of these characters shifted over time, but how/why?
posted by raihan_ at 2:54 PM
From my experience in other related games, some things like
1) Unknown techniques may arise months or years later. For example, maybe it took a year for someone to figure out you could chain two abilities together in a certain fashion for a character: as more and more people figure out how to use it effectively, its power ranking could go up. In an opposite fashion, people could discover how to counter a previously strong character, so its ranking could go down.
2) It's an ecosystem, so everything is interlinked since rankings are relative. Say after the above happens, character A becomes more powerful after certain techniques are learned and his rank goes up from 10 to 5 and gets played a whole lot more. If another character B happens to be a counter to character A, and was rank 20 previously - this indirectly makes character B more powerful, and his ranking may move upwards from rank 20 to rank 15. Stuff like this is is extremely complex and I would liken it to trying to do a post-hoc analysis of trends in stock markets - you can try create a narrative of "well there was a weakness in the China numbers which lead to A and B falling and bla bla" but really, who knows. It's all investor sentiment in the end.
posted by xdvesper at 3:11 PM on November 20, 2014 [7 favorites]
Wish this article would go further in-depth as to WHY character rankings moved around as much as they did. It's implied that players' use of these characters shifted over time, but how/why?
I watched this Smash Bros documentary (previously on the blue), which addresses this point somewhat (and it's long enough that it addresses just about everything. In the documentary, one of the tournament players started using Jigglypuff -- who is weak and light, but can float forever -- so successfully. This was largely because the previously-considered "good" characters could not address Jigglypuff's specific strength. This is what is referred to as metagame, which is how gaming strategy must adapt to the way the game is actively being played by successful players.
posted by joan cusack the second at 3:14 PM on November 20, 2014 [17 favorites]
I watched this Smash Bros documentary (previously on the blue), which addresses this point somewhat (and it's long enough that it addresses just about everything. In the documentary, one of the tournament players started using Jigglypuff -- who is weak and light, but can float forever -- so successfully. This was largely because the previously-considered "good" characters could not address Jigglypuff's specific strength. This is what is referred to as metagame, which is how gaming strategy must adapt to the way the game is actively being played by successful players.
posted by joan cusack the second at 3:14 PM on November 20, 2014 [17 favorites]
DOTA2 creates a fair game by creating unbalanced heroes. If everyone is overpowered in their own way, then no one can claim the game is unfair.
That's not really what we mean when we say "unbalanced", though. An unbalanced game is one in which one choice is the best choice under all or at least almost all circumstances. If A beats B beats C beats A that's not unbalanced even if they all have different crazy-powerful abilities (whether those are abilities in a fighting game, 4x Civ type game, or an RPG). It's only unbalanced if A beats both B and C (And D, E, F, and G usually).
For example, a recurring problem with the Civilization series is that Firaxis appears unable to learn from the past and the Civ games since Civ II generally start out with the ICS strategy being unbalanced; it was provably the optimum strategy in Civ II. It was provably the optimum strategy in vanilla Civ V, though later patches and expansions changed that. It is provably the optimum strategy in Civ:BE though I expect patches and expansions to change that.
That's unbalanced; when one strategy or choice is always the best one and nothing anyone else does can change that.
posted by Justinian at 3:17 PM on November 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
That's not really what we mean when we say "unbalanced", though. An unbalanced game is one in which one choice is the best choice under all or at least almost all circumstances. If A beats B beats C beats A that's not unbalanced even if they all have different crazy-powerful abilities (whether those are abilities in a fighting game, 4x Civ type game, or an RPG). It's only unbalanced if A beats both B and C (And D, E, F, and G usually).
For example, a recurring problem with the Civilization series is that Firaxis appears unable to learn from the past and the Civ games since Civ II generally start out with the ICS strategy being unbalanced; it was provably the optimum strategy in Civ II. It was provably the optimum strategy in vanilla Civ V, though later patches and expansions changed that. It is provably the optimum strategy in Civ:BE though I expect patches and expansions to change that.
That's unbalanced; when one strategy or choice is always the best one and nothing anyone else does can change that.
posted by Justinian at 3:17 PM on November 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
That's an interesting article, even for someone who only played Smash64. I've come to realize something similar with regards to the single player games of the Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind was shipped broken. Once you know the system, it's possible to become a God within about 20 minutes of gameplay (probably even quicker, since the speed run for the game without tool assistance is like, seven minutes or something).
However, for the new player you're probably going to spend a few hours with your first abortive character fumbling around, not knowing what to do. When you finally put all the pieces together and bend the game over your knee, that's really satisfying.
Oblivion's design team set out to "fix" this problem by making sure that enemies were constantly leveling, with pretty disastrous results. Instead of having the satisfaction of breaking the game you instead are always being matched by the RNG (well, it's still possible to break, but it's different than in Morrowind).
I have to admit that it's impossible to separate my first experiences with Morrowind and the fact that I was 18 and had much more spare time. General audiences don't want that frustrating first four hours where they're learning an arcane system - they want play-ability out of the box, even if that means sacrificing the high-level metagame that likely only appeals to 10% or less of total players.
posted by codacorolla at 3:20 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
However, for the new player you're probably going to spend a few hours with your first abortive character fumbling around, not knowing what to do. When you finally put all the pieces together and bend the game over your knee, that's really satisfying.
Oblivion's design team set out to "fix" this problem by making sure that enemies were constantly leveling, with pretty disastrous results. Instead of having the satisfaction of breaking the game you instead are always being matched by the RNG (well, it's still possible to break, but it's different than in Morrowind).
I have to admit that it's impossible to separate my first experiences with Morrowind and the fact that I was 18 and had much more spare time. General audiences don't want that frustrating first four hours where they're learning an arcane system - they want play-ability out of the box, even if that means sacrificing the high-level metagame that likely only appeals to 10% or less of total players.
posted by codacorolla at 3:20 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
hey so know i know why my friend's young cousin glared at me when i kept picking Meta Knight at the smashgiving party
sorry brandon, i didn't know i was cheap yo i just thought i was really good at the game
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:21 PM on November 20, 2014 [7 favorites]
sorry brandon, i didn't know i was cheap yo i just thought i was really good at the game
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:21 PM on November 20, 2014 [7 favorites]
Falco is my SSBM guy. That down-A-air tho.
Everyone knows Super Smash Bros for Wii U drops at midnight tonight, right?
posted by wikipedia brown boy detective at 3:21 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Everyone knows Super Smash Bros for Wii U drops at midnight tonight, right?
posted by wikipedia brown boy detective at 3:21 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Can someone tell me what "ranking" means? Does it mean how often someone playing that character wins a game?
Wish this article would go further in-depth as to WHY character rankings moved around as much as they did. It's implied that players' use of these characters shifted over time, but how/why?
The rankings are based on tier lists made by the players throughout the life of the game, so it's based on players perceptions of how good each character is. I wish it explained better where the tier lists used for the chart came from, but it sounds like it only used tier lists made by high level tournament players.
The rankings change because the "meta game" changes as people play more and learn more about the game and how to compete more effectively. New "tech" and strategies are discovered with characters that can make them better or worse.
A good example is Ice Climbers who was generally seen as a poor character until someone discovered they had an infinite(a loop where an attack or series of attacks the characters set them up to hit the opponent with the same attack or series of attacks again, so once the opponent gets hit they can't do anything until they die or person doing the infinite makes a mistake) and made a dramatic rise in the tier list. Most characters don't have anything as dramatic as an infinite being discovered, but smaller gameplay discoveries can move a character up or down over time.
Another thing that can move a character up or down is match ups. Certain characters will often do particularly well against other characters, even if those other characters are higher up on the tier list. For example a Pikachu player might always have a strong chance at beating some using Fox, even though Fox is much higher on the tier list. If Pikachu moves up the tier list or just becomes more popular on the tournament circuit that'll make Fox's ranking go down, even though Fox didn't actually change
posted by zodballs at 3:22 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Wish this article would go further in-depth as to WHY character rankings moved around as much as they did. It's implied that players' use of these characters shifted over time, but how/why?
The rankings are based on tier lists made by the players throughout the life of the game, so it's based on players perceptions of how good each character is. I wish it explained better where the tier lists used for the chart came from, but it sounds like it only used tier lists made by high level tournament players.
The rankings change because the "meta game" changes as people play more and learn more about the game and how to compete more effectively. New "tech" and strategies are discovered with characters that can make them better or worse.
A good example is Ice Climbers who was generally seen as a poor character until someone discovered they had an infinite(a loop where an attack or series of attacks the characters set them up to hit the opponent with the same attack or series of attacks again, so once the opponent gets hit they can't do anything until they die or person doing the infinite makes a mistake) and made a dramatic rise in the tier list. Most characters don't have anything as dramatic as an infinite being discovered, but smaller gameplay discoveries can move a character up or down over time.
Another thing that can move a character up or down is match ups. Certain characters will often do particularly well against other characters, even if those other characters are higher up on the tier list. For example a Pikachu player might always have a strong chance at beating some using Fox, even though Fox is much higher on the tier list. If Pikachu moves up the tier list or just becomes more popular on the tournament circuit that'll make Fox's ranking go down, even though Fox didn't actually change
posted by zodballs at 3:22 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Also the Ice Climbers are, like, completely adorable.
I wish I had 7 friends for 8 player SSMB Wii U
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:25 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
I wish I had 7 friends for 8 player SSMB Wii U
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:25 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
TFC and TF2 are my go-to examples for this. TFC was unsophisticated, unbalanced, and extremely long-lived as a competitive game with a high skill ceiling. TF2 was relentlessly balanced and polished. Its competitive scene was practically dead within two years of its release.
posted by sonic meat machine at 3:30 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by sonic meat machine at 3:30 PM on November 20, 2014
The characters are tweaked between versions, and there are a few that stick out, but mostly the characters at the top of the charts are all "fast". Their moves are performed with less lag. All of their actions have smaller delta-T, and their hit-boxes are thin/small. Also, a big part of this game depends on recovery from off-stage, where the bounds of the "arena" are an instant death. Characters with good movement techniques that can save them from these deaths are an advantage on stages with those extra hazards.
Some mid tier guys are there because despite their disadvantages, they have very good utility moves for defence or escape. The big uptick for Jigglypuff was around the time players discovered and exploited "juggling" where a sufficiently-damaged opponent could be kept airborne at will. Also, Jigglypuff floats, and paired with an instant KO technique, players who had the sense of her timing were pretty powerful.
And then the low tier are stuck because of unwieldy controls or ineffective defence. Bowser is permanently in the dumpster because he only offers short-range power, and he is physically so large that it is easy to hit him.
However, no one actually cares that Bowser will never be played at high levels because there is an understanding that he does not possess the proper qualities needed to respond to his counter-picks.
What I think that is that the low-tier characters present an unspoken, built-in handicap mechanism for players who wish to compete against family members or friends who play at a lower level. This clever style is also augmented by a handicapping system built into the game that increases the likelihood of winning strikes against the experienced player. So this two tier system says "here, let me give you a bit of an advantage so we're even" explicitly but also allows the player to further match the skill level of her opponent.
That, and it is sometimes a good "okay-time-to-quit" round with Max-damage-all-items-garbage-tier-super-gravity.
posted by Khazk at 3:37 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
Some mid tier guys are there because despite their disadvantages, they have very good utility moves for defence or escape. The big uptick for Jigglypuff was around the time players discovered and exploited "juggling" where a sufficiently-damaged opponent could be kept airborne at will. Also, Jigglypuff floats, and paired with an instant KO technique, players who had the sense of her timing were pretty powerful.
And then the low tier are stuck because of unwieldy controls or ineffective defence. Bowser is permanently in the dumpster because he only offers short-range power, and he is physically so large that it is easy to hit him.
However, no one actually cares that Bowser will never be played at high levels because there is an understanding that he does not possess the proper qualities needed to respond to his counter-picks.
What I think that is that the low-tier characters present an unspoken, built-in handicap mechanism for players who wish to compete against family members or friends who play at a lower level. This clever style is also augmented by a handicapping system built into the game that increases the likelihood of winning strikes against the experienced player. So this two tier system says "here, let me give you a bit of an advantage so we're even" explicitly but also allows the player to further match the skill level of her opponent.
That, and it is sometimes a good "okay-time-to-quit" round with Max-damage-all-items-garbage-tier-super-gravity.
posted by Khazk at 3:37 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
The data and the text don't match.
Look at the horizontal time axis of the graphs...they're non-linear. The first half of the axis spans about 1.5 years, and the next half spans almost nine years. And yet the author treats the data as if it's linearly distributed.
"Ice Climbers. For whatever reason it took almost half a decade for the Ice Climbers to be discovered. They actually went down for five years before they surged high and fast."
Ice climbers start their rise one year into the graph, not almost half a decade.
"For three years no one truly understood Captain Falcon. Once he moved up he stayed there for the duration."
Again, the data shows Falcon at the top of its rise one year into the graph.
posted by rocket88 at 3:40 PM on November 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
Look at the horizontal time axis of the graphs...they're non-linear. The first half of the axis spans about 1.5 years, and the next half spans almost nine years. And yet the author treats the data as if it's linearly distributed.
"Ice Climbers. For whatever reason it took almost half a decade for the Ice Climbers to be discovered. They actually went down for five years before they surged high and fast."
Ice climbers start their rise one year into the graph, not almost half a decade.
"For three years no one truly understood Captain Falcon. Once he moved up he stayed there for the duration."
Again, the data shows Falcon at the top of its rise one year into the graph.
posted by rocket88 at 3:40 PM on November 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
Star Control 2 melee is a good example of having your cake and eating it too in this regard, I think - the individual ships are wildly unbalanced but you can construct fleets that are overall quite balanced (and also handicap players of different skill).
posted by en forme de poire at 3:54 PM on November 20, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by en forme de poire at 3:54 PM on November 20, 2014 [3 favorites]
I don't know anything about this game, so I may have misunderstood how the term "balanced" is being used. But the author suggested that there was a value in Smash Brothers being unbalanced, and that the lack of balance was the quality that allowed exploration of characters and their shifting in the rankings.
But it seems as least as likely (and maybe more likely) to me that Smash Brothers was not really unbalanced but that players perceived a lack of balance that wasn't really there. He suggests pretty explicitly that the "balancing" some publishers do is based on immediate perceptions of the characters' strength and weaknesses, which might well be inaccurate.
In the example zodball gives, most players would at one point have pointed to the weakness of the Ice Climbers as proof that Smash Brothers was unbalanced, when if the Ice Climbers were actually among the strongest characters in the game.
How much data would you have to get before you could accurately report where all/some/most of the 26 characters were well-balanced or not?
posted by layceepee at 4:17 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
But it seems as least as likely (and maybe more likely) to me that Smash Brothers was not really unbalanced but that players perceived a lack of balance that wasn't really there. He suggests pretty explicitly that the "balancing" some publishers do is based on immediate perceptions of the characters' strength and weaknesses, which might well be inaccurate.
In the example zodball gives, most players would at one point have pointed to the weakness of the Ice Climbers as proof that Smash Brothers was unbalanced, when if the Ice Climbers were actually among the strongest characters in the game.
How much data would you have to get before you could accurately report where all/some/most of the 26 characters were well-balanced or not?
posted by layceepee at 4:17 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
A coin flip is as balanced as it gets, after all. Or more directly analogous, rock paper scissors.
Nonsense. Rock is totally OP. The statistics prove it: Out of the last 200 pro games in the Upper Mid-West league, 73 of them were won with rock. That's substantially more than random chance would give you, by several percent. Plus, I used to be a paper player, opening with it almost every time. When I switched to a rock-based strategy, I easily won the first three games in a row. Playing rock just requires less skill, you don't have to move your fingers as much. I mean the game is pretty good but this blatant imbalance is just unfair.
posted by sfenders at 4:28 PM on November 20, 2014 [12 favorites]
Nonsense. Rock is totally OP. The statistics prove it: Out of the last 200 pro games in the Upper Mid-West league, 73 of them were won with rock. That's substantially more than random chance would give you, by several percent. Plus, I used to be a paper player, opening with it almost every time. When I switched to a rock-based strategy, I easily won the first three games in a row. Playing rock just requires less skill, you don't have to move your fingers as much. I mean the game is pretty good but this blatant imbalance is just unfair.
posted by sfenders at 4:28 PM on November 20, 2014 [12 favorites]
en forme de poire: Star Control 2 melee is a good example of having your cake and eating it too in this regard, I think - the individual ships are wildly unbalanced but you can construct fleets that are overall quite balanced (and also handicap players of different skill).
I dunno, it takes a bunch of metagaming rules to make matches reasonable at all. No torches, no pillboxing, no using a bunch of the same ship... Plus, there are several matchups (mostly against the Avatar) where one player has absolutely no chance at all, which sucks.
posted by Mitrovarr at 4:39 PM on November 20, 2014
I dunno, it takes a bunch of metagaming rules to make matches reasonable at all. No torches, no pillboxing, no using a bunch of the same ship... Plus, there are several matchups (mostly against the Avatar) where one player has absolutely no chance at all, which sucks.
posted by Mitrovarr at 4:39 PM on November 20, 2014
why must it be rubbed in my face that Smash Bros. isn't out here in Japan for another two weeks
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:55 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:55 PM on November 20, 2014
Aw man, I always played Kirby. No wonder I was always so terrible at this game.
posted by dialetheia at 4:58 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by dialetheia at 4:58 PM on November 20, 2014
Smash Brothers has only one of which is winning. The other one is just having fun, and Kirby wins that every time.
But not as much as Jigglypuff.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:02 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
But not as much as Jigglypuff.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:02 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
The deep imbalance in Diplomacy is a big feature of the game. Yeah, sure, Russia wins a really outsized share of the games, and the Ottomans pretty much never win. But you get mad, mad props for winning as the Ottomans, and a Russian victory isn't much to write home about.
I figure that you could 'rebalance' some of these online tournaments by introducing a point system which rewards wins based on how 'hard' the characters using data in the actual ecosystem. It preserves the imbalance in the actual play, while correcting the imbalance in the game stats. You could be a high-ranked, awesome player by winning with Mew Too once in a while, against other good players...
posted by kaibutsu at 5:05 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
I figure that you could 'rebalance' some of these online tournaments by introducing a point system which rewards wins based on how 'hard' the characters using data in the actual ecosystem. It preserves the imbalance in the actual play, while correcting the imbalance in the game stats. You could be a high-ranked, awesome player by winning with Mew Too once in a while, against other good players...
posted by kaibutsu at 5:05 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
I find it impossible to consider ranked Diplomacy because after 3 games a player would have irrevocably broken relations with the entire ladder.
Kirby was one of the strongest characters in 64, which I played a lot of. And the entire purpose of Jigglypuff (other than 50% of high-level play) is landing a rest on an opponent.
I used to play a lot of LoL. It was a bad sign whenever a character became extremely popular, because they would inevitably nerf the character to the point that it could not sustain popularity; i.e. a competitively unusable state. That, in combination with the relatively small number of effects/power that they "allow," makes it fairly stable as a competitive and party game, but not as interesting for allowing unique plays. It sorta reminds me of Smash Bros for 3DS, because they've actually been applying patches fairly regularly; if you want to play online, you need to have the patch installed. I assume they'll do the same for the Wii version.
posted by halifix at 5:23 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Kirby was one of the strongest characters in 64, which I played a lot of. And the entire purpose of Jigglypuff (other than 50% of high-level play) is landing a rest on an opponent.
I used to play a lot of LoL. It was a bad sign whenever a character became extremely popular, because they would inevitably nerf the character to the point that it could not sustain popularity; i.e. a competitively unusable state. That, in combination with the relatively small number of effects/power that they "allow," makes it fairly stable as a competitive and party game, but not as interesting for allowing unique plays. It sorta reminds me of Smash Bros for 3DS, because they've actually been applying patches fairly regularly; if you want to play online, you need to have the patch installed. I assume they'll do the same for the Wii version.
posted by halifix at 5:23 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
>TF2 was relentlessly balanced and polished. Its competitive scene was practically dead within two years of its release.
I don't know much about these things, but I wouldn't go looking too hard for a competitive scene in a game where you get to throw jars of pee at the other team.
posted by xbonesgt at 5:50 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
I don't know much about these things, but I wouldn't go looking too hard for a competitive scene in a game where you get to throw jars of pee at the other team.
posted by xbonesgt at 5:50 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Still in MST, but I think I've heard that TF2's competitive scene isn't dead? I've not really followed it though.
posted by JHarris at 6:00 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by JHarris at 6:00 PM on November 20, 2014
Jigglypuff. My favorite. The pink pokemon had a dismal ranking of #17 after the first year. Her rise began after a few years and peaked at a shocking #3 in year 8. It's an inspirational tale that brings a tear to my eye.
[...]
Mew Two. My second favorite tale. An absolute basement dweller for almost, well, forever. Considered the absolute worst character in the game on two separate occassions. After 6 years of misery his ranking grew as high as #17.
Congrats, Mew Two, on your triumphant rise from miserable to dismal.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:08 PM on November 20, 2014
[...]
Mew Two. My second favorite tale. An absolute basement dweller for almost, well, forever. Considered the absolute worst character in the game on two separate occassions. After 6 years of misery his ranking grew as high as #17.
Congrats, Mew Two, on your triumphant rise from miserable to dismal.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:08 PM on November 20, 2014
Still in MST, but I think I've heard that TF2's competitive scene isn't dead? I've not really followed it though.
Well, I've just had a look around, and UGC actually seems to be relatively well-stocked with clans. Several reasonable-looking divisions, and so on. I could be mistaken about its overall vitality (although I and most other TFC players stopped playing very quickly). It's difficult to compare numbers; TFC had many leagues over its lifespan, and most leagues were 8v8 or 9v9 with occasional forays into 10v10 games (canalzon), so a single TFC clan might have three times as many members as a TF2 clan.
posted by sonic meat machine at 6:34 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Well, I've just had a look around, and UGC actually seems to be relatively well-stocked with clans. Several reasonable-looking divisions, and so on. I could be mistaken about its overall vitality (although I and most other TFC players stopped playing very quickly). It's difficult to compare numbers; TFC had many leagues over its lifespan, and most leagues were 8v8 or 9v9 with occasional forays into 10v10 games (canalzon), so a single TFC clan might have three times as many members as a TF2 clan.
posted by sonic meat machine at 6:34 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
This article was pretty disappointing, but maybe that's because my expectations were too high XD. I used to play this alllll the time with my brother and his friends, who while not tournament quality were pretty decent (unlike me). Falco was my go-to character so I'm feeling pretty validated rn.
posted by subdee at 6:35 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by subdee at 6:35 PM on November 20, 2014
Another advantage of some characters might be the way they pair up? For instance, Fox and Falco have similar sets of moves, so once you get used to playing as one it might be easier to switch to playing as the other one.
posted by subdee at 6:37 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by subdee at 6:37 PM on November 20, 2014
Plus, there are several matchups (mostly against the Avatar) where one player has absolutely no chance at all, which sucks.
In those matchups the goal is just to do as much damage as possible. I KILLED YOUR BEES.
You're right though it takes some agreements to maximize fun. Or rules were no duplicate ships and your next ship was always random. Winning the fleet battle wasn't really the goal, it was just a matchup generator for us that forced you to play some bad ships. We never quite had an agreement about the Spathi; I think StarCon needed some kind of clock where if there's no damage over some amount of time both ships are destroyed, or something.
posted by fleacircus at 7:20 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
In those matchups the goal is just to do as much damage as possible. I KILLED YOUR BEES.
You're right though it takes some agreements to maximize fun. Or rules were no duplicate ships and your next ship was always random. Winning the fleet battle wasn't really the goal, it was just a matchup generator for us that forced you to play some bad ships. We never quite had an agreement about the Spathi; I think StarCon needed some kind of clock where if there's no damage over some amount of time both ships are destroyed, or something.
posted by fleacircus at 7:20 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it is really easy to get into a stalemate in SC2, I forgot about that. It doesn't really bother me that sometimes you need to spend several ships taking down the other team's powerhouse, though - I like that you can play a "long game" where you try and weaken the other ship knowing that you won't be able to defeat it that round. (And I remember the original SC1 teams as being pretty well balanced... but my memories may be tinted by nostalgia.)
posted by en forme de poire at 7:51 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by en forme de poire at 7:51 PM on November 20, 2014
Reminds me of Super Mario Bros 2 on original Nintendo, which lets you pick from four characters before each world (or individual level, can't remember). The conventional wisdom with my friends was "always pick the princess" because she had a huge advantage.
Mario is boring as hell, Luigi jumps super high but is ridiculous to control and slow at picking stuff up, Princess Peach can float for brief periods! All of my friends loved the princess as did I. She had the slowest "pick stuff up" performance (perhaps because she's a woman with a dress on and must be Modest I guess) but I soon realized that she made the game too easy much of the time, and because she was slow at combat but could float for a little bit, she was often used as an evasive character just skipping through the whole level (a la the "P wing" in SMB3 but not quite that easy).
Meanwhile you have Toad the mushroom. He has the shortest jump but the fastest "pick up time." The more quickly you pick things up (enemies, heavy objects, root vegetables used as projectiles [!], etc) the more combative you can be. Turns out Toad is a killing machine. He's harder to maneuver than anyone except Luigi, whose high jump ultimately is a curse because he sort of spasmodically flails about and sort of "hovers" in a parabolic way.
So Toad is a straight up bird murderer (birds are one among many possible foes) and it turns out he can collect the most "coins" which involve finding magic doors that turn all of the root vegetables in the visible area into buried coins. Because Toad can pick vegetables fast, he can dig up the coins and get all of them every time.
Those coins are then used to play slots between levels, earning extra lives. Hook up an NES Advantage joystick, turn on the turbo for your "b" button, and you'll win a life on every coin. Or maybe it was both buttons? And with that joystick you can harvest coins like a mofo simply by holding "b" and walking over them.
"Toad" the lowly mushroom owns the game. The Princess is still invaluable on difficult levels but I never found an area where the hovering skill was required, including secret warp zones and the like.
My next favorite examples are "ogre mages" in Warcraft 2 with the blood lust spell and the zerg and protoss on Starcraft.
oh and Chun Li in street fighter 2 circa 1992. Fast, can jump off walls, stomp your head from above, throw you in the air or ground, and how's about that wind kick. People always wanted me to play with anything but Chun Li. How about Dhalsim just to be sporting?
posted by aydeejones at 7:56 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
Mario is boring as hell, Luigi jumps super high but is ridiculous to control and slow at picking stuff up, Princess Peach can float for brief periods! All of my friends loved the princess as did I. She had the slowest "pick stuff up" performance (perhaps because she's a woman with a dress on and must be Modest I guess) but I soon realized that she made the game too easy much of the time, and because she was slow at combat but could float for a little bit, she was often used as an evasive character just skipping through the whole level (a la the "P wing" in SMB3 but not quite that easy).
Meanwhile you have Toad the mushroom. He has the shortest jump but the fastest "pick up time." The more quickly you pick things up (enemies, heavy objects, root vegetables used as projectiles [!], etc) the more combative you can be. Turns out Toad is a killing machine. He's harder to maneuver than anyone except Luigi, whose high jump ultimately is a curse because he sort of spasmodically flails about and sort of "hovers" in a parabolic way.
So Toad is a straight up bird murderer (birds are one among many possible foes) and it turns out he can collect the most "coins" which involve finding magic doors that turn all of the root vegetables in the visible area into buried coins. Because Toad can pick vegetables fast, he can dig up the coins and get all of them every time.
Those coins are then used to play slots between levels, earning extra lives. Hook up an NES Advantage joystick, turn on the turbo for your "b" button, and you'll win a life on every coin. Or maybe it was both buttons? And with that joystick you can harvest coins like a mofo simply by holding "b" and walking over them.
"Toad" the lowly mushroom owns the game. The Princess is still invaluable on difficult levels but I never found an area where the hovering skill was required, including secret warp zones and the like.
My next favorite examples are "ogre mages" in Warcraft 2 with the blood lust spell and the zerg and protoss on Starcraft.
oh and Chun Li in street fighter 2 circa 1992. Fast, can jump off walls, stomp your head from above, throw you in the air or ground, and how's about that wind kick. People always wanted me to play with anything but Chun Li. How about Dhalsim just to be sporting?
posted by aydeejones at 7:56 PM on November 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
The most fun I've had in games is when they are, not unbalanced, but asymmetric. Taking that weak, difficult to play character and working through the problems until they're really powerful.
There's something fantastic about games with deep skill development.
posted by underflow at 8:04 PM on November 20, 2014 [3 favorites]
There's something fantastic about games with deep skill development.
posted by underflow at 8:04 PM on November 20, 2014 [3 favorites]
I suspect that Starcraft was one of the first populate games where regular "re-balancing" tweaks were being made on a constant basis. If I recall, every race had unfair advantages and each one had its "time in the sun" before a re-balance patch was released. I.e. the Terrans (humans) had obscenely powerful "siege tanks" that would often end the game as soon as they were created, the Zerg had "zerglings" that spawned quickly from the very beginning of the game and allowed trolly-type players to win the game within a couple of minutes, albeit a very boring game. And then the Protoss zealouts (badass slow-generating characters) had a similar advantage if you made 2 of them ASAP, and don't get me started on those aircraft carriers...
posted by aydeejones at 8:05 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by aydeejones at 8:05 PM on November 20, 2014
underflow, I was going to say something similar too -- in the "Toad example" for Mario 2, the game is truly much harder to play. I think Luigi is ultimately the hardest character to play and is probably a secret overlord or awesomeness when you master him, but basically any choice besides the princess made for a very different, more difficult game. You chose to take more risks of dying with Toad, and in exchange could very much more quickly dispatch your foes in a brutal way, almost like this video except with vegetables. Meanwhile the Zergling rush removes any joy from Starcraft and the main skill is just figuring out where the other people are ASAP.
Chun Li was the sort of character though, in my opinion, that you could just mop people up with starting with a minimal amount of skill. She dominated the air, the perimeter of the stage, and in my experience was the best "charge forward and beat some ass with strong slaps, fierce punches and a throw to death" character. She had that crazy look in her eyes as you charged forward and threw somebody. Ahh...
posted by aydeejones at 8:09 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Chun Li was the sort of character though, in my opinion, that you could just mop people up with starting with a minimal amount of skill. She dominated the air, the perimeter of the stage, and in my experience was the best "charge forward and beat some ass with strong slaps, fierce punches and a throw to death" character. She had that crazy look in her eyes as you charged forward and threw somebody. Ahh...
posted by aydeejones at 8:09 PM on November 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
"Toad" the lowly mushroom owns the game.
Toad really was great once you got the hang of him. I used to love playing him in world 4, the ice world, because I was able to constantly run and dodge at top Toad speed, not stopping unless absolutely necessary, which was extremely fun in that bit where the Beezos are constantly flying in, or when nailing the timing on the whale water spout platforms... unfortunately, I recently learned that this skill did not become muscle memory, because I made some terribly embarrassing attempts at trying it again.
I always rotated through characters quite a bit, though, instead of just sticking with one. I'd played the game to death and I had certain characters for certain levels - differences in jump heights, speed and all that really started to "click" for playing certain levels smoothly if you played them enough. I think, if I remember correctly, it was Peach for level 1-1 (and always take the back entrance to the Birdo fight), Mario for 1-2, Luigi for 1-3, and then warp to 4-1 and use Toad for those levels, Mario for 5-1, Peach for 5-2, Luigi for 5-3 and then warp to 7-1 and finish out the game with Mario. Nobody really liked playing Mario in that game, it seems, but his middle-of-the-road handling worked really well for me and I always got the best Birdo fight timing with him. This warp path let you skip every boss except Fryguy and Wart, too.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:24 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Toad really was great once you got the hang of him. I used to love playing him in world 4, the ice world, because I was able to constantly run and dodge at top Toad speed, not stopping unless absolutely necessary, which was extremely fun in that bit where the Beezos are constantly flying in, or when nailing the timing on the whale water spout platforms... unfortunately, I recently learned that this skill did not become muscle memory, because I made some terribly embarrassing attempts at trying it again.
I always rotated through characters quite a bit, though, instead of just sticking with one. I'd played the game to death and I had certain characters for certain levels - differences in jump heights, speed and all that really started to "click" for playing certain levels smoothly if you played them enough. I think, if I remember correctly, it was Peach for level 1-1 (and always take the back entrance to the Birdo fight), Mario for 1-2, Luigi for 1-3, and then warp to 4-1 and use Toad for those levels, Mario for 5-1, Peach for 5-2, Luigi for 5-3 and then warp to 7-1 and finish out the game with Mario. Nobody really liked playing Mario in that game, it seems, but his middle-of-the-road handling worked really well for me and I always got the best Birdo fight timing with him. This warp path let you skip every boss except Fryguy and Wart, too.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:24 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
And to ramble on further, Street Fighter II was full of asymmetric characters for sure and I think all of my examples except for Warcraft and Starcraft were truly just asymmetric characters, where you could decide how easy and breezy you want the game to be, vs. learning and exhibiting a mastery that average folks choose to ignore but will admire when they watch you pick the weird character and whoop the ass.
Chun Li just kind of walked the line of "you don't need to know any special moves or develop too much skill, just charge forward and beat the ass, if all else fails in close quarters, button mash the kick buttons and end their lives with a blurry flurry of kicks."
Meanwhile you had Zangief, a lumbering oaf that you had to essentially dedicate your heart and soul to mastering if you felt like having the only character in the game that could deplete your health by 33% in a single move. He later on had combos that could take 60%+ of an enemy's life, but he was so easy to annihilate unless you were playing against a truly odd bird who had devoted the necessary time.
But Chun Li could deplete 25% of your health with a slap-around-throw combo, so why bother learning how to perform a 360° joystick motion with the precise timing while someone is trying to beat your ass except to show off that you mastered a difficult character?
Street Fighter went through various re-balancing (or re-shuffling the asymmetry) changes too through its various iterations. The Sumo Wrestler "E. Honda" had the "hundred hand slap" similar to Chun Li's "wind kick" that just required button mashing. In the Championship Edition, he could walk, slowly inching forward like a wood chipper coming downhill at you, while performing this attack. Chun Li later got the ability to shoot fireballs, which just seemed unnecessary, but am happy to use any tools available.
My friend who introduced me to SF2 (and I started on the Championship Edition) was thoroughly annoyed by my immediate affinity for Chun Li, and thought that this "hundred hand slap" was the antidote. Motherfuckin' E. Honda was like literally designed to be stomped and slapped around by Chun Li. As he's approaching you, flopping his hands around like a maniac, you can simply jump over his slow ass, stomp on his dome, stun him, and then flip around and kick him upside down in the motherfucking neck, and why not unleash the wind kick while you're at it.
But Chun Li did have a natural sort of finesse in that she was easy to utilize, but you had to be aggressive, and it just so happened that things you tried with her naturally tended to work fluidly, like "jump towards the enemy and kick them in the head or chest without getting annihilated because you're using a Kung Fu ass-whoopin' style" or "jump over them and hold the joystick down and kick downward into their skull."
posted by aydeejones at 8:26 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Chun Li just kind of walked the line of "you don't need to know any special moves or develop too much skill, just charge forward and beat the ass, if all else fails in close quarters, button mash the kick buttons and end their lives with a blurry flurry of kicks."
Meanwhile you had Zangief, a lumbering oaf that you had to essentially dedicate your heart and soul to mastering if you felt like having the only character in the game that could deplete your health by 33% in a single move. He later on had combos that could take 60%+ of an enemy's life, but he was so easy to annihilate unless you were playing against a truly odd bird who had devoted the necessary time.
But Chun Li could deplete 25% of your health with a slap-around-throw combo, so why bother learning how to perform a 360° joystick motion with the precise timing while someone is trying to beat your ass except to show off that you mastered a difficult character?
Street Fighter went through various re-balancing (or re-shuffling the asymmetry) changes too through its various iterations. The Sumo Wrestler "E. Honda" had the "hundred hand slap" similar to Chun Li's "wind kick" that just required button mashing. In the Championship Edition, he could walk, slowly inching forward like a wood chipper coming downhill at you, while performing this attack. Chun Li later got the ability to shoot fireballs, which just seemed unnecessary, but am happy to use any tools available.
My friend who introduced me to SF2 (and I started on the Championship Edition) was thoroughly annoyed by my immediate affinity for Chun Li, and thought that this "hundred hand slap" was the antidote. Motherfuckin' E. Honda was like literally designed to be stomped and slapped around by Chun Li. As he's approaching you, flopping his hands around like a maniac, you can simply jump over his slow ass, stomp on his dome, stun him, and then flip around and kick him upside down in the motherfucking neck, and why not unleash the wind kick while you're at it.
But Chun Li did have a natural sort of finesse in that she was easy to utilize, but you had to be aggressive, and it just so happened that things you tried with her naturally tended to work fluidly, like "jump towards the enemy and kick them in the head or chest without getting annihilated because you're using a Kung Fu ass-whoopin' style" or "jump over them and hold the joystick down and kick downward into their skull."
posted by aydeejones at 8:26 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
(I feel like a 'gater getting all aggro about the ass-whoopin' and using macho terms. Whoa. My inner 12 year old is emerging, which is not to say that all Gaters are 12, but that's when I got into "fighters" and first experienced being hustled in Mortal Kombat. I'll bow out after having acknowledged that I sounded pretty keyboard-commando there)
posted by aydeejones at 8:29 PM on November 20, 2014
posted by aydeejones at 8:29 PM on November 20, 2014
This all depends on your notion of balance, however. There's this famous video of gamers absolutely losing their minds when Daigo executes a perfect parry of each of Chun Li's superfast kicks, when he has zero health left playing as Ken, then proceeds to destroy her with a combo. There's some balance to be found in the combination of skill and the game containing the raw mechanics to allow a skilled player to do well against anyone.
I've never played SSB, but looking at the movement in the rankings leads me to believe that what you're seeing there is all metagame. A few characters have consistently sucked (or have not lined up with the most dominant/popular characters at any point in time), some have taken time to be discovered, and others move around in popularity in accordance to their fitness for fighting the other popular characters. If character A can be countered well by B, and lots of people play A, well a good start might be to learn to play B well, and people will figure this out, leading to an increase in B's popularity, until C (who's a good counter for B) catches on, etc.
posted by axiom at 8:36 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
I've never played SSB, but looking at the movement in the rankings leads me to believe that what you're seeing there is all metagame. A few characters have consistently sucked (or have not lined up with the most dominant/popular characters at any point in time), some have taken time to be discovered, and others move around in popularity in accordance to their fitness for fighting the other popular characters. If character A can be countered well by B, and lots of people play A, well a good start might be to learn to play B well, and people will figure this out, leading to an increase in B's popularity, until C (who's a good counter for B) catches on, etc.
posted by axiom at 8:36 PM on November 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
I think balance in a fighting game like SSB is a lot different from balance in a game like League. You're not just balancing individual characters' abilities in 1v1 duels; you're balancing overall strategies, which doesn't necessarily entail direct changes to different champions. Right now Riot is changing the jungle significantly because of the dominance of early-pressure type junglers last season, for example, and they're reworking the items that junglers buy, but they haven't meddled directly with junglers in any major way yet.
There's also the issue of balancing for both highly coordinated professional play and ranked solo queue (i.e. 5 poor bastards are matched up to make a team and play against 5 other poor bastards), which is less coordinated even at higher levels, making certain champions that would be easily shut down by a coordinated team very powerful.
A lot of Riot's changes are in the interest of just making the game more fun, too, not necessarily more balanced. There were a lot of changes aimed at making the support role more engaging to play before this past season.
posted by Gymnopedist at 11:37 PM on November 20, 2014
There's also the issue of balancing for both highly coordinated professional play and ranked solo queue (i.e. 5 poor bastards are matched up to make a team and play against 5 other poor bastards), which is less coordinated even at higher levels, making certain champions that would be easily shut down by a coordinated team very powerful.
A lot of Riot's changes are in the interest of just making the game more fun, too, not necessarily more balanced. There were a lot of changes aimed at making the support role more engaging to play before this past season.
posted by Gymnopedist at 11:37 PM on November 20, 2014
I don't think TF2 was ever designed to be balanced, although I'm not sure what that would even mean: presumably that each character has equal utility? But in that case, if you have a team of 5, would one expect 5 medics to beat 5 heavies?
One thing to remember about balance is that a game can be balanced, but at a high level. In SC2 there is a lot of effort in patching to make sure that all three sides win about an even amount each, but that's at high level. Many of the tricks that make factions balanced may not work for a poorer player. For instance, there are certain skills that a pro-player is expected to have (ability to use abilities effectively, and to move units well) that less experienced players may not. I found myself losing match ups as terrans against protoss that, if you looked at the numbers, I really should have won, or at least come out in even in. However, I lost because I don't have the skills to control my units.
SSB is similar, in that this tier list may not be meaningful for the people you play with. I know that I used to play Kirby all the time because I liked him, and did pretty well with it, and I had a friend who played Captain Falcon who was absolutely terrible.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 12:24 AM on November 21, 2014
One thing to remember about balance is that a game can be balanced, but at a high level. In SC2 there is a lot of effort in patching to make sure that all three sides win about an even amount each, but that's at high level. Many of the tricks that make factions balanced may not work for a poorer player. For instance, there are certain skills that a pro-player is expected to have (ability to use abilities effectively, and to move units well) that less experienced players may not. I found myself losing match ups as terrans against protoss that, if you looked at the numbers, I really should have won, or at least come out in even in. However, I lost because I don't have the skills to control my units.
SSB is similar, in that this tier list may not be meaningful for the people you play with. I know that I used to play Kirby all the time because I liked him, and did pretty well with it, and I had a friend who played Captain Falcon who was absolutely terrible.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 12:24 AM on November 21, 2014
I'm back. Sorry to show up late in the thread, but there was MST3K Club. But this is a topic I've thought maybe too much about, and I'm going to apologize now for the length of this thread.
I've written comments here about this kind of thing before. I in fact brought up the same example that appeared, I think it was, in the article (read it a few hours ago and don't feel like opening it up again), and if not there then upthread: perfect balance can easily be sterile. Rock Paper Scissors is perfectly balanced. That's not what makes RPS fun to play: there, it's entirely the meta game, of figuring out what your friends will pick and beating them. But, since all the choices are equivilent, there's no game advantage to choosing any other than what you think will beat the other player, the choices are all isomorphic. It is simply a way to express metagame strategy.
So, games where the two sides are very close to each other in ability, those push the strategy out into the other aspects of the game. Particularly like this is the first two Warcraft games, where there are very few differences between the sides, where all the unit types have an opposite number on the other team. (Warcraft II does, if memory serves, have one difference, a high-level unit that's different on each side.)
So, to make a more interesting game, some try to make play choices that are not isomorphic, that give each side different strengths, that are so easy for players to analyze. Fighting games have done this since Street Fighter II, and one suspects the removal of this aspect of play is one of the reasons why the developers dictated you couldn't have mirror matches in the original version of SFII.
Of course you still want things to be generally balanced, and the ways these characters differing aspects interact, which are different with each character, in each game system, that's not an easy thing to match up between characters. My first observation here is: the difficulty for the designer in balancing differing characters/teams/sides is, mostly, proportional to the difficulty the players will have. There's always the chance that a player will find a gimmick that will make him unbeatable with a certain character, and news of those gimmicks tends to spread. But, for a game that's not a sterile choice in terms of character selection, there is no way to perfectly guard against that happening. If you want to be sure your game to be well-balanced and still present interesting choices, you have to put the playtesting work into it.
In fact, the more unbalanced a choice appears on the face, that is, the more immediately accessible that character's abilities are, the more likely a player will attach himself to it. That can be a good way to inspire players to pick up a game, in fact. The challenge is in making these characters less viable against experienced players playing other sides.
But one corolary of my italiziced observation above is: a game that offers meaningful choices, ones that will not eventually be rendered down to foregone conclusions, must confound attempts to completely analyze it, both by players and the designer. You can think about it and devise strategies, in fact you must be able to or you're just left with a kind of Rock Paper Scissors again, but the problem should not be completely solvable. In fact, the act of discovering how different characters interact is a major source of interest in these games. The act of playing one character against another seeks to solve the problem, not just of which player is better against another, but which gameplay choices are better, and the base choice of these kinds of games is character type.
But it's okay because of my second observation: a well-designed system of character differences can offload balance deficiencies onto the metagame. You might end up with tiers of general gameplay value, but even high tier characters may have specific low-tier characters they are bad against, and that effectively makes those characters more valuable. Effectively, the game becomes a kind of Rock Paper Scissors game, but with unbalanced strengths, and effectively an outside random element. That is what we observe with the Smash Bros., why people still play it with a variety of character, and it's why its relative character strengths haven't become locked down, because those choices are interesting to analyze, and in tournament play there is a strong incentive to discover and demonstrate the worth of one's choices, to find out which characters are objectively better. However, this very act, the solving of the problem of ranking character strengths, directly wears against this aspect of the enjoyment of the game. The better the answer players arrive at, the less incentive there is to refine it still further, as more iterations of the solving function (playing) produce less of an effect on the outcome, making the decreasing advantage gained by iterating it more and more difficult to separate from statistical noise.
Thought of this way, Melee's biggest strength is effectively that its characters are difficult to rank against one another, that the problem posed by its character choices and gameplay system is vague enough that it's sufficiently resisted everyone's attempts to pin it down, and that's why it's still played in tournaments, because players still find worth in trying to improve their answer, and yet, they still think the problem is solveable, that it's not ultimately too much like Rock Paper Scissors, where it doesn't matter what you choose. (Which can be an interesting game, but less in ways related to character choice.)
There's more to the issue than I've explicated here: it's possible for a character to be more valuable to a specific person than another because that character is better suited to his ability, like a speedster played by someone with fast reflexes. But I'll leave that question to be explored another time.
I don't think TF2 was ever designed to be balanced, although I'm not sure what that would even mean: presumably that each character has equal utility?
By my above way of thinking, TF2 is designed to be balanced between teams of equal character choice. Its up to players to determine which classes are better for them, given what they know of the map, format, their own ability and the ability and choices of the other team. Every class has strengths and weaknesses. These are not perfect between all classes, but if they were, the choice would be less interesting. The designers wisely left the balance to the metagame to figure out, making sure that each character has specific viable uses, not that all characters are universally playable.
posted by JHarris at 12:47 AM on November 21, 2014 [7 favorites]
I've written comments here about this kind of thing before. I in fact brought up the same example that appeared, I think it was, in the article (read it a few hours ago and don't feel like opening it up again), and if not there then upthread: perfect balance can easily be sterile. Rock Paper Scissors is perfectly balanced. That's not what makes RPS fun to play: there, it's entirely the meta game, of figuring out what your friends will pick and beating them. But, since all the choices are equivilent, there's no game advantage to choosing any other than what you think will beat the other player, the choices are all isomorphic. It is simply a way to express metagame strategy.
So, games where the two sides are very close to each other in ability, those push the strategy out into the other aspects of the game. Particularly like this is the first two Warcraft games, where there are very few differences between the sides, where all the unit types have an opposite number on the other team. (Warcraft II does, if memory serves, have one difference, a high-level unit that's different on each side.)
So, to make a more interesting game, some try to make play choices that are not isomorphic, that give each side different strengths, that are so easy for players to analyze. Fighting games have done this since Street Fighter II, and one suspects the removal of this aspect of play is one of the reasons why the developers dictated you couldn't have mirror matches in the original version of SFII.
Of course you still want things to be generally balanced, and the ways these characters differing aspects interact, which are different with each character, in each game system, that's not an easy thing to match up between characters. My first observation here is: the difficulty for the designer in balancing differing characters/teams/sides is, mostly, proportional to the difficulty the players will have. There's always the chance that a player will find a gimmick that will make him unbeatable with a certain character, and news of those gimmicks tends to spread. But, for a game that's not a sterile choice in terms of character selection, there is no way to perfectly guard against that happening. If you want to be sure your game to be well-balanced and still present interesting choices, you have to put the playtesting work into it.
In fact, the more unbalanced a choice appears on the face, that is, the more immediately accessible that character's abilities are, the more likely a player will attach himself to it. That can be a good way to inspire players to pick up a game, in fact. The challenge is in making these characters less viable against experienced players playing other sides.
But one corolary of my italiziced observation above is: a game that offers meaningful choices, ones that will not eventually be rendered down to foregone conclusions, must confound attempts to completely analyze it, both by players and the designer. You can think about it and devise strategies, in fact you must be able to or you're just left with a kind of Rock Paper Scissors again, but the problem should not be completely solvable. In fact, the act of discovering how different characters interact is a major source of interest in these games. The act of playing one character against another seeks to solve the problem, not just of which player is better against another, but which gameplay choices are better, and the base choice of these kinds of games is character type.
But it's okay because of my second observation: a well-designed system of character differences can offload balance deficiencies onto the metagame. You might end up with tiers of general gameplay value, but even high tier characters may have specific low-tier characters they are bad against, and that effectively makes those characters more valuable. Effectively, the game becomes a kind of Rock Paper Scissors game, but with unbalanced strengths, and effectively an outside random element. That is what we observe with the Smash Bros., why people still play it with a variety of character, and it's why its relative character strengths haven't become locked down, because those choices are interesting to analyze, and in tournament play there is a strong incentive to discover and demonstrate the worth of one's choices, to find out which characters are objectively better. However, this very act, the solving of the problem of ranking character strengths, directly wears against this aspect of the enjoyment of the game. The better the answer players arrive at, the less incentive there is to refine it still further, as more iterations of the solving function (playing) produce less of an effect on the outcome, making the decreasing advantage gained by iterating it more and more difficult to separate from statistical noise.
Thought of this way, Melee's biggest strength is effectively that its characters are difficult to rank against one another, that the problem posed by its character choices and gameplay system is vague enough that it's sufficiently resisted everyone's attempts to pin it down, and that's why it's still played in tournaments, because players still find worth in trying to improve their answer, and yet, they still think the problem is solveable, that it's not ultimately too much like Rock Paper Scissors, where it doesn't matter what you choose. (Which can be an interesting game, but less in ways related to character choice.)
There's more to the issue than I've explicated here: it's possible for a character to be more valuable to a specific person than another because that character is better suited to his ability, like a speedster played by someone with fast reflexes. But I'll leave that question to be explored another time.
I don't think TF2 was ever designed to be balanced, although I'm not sure what that would even mean: presumably that each character has equal utility?
By my above way of thinking, TF2 is designed to be balanced between teams of equal character choice. Its up to players to determine which classes are better for them, given what they know of the map, format, their own ability and the ability and choices of the other team. Every class has strengths and weaknesses. These are not perfect between all classes, but if they were, the choice would be less interesting. The designers wisely left the balance to the metagame to figure out, making sure that each character has specific viable uses, not that all characters are universally playable.
posted by JHarris at 12:47 AM on November 21, 2014 [7 favorites]
Honestly I was expecting far more variation and a deeper analysis than that. Something about metagame and something about how the ratings change what's in the game. Also the graphs in question are mostly fundamentally static with very few changers.
With the exception of Jigglypuff the only one of the top six to ever be outside the top six was Peach - in the Oct 02 rankings when she made it in in December 02 - the second ever ranking. And after December 02, Jigglypuff is the only character to be ever considered better than that second top 5. With a single exception the characters thought to be the best early have remained the best throughout.
Of the initial bottom five, four are still there and have never escaped the bottom seven. So with one exception the characters thought to be terrible have remained terrible. And the initial bottom seven are all currently in the bottom eight (although two of them made a break for it).
So the tournament winners have remained barely changed with only really Jiggly Puff breaking in. The handicap characters have barely changed, with Ness joining them. The only major changes I see are Jigglypuff and Ice Climbers making a break for the top (and arguably Captain Falcon), the "default" advantage wearing off Mario, Ness falling and whatever the hell happened to Zelda between October 02 (6th) and June 03 (7th from bottom). The rest? Top's still top, upper middle's still upper middle, lower middle's still lower middle, and terrible's still terrible.
posted by Francis at 1:38 AM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]
With the exception of Jigglypuff the only one of the top six to ever be outside the top six was Peach - in the Oct 02 rankings when she made it in in December 02 - the second ever ranking. And after December 02, Jigglypuff is the only character to be ever considered better than that second top 5. With a single exception the characters thought to be the best early have remained the best throughout.
Of the initial bottom five, four are still there and have never escaped the bottom seven. So with one exception the characters thought to be terrible have remained terrible. And the initial bottom seven are all currently in the bottom eight (although two of them made a break for it).
So the tournament winners have remained barely changed with only really Jiggly Puff breaking in. The handicap characters have barely changed, with Ness joining them. The only major changes I see are Jigglypuff and Ice Climbers making a break for the top (and arguably Captain Falcon), the "default" advantage wearing off Mario, Ness falling and whatever the hell happened to Zelda between October 02 (6th) and June 03 (7th from bottom). The rest? Top's still top, upper middle's still upper middle, lower middle's still lower middle, and terrible's still terrible.
posted by Francis at 1:38 AM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]
I find it surprising that Luigi is so lowranked. Back when I played Super Smash Brothers Melee a lot, Luigi was my main guy.* I found that I would win more often than not as Luigi. His combination of survivability plus rage made him very powerful. In four player matches (which was what we usually played) I would generally get to the final two, and most often have much better health and often a whole life over the other person. Maybe he suited my playing style, but I found him a superb character to play.
* Falco was my secondary character, but he just didn't have the in-personality of Luigi. Of all the Nintendo playable characters who aren't the stars of their series, he's the one who's got the most developed personality. It was always easy to "roleplay" his white hot rage at always being second fiddle to his annoying, smaller brother.
posted by Kattullus at 2:54 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
* Falco was my secondary character, but he just didn't have the in-personality of Luigi. Of all the Nintendo playable characters who aren't the stars of their series, he's the one who's got the most developed personality. It was always easy to "roleplay" his white hot rage at always being second fiddle to his annoying, smaller brother.
posted by Kattullus at 2:54 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I suspect that Starcraft was one of the first populate games where regular "re-balancing" tweaks were being made on a constant basis. If I recall, every race had unfair advantages and each one had its "time in the sun" before a re-balance patch was released.
Starcraft didn't receive regular balance patches. There were four balance patches and Brood War between release in 1998 and the end of balance patches in 2001. SC:BW competitive scene took off in 2002. What kept SC:BW balanced for the rest of the 00's were the KeSPA map makers, who tinkered with pro-league maps to make sure each race had a reasonable win rate on each season's maps, and retiring maps that couldn't be made to work.
posted by kithrater at 3:05 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Starcraft didn't receive regular balance patches. There were four balance patches and Brood War between release in 1998 and the end of balance patches in 2001. SC:BW competitive scene took off in 2002. What kept SC:BW balanced for the rest of the 00's were the KeSPA map makers, who tinkered with pro-league maps to make sure each race had a reasonable win rate on each season's maps, and retiring maps that couldn't be made to work.
posted by kithrater at 3:05 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I never miss a chance to babble about Smash Brothers, so here are a few thoughts.
I take the word "unbalanced" to mean either inexpertly balanced to start with or having no balance patches after release. Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai basically balanced the first three games in the series himself, IIRC, with some pretty strange results. For example, in Melee, the Fire Emblem swordsmen Roy and Marth are clones, but all their differences are in Marth's favor. Roy falls faster than Marth, making him easier to combo against. Roy's attacks are weaker at the tip of his sword and more powerful at close range, which sort of defeats the purpose of having a sword. I mean, I'll still play as Roy because he sets stuff on fire, which is cool. Also, Melee has Pichu, who's like Pikachu but hurts himself with electrical attacks. Maybe he's supposed to be a joke character, like Dan in Street Fighter. Poor Pichu.
There were a few balance changes between versions of Melee - like, Fox's upsmash isn't as deadly in the European release, I think, and I believe Zelda's smash attacks were made easier to escape from after the very first release. But players kept finding new mechanics in the game to exploit long after these changes stopped, which is why it makes sense to call Melee unbalanced. The designers didn't anticipate that competitive players would explore and exploit the game's physics to develop different ways to move characters around and rapidly chain attacks together.
I'd credit Jigglypuff's rise to Mango, a contender for greatest Smash player of all time, who won tournaments with Jigglypuff-- I think he popularized Jigglypuff's strong offstage aerial combos known as the Wall of Pain (pretty much carrying you, the hapless opponent, from the edge of the stage to offscreen until you got KOd). This was before Hungrybox, another top Smash player who mains Jigglypuff, became (in)famous for repeatedly using a particular aerial attack of Jigglypuff's with a huge disjointed hitbox (like Marth's sword, it's an area that can't be hurt but can hurt you) that extends beyond the character model. I mean, that's kind of just what you do with Jigglypuff other than Rest, and it's a key part of the Wall of Pain, but it's an example of how an unbalanced game will have very successful strategies in it that maybe would get patched out in a regularly balanced game for being too frustrating/unfun, not even leaving the possibility to develop counters to it. Although now that I think about it, the reason Hbox the player, not Jiggs the character, is associated with the back-air attack is that he manages the space between characters to take full advantage of that hitbox, something that is deceptively difficult to perfect.
I'm surprised to see that Peach's rise in the ranks came years before the debut of Swedish player Armada, one of the five biggest names in Smash and undoubtedly the best ever Peach player. Part of the Armada mythos is that he single-handedly developed the character's potential, so I wonder who deserves the credit for showing Peach's strengths earlier than he did.
I'm also wondering about Captain Falcon. Maybe it took time to figure out reliable combos into his famous knee? Ice Climbers I'm not surprised to see go up and up in the rankings, since players do ridiculously technical things with them that I don't even understand. Fly Amanita is some sort of wizard.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 3:07 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I take the word "unbalanced" to mean either inexpertly balanced to start with or having no balance patches after release. Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai basically balanced the first three games in the series himself, IIRC, with some pretty strange results. For example, in Melee, the Fire Emblem swordsmen Roy and Marth are clones, but all their differences are in Marth's favor. Roy falls faster than Marth, making him easier to combo against. Roy's attacks are weaker at the tip of his sword and more powerful at close range, which sort of defeats the purpose of having a sword. I mean, I'll still play as Roy because he sets stuff on fire, which is cool. Also, Melee has Pichu, who's like Pikachu but hurts himself with electrical attacks. Maybe he's supposed to be a joke character, like Dan in Street Fighter. Poor Pichu.
There were a few balance changes between versions of Melee - like, Fox's upsmash isn't as deadly in the European release, I think, and I believe Zelda's smash attacks were made easier to escape from after the very first release. But players kept finding new mechanics in the game to exploit long after these changes stopped, which is why it makes sense to call Melee unbalanced. The designers didn't anticipate that competitive players would explore and exploit the game's physics to develop different ways to move characters around and rapidly chain attacks together.
I'd credit Jigglypuff's rise to Mango, a contender for greatest Smash player of all time, who won tournaments with Jigglypuff-- I think he popularized Jigglypuff's strong offstage aerial combos known as the Wall of Pain (pretty much carrying you, the hapless opponent, from the edge of the stage to offscreen until you got KOd). This was before Hungrybox, another top Smash player who mains Jigglypuff, became (in)famous for repeatedly using a particular aerial attack of Jigglypuff's with a huge disjointed hitbox (like Marth's sword, it's an area that can't be hurt but can hurt you) that extends beyond the character model. I mean, that's kind of just what you do with Jigglypuff other than Rest, and it's a key part of the Wall of Pain, but it's an example of how an unbalanced game will have very successful strategies in it that maybe would get patched out in a regularly balanced game for being too frustrating/unfun, not even leaving the possibility to develop counters to it. Although now that I think about it, the reason Hbox the player, not Jiggs the character, is associated with the back-air attack is that he manages the space between characters to take full advantage of that hitbox, something that is deceptively difficult to perfect.
I'm surprised to see that Peach's rise in the ranks came years before the debut of Swedish player Armada, one of the five biggest names in Smash and undoubtedly the best ever Peach player. Part of the Armada mythos is that he single-handedly developed the character's potential, so I wonder who deserves the credit for showing Peach's strengths earlier than he did.
I'm also wondering about Captain Falcon. Maybe it took time to figure out reliable combos into his famous knee? Ice Climbers I'm not surprised to see go up and up in the rankings, since players do ridiculously technical things with them that I don't even understand. Fly Amanita is some sort of wizard.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 3:07 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I like that Peach has risen near the top of the ratings. Back in the day, I made someone throw down his controller once by smashing him senseless with pretty dainty li'l Princess Peach. She can be awe-inspiring if played well -- that is to say, keeping the pressure on.
It was always easy to "roleplay" his white hot rage at always being second fiddle to his annoying, smaller brother.
LUIGI DEATH STARE.
Maybe (Pichu is) supposed to be a joke character, like Dan in Street Fighter. Poor Pichu.
One of the character's trophies in Melee outright says as much.
Ice Climbers I'm not surprised to see go up and up in the rankings, since players do ridiculously technical things with them that I don't even understand.
I loved playing the Climbers back in the day. It's sad that they're not in the new iteration of the game, but maybe they'll make it in as DLC.
posted by JHarris at 3:29 AM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
It was always easy to "roleplay" his white hot rage at always being second fiddle to his annoying, smaller brother.
LUIGI DEATH STARE.
Maybe (Pichu is) supposed to be a joke character, like Dan in Street Fighter. Poor Pichu.
One of the character's trophies in Melee outright says as much.
Ice Climbers I'm not surprised to see go up and up in the rankings, since players do ridiculously technical things with them that I don't even understand.
I loved playing the Climbers back in the day. It's sad that they're not in the new iteration of the game, but maybe they'll make it in as DLC.
posted by JHarris at 3:29 AM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
Starcraft didn't receive regular balance patches. There were four balance patches and Brood War between release in 1998 and the end of balance patches in 2001. SC:BW competitive scene took off in 2002. What kept SC:BW balanced for the rest of the 00's were the KeSPA map makers, who tinkered with pro-league maps to make sure each race had a reasonable win rate on each season's maps, and retiring maps that couldn't be made to work.
This reminds me-- so the article shows Meta Knight at the top of the Brawl rankings for as long as there have been Brawl rankings. Some tournaments banned Meta Knight, but most instead changed the pool of legal stages to play on, sort of equivalent to tinkering with StarCraft maps. There's a good thread on /r/smashbros about why many Brawl stages were banned, not all of it having to do with Meta Knight. Tournaments had to do something like ban stages because Brawl was never going to be officially rebalanced, but this really cut down on stage variety and made the game less spectator-friendly.
There's actually a ton of good stuff about stage bans and balance on /r/smashbros, I now see.
Melee stage ban reasons
Smash 64 stage ban reasons
(gif) Why stages with walls are banned
(video) Why stages with walk-offs are banned
(video) Why large stages are banned - gif in fast-forward
(gifs) Why stages with walls are banned: Not Just Fox edition (Brawl)
posted by knuckle tattoos at 3:37 AM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
This reminds me-- so the article shows Meta Knight at the top of the Brawl rankings for as long as there have been Brawl rankings. Some tournaments banned Meta Knight, but most instead changed the pool of legal stages to play on, sort of equivalent to tinkering with StarCraft maps. There's a good thread on /r/smashbros about why many Brawl stages were banned, not all of it having to do with Meta Knight. Tournaments had to do something like ban stages because Brawl was never going to be officially rebalanced, but this really cut down on stage variety and made the game less spectator-friendly.
There's actually a ton of good stuff about stage bans and balance on /r/smashbros, I now see.
Melee stage ban reasons
Smash 64 stage ban reasons
(gif) Why stages with walls are banned
(video) Why stages with walk-offs are banned
(video) Why large stages are banned - gif in fast-forward
(gifs) Why stages with walls are banned: Not Just Fox edition (Brawl)
posted by knuckle tattoos at 3:37 AM on November 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
To answer my own question about Peach, it looks like an influential Peach main named Mike G popularized the character in 2002. A 2005 video shows a different style than Armada would later develop. Less floating, more downsmashes. Can't argue with the range and damage of that downsmash.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 4:02 AM on November 21, 2014
posted by knuckle tattoos at 4:02 AM on November 21, 2014
TF2 has balancing mechanisms to encourage stream rolling. It makes winners spawn faster, moves their spawn closer, and so on. Come from behind victories are next to impossible.
posted by sonic meat machine at 4:05 AM on November 21, 2014
posted by sonic meat machine at 4:05 AM on November 21, 2014
A friend and I methodically played Super Tecmo Bowl (SNES) matchups to see what the best teams were. If a team lost they would travel down the ladder and vice-versa. We would play a matchup and then switch sides and play second game.
The best teams were the Bills (no surprise), Falcons, Cowboys and Chiefs.
The worst were the Rams, Patriots, Saints, and Bengals.
posted by starman at 5:01 AM on November 21, 2014
The best teams were the Bills (no surprise), Falcons, Cowboys and Chiefs.
The worst were the Rams, Patriots, Saints, and Bengals.
posted by starman at 5:01 AM on November 21, 2014
TF2 was relentlessly balanced and polished. Its competitive scene was practically dead within two years of its release.
TF2's was and is relentlessly balanced and polished, but the competitive scene soon established that in the vast majority of games, you wanted Medics, Soldiers, Demomen and Scouts - to the point where, when six-on-six became the archetype for competition play, two Soldiers/two Scouts/one Demoman/one Medic became more or less de rigeur. In the rare situations where people were playing attack/defense maps rather than control point maps, an Engineer might replace one of the Scouts, and occasionally you see a wildcard player going with Sniper rather than Scout, but that's about it. Spy, Pyro and Heavy are almost completely unplayed in competitive TF2. So it's not really that "relentlessly balanced and polished."
posted by mightygodking at 7:35 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
TF2's was and is relentlessly balanced and polished, but the competitive scene soon established that in the vast majority of games, you wanted Medics, Soldiers, Demomen and Scouts - to the point where, when six-on-six became the archetype for competition play, two Soldiers/two Scouts/one Demoman/one Medic became more or less de rigeur. In the rare situations where people were playing attack/defense maps rather than control point maps, an Engineer might replace one of the Scouts, and occasionally you see a wildcard player going with Sniper rather than Scout, but that's about it. Spy, Pyro and Heavy are almost completely unplayed in competitive TF2. So it's not really that "relentlessly balanced and polished."
posted by mightygodking at 7:35 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
The Princess is still invaluable on difficult levels but I never found an area where the hovering skill was required, including secret warp zones and the like.
That's good design though because if it were required, it would make the other characters unplayable in these stages.
Also, Dan may be a bit of a joke character in SF, but he's good for handicap rounds.
posted by ersatz at 8:19 AM on November 21, 2014
That's good design though because if it were required, it would make the other characters unplayable in these stages.
Also, Dan may be a bit of a joke character in SF, but he's good for handicap rounds.
posted by ersatz at 8:19 AM on November 21, 2014
Also Dan just plain makes the series more enjoyable by his existence. That you can play a joke character if you want the challenge or fun of it and that sometimes you'll have to play or fight him as a random selection adds a really fun element.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:43 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by jason_steakums at 8:43 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I just read my comment above and found it difficult to parse. I wrote it in a hurry. If anyone has questions about what the hell I meant there, just ask, via MeMail if you want.
TF2 has balancing mechanisms to encourage stream rolling. It makes winners spawn faster, moves their spawn closer, and so on. Come from behind victories are next to impossible.
1. It sounds like you're talking about a specific play mode. TF2 has quite a number of game styles now.
2. Interestingly, a two objective map where both objectives are easier than 50% for one team to obtain, but where he must get both to win, can be balanced to be fair overall.
3. I've played a fair amount of community TF2, and I've seen both great stonewalls and come-from-behinds, so I'm not sure your observation is accurate.
Spy, Pyro and Heavy are almost completely unplayed in competitive TF2. So it's not really that "relentlessly balanced and polished."
TF2 is balanced for community play, which involves a lot of play modes. Tournaments tend to obsessively focus on one or two modes, and it is not a weakness of the full game if not all choices are equally viable within those modes. You generally can't balance only for tournaments. Casual, community and tournament play styles have different, often conflicting, design goals, and while tournaments have a lot of clout and prestige, the great majority of players will never play a tournament game, or even want to. I think TF2 does a good job of balancing them all.
In fact, I hear current Smash Bros offers a separate mode specifically for tournaments, which automatically turns off items and limits play to a selection of maps. Don't know much about it though, haven't played yet.
posted by JHarris at 1:22 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
TF2 has balancing mechanisms to encourage stream rolling. It makes winners spawn faster, moves their spawn closer, and so on. Come from behind victories are next to impossible.
1. It sounds like you're talking about a specific play mode. TF2 has quite a number of game styles now.
2. Interestingly, a two objective map where both objectives are easier than 50% for one team to obtain, but where he must get both to win, can be balanced to be fair overall.
3. I've played a fair amount of community TF2, and I've seen both great stonewalls and come-from-behinds, so I'm not sure your observation is accurate.
Spy, Pyro and Heavy are almost completely unplayed in competitive TF2. So it's not really that "relentlessly balanced and polished."
TF2 is balanced for community play, which involves a lot of play modes. Tournaments tend to obsessively focus on one or two modes, and it is not a weakness of the full game if not all choices are equally viable within those modes. You generally can't balance only for tournaments. Casual, community and tournament play styles have different, often conflicting, design goals, and while tournaments have a lot of clout and prestige, the great majority of players will never play a tournament game, or even want to. I think TF2 does a good job of balancing them all.
In fact, I hear current Smash Bros offers a separate mode specifically for tournaments, which automatically turns off items and limits play to a selection of maps. Don't know much about it though, haven't played yet.
posted by JHarris at 1:22 PM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
> I dunno, it takes a bunch of metagaming rules to make matches reasonable at all. No torches, no pillboxing, no using a bunch of the same ship... Plus, there are several matchups (mostly against the Avatar) where one player has absolutely no chance at all, which sucks.
There are plenty of great matchups against the Avatar, though - That was my primary use of the Kohr-Ah, to use the flame-ring thingy to take out all of the satellites at once. They would take damage in the process, and they were overall a bit slow, but they made mincemeat out of the Avatars. The Thraddash were also a good option because they were fast and maneuverable enough to lay down a line of fire. The Chmmr were usable but slow, someone skilled with the Orz could also take them out, it was one of the only use cases for the Druuge. Basically, if you could kill the zapsats - and there were plenty of ways to do so - the Avatar was totally no big deal if you built the right team - and basically any ship in the same class range/point value could take it out with the exception of the Ur-Quan.
I know you are saying that there are many matchups where someone DOESN'T have a chance, but there are enough that the points, long term, that would be spent on a Chmmr AREN'T WORTH IT - You lose 30 for each one, and it can be taken out by a ship that cost 10-15 pretty reliably.
There were many ships I once thought broken that have a foil... The Utwig Jugger was one of those - and you definitely feel that way if you are playing against the PC on hard, where it will activate the shields with reflexes a human could never have. However, the Chmmr made quick work of the battery, which could NEVER replenish once it hit zero, and the VUX did well against it also. There were enough quick kills against it at around half the point value that I rarely ever used them in melee, as the points would be better spent elsewhere long term.
Typically, the worst cases came when ships were so imbalanced against each other that the round took an ETERNITY with nobody even reaching the others range. Which is where I'm guessing the "no torch" rule came from.
As far as I know, no ship was ever unstoppable.
posted by MysticMCJ at 1:48 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]
There are plenty of great matchups against the Avatar, though - That was my primary use of the Kohr-Ah, to use the flame-ring thingy to take out all of the satellites at once. They would take damage in the process, and they were overall a bit slow, but they made mincemeat out of the Avatars. The Thraddash were also a good option because they were fast and maneuverable enough to lay down a line of fire. The Chmmr were usable but slow, someone skilled with the Orz could also take them out, it was one of the only use cases for the Druuge. Basically, if you could kill the zapsats - and there were plenty of ways to do so - the Avatar was totally no big deal if you built the right team - and basically any ship in the same class range/point value could take it out with the exception of the Ur-Quan.
I know you are saying that there are many matchups where someone DOESN'T have a chance, but there are enough that the points, long term, that would be spent on a Chmmr AREN'T WORTH IT - You lose 30 for each one, and it can be taken out by a ship that cost 10-15 pretty reliably.
There were many ships I once thought broken that have a foil... The Utwig Jugger was one of those - and you definitely feel that way if you are playing against the PC on hard, where it will activate the shields with reflexes a human could never have. However, the Chmmr made quick work of the battery, which could NEVER replenish once it hit zero, and the VUX did well against it also. There were enough quick kills against it at around half the point value that I rarely ever used them in melee, as the points would be better spent elsewhere long term.
Typically, the worst cases came when ships were so imbalanced against each other that the round took an ETERNITY with nobody even reaching the others range. Which is where I'm guessing the "no torch" rule came from.
As far as I know, no ship was ever unstoppable.
posted by MysticMCJ at 1:48 PM on November 21, 2014 [3 favorites]
TF2's was and is relentlessly balanced and polished, but the competitive scene soon established that in the vast majority of games, you wanted Medics, Soldiers, Demomen and Scouts - to the point where, when six-on-six became the archetype for competition play, two Soldiers/two Scouts/one Demoman/one Medic became more or less de rigeur. -- mightygodkingIt depends on where you're playing. UGC's rules, for example, allow only for "1 Medic, 1 Demo, 1 Engineer, 1 Heavy and 2 of any other class". There are other organizations with different rules.
Spy, Pyro and Heavy are almost completely unplayed in competitive TF2 -- mightygodkingNot counting Highlander format, of course.
You generally can't balance only for tournaments. Casual, community and tournament play styles have different, often conflicting, design goals, and while tournaments have a lot of clout and prestige, the great majority of players will never play a tournament game, or even want to. -- JHarrisThis is the major point of it all and, IMO, the reason why TF2 still has a strong audience even though it's a 7 year old game. Tweaks are done through specific rulesets by communities, but those are artificial limitations, not inherent to the game.
posted by andycyca at 1:51 PM on November 21, 2014
Incidentally, actual sports games have something like a 2-1 (I am not exaggerating) home field advantage, so e-sports that do try for balance succeed way more right off the bat.
We don't actually live in a balanced world, however, so *finding* the balance is actually fun too.
posted by effugas at 3:30 PM on November 21, 2014
We don't actually live in a balanced world, however, so *finding* the balance is actually fun too.
posted by effugas at 3:30 PM on November 21, 2014
(I know we're mainly talking about PvP, but the Utwig on AI is also pretty beatable with an Arilou Skiff - those hair-trigger reflexes on the AI mean that you can just hang out near the Jugger and not fire until you've completely nixed its battery, at which point it's kind of a sitting duck.)
posted by en forme de poire at 2:58 PM on November 22, 2014
posted by en forme de poire at 2:58 PM on November 22, 2014
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posted by small_ruminant at 2:51 PM on November 20, 2014