Stats from the WCS 2019

At the same time, elite players don't trust axis t4 be it panther brumbar or jp4.

That's also telling. Imo its with 60td zoning them out from clear safety margins.

Low risk lower cost high reward..

The problem isn’t the Panther versus TD matchup, it’s the Medium versus TD matchup.
Compared to Mediums, TDs have a whopping 50% more range, and will hit+pen more than 90% of the time.
You also need to keep your at guns IN FRONT of your tanks if you want them to return fire on Tank Destroyers
So:

Keep the 10 range gap between TDs and Panthers. Current 50 vs 60 range.
Reduce the range gap between TDs and Mediums and decrease chance to hit and pen mediums

- Reduce the range of TDs and Panthers by 10
- Reduce the range of heavies across all veterancy to 40
- Increase the size of Heavy tanks (It’s not like they are underpowered so these nerfs won’t kill them)
- Decrease the accuracy of TDs


This leaves USF without a non doctrinal medium tank hunter. I’d like to see the M4A3 added to their vanilla tech tree but with its main gun AOE removed, and allow the Easy eight to toggle between HVAP(no aoe) and APHE(current M4A3) so it will be an actual premium medium

snip

-Panther becomes useless as it has the same range as medium tanks and other heavy tanks. It becomes an interesting concept been at 40 range with high pen but totally overcosted.
-Comet get's shafted again, cause i'm sure it would go down in range as with other 45 range vehicles.
-So you plan on nerfing Pershing, KT and Tiger to basic 40 range?
-What do you do with 50 range vehicles other than PV? There's M10 and Stug. There's the Su76 at 60 range which would be useless at 50 range IMO. The Puma/Aec becomes way better now that they can hit back vehicles at the same range.

Instead of messing up with range, you can do so in a more practical way with size of vehicles and accuracy. Make all advance premium mediums and heavies bigger and you could reduce the accuracy of TDs and/or reduce the size of medium tanks.

In the round of 32, 15 of the 16 matches were 3-0 or 3-1.
In the round of 16, 6 of the 8 matches were 3-0 or 3-1
In the round of 8, all four matches were 3-0 or 3-1
In the round of 4, both matches were 3-0 or 3-1

Both of the finals were split 3/2.

Only 4 out of 38 matches (10.5%) were closely split. This means that the selection bias is so strong that you can't look at win/loss and conclude anything about the factions. The results are skewed towards whichever faction the better player picks. Even in the cases where the worse player picked faction, it would have rarely helped them win.

The only conclusion that you could make out of this is that elite players don't choose UKF. I haven't noticed any of them commenting on this thread so everyone else is speculating.

10 times this.

UKF, commander pick and unit usage. You can vouche for smaller balance changes but not this monstrosities some people are suggesting.

I have the feeling stats from the WCS 2019 will certainly shows that Heavy tanks are not in their right place at the moment. They bring too much in comparison with other doctrines and top players choose the best heavy tank doctrine regardless of faction because they know that.

Last tourney we had OKW special ops every match for a reason called command panther and now we have Pershing, Tiger or IS2 for the exact same reason. 1 unit micro able to do many things very well and enough resistant to mitigate your own mistakes to a certain extend. In two words: best value.

When you call a heavy tank, you pay and have it until it dies. When you call said P47 rocket run, you pay it and it last a moment and leave whenever all planes die or not. And then you have to pay for it again to use it.

Now in my opinion, if we would want to have the P47 rocket run (and all other variant from other factions) being competitive (as abilities available from doctrine) with heavy tank as they stand today, we should already apply the same logic. You pay for it until it dies. It doesn't necessarily mean the ability have to last until all planes die but you don't pay for it anymore until all planes die. The ability keeps the same duration, same cooldown but you don't pay munition until all planes die.

And even with that I'm not sure it would still be balanced, heavy tank can be repaired for free and get veterancy bonuses while abilities don't.

Another solution would be to simply remove heavy tanks from doctrines and put them in tech structure like the King Tiger. So we can elaborate balance around being sure everyone have access to them and balance doctrines around abilities and not those units.

I have the feeling stats from the WCS 2019 will certainly shows that Heavy tanks are not in their right place at the moment. They bring too much in comparison with other doctrines and top players choose the best heavy tank doctrine regardless of faction because they know that.

Last tourney we had OKW special ops every match for a reason called command panther and now we have Pershing, Tiger or IS2 for the exact same reason. 1 unit micro able to do many things very well and enough resistant to mitigate your own mistakes to a certain extend. In two words: best value.

When you call a heavy tank, you pay and have it until it dies. When you call said P47 rocket run, you pay it and it last a moment and leave whenever all planes die or not. And then you have to pay for it again to use it.

Now in my opinion, if we would want to have the P47 rocket run (and all other variant from other factions) being competitive (as abilities available from doctrine) with heavy tank as they stand today, we should already apply the same logic. You pay for it until it dies. It doesn't necessarily mean the ability have to last until all planes die but you don't pay for it anymore until all planes die. The ability keeps the same duration, same cooldown but you don't pay munition until all planes die.

And even with that I'm not sure it would still be balanced, heavy tank can be repaired for free and get veterancy bonuses while abilities don't.

Another solution would be to simply remove heavy tanks from doctrines and put them in tech structure like the King Tiger. So we can elaborate balance around being sure everyone have access to them and balance doctrines around abilities and not those units.

yeah and dont forget to add manpower, fuel and popcap to those planes

yeah and dont forget to add manpower, fuel and popcap to those planes

And micro.

Soviets, at present, simply don't have a weak point where they are vulnerable. Early game? Cons will dominate because you can mass them. Alternatively, Penals dominate Grens and early Volks.

If that fails, call out elite infantry like guards that counter light vehicles on top of dominating other infantry.

Then they get the single greatest power spike in the game in the form of the T70. No other vehicle has this big of an impact when it arrives on the field.

Finally, we have the IS2 which is a better, cheaper and more accessible KT.

The selling point of the conscript is the option to "mass" your forces.

Conscript are cheap and disposeable infantry. Early game conscripts are pretty shit, missing many shots. I am a pure Soviet player, it's my main, not for any "Meta" reasons but because i enjoy it from a gameplay perspective.

Looking at it from your perspective of someone massing 3 conscripts against your outnumbered force. I would just not fight that battle. Can't you choose your battles better?

If someone is massing forces on 1 point, then clearly they are leaving other points absolutely undefended, which means you can go and cap. Mines should counter the T-70 if you place them correctly, and your Panzer 2 should counter all infantry if used properly.

Again, i don't play Axis, never have.

yeah and dont forget to add manpower, fuel and popcap to those planes

Only real point is the popcap here. But I'm pretty sure something could be done if we decided to align those abilities.

10 times this.

UKF, commander pick and unit usage. You can vouche for smaller balance changes but not this monstrosities some people are suggesting.

This is the short version of what I was implying. The balance team just delivered a patch where the "better" player won about 90% of the time. It's incredibly efficient at separating players based on skill.

If they wanted to tweak it further, at this point they would have to arrange for players like Lovenest/Noggano and Jove/Von Asten to play many matches on just a couple of maps and see what small changes to make. You'd also have to ask players like them, including Helping Hans, for suggestions for UKF since they are the ones creating the selection bias.

Which they should consider now.

We won't.

This is the short version of what I was implying. The balance team just delivered a patch where the "better" player won about 90% of the time. It's incredibly efficient at separating players based on skill.
...

Not really if the same commander and tactics are used again again...That only mean that only specific tactics are "balanced" mainly "Super heavy strategies" with exception of soviet that can counter Tiger with "ram" off map.

We won't.

rip

btw any idea how to make tier 4 viable and making brits more well rounded ? cheaper single mortar emplacement ? and i do hope u are gonna delay heavy by 1,2 CP right ?

I see more people are interested in my idea: tweaking with the target size of mediums and heavies to differentiate themselves in the face of 60 range TDs.

I see more people are interested in my idea: tweaking with the target size of mediums and heavies to differentiate themselves in the face of 60 range TDs.

Cause there's not so many aspects you can change without breaking the whole balance of the game.
There's pushing units in certain directions and then there's throwing the dice again and checking the mess you've done 6 months later and one more year to really see how to balance it again.

Only 4 out of 38 matches (10.5%) were closely split. This means that the selection bias is so strong that you can't look at win/loss and conclude anything about the factions. The results are skewed towards whichever faction the better player picks. Even in the cases where the worse player picked faction, it would have rarely helped them win.

The only conclusion that you could make out of this is that elite players don't choose UKF. I haven't noticed any of them commenting on this thread so everyone else is speculating.

10 times this. UKF, commander pick and unit usage. You can vouche for smaller balance changes but not this monstrosities some people are suggesting.

I discussed this before (on page 2), but even with the current vague stats, Sov are still dramatically over-performing vs. OST. This is supported by looking at the standard deviation from all the other faction win:loss rations as well as the statistical margin-of-error.

Show Spoiler

TL;DR, statistically, there's over a 99.99966% chance that Sov is over-performing, leaving just 0.00044% chance that the match-ups were so skewed in favor of one player that the win:loss data is irrelevant. There's also a 90% chance that UKF is UP vs OST (no data vs. OKW). The other match-ups were close enough to be within reasonable margins of error.

Not completely true. Well, if the games would have been played in a BO3 you would have a solid point. However, given that this is B05, it seems more tricky. I asked Sturmpanther about the how this actually was played out and if I understood correctly the way this worked was that the player that won the first two games had faction selection in the third match.

So, faction selection was not completely random, the better player typically would end up playing the faction that he would consider to be stronger.

Not completely true. Well, if the games would have been played in a BO3 you would have a solid point. However, given that this is B05, it seems more tricky. I asked Sturmpanther about the how this actually was played out and if I understood correctly the way this worked was that the player that won the first two games had faction selection in the third match.

So, faction selection was not completely random, the better player typically would end up playing the faction that he would consider to be stronger.

If that's the case, then the WCS rule-set was ignored.

COIN TOSS AND FACTION SELECTION

For all stages of this tournament, the following will apply.
Game 1: Coin toss winner chooses who picks faction first.

(Players alternate Axis/Allies)
Game 2: Coin toss loser chooses who picks faction first.

(Players alternate Axis/Allies)
Game 3: Coin toss winner chooses who picks faction first.

(Players alternate Axis/Allies)
Game 4: Coin toss loser chooses who picks faction first.

Game 5: VP leader decides who picks faction and allies/axis first

It's also important to note that while the players had faction pick, they did not have 'side' pick until game 5; meaning players were always alternating between axis and allies every game (until game 5, where the leading player could chose to no longer alternate).

As EffenNewbie pointed out, "Game 5" only happened five times (1x R32, 2x R16, 2x finals); so that means 27 out of the 32 bracket games must have ended in a win-loss ratio of either 50:50, 66:33, or 33:66 axis:allies, where the player who was playing Axis/Allies was entirely random. In the case of a game 5, regardless of which side a player chose, the win:loss ratio must have been 60:40 for either axis or allies.

As a result of all this, the "worst possible case" (where the better player always played allies more) decreases, since we're now introducing 50:50 and 60:40 games into what was once exclusively a set of 66:33 games - meaning that Sov's win ratio against OST is now even higher than before over that "worst possible case".

For example, if 14 matches were 3:0, 13 matches were 3:1 and 5 matches were 3:2, and all matches went in favor of allies, the "worst possible case" goes down to 58.6:41.4, putting Sov 12.6% over what the maximum possible win:loss ratio is in a balanced game. There is simply no statistical way in which Sov did not over-perform vs ost; even when taking into account impossibly imbalanced matches and exceedingly unlikely coincidences in coin flips.

I'd be able to get a more accurate worst-case by knowing the outcomes (and faction picks) of every single match, but I haven't found that written down anywhere.

TL;DR, statistically, there's over a 99.99966% chance that Sov is over-performing, leaving just 0.00044% chance that the match-ups were so skewed in favor of one player that the win:loss data is irrelevant. There's also a 90% chance that UKF is UP vs OST (no data vs. OKW). The other match-ups were close enough to be within reasonable margins of error.

Um, no. Selection bias wasn't a term that I cooked up for this. It comes up relatively early in even a entry level statistics class.

Looking at just the round of 32, the winner of the match won 48 out of 52 matches played (92%). If one faction was overperforming like you think, the win rate would have been 48 out of 80, (60%) and the winner of the coin toss would have picked Soviets every time. In the round of 16, the winner of the match won 83% of the games, again not anywhere near 60%. The quarter finals and semi-finals had a 86% win rate by the match victor, again not anywhere near 60%.

If you were analyzing this correctly, you would have came to the conclusion that faction didn't matter at all. The only thing that determined win rates was the choice that people made before starting the match.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias