UKF on Life Support

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 09:44 AMiTzDusty

Oh boy, Dusty vs World here, here we go.

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Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 05:38 AMAladdin

You can say "I don't care", but you can't say "No one cares"

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 09:44 AMiTzDusty

Oh boy, Dusty vs World here, here we go.
I think this pretty much sums up the problem. You seem to think that because you play 1v1, you are more justified than the rest of the world. At this stage, it doesn't even matter if you are right or wrong. If the rest of the world does not like your arguments, then you are helping nobody by making them.


You can tout how many people play 3v3 and 4v4 all you want. If you still think that somehow means 4v4 balancing should be a priority, and that balance somehow trickles down, all it proves is a complete lack of understanding of game mechanics, full stop.

Balance trickling down or not trickling up/down is irrelevant. If balance for only either 1v1 or 4v4 is possible, then balance for 4v4 takes precedence because more people will benefit from a balanced 4v4 than a balanced 1v1.



Notice how I never said that 1v1s are the most popular game mode. My post implies/claims that 1v1 tournaments receive more viewership because they are, in fact, more competitive than 3v3 and 4v4.

This argument continues to ignore the massive advertising (by COH2 standards) put into OCF tournament, by both this website and RELIC entertainment itself, in comparison to any 3v3 or 4v4 tournament.



Again, your fundamental understanding of the game is flawed. The nature of variables and the amount matchups to balance, that other users have pointed out in this thread, mean that 4v4 is exponentially harder to balance and technically impossible. Throw map balance in to that, something that is refined in 1v1 and 2v2 for the most part, and it becomes even harder.

This argument is invalid because it assumes two separate issues as one issue.
- I don't understand COH2
- Team games can never be balanced

If the difficulty in balancing large team games lies in the large number of possible match-ups, then no large team game would ever be balanced. If it is my personal lack of understanding of COH2 that stops me personally from balancing COH2, then this has nothing to do with the balancing of large team games at all.

A figure posted in this thread is 192 possible matchups in a 4v4 game.EDIT: It appears I have misread the number. But all this does is change the chess game from 2 moves to 3 moves I haven't checked that (and to be honest its been too long since high school), but I'll assume its true. After only two moves in chess, for example, there are 400 different possible combinations. Clearly, the number of combinations and permutations in a possible game state is not the only thing dictating whether or not that game state can be balanced.

The vast majority of chess literature focuses on less than 0.00000...1% of the possible positions for analysis. Why is this? Because human intelligence is not machine - it utilises heuristics, among other reasoning tools, to simplify complex calculations in ways that computers cannot do as well. According to the rules and commonly accepted principles in chess, over 99.9999....% of the possible positions in chess are absolute garbage - there is no reason according to the limits of human understanding to play into those positions. This is a satisfactory area to draw the boundary - after all, humans are the ones playing the games.

Using reasoning, such as heuristics, to simplify the possible number of combinations in COH2 reduces the already (comparatively) small number of 192 into something even Lelic entertainment can comprehend. For example - It doesn't even matter if 4x Soviet is better than 4x Wehr or vice versa, because it is almost certain that 3x SOV 1x UKF would be better than 4x SOV. Thus nobody needs to balance for 4x SOV vs 4x Wehr because the matchup would never happen.




If you ever played CoHnline, I was in the top of the 4v4 ladders for a very long time. I've played my time in 4v4s. Individual skill is hardly the factor that it is in 1v1s and 2v2s. "Top" 4v4 teams get away with literally a-moving blobs, because there are little opportunities to flank. The "Go hard like" team showed this many times on one of their POV streams during League of Heroes, where one of the players on north Lienne had 4 squads of Pgrens a-moving around for half of the game. I fail to see the "skill" involved in that.



Yes, because most of the best 4v4 teams (with notable exceptions like the TATUS guys that have proven themselves to be extremely competent 1v1 and 2v2 players) get away with poor micro on the basis of map knowledge. Knowing where to optimally place bunkers, schwerer HQs, and which buildings to garrison at the start of the match are not indicators of skill, they are indicators of cookie-cutter pre-planning. The nature of 4v4 allows these plans to be executed with minimal micro because, again, the lack of flanking opportunities and human wave tactics that only 4v4 lets players set up a machine gun and not have to worry about it for 5 minutes. 1v1 and 2v2 have minimal pre-planning at best, and no MG will stay static for 5 minutes. All players must adapt on the fly to cutoff maneuvers and well-microed light vehicle play. A 4v4 team could theoretically place a machine gun on their cutoff for the entire game and it would hardly constitute a few percent of that teams effective fighting strength. If anything, League of Heroes proved that these types of players were abysmal at micro and on the fly planning, as these teams lost the majority of their 1s and 2s games, and only stayed in the tournament because of the extreme point weighing on the 3s and 4s games.


Your definition of skill continues to lie in the realm of technical skills like APM, and you continue to believe having a high APM somehow gives you a right to comment on a state of game balance. If APM were the only determining factor, then surely CPU - Expert would be the ultimate authority on balance, because it can make as many calculations as your Central Processing Unit allows it to make. Furthermore, CPU - Expert has perfect map awareness, because both you and it are playing on the same computer and thus must share the same game information.

This is not to say your arguments are invalid by any means. You simply must present them, backed up with non-anecdotal evidence, like everyone else. "The fact that you have a good APM in 1v1" is insufficient.



I look at each player individually. When the players arguing with me play 90% of one faction, have mediocre ranks, and only play 3v3 and 4v4, it is EXTREMELY safe to say that they have a limited understanding of game mechanics/timing/resourcing. I don't even have a perfect understanding of all the numbers in this game, yet I'm not going to run head first into an MG42 over and over again, I'm not going to lose two squads to a sturmpio, I'm not going to chase a low health tank without stopping to shoot, I'm not going to fight on the move and in open cover, I'm not going to have my pants down for a light vehicle rush,and I'm not going to leave roads unmined for Panthers and complain about losing my katyusha on the forums.

The person making the argument does not affect the strength or weakness of the argument. It doesn't matter whether I or stephen hawking claim the sky to be blue. Likewise, it doesn't matter whether Northweapon or Jesulin posts a chart showing Brits have 25% win rate in 4v4s - the evidence, not the person posting the evidence, must be discredited.

A case example in the academic world is David Irving. Irving started off his career as a well respected historian, doing (at the time) groundbreaking research on Hitler and the Third Reich. He then published what most historians discredit as 'holocaust denial', and has had his work on the holocaust continually discredited up until the modern day. The fact that Irving was a well respected historian with great academic authority played absolutely no part whatsoever in the destruction of his arguments on the holocaust, because the evidence he presented was insufficient.

Regarding the actual argument you just made; it doesn't matter whether or not I know how much fuel, for example, a Luchs costs, or how much fuel OKW gets per minute. I see a Luchs on the field, I check the time on the in-game clock. That's how I know when OKW can get a Luchs. The code behind "Mechanics/Timing/Resourcing" is irrelevant when I can make real observations of in-game events. If OKW has a Luchs and my game clock says 4/5/6 minutes, then OKW has a Luchs at 4/5/6 minutes. All your theorycrafting won't change that.




I've never said they aren't the most popular, I have always said that is a dumb metric to use when prioritizing balance in an RTS game. This isn't a MOBA, go play DOTA or Total War Arena if thats what you're looking for. The game is, never has been, and never will be designed to be anywhere close to perfect in 3v3 and 4v4.

The popularity of the game mode is the only metric to use when prioritising balance in RTS games. There is no reason whatsoever that Lelic should spend their resources balancing to a minority of their customers. While the game may currently not be suited to large team games, and perhaps never has been in the past, nothing in God's name gives you the right to arrogantly declare that you and 24.7% of 1v1 players have the right to all future balance updates and matter more than myself and 30.5% of 4v4 players (not to mention that 4v4 games have 4x as many players as 1v1 games).


My judgements are superior to the average 4v4 player, because again (and this is getting very old to repeart), the average 4v4 player sticks to one faction or side, has mediocre micro, and has mediocre game mechanic understanding. This really isn't hard to understand.
I've already addressed these points, but a brief recap'
- Technical skill is not a factor in balancing for games
- Whether or not I understand how OKW gets a X minute Luchs doesn't change the fact that I see them get a 5 minute Luchs
- Whether or not I play OKW doesn't change the fact that OKW gets a X minute Luchs

So yes, your argument is extremely hard to understand. You're essentially saying that just because you are fitter and stronger and can aim better, you should be the General while the 55+ year old should GTFO. A contemporary example would be Adolf Hitler compared to Albert Speer - Hitler was the trench soldier with all the experience and "technical skill", but no able minded historian would doubt the effort Speer placed into the German War Effort. Your skill at playing the game does not invalidate my game clock when I see a 4/5/6 minute Luchs on the field, nor does your understanding about how resource flows work, or any other fancy theory you claim to have.


This thread really has proven to me that the "unskilled idiotic casual" moniker becomes more true each day. Notice how I've never even said in this thread that OKW isn't OP, but everyone is pretending like I'm saying there isn't a problem. The hyperbole in this thread that I've been calling out is about "LEL 90% winrates" 3 days after a patch that had a MAJOR faction redesign, most importantly the potency of EARLY light armour play in the Luchs that Allied factions have NEVER had to prepare for (unlike the m20, t70 rush of early 2014, m5 rush in the summer) and the fact that people are up in arms about this without even learning how to counter it is ridiculous. Even better is the people that make these arguments have no right to make them, they have hidden ranks with OKW, or a majority of games played as allies. I don't really care how batshit OP something is, but no one is allowed to make a balance argument without playing a SINGLE match as what they claim to be oh-so-OP. Sure, 11 minute KTs are retarded (and surprise, only exist in 3v3 and 4v4, remember what I said about lack of flanking, micro, and retarded tunnel vision static play? No wonder, people can just build caches and never get cut off in 4v4) and that is going to be changed.
I've addressed most of this already, but for what I haven't touched on yet;
You've essentially claimed two things
(1) you can't cut players off in 4v4
(2) therefore 4v4 has less "skill" (whatever that means) than 1v1

Point (1) essentially admits to 4v4 being a different game than 1v1. You now need to prove that your 1v1 skillset of "being able to flank" and "cutting people off" is still relevant to any 4v4 discussion.

Your argument has thus negated itself - you continue to rely on your superior judgement as a 1v1 player to make judgements about 4v4 games, yet you also argue that 4v4s are so different to 1v1s (even if the only difference is less undefined skill) that certain 1v1 things cannot happen in 4v4s.



1v1, and 2v2. And yes, that literally is a good justification. 1v1 and 2v2 primary players have a better understanding of game mechanics, because if they don't, they lose. Tell me how many of your 4v4 friends can say the same about their matches, considering you don't need to know much at all to be a competent 4v4 player. Bonus points when these players complain about patch notes and specific numerical changes. I loved reading the posts when the flame changes happened, and people knee-jerked harder than I've ever seen, repeating the same incorrect bullshit that only someone with a lack of understanding of mechanics would be able to fathom. Oh, lets not forget the crit shot change too, apparently EVERYONE claimed to play the balance mod, and apparently none of them did because they all though there was no more snare.

You continue to attack the person making the argument rather than the argument itself. Furthermore, you continue to insist that knowing how the game works is somehow necessary to know the results of a game. It doesn't matter whether I can explain the code behind how flame damage works. I can learn the results of flame damage by observing what happens to my units when they are hit by fire, and what happens to enemy units when they are hit by fire.

I don't need to know how the code for mines works, because I can see what happens when a vehicle hits a mine.

I don't need to know what the scatter range on a t-34-76 is, because I know it's shit from experience

I don't need to know any "mechanics" at all, because I can see the practical results of those mechanics in every game I play.



Are we really going to base UKF being bad on the 25% 4v4 statistics that do not take into account matchups with what is a fairly broken OKW due to pop cap?

UKF performs completely fine against Ostheer, and would perform fine against a fixed OKW. This is the truth for all game modes. UKFs win rates can easily be explained by the lopsided OKW search rates, and the fact that their brokenness disproportionately affects UKF more, on top of UKFs current population cap bug.

The hyperbole in this thread about UKF being "on life support" comes from the exact same clowns that think the sniper was fine, the churchill was fine, the crocodile was fine, and free heavy engineers were fine. These are those oh so high caliber 4v4 players that required these crutches to make up for their poor play. After all, a cheap 1400HP well armoured tank requires minimal micro, ditto for one with a stupid long range, DOT dealing, AT gun wiping 1400HP well armoured tank with a flamer, perfect for 4v4 players.

Please refrain from attacking the person making the argument, and attack the argument itself.

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 13:38 PMQuercus

Regarding the idea of balancing team games, this may be rather simplistic but isn't this issue pretty much down to resource income?
Leaving aside the synergy between different factions on the same team (which would apply to both sides) the resource income is determined mostly by the number of sectors owned by that team isn't it?
So logically on a 2v2 map you will get more income than on a 1v1 and on a 3v3 you will get more than a 2v2?
Why can't you just then reduce the income per sector (including reducing cache benefits) depending upon the number of players?
2 players = 100%
4 players = 75%
6 players = 50%
8 players = 25%

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 14:40 PMvoltardark

I would like to see iTzDusty playing 1vs1 as UKF vs a top OKW player in a ten matches challenge.

After that we could have a better understanding of the situation.

Thanks.

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 10:06 AMiTzDusty

multiple posts

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 17:06 PMpigsoup

can you blame us when you start out by saying

"4v4
?

No one cares."

??

lol.

and you are right. there are much much less proportion of good and game understanding people in 3v3+. maybe it is because it is so noncompetitive most of the time which some of us are eager to fix except your type comes into shit on us just because... you know.

you are also right in lack of flanking leads to more a-moving. a big big problem which i do not see being fixed in coh2. Many of the top 3v3+ teams just got the meta figured out every patch. they know what they are doing 100% of the time and do the same thing over and over and over again because to them, it is about winning not playing. whenever they try new stuffs, they collapse like house of cards which I have seen a lot of times.

---------------------------

here is the bottom line for you and other people who just like to shit on 3v3+ players.

coming to this kind of thread and shit on NorthWeapon and me for being premature is absolutely fair.

but just STFU about 3v3+ if you don't care for those game modes.

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 07:31 AMAchtAchter

1vs1 & 2vs2 are competitive modes and 3vs3+ are fun modes

Jump back to quoted post8 Dec 2015, 17:17 PMiTzDusty

...
Again, I never intended this whole thread to devolve into a 1v1/2v2 vs 3v3/4v4 slit shinging thread, when my original comment was intended to address the issue of using only 4v4 random stats in the original unedited OP.