[Relic blog] Game Balance: The State of 1v1 for ESL

With the Go4 CoH2 ESL Tournament Series just around the corner, the current state of game balance has become a hot(er) topic of late for not only the community but for Relic as well. To add fuel to the fire, the recent revamp of the OKW have made some worried that this faction is now over-performing which may lead to a one sided tilt for Axis players during the upcoming competitions. This is something here at Relic that we have been monitoring very closely over the past few weeks and we feel we have made the necessary adjustments to ensure that all five factions are performing within an acceptable margin.

The data below depicts the win ratio by faction for the top 250 players in CoH2 and is broken down into two separate weeks: December 7 - 13 (Post December 3rd Update) and December 14 - 20 (Post Dec. 10th's Hotfix and Dec. 17th's Modding Update). Each week tells a story about the state of balance and how it has changed with each update that has been released this month.

POST DECEMBER 3RD UPDATE*


*Win ratio of the top 250 players from the week of Dec. 7 - 13

As mentioned, the December Update came with a major revamp to the OKW. As players learned the new meta for this faction, Relic monitored win rates closely to keep an eye on the state of balance. As depicted in the image above, the win ratio for the OKW shot up to around 65%, roughly 9% higher than that of the next closest Allied faction. This fell outside of an acceptable margin and therefore was adjusted in the December 10th Hotfix.

Another faction worth noting in this image is the UKF. As shown above, The UKF were at the time the most under-performing faction and thus were the recipient of a small balance change on December 17th to increase their performance.

POST DECEMBER 10TH & 17TH PATCH*


*Win ratio of the top 250 players from the week of Dec. 14 - 20

As show above, the December 10th & 17th patches had a strong effect on re-stabilizing the 1v1 game balance between all factions, with an average deviation of under 2% between USF/Soviets and Wehrmacht/OKW.

Although still relatively under-performing compared to other factions, the UKF has also seen a performance increase of approximately 8%. With less than a week's worth of data since this faction received an adjustment, we feel it is likely that their performance will increase as we gain access to additional data. If needed, the UKF will receive additional adjustments until it falls within the same win margin as other factions.

BALANCE: THE ROAD AHEAD

In the midst of ESL, our goal is to do as little balance changes as possible to ensure gameplay stays consistent and fair for all tournament participants. As demonstrated in the last two patches, future patches will receive only small, calculated changes to a single over or under performing faction in a continued effort to keep all factions as closely balanced as possible.

Once the team feels that the state of 1v1 is as balanced as it needs to be to run a fair ESL tournament series, efforts will then be focused on ensuring team games fall within the same acceptable margins as well.

Source : http://www.companyofheroes.com/blog/2015/12/23/game-balance-the-state-of-1v1-for-esl

Tournaments are usually the best gauge of balance, but I don't know how we will get any useful data from the ESL format. One guy picks a faction, then his opponent counterpicks faction and the map. So basically everybody is gonna try to pick the most imbalanced map that favors their faction. I dunno how you could get any useful data from results of that kind of setup.

Maps are also re-picked after each game in a best-of-3 and have random starting positions. This will further confuse any data we might get from this cup series, as the traditional format of playing a map twice, once from each side, with fixed positions, has been tossed out the window.

From my little biased perspective, this proves that coh2chart is a reliable source of the state of the balance.

Seems pretty balanced atm

Don't let the charts fool you, top players know how to counter almost everything. If we take the player base outside of the 250 top range, things will go south very quickly.

We can't deny that certain factios are more noob proof and easier to win with than others. Above the top 250, skill level varies enormously, which makes exploiting noob friendly factions all the more potent. To add to this, having non linear factions, means we have certain factions that have a disadvantage tech wise from the very beginning, just for the sake of a unique feeling to the game. This in combination with the teching of the noob friendly factions, is a recipe for balance disasters.

Since this is about 1vs1's, what I would really like to see is matchup-specific stats (e.g., OKW vs UKF, OST vs USF), instead of just faction-specific stats (e.g., OKW winrate)

No. Matchup-specific stats would not be perfect (the same reasons why limiting the sample size to X best players for all factions).

Nevertheless, matchup-specific stats would be less bad than faction-specific stats. At least matchup-specific stats will not be polluted/affected by the distribution of players playing the opposite faction.

Surely Relic has access to/has been monitoring matchup-specific data?

The games balanced when top 200 play because most MU's are one specific build order vs another, with main variables being initial capping order, micro, and trickery. Sure, everyone can get as good as the top 200 to enjoy balance. But what this means is memorizing specific strats that exploit extremely blatant holes in the poorly designed WFA and UKF.

In most good RTS games balance falls apart at the pro level, not the other way around. (Protoss for example.)

Soviet Maxim spam into T70 vs OKW, OKW aggressive cut off harassment vs USF into either tech, OKW fast luchs vs UKF. Really the only tactical and varied MU is Ost vs Soviet, because the factions are actually well designed.

That's pretty darn good balance for 5 factions with many different mechanics and commanders to confuse things. Can't wait to see how much closer they can get it. One concern about even balance is stale gameplay. Maybe only one commander at high gameplay is ever viable, for instance. The dream would be balance within a couple % points, and multiple viable tactics and commanders that suit play styles.

One thing at a time though.

P.S. Is there somewhere to see the change log now that the official forums are down?

Tournaments are usually the best gauge of balance, but I don't know how we will get any useful data from the ESL format.

that reminds me

did they fix a lot of the semi-exploitave stuff after the last tournament? Specifically the sandbags thing. Just a lot of little things would be nice to see fixed.

That's pretty darn good balance for 5 factions with many different mechanics and commanders to confuse things.

It is good to remember that 6 percentage difference between factions means 11% more victories to the other faction.

Wehrmacht 59%
UKF 53%

-> (59-53)/53 -> 10.7%

11% doesn't sound so darn good, anymore :/

Don't let the charts fool you, top players know how to counter almost everything. If we take the player base outside of the 250 top range, things will go south very quickly.

We can't deny that certain factios are more noob proof and easier to win with than others. Above the top 250, skill level varies enormously, which makes exploiting noob friendly factions all the more potent. To add to this, having non linear factions, means we have certain factions that have a disadvantage tech wise from the very beginning, just for the sake of a unique feeling to the game. This in combination with the teching of the noob friendly factions, is a recipe for balance disasters.

That's because someone who can't reach top 250 in this game is absolutely clueless about its basic mechanics. There aren't even 250 active players. Rank >250 is basically bronze level in other games. Even Top 50 players can be really bad. I'd say that from rank 25 upwards there's a pretty decent skill level the ranks below that are occupied by people who don't fully understand this game. (I'm not talking about apm or anything like that, I'm talking about troop movement, decision making and similar things)

That's because someone who can't reach top 250 in this game is absolutely clueless about its basic mechanics. There aren't even 250 active players. Rank >250 is basically bronze level in other games. Even Top 50 players can be really bad. I'd say that from rank 25 upwards there's a pretty decent skill level the ranks below that are occupied by people who don't fully understand this game. (I'm not talking about apm or anything like that, I'm talking about troop movement, decision making and similar things)

To give an example, cpt.molo.

this article is a white noise. I suppose there are people who bought the game to play it for themselves. They dont care about esl.
Since awful british faction release relic spoils the game with every patch

calculated changes

They really treat their customers like a chumps. So they calculated 510MP difference between OKW P4 and T3485.
And 500MP/120F difference between Kati and Stuka is also calculated.
BUTTONS DOESNT WORK. A-click and R-clik do random things.

It is good to remember that 6 percentage difference between factions means 11% more victories to the other faction.

Wehrmacht 59%
UKF 53%

-> (59-53)/53 -> 10.7%

11% doesn't sound so darn good, anymore :/

Yep, there's still more work to be done. I can wait.

Tournaments are usually the best gauge of balance, but I don't know how we will get any useful data from the ESL format. One guy picks a faction, then his opponent counterpicks faction and the map. So basically everybody is gonna try to pick the most imbalanced map that favors their faction. I dunno how you could get any useful data from results of that kind of setup.

Yep, it sucks.

Cant wait for that team game balance

Don't let the charts fool you, top players know how to counter almost everything. If we take the player base outside of the 250 top range, things will go south very quickly.

We can't deny that certain factios are more noob proof and easier to win with than others. Above the top 250, skill level varies enormously, which makes exploiting noob friendly factions all the more potent. To add to this, having non linear factions, means we have certain factions that have a disadvantage tech wise from the very beginning, just for the sake of a unique feeling to the game. This in combination with the teching of the noob friendly factions, is a recipe for balance disasters.

The solution is L2P, not fuck up the balance.

efforts will then be focused on ensuring team games fall within the same acceptable margins as well.

there might even be a player base left!

My question is: Why do win/loss ratios matter?

Are these the win ratios since the last major patch? Since the last major release? Since forever? Players with more games tend to have more balanced ratios, which to me, is what we're seeing here. Furthermore, it can sometimes take a while for metagames to stabilize after game changing releases and patches.

I'm not entirely sure it's the best metric for tracking game balance over the course of a few weeks, especially considering that these ratios appear to be cumulative.

I'd like to know how many players shifted or changed position in the rankings and by how much. Did people with 40-1 stats crash into a 42-20 W/L? That'd indicate to me that a patch changed the viability of a strategy greatly. Did the same people stay in the top rankings? That'd tell me that the changes may been more minor and didn't change the established gameplay.

But just straight W/L ratios of the top players seems highly suspect.

There aren't even 250 active players. Rank >250 is basically bronze level in other games. Even Top 50 players can be really bad.

I might misunderstand your use of "active", but you can see precisely how many people are still playing ladder because inactive players are hidden from leaderboards. 1v1 has 2k-3k in each faction, while 4v4 is up towards 10k. I'm guessing most people don't play all game modes, or even all factions.