Profile of Inverse

Nice to have confirmation even though we knew all of this was on the way already.

Best parts are definitely the fact that they're aware of their performance problem and the fact that they're going to start selling user-generated cosmetic content. Less gameplay-affecting DLC is only good news for the game.

That's the wrong way to approach game balance in competitive games, however. The problem is people often have trouble distinguishing game balance and game design. Balance and design are two entirely different aspects of multiplayer games, and they influence the game in very different ways.

Game design in multiplayer games is all about making the game fun and engaging for as many people as possible, regardless of skill level or the degree to which they decide to dedicate themselves to the game. Good game design results in games that are fun and engaging regardless of any balance issues, since perfect balance is an unattainable ideal. Dota 2 is a great example of a game that excels in this area. The game is so complex that even approaching perfect balance is difficult, yet it's designed in such a way that there's so many ways for people to outplay their opponents in spite of perhaps being at a technical disadvantage because of imbalanced gameplay elements. Even though it constantly has balance issues and is balanced pretty much exclusively for tournament play, so many people play that game because it's just as fun when you're a 2k scrub as it is when you're 5k and getting matched against pros.

Game design is something every single player could and should voice their opinions on, because it's an important aspect of the game that affects all players equally. Things like the merits of call-in-focused gameplay, the lack of global upgrades, and the stale metagame are issues that every player could and should weigh in on, because they're the direct result of deliberate game design decisions on the part of the developers. Game design feedback should come from everyone because the purpose of good design is to appeal to the most people as possible.

Balance, on the other hand, is entirely different. The key fact of balance that people refuse to accept is how little it actually affects the outcome of games except at the absolute highest level of play. The vast majority of players have so much room for improvement that any perceived imbalances can easily be overcome with superior play. If the game isn't fun at lower levels, we shouldn't be looking to fix balance, we should be looking to fix design.

The main reason we should be looking at design instead of balance if we want to fix low-level play is because the only effective way to balance a multiplayer game is to balance it for players at the highest possible level of play. This seems entirely obvious to me, but it's a point that people constantly resist. The reason balance needs to be done for the highest level possible is because that is the level with the least complicating factors. Things like skill, dedication, and time spent are complicating factors when talking about balance in the context of low-level play because ranges are so great and there's no baseline. High-level players are separated by very little in terms of skill, and are affected far more severely by balance issues as a result.

Let's manufacture a little scenario. Say we break down CoH into two "skill areas" of micro and macro decision-making, and assign every player a value between 0 and 100 for each. That means a theoretical perfect player would have a micro score of 100 and a macro score of 100.

The complication, of course, is the fact that there's really no way to easily tell what a player's relative strengths and weaknesses are, so instead of seeing this breakdown all we're essentially seeing is the aggregate skill rating. So if you see a rating of 200, you know the player is a perfect 100 in each of the rating categories. But what if the aggregate skill is 100? You could have breakdowns of 100/0, 0/100, 50/50, or anything in between. This adds a degree of uncertainty that is far beyond that of theoretical perfect players.

Say we make two of these perfect players face off; we know they represent the absolute maximum possible level of skill, and because of that we can entirely eliminate skill as a contributing factor when analyzing the outcomes of their games, thus giving us theoretically perfect data on the balance of the two factions they played. Next, we get two players with aggregate scores of 100 to face off. These players could have micro/macro skill splits of 100/0, 0/100, 50/50, or anything in between. Though they may technically be of equal skill, the data they generate will be extremely different based on their relative skill disparities in certain areas. A match between two 100/0 micro/macro players would generate entirely different data than a match between two 0/100 players, or a match between a 100/0 player and a 0/100 player.

We don't have perfect players, of course, but the closest we have are high-level tournament competitors, and those are the players who should be looked to for balance because they play at a level where skill gaps are tiny and the effects of balance are large. At a lower level, game enjoyment is all about design. If people aren't having fun at those levels, they need to frame their complaints in the context of design, rather than pushing for balance changes when they know very little about how said balance changes would impact the game beyond their personal sphere of familiarity.

Boy, you people sure do offend easily. It just strikes me as rather narcissistic and delusional to assume you understand high-level play without being able to compete at a high level. It's possible, sure, but extremely rare.

I meant in the way they formulated and structured this patch, not necessarily the 'fine' details. Small patches are the way to go, they just need to increase the frequency of it. And thank you for calling me mediocre, im flattered.

Agreed, small patches are the way to go, but that approach requires rapid updating, and Relic is traditionally terrible at iterating quickly. I can't comment on the efficacy of the balance changes, of course, but it worries me that it's only balance changes that are being made, since balance has always been secondary to the game's more fundamental issues.

Nah, it's like comparing the knowledge of college or amateur players to pro players; that is to say, you can't even make the comparison. Coaches and managers have proven their expertise in a professional environment, not to mention the vast majority of them were former pro players in the first place. The only person who's achieved a similar understanding of high-level CoH play without being a high-level player is Kolaris back in CoH1. I guarantee the vast majority of people posting balance opinions on these forums are entirely clueless about what it takes to truly compete.

I actually played fairly high-level college baseball, and there's no way in hell I would claim knowledge of the game to the degree people on here claim knowledge when discussing balance.

I just think it's a very silly thing to post because it accomplishes nothing except to give the appearance that Relic is going to heavily police modded content. I also think it's a silly policy because it's counter-productive (for the reasons stated above), but they're two separate aspects of silliness.

Posting something like this doesn't improve Relic's bottom line at all; instead, it gives people another reason to doubt their ability to effectively manage a game and a community. It's a net negative, just like the toxicity post was a net negative. Why post this now instead of waiting until a problem comes up and handling things on a case-by-case basis in the meantime? It doesn't make any sense from any perspective except a strictly legal one, and you've got some serious issues if you're letting your legal team manage your game for you.