"What needs to be done" 2nd Edition

[ginn]

So, I've had a chat with shoozza quite a while ago about the wm and it's current state, however, he refuses to actually do anything about it. Hopefully this will get some attention from the community and he will give a 2nd thought about it.

The current model for the wm

atm the weapon balance team looks like this:

• Skoskav - Head of the weapon balance team
• Bern - Beta tester
• ZeroStatic - Beta tester
• DragonSlayer - Beta tester

-The only person that does anything is Skoskav, though, the method he uses is very flawed.

So how is the wm made?
Well, Skoskav looks at stats from #soldat.gather, and then balances after the stats, such as most kills.
-This is just wrong, since most players on #soldat.gather aren't that good. Even if they were, just looking at stats won't tell you much.

What the model should look like

What the team should look like

• 2-3 Leaders for the wm tean
• 4-6 Testers

- A big team might make it very hard to make decisions, so instead the team should be split in two.

How the wm should be made
First the 'leaders' provide a wm for the testers to test, after a few games using this wm, the testers gives their opinion and it's reasoning. From here the 'leaders' go trough the input and their own sense of the wm state and adjust it..
-To not let just a couple of people decide the wm, where it can become very biased, input is provided from a larger source.



This would be a good start, to further improve the wm and also the game, more variables to the weapons.ini is needed among other things.

Just to name a few needed variables:

• Bullet push
• Damage fall off ratio
• Range before decreased damage

Some other things that should be done as well:

• No damage modifiers
• Nades total damage depending on shooters speed rather than the distance to the victims feet
• Variable in maps for respawn modifiers
• Alternative respawn for team based mods/ showing a timer for the respawn wave

[Clawbug]

Public, gather/fcw, and SCTFL games all need their own WM's if you truly want to have any form of balance. Do I need to explain why?

Have you put any thought on the maps, which by the way, define weapon usage statistics to a great degree?

[ginn]

maps doesn't really matter at this point. Steyr out performs every other auto in every situation, Spas doesn't really have any weakness neither does ruger have any (the only difference between the two is that ruger is slightly better on range but doesn't have infinite ammo).

You only need 1 wm, which is for competitive play, publics has never and will never have any clue of what is balanced and not and gathers/fcw should use the wm that competition rules has.

[Clawbug]

I'll just leave this here, so you can actually see how the weapons work in terms of damage per second, shots per second, time to kill etc.



Difference between TimeToKill and SustainedTimeToKill is that because the first fired shot never has fireinterval(delay), you get to shoot 1+n shots with n*fireinterval ticks. In essence, for 2 shots you only need to wait for 1*fireinterval, and for 5 shots you only need to wait for 4*fireinterval. SustainedTimeToKill is the same, except it only calculates fireinterval*n ticks.

Yes, Socom kills faster than AK or Mimimi from zero range. It has been so for years.

[ginn]

Not quite sure what you're trying to say, according to those stats steyr spas and ruger are very over powered.
There's also the fact that bullets loses speed with travel time.

As for an example lets take the example where the bullet is going to lose 18 speed before it hits.
We'll use Spas and minimi for this example.

So, the total damage loss for spas is 12,9% and for minimi 8,1% per bullet. This is due to a number multiplied by another number close to itself has a higher value than 2 far away from each others.
as for example, 2x8 = 16, while 5x5 = 25 (The difference is n^2, where n is the number from it's average).

Anyhow, looking at stats is a horrible way to balance. It's good to get a base/prototype, after that testing and experience is the only way to balance.

[Clawbug]

Yes I am aware that bullets lose speed, this is far bigger problem for weapons with slow bullets such as Spas and Deagles while it does not affect Ruger or AUG as much,

When it comes to actually balancing weapons, there's no room for actual arguments backed up by usage statistics, weapon properties or common sense. Otherwise you wouldn't see Ruger being completely and utterly overpowered against Deagles 5 years in a row in every single possible case imaginable(publics, gathers, SCTFL, ...).

Oh, and the table was just to prove your claim that AUG outperforms other autos in every situation which is simply not true from perspective of numbers or practice.

[13th_account]

So how is the wm made?
Well, Skoskav looks at stats from #soldat.gather, and then balances after the stats, such as most kills.
-This is just wrong, since most players on #soldat.gather aren't that good. Even if they were, just looking at stats won't tell you much.

This must be awkward for you, because that's not at all how it works. Whoever told you that was probably trolling you. I wish it was that simple though, then the weapon distribution there would have been equalized years ago. I won't bore you with the intricacies of the process, but it's mainly based on feedback from people on IRC. Stats from sources like gathers, SCTFL and its playoff is just an interesting tool to double-check planned changes so they won't worsen situations.

What the team should look like

• 2-3 Leaders for the wm tean
• 4-6 Testers

- A big team might make it very hard to make decisions, so instead the team should be split in two.

How the wm should be made
First the 'leaders' provide a wm for the testers to test, after a few games using this wm, the testers gives their opinion and it's reasoning. From here the 'leaders' go trough the input and their own sense of the wm state and adjust it..
-To not let just a couple of people decide the wm, where it can become very biased, input is provided from a larger source.

Well that's kinda how it used to work between the makings of versions 1.3 to around 1.5. The process was slow, indecisive, mixed balances that didn't work together and never let new ideas flourish. And ever since Chakra left the team no one has had the ability to wrangle enough good testers.

This would be a good start, to further improve the wm and also the game, more variables to the weapons.ini is needed among other things.

Just to name a few needed variables:

• Bullet push
• Damage fall off ratio
• Range before decreased damage

Some other things that should be done as well:

• No damage modifiers
• Nades total damage depending on shooters speed rather than the distance to the victims feet
• Variable in maps for respawn modifiers
• Alternative respawn for team based mods/ showing a timer for the respawn wave

I already added bullet push for the next version. For modifying the damage fall-off I don't see why this needs to be weapon-specific. But that and the other things are probably better to discuss in their own topics.

[ginn]

you should be playing the game if you're gonna balance it.

And well, the balance has gotten worse since 1.5, everyone playing minimi is better than instagib spas.

[Clawbug]

And well, the balance has gotten worse since 1.5, everyone playing minimi is better than instagib spas.

Depends on the map. I dare you to play ctf_B2b against barrett with Spas as an example. As such, weapon usage is also dependent on maps, not only on the perceived changes in the weapons.ini changelog.(Wasn't this experimented with a few years ago, when the claimed changelog did not reflect with the real changes. Maybe skoskav remembers the case?)

[13th_account]

you should be playing the game if you're gonna balance it.

And well, the balance has gotten worse since 1.5, everyone playing minimi is better than instagib spas.

http://skoskav.org/etc/soldat/wm/150/
http://skoskav.org/etc/soldat/wm/163/3/

Borrowing your lingo, Spas instagibbed back in 1.5 too.

[ginn]

As players get better, the weapon balance needs adjusting.

[Clawbug]

It's not about players getting better. It's about people playing differently in different maps. For example do you consider Spas to be overpowered in comparison to e.g. AK in ctf_X? How about in ctf_Laos or ctf_Voland?

The fact is that these days 3v3 CTF matches are played in very fast-paced and intense maps in which the combat mostly happens at close-quarters, meanng that short-range weapons gain huge advantage. If you use this as a balancing measure, how would you play older maps which are more open? How would you play 5v5 games? 4-10 player deathmatch in Leaf, Flashback, Rok, HH, ... Inf? HTF?

You simply just can't take your most played SCTFL and gather maps as a measure to balance the weapons. That just alone is what makes things far more complicated than just nerfing what's most used and buffing what's least used. There are other reasons too, for example the fact that weapon usage statistics are far different in SCTFL games than in less serious games(fcws and gahers) because people value reliability over maximum potential. Hence why autos are far more used than semi-autos in SCTFL games, where it's a bit of an opposite in gathers, where reliability isn't such an concern.

[13th_account]

The instagib is indifferent to player skill and maps. It only cares for damage.

[Clawbug]

The instagib is indifferent to player skill and maps. It only cares for damage.

Weapons in relation to others.

[13th_account]

The instagib is indifferent to relative balance.

[ginn]

spas is quite viable in laos and voland, I really can't think of any map where it wouldn't be good.
No other mode is played seriously, so it's not a concern. would you nerf carriers in bw because they're overpowered in bighuntersgame?

Things that aren't played shouldn't have any priority, do you really think it's better to ruin what's being played just to not ruin something that isn't played?


This is just dumb, neither of you play the game, and even if you play it occasionally, you're probably far below the average skill... which kind of makes your opinion on the wm void... I don't think any sane good player would say that steyr, spas and ruger aren't overpowered.

[Clawbug]

This is just dumb, neither of you play the game, and even if you play it occasionally, you're probably far below the average skill... which kind of makes your opinion on the wm void... I don't think any sane good player would say that steyr, spas and ruger aren't overpowered.

First of all, I do not disagree that spas or Ruger wouldn't need nerfing. Second, Soldat is not only about competitive scene, and it is my understanding that the WM although being influenced heavily by the needs of the competitive scene, is not made with only competitive scene in mind. Third, player skill has nothing to do with arguments, to believe so is a fallacy.

[ginn]

This is just dumb, neither of you play the game, and even if you play it occasionally, you're probably far below the average skill... which kind of makes your opinion on the wm void... I don't think any sane good player would say that steyr, spas and ruger aren't overpowered.

First of all, I do not disagree that spas or Ruger wouldn't need nerfing. Second, Soldat is not only about competitive scene, and it is my understanding that the WM although being influenced heavily by the needs of the competitive scene, is not made with only competitive scene in mind. Third, player skill has nothing to do with arguments, to believe so is a fallacy.

you're reversing the "skill" thing. if a doctor tells you that you have the flue, and another mental patient tells you that you have another illness that requires you to amputate your limbs to survive.... I think it's fair to say that you should probably listen to the doctor instead.

To make an argument, you need to have something to back it up with. Your arguments are completely unbacked, as you don't play the game. Would you be happy to get a kid into your office arguing about things you're educated in and he isn't?

[Adam]

spas is quite viable in laos and voland, I really can't think of any map where it wouldn't be good.
No other mode is played seriously, so it's not a concern. would you nerf carriers in bw because they're overpowered in bighuntersgame?

Things that aren't played shouldn't have any priority, do you really think it's better to ruin what's being played just to not ruin something that isn't played?


This is just dumb, neither of you play the game, and even if you play it occasionally, you're probably far below the average skill... which kind of makes your opinion on the wm void... I don't think any sane good player would say that steyr, spas and ruger aren't overpowered.

ruger gets eaten alot of times leaving only 1 shot,steyr is overpowered cause the bullets shoot straight and spas distance is overpowered :>

[STM1993]

Why not select a few well-rounded maps, enforce them as the only maps you can use for competitions, and balance based on those few maps? And if you want to get even more stringent you could have separate balances for pubs and competitions.

The competitive scene wants very stringent balance between all guns and there is no doubt that maps play a role in that(would you use a straight-firing weapon in a map full of curves?), while the pubbers don't really care as long as their games are fun and like variety in game modes and maps(which is a bit of a problem right now - everyone in pubs use Barrett M79 Knife).

As for the guns themselves, my 2 cents:
* I prefer Steyr to every other auto. Shoots fast, kills fast, high bullet speed, good accuracy, reloads fast, 1 clip is enough for my needs. This is compared to AK taking very long to kill (so I get out-DPS'd all the time), Minimi a bit clumsy, MP5 having too low bullet speed(and so more specialized).
* I would use Deagles, Ruger, Spas if I never missed. Problem is that I can never count on myself never missing, I'd rather use an auto when I'm playing seriously.
* 1-hitters, similar to semis, but I don't need to be as consistent as semis. I just need to fire ONCE, and that's it he's down. I don't need to care about anything else.
I like having reliability, I want to minimize the cost of my mistakes and be able to handle any situation - that or I can shut people down before anything happens. Why do you think Assault Rifles are always the most popular weapon in an FPS, followed closely by 1-hitting Sniper Rifles?