1v1/Maps/Balancing

[bkn]

I know that in this forum most of the people are aware of the problem that the mapdesign can heavily influence the outcome of a match. I myself mentioned this problem here and there. But i think this topic deserves its own discussion. This problem heavily kicks in if you play 1vs1. Im a "competitive" person. In this game i enjoy winning. I enjoy building decks. i enjoy to optimize decks. I enjoy to lose and learn more about my mistakes and try correct them.

The numbers of divisions and maps makes it impossible to balance it 100%. i am fully aware of that. Optimizing decks for 1vs1 means you try to build your decks in a way you gain an advantage over your opponnent for the most possible scenarios or at least can handle them somehow. For me its even ok if play on a certain map and see my opponent will have a huge advantage in this setup. I had time to optimize my deck for it, so i still have a chance to win.

Something i dont enjoy is the fact that even after optimizing a deck some setups (maps + division) don´t allow you to win the game literally. I have about 400 hours ingame so far. i didnt play the campaign, i didnt play wargame. After the tutorial and a few 3vs3 and 4vs4 lobby games (to learn the basic of the game) i straight went into 1v1 ranks. And i did good. At this point i probably didnt even know why i did good, but was able to hit the top 20 in my prime.

Now i know better. With all this experience i finally know why i did good (Not because i am a good player, thats truly not the case). Literally my initial idea of playing this game was favouring me most of the time. I had huge advantages over my opponents. The decks i played and the core strat literally boosted me into heaven. When i was loosing i learned about why i lost and try to preperate my decks. But now i got tired. After x hours of theorizing i learned that the SD universum doesnt allow you to find the big answers. Sometimes the creator wants you to lose.

You can have the "perfect" deck, but that newbie that just finished the tutorial just steamrolled you with devilish laugh again. But after constantly lying crying under my desk there needs something to be done in this game. I dont know how often i will be able to swallow the fact that you can be beaten by literally everybody that knows how to activate his touchpad on his laptop (thats sometimes enough to know) because all advantages were on his side.

Now you can argue i shouldnt play 1vs1. I should play lobby games and stop sweating ranks. But for me its no fun. The basic nature of strategy games is the competition against others. You vs Me. Chess. I wanna play vs other sweaty tryhards to enjoy the game. But i dont wanna lose all the time because i started our chess game without pawns. There needs to be a ranked map pool, redrawing of some maps, redesign of divisions to make them self sustainable and so on... Because in this state this is the worst balanced strategy game for 1vs1 i have ever touched.

This is not a flame, because i realy love this game... But i dont like the fact that the outcome of a match is not decided during the match. I want to play a fair game, thats all. Even if i play against an unexperienced player i want him to have a chance to beat me. I want him to have a fair game aswell. I dont wanna have to think to myself "bad division choice this time bro, maybe next time sry". And i also dont want boring free wins even against very experienced players (even spending 10 mins on yt during the match) because he literally cant win this match.

 

[xFoXReaper]

1 v 1 games are very tricky. There's no map with a 'fair' layout. It's not like other RTS e-sports games like StarCraft where the map layout is randomized and no player has a clear advantage because they spawned there, it usually comes down to the skill of each player to defeat its opponent and not because you had a treeline and your opponent didn't.

For example, Colombelles 1 v 1 map, in my opinion, has a 'better side'. If you spawn in the North side of the map you have the tree line across the river where you can put field guns and MGs to stop a potential push, while the opponent has an open field where he can get shot at pretty much from everywhere. You also have more buildings that you can occupy in the factory area, so it will always be difficult for the opponent to push you since you can 'building hop' and get yourself in cover. Lastly, on the left side it's a bit more even but I think the forest layout is better on the North side than on the other side.

One of the most complex issues is the different unit cost across divisions and different income rate, this makes balancing a nightmare. At least in Wargame Red Dragon everyone had the same income and the units costed the same for everyone, the T-90A costed the same whether you were USSR or USSR-China deck... But I understand that Eugen wants to make each division unique and giving different income and unit cost is the best way to make them unique.

 

[bkn]

I fully agree, some maps offer better positions for one side, literally all do. I consider some maps as playable in terms of everyone has a chance of winning though. Some maps are simply unfair by design.

The best example is that airfield map. You dont need a masters degree in mapdesign to know that this stuff cant work in a 1vs1. A Tank division with long range potential and support units will always win against a infantery division that relys on paks in their game (they dont even have an alternative for those maps in their deckbuilder most of the time). Even Tank Destroyers are suitable now for dealing with some paks. On the other hand (I struggle with the map names tbh) if a map consist of 50% dense forest your tanks become usless against an inf spam, no matter what you are trying to achieve with micro.

Incomes. Thats the next thing that is unsuitable for 1vs1 games. Best example Lehr Division. 40 min game lenght, 20 min bad income. Phace C high income kicks in, 1 min to move that income to the frontline, 1 min to do the first damage. So you have for like 18 min the upper hand in terms of income, but thats about the point to draw the game at least (if you are constantly -1). You still need time to push the frontline if you are even able to do so, because the higher income of your opponent has also higher potential of dealing damage to you in the early game.

There are many factors that make this fun game unsuitable for "fair" games. Now imagine you are playing lehr in that forest map i mentioned vs an Inf division with high early income... good luck, its literally impossible to win the game now. And you can transfer this example to all divisions and maps. Its too hard to find some enjoyable games in 1vs1 imo, for both sides.

You simply cant balance the game due to its design. And almost no strategy game is or will fully be balanced.The problem with SD is that it can be even so unfair that you can consider it a waste of time to play some matches (if your goal is to win at the end). And thats something i have never seen in any other strategy title.

 

[xFoXReaper]

I think the game wasn't conceived as a competitive RTS for 1 v 1s. Each division has its own pros and cons that combined with other divisions create a solid army. What I think Eugen expects from this game is large scale battles that involve teamplay. When I used to play ranked I would always the same divisions over and over again. Top picked divisions are the infantry ones, since you have a lot of expendable infantry for you to push and cost-effective armor. Playing an armor based division is risky since your chances to win depend completely on the map layout. I think that's the reason why you see Indian Head, Scots, Canadian (maybe sometimes the poles), Fallschirmjager and Hitlerjugend constantly.

 

[Karlburg]

I think the map design of taking a box out of a larger map makes it really difficult to make a balanced map.

 

[Fussel]

If you get a map not suited for your division you have to do some unconventional stuff because otherwise you play into the hands of your opponents. Carpiquet Duellist with an infantry division for example you can throw all your eggs in one basket and try to get a breakthrough and reach the town (still high chance of failing).
I think a menu where you can vote off 3-4 maps before you search would have been nice but at this point you are glad if you get a game without having to wait to long. Another option would have been changing map pools every 2-4 weeks or so but yeah...utopistic.

 

[xFoXReaper]

There are many examples that Eugen can get their ideas from. For CSGO you can pick the map or maps you want to play. In MOBA games you can ban characters, maybe in SD you can ban 2 or 3 divisions or something like that. The main problem will probably be playerbase. It's not like SD has an immense playerbase so if you add filters to it you might run into endless queues.

 

[dmdelor]

I certainly agree with the ideal, although I don't think SD is as bad as you say it is about this.

I think for the most part, Steel Division does a pretty good job of having fair maps with regards to which side you start on. Not perfect- it's never going to be without symmetry- but a pretty good job. Certainly compared to past Wargames, it's a lot better, although the Frontline mechanic makes this design a lot easier than the control zones did.

Any specific maps that are obviously biased towards one half or the other ought to be fixed, of course.

I do think that some of the more extremely open or closed maps like Cheux ought to be removed from the random map selection pool, and that it's a huge shame that they don't have the map thumbnail functionality that Red Dragon had so that you can see what you're getting in to when you join a custom lobby. Most of the maps do a good job of having a mix of places with open fields and places where you're going to be fighting up close, which helps give all divisions a chance even if they're optimized for one or the other, but there are exceptions.

I also think there's a few divisions that ought to receive some minor tweaks to reduce how swing-y they can be, although I'll skip enumerating my ideas here to avoid having this degenerate into a division balance thread.

 

[xFoXReaper]

Certainly compared to past Wargames, it's a lot better, although the Frontline mechanic makes this design a lot easier than the control zones did.

The change from Cap zones to Frontline is a step forward. Some Red Dragon games degenerated into throwing cluster artillery and MLRS into control zones trying to nuke the enemy CV. Frontline seems definetly a more balanced and enjoyable way to score points. I wish the point system of CQC (Attributing 1 point to the team that pushed 52% and not 51%) was also applied to normal frontline maps since I think a 1% can be achieved by just killing a single small unit. The hedgerow setup is definetly a blessing since Red Dragon forests were basically pillboxes filled with tanks with ATGMS that will shoot you and dissapear seconds later. So overall those cheesy tactics are gone from the game.

There's a UI mod that shows you the map layout in the lobby. The name of the mod is TACMOD UI. Pretty useful and also has other features like a range finder etc... There's definetly maps that are more versatile but I can think of several of them that are completely ridicoulous i.e Carpiquet.

I wish Eugen would release a game mode where one side has to attack and the other to defend. Best of 4 four rounds. It will add some diversity to the current gamemodes. Frontline is basically a tug of war.

 

[Claremont Waltz]

No one is ever going to sign up for a best of 4 mode in a random match game.

 

[bkn]

For me the first step forward would be a map voting system in rank games like CoH 2 has for example. So before the queue you can simply vote out some of the maps you consider unplayable for the division u wanna play as. Its not hard to implement and both partys agreed on the map they are playing on. Its not perfect because all the divisions and maps will still lead to unfair games, but u are able to be prepared better. That would at least bring me back into playing again. But atm im simply to frustrating losing games you are supposed to win.

What i would also like to see is that the ladderboard for ranks are split into the different divisions and game modes (also from CoH). That would encourage people more to play divisions in rank that for example are not good for 1vs1. So for example you can go 1vs1 rank with the lehr division and try to become #1 in the ladderboard even if you are losing most of the games, u just have to win more games than the other guys going 1vs1 with lehr. That would be such an awesome change and would bring back all division into rank games.

The sad thing about the current rank system is that a win against a good opponent wont give you more points than winning against a weak opponent. All that matters is the ratio of W/L in general. So if u wanna be in the top 10 for example you have to grind a lot of games, hoping you are playing against alot of beginners that went for a quick match (its not seperated what kinda pisses me off). Somebody that goes for a qiuck match shouldnt be matched up with somebody from the rank queue. If the game doesnt count for the opponent as a rank game aswell, he can go full yolo meme, while you are more focused about playing balanced to win the game. I have seen this alot, ppl spamming all their troops to the center off the map and throwing you off the board because they didnt care about the outcome of the match.