Balancing for 1v1 vs Teamgames

[Korbah]

Read it again

What I said is that a single change may cause a different effect between 1v1 and team games.

This situation can be understood and using the understanding of this relationship you can make changes that take into account team and 1v1s to the balancer's advantage.

[Nyx]

Fundamentally understanding the implications of 1v1 vs team battles is about getting to grips with the temporal and scalar differences that are emergent within both style of game. Maps are and additional factor as other have suggested.

When this is appreciated the fact that you can make significant changes to units that impacts heavily on team games with little 1v1 implications becomes a lot more intuitive.

Inherent gameplay quality will affect both - albeit to differing degrees. An effort should always be made to ensure the integrity of the core metagame is of a high quality as this will have critical implications. It is this which should be the initial focus of any gameplay/balancing team as weaknesses in the design of core gameplay mechanics and core units will have overarching negative consequences.

Never seen so many words that mean nothing, good vocabulary does not make ones post more valid nor give it more reasoning.

Although correct, you could of just said that one must understand the difference of scale between 1v1 and team games as they are different styles of game and you should focus on this apparent "core" of the game so not to make changes with bad effects.

You could of just said:
"Changing 1v1 positively could have the opposing effect on team games and vice versa (to quote the obvious and kind of is already the TITLE of this post)."
Which pretty much sums up your post. XD

As Ceneraii said, basically pointing out the obvious and saying changes make changes.

[Korbah]

Your summation is overly truncated and key points are lost.

As a change in 1v1 may have almost no effect to very broad effects depending on the individual change. The whole post was about the importance of understanding why certain changes impact differently.

Let me review what I said
Paragraph 1:

To understand how to differentially tweak 1v1 balance as against team games you must be able to appreciate how:
- Timers
- Unit critical mass
- scale of the combat
- maps
Differ and impact on each game type.
(this paragraph was initially deliberately vague as the interactions are complex and fully explaining it whilst typing on my phone was not feasible)


Paragraph 2:
Once you understand why changes affect each game type differently you can use said changes to the tweak each game style as you please with minimal or predictable consequences in the other.

Paragraph 3:

The core gameplay will affect both game types. Efforts should be made to make the core gameplay as good as possible and THEN add tweaks to either 1v1 or team games as required (using the aforementioned understanding from the prior 2 paragraphs to limit flow on effects.)

[keyser]

What is the core gameplay ? Is there difference between core gameplay and some other side gameplay ?

[Zoram]

Korbah, you really don't need to be that verbose to just end up being captain obvious.
I think it's quite apparent to everyone that there are differences of scales and timing between 1v1 and team games.

Then what ? What is core gameplay ?

You should do politics though, your skills at diluting a simple idea into abstruse discourse are quite impressive.
Sorry for being a bit of a jerk, but someone had to tell you

[nine2]

I really don't get all the Korbah-hate. There are so many down right assholes on these forums and you guys pick Korbah to have a shot at? For what? Essentially you think his posts are flowerly yet unimportant. So what.

[Zoram]

I really don't get all the Korbah-hate. There are so many down right assholes on these forums and you guys pick Korbah to have a shot at? For what? Essentially you think his posts are flowerly yet unimportant. So what.

not hate from me, and he's not an asshole as far as I know. I just think the lecturing tone is a bit much and starting every sentence like he's stating the laws of the universe doesn't encourage constructive discussion.

[Korbah]

Korbah, you really don't need to be that verbose to just end up being captain obvious.
I think it's quite apparent to everyone that there are differences of scales and timing between 1v1 and team games.

Both Keyser and zlo_rd highlighted this in their posts and put forward some great examples of some of the key factors that differ between 1v1 and team gameplay. What they didn't do was highlight the decision making process a balancer would need to follow if they were looking to improve either 1v1 or team games without impacting on the other game type.

Given the original poster's question:

Can we achieve a balance that makes for the best 1v1 games and the best teamgames? How does the balance team consider changes that affect these two areas of faf differently?

It seemed reasonable to me to try and explain how to approach making balance changes from a theoretical point of view (especially given we'd already heard good examples of different gameplay factors). Also given the question was broad - a broad response seemed appropriate.

Whether or not you dislike how I delivered the message is up to you and I make no apology for my prose - I participate in FAF because I enjoy it and will continue to do so in a manner that furthers my enjoyment. What is of relevance, and is being lost in the indignant posts decrying my language, is the key message of my posts - that the differing effect a given change makes on team games as against 1v1 can be predicted and therefore accounted for.

What is the core gameplay ? Is there difference between core gameplay and some other side gameplay ?

Core gameplay is what you'd expect to see in most games - whether they be 1v1 or teams. Unit interactions such as t3 arty wars are clearly much less common and frequent in 1v1's and are therefore not core gameplay and can be less of a priority when balancing. The gameplay you see 80% of the time should be the focus of balancing - once you get that working well in 1v1 you can broaden to make that core gameplay work well in team games without altering 1v1 significantly. Once all the core gameplay works well in 1v1 AND team games go hunting for the less common balance problems starting first with 1v1 play then team.

It's an arbitrary term and open for negotiation - but it's a useful concept to use when prioritising work on gameplay and balance changes.

your skills at diluting a simple idea into abstruse discourse are quite impressive

See I disagree here. JaggedAppliance is no fool and is a good player - he knew full well that there's different scale and timing between the two types of games but still posed the question here in the thread.

If addressing the simple ideas were as easy as you'd suggest FAF would be balanced for 1v1 and team games years ago. Clearly it's not despite the hard work of a legion of intelligent chaps working on this "simple" problem.

Perhaps instead of irrelevant and pointless posts criticising the vocab and style of a few forum posts I've made, people could make a meaningful contribution that answers the OP's question.

[JaggedAppliance]

Another great balance thread.

[Ceneraii]

Attempted re-railing of this thread; numbering your questions for my own convenience.

1. I'm sure both are considered when making balance changes but I'm wondering where the line is drawn.
2. Ultimately I believe the game has to be balanced for 1v1 but does this compromise teamgames?
3. Can we achieve a balance that makes for the best 1v1 games and the best teamgames?
4. How does the balance team consider changes that affect these two areas of faf differently?

Note that my answers are mostly guestimates because I can't really speak for the balance team.

1. Generally the attempt is to improve one without hurting the other or preferably improve both. I'd think the line is drawn based on logic of pro's vs con's vs severity vs controversy.
2. It does, the two are quite different from eachother, more in depth answer on 3.
3. Probably not, almost certainly not in fact, but we can come close and have been coming closer through the years. Two of the major problems are that near(mapwide) threats require counters from a bunch of people in teamgames while in 1v1 they would only have a concentrated target area (think TML) and super-focussed strategies like Rambo rush or strat rush that are only viable if you don't need to expand or fight.
4. Can't really answer for them but see 1.