Ladder: Picking faction with or without map

[sasin]

I had a question that I don't know if people have considered before. What if in the ladder system you could see the map that you are going to play (and maybe your opponent?) and then pick your faction? This is kind of like the system in many tournaments where you know the map in advance and can pick your faction accordingly. I think there are two big advantages to such a system and a lot of smaller advantages.

1.) It would make the game design/balance aspect of the community much easier. For example, in the past there were certain maps where people thought aeon/sera are OP because of auroras and zthuees. To alleviate that situation, the community worked on global unit changes. But those changes affect not only water maps but all maps, and therefore have a whole stream of consequences.

Alternatively, if you could pick your faction after the map choice is revealed, this situation would be much much less problematic (although it'd be unfortunate if there were a lot of maps were one or two factions dominate).

2.) Along the same lines, it would allow for a ton more faction diversity. Right now, we have to be very careful with faction diversity because there are so many maps and you want to make each race viable for each map. It's really, really, really difficult, if not impossible, to have a lot of faction diversity, balance, and a variety of different maps. By not forcing people onto maps after they've picked a faction, we could allow the factions to deviate much more without screwing players over.

There are also additional minor advantages to the system, such as the fact that it rewards players who are proficient with several factions and encourages players to try out different factions.

What do you guys think? Sorry for the super long post.

[Cuddles]

Or just remove maps like four corners from the pool

[Vee]

Agree with Scoot. Additionally, I would suggest to show random as a random icon in the game, so that you need to scout your opponent so see his faction if he plays random. Then at least there is some tiny advantage to playing random =)

[sasin]

I think you guys are under appreciating how much the allowing factions to be picked after the map is selected could allow for additional faction diversity.

[Morax]

It is possible to counter Aeon on most maps, but it requires a lot of speed and awareness. On a map like theta passage I usually rush t2 with cybran and get rhinos FAST. There is the vulnerability to OC, but if you spread out your units and pester enough you should be fine. It does take a lot of practice to get it right, though.

[Nombringer]

That seems more like giving up on balance and just putting a band-aid over it, rather than actually fixing it.

There are only a few maps that probably cant be fixed (like four corners) I agree with Scoot and Vee for these ones.

[sasin]

That seems more like giving up on balance and just putting a band-aid over it, rather than actually fixing it.

There are only a few maps that probably cant be fixed (like four corners) I agree with Scoot and Vee for these ones.

If everyone likes the system as is then that's fine, but I don't think it's fair to characterize this as putting a band-aid over balance. It's changing the rules of the game in the most minor of ways to allow for much more faction diversity and alleviate potential small imbalances that are hard to keep track of. No matter what, there's a trade-off between map diversity, balance, and faction diversity. Look at starcraft. It has much much better faction diversity but at the cost of map diversity. I don't think you could say that the lack of variety in maps in that game is a band-aid over balance, if you asked players of that game if they would give up the faction diversity for a wider range of maps I don't think any of them would choose to do so.

Or consider shooters, which as far as I can tell for the most part allow you to pick your load-out after you know the map and gametype. It allows the load-outs to be very different and have unique strengths and weaknesses, whereas if you picked your load-out and then were assigned a map you would have to limit the strategic variety. Or, consider a game like super smash brothers, where certain characters are deemed to have an advantage on certain stages. That fact enriches the depth of strategic interplay in picking your character to match up against your opponent and worry about the stage he/she will pick. And the meta game has evolved over time as different people played different characters on different stages. If anyone plays the board game terra mystica, it's a perfect illustration. There are 14 factions and a randomly generated map. The players see the maps and then choose factions, and it allows for tremendous variation between the factions. Forcing players to choose factions first would result in wildly imbalanced games, and it's interesting to see which factions players choose to respond to the map. If they forced you to pick factions first, they'd have to make the factions much much more similar, which would lose a lot of what makes the game great.

In supreme commander now, we're in denial if we don't think that the factions increasingly play more similarly and that faction diversity is much less than the above games, as well as many others. For those who are familiar with super smash brawl (melee to a lesser extent), it's like we're playing that game with only fox, falco, and wolf. There are certainly differences, but a 1400 rated player who played only cybran could switch to UEF on many team land maps and probably play at around 1300 level at worst. The adjustment from mantis to uef t1 tank is the hardest part as far as I could see. At t2, each faction primarily relies on some medium tank that is pretty much identical to the other tanks. Certainly, the different complementary roles that cybran t1 arty and uef t1 arty etc. play makes a difference in how you use them to complement your army, but in general t2 tanks etc. play pretty similarly to each other, and that's the main unit people are spamming. The cybran MMLs are also obviously better. On t3 percivals and bricks are obviously basically the same unit, although of course percies are a little better than bricks at killing t3/exps and bricks are better against lower tier units. I don't think any of this is controversial, is it?

The tanks were made more homogeneous as the result of deliberate decisionmaking in the FAF community. In addition, the t1 bombers have been made more identical, although I believe aeon and sera are still best, in an effort to make first bomber viable for all factions (this one I obviously agree with more as the random bombs not dropping were really stupid). I'm not criticizing the decision-makers or the decisions, it makes sense given the current rules. These are in addition to a whole host of other units which are practically identical.

Think about the units that are more unique... the aurora, the fatboy, the various scus, the combat fighter, the megalith, arguably the corsair, cybran t1 arty, pretty much t2/t3 navy in general but specifically shield boats, coopers, cruisers etc. or whatever units you think are most unique. Those units dramatically enrich the sup com experience. It would be nice to have more diversity along those lines, but that is very hard and on some level impossible to do while preserving the rich variety of maps and wanting each faction to have an equal chance on each map.

Conclusion/TL:DR

A simple change, allowing the faction to be picked after the map is determined, would make balancing the game much easier and allow for much more faction diversity. Further, it'd add strategy to the game insofar as people have to think about picking the right faction for a given map. It would encourage people to further learn multiple factions in order to have different choices etc. for different maps. Finally, there aren't really any major drawbacks to the change, at least none that have been mentioned.

[Aarhun]

I agree with you on most point, and it could indeed simplify balance and allow more race diversity.
I see only two minor drawback:
- Some player like to identify to a race, being UEF, Cybran etc. If you transform the race choice into a strategical option, you lose this aspect. Granted that good players are already doing a switch of race in custom games. And granted also that it did not prevent a player to choose the race he want, willingly adding some challenge if he stick to his favorite race instead of picking the more efficient.
- You will have many mirror matches, except if balance is made to allow two races to be good on a single map.

Anyway it could worth a try, maybe a second ranked ladder with this special rule ?

[Aurion]

I think this solution actually makes faction diversity LESS interesting, because you can just choose the right faction for the map and everyone will pick the same faction.

[Taffy]

Easiest solution is to remove maps like four corners/paradise where faction diversity leads to unfair games.