Blogs - SEA-106

Welcome back. With the more general basics dealt with, I'm going to move a a very specific area of balancing. OP rants.

Don't behave like a moron, and DON'T RANT.
You know that something is imbalanced? Saying it in all capitals or giant letters is the perfect way to sound like a fanboy, and get you collectively mocked. If you have something to say, say it legibly, sensibly, and make ample use of the Enter button. I'm yet to find someone who likes a walls of text.

Similarly, once you've made your well-thought out conclusion, you're bound to get some responses. And unless something is completely obvious, then you're bound to get some negative responses. Take them in your stride, don't dodge the issues, listen to what they say, and use just as much intelligence in your following writing as I hope you had in your first post.

Ultimately, if your behaviour is best compared to a crying kid, then you really need to rethink your post.

Your opinion alone does not make something imbalanced
It just so happens that you're opinions of how the game works do not define how the game works. Simply, just because something looks OP doesn't necessarily make it OP.

If you find yourself in the circumstance where you are the only one arguing for a balance change, then there's a good chance that the balance change is not needed. I once heard one person say something to the effect of, "If everybody says that you're wrong and you fail, then there's a good chance that you're wrong and you fail."

(Similarly, however, it should be noted that balance is not decided by the majority, it's just that there's a good possiblity of the majority being right.)

Time is needed to prove imbalance
You cannot change something after a single game. If I see someone demanding a balance change after a single game they had, I will just ignore them. (except in exceptional circumstances, such as a single PK being able to defeat unlimited Soviet forces)

When a new strategy appears, it will often have no counters. Since the strategy has never been seen before, opposing players will have never needed to counter it, and so will not have the knowledge to do so. It is then understandable that a new strategy has a much higher success level than the same strategy after long amounts of use. Just because it is not counterable immediately, however, does not mean it cannot be countered.

Keep skill levels in mind, a player that beats you may be much better than you.
I've seen an incredibly large amount of players who complaining about balance problems, when the real balance problem is between skill levels, not between opposing factions. If you've just been beaten, consider the fact that they might be better than you, before posting your thoughts online. Otherwise, others will consider this fact instead, and you'll be embarassed in front of the entire community.

Don't call a strat OP when your enemy has THREE TIMES YOUR ECONOMY
Suppose you are the Allies faction, and you get a good tank force built up. You start rolling towards your enemy, when a whole lot of tengus land on your tanks, and despite their weak attack, decimate you simply with HD. This happens many times, with the huge number of tengus taking out both guardians and mirages easily, and eventually overwhelming the home base.

What's the best response? Go and whinge on the forums? One player had this exact scenario, and made a large post (with ample CAPS) in the GR.org forums, complaining that tengus were OP.

The community (who actually took the time to watch the replay) ripped him to parts, stating the extremely obvious. His enemy had started with a 4-ref build, and had HUGE amounts of money. Enough that he could even do usually inneffective strategies and win the game.

In short, any strategy can succeed with ample money, which brings me to my next point.

Even great strats can fail with bad macromanagement, and vice versa.
If a player manages their base perfectly, expanding at the right times, building neither too little or too many power plants, takes his important garrisons and tech structures, techs up at the correct time, and doesn't float large amounts of money, he is likely to do a much better job than a player who does none of these things well. Even if the latter player has the best strategy possible mapped out, he can fail just because of bad gameplay.

The war on the battlefield can often be won at the home.

Discuss

Now, we have an idea of what we hopeto achieve through balance, and also some of the problems facing us.

Practise > Theory
Sure, with a juicy new mod coming out very soon, it is quite easy to spend large amounts of time analysing Paradox. I do not discourage this, but it should be made plain to everyone that ultimately, you cannot understand the game from outside the game.

This is especially true of balance issues. While there are many things I will be having my eye on as the Beta progresses, I realize that we simply cannot make any judgements before the Beta is actually released. But even once Paradox is released, we cannot trust the claims of people the same way that we can trust actual games. In theory, a strat may be implausible, but in practise, good players will often find ways to make them work.

In short, theory is imperfect, and should only be trusted so far

There are no lame, noobish, or amoral strategies (short of cheating)
I'm sure all of us have seen people put down players, simply because they base-push, use a certain "lame" tactic, or even because they play a certain faction. I want to make it quite clear that these attitudes should not be taken. We developers have designed the game as it is, it is not in any way bad for a player to utilize what the developers purposefully put into a game.

If there is genuinely a problem with a strategy, tactic, or even a faction, it is the developer's job to fix it, not the player's. If the developers are unable (or unwilling) to fix the problem, then a ban on the said object can be put in place. Bans should be used as little as possible, however

Avoiding "lame" or OP strategies simply makes them more powerful, aka discard your Code of Honour, at least for the Beta
Use and Abuse everything. The sole aim of the Beta is to balance the game, but how can we do that if we have inadequate information about the object we need to adjust? Give up your Code of Honour, and join in base-pushing, infantry-rushing, harvestor-killing, and all the other things that players may be unwilling to do. That way, we developers have adequate knowledge about the subject to make the necessary changes, without breaking the game.

After all, if you don't try out the strategies, someone else will. And the earlier these things are balanced, the easier it is for everyone.

We will refund anyone their Code of Honour at the end of the Beta, should they want it back.

Try unusual things to counter supposedly "Imba" strats
Not all the best strategies are easy to discover. Don't stick with the hard counters, or the standard playstyle. Mess it up a little. Which brings me to my next point

Be Creative
You're at the beginning of a new game. Untested units are about to be unveiled, strategies unthought of about to be used. Well, at least if someone gets around to actually thinking them.

Have you been using a great strategy? Think of a better one. Don't stick to what is tried-and-tested, or you'll never be known as the creative player who thought up al; types of zany, yet successful strategies. This is where all those aspiring Foxboxx's come in, to show the gamers that there's more to paradox than tank spams.

Discuss

Hi, I'm SEA-106. I'm a coder for the Red Alert 3: Paradox mod, and used to be a higher-tier Red Alert 3 competitive player. I am the only competive RA3 player in the mod team, and as such will have a better understanding of the way Red Alert 3 works. I have played great players of RA3, such as Technique, Sofronel, Ukraine$tar_oWnZ, and Zlex, and occasionally won. While I was unable to compete in any tournaments (due to timezone issues) I frequented the higher circles of play, and came to know many great players.

In addition, I code for the Paradox mod, coding units like the Razor Sub, the Duster Bomber, the Allied Mass Tank, and others. And now, with the Paradox beta drawing near, I will have a large part in trying to balance Paradox, having recently been made the Beta Community and Balance Manager.

With the release of Paradox only a few weeks away, the issue should be raised, "How does one mentally approach the balancing process?" This will be the first of several threads on the topic of balance.

First, though, what is the problem that we face in balancing Paradox? What makes it so difficult?

Balance is implemented to achieve two primary goals. The first of these is to achieve equality, so that opposing players of equal skill from separate factions will have an even likelihood of victory. There are issues to be dealt with, however. For example, while balance is supposed to equalize players of equal skill from different factions, the only way the balancer can know the relative skill of two players is by how many games they win. Basically, this makes it hard to determine if a faction is really overpowered, or if the players of that faction simply have more skill.

Secondly, the balancing process is supposed to provide diversity, such that the player is given a large number of viable options. These options are implemented in such a way that the player has some basis to choose amongst these meaningful options. As opposed to Rock-Scissors-Paper, in which all three options are identical, the decisions between these options should take place inside the game in such a way that strategy can be applied to pick among the meaningful options from many factors, such as the enemy behaviour and the player's play-style.

Overarching the whole balance issue is the question, "Is it even possible?" We don't know how the game will be played, and yet we have to balance for it. It is a difficult problem, and while we may never achieve "perfect" balance, we will still strive to do the best possible job.