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Thread: Balance; An Explanation

  1. #1
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    Balance; An Explanation

    OK ...

    ..

    we're actually doing this.


    There are many factors of balancing a game, and this isn't JUST CM, this is every game in existence.

    Balance DOES NOT MEAN FUN, EVERYONE NEEDS TO AGREE ON THAT.


    We ALL need to agree, that these 3 rules are the CORE of balance for ANY game, fun EXCLUDED:

    Power of the Individual, or how powerful a single person can affect the outcome
    Power of the Team, or how powerful a team can affect the outcome
    Power of the Skill Ceiling, or how powerful knowledge/experience/skill can affect the outcome, or power, of both the individual and the team.


    Let's get started:


    Let's get started with the number of people. The marines obviously have the advantage, it's not a secret.
    What does this tell us?

    It tells us that, if we exclude the skill ceiling, the xenomorph's ORIGINAL intent was to have the power of the individual.


    Let's dive into the power of the individual for both marine and xeno:

    Spoiler Spoiler:


    Now, let's dive into the power of the TEAM for both marine and xeno:

    Spoiler Spoiler:



    Now ... here's the tricky part:

    Team fights can very quickly become excursions, flanks, and ganks which turn the team-fight into a 1v1 very quickly unless the ENTIRE TEAM compensates to re-adjust ... which creates an imbalance on one-side to compensate for the other and ... you know how that all goes down.



    When people complain, even in my own complaints after the fact, I see that almost 99% of the time there is an imbalance of one thing, and one thing only:

    Power

    Whether the combination is individual VS Team, Individual VS Individual with better skill, Team VS Team with better skill, or whatever combination you can come up with;
    IT IS ALL THE SAME.


    This is the way the game was meant to be played.

    This is the way OTHER GAMES are meant to be played.

    If you don't like it, then why are you here?

    If you don't want to spend time to increase your skill-ceiling ... why are you here?

    Why are you still playing?

    ...

    Stop complaining, and suck it up.

    (quote me on this next time I rage in-game ... you think I'm joking, but seriously, do so.)
    Is an Ambidexterous marine and xeno main.

    Anekcahap "Kneecap" Volkov
    Agent X41833N

    "Some of the best words are never said, but are rather understood."


  2. #2
    Whitelisted Captain ExGame's Avatar
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    70/30 though.

  3. #3
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    Skill ceiling for marines: have a macro for unique-action, PB xenos with shotty.
    Skill ceiling for aliens: have macros for xeno abilities, combo them in certain order.

    Jokes aside, there will always be a group of people who will complain about balance changes no matter they are good or bad.
    But unfortunately those people who need to read this post will probably not read it and you'll still see messages like "they buffed xenos/marines again for no reason, devs don't know anything about balance" in dchat.

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    CM has always been balanced around either very dumb NPCs that cannot figure out why rushing 2 shotgunners as warrior solo is a bad idea, or stock M41 alpha marines that think they're doing something. But they've probably fired 600 rounds and 80 of those maybe hit, and 40 of those hits were FF. Also if you consider most maps will simply have xenos hug caves until they route the marines, the force multiplier that is JTAC won't do shit most of the time. Plus if they're in the open just build pylons lol. Only idiots die to JTAC nowadays. Plus OBs are a pain, easily avoidable if you know left from right AND they will likely be miss-timed. Marines rely on the few marines that know what they're doing with a meta attachment build to get kills, and M41 NPCs to be warm bodies that stay and keep the cades/trenches occupied so marines don't get flanked. But if they do get flanked however they're fucked, as they won't be able to scare off xenos in a moving frontline like that. If you look at a xeno, they're meant to be stronger on average than your 'standard' marine. So in a 1v1 fight the xeno is meant to win, okay. What's our standard marine? An NPC. If you get 20 xenos and 20 marines. There will be, what, 4-6 people that can get kills in that section of marines total? Xenos is probably double that, as it's just easier to get kills or lasting damage when you're a xeno. 20 xenos and 40 marines is still an easy xeno win, too. Xenos are just built for individual damage output, so good xenos shine even brighter. I'd tell you more but I'm busy trying to PB a rav 8 times to kill it.

  5. #5
    Senior Member AlbertBlackwell's Avatar
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    both sides are hand held, xenos are hand held more tho
    Chaotic puppet-master from hell

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by AlbertBlackwell View Post
    both sides are hand held, xenos are hand held more tho
    reject marines
    play survivor

  7. #7
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    remember back when the point was to have a fun round, damn

  8. #8
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    didn't read t1s are weaker than a pfc origami 512001

  9. #9
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    There is minimal feedback for most actions in the game like damage, in a lot of skill based/competitive games that expect players to improve feedback is incredibly important, but in CM its difficult to get any kind of immediate feedback so a new player can adjust. The result of this is that only players who play for years really know how anything works with memorizing maps, enemy health, abilities, damage, etc. of each gun and thus there will always be a minimal amount of skilled players on each side as old players quit and new players play, but don't stay for the years required to learn the game or are unwilling to sift through information externally from the game.

    The general consensus in the community seems to be that you can't increase the general skill level of players and that balance has to be based on that, but just increasing feedback by adding multiple damage sprites, a health bar, numbers above a sprite's head showing damage, etc. you will increase general player skill by allowing players to collect and process feedback faster and more clearly.

    You could also lower the hard skill floor of some things by just doing things like including full maps with areas labeled for convenient reference ingame so that commanding players can expect every player to have an idea of where to go when they tell everyone to go to a location and a rough idea of where things are in comms.

    Of course numbers and healthbars would be incredibly immersion breaking, but with the style of faster rounds more focused on deathmatch combined with a dwindling RP contingent on server it might be the way to go since it would allow devs to have a more even skill level to work with.

  10. #10
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    you know you just made me want to list every alien and marine job on a power level and I hate you for that.
    as for the balance, I will not comment as I both banned and not a game dev

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