What does "balanced" mean?

[FunkOff]

With the term being thrown around left and right, I thought it would be helpful to try and attach some collective meaning to it. After all, how can two people rationally accept something is or is not balanced when they are both using different definitions?

It is my opinion that "balance" is a concept with several sub-parts and I will elaborate on them here.

The first is the one that most high-level players seems to gravitate to, both in FA, Starcraft 2, Generals and pretty much every skilled player of every strategy game ever made. It's inter-faction balance. A unit or faction can be said to be balanced if other factions (and the units therein) can reasonably counter or defeat the first unit or faction. Inter-faction balance is important such that the community can enjoy the complete variety of factions in games... that is, that no factions is substantially weaker (as not to be used) or stronger (as to be the only faction used) than the others. An example of poor faction balance is Seraphim in 3599: The faction is incomplete, buggy, and difficult to use. Another example is Cybran is Supreme Commander 2: The faction is very weak in 1v1 games and, therefore, 1v1 games are usually limited to Aeon and UEF.

The second kind of balance is inter-tech balance. All strategy games have some kind of tech system. In Starcraft 2, it's based upon tech structures, in Supcom 2 is uses Research and in FA it uses factory/ACU upgrades. A level of tech can be said to be balanced if it is neither materially stronger or weaker than other tech levels. Inter-tech balance is important such that the community can enjoy the complete variety of technology levels available in the game. An example of tech imbalance in 3599 is that Tech level 1 and tech level 4 were so overpowered that it was common to see games where neither tech 2 nor tech 3 were utilized. The original Supreme Commander suffers a different problem, wherein Tech 2 is so powerful that the other techs are never fully utilized, causing variety to suffer.

The third kind of balance is inter-unit balance. Different units within the same faction and tech level can be imbalanced if one units is appreciably stronger or weaker than other units in that same faction and tech. Inter-unit balance is important such that the community can enjoy the complete variety of units available in the game. Two examples of a unit imbalance in 3610 is the Strategic Missile Sub and the Aircraft Carrier: These units, as compared to other ships available at tech 3, can perform no valuable function well or cost-effectively. Strategic Missile Subs and Carriers are imbalanced. Another example is the Magnetron is Supreme Commander 2: This unit, far more than any other high-tech Cybran unit, is strong against enemy land units to the point that it is commonly the only unit used for this purpose, despite the fact that Cybran late-game tech has many different units that can attack land.

With these three types of balance in mind, it should be noted that a claim of "imbalance" may be justified if a unit, tactic, strategy or faction is only found to be imbalanced in one of these three ways.

[Armmagedon]

funk you need add another concept:

the inter strategy balance or something like that, the pass of 3599 to 3603 with the t3 air nerf is an example
and nerf or buff a kinda of unit (like the gunship) was a balance change too.

balance need see where we want to go too, for me the game is ok now like it is, but I hate sniping easy with t2 air that hurt many cool games.
for this i dont like the mercys and the buff or some t2 air like gunships and t2 torps
but its only an opinion.

for me the balance should us let the opportunity of use the com in attack with a normal amount of micro dont be only caring about the com, and do a dinamic game of attack and counter, sniping buff only do more easy the turtling game, and a turtling game is boring.

[FunkOff]

funk you need add another concept:

the inter strategy balance or something like that, the pass of 3599 to 3603 with the t3 air nerf is an example
and nerf or buff a kinda of unit (like the gunship) was a balance change too.

balance need see where we want to go too, for me the game is ok now like it is, but I hate sniping easy with t2 air that hurt many cool games.
for this i dont like the mercys and the buff or some t2 air like gunships and t2 torps
but its only an opinion.

for me the balance should us let the opportunity of use the com in attack with a normal amount of micro dont be only caring about the com, and do a dinamic game of attack and counter, sniping buff only do more easy the turtling game, and a turtling game is boring.

You make a good point. That is, perhaps, the most important kind of balance, the "flow" balance.

After all, the game is meant to be played in a more specific way. Tech 1, Tech 2, Tech 3 and Tech 4 are all separate and distinct levels, and the way the game giving way to each in a graduated, progressive way. The ACU is foremost a fighter, and this ability to use it at such is critical to the balance that has insofar been achieved.

[IceDreamer]

Tech level 1

were

Errm... Past tense? The biggest thing in SupCom at the moment which pisses me off beyond all description is the way T1 spam is stronger than any other strategy, yet takes no appreciable level of strategic skill. Sure, loads of Micro skill, but it boils down to 'Build tanks, Attack'... It is the most basic available strategy in a game this complex. It should not, in my opinion,. be the strongest.

Regards to the OP, totally correct. The flow comment also right on target. I would add yet another balance criteria though... That of psychological balance, where a unit is imbalance if it requires a substantially greater amount of attention, clicks, and effort to use or stop. An example would be a unit which is Cloaked and Stealthed 100% of the time. The unit could have very weak firepower, low hit-points, AND be slow, and it would still be imbalanced as there would be no appreciable way of stopping it before T3. An example of an existing unit which is psychologically imbalanced is the SpiderBot. It is not OP or UP because it is balanced in the other four categories, but, in 3599 at least, one of the scariest things in the game was a 7 minute SpiderBot crawling out of the sea into your base...

[AdmiralZeech]

I think the question of "how much balance?" also needs to be addressed. Let me write an essay on the topic

We can agree that inter-faction balance (for a game with few factions) needs to be as close to equal as possible. So that, regardless of what factions you choose, you theoretically have an equal chance of winning based on your skill.
More advanced designs might have factions catering to different skillsets - player A might win more with faction A due to better micro, whereas player B might succeed more with faction B due to better economic skill.
A game with more factions might have factions with different purposes - faction E might be a simpler and weaker faction, for beginners to learn. Or faction F might be a weaker and more hardcore faction, for expert players to handicap themselves with. (like how some players take pride in winning with a low-tier character in a fighting game).

For an RTS, we can also probably agree that inter-theatre balance (air, sea, land), needs to be equal between factions. Its bad to have Faction A be strong at sea and weak at land, and Faction B be vice versa, because this means map balance is out of whack. Which leads us to map balance, where we prefer that maps do not favour one faction over another.

All of the above things are things outside of a player's control once he is in the game. This is why those things must be as balanced as possible.

--------------------------

But what about unit/strategy balance? Because we can choose to build any of our available units or adopt any available strategy, I think its important that those things must NOT be perfectly balanced. As long as it's not so OP as to dominate all other choices, or so UP as to be unused, then usually it's fine.

Consider an extreme counterexample, a game where all of the units are perfectly balanced with each other. In such a game, it doesnt matter what I build, I can choose units based on how much I like their looks or something, because I know that every unit is equally strong as any other unit. That's not interesting at all, I'm just picking a skin for my army. Theres no -gameplay-.

So for an interesting RTS, we need units/strategies that are stronger or weaker in different situations, when used in different ways, at different stages of the game, etc. This provides gameplay, because then the decision of what strategy to adopt is a meaningful one.

Now, theres an argument to be made that, even though units/strategies may be stronger or weaker in different situations, they all need to be -equally viable-. But I think that it's almost impossible to have units that have interesting strengths and weaknesses, whilst simulaneously trying to make them all equally viable. At the very least, it requires a much more rigidly controlled gameplay design, and a much larger testing/dev budget. Since this is SupCom and not Starcraft, I dont think its practical.

So my point is, as long as a unit isnt so OP as to make other units worthless (which reduces the options in game) and isnt so UP as to be completely unused (which is a waste of content), then it's fine. Any variations in strengths and weaknesses is part of variety and makes the gameplay space interesting to explore. (the unit has to be interesting and fun ingame, too, which is somewhat seperate from balance). Adopting this philosophy saves a lot of work, and allows for more complicated gameplay with more variety that would be impossible to perfectly balance.

As an example, I was flamed a lot by Word in SCom2 because I liked how the Loyalist was weaker than the tanks of other factions. I thought it was the perfect example of gameplay variety - building Loyalists was still mandatory, but it gave Cybrans a weakness that had to be compensated for by other means. Now, if SCom2's faction balance was such that all factions were equally balanced in terms of how often they win, but Loyalists were still weak, that means Cybrans have other compensating strengths. It might be other units, or it might be that Loyalists are weak in direct combat but great at something else, like raiding or combined arms or whatever. This is why I thought the "Cybrans are underpowered because Loyalists suck, so lets buff Loyalists so they are as good as other faction's tanks" was a boring and ultimately flawed way of fixing the faction balance in SCom2.

When trying to make factions perfectly balanced, I dont agree that the answer is to compare Faction A's tanks vs. Faction B's tanks, Faction A's ASFs vs. Faction B's ASFs, etc, and make sure that each of them are perfectly equivalent in mass efficiency.

I prefer a more empirical approach: Faction A is losing more often than average. Let's fix their useless units, fix other faction's OP units that A has no counter to, and otherwise just buff some of the fun stuff that Faction A has, with an eye for increasing gameplay variety. (eg. if Faction A has a special gimmick like stealth, then lets find ways of making it more useful.) If this makes Faction A win as often as average, then great. If not, then we keep iterating until their win statistics are balanced.


So I think the best RTS balance is when Faction A's ASFs can be worse than Faction B's, but somehow, when you put it all together, every faction has an equal chance of winning on any map, dependent entirely on player skill. And every unit is useful somewhere, and every match has a wide variety of units and strategies used, not just one or two.

[Antoninus]

Great discussion so far and thanks FunkOff for broaching the subject. I agree with the above statements and would like to add that video games are not inherently sacred in their design. They should be free to evolve with the desires of the community, a notion that is generally agreed, but not always applied evenly. I appreciate Ze_Pilot, FunkOff, et al for putting so much of their resources and creative effort into FA, but I'd like to remind them that when they make their final balancing decisions 'fun' is synonymous with 'balance'. The decision to change the game to make it more 'balanced' is because there are directions that the game could go to make it more 'fun'. Having an OP unit is not fun when people begin to exploit it, so a new patch is released that nerfs that unit and the game improves as a form of entertainment. (I admit, there is no universal agreement on what 'fun' means, either, but I argue here that it still matters.)

I would hope that in balancing conversations people put their calculators down and come back to earth from lofty theoretical clouds to understand that some things just aren't as fun as others. There is no mass attack vs mass defense comparison in all balancing conversations so part of our collective definition of 'balance' should allow for less tangible calculations. For better or worse, sometimes the decision boils down to what is more enjoyable an experience. For example, people hated all the draws in-game so what was the balance debate to nerf the commander nuke to 2,500HP from 4,000HP? How about the ongoing discussion to nerf t2 gunships? They can still be countered with t2 flack, so why are they being nerfed if not for the fact that t2 gunship spam is boring? The point is that balancing decisions are multifaceted and should include less tangible things like 'fun', 'micro', and 'gaming spirit' as a part of the calculus.

I hear people argue against change by citing mass/energy calculations and conjuring theoretical scenarios to bolster their position, but I think balancing conversations should be allowed to consider less tangible things. The obvious application of this notion is to the mercy debate but I want this conversation to remain on the OP's topic (no pun intended ). I offer no rubric for making a decision on those types of things, but as FunkOff said, I'd like to ensure that they are a part of our collective definition of what 'balanced' means.

[Antoninus]

I think the question of "how much balance?" also needs to be addressed. Let me write an essay on the topic

...

So I think the best RTS balance is when Faction A's ASFs can be worse than Faction B's, but somehow, when you put it all together, every faction has an equal chance of winning on any map, dependent entirely on player skill. And every unit is useful somewhere, and every match has a wide variety of units and strategies used, not just one or two.

Good observations AdmiralZeech, but I read them as rather obvious to the Supcom community. You are pointing out the beauty of faction diversity in supcom, which is the slight differences between factions that give them an edge when you know how to play them. Further, even within each faction's seemingly mirror units there are important differences; for example mantis and strikers have roughly the same dps and health, but their turret pitch is vastly different. Thus, if you were to charge your army of mantis into an army of strikers the mantis would win because their turret could keep up with their target.

These little gems are boundless in Supcom and what makes the game so wonderful. I am sure everyone here understands that already. I'd like to add though that within each theater's tier level there is a non-equal amount of unit diversity leading to an inherent need to quickly span all three tech levels to find the balanced counter to each faction's unique units. (Note: I didn't say unbalanced.) But the point in a balancing conversation is not IF there are differences, but if those differences ruin the game experience. How that is defined is very complicated, but I haven't observed anyone bemoaning that faction A's units are not exactly equal to faction B's units, as you seem to imply in your post.

[uberge3k]

"I hear people argue against change by citing mass/energy calculations and conjuring theoretical scenarios to bolster their position"

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that was directed at me.

The definition of balance was, to my knowledge, never contested. Balance, put as succinctly as possible, means:

"From the high level of "a faction" to the low level of "a single unit" and the various combinations inbetween, each tactic should be both useful and counterable".

To elaborate, by "useful" I mean that it should be a worthy investment to build that unit. If you have air control and want to kill ships, torp bombers should do their jobs. If you have naval control and want to bombard shore targets, battlships should be a good investment. If you have the ability to make a gun upgrade, it should kill land units more efficiently. And yes, if you have air superiority and your enemy is pushing too hard, mercies should kill ACUs.

By "counterable" I mean that every tactic should have a reasonable counter for it. This is where we start going into a gray area. How do we define how mass effective counters should be? As a general rule of thumb, the same type of unit should kill the other, similar unit at a roughly equal rate. This already happens with ASFs, tanks, ACUs, ships, and most every other unit. Sure, one faction's tanks might be a little better, but they might have better ASF to compensate. This is the type of useful variation that AdmiralZeech describes, and in every case, it seems to work quite well.


The problem is that there are more variables in this equation than sheer mass-effectiveness. Micro plays an important part in the game. For example, a similarly sized group of Auroras could theoretically win vs any other faction's tanks with few to no losses, assuming appropriate terrain and perfect micro, due to the increased range.

Since it's fairly obvious that these threads are about mercies and their side effects, I'll use them as an example:

The mercy can be killed with perhaps the highest mass-efficiency of any unit in the game.

A single, solitary, 52 mass interceptor could kill an infinite number of mercies.

A single T1 AA could kill an infinite number of mercies too.

And so on with the list of possible counters to mercies.

The difficulty is, people don't have perfect micro. People often don't pay attention to their ACUs. People often go AFK during games, if just for a moment to take another drink of their beverage. It is under this theory that I believe the entire "mercies are imba" sentiment stems from, and it does indeed have some merit.

There are two problems with this:

1) The significant risk of the investment in mercies is ignored. In 1v1, mercies are not an issue. They are only an issue in teamgames, due mostly, I believe, to the fact that most teamgames are both highly imbalanced and that most players do not play them at anywhere near as high of a level as 1v1 players.

Take the top 20 teamgame players, and take the top 20 1v1 players. Remove as much overlap from the two groups as possible. I would be willing to bet that on average, high level 1v1 players would do better in teamgames than high level teamgame players would do 1v1s, simply due to already being in the proper mindset of maximizing every last scrap of mass and dedicating as much attention as possible to the game.

2) We start going into the incredible murky waters of what "fun" is.

Perhaps the most telling comment in the closed mercy topic is Maverick's simple one: "fu mercy cheaters!".

People like to play aggressively with their ACUs. They think it's fun. That playstyle does have its merits, but does not come without risks. Putting yourself in an ability to get sniped is one of them.

Do sniper units such as the mercy dampen the fun? I don't believe so. It's a personal opinion, and one which I don't particularly share. My primary interest, and the reason why I love FA so, is due to its incredible depth and the amount of tactics and strategies available. I try not to favor one specific playstyle, and instead frequently try new things to see if there's a better tactic or strategy out there somewhere that I can find and exploit.

"Exploit"... Exploit seems to carry negative connotations. One of the "anti-mercy" sides specifically mentioned this in another thread - "oh, mercy snipers feel like they're cheating". Same with Maverick's earlier comment - if you lose your ACU to a snipe, especially one that is "close", some feel like the other team cheated.

I disagree with this sentiment simply because I play to win. The (large quantities of) fun I derive from the game is primarily from learning new things about the game, trying new tactics, and slowly perfecting the way I play so as to maximize my effectiveness on the virtual battlefield.

"Fun", for me, is not tied to some specific play style such as ACU rushing, or even specifically tied to winning and losing - it's the learning that I enjoy. Obviously, this is a highly personal opinion, as everyone's will differ. Some exclusively play one map as they believe it has the most of any to offer, and perfecting their play on the positions wherein is where the maximum amount of fun can be had. Others exclusively play a game mod such as Phantom. Yet more play only against the AI. And so on and so forth.

This is, fundamentally, why I do not believe that "fun" should be a variable that comes into consideration when deciding balance changes, as it will necessarily be both arbitrary and deeply skewed by the personal opinions of whomever is deciding said balance.

To use a personal example - I hate having to counter auroras, but I've changed my opinion from some months ago when I suggested they be nerfed. After practice, I have learned to exploit the weaknesses of auroras, and adapted my gameplay when facing them.

In other words, myself, as a player, adapted to the game, instead of attempting to have the game adapted to my preferences.

This is where I believe the line should be drawn when it comes to definitions of "balance". Personal opinion should count for nothing, as it is the player's job to improve, not to have the game coddle them from tactics they personally dislike. To use an example:

The 3599 Seraphim restoration field bug could not be effectively countered, either by micro or by mass. Hence, it was unbalanced, and should be changed.

Similarly, it has been conclusively proven that mercies can be effectively countered, either by mass or by micro. Hence, it is balanced, and should not be changed.



***

At the end of the day, how much is there, really, to balance in FA? There are some underused units, such as SCUs, and would be delightful to change them in some way as to introduce another strategic option, so long as it was carefully so as to avoid creating other imbalances in the process.

Other than that, the game is balanced quite well. There are no glaringly imbalanced tactics. Each faction has their strengths and weaknesses while still being, overall quite competent.

The vast majority of changes suggested in this subforum boil down to personal opinion, which is something that balance should not and, quite rightly, will not be decided upon. Simply put, one person's opinion, or one group's opinion, should not decide the overall fate of the game's continued balance, no matter how well intentioned or well thought out. The risk (alienating players and worsening the balance in some not-readily-apparent way) vastly outweighs the reward (making that one person/group feel special and being able to say "hey, we're continually churning the balance!").

Sure, you could say "but it's just this one time for this one unit because everyone agrees it must be changed or else!!1111". That would start us down a very, very slippery slope and introduce a terrible precedent for making balance descisions.

[FunkOff]

"From the high level of "a faction" to the low level of "a single unit" and the various combinations inbetween, each tactic should be both useful and counterable".

To elaborate, by "useful" I mean that it should be a worthy investment to build that unit. If you have air control and want to kill ships, torp bombers should do their jobs. If you have naval control and want to bombard shore targets, battlships should be a good investment. If you have the ability to make a gun upgrade, it should kill land units more efficiently. And yes, if you have air superiority and your enemy is pushing too hard, mercies should kill ACUs.

Although I disagree with your definition of balance as it is not inclusive enough, would you at least agree that mercies ought to be effective against a land push that includes neither AA nor an ACU?

[IceDreamer]

I love how you say Mercies have been conclusively proven to be effectively counterable, despite the fact that that thread was locked before anyone actually replied to the replay I posted. I'm not going to deny that they are counterable, but I would certainly argue with the word 'Effectively' being used here...

Nice write up though Uber, and I agree with you on most points. Mercies SHOULD kill the enemy if they overextend or have inadequate AA. Being perceived as 'Cheating' shouldn't change game balance. But the fact remains I consider adequate AA to stop a Mercy strike an unacceptable amount, and I also consider the fact the Mercies bypass AA so effectively and easily to be unacceptable.

Your comment about sACUs was very enlightening, because you are of course right. Something needs to be done with those. I think I shall work on that over the coming weeks, see what I come up with. If anyone has any ideas for the sACU, please feel free to PM me