Why not just have an option to turn off the creeps in a lane? It makes more logical sense, and doesn't tie down a player to doing one stupid thing over and over again.
Real question, creeps are supposed to be units in your army on your team helping you win and fight the enemy. If by attacking and dying they are helping the enemy, they should not be doing that! Who fucking runs over to the enemy on a suicide mission carrying a pile of gold to give to the enemy as a gift? If I made a MOBA one of the first things I would do is make the creeps fucking dangerous at all times. You would kill them not to level up, but because if you do not kill them, they will lose the battle. If you kill more enemy creeps than the enemy kills of your creeps, you will start to pose a serious threat in that lane.
I would also probably just let people command the creeps. It is an RTS. I also probably wouldn't have them be automatic. Nor would I have the towers be there from the beginning. Let the players build the towers and deploy the creeps. Which ones, how many, and where to deploy these things are all interesting decisions that can lead to very interesting strategies and a game that makes sense.
It's interesting to see how Dota 2 is dealing with their microtransactions. I don't think selling champs with ingame or real currency won't work due to all the extreme hero specific balance in Dota compared to a game like LoL.
It's interesting to see how Dota 2 is dealing with their microtransactions. I don't think selling champs with ingame or real currency won't work due to all the extreme hero specific balance in Dota compared to a game like LoL.
It's possible. Trivial even. We're going to talk about the maths of that at PAX. ;^)
It's possible. Trivial even. We're going to talk about the maths of that at PAX. ;^)
I genuinely want to see you have a conversation about how trivial it is to balance a game, with, say, Robin Walker, the head of the TF2 team - where they're dropping weekly balance tweaks, and have been pushing regular balance tweaks for years, and will likely do so well into the future, and have admitted that's one of the hardest parts of making/maintaining the game. Purely because the Theoretical knowledge VS practical experience would be an extraordinarily interesting discussion, not trying to rag on you about it.
Why not just have an option to turn off the creeps in a lane? It makes more logical sense, and doesn't tie down a player to doing one stupid thing over and over again.
Denying is a little more active and a little more engaging. There's a timing/skill component to it that would be lost there. Not to say that isn't a possibility, but there would be something lost in that.
Not that I agree with denying, but if people want it in the game why not have it when you attack your own creep they go back to base to heal. Seems like it would make much more sense
Real question, creeps are supposed to be units in your army on your team helping you win and fight the enemy. If by attacking and dying they are helping the enemy, they should not be doing that! Who fucking runs over to the enemy on a suicide mission carrying a pile of gold to give to the enemy as a gift? If I made a MOBA one of the first things I would do is make the creeps fucking dangerous at all times. You would kill them not to level up, but because if you do not kill them, they will lose the battle. If you kill more enemy creeps than the enemy kills of your creeps, you will start to pose a serious threat in that lane.
Go to war. Kill your own dudes. Makes perfect sense!
In war when your ally dies, the enemy does not get stronger, you just get weaker. In a MOBA, your allied magickal automatons dying not only weakens your lane temporarily till reinforcements arrive, it also makes the enemy heroes stronger. The latter you do not want to happen. There is a benefit for you in-game for denying that creep, entirely unlike killing your ally in a war where it will not benefit you (hell, changing your attention and spending limited resources to kill your ally might get you killed as well). It's a game, it allows for things real life doesn't (for example, Mass Effect, or any other magick/sci-fi that's internally consistent with itself).
I didn't think it would ever happen because I keep up with shit! I read Internets every day! How has this come to pass?
You think you keep up with shit, but all you do is keep up with what interests you. Not what interests others. You also refuse(d) to learn some basics that would allow you to better grasp the mechanics of the game and how they play out over the entire match.
This is why I try so hard to figure it out, but it still makes no sense. It's like the younger generations are speaking a different language, and there's no way to learn it.
This is how a lot of people feel when they come across jargon they are not familiar with. Assuming you don't understand quantum theory in depth, you'd be just as confused when someone would start talking about quantum theory in depth to you. The solution, for one, is to start listening (instead of 'suggesting' 'solutions' to things you perceive as 'problems' when they are anything but), and stop with jumping to conclusions. Question, analyse, deduce.
Why not just have an option to turn off the creeps in a lane?
Lane-creeps are a non-stationary source of xp and gold. Controlling the flow of how they (allied and enemy creeps) move allows you to control these resources giving you an upper hand. They also protect you to an extent against enemies, both creep and hero-kind. Taking them away would result in everybody dicking about in the jungle and not coming to lane till they can finally tank the tower hits and push it down. It would also make observer wards retardedly OP since they can block jungle creeps from spawning when placed just right, denying the opponent experience and gold in their own jungle. Removing lane-creeps would basically mean you'd have to reduce the number of players (in which case team composition will become more static as well) and/or making the map a lot larger (which would artificially lengthen the time it takes to finish a match because it takes an aeon an a day to get anywhere you cannot teleport to).
If someone is so hung up about denying and equating it to killing, why not fluff it, since motherfucking magick leaks from every square inch of everything on the map, as the hero teleporting the creep away from harm to a creep veteran's home so they can recover from grave magickal injuries? The end-result is the same. Hell, in LoL the entire backstory is basically "MAGICK FUCKED UP SHIT BIG TIME, LET'S MAKE THIS PLACE SO WE CAN CONTROL MAGICK BETTER."
If by attacking and dying they are helping the enemy, they should not be doing that!
Who says they have a choice? The magickal bauble the enemy protects (and you in turn as well) draws strength from the spilled blood of enemies (and innocents, hence why your team is trying to destroy the 'bad' one), and in turns bestows power and prestige upon its heroic allies, making them stronger and capable of handling more powerful charms to aid them in their battle to destroy the evil magickal bauble. You're complaining about fluff.
If you're going that way, what the fuck Natural Selection. Marines almost instinctively know how to create teleportation pads to call-in more reinforcements, but don't have the fucking braincells to bring along a goddamned shotgun/grenade-launcher/flamethrower instead of a machine gun? But after teleporting in the materials needed to build a fucking factory they suddenly can get those weapons. It's a fucking game, see how fucking retarded it is to complain about fluff?
make the creeps fucking dangerous at all times.
They are if you don't pay attention to them.
If you kill more enemy creeps than the enemy kills of your creeps, you will start to pose a serious threat in that lane.
At which point the enemy should group up and tear you a new asshole and then focus down your creeps. Unless you mean shenanigans like All Random All Mid where little else matters than your k/d ratio and creep nuking ability.
It's possible. Trivial even. We're going to talk about the maths of that at PAX. ;^)
Proof it. Make a game that's truly balanced with more than a handful of uniques. Also, as Churba said, that would make for an interesting Geeknights episode, but probably would take too much time for you guys to actually bother doing. Or have an interview with people actually in the business of doing those things. You've mentioned discussing these things with people in the business, where is the fucking recording? Have you not been considered "Press" at events? Have you no audience that would enjoy seeing the fruits of your more-than-5-minutes-for-finding-a-TotD labour?
It depends on what you mean by "balance" in a game. There are different measures, and different kinds of games.
Team Fortress 2 has a wide array of items, many of which are effectively unique to a particular game of TF2 or otherwise not available to all players. The totality of choices can nonetheless be demonstrated to be "fair" in the sense of, for example, Pareto efficiency.
"Absolute" "fairness" is effectively impossible unless the game is perfectly symmetrical, involves no randomness, no execution challenges, and is complete. And if a game is "fair," then it is solvable. Either one of the players can always force a win for themselves, or one of them can force a stalemate or draw. Is it Checkers "fair" knowing that it's impossible for either side to win if play is perfect? What if white could force a win? The game's just as perfect and fair, but is it "fair?"
The fact of the matter is that a game doesn't need to be perfectly fair, it only needs to be fair enough to be popular. There are a handful of strict mathematical measures one can take to guarantee certain forms of "fairness" or "balance" that will effectively make the game fair in the perception of the players even if it turns out that practically one character is better than another in some sense.
So back to Team Fortress 2. The items are effectively Pareto efficient. What does this mean? That no item or loadout is materially and without cost better than any other. To put it simply, you have to give up something to get something.
If a game is designed such that all character/item choices are in fact on the "Pareto frontier," then they are in at least one deep sense fair. However, any item or loadout that is within the frontier is inherently and unambiguously worse. Introducing items or characters there makes them deeply and inherently unfair, as there is literally no cost to choosing a materially better character or item. Further, introducing a character that is without the frontier effectively moves the frontier.
If I introduce a character that moves the frontier, I may well make an existing character literally worthless. If I introduce a character that is within/behind the frontier, I have introduced a literally worthless character. If I introduce a character outside of the frontier that isn't available to all players, I have made that character inherently and unambiguously unfair.
Dr. Chris Hazard spoke about this when we discussed game balance and monetization at MAGfest this year. One of his points was that for most practical purposes increasing the number of choices along this "frontier" does not introduce "unfairness" except in the sense that players without access to these items suffer "increased cognitive load" yet do not have access to the choices that cause said increase.
It depends on what you mean by "balance" in a game. There are different measures, and different kinds of games.
Fascinating. But yes, basically, I mean how they're keeping all the players on a level footing weapon-wise, and keeping everything tweaked so that a skilled player with the vanilla items is just as effective as a skilled player with all the extra items, and skilled players without those items can still compete. And they do this while throwing in extra effects and abilities for the weapons, which often changes player strategy and changes up how the game is played - For example, the dead ringer. In exchange for your cloak ability as the spy, you get protected from dying while you have it out(natch, you still die without it held out, but you can't do anything but move and jump with it held out, and spies are pretty fragile). It completely changes the way the spy is played, and how you respond to a spy, and yet, it's still balanced against everything else in the game.
That's why they still have the active beta - it's not for the game, it's for new weapons, maps, and abilities(along with the occasional UI tweak). Everything they put into the game is tested for MONTHS, in multiple forms, and multiple fashions, and often they'll even test the individual abilities, too.
But anyway, this is EXACTLY why I'd like to see that discussion. It's all well and good to have - to use him again - Robin walker say "Well, this was incredibly overpowered, so we changed it, and that's that", and it's fine to see you speaking of fairness and Pareto optimality, but it would only be an improvement to both to have robin walker speaking of how they had to do XYZ, and you asking why, and analyzing it from your perspective. And don't forget, while he's goofy, and he's the head dude of a game you're not extraordinarily fond of, but he's still no slouch, he knows what's game is.
Mostly, what I've found is that almost noone in the game industry knows anything at all about game theory, and they work primarily through trial and error. Dr. Hazard is a major exception to this.
They basically independently derive long-established concepts over and over again. For example, when we were interviewed by the Boston Globe about board games, and we talked about solvability, the interviewer told us that most every designer he interviewed was working making "unsolvable" board games (which is patently impossible short of making them random, execution-dependent, or arbitrary). A little followup revealed that said designers basically knew nothing about the basic structure of games from any analytical perspective, and were literally seeking impossibilities due to their lack of understanding.
Most game balance is done almost solely through trial and error. I suspect that Valve ended up making a reasonably Pareto-efficient game without anyone ever mentioning that concept by name. Blizzard straight-up admitted to us it was trial and error all along the way in most cases.
My main point is simply that you can heavily narrow the scope of what is required to be tested for game balance by implementing a small number of surprisingly simple mathematical concepts early in the process. Even without the maths, the concepts themselves can be applied.
Unless they have the aforementioned item out, at which point they can tank more damage than an overhealed heavy currently not receiving further healing. For as long as the cloak lasts that is, which allows them to get out, heal up, and do it all over again. A competent dead ringer spy can only reliably be shut down by a competent pyro.
Unless they have the aforementioned item out, at which point they can tank more damage than an overhealed heavy currently not receiving further healing. For as long as the cloak lasts that is, which allows them to get out, heal up, and do it all over again. A competent dead ringer spy can only reliably be shut down by a competent pyro.
Thank you, nine, I'd forgotten some people here don't play TF2, and would need an explanation of how the exact example I picked changes the way a class is played.
Mostly, what I've found is that almost no-one in the game industry knows anything at all about game theory, and they work primarily through trial and error. Dr. Hazard is a major exception to this.
That's true, I suppose. I've not heard of many people at all in the games industry who are also educated in game theory. I wonder why that is? Okay, only a little. I kinda know why.
But that aside, I think you're kinda missing my point, here, we're talking across each other - what you're saying is precisely why it would be interesting, because the people making these things don't often know about these things except through practical experience, and the vast majority of the people who do know about these things, don't have anything to do with gaming. So, Let's put them together and see what happens, see how the two work out with and against each other, I think that would be cool. I don't even know if it would work out, to be honest, but I want to find out.
Thank you, nine, I'd forgotten some people here don't play TF2, and would need an explanation of how the exact example I picked changes the way a class is played.
But I didn't explain shit. I just pointed out they're not that fragile in certain circumstances. Doesn't change the way the class is played. Dear lord, a spy tanking damage in TF2 so his teammates can kill the enemy team? That has yet to happen in my experience.
but I want to find out.
And I'd like to see some high quality, very interesting content coming from Geeknights that's accessible to people outside of their Con-going routes.
I brought up this same point in a previous conversation here in regards to the assertion that playing the game to do anything but win is griefing, but it's important to think about which "game" (or meta-game) you are balancing. In terms of LoL or TF2, they are also attempting to "balance" things around the currently evolving strategy meta-game and popularity (so they can sell more hats/skins). I actually don't disagree with Rym that you can achieve balance when you can decide on a single axis of measurement. I just think it's relatively hard to pick a single axis of measurement, and the more things pulling in different directions, the more difficult it becomes.
At the simplest level, there's mechanical balance vs. balance within the context of what people actually play. Balance is often manipulative in itself. Typically a games goal is not pure mechanical balance. You might want to have a skill vs. power trade-off, so that a new player can be relatively viable vs. a veteran player who might use a more powerful (but more skill-dependant) option. But that's not "balanced" in most senses of the word. But League of Legends definitely has some of that. There are relatively easier characters to play, but there are also reasons to specifically play a different character.
Remembered that this thread exists so I decided to tell about what Valve is doing with Dota 2 on the money making side.
So there is this big official Dota 2 tournament going on and in dota 2 store there are these "pennants" for most of the teams in the tournament (I at least remember reading something about some teams not having them because of reasons). The team pennant costs about 1 dollar and the money goes to the team, after Valve takes their cut of course. The player can equip one of those pennants on their profile in "fan slot" on Player Loadout and if they spectate that team's games with the game client or from spectator client they can get "hats" (not literal or even digital hats, but I believe people understand what I mean in this context). Pennants can also be upgraded so you can show that you are bigger fan and give more money to the team (and Valve).
I don't know about what other forumites think but I personally think that all this is pretty clever from Valve. They get easy money, the teams earn some money and fans can support the team(s) they like. Also the promise of "hats" gets people watching the tournament from Valves client instead of using outside streams and that generates nice big numbers that Valve can show when discussing sponsorship deals on later tournaments.
To be clear I have not bought pennants myself so my information doesn't come from personal experience, but from what I read on dota 2 store and what I've heard elsewhere so the information might not be 100% exact. Also third paragraph includes some personal speculation not tied in facts, but you can probably tell what's what.
I'm not trying this game again until they un-gray the tutorial. Also, they should add ladders like StarCraft so nubs play with nubs and such.
Actually there is matchmaking so nubs play against nubs. It's just hidden away. I'm also waiting for the tutorial, not that I need it anymore, but I'm interested of seeing what Valve manages to do with it.
It is pretty much trial by fire right now, at least until you get someone to hold your hand. I'm actually more interested in a mentoring system where you can watch someone else play and direct them. It exists in TF2 already.
It is pretty much trial by fire right now, at least until you get someone to hold your hand. I'm actually more interested in a mentoring system where you can watch someone else play and direct them. It exists in TF2 already.
I do feel like if someone helped me I could actually get this game going on.
If anything they'll incentivize players to coach, write build guides, create video tutorials orr maybe script custom scenarios like the SCII's challenges; "Get a blink dagger in 10 minutes as X hero" or "reveal and destroy a ward" or "land an ult that hits the entire enemy team as tree"
Though, for a straight up tutorial you can play the HoN one for free since most of the mechanics are basically the same.
It is pretty much trial by fire right now, at least until you get someone to hold your hand. I'm actually more interested in a mentoring system where you can watch someone else play and direct them. It exists in TF2 already.
I do feel like if someone helped me I could actually get this game going on.
I did this for Adam when he wanted to start playing LoL. The closest you can get right now is to share a lane and play a few custom games. I'm willing to do this for other people if they're interested.
It is pretty much trial by fire right now, at least until you get someone to hold your hand. I'm actually more interested in a mentoring system where you can watch someone else play and direct them. It exists in TF2 already.
I do feel like if someone helped me I could actually get this game going on.
There are probably people here who could be willing to roll against some bots with you.
I follow a game here and there whenever I feel like it. I don't know enough about dota scene to have favorite teams or anything like that, so I don't have any favorites or anything.
Comments
I would also probably just let people command the creeps. It is an RTS. I also probably wouldn't have them be automatic. Nor would I have the towers be there from the beginning. Let the players build the towers and deploy the creeps. Which ones, how many, and where to deploy these things are all interesting decisions that can lead to very interesting strategies and a game that makes sense.
If someone is so hung up about denying and equating it to killing, why not fluff it, since motherfucking magick leaks from every square inch of everything on the map, as the hero teleporting the creep away from harm to a creep veteran's home so they can recover from grave magickal injuries? The end-result is the same. Hell, in LoL the entire backstory is basically "MAGICK FUCKED UP SHIT BIG TIME, LET'S MAKE THIS PLACE SO WE CAN CONTROL MAGICK BETTER." Who says they have a choice? The magickal bauble the enemy protects (and you in turn as well) draws strength from the spilled blood of enemies (and innocents, hence why your team is trying to destroy the 'bad' one), and in turns bestows power and prestige upon its heroic allies, making them stronger and capable of handling more powerful charms to aid them in their battle to destroy the evil magickal bauble. You're complaining about fluff.
If you're going that way, what the fuck Natural Selection. Marines almost instinctively know how to create teleportation pads to call-in more reinforcements, but don't have the fucking braincells to bring along a goddamned shotgun/grenade-launcher/flamethrower instead of a machine gun? But after teleporting in the materials needed to build a fucking factory they suddenly can get those weapons. It's a fucking game, see how fucking retarded it is to complain about fluff? They are if you don't pay attention to them. At which point the enemy should group up and tear you a new asshole and then focus down your creeps. Unless you mean shenanigans like All Random All Mid where little else matters than your k/d ratio and creep nuking ability. Proof it. Make a game that's truly balanced with more than a handful of uniques. Also, as Churba said, that would make for an interesting Geeknights episode, but probably would take too much time for you guys to actually bother doing. Or have an interview with people actually in the business of doing those things. You've mentioned discussing these things with people in the business, where is the fucking recording? Have you not been considered "Press" at events? Have you no audience that would enjoy seeing the fruits of your more-than-5-minutes-for-finding-a-TotD labour?
Team Fortress 2 has a wide array of items, many of which are effectively unique to a particular game of TF2 or otherwise not available to all players. The totality of choices can nonetheless be demonstrated to be "fair" in the sense of, for example, Pareto efficiency.
"Absolute" "fairness" is effectively impossible unless the game is perfectly symmetrical, involves no randomness, no execution challenges, and is complete. And if a game is "fair," then it is solvable. Either one of the players can always force a win for themselves, or one of them can force a stalemate or draw. Is it Checkers "fair" knowing that it's impossible for either side to win if play is perfect? What if white could force a win? The game's just as perfect and fair, but is it "fair?"
The fact of the matter is that a game doesn't need to be perfectly fair, it only needs to be fair enough to be popular. There are a handful of strict mathematical measures one can take to guarantee certain forms of "fairness" or "balance" that will effectively make the game fair in the perception of the players even if it turns out that practically one character is better than another in some sense.
So back to Team Fortress 2. The items are effectively Pareto efficient. What does this mean? That no item or loadout is materially and without cost better than any other. To put it simply, you have to give up something to get something.
If a game is designed such that all character/item choices are in fact on the "Pareto frontier," then they are in at least one deep sense fair. However, any item or loadout that is within the frontier is inherently and unambiguously worse. Introducing items or characters there makes them deeply and inherently unfair, as there is literally no cost to choosing a materially better character or item. Further, introducing a character that is without the frontier effectively moves the frontier.
If I introduce a character that moves the frontier, I may well make an existing character literally worthless. If I introduce a character that is within/behind the frontier, I have introduced a literally worthless character. If I introduce a character outside of the frontier that isn't available to all players, I have made that character inherently and unambiguously unfair.
Dr. Chris Hazard spoke about this when we discussed game balance and monetization at MAGfest this year. One of his points was that for most practical purposes increasing the number of choices along this "frontier" does not introduce "unfairness" except in the sense that players without access to these items suffer "increased cognitive load" yet do not have access to the choices that cause said increase.
That's why they still have the active beta - it's not for the game, it's for new weapons, maps, and abilities(along with the occasional UI tweak). Everything they put into the game is tested for MONTHS, in multiple forms, and multiple fashions, and often they'll even test the individual abilities, too.
But anyway, this is EXACTLY why I'd like to see that discussion. It's all well and good to have - to use him again - Robin walker say "Well, this was incredibly overpowered, so we changed it, and that's that", and it's fine to see you speaking of fairness and Pareto optimality, but it would only be an improvement to both to have robin walker speaking of how they had to do XYZ, and you asking why, and analyzing it from your perspective. And don't forget, while he's goofy, and he's the head dude of a game you're not extraordinarily fond of, but he's still no slouch, he knows what's game is.
They basically independently derive long-established concepts over and over again. For example, when we were interviewed by the Boston Globe about board games, and we talked about solvability, the interviewer told us that most every designer he interviewed was working making "unsolvable" board games (which is patently impossible short of making them random, execution-dependent, or arbitrary). A little followup revealed that said designers basically knew nothing about the basic structure of games from any analytical perspective, and were literally seeking impossibilities due to their lack of understanding.
Most game balance is done almost solely through trial and error. I suspect that Valve ended up making a reasonably Pareto-efficient game without anyone ever mentioning that concept by name. Blizzard straight-up admitted to us it was trial and error all along the way in most cases.
My main point is simply that you can heavily narrow the scope of what is required to be tested for game balance by implementing a small number of surprisingly simple mathematical concepts early in the process. Even without the maths, the concepts themselves can be applied.
But that aside, I think you're kinda missing my point, here, we're talking across each other - what you're saying is precisely why it would be interesting, because the people making these things don't often know about these things except through practical experience, and the vast majority of the people who do know about these things, don't have anything to do with gaming. So, Let's put them together and see what happens, see how the two work out with and against each other, I think that would be cool. I don't even know if it would work out, to be honest, but I want to find out.
At the simplest level, there's mechanical balance vs. balance within the context of what people actually play. Balance is often manipulative in itself. Typically a games goal is not pure mechanical balance. You might want to have a skill vs. power trade-off, so that a new player can be relatively viable vs. a veteran player who might use a more powerful (but more skill-dependant) option. But that's not "balanced" in most senses of the word. But League of Legends definitely has some of that. There are relatively easier characters to play, but there are also reasons to specifically play a different character.
So there is this big official Dota 2 tournament going on and in dota 2 store there are these "pennants" for most of the teams in the tournament (I at least remember reading something about some teams not having them because of reasons). The team pennant costs about 1 dollar and the money goes to the team, after Valve takes their cut of course. The player can equip one of those pennants on their profile in "fan slot" on Player Loadout and if they spectate that team's games with the game client or from spectator client they can get "hats" (not literal or even digital hats, but I believe people understand what I mean in this context). Pennants can also be upgraded so you can show that you are bigger fan and give more money to the team (and Valve).
I don't know about what other forumites think but I personally think that all this is pretty clever from Valve. They get easy money, the teams earn some money and fans can support the team(s) they like. Also the promise of "hats" gets people watching the tournament from Valves client instead of using outside streams and that generates nice big numbers that Valve can show when discussing sponsorship deals on later tournaments.
To be clear I have not bought pennants myself so my information doesn't come from personal experience, but from what I read on dota 2 store and what I've heard elsewhere so the information might not be 100% exact. Also third paragraph includes some personal speculation not tied in facts, but you can probably tell what's what.
Though, for a straight up tutorial you can play the HoN one for free since most of the mechanics are basically the same.
Internationals are happening right now, anyone else watching them? I think eHome Chinese team is the favored this year.
They seem to agree with your assessment of the Chinese.