0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

First I would like to offer the disclaimer that an emphasis on balance is not a bad thing.  It helps to maintain a thriving community, and the community is integral to an open source topic.  That said, many design decisions that have changed the game on an integral level were done so with balance in mind, not an end vision.  Again, this is not bad either, but ultimately it means that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design.

Ultimately a problem I see with the game from this standpoint is that the factions are fairly bland.  Yes, there are restrictions to what units are available, but at the end of the day a Persian spearman has the same statline most other factions.  Many great proposals have been done to flesh them out better.  I would particularly mention wowgetoffyourcellphone's and my own, but I'm sure that there are plenty of others.  Despite often a great amount of thought being put into them and at least some of the community having positive opinions on the alterations, to my knowledge little if anything gets done.  This is ultimately motivated by the fact that these would throw the balance in flux.  While this is exasperating to people who would like change, the points behind these conservatives are valid.  The multiplayer community might suffer.  

That said, I think that there is a reasonable compromise that 0 AD can and should take to help diversify factions and gameplay for the longterm without ruining the competitive scene.

One by one factions could experience overhauls with key things in mind:

How would their economy function differently from other ones?

Are there any ways to reward strategic building placement?  

Are there any glaring inaccuracies in the design?

What are current strategies used in the competitive scene, and how could these be expanded upon?

These new iterations of the factions would initially be an option until all factions have experienced an overhaul, allowing for players to freely choose between the current, more balanced faction designs and the more experimental ones.  Then, the team could in theory even turn around and continue the cycle of overhauls.  

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The forum is great for discussion, but not great for action. Action is creating a mod for others to try and/or a patch to put on Phabricator for others to try and improve and eventually be accepted and committed. Lately, I have been attempting the latter, with good results:

[Gameplay] - Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food
https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4380

 

[Gameplay, CivBonus] Rework Kushite Pyramids to be Phase Requirements
https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4381

 

The discussions there are far more fruitful, due to there being actual stats and real gameplay to chew over. The forum is really only good for hypothetical discussion.

Edited December 19, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Grapjas]

Tbh, there is much that can be said about this subject, and will probably lead into another endless discussion with a lot of different opinions. Here's mine though (lol).

I'm heavily in favor of rock paper scissors balancing. This way you can really diversify civs from each other and have interesting matches. But for this to work i feel like there would need to be some additional changes like being able to pick your civ yourself in mp matches, and hide your choice from others if you want. Otherwise people can pick obvious counters. But the current way of balancing seems to be more about making civs the same.

I also feel like the bigger the balancing team gets, the harder it will be to actually conclude and agree on something. Get a small team to do it, the feedback of the people will be the actual guidance on what needs to change.

15 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

While this is exasperating to people who would like change

I feel like this is very true and to add to it, the offline playerbase is likely much bigger than the online one, and the competitive scene is actually really small.

But behind the (forum) screens, there is much need for more contributors on trac and phab. From big tasks like optimizing pathfinding in C++ (<- devs really need someone), to simpler tasks like cleaning up loading tips. Anyone can join the IRC chat for more extensive help on how to get set up if interested.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Grapjas
fixed a wrong link.

[alre]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

ultimately it means that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design.

wrong. 0AD design choices are all near sighted because there is no long term project, not because of general focus on balance. actually devs give fairly little attention to balancing.

[maroder]

6 hours ago, alre said:

actually devs give fairly little attention to balancing.

Lol that's not true. There are so many things that are not getting in the game for the fear that people will find it "unbalanced" and start yelling.

Every decision that touches the gameplay is looked on from the angle of "what do the multiplayer think".

The problem is that most devs play the game not super competitively, but just casually, so no one I know of claims to be an expert for balancing.

Which is why there is an extra balancing forum now.

[alre]

1 hour ago, maroder said:

Every decision that touches the gameplay is looked on from the angle of "what do the multiplayer think".

because that is the last thing that is taken into consideration, is also the thing being discussed before making the final decision.

[alre]

11 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

[Gameplay] - Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food
https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4380

lol I thought noone would implement that anymore, I was actually considering to propose on this forum a completely new alternative for how to make corrals work.

[Stan`]

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1907

[Yekaterina]

Let's put it this way: even the very slight change in mechanic or stats or addition of a seemingly irrelevant unit  would suddenly make an unit or civ OP, and then upset the multiplayers. 

Currently, it seems that A25 is one of the most balanced alpha, so why don't we use that as a foundation and do small tweaks on it as suggested by the balancing advisors?

Then, for excitement, we can add new aesthetics and new maps, which pleases the singleplayers without upsetting the hardcore TG players. 

We can also introduce upgraded versions of the AI, if the singleplayers fancy a challenge! See Res Gestae mod by nagasushi.  

[maroder]

27 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Then, for excitement, we can add new aesthetics and new maps, which pleases the singleplayers without upsetting the hardcore TG players. 

I feel like you missed something when reading the first post. How would that fix the point that the factions are just kind of bland and lack unique features? 

[Yekaterina]

47 minutes ago, maroder said:

How would that fix the point that the factions are just kind of bland and lack unique features? 

Unique features = new imbalances

 

[alre]

May I say that, while there certainly is a conservative faction within the multiplayer community, it doesn't represent all of it. Liking to play against peers doesn't involve disliking the game to change.

Balance is important for MP, buy one may disagree on how to pursue it.

[maroder]

13 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Unique features = new imbalances

Lol. This is why we can't have nice things.

[Grapjas]

51 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Unique features = new imbalances

This is the worst kind of mindset for a balancer to have imo. And i'd still say that A23 balance was superior and the civs were more unique.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Grapjas

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

2 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Let's put it this way: even the very slight change in mechanic or stats or addition of a seemingly irrelevant unit  would suddenly make an unit or civ OP, and then upset the multiplayers. 

Currently, it seems that A25 is one of the most balanced alpha, so why don't we use that as a foundation and do small tweaks on it as suggested by the balancing advisors?

Then, for excitement, we can add new aesthetics and new maps, which pleases the singleplayers without upsetting the hardcore TG players. 

We can also introduce upgraded versions of the AI, if the singleplayers fancy a challenge! See Res Gestae mod by nagasushi.  

This is precisely why I would propose a systematic approach to updating civilisations one by one.  There would be time to forge a clear identity to how they would work, yet at the same time since it would just be that civilisation, players would be able to see how matchups with it and other factions would function.  Choices would be deliberate, not either dogmatically following the whims of the meta or taking in every shiny idea..  That said, I see the balancing advisors to be have a valid place here, noting where things are broken and noting where fixes could be made.

At the moment the economies for civilisations run fairly similar to each other, which I find unfortunate, especially since a large amount of a players concentration has to be dedicated to it.  It also can be fun to build aesthetically nice cities in game, but there are no rewards to consider with building placement.  What if there was one faction that had reduced training time to barracks placed next to blacksmiths?  The Romans could also have their Temple of Vesta offer increased gathering speed to nearby women.

11 hours ago, alre said:

wrong. 0AD design choices are all near sighted because there is no long term project, not because of general focus on balance. actually devs give fairly little attention to balancing.

Maybe so, but the point is still valid.  There is no clear documentation of where the team wishes to take the civilisations from a design perspective (There are documents on each civilisations design, but those seem to have been left by the wayside.), and this would perhaps fix that apparent issue.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[alre]

I agree on this plan for reworking civs one by one, this is my vision as well. I think all these good intentions could get into the game easier if there was a shorter term balancing calendar of the game, independent on the engine upgrades and the main releases.

[Yekaterina]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

but there are no rewards to consider with building placement.  What if there was one faction that had reduced training time to barracks placed next to blacksmiths? 

That is interesting, however, building placements are already very important in high level multiplayer games: wrong place could lead to inefficient gameplay or the building being captured. Also, houses / barracks are now used as walls to defend against cavalry rush. If barracks train faster when close to blacksmiths, this will temp the player into making economically beneficial but tactically nub decisions. 

 

1 hour ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

The Romans could also have their Temple of Vesta offer increased gathering speed to nearby women.

This is good bonus. 

 

Before we talk about reworking civs, the navy is completely broken from a balancing perspective, but also from how ships worked. 

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

29 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Also, houses / barracks are now used as walls to defend against cavalry rush. If barracks train faster when close to blacksmiths, this will temp the player into making economically beneficial but tactically nub decisions. 

Personally the house walling concept is something I dislike; they take away the idea of using other structures for defence like... walls.  I think that a soft way of punishing that sort of tactic would be to allow a town phase technology that allows infantry to set buildings on fire.  If they are too close together, the fire would spread, but I digress.  Walling with buildings is nothing new to RTS games.  What we want to think about is ways of providing more nuance.  Another thing blacksmith adjacency could do is award experience to units trained from nearby barracks.  Honestly there are so many cool, thematic synergies that have remained unexplored that could add some much needed spice to the economic/base building side of the game.

[Micfild]

3 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Unique features = new imbalances

That is true, but imbalances are a natural part of the process, so it is unavoidable in some ways. The biggest issue, in my opinion, isn't that the game can become imbalanced, but that once it does, patches and fixes will only roll out 6-8months later.

I'm somewhat aware of the hurdles of changing compiled code, but still can't understand why smaller changes (like numerical tweaks in the template .xml files) can't be updated more regularly, especially since theses changes can be easily modded. This way we wouldn't be so afraid of imbalances, since they could be fixed after a few weeks of discussion.

[alre]

22 minutes ago, Micfild said:

That is true, but imbalances are a natural part of the process, so it is unavoidable in some ways. The biggest issue, in my opinion, isn't that the game can become imbalanced, but that once it does, patches and fixes will only roll out 6-8months later.

I'm somewhat aware of the hurdles of changing compiled code, but still can't understand why smaller changes (like numerical tweaks in the template .xml files) can't be updated more regularly, especially since theses changes can be easily modded. This way we wouldn't be so afraid of imbalances, since they could be fixed after a few weeks of discussion.

THANKS!

[Stan`]

Well ideally the empires_acendant mod could evolve at it's own pace. It could be available on mod.io and provide day to day fixes. Sadly, this requires an effort the team is not able to provide. We can't maintain the current version and the next one at the same time.

[LetswaveaBook]

19 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

ultimately it means that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design.

I will be picky here. It does not mean that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design, it only resulted in that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design. This wasn't doomed to happen, but it did.

18 hours ago, Grapjas said:

I also feel like the bigger the balancing team gets, the harder it will be to actually conclude and agree on something. Get a small team to do it, the feedback of the people will be the actual guidance on what needs to change.

I don't think the size of the team is the problem. The main problem is that balance advisors rarely make a differential, or concretely suggest one.

4 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Unique features = new imbalances

 

Hmmm.... Do you have evidence for that? What is probably closer to the truth is that Balancing team=more imbalances. In my view most inballances that are in A25 are either introduced by the balance changes or they were present in A24 and nobody cared about them.

It would have been easy to make a mod that gives players 2 metal mines o mainland, but the balancing team did not push such a mod forward. If such a mod were there, then a number of inbalances would have been solved before we went to A25, but here we are. If you took a look at the scenario editor in A24, you would have seen that skirmishers are good for something, but nobody in A24 could imagine that they were useful.

What this community needs is a mentality of complain about it & fix it. It is better to continuously have balance mods being tested rather than having only changes every alpha. If people complain about Roman/Iberian champion cavalry, they are childish. Because if they were smart and really bothered they would make a mod with better balance, nothing is stopping them to mod 0AD.

Blaming anyone but the balancing team for imbalances is hypocrite.

 

 

I like the coral-idea though and I think new features should be not judged on balance. When new things are inbalanced, the balancing team should solve that while keeping the feature intact. 

[Micfild]

Thanks @Stan`. I think i understand a few points of your reply, but not all of it. If possible, could you clarify a few things:

1 - It seems that the moddable part of 0AD is treated (in some ways) as a mod itself (called empires_ascendant)  <-- is this correct?

2 - If 1 is true, then it means that, much like mods, this one could be changed more frequently, and updated on mod.io

3 - Empires_ascendant is a rather large mod (a few gigabytes in fact) and the only way to change parts of it would be to download and replace the entire thing (can't just change a few files)

4 - " We can't maintain the current version and the next one at the same time. " <--> If i'm understanding this corrently, it means that current versions of 0AD in phabricator  (A26) have new features (like acceleration) that changes the game and most of it's .xml files. This way, patches for A25 couldn't be easily tested in Phab without messing with A26 stuff. Therefore it would be necessary to have two projects in Phab, one for A26 and one for A25, and that is just not feasible.

If that is the case, then can't we test tentative patches as a simple mod and when eveything is set, officialy transmit them to the Empires_Ascendant "mod". It sounds a little vague because i don't have enough knowledge to know what is possible and what isn't, but if we can use a program, like the installer, to officialy replace files in Empires_Ascedant, it would make things simpler.

This way, the workflow would be something like this:

Tentative patch A25.01 --> as a simple mod (or .pyromod) file, like any other mods.

Balance team downloads the mod, tests it and have discussions.

         - If the changes are insufficient, a new mod (A25.02) is created and the process is repeated)

         -If the changes are accepted then it can be implemented.

After a final version is approved, an official patch (or something) can be downloaded to replace the original files in the Empires_Ascendant mod for the new ones, but only those that were changed (like a copy and replace).

=======================================================

I don't know if i got everything right or if this is even realistic, but if possible, it might be close to a good solution to this problem.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Micfild

[Grapjas]

@Micfild you're probably just better off downloading SVN (<- for windows, for other os im sure someone can help) and test it there. Otherwise with every patch now one also has to make a mod file, which likely wouldnt work anyway because the patch is based on a different build (with patches already commited to it). Unless i misunderstood what you meant. 

 

The balance team can however already make a mod, and experiment with balancing in the current released build. 

[Stan`]

4 hours ago, Micfild said:

- It seems that the moddable part of 0AD is treated (in some ways) as a mod itself (called empires_ascendant)  <-- is this correct?

The game is a mod yes. However it extends far beyond just the 13 civs and is called “public” All fauna and flora assets are part of it. In my mind the civs should be split from the rest as they could be replaced by something else.

4 hours ago, Micfild said:

2 - If 1 is true, then it means that, much like mods, this one could be changed more frequently, and updated on mod.io

Yeah it's possible.

4 hours ago, Micfild said:

3 - Empires_ascendant is a rather large mod (a few gigabytes in fact) and the only way to change parts of it would be to download and replace the entire thing (can't just change a few files)

If it was split I believe it could be a bit smaller. It would be a fun experiment to see how much space the civs really take. Do note however you could just have an extra mod that just changes the stats that would be much smaller. You could just have three xml files in that mod

5 hours ago, Micfild said:

4 - " We can't maintain the current version and the next one at the same time. " <--> If i'm understanding this corrently, it means that current versions of 0AD in phabricator  (A26) have new features (like acceleration) that changes the game and most of it's .xml files. This way, patches for A25 couldn't be easily tested in Phab without messing with A26 stuff. Therefore it would be necessary to have two projects in Phab, one for A26 and one for A25, and that is just not feasible.

Without branches and backporting non C++ changes it's not trivial no. Not with the current resources at my disposal at least.