0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design

[Micfild]

50 minutes ago, Stan` said:

f 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.

The civs' files are a bit spread out since it includes auras and other things. But if you take the simulation folder alone (with gaia and all the civs) it has only 4,22 MB of files with 8,24 MB of occupied disk space. Most of the size of the public folder comes from the Art folder (2,53 GB), Audio folder (177 MB) and the Maps folder (341 MB). The rest only weighs 31 MB.

Overall, scripts and XML files are really light.

[Stan`]

6 minutes ago, Micfild said:

The civs' files are a bit spread out since it includes auras and other things. But if you take the simulation folder alone (with gaia and all the civs) it has only 4,22 MB of files with 8,24 MB of occupied disk space. Most of the size of the public folder comes from the Art folder (2,53 GB), Audio folder (177 MB) and the Maps folder (341 MB). The rest only weighs 31 MB.

Overall, scripts and XML files are really light.

And they would be the only thing you would change. And you only have to package the files you changed.

[alre]

what's the problem with branches?

[chrstgtr]

14 hours ago, Grapjas said:

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.

If you look at the forum history, the people who were loudest about the a24 being imbalanced were the same people who said a24 was bland and uniform louder than anyone else and they did so from the very start. If anything, it was the casual players who received a24 best, but that also came to pass and I am not here trying to point fingers. And if you look at the ongoing conversations in the balancing community, most concern how we can (re)introduce aspects of the game that lost in a24 or have never been developed. For example, look at the threads @wowgetoffyourcellphone posted where he and I had several productive conversations that hopefully will materialize into new, balanced features that will make everyone happy. 

Saying "people who care about balance make the game boring" is wrong and unproductive. People who care about balance can also care about it being interesting, fun, and dynamic. People who care about balance simply want new features to be balanced in addition to being new. 

[Stan`]

6 hours ago, alre said:

what's the problem with branches?

Svn's system isn't really great

 

[alre]

but diffs can also be created using git right? I don't really know svn but if it's supposed to be better than git for binary files, here we are talking about xml essentially. this is how I envisioned the process:

- A26 comes out, then the main dev team goes on with svn.

- gameplay rebalances get worked on on a different git project, from a different team (it needs not, of course, to be separeted from the original team, but it needs neither to be the same)

- every time the game access the lobby, it checks for updates

- if the balance update is out, a message pops up asking if the player wants to update the game, and if the answer is yes, ideally, the update gets downloaded and installed automatically as a mod on top of A26, I don't see it being more than a few kb heavy

- some time before A27 comes out, the balance update is copy-pasted into a git branch created before moving on from A26, than the branch is merged into the latest development version and the diff is created (if I remember well there is such a git repo updated together with svn)

[Grapjas]

9 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

People who care about balance can also care about it being interesting, fun, and dynamic. People who care about balance simply want new features to be balanced in addition to being new. 

Yes, this is the kind of mindset that would be great for every balancer to have, would even go as far as calling it a must-have. 

[Stan`]

3 hours ago, alre said:

but diffs can also be created using git right? I don't really know svn but if it's supposed to be better than git for binary files, here we are talking about xml essentially. this is how I envisioned the process:

Sure. As long as you have the same file tree. So either you use github.com/0AD/0AD, gitlab.com/0AD/0AD/, or svn.wildfiregames.com

3 hours ago, alre said:

ome time before A27 comes out, the balance update is copy-pasted into a git branch created before moving on from A26, than the branch is merged into the latest development version and the diff is created (if I remember well there is such a git repo updated together with svn)

Of course dumping files works well enough as a diff. However it will be impossible to track the changes. As in you will have one potentially huge commit. Do not that A25 templates need changes to work with A26 templates.

3 hours ago, alre said:

- if the balance update is out, a message pops up asking if the player wants to update the game, and if the answer is yes, ideally, the update gets downloaded and installed automatically as a mod on top of A26, I don't see it being more than a few kb heavy

That's a bit dangerous which is one of the reasons why I believe you can't download mods from your host. He could send you anything he wants. And to download from mod.io you need to have accepted the term and conditions.

 

[alre]

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Of course dumping files works well enough as a diff. However it will be impossible to track the changes. As in you will have one potentially huge commit. Do not that A25 templates need changes to work with A26 templates.

more difficult yes, impossible not, in any case it will be some added work to make the merge, but it will be worth it for the accelerated balancing and testing.

17 minutes ago, Stan` said:

That's a bit dangerous which is one of the reasons why I believe you can't download mods from your host. He could send you anything he wants. And to download from mod.io you need to have accepted the term and conditions.

It wouldn't be the host, it would be mod.io or maybe the lobby server itself, we are not talking big files anyway, a single web page is heavier.

[Stan`]

6 minutes ago, alre said:

It wouldn't be the host, it would be mod.io or maybe the lobby server itself, we are not talking big files anyway, a single web page is heavier.

I believe that for mod.io you need to accept the terms every single time. Not sure whether they are changing but we are legally obliged to do so. Hosting stuff on the lobby is a slippery slope.  I believe people can tell others to update their mod version from mod.io? Doesn't it work like that for Autociv?

[ChronA]

10 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Saying "people who care about balance make the game boring" is wrong and unproductive. People who care about balance can also care about it being interesting, fun, and dynamic. People who care about balance simply want new features to be balanced in addition to being new. 

Sorry, that feels like a no-true-scotsman fallacy to me. Yes, everyone wants both balance and new features, but the important distinction is which one you prefer when you can't have both. It seems like this community ends up picking balance over features every time.

Perhaps a more useful framing of the problem is that the project's consensus view of what constitutes balance is too narrow for its own good. It's not enough that every strategy has a viable counter; that counter must be tuned to an exacting level of minimal surplus efficiency to preserve the soft counter character of the game. Moreover, you have to do this with consideration to every single civilization in the game. If a new feature makes any one of the game's dozen civilizations grossly over or underpowered then it is automatically not fit for purpose. And forget about trying to deliberately change the nature of any particular strategy or counter relationship, or majorly adjust the unit roster available to any civilization. The community has certain expectations about how things are supposed to look in 0 AD.

The problem is, when combining all those constraints the only valid solution is gridlock. With counter margins so finely tuned, every single tiny simulation or stat difference triggers a cascade of unacceptable changes that must be fastidiously counteracted every patch, eating up development energy. Meanwhile, anyone trying to contribute new features has to run a gauntlet of predicting and adjusting for every balance implication across every combination of civs. It is simply not possible to innovate successfully in such an environment.

To get out of this rut, this community needs to accept that 1. it is worth breaking things to add features, and 2. that a more bold, rough-strokes approach to balance and counter design will cause less balance problems while the game is in heavy development. Otherwise I think 0AD should accept that its game design has fully matured to its natural conclusion, and slap a beta number on the next update. 

 

[guerringuerrin]

I don't want to offend anybody but every months there's a new thread about balancing and all thing should be done to improve the game.
I find this version quite balanced regardless ppl complaining of Merc Cav OP, carth OP, anything OP, and so on. I agree with @Yekaterina this is good base to go through with small changes.
RIGHT NOW the game needs gameplay fixes, fix and improve pathfinder, and many optimizations tweaks, balancing should not be a priority. (at least not the top one)
I always find this threads interesting, there's 2 or 3 with very interesting proposals but imo the best the majority of us can do is foundrising to pay some C++ dev 

Edited December 21, 2021 by guerringuerrin

[alre]

29 minutes ago, ChronA said:

Sorry, that feels like a no-true-scotsman fallacy to me. Yes, everyone wants both balance and new features, but the important distinction is which one you prefer when you can't have both. It seems like this community ends up picking balance over features every time.

Perhaps a more useful framing of the problem is that the project's consensus view of what constitutes balance is too narrow for its own good. It's not enough that every strategy has a viable counter; that counter must be tuned to an exacting level of minimal surplus efficiency to preserve the soft counter character of the game. Moreover, you have to do this with consideration to every single civilization in the game. If a new feature makes any one of the game's dozen civilizations grossly over or underpowered then it is automatically not fit for purpose. And forget about trying to deliberately change the nature of any particular strategy or counter relationship, or majorly adjust the unit roster available to any civilization. The community has certain expectations about how things are supposed to look in 0 AD.

The problem is, when combining all those constraints the only valid solution is gridlock. With counter margins so finely tuned, every single tiny simulation or stat difference triggers a cascade of unacceptable changes that must be fastidiously counteracted every patch, eating up development energy. Meanwhile, anyone trying to contribute new features has to run a gauntlet of predicting and adjusting for every balance implication across every combination of civs. It is simply not possible to innovate successfully in such an environment.

To get out of this rut, this community needs to accept that 1. it is worth breaking things to add features, and 2. that a more bold, rough-strokes approach to balance and counter design will cause less balance problems while the game is in heavy development. Otherwise I think 0AD should accept that its game design has fully matured to its natural conclusion, and slap a beta number on the next update. 

lol which are these wonderful new features that aren't being implemented because there aren't enough balance testers? this is all just debate over ideology and taste.

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

I believe that for mod.io you need to accept the terms every single time. Not sure whether they are changing but we are legally obliged to do so. Hosting stuff on the lobby is a slippery slope.  I believe people can tell others to update their mod version from mod.io? Doesn't it work like that for Autociv?

how is that a slippery slope?

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

1 hour ago, ChronA said:

To get out of this rut, this community needs to accept that 1. it is worth breaking things to add features, and 2. that a more bold, rough-strokes approach to balance and counter design will cause less balance problems while the game is in heavy development. Otherwise I think 0AD should accept that its game design has fully matured to its natural conclusion, and slap a beta number on the next update. 

This is precisely why I proposed working with a new schema, the kill your darlings concept applied to 0 AD.  First, while the current alpha is an excellent template to work off of, it does not have to be followed to a T since the first civilisation that would be reworked could be balanced against itself.  Things would complicate themselves with each successive rework, but the important thing is that there would be a coherent idea of how each civilisation would perform beyond just looking back at previous versions.  At the same time since there would be the option to play the factions prior to the rework, players could still enjoy the variety of them without a grossly imbalanced game.  

This would allow for much more radical departures from the current formulae.  Instead of champions always being available at the 3rd phase simply because, there could be some, like say the Spartans, who could train Spartans at the very outset.  There could be new ways of collecting resources like Athenians collecting metal from olive fields.  

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, alre said:

how is that a slippery slope?

You give an extra load on the lobby, because you have to download stuff, and all the clients of the game needs to keep pinging it to know if there are updates. It's possible that it would introduce some security flaw where the person(s) currently having fun ddosing players (and sometimes it seems the server) might inject other fancy stuff. While assuming we have recurrent updates, a mod with team verification on modio with manual download seems much more secure and requires much less infrastructure.

1 hour ago, alre said:

lol which are these wonderful new features that aren't being implemented because there aren't enough balance testers? this is all just debate over ideology and taste.

Secondary attacks, attack ground,  mixed gender citizen soldiers, scouts... probably a lot more. I believe @Freagarach was working on something that could allow directional damage. And because I'm a jolly mood, the hans  

 

[LetswaveaBook]

3 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Secondary attacks, attack ground,  mixed gender citizen soldiers, scouts... probably a lot more. I believe @Freagarach was working on something that could allow directional damage. And because I'm a jolly mood, the hans  

I think it is wrong to blame the balance team for these functions not being implemented. Can someone point out where the balance team is obstructing these changes?

39 minutes ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

 

This would allow for much more radical departures from the current formulae.  Instead of champions always being available at the 3rd phase simply because, there could be some, like say the Spartans, who could train Spartans at the very outset.  There could be new ways of collecting resources like Athenians collecting metal from olive fields.  

The reason these things aren't being implemented is not because there a people that obstruct, but because nobody took serious effort to create them.

Also you could be a little more creative than just say champions in p1. What about a male helot cap depending on how many spartans you have. Also Spartan women were considered strong defenders, so the spartan female warriors could be another champion. A suggestion would be that they are not as strong as other male champions, but gains a bonus when fighting close to the CC or under the command of Archidamia.

[Stan`]

22 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I think it is wrong to blame the balance team for these functions not being implemented. Can someone point out where the balance team is obstructing these changes?

Sorry you're right it's not a direct blame. Some team members are a bit afraid of the insults and the backlash we got after A24. So they wait for balancing people to come test those patches and suggest improvements, which is currently hard to put in place. so the features never move forward, or like in the case of acceleration, just go through without much consideration.

 

 

[maroder]

@LetswaveaBook I'm happy to hear that you are open to new ideas, but there are some forum members who (from what I know and experienced) have a very what I would call "conservative" view of what changes should be made and what not.

There have been things said like "if you want to change something put it in a mod, but please leave the main game alone" or the very liberal use of the confused smiley on every new idea and proposal.

Which are very legitimate opinions, so no hard feelings, but that's doesn't create the feeling that changes are welcome.

Edited December 21, 2021 by maroder

[alre]

I see, it looks like we should best just follow Kate's suggestion then. Game's not great, but is good, better to keep it that way than spoiling it.

[borg-]

The big problem is that balancing patches go through the same democratic process as other large patches. We have some patches with a small number of changes (status) that are a few months in the queue waiting to be checked.
My suggestion is to create a small team balancing 3-5 players who listen to the community's suggestions, and based on the suggestions, talk and agree on the changes (vote if necessary). After the changes are agreed upon, the patch is built. Ideally, we need a moderator with the main role of balancing patches and gameplay that is more available for this type of patch. This moderator would not exercise his opinion on the patch, he would just test it for possible bugs and code breaks.

There have been a lot of good suggestions on the forum over the years on how to work with civilizations, but the process of having to break those patches into dozens of little patches and all being discussed individually doesn't work well, because when you have ideas about changing a civilization, you think about global changes, one patch often depends on the other, and in the current form it's almost impossible to work.

Edited December 21, 2021 by borg-

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, ChronA said:

Sorry, that feels like a no-true-scotsman fallacy to me. Yes, everyone wants both balance and new features, but the important distinction is which one you prefer when you can't have both. It seems like this community ends up picking balance over features every time.

Perhaps a more useful framing of the problem is that the project's consensus view of what constitutes balance is too narrow for its own good. It's not enough that every strategy has a viable counter; that counter must be tuned to an exacting level of minimal surplus efficiency to preserve the soft counter character of the game. Moreover, you have to do this with consideration to every single civilization in the game. If a new feature makes any one of the game's dozen civilizations grossly over or underpowered then it is automatically not fit for purpose. And forget about trying to deliberately change the nature of any particular strategy or counter relationship, or majorly adjust the unit roster available to any civilization. The community has certain expectations about how things are supposed to look in 0 AD.

The problem is, when combining all those constraints the only valid solution is gridlock. With counter margins so finely tuned, every single tiny simulation or stat difference triggers a cascade of unacceptable changes that must be fastidiously counteracted every patch, eating up development energy. Meanwhile, anyone trying to contribute new features has to run a gauntlet of predicting and adjusting for every balance implication across every combination of civs. It is simply not possible to innovate successfully in such an environment.

To get out of this rut, this community needs to accept that 1. it is worth breaking things to add features, and 2. that a more bold, rough-strokes approach to balance and counter design will cause less balance problems while the game is in heavy development. Otherwise I think 0AD should accept that its game design has fully matured to its natural conclusion, and slap a beta number on the next update. 

 

This is a defeatist point of view that clearly relies on false assumptions. There are many examples of where new features had been proposed and adopted, so I don’t understand how you can say it’s not possible. I’ve even given you an example of how it can work out so someone doesn’t have to “run the gauntlet” alone. With the possible exception of turn rates, which have been tried several times and are still being tried, I am at a loss to think of any features that have actually be shouted down by anyone truly involved.

Sure there are some people on the “balancing” side who think nothing should be introduced because it will wreck balance. They are wrong. Also wrong are the people in the “feature” side who forget that 0AD is a game.

Like with most things, the right answer is usually somewhere in the middle

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

Secondary attacks, attack ground,  mixed gender citizen soldiers, scouts... probably a lot more. I believe @Freagarach was working on something that could allow directional damage. And because I'm a jolly mood, the hans  

Just worth noting that at least one of those (attack ground) was actually proposed by @BreakfastBurrito_007, who falls on the balancing side of things, and he and I squawk about it just about every chance we get. The balance vs. feature divide isn’t as binary as some people suggest.
 

I get that there is some paralysis resulting from bad memories of a24’s release. I would submit that the process for a24 just failed. The people who drove a24 are largely uninvolved at this point and the proper concerns were raised at the time, but we’re just largely ignored or voted down by a minority that controlled the process. I really don’t think the entire MP community should be blamed for something like that, especially when many complaints of the MP community are the same ones being voiced here. 

[Yekaterina]

The thing is, we don't have a perfect or near perfect release yet, every version has its own problems so it is a bit premature to go to beta. 

Most players think A23 had great mechanics and sound effects, just that slingers are not balanced and dancing is allowed. 

Most players are quite happy with A25 but a few people hate units overlap so much that they refuse to play A25. 

A26 is about to introduce an acceleration mechanism which is again controversial. 

We don't have something that everyone is happy with. So we need to first come to an agreement with unitAI mechanics, then we can work on the stats. Once these two are done, I bet that some additional features like an  extra decorative building or harmless unit wouldn't upset anyone too much. 

Also I spotted a pattern: if a completely useless and weak thing is introduced, nobody cares about them unless they interfere with the main military units of a civ. For example the Kushite mercenary desert raiders of A23 and A24: they had exactly the same stats as a regular cavalry javelineer but are much more expensive, so they were never used. No-one ever complained about them as the Kushite player still has the rest of their structure tree to play with; they can simply ignore the desert raiders. 

So we can add in historically accurate units and buildings but make the new additions very nerfed so that no-one has too much dissent over them. We wait for Valihrant to come up with a strategy for these units, then we adjust their stats accordingly.

[Stan`]

30 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

I bet that some additional features like an  extra decorative building

IMHO this does not qualify as “Feature”. It's an embellishment at best.

Features would be a new civilization, bataillons, acceleration, multiple attacks, building sockets (think settlements like Age of Mythology), Knockback, hero selection screen, attack ground, etc.

36 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Most players think A23 had great mechanics and sound effects, just that slingers are not balanced and dancing is allowed. 

Players who want A23B can still download it and or use nani's mod Disabling defeat sounds is just a a xml file to change.

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Also wrong are the people in the “feature” side who forget that 0AD is a game.

Because it's important there are a bit more sides.

- Engine Side Pyrogenesis: Hardware Support, Performance,

- Modding and Engine : Features (Both gameplay and hardware such as msaa, 4k support, 64 bits etc)

0 A.D: Empires Ascendant

- MP Side: Playability, Balancing, Fun

- SP Side: Depth, Diversity etc

[Yekaterina]

8 minutes ago, Stan` said:

would be a new civilization

Always welcome from me