Looking back on the balancing strategy

[Stan`]

Hey everyone,

I am creating this thread to discuss the balancing from a "meta" perspective in hopes to improve the current situation. Please refrain from discussing "actual" balancing in this thread.

As some of you may know, it has been a priority of mine for the past three years to find a way to provide a good experience for players, whether they are on the competitive side or not. For the 24th Alpha I created a Personal Mail (PM) with a few individuals, in order to try to create a team-like cohesion. While the 24th Alpha was a game changer in a lot of ways, and a painful experience, I do believe that it was the most productive in terms of actual patches and changes. People played by the rules by proposing, creating, and accepting patches (I insist on the last part because without formal acceptance there is no liability).

I also tried to leverage a documentation team to update the design document. The job was too hard, and it died quickly and in silence. The original design was somewhat different from what the current game is today. There would have been much less civilizations, and instead your empire would have switched from a generic civilization to a more specific one (e.g greek -> macedon -> seleucid). Then another era came, where everything changed.

Meanwhile, I was not happy about doing things in the shadows. This whole project is a community effort, and the contributors of today are the ones that might carry the flame when I am gone. So after a few internal discussions we came up with the balancing subforum, where everyone could see what was going on behind the curtains but only a selected few could interract, and anyone could ask me for a seat at the table, with some relevant experience. It came with little titles that hoped would boost morale.

However...

It did not go as I(we) planned. It created an even bigger split in the community, resulted in a huge variety of threads which is good, but which led nowhere as none of the idea was accepted enough to be implemented. And even the ideas who did get implemented did not make it.

While the Personal Mail (PM) did go off track from time to times, it had the advantage of notifying people everytime someone posted (I do not think many people use that forum feature for threads) and I think the discussion was more focused, people pinging each other for patch reviews etc...

There was also an attempt to use the chat on Phabricator which also sends emails for each messages, but it quickly vanished after the 24th Alpha. The 25th Alpha got some welcomed changes, at a much slower rate, and I think it fixed a lot of the quirks Alpha 24 introduced. But we're not quite there yet, and I know a few people are hurt about the current state of the game.

I'm not a fan of the current balancing forums, and I'd like to merge them again with the rest of the game discussions, or at least to open them, since there seem to be no point in having them closed anymore.

So I'm asking everyone, what can we (as in Wildfire Games) do, to get more contributions about balancing, to make A26 a success.

We have some very nasty release blockers, and that leaves time for a bit more balancing patches.

Best regards,

Stan

[Stan`]

Should this be published on the main website as well ?

[maroder]

For me this comes back to the problem that it's hard to define what 'balancing' is and that there is no definite feature/ gameplay-design plan.

Everyone comes in with different ideas of how they would want the game to look and play like and no consensus in any form is ever reached. So is this a discussion about  e.g. skirmishers need -1 hack or about hard vs soft counter or about how different civs should play and how the grand gameplay works?

Without a having a defined goal of what the balancing discussion should lead to, it's hard to discuss it.

[Gurken Khan]

On 17/04/2022 at 1:43 PM, Stan` said:

I'm not a fan of the current balancing forums, and I'd like to merge them again with the rest of the game discussions, or at least to open them, since there seem to be no point in having them closed anymore.

I sensed your distance to the closed balancing forums before. I don't know if it increased a rift in the community, but I did read comments stating that some people wouldn't even read the closed forums because they go against the principles of FOSS. When I thought that an important aspect was overlooked in the discussion I pm'ed a member and she brought that aspect to the discussion; however, I recently decided to just start a parallel, open thread whenever I felt I wanted to state my opinion on something. So in short, I think opening the balancing forums might be a good idea.

I don't know what role the balancing advisors could play, or how decisions should be made; but there seems to be a lot of discussions where nothing ever comes out of it. Unfortunately I don't really have a good suggestion how to remedy that, but I suspect it also has something to do with us being a bit thin regarding devs.

[hyperion]

Without moderation it won't work as a recent example showed because after all everything is about balancing, no need for any other forum. Looking at @Gurken Khan

Honestly I don't mind a closed group as long as no one pretends it was discussed openly, either it's fully open or it's not. And yes, in the latter case I can't be bothered to participate.

Balancing is also given far to much weight, broken packing of catas is far worse than the discussed balancing issues when it comes to retaining users. Any new user with a 4k screen will hardly stick around long enough to find the gui.scale property. The list of potential show stoppers is long. New features are a 100 times worse than fixing existing ones. About multiplayer, the lobby climate I consider most important and that seems to be a major issue currently.

As for balancing, without proper statistics or at least some quality questionnaires, it's a headless chicken. Add to that that balancing, realism and game play may have contradictory goals and there is no clear statement / moderation line what has precedence. Also balance isn't any worse than other similar titles. We just have to accept that fixing only game breaking issues (for instance deathballs like roman scorpios in the past) is plenty good enough.

Honestly, I'd just replace the whole balancing effort with a balancing tech, as balancing is an e-sport here, we need more than 1 vector so those folks don't have it to easy. Let's say one roughly corresponding to the 3 base strategies, boom, turtle, rush. If for example a civ has a to strong an eco, just reduce the eco factor and so forth. Then anything not about tweaking those 3 factors is by definition not balancing at all. 

 

 

[alre]

the problem was the distance between the balancing discussions and the game development. big changes are introduced to the game without previous notice, apparently being part of personal plans by each dev, not disclosed to the larger community. on the other hand, there is not enough effort on the balancing part for testing game changes, which in turn depends on technical difficulties, small user base, low engagement with the game development and its management.

these are my two cents, from the perspective of a "balancing advisor".

[real_tabasco_sauce]

On 17/04/2022 at 1:43 PM, Stan` said:

a bit more balancing patches.

I think most people agreed about the spear cav buff. As an outsider to the "balancing advisor" group, I would say that the spear cav discussion is a good example of how these closed discussions go. People agree something must be done, but differ on how to go about it. After the dust last settled, it looked like the best option was +1 pierce armor, cav counter raised to 2.0.

There are times I would like to add to these discussions, but cannot. I think the open format is better.

 

16 hours ago, alre said:

the problem was the distance between the balancing discussions and the game development

Yes often balancing discussions become hypothetical, which is unavoidable. When actual patches are introduced, discussion becomes more fruitful and better values are found.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Perhaps when there is a situation that calls for a vote, the vote can be mandatory for "Balancing Advisors" (perhaps with a reminder sent by forum message) and optional for others. Most votes on balancing discussions I have seen have very low participation. 

An example of a vote could stem from something people broadly agree on, for example:

CS archer inf need a buff, vote for one of the following:

• return accuracy values to a24
• add 1 or more pierce damage
• give them 1 pierce armor

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Lion.Kanzen]

10 hours ago, Stan` said:

Should this be published on the main website as well ?

Yes and social network.

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think most people agreed about the spear cav buff. As an outsider to the "balancing advisor" group.

You can join.

[Nullus]

I would say that before any more major balancing is done, we should develop an updated design document. A25 has a few issues, such as Iberian firecav, but overall it's pretty well balanced, and there aren't any game-breaking flaws in it. Given this, I think that balancing should keep to fixing major issues, not working on civ differentiation or anything else. Before any of that, we need to agree on a design document. Without a cohesive plan for how the game should play, balancing decisions will tend to pull the game in opposing directions, making balancing ineffective or even counterproductive.

To create a design document, I think that one or more proposals need to be submitted to the forum on how the game should play in general. For example, it could specify general roles for civilisations and unit classes. After this has been discussed and approved by a vote, then documents for specific civilisations can be created and approved by the same process. Once a complete design document has been created, balancing could resume, with the document as a goal. Until then, it would be limited to fixing major issues, not deciding any gameplay roles.

Once balancing resumes, I think that there are two rules which would make it more effective. First, all members of the balancing team should be required to have the SVN version installed. Currently, I think that the current development version has made some major changes, such as acceleration and the Han Chinese, which could cause balancing issues in the next alpha, but which haven't attracted much attention, mostly because very few people play the development version. Second, if anyone wants to make a change to the game, a forum topic should only be opened after a patch has been submitted on phabricator. As it is, there are lots of balancing discussions, but I don't think they've resulted in any changes, mainly because no one creates any patches for them. If the consensus on the forum moved against the changes, the patch could be updated or abandoned, while if the forum approved, the patch could be committed. This could be much more effective than the current model.

[ChronA]

10 hours ago, Stan` said:

Should this be published on the main website as well ?

Yes. First though, I suggest undertaking some light rewrites to give it a bit more positive spin. Right now I feel like there is a lot of weight on the "sorry we did something that isn't working well" part of the situation, and not enough on the "here's a plan to try something new" side.

On 17/04/2022 at 7:43 AM, Stan` said:

I'm not a fan of the current balancing forums, and I'd like to merge them again with the rest of the game discussions, or at least to open them, since there seem to be no point in having them closed anymore.

I am for this. Just for the sake of communication clarity alone, it's not a good policy having two separate tiers/fora for one public discussion. It's much worse to have any appearance of deliberately excluding some voices from the more important of those tiers. That's really only justified if some speakers have a massive advantage in influence or understanding that makes it vital for their voices to be heard, and a proven risk of them being drowned out by the noise of the crowd otherwise. 0 AD is not currently in such a position. It is fine and even desirable to have some discussion taking place through private channels, but all public communications should ideally be open to direct public comment.

[smiley]

9 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

I did read comments stating that some people wouldn't even read the closed forums

I can attest that I wanted to write some stuff in there at least two times. One was regarding something random maps that someone wanted to know the feasibility of, and some balancing stuff + historical discussions. I am not DMing someone just to post a reply. And I imagine a lot of people feel the same way.

If I have the chance, this game would be beyond recognition, that's how different the vision is. And the spectrum of stuff people like are probably just as vast. It's like three gears interlocking, they don't spin. Hence why such a thing as making a rigid design document is going to cause so much controversy that the accuracy fix in A22 would pale in comparison. But at the end of the day, whose game is this and whose it for are questions that will eventually need answers.

I suspect balancing per se is so dead because of the amount of work involved in proposing changes. You can't simply say, "X op because I got steamrolled by someone using X yesterday". Subjective reasoning isn't good enough either.

[maroder]

41 minutes ago, smiley said:

If I have the chance, this game would be beyond recognition, that's how different the vision is. And the spectrum of stuff people like are probably just as vast. It's like three gears interlocking, they don't spin. Hence why such a thing as making a rigid design document is going to cause so much controversy

this. It is incredibly demanding and time consuming task to argue with people why your view of how the game should be is the good and should be implemented. So people who have the skills to actually do some changes are unfortunately better off time and motivation wise by just creating a mod, especially when they don't play multiplayer.

So the incentive of making, discussing or accepting gameplay patches is just not that big, the exception being glaring issues (e.g. fire cav).

[smiley]

1 hour ago, maroder said:

So people who have the skills to actually do some changes are unfortunately better off time and motivation wise by just creating a mod,

Either that or work on engine bugs and underlying code without actually focusing on gameplay. In other words, what developers usually do. You can count with your fingers the number of actual noticeable gameplay changes that have been committed in recent memory.

No one wants to be that guy.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

To add gameplay changes you have to be able to take scathing criticism. Hell, to change a cursor brings the hounds of Hades. So, you have to be "that guy" who will be willing to ignore a lot of the criticism because you can't please everyone. 

[chrstgtr]

On 17/4/2022 at 7:43 AM, Stan` said:

Hey everyone,

I am creating this thread to discuss the balancing from a "meta" perspective in hopes to improve the current situation. Please refrain from discussing "actual" balancing in this thread.

As some of you may know, it has been a priority of mine for the past three years to find a way to provide a good experience for players, whether they are on the competitive side or not. For the 24th Alpha I created a Personal Mail (PM) with a few individuals, in order to try to create a team-like cohesion. While the 24th Alpha was a game changer in a lot of ways, and a painful experience, I do believe that it was the most productive in terms of actual patches and changes. People played by the rules by proposing, creating, and accepting patches (I insist on the last part because without formal acceptance there is no liability).

I also tried to leverage a documentation team to update the design document. The job was too hard, and it died quickly and in silence. The original design was somewhat different from what the current game is today. There would have been much less civilizations, and instead your empire would have switched from a generic civilization to a more specific one (e.g greek -> macedon -> seleucid). Then another era came, where everything changed.

Meanwhile, I was not happy about doing things in the shadows. This whole project is a community effort, and the contributors of today are the ones that might carry the flame when I am gone. So after a few internal discussions we came up with the balancing subforum, where everyone could see what was going on behind the curtains but only a selected few could interract, and anyone could ask me for a seat at the table, with some relevant experience. It came with little titles that hoped would boost morale.

However...

It did not go as I(we) planned. It created an even bigger split in the community, resulted in a huge variety of threads which is good, but which led nowhere as none of the idea was accepted enough to be implemented. And even the ideas who did get implemented did not make it.

While the Personal Mail (PM) did go off track from time to times, it had the advantage of notifying people everytime someone posted (I do not think many people use that forum feature for threads) and I think the discussion was more focused, people pinging each other for patch reviews etc...

There was also an attempt to use the chat on Phabricator which also sends emails for each messages, but it quickly vanished after the 24th Alpha. The 25th Alpha got some welcomed changes, at a much slower rate, and I think it fixed a lot of the quirks Alpha 24 introduced. But we're not quite there yet, and I know a few people are hurt about the current state of the game.

I'm not a fan of the current balancing forums, and I'd like to merge them again with the rest of the game discussions, or at least to open them, since there seem to be no point in having them closed anymore.

So I'm asking everyone, what can we (as in Wildfire Games) do, to get more contributions about balancing, to make A26 a success.

We have some very nasty release blockers, and that leaves time for a bit more balancing patches.

Best regards,

Stan

Just want to say, we appreciate you, Stan. Lots of toxicity has been around the last 18 months or so and it’s easy to forget about good people like you. 

[chrstgtr]

The only other thing I really have to say is that a lot of people (too many in my opinion) see problems in the the current game and want to create their own ‘perfect’ game from scratch. But everyone has a different idea of perfect and everyone can’t have their own perfect game that everyone plays. At some point, someone will be unhappy. We have what we have and unless you want to be like Wow and create your own game from new cloth then revisions can’t forget everything and become something brand new. Change will be gradual and frustrating because it isn’t anyone’s perfect game.
 

But it’s also worth noting that there is wide consensus that this slow gradual change is an improvement from where we came. It’s not ‘perfect’ but let’s appreciate that it is ‘better’

Edited April 20, 2022 by chrstgtr

[Dizaka]

Personally, I like the "balancing discussion" forum.  It opens up different perspectives and points of views of how things can be done.  Clearly, there's no right way to do things and not many wrong ways to do things. 

However, as some noted in this thread, there should be a "design document."  This document, could basically, serve as the intended direction and to focus discussions.  With the balancing, and other forums, the document could change as need be.  As much as a "design document" should exist, I think there should be a plethora more of sub forums that go under balancing or there should be a way to tag topics based on major ones (e.g., civ differentiation, team bonuses, mercenaries, champions, spear cav).  Maybe specific "design sub-documents" could be created and updated on github that are not a "design document" but implementation ideas that can be added to the "design document" should there be sufficient time to include them.  I love that 0ad is basically a living game.

In general, I think @Stan` and the whole WFG Team have been doing a spectacular job with 0ad.

I think the "balancing discussion" forum serves as an example of that people want 0ad to succeed.

[Outis]

Having played Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C, AoE series since the first titles, I always dreamed of creating the "perfect" RTS. I can comfortably say 0 ad is perfect and don't let anyone convince you otherwise @Stan` and the WFG team. Those titles do not come close to the level of immersion 0 ad has. Any discussions concerning balancing at the moment is marginal compared to the awesomeness of what we already have. Big thank you!

I agree about the necessity of design documents. When we say "unit x needs more armor", it should not be implemented just to adjust current balance as it is without considering to the whole balance concept behind. We should ensure our proposal is adding value towards the balance goals. We should have an anchor.

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

To add gameplay changes you have to be able to take scathing criticism. Hell, to change a cursor brings the hounds of Hades. So, you have to be "that guy" who will be willing to ignore a lot of the criticism because you can't please everyone. 

This is so true. Design is about compromise.

[MarcusAureliu#s]

I think one of the main things that need to be considered for balancing is, that for every advantage a civ has, there needs to be an equal disadvantage compared to other civs.  This is ofc present in the game:  Persians have a slow eco and "weak" archers in the early game, therefore more pop, and cav techs that could make them strong in late game.  In some cases it is present in theorie but with too little effect. For example Ptolemies are supposed to have weaker buildings. This is not big enough of a deal compared to both economic and military advantages; if u cant defeat the enemy army u will struggle to destroy many buildings. I see little to no reason why i would pick seleucids over ptolemies in competitive multiplayer. Roman variety for siege and camps for example just dont really make up for slower eco and a lack of pikes rn. Therefore there should be a concept/overview for all civs, on where they are strong and where they are weak, each strength opposed by a weakness. Then the second step could be to make sure, things that are considered a strength and things that are considered a weakness are actually strong or weak respectively in relation to other Civs. I have tried something like that in the past. Just to stay within "meta". 

[smiley]

Step 1: Write down an updated design document that reflects the current game. There was an attempt 2 or so years ago that failed.

Step 2: Make it an open repository that anyone can propose changes to.

Step 3: Add weighted voting to determine what gets accepted and what gets rejected. Someone who has been here for 5 years should obviously have more leverage than a new player. Might seem unfair, but knowing the culture and the community built around this is necessary to propose a change that's going to make most of that community happy.

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Profit

[smiley]

I propose splitting the work to sections and merging the final pieces. Someone can write about unit classes, someone else can write about factions. Or combat mechanics.

[Stan`]

16 hours ago, hyperion said:

. Any new user with a 4k screen will hardly stick around long enough to find the gui.scale property.

Good thing we added an option for it finally in A26!

16 hours ago, hyperion said:

As for balancing, without proper statistics or at least some quality questionnaires, it's a headless chicken. Add to that that balancing, realism and game play may have contradictory goals and there is no clear statement / moderation line what has precedence. Also balance isn't any worse than other similar titles. We just have to accept that fixing only game breaking issues (for instance deathballs like roman scorpios in the past) is plenty good enough.

Do you mean something like this http://docs.wildfiregames.com/templatesanalyzer/ ?

16 hours ago, alre said:

the problem was the distance between the balancing discussions and the game development. big changes are introduced to the game without previous notice, apparently being part of personal plans by each dev, not disclosed to the larger community. on the other hand, there is not enough effort on the balancing part for testing game changes, which in turn depends on technical difficulties, small user base, low engagement with the game development and its management.

Indeed each team member has its own agenda. It can be disastrous sometimes. The issue lies between the way people expect to be played I guess. I remember @mysticjim and @superflytom commending the turn rate feature while everyone else on the forums seemed to hate it.

15 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Perhaps when there is a situation that calls for a vote, the vote can be mandatory for "Balancing Advisors" (perhaps with a reminder sent by forum message) and optional for others. Most votes on balancing discussions I have seen have very low participation. 

This could work maybe. As much as I'd like to, I cannot listen to everyone, and since I don't have a big experience on the game I have to rely on trustworthy people to help me make good decisions. Some might say it's weak, but I think it's better to admit when you don't know instead of blindly doing things.

14 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Yes and social network.

I think I need to find a good image for social media.

13 hours ago, Nullus said:

I would say that before any more major balancing is done, we should develop an updated design document. A25 has a few issues, such as Iberian firecav, but overall it's pretty well balanced, and there aren't any game-breaking flaws in it. Given this, I think that balancing should keep to fixing major issues, not working on civ differentiation or anything else. Before any of that, we need to agree on a design document. Without a cohesive plan for how the game should play, balancing decisions will tend to pull the game in opposing directions, making balancing ineffective or even counterproductive.

I'd like that. The design document is actually versioned and changes can be made to it. https://docs.wildfiregames.com/design/ But I need people to step up and take the lead.

13 hours ago, Nullus said:

Once balancing resumes, I think that there are two rules which would make it more effective. First, all members of the balancing team should be required to have the SVN version installed. Currently, I think that the current development version has made some major changes, such as acceleration and the Han Chinese, which could cause balancing issues in the next alpha, but which haven't attracted much attention, mostly because very few people play the development version. Second, if anyone wants to make a change to the game, a forum topic should only be opened after a patch has been submitted on phabricator. As it is, there are lots of balancing discussions, but I don't think they've resulted in any changes, mainly because no one creates any patches for them. If the consensus on the forum moved against the changes, the patch could be updated or abandoned, while if the forum approved, the patch could be committed. This could be much more effective than the current model.

This would be nice. I offered (and still do) to help anyone on IRC or Discord installing it.

13 hours ago, ChronA said:

Yes. First though, I suggest undertaking some light rewrites to give it a bit more positive spin. Right now I feel like there is a lot of weight on the "sorry we did something that isn't working well" part of the situation, and not enough on the "here's a plan to try something new" side.

Because I'm a bit at loss there. I'm good at being honest, not sugar coating things, feel free to suggest an improved version if you have some time.

13 hours ago, ChronA said:

I am for this. Just for the sake of communication clarity alone, it's not a good policy having two separate tiers/fora for one public discussion. It's much worse to have any appearance of deliberately excluding some voices from the more important of those tiers. That's really only justified if some speakers have a massive advantage in influence or understanding that makes it vital for their voices to be heard, and a proven risk of them being drowned out by the noise of the crowd otherwise. 0 AD is not currently in such a position. It is fine and even desirable to have some discussion taking place through private channels, but all public communications should ideally be open to direct public comment.

Indeed, although noise is a thing on these forums, people going of track and stuff. I guess actual moderation could fix it though.

11 hours ago, maroder said:

this. It is incredibly demanding and time consuming task to argue with people why your view of how the game should be is the good and should be implemented. So people who have the skills to actually do some changes are unfortunately better off time and motivation wise by just creating a mod, especially when they don't play multiplayer.

So the incentive of making, discussing or accepting gameplay patches is just not that big, the exception being glaring issues (e.g. fire cav).

Maybe the issue is the medium of communication rather than the actual thing being discussed ? Maybe audio chat could help?

7 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

To add gameplay changes you have to be able to take scathing criticism. Hell, to change a cursor brings the hounds of Hades. So, you have to be "that guy" who will be willing to ignore a lot of the criticism because you can't please everyone. 

This is a big thing. Some people are legitimately scared of making changes, and other get very frustrated when they had the courage to make them and have to take them down.

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Just want to say, we appreciate you, Stan. Lots of toxicity has been around the last 18 months or so and it’s easy to forget about good people like you. 

Thank you. I do it for the people that like 0 A.D. even though I must admit the rest has taken a huge toll on me. Hopefully being able to go to events where people are actually happy to discover or talk about the game will bring back some energy on my side.

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

The only other thing I really have to say is that a lot of people (too many in my opinion) see problems in the the current game and want to create their own ‘perfect’ game from scratch. But everyone has a different idea of perfect and everyone can’t have their own perfect game that everyone plays. At some point, someone will be unhappy. We have what we have and unless you want to be like Wow and create your own game from new cloth then revisions can’t forget everything and become something brand new. Change will be gradual and frustrating because it isn’t anyone’s perfect game.
 

But it’s also worth noting that there is wide consensus that this slow gradual change is an improvement from where we came. It’s not ‘perfect’ but let’s appreciate that it is ‘better’

This is why I wanted someone to take the role and make decisions. This is too heavy for me on top of everything else. I hoped it would work with @borg- but it seems even his ideas were not to the liking of most people...

 

[maroder]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

I'd like that. The design document is actually versioned and changes can be made to it. https://docs.wildfiregames.com/design/ But I need people to step up and take the lead.

taking the lead is a bit of a blurry description. Do you mean as in 'writing down how the game currently works' or as in 'how it should work' ? The latter will probably cause some conflict e.g.

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

This is why I wanted someone to take the role and make decisions. This is too heavy for me on top of everything else. I hoped it would work with @borg- but it seems even his ideas were not to the liking of most people...

making or contributing to a design document would also require some kind of decision or knowledge about what features will be implemented in the future and which just won't make the cut. E.g. secondary weapons. phase 4, new civs ect.

Generally I would like to help out with that task, but it is unclear what *exactly* the task contains.

______

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

Maybe the issue is the medium of communication rather than the actual thing being discussed ? Maybe audio chat could help?

Hmm sure, some things are better / quicker to discuss in real time (so it might be a good option to have some kind of regular internal chats), but I think the asynchronous communication is actually a strength of the development process. I think it's mostly a problem of diverging ideas about how the game should play and discussing something like that means emotional investment which just cost a lot of energy.

Edited April 20, 2022 by maroder
typos

[Stan`]

13 minutes ago, maroder said:

taking the lead is a bit of a blurry description. Do you mean as in 'writing down how the game currently works' or as in 'how it should work' ? The latter will probably cause some conflict e.g.

I mean taking the lead in the sense of trying to organize the update or the rewriting of the documentation, so yeah writing how it works might help.

14 minutes ago, maroder said:

making or contributing to a design document would also require some kind of decision or knowledge about what features will be implemented in the future and which just won't make the cut. E.g. secondary weapons. phase 4, new civs ect.

Indeed, and just like I can't give you a release date for A26 I cannot give you that ... However it's not because features are there that we need to use them.