User talk:Shard/Whatisbalance
I believe the use of the term "broken" to mean "improportionately powerful" originates from card games. I know I was using it by that meaning as far back as 1996 in MtG tournaments. You are correct in stating that it is a dumb usage of the term, but current trends indicate it's not going to disappear anytime soon. –Jette 04:26, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- I don't know which cards you're talking about, but if they're anything on the BnR list, most of those do break the game. The power nine are a fine example of this. ~Shard
19:11, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
- You can't break Magic without going to Unhinged or something. It's a card game. Truncating floating points breaks games; the power nine are just nefandously powerful. –Jette 19:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
l2math[edit]
4+2 != 6+1. Noob. — Raine Valen 
7:02, 20 Nov 2010 (UTC)
- I almost clicked "edit page" as to fix it as a typo. --Boro
18:45, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
So[edit]
I've read your other article, the one called balance specifics something something, yet I haven't seen you define balance anywhere on that page, just some random attempt at calculating the power of skills. For balance to be treated as math, it needs fundamental, general values from which more advanced theorems can be deduced. So please tell me, what do you believe balance is? 83.163.190.111 17:59, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Also, you seem to use the term 'broken' yourself pretty oftenly (you called Wail of Doom broken on your comparison page). Is there anything I'm missing or did you change your opinion on the matter?
- I really meant to say it breaks the game. Almost everyone is guilty of using it that way. ~Shard 19:33, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Its true though. Lol. "For four seconds you're completely removed from any format of the game" <- This should be a bare minimum of 15 energy and 50% sac. with a 15 second recharge. Again, bare minimum. --Briar
The Spider 19:45, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Nah, it just needs a rework. Not that the skill is used, mind you. PoD is much better for spike support. 83.163.190.111 19:47, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Its true though. Lol. "For four seconds you're completely removed from any format of the game" <- This should be a bare minimum of 15 energy and 50% sac. with a 15 second recharge. Again, bare minimum. --Briar
Its funny because its true...[edit]
"Good player good designer. If you haven't figured this out already, Michael Jordan did not invent Basketball, Michael Jackson did not invent music, and Isaiah Cartwright is not the best GW player in the world. Being good at something has no bearing on whether you can create it, and being able to create something doesn't mean you automatically master it. "
True story. Did you kiddies know Leo Fender, the creator of the Fender Stratocaster, one of the most famous and popular guitars of all time did not play guitar at all?--*Yasmin Parvaneh* 
23:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
- Orly?--BriarThe Spider 21:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Eh[edit]
I didn't find this page earlier, but I vehemently disagree on 6. Tournament results are the exact opposite of meaningless - tournament play (where both players have relatively equal skill, experience with maps, experience with varying build orders for their races in sc2) can showcase small imbalances that are largely not seen in lower level play. Balancing the entire game based on what we see in tournaments would be a bad idea, but ignoring tournament play entirely is incredibly daft. Yes, the sample size is small - but the skill is unmatched. No, the players participated in elims and then playoffs - "selected" hints that they were hand-picked. Yes, there are metagame trends - but as you can see in Guild Wars and sc2, metas are made by these top-level players. That really is not a valid reason to ignore tournament play - none of your points are.
Tournament play is the highest form of PvP in most games. Yeah, it's alright if bronze and silver league have fun matches that are mostly balanced, but in the end, it doesn't really matter - most of them are too shitter to tell what's balanced and what isn't, and most of the matches are decided based on obvious mistakes that the opponent capitalized on, not balance issues with the game. Balance issues with the game will cause much bigger problems the higher up you go; even in Guild Wars, there were guilds who had no qualms with running really homosexual bullshit to win (like the japs running hexes and sins to get their gold trims cos they never had to deal with anyone calling them cheating faggots). The company can't rely on people being honorable and not exploiting gay shit on principal. It has to balance the game specifically for tournament play, because that is where balance matters the most. Ignoring it entirely is not something any company does, and for good reason. -Auron 00:43, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
- Well, I can think of one... –Jette 01:59, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
- I have a similar issue with point 1: balance is math. While I agree that math can be a valuable tool, it's not the definitive answer to all problems as there are situations that cannot be expressed mathematically. For example, assume a situation with 2 skills: skill 1 deals 50 damage with 5 seconds recharge. Skill 2 deals 100 damage with 10 seconds recharge. Basic mathematical comparison can only conclude that both skills are equally powerful. However, when considered in a team, it's easy to see that skill 2 can be used to instantly spike a target to death, whereas skill 1 cannot. As such, skill 1 would be much easier to defend against than skill 2. Math does not take this into consideration. The same can be said for projectiles and AoE skills, which can be dodged or avoided. Such factors are also hard to incorporate into a mathematical model. Finally, skill combinations (like AoE and snare) are even harder to accuately qualify into a math model: in such a case, 1+1 equals a greater effect than 1 and 1 would seperately (i.e. 1+1>2). Overall, I'd say that math can account for 80-90% of the balancing work, but the remaining 10-20% is finetuning based on experience and 'feelings'. That's where the tournament results come in, and where balancing turns from math into an art. 145.94.74.23 10:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Here's another example I thought of just now. How would you mathematically describe Distracting Shot? Depending on which skill it interrupts (assuming it interrupts at all), it can be either a super skill or a worthless one. The balance would be quite different if you'd compare a pro player who always hits a key skill with it to an average player who sometimes hits a key skill, sometimes another skill, and occasionally misses it. Which player would you choose for balancing? A perfect player? That would lead to an underpowered skill, since players will never be perfect. The same goes for a poor player: Distracting Shot would be overpowered compared to skills that have a static effect in the hands of good players. You could consider using statistics to determine a fair number of hits, but even then, player's skill levels may have changed since you started measuring what they interrupted with it. They may have gotten better at it (or worse). So what would any balancer do? Assume a succesful interrupt percentage that feels likely, possibly based on experience, testing and/or player input. In essence, this is where balancing becomes an art (or luck), but where math cannot make the final decision. 145.94.74.23 11:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- In addition to AoE, there are skills that have no direct damage component but utility that varies in power depending on when and where you use them. Toss chronoboost, overseer's contaminate, point defense drone, force fields, stim... it's really difficult to "math" those to perfect balance. That is a minor point, though, as most things are still math (energy cost, build time, research time, etc). -Auron 11:20, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Damnit 145. Stop reading my mind. -Auron 11:22, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry. ^^ As for your points, I'll admit that some things are easy to figure out using math. However, I strongly disagree with the statement that only minor things cannot be balanced. As my previous examples have indicated, minor issues can quickly become complicated once you let them loose into the world. Even a simple: twice the damage, twice the cost isn't neccesarily so. In Magic:The Gathering for example, the card Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage. Yet, if there'd be a card that'd cost (only) twice as much that'd deal 6 damage, it'd be grossly overpowered. For reasons stated above, in Guild Wars, a skill that deals twice the damage for twice the cost, is not equal in power. And yet, that would just be a basic problem where math is concerned. At best, math is a very useful tool. But I simply cannot agree with statements that suggest that it's the answer to all balance issues...because it's not. 145.94.74.23 11:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I highly dislike the way math is used in balance discussions. Math is so much more than dumb calculations based on flawed definitions. Terms like overpowered are currently at best vague and at worst completely unusable. To put it simply, balance is currently not defined well enough for it to be called math. Morphy 21:41, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- Balance: effort * skill = reward. — Raine Valen
22:38, 20 Jan 2011 (UTC)
- That's just moving the problem. You have left skill undefined. Morphy 08:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
- Skill = efficiency (at max effort). In a game where power is constant (ostensibly GW), efficiency is the only thing that differentiates players' output: this is skill, for all intents and purposes. To be specific, I mean efficiency in creating time pressure: the player who can create the greatest time shortage for their opposition using the least time, themself, is the most skilled.
- For reference, right now, power * effort * skill = reward; in order for balance to be achieved, power needs to be normalized. Of course, that's the gist of it: power needs to be normalized, and that's not been a mystery to anyone, now has it? — Raine Valen 16:26, 21 Jan 2011 (UTC)
- Interesting. I'll talk to you on MSN about it, it's for discussions like this I added you. Morphy 17:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
- That's just moving the problem. You have left skill undefined. Morphy 08:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
- Balance: effort * skill = reward. — Raine Valen
- I highly dislike the way math is used in balance discussions. Math is so much more than dumb calculations based on flawed definitions. Terms like overpowered are currently at best vague and at worst completely unusable. To put it simply, balance is currently not defined well enough for it to be called math. Morphy 21:41, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry. ^^ As for your points, I'll admit that some things are easy to figure out using math. However, I strongly disagree with the statement that only minor things cannot be balanced. As my previous examples have indicated, minor issues can quickly become complicated once you let them loose into the world. Even a simple: twice the damage, twice the cost isn't neccesarily so. In Magic:The Gathering for example, the card Lightning Bolt deals 3 damage. Yet, if there'd be a card that'd cost (only) twice as much that'd deal 6 damage, it'd be grossly overpowered. For reasons stated above, in Guild Wars, a skill that deals twice the damage for twice the cost, is not equal in power. And yet, that would just be a basic problem where math is concerned. At best, math is a very useful tool. But I simply cannot agree with statements that suggest that it's the answer to all balance issues...because it's not. 145.94.74.23 11:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Here's another example I thought of just now. How would you mathematically describe Distracting Shot? Depending on which skill it interrupts (assuming it interrupts at all), it can be either a super skill or a worthless one. The balance would be quite different if you'd compare a pro player who always hits a key skill with it to an average player who sometimes hits a key skill, sometimes another skill, and occasionally misses it. Which player would you choose for balancing? A perfect player? That would lead to an underpowered skill, since players will never be perfect. The same goes for a poor player: Distracting Shot would be overpowered compared to skills that have a static effect in the hands of good players. You could consider using statistics to determine a fair number of hits, but even then, player's skill levels may have changed since you started measuring what they interrupted with it. They may have gotten better at it (or worse). So what would any balancer do? Assume a succesful interrupt percentage that feels likely, possibly based on experience, testing and/or player input. In essence, this is where balancing becomes an art (or luck), but where math cannot make the final decision. 145.94.74.23 11:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- I have a similar issue with point 1: balance is math. While I agree that math can be a valuable tool, it's not the definitive answer to all problems as there are situations that cannot be expressed mathematically. For example, assume a situation with 2 skills: skill 1 deals 50 damage with 5 seconds recharge. Skill 2 deals 100 damage with 10 seconds recharge. Basic mathematical comparison can only conclude that both skills are equally powerful. However, when considered in a team, it's easy to see that skill 2 can be used to instantly spike a target to death, whereas skill 1 cannot. As such, skill 1 would be much easier to defend against than skill 2. Math does not take this into consideration. The same can be said for projectiles and AoE skills, which can be dodged or avoided. Such factors are also hard to incorporate into a mathematical model. Finally, skill combinations (like AoE and snare) are even harder to accuately qualify into a math model: in such a case, 1+1 equals a greater effect than 1 and 1 would seperately (i.e. 1+1>2). Overall, I'd say that math can account for 80-90% of the balancing work, but the remaining 10-20% is finetuning based on experience and 'feelings'. That's where the tournament results come in, and where balancing turns from math into an art. 145.94.74.23 10:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry I haven't checked this page in. . . well ever. Auron, nowhere did I say tournament play was meaningless. I said tournament results (and statistics) are meaningless. It's entirely useful to observe what units and playstyles pro players use, but that's not what most scrubs on forums do. Scrubs on forums look at who won and who lost and use that as an indicator of balance. ~Shard 08:37, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
