(Uncle Dane) Trickle-Down Balance - General

[video=youtube;X1p42KtZOCw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1p42KtZOCw[/video] The video's about TF2, but I think it applies to pretty much every game that gets balance changes.

But what about things that are weak and easily countered at high levels of play but powerful at low levels?

[QUOTE=Kljunas;53071825]But what about things that are weak and easily countered at high levels of play but powerful at low levels?[/QUOTE] then its a matter of the player being unskilled, rather than an OP weapon usually the players catch up. it could be compared to the Dragon's Fury (not as much tho because that weapon is sort of broken) with how right after JI released it was basically only used and dominated pubs. now it only really dominates pubs if you're a higher level player, and even then you probably are dominating because of your skill rather than the weapon i'd much rather have a weapon require that players learn to work around it rather than it being nerfed into nothing because low level players don't want to learn to play against it (not applicable if the weapon is blatantly OP, however)

[QUOTE=ShimTaco;53071852]then its a matter of the player being unskilled, rather than an OP weapon usually the players catch up. it could be compared to the Dragon's Fury (not as much tho because that weapon is sort of broken) with how right after JI released it was basically only used and dominated pubs. now it only really dominates pubs if you're a higher level player, and even then you probably are dominating because of your skill rather than the weapon i'd much rather have a weapon require that players learn to work around it rather than it being nerfed into nothing because low level players don't want to learn to play against it (not applicable if the weapon is blatantly OP, however)[/QUOTE] I mean the video is mostly correct but the TF2 team is still really shit at balancing other stuff. Pyro is overpowered. Heavy is really underpowered. Sniper is absolutely ridiculous. Spy is useless unless you are a god. Demoman has been A+ since the game came out. Stickyspamming is still the most effective demoman strat and demoknight is pretty much dead. Trickle down works but when its only a select few weapons it still leaves casual as a big playground where the bullies kick over your sandcastle even though 80% of the TF2 community (probably more) plays casual.

Making spy, heavy, or engie more generally viable in comp would make them completely gamebreaking against new or disorganized players.

[QUOTE=Gravygrove;53071983]Making spy, heavy, or engie more generally viable in comp would make them completely gamebreaking against new or disorganized players.[/QUOTE] Spy will unfortunately always be the odd one out in TF2 since his design is so unique but is really not that effective against players with even a little bit of experience, and the games been out 10 years. No one was genuinely getting fooled by a spy after 2008 unless they had just installed the game. The problem was his deadringer and ambassador combo was too powerful and IMO took away from the class that was all about staying hidden and getting backstabs, not being a psuedo invincible sniper, but now that his one strong playstyle is gone unless you are a spy with a lot of experience and skill you aren't going to do well. The recent pyromania hasn't made playing Spy any easier since Jungle Inferno either. Spy pretty much only excels AGAINST disorganized players now. When you have to worry about sniper headshots, jetpacking pyros, and crit rockets coming at you, it's very easy to get distracted and backstabbed. Which is fine and makes sense. Heavy is a low skill class in the sense that he doesn't really have many mechanics to learn or master, but game sense is very important for a heavy player. Knowing when to be aggressive or defensive, checking for spies, not getting caught out or being too far from the action, ect are all the most important things for a heavy yet. I've seen thousands of new heavies get destroyed because even if they can aim a little they have no game sense and are sitting ducks. Unfortunately for heavy he is really easy to counter and has no counters for soldier, demoman, or scout (except having good tracking aim) and especially snipers, and that's what you see in competitive so you'll never see heavy except for certain points that it's very safe to pick him. Engie is fairly well balanced after Jungle Inferno and his only really nonviable weapon is the Pomson. The problem for engie in comp is that the 6v6 atmosphere is too restrictive in a game with 9 varied classes and the comp meta is pretty well laid out already so there's just not room for an engineer. IMO, and an unpopular one, but comp TF2 hasn't taken off in 10 years and it's not going to. While a lot of it is because of Valve, the 6v6 playstyle is just not really receptive to the full depth of TF2 and while it's a great playground for really highly skilled soldiers, demos, scouts, snipers, and medics, thats pretty much it. So it's sad to see comp balanced mainly around those classes, and even then tournaments have to further ban items like the BASE Jumper that was talked about in the video or Jarate/Mad Milk.

I don't think this is 'trickle-down' at all really, which might be a good thing because trickle-down economics is widely considered a joke what he's describing in his examples isn't balance trickling down, it's valve changing features of weapons that were relevant in comp but irrelevant in public play - it's two completely distinct sets: they basically didn't change the weapon for pub play trickle-down balance would be more like them taking a class or weapon that is typically unsuccessful in competitive but playable/successful in pubs (like the heavy, engineer) and buffing them - they're not good enough in comp, and the balance should "trickle down" but they [B]don't[/B] do that, because that's [I]awful[/I] game design - why on earth would you consciously make a game design decision that actively made the experience of 98% of your playbase worse? it's all well and fine to give the "git gud" argument, but when people stop playing your game out of frustration, the 1-2% won't keep your game alive i can't think of a game that's alive right now which is entirely balanced at the top-end, not even dota does this.

Balance can ruin a game if the only goal is to cater to the competitive scene. I think it's important for a developer to remember that games are supposed to be fun and make compromises between it being fun and balanced. A game like Team Fortress is silly and was never meant to be a competitive game. So I think It's a pretty bad move to make balance changes solely to make it more competitive. Spy has been hit pretty hard by these changes and is an example how balance isn't always a good thing. The Dead Ringer was a pretty difficult item to use and master and rewarded good players. Now it's useless because they tried to make it more "balanced". And sometimes they should have "balanced" the game by opting out of certain items because they broke core rules of the game. Every class counters the Spy because everyone now has a weapon that can set things on fire, instead of it only being the Pyro. That is really bad. So balance isn't always the issue is what I'm trying to say.

[QUOTE=Gravygrove;53071983]Making spy, heavy, or engie more generally viable in comp would make them completely gamebreaking against new or disorganized players.[/QUOTE] Actually their primary reasons still remain unchanged for why they're not very viable in comp vs. pubs - they slow down the game considerably, especially in the case of heavy and engie. Attempting to change them to be more viable for comp would pretty much break them as classes in and of themselves.

I just want to point out that competitive is an entirely different environment of team fortress 2. A lot of tf2's core game design is heavily balanced around 12v12, and when the comp environment reduces it to 6v6, that's when you start seeing a lot of issues with items and even classes. To illustrate, spy is near useless in 6v6 due to most of his strength being in espionage. It's really hard to pretend to be someone else when everyone on that team is close together and you know exactly who is dead on your team. This is why I think it's rather unfair to solely balance around comp in team fortress 2, because it just wasn't designed to BE a comp game. I think balancing certain items in the way that makes them viable, but not abusable is good, but changing core mechanics to favor a more competitive experience often extremely hampers the casual experience.

[QUOTE=REMBER;53072061] The Dead Ringer was a pretty difficult item to use and master and rewarded good players. [/QUOTE] dead ringer rewarded any player who used it tbh you could just press right click and get free speed + huge damage ignore + invis. you didn't have to be good to just hang around a health+ammo pack and spam your DR

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;53071886]Pyro is overpowered.[/QUOTE] Pyro is truly good as something other than as an airblast gimmick since his original flamethrower got nerfed into the ground. If Pyro kills you super fast when he catches you in close quarters congrats, that's what he was supposed to do at release. Last I checked Pyro's shotgun does more DPS than his regular flamethrower with more range on top of it, that's absurd. Before the DF came out what I would do while playing Pyro is burn them a little with the flamethrower to do a little damage and set in afterburn, use compression blast to disorient them, then use a secondary, usually the shotgun to actually finish them. He's the Bastion or Mei/Symmetra of TF2, IMO. A character maligned as 'cheap' because they're fairly easy to play and difficult for an inexperienced player to deal with that shouldn't actually be nerfed because more experienced players know that they're actually not that good.

Side note from Blackavar from the TF2 thread, turns out the BASE Jumper (parachute) was rebanned from 6s, turns out 50% less strafing and only being able to deploy it once in the air still makes it to hard to be hit.

[QUOTE=Simplemac3;53072138]Pyro is truly good as something other than as an airblast gimmick since his original flamethrower got nerfed into the ground. If Pyro kills you super fast when he catches you in close quarters congrats, that's what he was supposed to do at release. Last I checked Pyro's shotgun does more DPS than his regular flamethrower with more range on top of it, that's absurd. Before the DF came out what I would do while playing Pyro is burn them a little with the flamethrower to do a little damage and set in afterburn, use compression blast to disorient them, then use a secondary, usually the shotgun to actually finish them. He's the Bastion or Mei/Symmetra of TF2, IMO. A character maligned as 'cheap' because they're fairly easy to play and difficult for an inexperienced player to deal with that shouldn't actually be nerfed because more experienced players know that they're actually not that good.[/QUOTE] The problem with Pyro is that since they "fixed" his particles whats happened is that they've actually been broken in every way you can think of. I won't turn this thread into another pyro hitbox analysis by posting a bunch of videos but it's busted, luckily they've fixed some of the sillyness like being able to airblast people when they were behind you but it's still nowhere near fixed. His shotgun might do more DPS but you have to aim it. Pyro can flick left and right at a thirty degree angle and because of how his new flames work he will kill you faster than if he was 100% perfectly aimbot locked on to you. He has to aim even less than before. You can also barely see him to even shoot him behind his huge flames now. And he can be in spots pyros couldn't get to before because he has a jetpack. Even if the jetpack isn't incredible it's still infuriating to die to stupid deaths because a pyro can now use areas traditionally meant for high mobility classes. Hes a super easy class with about a dozen utility features with dps that can kill you almost instantly with zero effort. Again, this is why in pubs it's ridiculous because you can't avoid pyros especially when an update comes out centered around them so 6 people on each team is a pyro. Spies cry in the corner and medics wait in the respawn room until it blows over.

[QUOTE=Kljunas;53071825]But what about things that are weak and easily countered at high levels of play but powerful at low levels?[/QUOTE] That's an issue pertaining to skill floors and the resulting skill curve. I'll just repost this to save myself time to elaborate. [QUOTE=Psychopath12;53060147]On the contrary, there is 1 particular part of balancing that's relevant to casual modes: the skill floor. The skill floor is the expected effectiveness achievable at the barebones-minimum level of competency. This is not to be confused with the skill ceiling, which is the exact opposite scenario (the maximum effectiveness at the maximum competency). When you have an assortment of players who all have low to middling experience, a character with a high skill floor will be extremely easy to overcome most situations they may encounter, mostly because their targets are sitting at a comparatively lower skill floor or are somewhere along the skill curve that has yet to tap into the higher potential that their tools provide. Something that has a mostly-flat skill curve has extremely limited potential for growth as a player improves their abilities. Looking at TF2's combat class lineup, the classes with the highest skill floors are Pyro, Heavy, and Engineer. Since it doesn't take particularly much raw skill to defeat other classes with comparable low skill. They do require positioning and gamesense to perform amiably at higher skill levels, but their core principles are more or less the same across the board (and it's not like other classes don't also require positioning and gamesense, it's just that they're punished more severely for not developing those skills, that has more to do with their opponent's tapping into the potential to punish mistakes than it is on themselves having bad positioning or awareness although it is still a 2-way street). There's a reason the Phlog was stupid at its conception. It effortlessly buttfucked players who don't have the core competency necessary to defeat Pyros walking at them. When a skill floor is already high, all the Phlog wound up doing was raise the floor even higher. It was the same problem that day 1 Backburner had, but more threatening. Sure it was a joke against skilled players, but the sheer imbalance it caused at lower skill brackets was something that needed to be addressed. Sure, don't make high-level balancing decisions on the lowest-common denominator, but don't entirely discredit their environment, it could be indicative that something is wrong with the skill curve.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;53072174]The problem with Pyro is that since they "fixed" his particles whats happened is that they've actually been broken in every way you can think of. I won't turn this thread into another pyro hitbox analysis by posting a bunch of videos but it's busted, luckily they've fixed some of the sillyness like being able to airblast people when they were behind you but it's still nowhere near fixed. His shotgun might do more DPS but you have to aim it. Pyro can flick left and right at a thirty degree angle and because of how his new flames work he will kill you faster than if he was 100% perfectly aimbot locked on to you. He has to aim even less than before. You can also barely see him to even shoot him behind his huge flames now. And he can be in spots pyros couldn't get to before because he has a jetpack. Even if the jetpack isn't incredible it's still infuriating to die to stupid deaths because a pyro can now use areas traditionally meant for high mobility classes. Hes a super easy class with about a dozen utility features with dps that can kill you almost instantly with zero effort. Again, this is why in pubs it's ridiculous because you can't avoid pyros especially when an update comes out centered around them so 6 people on each team is a pyro. Spies cry in the corner and medics wait in the respawn room until it blows over.[/QUOTE] Well Spy is simultaneously kinda bad and deliberately weak to Pyro. I won't say the broken particle hitbox thing where you wave your mouse all over the place for higher DPS should be left in, but the DF is fine and the jetpack is so he can actually get in close to compete with the other high mobility classes because his job is supposed to be "close the distance by ambushing people and overwhelm them before they can retaliate or escape" and against anyone competent he had a really hard job closing the distance. I think some of the dumb utility features were kind of because they didn't know what to do with Pyro because everyone complained about his main job being too frustrating to fight. For awhile he [I]was[/I] basically a support class, exploited mostly for his airblasts. He was a pale imitation of what the class was actually supposed to do. Pyro didn't even [I]have[/I] airblast on release. Heavy can still generally kill Pyro first if he's trying to get in close. He's more able to kill sentries with the DF's damage, but Engineer should still generally be able to keep him out. Scout can outmaneuver him but is melted if he gets in close. Soldier and Demoman should still be able to escape him or keep him away in good conditions. I don't think he's an apocalypse, he's just as I said, easy to play and hard to beat without experience. Everyone was yelling for Bastion to get nerfed day one in Overwatch because it was easy (and still is easy) to blunder into his killzone and get instagibbed, but I don't think that means he's overpowered, just frustrating if you don't know what you're doing. Also I think "well at least you have to aim it" is sort of weak, because it isn't very hard to use the shotgun accurately at the ranges where its DPS is surpassing the flamethrower. I like to think I'm pretty good, but I'm not [I]that[/I] good and I don't have a hard time with it at all. I've heard the sentiment before that guns that are easy to aim or autoaim themselves are broken because they "take away from the skill," but they're usually objectively worse than the weapons you [I]do[/I] have to aim. I think a lot of it is that when you're attacked by one of these weapons you know you're on a definite timer to death, and a lot of people panic and can't handle the pressure? That sounds pretty accurate to my experiences fighting characters like Symmetra. Also in the case of the DF you're [I]significantly penalized[/I] for missing a single shot, too. You're left wide open for a second.

[QUOTE=Simplemac3;53072242]Well Spy is simultaneously kinda bad and deliberately weak to Pyro. I won't say the broken particle hitbox thing where you wave your mouse all over the place for higher DPS should be left in, but the DF is fine and the jetpack is so he can actually get in close to compete with the other high mobility classes because his job is supposed to be "close the distance by ambushing people and overwhelm them before they can retaliate or escape" and against anyone competent he had a really hard job closing the distance. I think some of the dumb utility features were kind of because they didn't know what to do with Pyro because everyone complained about his main job being too frustrating to fight. For awhile he [I]was[/I] basically a support class, exploited mostly for his airblasts. He was a pale imitation of what the class was actually supposed to do. Pyro didn't even [I]have[/I] airblast on release. Heavy can still generally kill Pyro first if he's trying to get in close. He's more able to kill sentries with the DF's damage, but Engineer should still generally be able to keep him out. Scout can outmaneuver him but is melted if he gets in close. Soldier and Demoman should still be able to escape him or keep him away in good conditions. I don't think he's an apocalypse, he's just as I said, easy to play and hard to beat without experience. Everyone was yelling for Bastion to get nerfed day one in Overwatch because it was easy (and still is easy) to blunder into his killzone and get instagibbed, but I don't think that means he's overpowered, just frustrating if you don't know what you're doing. Also I think "well at least you have to aim it" is sort of weak, because it isn't very hard to use the shotgun accurately at the ranges where its DPS is surpassing the flamethrower. I like to think I'm pretty good, but I'm not [I]that[/I] good and I don't have a hard time with it at all. I've heard the sentiment before that guns that are easy to aim or autoaim themselves are broken because they "take away from the skill," but they're usually objectively worse than the weapons you [I]do[/I] have to aim. I think a lot of it is that when you're attacked by one of these weapons you know you're on a definite timer to death, and a lot of people panic and can't handle the pressure? That sounds pretty accurate to my experiences fighting characters like Symmetra. Also in the case of the DF you're [I]significantly penalized[/I] for missing a single shot, too. You're left wide open for a second.[/QUOTE] I mean those are good points but hes still overpowered in a pub environment. It's not like hes just easily invalidated like Bastion also, who has to set up and isn't mobile. Bastion is more akin to when people called Heavy overpowered and it's a lot easier to avoid what is essentially a sentry than it is a high speed class with a jetpack. Pyro has long range capabilities, is devastating at close range, an area of denial secondary, he can reflect incoming explosives, hes highly mobile, can extinguish his team mates for 20hp, can airblast enemies into pits, can airblast dangerous enemies away from him, can equip the homewrecker and make a sentry nest near impenetrable and unsappable, his flames AND afterburn make you heal slower from medics. Meanwhile heavy can...throw a sandvich. He is easily the most flexible character in the game and again, anyone with four hours on TF2 can get kills as pyro with no effort. Skilled pyros are frustrating monsters who can use every one of those mechanics to make sure you have no fun. The shotgun also doesn't do massive AoE damage, go through targets, and give afterburn. I think it's a totally fair point that you have to aim it, I mean its the same shotgun between heavy pyro and engineer yet pyro is easily the most dangerous out of the three. I highly doubt it does more DPS than the flamethrower at the max range the flame particles extend, maybe it does more if you are hugging your target. IIRC a pyro can kill someone with 125hp in .77 seconds and that's not even with the backburner. I like the Dragon's Breath, I have no problems with it other than it doing more damage to buildings than it's meant to. I think its balanced.

[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;53072337]I mean those are good points but hes still overpowered in a pub environment. It's not like hes just easily invalidated like Bastion also, who has to set up and isn't mobile. Bastion is more akin to when people called Heavy overpowered and it's a lot easier to avoid what is essentially a sentry than it is a high speed class with a jetpack. Pyro has long range capabilities, is devastating at close range, an area of denial secondary, he can reflect incoming explosives, hes highly mobile, can extinguish his team mates for 20hp, can airblast enemies into pits, can airblast dangerous enemies away from him, can equip the homewrecker and make a sentry nest near impenetrable and unsappable, his flames AND afterburn make you heal slower from medics. Meanwhile heavy can...throw a sandvich. He is easily the most flexible character in the game and again, anyone with four hours on TF2 can get kills as pyro with no effort. Skilled pyros are frustrating monsters who can use every one of those mechanics to make sure you have no fun. The shotgun also doesn't do massive AoE damage, go through targets, and give afterburn. I think it's a totally fair point that you have to aim it, I mean its the same shotgun between heavy pyro and engineer yet pyro is easily the most dangerous out of the three. I highly doubt it does more DPS than the flamethrower at the max range the flame particles extend, maybe it does more if you are hugging your target. IIRC a pyro can kill someone with 125hp in .77 seconds and that's not even with the backburner. I like the Dragon's Breath, I have no problems with it other than it doing more damage to buildings than it's meant to. I think its balanced.[/QUOTE] I mean, I feel you, but I feel like a lot of his tricks are mediocre or situational compared to the Soldier's intensely utilitarian kit of "can go fast and do a lot of damage in a big area where you want it." It's not like a lot of them were unwarranted, either. Airblast got put in because even at vanilla flamethrower damage he couldn't threaten a competent soldier or Demoman. Flare gun got put in with the idea of giving Pyro a simple ranged option when he can't get in, then got upgraded to offer a crit on repeated hits when most people still preferred the shotgun. 20hp on extinguish got added because pub players needed an incentive to use it. Pyro's balancing has been a mess where he's had his role taken away from him, had some different potential roles experimentally added, and now they've gone back to his old role while still leaving the other stuff in so it's still kind of messy. Also don't knock on the Sandvich, being able to throw out a big medkit every once in awhile without being a medic is a pretty big deal. There's a reason why it's almost always taken when you have to play Heavy in comp. For the record I'd forgotten about the particle bug on the current flamethrower. Before this recent update the shotgun [I]absolutely[/I] did more damage than the flamethrower. Trying to kill a Heavy with the flamethrower was sort of a joke, oftentimes even if you managed to catch them unspooled. Also as other people in this thread have pointed out, trying to strike a compromise between the highest level of play and the lowest level of play doesn't always work out, like with the parachute. I just think it's the best option to balance around the highest level of play, honestly. They're the ones that have an idea of what they're talking about, not "i couldn't shoot this dude running right at me with a flamethrower and he killed me really fast and the way I died pissed me off and now I'm here" like what plagued the steam forums for years. tl;dr Pyro has a lot of tricks up his sleeve but none of them are quite as good as the fundamentally good kit a character like Soldier has. The Dragon's Breath and Jetpack salvaged the character by bringing back his fundamental intent as an ambusher class and that should be preserved however possible. Particle bug should probably be fixed.

[QUOTE=REMBER;53072061] Spy has been hit pretty hard by these changes and is an example how balance isn't always a good thing.[/QUOTE] Even though DR and Amby got nerfed, spy as a base class has received some pretty generous buffs from all of this. His base movement speed has been upped by 10% (so he now matches a medic in movement speed) and all cloaks now give him a 20% damage resistance, and a lower timer on debufs while cloaked (fire for example only lasts 2 seconds while a spy is cloaked and was only brushed by fire) Also, most of the people who complained about DR and amby were [I]not[/I] competitive players, but the casual pub game audience

[QUOTE=DrCactus;53072762]Also, most of the people who complained about DR and amby were [I]not[/I] competitive players, but the casual pub game audience[/QUOTE] Because Spy was already trash in competitive. Every class is a counter to Spy.

This video seems to be trying to coin a term for something that isn't happening. Even in this video he admits that TF2 devs aren't balancing solely around competitive players because not even taking the majority of your playerbase into account is an awful way to balance a game. Skill curves are too complicated for balance decisions to 'trickle down' and once you except the need for compromise you are no longer just trusting for game balance to simply trickle-down to lower level players. The comparison to Reaganomics is amusingly apt because both Trickle-Down Balance and Trickle-Down Economics make for terrible systems.