Loading...
  OR  Zero-K Name:    Password:   

"Teams All Welcome" testing ground for units

23 posts, 1282 views
Post comment
Filter:    Player:  
Page of 2 (23 records)
sort

8 years ago
As from the title i suggest we make the "teams all welcome" room a testing facility for new/old units that don't have a role in the game yet.

The 1 vs 1 meta won't be affected because we will disable these units there and in the tourney matches and maybe ffa.

Unit selection and then giving them a specific task to a factory will be made mostly by admin community but also by a vote system where everyone can vote( beyond level 10 so smurfs will have no chance).

For example I will propose Kestrel as a torpedo airplane launcher that has a small sonar. From here admin community will decide to give it a try and if they do we make a vote where we :
a) decide what kind of torpedo( slow torpedo, emp torpedo, disarm torpedo)
b) how many torpedo it will have to fire( I propose 2 of them for example)
c) speed
d) cost
e) etc...

Unit is implemented with the wanted variables and then we test it over and over in the team games without harming the actual balance. When we find a good role to that unit by over testing it then we will introduce it to the 1 vs 1 meta and tourneys.

What do you guys say ?

Also can i have a link to all of the unused units in this game ? Do we have a webpage for that ?


+3 / -0
Unit design does not work that way.

I could make you 10 medicore models within a week and give them some Spring attributes would you arbitrarily add them as well? Adding and removing units haphazardly is generally not a good idea.

quote:
The 1 vs 1 meta won't be affected because we will disable these units there and in the tourney matches and maybe ffa.

That would divide the community and effectively making another game out of ZK. 1v1 is the center of ZK's balance because it is a much cleaner environment than team games (especially clusterfucks) so interactions between units are easier to spot and tweak.

quote:
by admin community

admins != developers
developers != admins
Some admins have absolutely (or little) idea how Spring works, some developers/contributors are not actually admins.

Please define me what do you call an "unused unit". I could find a bunch of "units" in smoth's crap and put them into ZK without almost any knowledge but for what purpose? The unused units in current repo are there because they are either:
used in missions (examples: sunlance, eclipse)
used in gamemodes (PW sructures, IWinButton)
made to not lose them in the depths of github (anarchid, kerstel)
to remember the concept (vanquisher, trisula)
used in tests (sprinkler, damagesink)
just not removed for whatever reason (razorback)

This has listed all the units in the current build of ZK.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
PLrankOrfelius is zero-k centered on 1 vs 1? Why do we have team games then ? I see more team games than 1 vs 1 ? That's why i proposed for team games unit testing ( we need a plane that bombs sea, we need a gunship that does the same etc...) and then if they are balanced correctly we put them in the 1 vs 1 to.

Unused units, I mean models that are not used but will provide new unit features to the game.
Conditioning the game for 1 vs 1 purpose only will block fun to the game. Just make a poll and let's see how many people enjoy 1 vs 1 or team games. And you will find out that team games are most wanted( especially high elo team games). 1 vs 1 is a thing of "I am better than you for sure" and is made out of "I move my mouse faster than you or I have better keybinds".
+0 / -0


8 years ago
Sorry, but this is now how the things work.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
"Sorry, but this is now how the things work. " it's just you saying that...Let's do a pool and see how the thing are. I am just curious how many people enjoy 1 vs 1 or team games. Is it a bad thing for a bit of zero-k democracy?
+0 / -0
Read again!
quote:
1v1 is the center of ZK's balance

balance

Then I go on why its not good to test units in team vs team environment.

quote:
Is it a bad thing for a bit of zero-k democracy?

Shouldn't we all on how architects plan out buildings? A balcony here, room extension here. No matter if the building itself will collapse because of this.
+0 / -0

8 years ago
!move Scandium
+2 / -0
I hope we won't lose ground with the game if we don't try new things.
I want to also ask how easy or how hard it is to make a widget that will balance the units ingame ? ( In the way where you adjust and add numbers to dmg, speed, attack and so on).

For example i start the game, I give it !setoptions unitingamechange=1 and then i start to change the stats of units while playing. Unit stats will remain the same when game ends and it will be great to have a fast toll to adjust the units. Balance will be easily made and done with the help of players if a tool like this will exist.

And of course admin community will agree if the variables will be good for the overall balance.

+0 / -0
The possibility to alter arbitrary unit stats via setoptions is a good idea! (Permenant change for the complete game)

Additionally when cheat mode is enabled, we could have some unit stats panel ingame to change things on the fly.
+3 / -0

8 years ago
Thats what i was asking for USrank[I]burp , stats panel ingame where you change things at the same time you play :). No more exit, adjust the units and then play to test. In game testing from the start :).

What does the admin community say about this ? At least il be a good tester, that will be sure :D. If we have this widget il spend some time testing units and stuff.
+0 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
How about a !modoption then that enables "planned"/"WIP" units and other "requires balance testing" things? Or a complete "testing branch" - a new branch of ZK that could later be merged into a stable. Or something else.
+2 / -0


8 years ago
Building from a special balance branch would be interesting but that requires modifications to rapid to allow building packages from any branches except master
+0 / -0
quote:
As from the title i suggest we make the "teams all welcome" room a testing facility for new/old units that don't have a role in the game yet.
Sounds too much like turning the most busy room into a testground. Clusterfuck room is already bad enough without potentially broken/unbalanced units.
And there is already enough votespam, a new-units-modoption would surely be controversial and cause even more votespam.

Imo the easiest & best way to make balance-version of a game is as a map.
[Spoiler]
+2 / -0
Please don't expose newbies to imbalanced crap that is subject to change on a whim kthx

Also, balance is not done by fiddling with a slider. It involves watching a ton of games, patience for the meta to evolve, looking at how the unit interacts with others, and then, maybe, you get to tweak a value. But more often than not, a whole range of values seem to fit just as well in a sterile environment and further change comes from repeating the whole process: more games and more patience.
+1 / -0
^ all above unless the unit has been pretty much broken due to some earlier shenanigans, engine change or whatever (like bro'lor ultra buff with that innocent looking projectile spread fix).

That being said ZK devs cough*GF*cough might have not been sufficiently careful in the past. Underscored 'past' in hopes that I wont come off as some ungrateful ass and since I do think that GF is doing a good job altogether.
+0 / -0
I already told in this thread PLrankAdminSprung that the widget who will change units in game will need "setoptions" before game. And changing those units while ingame will be only possible by admins and the host maker of that game. For me it will be perfect to test things over and over again and even provide strong balance feedback suggestion. I just try to help you guys. If such a widget is made il spend decent time to improve and adjust units if needed.

Regarding the new units of course as i mentioned " if admin community will agree in placing a new unit". That was the first condition, second was the help from players who will use that widget to adjust it in their own hosts when testing.

Just to make things clear, adjusting the units with such a widget will only take place in that game and the values won't replace the standard values when game will end.
S
o newbies won't be face to face with imbalaced units. Those will be balanced like 90% when introduced to the game while it will get polished more to 100% after we the players will try "new things".
+0 / -0
quote:
For me it will be perfect to test things over and over again and even provide strong balance feedback suggestion. I just try to help you guys. If such a widget is made il spend decent time to improve and adjust units if needed
(...)
it will get polished more to 100% after we the players will try "new things".

read the previous post
this is not how balancing works

you do "testing over and over again and provide feedback" by just playing the game normally

units cannot be objectively discovered to be balanced in a game as complex as ZK through math, so small numerical tweaks can be meaningless unless they cross over some boundary (eg. cause it to outrange some other unit, or start 1-shotting)

you need to see how units perform in various real environments, how they relate to other units, and where they stand in the metagame, not just say "i adjusted some value from X to Y, played a sterile game and didn't see any problem" and especially not by saying "it's now 100% right" afterwards

at some point you do get to tweak stuff but using a dynamic variable which changes values multiple times during a single game through trial-and-error is not usually a good method to do that (example: det has 85800 health. would the rounder value of 85000 be better balanced? maybe, but i can play a bunch of games with det tweaked to 85000 health and there would be no tangible difference at all)

quote:
So newbies won't be face to face with imbalaced units

yes they will, for the duration of the games with the tweak mode, and considering big teams tend to have large streaks of games with such shitty options enabled it's safe to say that's going to be most of the time
+2 / -0
There are no unused units in the game. The units which are on git but cannot be accessed in the game (without cheats) are not in the game. ROrankForever perhaps it would enlighten us if you said why you think stuff like Neblua is not accessible.

quote:
For example I will propose Kestrel as a torpedo airplane launcher that has a small sonar...
This is basically equivalent to suggesting that there should be a torpedo plane. You could make any unit suggestion and the merit of the suggestion should be discussed regardless of whether a close unit exists in git. The existence of a model is only relevant once the unit idea is deemed to have merit.

The sunk cost fallacy is strong in this thread. The existence of a model for a unit does not mean that a unit should be added. Of course, as has happened in the past, the existence of a model smooths over the process of new unit creation. It also prompted Disco Rave Party. But I don't want models to lead units for anything more serious than DRP.

So, that is one half of the thread responded to. The other half concerns this:
quote:
I hope we won't lose ground with the game if we don't try new things.
I want to also ask how easy or how hard it is to make a widget that will balance the units ingame ? ( In the way where you adjust and add numbers to dmg, speed, attack and so on).

For example i start the game, I give it !setoptions unitingamechange=1 and then i start to change the stats of units while playing. Unit stats will remain the same when game ends and it will be great to have a fast toll to adjust the units. Balance will be easily made and done with the help of players if a tool like this will exist.

And of course admin community will agree if the variables will be good for the overall balance.
No. Often I will say "patches welcome" when I don't care for the feature. But in this case your suggestion is so complicated that I don't want it to touch the codebase.

Development reasons:
  • Slow damage etc... doesn't want the complexity of taking base stat changes into account.
  • A lot of UI assumes that base stats do not change.
  • Many other things assume base stats do not change.
  • Maintenance of the gadget and widget would be awful.
  • Base stat modifications are always going to be significantly more cumbersome and limited than changing the game properly.
  • If you want to test balance then use git and make PRs. This is significantly easier for everyone (except yourself).

There are also a bunch of social reasons that this is a bad idea:
  • People do not want to be hijacked to play balance testing.
  • Changing unit stats during a game doesn't even make sense for testing and would have people screaming "unfair".
  • The setoptions UI is bad.
  • The UI for changing stats ingame would be so complicated that only ROrankForever would use it.
  • If, somehow, all the issues are overcome then I think rapid unsupervised balance changes as part of the 'big teams meta' would make the actual balance of the game even harder to determine.
+4 / -0
Well thx that you cleared things out AUrankAdminGoogleFrog, i always agreed on your balance feedback even if sometimes make me a bit sad in the start when i see the changes. After some time after you made the changes i notice that you were right so I am fine with what you do, and that's why i respect you. I admit i have no coding skill, i was just trying to find a way to add more units to the game (for me more units= more game complexity and i STARVE for a game like that).

Well now i change my idea to this : Ingame widget that changes variables of units ( dmg, aoe, range , line of sight etc.), and I will test this alone in my own host if the widget is provided. As I said, most of the times i trust your judgement AUrankAdminGoogleFrog and I will agree with the things you said about the widget when you said " is so complicated that I don't want it to touch the codebase".

I was just trying to find a way to make this game have more units, unite types, more unit interactions. I already said in many threads about these kind of units.

For example:
Outlaw- Emp outlaw, Slow dmg outlaw, Disarm outlaw
Thug- Normal bombs, slow bombs, emp bombs, disarm bombs etc, napalm bombs etc.
Glave- normal bullet, slow bullets, disarm bullets etc...
And so on.

Giving this game more complexity will create a lot of balance workout i agree, but I can help with this balance if needed. I always wanted this game to be more complex but never brake it in the way where most of you guys won't like it.

As i mentioned many times, I play tons of strategy games, and nothing is like Zero-k from what I saw. No game has such complexity even if you guys won't belive me now. That's why Imo if we mange to increase it's complexity and take care of those bugs that people talk in "Zero-k has been greenlight" thread we will have one awsome game.

Is it that bad to create more complex game ?
+0 / -0
8 years ago
quote:
There are no unused units in the game.

Surfboard
+3 / -0
Page of 2 (23 records)