After having spend almost 300 hours on rebellion, playing multiplayer exclusively, I feel like the time has come for me to provide feedback to the developers of this excellent game.
I must start by congratulating the developers on a job well done. Having played a little bit of the original SOASE, mainly singleplayer, I was surprised by the giant leaps this game has made since the original was launched. I felt like the new elements added to the game, such as the diversifying of the different races by splitting them into factions, and adding dwarf ships and gargantuan ships, opened up a plethora of new strategic options. I was delighted.
Others not so much, I soon discovered. Upon chatting with other players at the start of, after, and during games, I found out others were not as impressed by the game as I was, the main reason being balance: they claimed vasari rebels were 'overpowered', going as far as to ban them from their lobbies, kicking anyone who would chose Vasari Rebels. The other half of the Vasari race, as they would have me believe, was also overpowered: surely, consuming planets must be moved to tier 8 and nerfed to 50% effectiveness! And while we are at it, we might as well remove corvettes from the game.
Each and every single one of those balance whines makes me cringe. It hurts. It is a blade cutting to the bone. "Why?" You might be wondering. Why does this guy not make angry posts on the forum about how imbalanced the game is, or make excellent balance suggestions to improve the game like we are all doing?
Allow me to explain myself. Nobody here is going to deny that some fine small-scale balance improvements are required to make the game even better than it is now. Tweaking some numbers here and there, adding a small bit of damage here, fixing a bug there. I very much agree with you on that! Perfect balance is only a small adjustment away.
Everybody wants the balance to be perfect. The question that has people divided is: when is the balance perfect? Who decides when the balance is perfect? In the end, the developers do. The developers of this game, I have noticed, actually listen to criticism offered by the community. A very positive trait! But alas, does the community know what is good for itself?
The community, I found, is very much like a small child that is learning to walk: it falls on its face, and comes crying to mommy. The community is learning to play the game, yet it encounters an obstacle, and come crying to the devs. People encounter a strategy that is continually beating them, and they instantly conclude that the opposing race is intrinsically overpowered and must be nerfed. Phase jumping starbases, overpowered! Consuming planets, overpowered! Corvettes, overpowered!
These awesome mechanics, that diversify the game so much, and add so much fun to the game and add so much new gameplay will be made redundant, boring, dull and plain if the community has their wish. The different factions in the game all have strenghts and weaknesses in different directions, but if the community gets what it wants, all those strenghts and weaknesses will be equalized. Would that not be wonderful? If we could just nerf everything into the ground, and make every strategy equally viable, all equally easy to execute, with the same chance of succes and luck involved?
I think not. Am I the only one that dares swim against the flow? Am I the only proponent of keeping the game as it is now largely unchanged? The only one not offering up balance suggestions? Winning a game takes several things, in my opinion, so here, in no particular order:
These different factors that I summed up here, can all be the deciding factor that win or lose you the game. If you are skilled and experienced, and have a good strategy, but engage in a shitty manner thus failing in the tactics aspect, you lose. If you are unlucky with your spawn, but change your strategy because you have experience with the situation or are improvising because you are naturally skilled, you can still win. If your opponent uses a supposedly OP strategy, such as phase jumping star-bases, you change your own strategy to counter his. You pick the engagements to favour you. You build your ships to counter his. You use your skill to out-micro him. You win.
Do you see what I am getting at here? Certain strategies are considered OP by the community. Instead of attempting some introspection, and seeing if they could possibly alter something in their own strategy or tactics to counter the opposing strategy, they come on the forum, and start balance whining. But how arrogant is it, to make the claim that some strategy or ship is overpowered, even going as far as to offer balance suggestions, when you can't even be bothered to improve your skill to out-multitask him, to get more experience to know how to counter the strategy or tactic, to change your strategy to counter his, to adapt your tactics to make your engagements favour you!
I love this game and I would hate to see it mutilated because people see the problem outside of themselves instead of inside of themselves. Adapt, evolve! Get better! Go, and improve all the factors to decide who wins , and when you can truly claim that the only factor that decides whether you win or lose is balance, come back, and share your wisdom. Don't try to change the game so you can safely keep doing the thing you have been doing forever and hide under yo momma's skirts instead of learning and adapting.
Want to win? Don't blame the game, blame yourself!
Signing out, Grimmy.
What are your thoughts? Is there anyone that agrees? If you disagree, why so? What are you counterarguments? Keep it civil.
TL;DRThe problem part of the community has with balance in this game is is largely caused by their mentality and lack of willingness to change their strategy and tactics. balance only plays a very small role in who wins or loses. Only small balance changes must be made, larger ones will simplify the game and make it bland.
This isn't a question of actual skill and stubborness.
Some of the guys complaining have been playing for 4 years exclusively multiplayer against others of the same skill level. 300 hours in somewhat very little compared to the others.
We arn't trying to make the game bland through balance changes. The balancing in the game is just broken in some aspects.
Take the Vasari Rebels Starbase.
- Rushable at a mid tier with no real large investment.
- Becomes essentially a titan that can be made very quickly with less costs. That can be made in the very early game.
- Counters you say?
Vasari Loyalists (after coming to our senses we find that they are even more unbalanced than the Vasari Rebels)
- High tier researches are no hassle with capitals rather than logistic slots.
- Strip to core is very rushable that you don't even need to engage early game. Just rush the tech and eat planets and start building a titan and fleet at some random astroid n the middle. You manage to get a late game fleet by the early-mid game. You become an unstoppable force that nobody can counter till the late game. You try finding a suitable counter against this.
As for the issues with the corvettes. We have found various counters to them.
We thought of all the viable counters and tactics to take against these. You complain that we don't yet you don't provide any yourself. Even with the supposed "counters" we are unable to stop some of the "OP tactics". This is what becomes the definition of game breaking rather than just a balance issue.
The biggest issue is that the early game is essentially in ruin because some tactics are so rushable yet their counters don't become viable till later on. And by that time you're probably dead.
I agree with quite a bit with what you say. I laugh at the ones that say corvettes are OP. Really? In an MP game I faced a huge swarm of Corvettes. I built a third the amount of flak ships. I rendered that swarm inert. My only regret is that I didn't build that them sooner. Missile Barrage is another that for a while was "OP". The devs didn't really even truly nerf it. The MP crowd finally found a solution with interrupts. Yet before they figured it out there was pages upon pages of calls for nerfs.
Mind you Vasari still need a bit of work. But they were just introduced. Its still beta. Some people just need to calm down. Even if the game is released as is the devs have a 4 year track record of support for this game of balancing and bug fixing. Something only Blizzard and MMO companies can truly say.
I most certainly disagree. Let's take a look at Corvettes, strip-rushing, and the VR and see why those things are OP.
Corvettes: these little things are OP because while flak may eat them alive, flak are very difficult to bring out early on, requiring multiple labs and quite a bit of money to do so, allowing someone to tier I spam you with so many units that you can't effectively bring out flak in time to save yourself. Ironically, this had led to cries of ships such as the Corsev and Marza being OP because they have AoE's. While the Corsev is too durable, I believe the AoE cries will largely go away once corvettes are brought into line by doing something such as giving them a unique damageType that is among other things, weaker against LF, allowing LF to act as a soft counter for them until flak can be brought out, establishing the intended combat rectangle of Corvettes>LRF>LF>Flak>Corvettes.
Strip-Rushing: this strategy is OP because it enables a player to quickly build a fleet that is many times the size of the enemy and nullify the idea of research tiers. Why you think this is remotely balanced is beyond me. Stripping is a fine mechanic, but the strip-rush as a whole is an OP strategy that has no effective counter unless you're just a couple jumps away from the VL player. It shouldn't be that easy. A powerful strategy is fine, but one that under the circumstances of most games can't be defended against is OP.
VR: First off, they have an immortal titan and a pseudo-titan in their Orky. Orkies have always been incredibly powerful. When thrown into the heart of an enemy fleet once fully upgraded, they can quickly bring down a significant portion of the fleet, and when upgraded with both levels of Debris Vortex, it becomes incredibly hard to kill. The problem is that the jumping orky disrupts the standard that defenses must be more powerful than offenses. The VR is equally good on the attack and defense. The Orky has always been a vicious offensive strategy. If an Orky is built on your planets early on, it almost always meant horrendous losses in ships or a loss of the planet (if not both). The only saving grace when defending against Assault Deployment was the fact that they started off weak. Now, you can bring in a pseudo-titan with no fleet supply cost and have an infinite amount of them on standby, awaiting the death of the first. The problem is just that you are attacking with a fully upgraded Orky.
As for the Kultorask, the larger the fleet you bring against it, the more powerful it is. No frigate aside from Light Carriers can deal enough damage to negate the drain on them. Bomber spam+titan+starbase is the only decent way to bring this thing down, but the problem is, it will always have a fleet (read: fleet+fully upgraded Orky/Orkies) with it. As a result, you have to bring something to take down their fleet, but that firepower just feeds the bloodlust of the Kultorask with Nanoleech, not to mention the fact that it can outright disable anything smaller than a capital.
On top of everything else, this statement is just rude.
It's more or less that the early game is now centered around countering the corvettes.
Sure LRF spam was big back in diplomacy but you couldn't get them in such a volume enough that they could actual overwelm the counter and take out the target before the flak actual does. That's probably the problem here is that you can snipe out capitals faster than a LRM and be able speed out of the way of the flak after you kill them with minimal loses.
So, you didn't tell us why these things are not OP. You simply said, to paraphrase, that everyone just needs to learn to play. Dress it up however you like, but it's not a terribly constructive post.
If you really think balance is nearly fine and everyone else is wrong, then great. Tell us why. There's numerous pages of arguments for why these things are problems.
I see it both ways - some stuff is OP, while other bits are not. Here's an updated list of things:
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/419438
I would be inclined to agree with the OP about "dont blame the game, blame yourself" if the game was actually finished.....If you are trying to convince the Devs to not change anything from what it is now, then I definately dont agree at all.
I do think that almost all of the people complaining about balance issues are MPers. The sad truth is people will go to nearly any lengths to Win....They will find and exploit anything they can....for the devs to balance to game perfectly so no faction has any advantage would make for a poor game. Using the strengths and weaknesses of each faction should be how its done....
Why go through all the effort to make 3 distinct factions, only to make them all the same in the end, just different skins. You want to play a perfectly balanced game, play checkers......I wish they never included MP, now they are torn between making the game fun for true Space game fans, and making the game Non exploitable by MPers....and ultimately these are 2 different goals. Why are these 2 different goals you say? because the AI can be set to use the intended strategies, not just focus on a corvette spam or some other exploit, and any player who plays the game to enjoy the experience of fighting in space and empire building would not find it much fun to just spam corvettes and destroy the AI in the first 15 minutes of the game. So ultimately they are 2 different games...
At the risk of being very unpopular on the forums here, as most seem to be MPers, I think the devs should focus on making the SP game fun, and not worry about MP except to fix major imbalances in the game, because like I said, someone will find an exploit and abuse it, and if you take out all the exploits, someone will just cheat.....Turning the game into Checkers or Chess will not solve the MP problems, it will only ruin the game.
Hi guys! Thanks for the input. It has made it clearer to me what your stance on the balance of the game is.
Sorry, I did not mean to be rude. It was meant as the kind of statement an enthusiastic baseball coach might make.
So, I've read all your replies with great interest and it has made it clear to me that my judgement might have been cast too soon. Volt, I agree with the points you made in your post; there are no counter-arguments against what you have said. They are very strong strategies, that, when executed right, are indeed extremely hard to counter. My post is not meant as a denial of a lack of balance: it is meant as a warning against too quick balancing decisions. Are all suitable strategies explored yet? Rash decisions regarding game balance will tip the scales over in the wrong direction. I really like the core game machanics of the Vasari. And of the tec, for that matter. I would hate to see balance changes that completely change the metagame, so to speak. I want the orkulus starbase to stay a feared tactic, not something that almost never happens unless the person doing it has won already. It is compelety reasonable to nerf it slightly, withing reason, so it becomes a more easily counterable tactic.
I personally have never faced any difficulty with starbases, or planets being consumed. Perhaps I play in the wrong games? Or I have always been lucky to be close enough to kill the guy rushing consume planet with corvettes. From my own gameplay experience, I've never encountered a strategy I could do nothing against. That's why the balance concerns that are so commonly spoken in the community surprised me. Having read your posts though, gents, has made it clearer for me what all the fuss is about.
I do apologise if some of the sentences came across as elitist or belittling. Imagine in your mind the leader of a team of ice hockey players trying to sweep up his team. That's the voice you must read it in. My concern is that people say "disbalance!" while it might just take a while for everyone to figure out how to handle it. I'm not telling everyone to become gods at the game.
I'm off, thanks for the input!
I also disagree with the idea that nerfing has to make things bland. The new Vasari mechanics being talked about here can still exist as cool, new elements in the game that function exactly the way they do now, but they can be delayed or tweaked in terms of numbers. Changing numbers doesn't change the mechanics.
That's not what "balance" is. That's mirrored factions. And while mirrored factions are by default balanced (since they're the same), balance doesn't require mirrored factions.
There's plenty of games out there with unique and different factions that don't play the same way, but are still competitively balanced. These things are a problem in SP too. SP should not go into super easy mode just because you picked Vasari, but that's what it does right now. Hell one game I played against several hard AI's and didn't bother building ships for most of the game because a Starbase and a Titan is really all you need to attack pretty much anything the AI can throw at you for most of the game. As a bonus the Starbase doesn't even take supply.
That is not how it should be, and it's a straight up balance issue. A couple of the factions are flat out better then the others (and one lags behind). That can and should be fixed, and it can be done without taking away the flavor or different strengths of the factions. On this issue there shouldn't be a divide between SP and MP, because balanced factions are good for all of us. (There probably will be disagreement on how to get there, of course. )
You just gave me a good idea ....maybe someone has thought of it before, but the Vasari Star bases should take supply to move into a gravity well not owned by the player...keep in your own gravity wells, no problem, want to use em a ships, well better have the supply to do so.....would help stop starbase spam, and fit perfectly into realism....
Very nice. Cant wait for the next patch to see those changes.
what about like a star? a plasma storm? not enemy but neutral territory?
I understand where you are coming from. Allow me to present my counterargument: only the numbers, and not the mechanics change if, for example, we made the orculus starbase cost 100.000 credits. It would function exactly the way it did earlier. but nobody would make them, because it is too expensive. Nobody would fear them anymore, because nobody would make them. The entire vasari rebel game would change, while the mechanics stay the same. And that is my fear: I want people always being afraid of starbases, not LOL when somebody makes them because they can easily counter it while eating sandwiches.
100.000 is a ridiculous example, of course, but anything that makes them harder to get, makes them less used. So it is a matter of finding the point where it isn't OP while it is still an iconic vasari rebel tactic.
@ grimmjew
Interesting name you have. It reminds me of the movie "Inglorious Bastards".
Moving on.
I agree that Ekko's statement needs revision as his learning curve is jumped up a bit. I also think that your learning curve needs to be upgraded, grimmjew.
How many of those 300 hours were spent facing live humans? Are you "grimm" online? If so, I know you have been playing online against human players, yet you are not by any means playing the game at maximum potential. You too have a lot of learning to do about in game strategies. This is meant not as an insult, rather as an analysis of how I've seen you play. I'd love to play you more and help you increase your ability to play the game to the max. Then we'd have one more person in the community who really knows what they are talking about to give developers effective feedback.
Getting good at sins strategy allows you to provide suggestions that assist in diversifying the strategy and skill aspects of the game. The developers need us to test this in depth to achieve balance. The single player playing experience would largely be unaffected by the type of balance changes that would be made.
@sareth
Grimm is indeed the name I have ingame. Your words ring true to me. It would indeed be good to play more. I do indeed speak of strategy and tactics as if I have a full grasp of them; sadly this is not true. One thing I need to know, for example, is when you use the different openers you can employ (dual carrier, mothership, aoe support ship), what they're good for, etc. Thanks for the input, and thanks in advance for any advice or help you might give me. All 275 hours I played the game right now have been spent in online matches, and I only play with or against humans.
Well I am surprised by your humility, I enjoy seeing that you are in fact an intelligent person who knows how to deal with himself on forums.
Cya around once they fix the bugs
The problem is, like someone has already said, SP and MP are very different animals. I haven't invested any time in MP in Sins, sadly.
I like to win against overwhelming odds of a cheating computer, refining my strategies, but taking breaks and using the pause button a lot also...
If I went online, corvettes would be a nightmare and I would be pissed at it. As it stands now, they make a nice supplement to my fleet, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe one day I'll take the plunge and go online.
@Grimmjew - your counterargument doesn't address what I said. In your initial post you were concerned about the new mechanics being "nerfed into the ground" and in your reply to me you use an example where a starbase costs a ridiculous amount. This is not what I am talking about. In my post I use the phrase "tweaking the numbers". I'm talking about fine tuning the numbers to a state of balance without changing the mechanics of how things operate. Not responding to current imbalances by swinging the pendulum in the complete opposite direction. The titans are a good example. They were batshit OP at the start of beta but have been brought more and more into balance by tweaking numbers (still needed changes to some of them notwithstanding) without fundementally changing how they work.
@Sareth - have we played online much before? What is your ICO name? My original reply can be generalized to any game balance, it has nothing to do with Sins in particular. I do need more MP practice though - I played a fair bit online in vanilla and Entrenchment but then quit until Rebellion beta. MP is what I prefer but, well, ICO after all.
The way I see around this: Add an ability to allow the starbase to jump and also have it use fleet supply as well with the ability.
This would still allow you to use starbases for Offense without allowing an unlimited supply, So if you wanted to focus on using starbases you would have to sacrifice overall fleet power.....
and has the added bonus of allowing a defensive Starbase(non jump capable one) an extra ability to use for added defense over a jump capable one.
anything being done about how the AI researches for shit or 'priority 1/0' being practically useless in getting AI to do more than a little research -even if 'researcher'?
"Vasari Titans too weak"
This plural worries me being that Nanoleech is every bit as gamebreaking as anything else in the vasari arsenal.
Support that did what? Yes, bug fixes and new features were added, and thats great...but we are talking about balance in this thread....
Yes, SD has used updates to improve game balance drastically, but I have 2 things to say to that:
Since I seem to be losing some forum friends and gaining a reputation as a rabble rouser, I'll just leave it at that...
i noticed this as well, i really hope it just a typo and forgot "Loyalist" before the word titan and hit the s on accident
I noticed as well and PM'd Yarlen about it. I hope that was either a typo or meant that the Kultorask is too weak against bigger targets so maybe they'd nerf Nano Leech and allow Dissever to hit capitals/titans.
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