Realism Vs Balance ? ... It's all about behing coherent (IMO)

[HaZZarD]

First of all sorry for my english , I'll try to write in the best way I can :D

And it will be a wall of text because I want to try to make it clear and add more ideas I can


here some thoughts about Realism Vs Balance , not necessarily related to Assault Squad 2 but War Games in general , I really would like to know what do you think about this argument , no flame please , lets keep this friendly and civil



So we have people that are really afraid when balancing take away realism from a game and others that would like to altering most of the datas in favour of having a perfectly balanced game

Between the key features of AS 2 you could read realistic weapon datas and this for me was one of the key points that made me preorder the game

What me and other people think is that all the balances needed can be done tweaking prices and CP , not an easy job , but it can be done just tweaking those datas .

We can even take a look at real life WWII tank prices and at tanks proportions , like how many medium tanks you had for each heavy one and try to match those proportions in game too , would be awesome and self balancing .

Altering weapon datas really ignite a chain reaction that could bring the game very far from what WWII was , not that MOW series it's a sim but look at the COH series , it can be considered a good series for some but that game has nothing to do with WWII , you can put on it wharammer skins and that game would work nice too ... if not better .

What I think is that when you chose a scenario like WWII , medieval , fantasy or whatever it is , you should remain coherent with it

Is not about making a sim , you can take The Lord Of The Ring and make a game on it , it's not a sim but if you change too many things and the game turn in Legolas using heavy armour and two hand sword and hobbits being giants well.. how can it be a good game ? it would be totally Incoherent and people that like LOTR would not like the game .

If people know nothing about LOTR they could like it , of course , and this is what you have with COHII , people that know nothing of WWII simply don't care and they like it because they have no idea about how WWII weapon were or worked.
I myself enjoyed COH1 before knowing MOW .

If you want to make a Legolas kind of warrior using heavy armour and two hand weapon just call the game Lord Of The Swords and then you can put in it whatever you want and people would be happy with it and nothing to complain .

Same go for a RTS war game , if you want perfect balanced factions that really are the same just create your own futuristic RTS world because if you chose WWII and you want to stay coherent with it , well , you will never have two factions that are exactly the same and perfectly balanced

One faction will excel in one field the other one in another field , it's player duty to find the best use of every faction and I would like to add that this is also the pleasure of WWII , the variety you have in this era is unique

So for me balances should go in the way of tweaking CP/Prices/Quantities and of course you have to consider the engine/budget limitations and what kind of mechanics you can implement in it and what not

For example if every new MOW title has Performance and distance of view improved well following the reasoning above I would expect the game moving on longer ranges

So for now , talking about AS2 , the thing that most find me in disagreement is the reduction of tanks ranges , I know we can mod it but it's never easy to mod a game in a direction if the basic game was meant to be played with lower ranges , if the basic game is moving toward shorter ranges I will hardly see in future a feature that would help longer ranges shooting

With this I wont say that tanks of AS2 should shoot like their real life counterparts , with the engine limitations we have would be nothing funny , but I was expecting longer ranges compared to AS1 , that for sure would not be a problem


And this is all , not a complain , I love this series and I have lot of hours of entertainment on it with really low expense so I can't really ask too much , just some thoughts on it and hope that if the series will remain coherent with WWII [not necessarily a sim] then I will keep to be an happy costumer and player and like me I'am sure many others will [ specially the ones that started with the Close Combat Series ; ) : D ]

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Part 2


Thinking outside the box compared to what we usually see in MOW , another idea for balancing factions can be what we saw with the Pacific Theater mod for Red Orchestra 2


What if we balance factions with..... maps ?


A map could be directly related to a faction so that if we make US Vs Japan , we have Japan using real Weapons with the advantage over US being the map side itself

For me it would be amazing because this would mean fighting on realistic maps , like USA Vs Japan fought on Pacific Maps with well entrenched japanese forces

this is just a plus , the most important points are all in the post above but for me something like this would be an amazing plus .

[And if at this you add a strategic campaign map game mode like the Close Combat Series ......well...... just dreaming : ) ]

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Part 3

What do you think guys about this balance idea , I think I already posted something similar on DMS forum in the past but lets discuss about it again here on steam


So we saw that if you want to keep the game coherent with WWII you will face lot of difficulties due to the fact that the nations of WWII were not balanced in real life , every nation was very different from the others , you had huge amount of weapons and those weapons changed the balance of the war from year to year if not month to month , during WWII you had really huge amount of new tech/weapons deployed in relative few time .


We saw also that competitive games are interesting for lot of people and that AS2 give them importance with the matchmaking system and other features to promote competitive gaming

Competitive games are an important aspect of the game and good to keep the community more active with tournaments etc.

The problem now is that competitive matches obviously need a fair balance to determinate who between the two players/team is better

We alredy have competitive rosters where limiting the units of a faction you reach a better balance , it's nice and with few units it's more easy to balance but in my opinion less unit also mean less interesting matches and even in this way some will complain about balance.. lol

As if that was not enough , we also have to face another big Issue that in the past was discussed maybe more than weapon balance itself , an issue called Unbalanced Maps.
Because yes if you really want to determinate who is better , doing it in a fair way , you theoretically would need a symmetric map but again making symmetric maps you will face the problem of having maps that really look ugly and artificial .

So the problem is always the same if you push too much for balance and you do it tweaking weapon datas , maps etc , yes you will maybe have a balanced game but a very artificial and incoherent one where would be really difficult to play for the joy of enjoying a game and the game will turn in something like Counter Strike


What if one would like to play competitive but at the same time enjoying full rosters and realism of WWII ? (like me)


In my opinion the solution would be relatively simple , the ispiration come from seeing how Frontline works , first match team A attack and team B defend then you have a second round where B attack and A defend , a switch side of the map .
But switch side of the map is not enough for perfect balance and fair match


So for me a nice solution to have a game that can be competitive and realistic at the same time without even making competitive rosters , without even facing the map problem and many other issues is to turn competitive games in a two round matches with switch sides of map and factions

example :

first match Team A use Germany on side South of the map , Team B use URSS on side North

second round Team A is URSS on side North and Team B is Germany on side South

this is done in real life sports since forever , we would finally have 100%fair and balanced competitive matches in a realistic WWII games

All kind of players would be happy




Well let me know what do you think and what are the PRO/CON of this solution

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part4 and final considerations


I like the fact that AS2 is aiming for realistic weapons data (+1 for AS2) but on the contrary , compared to AS1 , now tanks are forced to fight on a very reduced scale compared to infantry

What I mean is that if the game was planned for a 1:3 scale , in AS1 you maybe had infantry fighting in scale 1:3 and tanks in 1:4 , now with AS2 infantry remained with same 1:3 ranges but tanks scale have beed reduced to 1:5

Are not those few less meters that make me "scared" but the fact that in a scale game we have tanks and infantry fighting on very uneven range proportions , the bigger is the difference between different weapons scale and the bigger is the artificial feeling of fights .

lets call this difference between scales "scale disparity"


--> "scale disparity"
AS 1 Infantry 1:3 Tanks 1:4 --> 1
AS 2 infantry 1:3 Tanks 1:5 --> 2

from this example made on the fly (with random scale numbers of course) you can see what I mean better than with 1000 words

the "scale disparity" increased in AS2

call it with the name you want and put in it real As1/As2 scale numbers but the fact is that in AS2 this important number increased and led to wider disparity between key weapons .

The situation above is what right now make me feel AS2 less realistic , I like the other changes and I read with attention the motivation between tanks scale reduction , I understand those motivations but I think this lead us to other unexpected problems .

As giving weapons of AS1 fake values led us to artificial fights same for me go with using fake scales between different kind of weapons.

The day MOW series will have same scale for all kind of weapons (or at least as close as possible) realism kind of players will have less excuses for not buying this game.
And I' am not talking about having real life ranges , just more realistic proportions , same scale for all weapons just this.

Choosing realistic weapons data is already a BIG step forward and I thanks the Devs for it but I still have hope in the future for more little steps in this direction .

Some more little important steps could be for example to implement HEAT rounds and give auto-cannons HE/AP rounds .

For the rest I perfectly agree that if one want more realism or more of other things then there are mods for it , but in order to make good mods and attract more realism players , you have to make a nice vanilla game with at least the basics to make it known as realistic WWII RTS (and you already are very close to this).


I know you Devs are super busy right now and text like this can be annoying , time consuming and felt like one is requesting more and more but I' am still convinced that really little steps are needed to make realism kind of players happy and have them coming in this series .

You are very close to have more players , during Arma III developement for example two games were taken in consideration as nice tank armour simulation , those games were Assault Squad and Iron Front , you must be proud of this , specially considering that those words were coming from the Arma devs and the whole forum agreed on it .

You have a fantastic , realistic and in depth series in your hands , hope one day you will manage to make most kind of players happy with the vanilla game experience and sell same copies and reach same popularity , if not more , than Arma series got now .

I take Arma as example not because I think Arma is better than Mow and Mow must learn all from Arma , I used it as an example just to show that one series can keep depth and realism over the years and keep selling lot of copies and be popular , Arma right now is one of the series that more represent what the PC world is able to do , this just to dispel the myth that more realism means less players .

Realism = less players and less fun was true in the past when most of the players were young and those few sims/realistic games around had very poor quality and cold atmosphere , nothing attractive really , now in 2014 PC world the average players age grow up and what count more is quality and Sandbox/moddability and with growing players the realism market is in costant expansion.
you can see this trend even looking at how many players are moving from arcade COH to more realistic MOW .



I wish you the best DMS

keep up the good work

[HaZZarD]

*RESERVED*

DMS Official Replies

[reply 1]

"I have a few questions to take a little bit of heat out of the discussion:

Why do you discuss the removal of super heavy tanks, like IS-3, Elefant, Jagdtiger etc., while they are not available in the standard settings and are not supported by us to begin with?

If you don't play standard settings, why don't you simply disable these tanks yourself?

Why do you claim the game is less realistic than AS1, if AS1 did have balanced penetration values while AS2 does have historical accurate values? Because a Sherman can shoot 10m less than before? Are 10m reason enough to panic? Or are 10 more meters with fake penetration values a better deal?

Why is it commonly suggested to nerf heavy tanks, but at the same time increase ranges, even though heavy tanks are mostly affected by the shorter ranges and are therefore nerfed?

What hinders you from playing a mod with different ranges if you think you found the golden range balance?



When we worked on AS1, we increased the ranges drastically compared to MoW and later we also added APCR. This lead to a gameplay, where each tank of the same class was able to kill each other on maximum distance, especially medium tanks. This is not fun, this is not good gameplay if a medium tank can't take any beating and the only safe call for you is to bank for a heavy tank which at least doesn't get killed by the lightest of all at-guns. It's also not good gameplay if one heavy tank or at-gun can lock down a huge part of the map because it can insta kill every other tank trying to flank it.

Since AS1 we followed a principle of adding realism where it makes sense and doesn't hurt gameplay. We follow the same principle in AS2.

We also believe that everyone of us can spend a lot of energy over debating ranges and penetration values with no end in sight. You get a super mod friendly game, so use it, if you have great ideas deliver them in a mod and other players will enjoy it together with you and it might also lead to changes on our side. It's in your hands :) "


[reply 2]

"Franek, maybe calm down a little? Your points have nothing to do with my reply whatsoever. Balancing of individual units is a completely different topic and the closed beta is not yet balanced. If you wonder why the Stug has the same gun like the Pak40, well that's because they had the same gun. Infantry combat is your imagination, because especially machine guns have been weakened a lot. The only changes that positively effect vulnerability is less protection by cover, which makes attacking easier and an AI behaviour fix that units behind cover who stick their head out can still be killed by AI. I might answer some of your other points, if there is less shouting to be found."

[Opavius]

Welll i agree with you, but on the other side, when speaking about ranges, developers wanted (i think) tanks to be seen while shooting even on 180m. In AS1 you sometimes lose a tank to some silhouette in forest that you even havent seen... so maybe this is the reason, why are ranges shorter. But on the other side i cannot say much, i still wait for open beta to test it by myself.

And in case of map balance - well, can be, but if i want such realism, i try Theatre of War :-) But this game is a mix of both playability and realism...

[Opavius]

I think that "historical values" were meaned to fix some penetration on some guns / calibres, not to make realistic ranges. There was a discussion in DMS forum in AS1 section about 17pndr, its penetration and other guns penetration - and there was a conclusion, that most guns should have fixed or reworked statistic... but it was not connected with ranges...

[Kraft ☢ Squad]

Realism.

[☠ 🅺 🆄 🆁 🆃 ☠]

Realism is the key to success

Also important: new weapons, and nations in mod example GSM

[FeltHλt]

i think AS should aim for realism with tweaks resulted from small map like speed of planes or range of tanks. Where its possible it should be as close to real as possible.
I rly enjoy totally balanced game (eg in Wargame max speed of planes is 1100km/h and in real they fly -+ even 3000km/h) but i think realism fits this title more and looks like its what u want guys.

[FeltHλt]

i think this thread is about balance/realism of some ameplay values, not how game looks/sounds

[Windmaker]

Personally I would say that realism in Men of War should be in 1st place, balance should be later. There are a lot of games which are more friendly for people without knowledge about WW2, which should aim into balance. MoW is different. Because of direct control, because of damage system etc.
In my opinion balance should be based on few factors. Some of them are essential, some not.

The essential one are: prices and CP based on historical availability of units in specific theatre of war. As an example I would like to use Combat Mission game series. In this series for balancing porpoise each unit was priced in "general price" and as additional price - availability price. So if something was rare, it's price was higher.

Similar thing should be done in MoW. If Tigers were rare, if Pershing was extremely rare etc. their price should be really high. But if Shermans, PzKpfw III and IV, and Cromwells, and T-34 were basic tanks of their armies, their prices and CP should be low enough to make them popular in game. If that means PzKpfw IV G 350 points or something - ok, it would promote mediums.

The problem of such idea is that in some situations some countries would be weaker - for example Germans in early part of game, and all Allied countries in late part of game. Also there might be second problem. Such balancing should be done by people who really know something more about WW2 units. I mean people who know exactly how many specific units were in specific places. Because if we take just general number of produced units we won't get good result.

But all in all, if we really want to have balance that will be good for players, I would propose something based on mix of unlocking units, CoH 1 system (from one of addons) and Wargame series.

So in automatch system players have set of units in which he can choose units he want to play. Let's say 3 infantry squads, 4-5 special soldiers (AT infantry etc) 3 Light vehicles and light tanks, 2-3 medium tanks, 1 heavy tank, 2 tank destroyers, 3 guns and stationary units etc etc.

Each unit based on general list of all units. If player want medium tank he can choose M4A1 or M4A3 with better armor etc.

There is no need in adding unlocking units here, but it could be interesting for gameplay.

This system also needs one more thing - more new units in game. On one hand it'll make balancing difficult. On the other, sometimes it might help to find counter unit. I think mostly about variants of medium tanks and vehicles.

To sum up. Balance should be achieved by adjusting prices and CP, and in future by adding more units based on historical availability. Realism on the other hand should be increased as life showed, that "war was balanced if different factors were used". So if we can't get counter tank to enemy tank, in real life there were different units that might be helpful and it should be the same in game.

With ranges, they should be increased as much as possible. And if we want to prevent players from overusing such range, maps should be made in that way.

Just as example from real life. Typical tank/AFV etc. now can shot at range of 2 or more km. But terrain in Europe makes it impossible to use max range at most situations - because of trees, hills, buildings and other obstacles. But in some specific situations they might be used.

We have big maps now in MoWAS2, so I think it should be possible.

And of course other factors like real speed etc. should be also used in game. It will help balancing more in some situations.

[76561198101175145]

The only realistic thing about unbalanced games are they soon become history. Small community + unbalanced game = dead MM.

[HaZZarD]

The point was that there is no Realism Vs Balance battle , it's about behing coherent with WWII

if you want to have a coherent WWII game the way to balance is not altering weapons datas

you of course need to balance the game but we think the best ways to do it is to ..... well go up to my post number 1 and read

[Kraft ☢ Squad]

Originally posted by Franek:

The only realistic thing about unbalanced games are they soon become history. Small community + unbalanced game = dead MM.

You can balance realistic tanks/stats.
Price, availability, map design,..

[Opavius]

Guys you are speaking about another game, not about MoW. Pls dont change this game, its good as it is and it has its place. Its not 2nd CoH, its not 2nd Wargame, or whatever else...

Also, Windmaker, your system would not work - for example, there were cca 492 King Tigers manufactured (and most of them were send to battle) and just 6 Pershings - which means, that KT would cost 500MP and Pershing 4000MP ? Bad system... also your system doesnt count with air support (hard to implement - already answered by Instinct), heavy long range artillery support (who wants stronger arty than 203mm ?), etc...

And for those, who want realistic ranges - pls, try Theatre of War or Wargame... again, this is MoW - also this would not work - for example, you will be capturing a village with your troops (USA), you will move your Sherman into god position and now you would get blown by Stug firing from 2km far position hidden in a forest... would it be playable ? No... not with MoW system of play. I had a lot of battles in Theatre of War and those ranges were good, but well, MoW has better feeling in this - you see all the stuff on your map, you can enjoy its models, etc...

The only thing i would (maybe) change is make ranges same as in AS1. For me those were ideal. You are not so close but also you can see both tanks in firefight and you can enjoy them from decent range. In ToW you cannot...you just see (in big battle) a lot of small silhouetes firing at each other)

Also dont forget, this game miss a lot of factors that influenced ww2. Air support - USA and UK won ww2 mostly thx to air superiority. Do we have it in game? No... its hard to implement i heard. OK. Soviets won by numbers - well, it can be done by making soviet tanks cheaper and less CP expensive - BUT, if you play 1v1, you still have ONLY 2 players - there is not - 1 player at germany side driving one Tiger and 3 players on soviet side driving 3 T34/85 - so they can act in same time and flank Tiger... no... you have just one players that can drive only one T34 at a time. So this system of "numbers" also dont work. The "only" thing you can easily do is make tanks a bit cheaper, so players can buy more of them.

Pls guys, i have nothing about discussion, but do not try to make another game from this...if you like CH, go play CoH, if you like Wargame, go play it, but if not, dont want MoW to become one of them...

[Windmaker]

I don't remember any post in which someone wanted real life ranges. It's impossible in MoW. But ranges based normal values would be more interesting:

1 km = 100 game metres for guns/tanks/autocannons with max range 200 m for 90mm, 88mm and 17,6 pdr guns, etc.

For artyllery range should be aout 300/350 m.

For infantry up to 100 m.

So it would mean that on maps places with open field 2 km (200 game metres) long would be rare.

About choosing units in my system Opavius. Well depends on what type of ground units we would get. And example of Stug... well Sherman with 76 would blow it from same distance :) If of course there were enough of such positions on map. In Wargame where there are more units then could be used in game it works just fine and it's much more balanced. But the problem of Wargame is that it's unrealistic in some other elements. Same as Men of War.

I know some people are afraid of adding more units. I can understand that. But... well we have to ask one question. Are we going back to Faces of War standards, or are we moving forward from MoWAS standards. It's about ranges, number of units etc. MoWAS was more realistic then previous games, so MoWAS2 should be at least the same.

And about Pershing pricing. Well if we really get realistic penetration, and we could get more real availability, US 76 mm gun would be fine to stop PzKpfw IVs and sometimes Tigers and Panthers, usually flanked on our bigger maps.

Personally I would really like to move King Tiger, Elephant, Jagdtiger, Pershing, IS-3, Centurion (MK I, not this MK II post war tank) to hero units.

We have so many tools for balancing units that we can do a lot.

For example Veteran Tiger - what it is for? Germans have enough tanks in game, and could get many more interesting one, instead of "cheater Tiger" :)

MoWAS 2 is just an ideal moment to start such reworking balance things. Just because there is in my opinion no sense to spend money by DMS to just make more polished game then MoWAS was ;)

[(KBH)guderianxix]

http://youtu.be/gEeQPUp5VTY

[Opavius]

Welll i still thing you are talking about big changes that would consume a lot of time and money, and we all can see that devs will have a lot of work pre /after release, so there is no need for big changes now. If something should be done, than let it pls into MoW2 in the future. Also i have nothing about adding new units, and about making some "groups" of units but hey, this is MoWAS2, let it be MoWAS2 pls... any big changes would lead into other game that we know... I got used to MoW standards and i like them, i played almost all RTS from ww2 and i must say that MoW is very original and is very good combination of both realism and playability. If you move to one or another, you will not get a good game. Example - CoH2 mooved a lot to playability and lost a lot of realism...so its nothing for me now. Theatre of War moved a lot to realism, so after a few nice battles i started to get bored from all those long ranges, etc... That is why i prefer MoW series, it stays between both.

And also, when some game refers to ww2, it doesnt mean that i must be 100% correct. Is there in title "ww2"? Is there written "simulator"? No... so pls, let those big changes to MODs...