The invisible hand perfect balance

[Iluvalar]

Let's say that each time a player pay for a research it price increase by K%*[Number of research avalaible] and that all the research in the list drop by K% (K discussed later). At the end of each games, the host would send the result to a global server that keep track of all that.

Wouldn't that be awesome ? Each option in the research tree would slowly tend to a perfect balance. Even if someone make change to the stats afterward, suggest a new techtree or even a dev cause a new bug. If the flamers were too strong, obviously the players would try to research it more often, but then, the research cost for flamers would increase until it become as much attractive than other researches.

We could ask the server to automaticaly set that K constant according to the amount of changes detected recently. If a new version was changing the gameplay, it would automaticaly start to balance the research cost until things start to settle down again.

[Duha]

Let's say that each time a player pay for a research it price increase by K%*[Number of research avalaible] and that all the research in the list drop by K% (K discussed later). At the end of each games, the host would send the result to a global server that keep track of all that.

Wouldn't that be awesome ? Each option in the research tree would slowly tend to a perfect balance. Even if someone make change to the stats afterward, suggest a new techtree or even a dev cause a new bug. If the flamers were too strong, obviously the players would try to research it more often, but then, the research cost for flamers would increase until it become as much attractive than other researches.

We could ask the server to automaticaly set that K constant according to the amount of changes detected recently. If a new version was changing the gameplay, it would automaticaly start to balance the research cost until things start to settle down again.

Statistic is good for balancing. Balacnce must be changed under human control.

[NoQ]

If the flamers were too strong, obviously the players would try to research it more often

Obviously, 95% of players will not care. Most players don't even know that it's bad to research rockets and cannons simultaneously.

[iap]

Anyway, it would be a nice experiment to bring the "free market invisible hand" rules to warzone: The more you research something, the more it cost. The more you use something, the more it cost. And the more you try to avoid it - the more it's price is dropping. And this will bo globall.

[raycast]

Well, the results might not be stable. Flamers get too expensive, thus people stop using them and go for machineguns instead. then machineguns get expensive, so they go for rockets. And then rockets get expensive, but flamers are cheap again... this may also run in circles, depending how easy people *see* the price differences.

However, it may be a good idea to collect this kind of statistics.

And when the statistics show that some technology is much more used than another, this may indicate the balance needs to be tweaked. (But of course, it may also just be popular because of some cinema movie having nice flame throwers! )

I would definitely do this by hand, but the statistics can help for this.

[NoQ]

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[Iluvalar]

Raycast : Probably at the beginning there would be some turmoil. But the more players will get used to it, the more they'll believe in it and start to use different strategies more often. If we fix the starting K% low enough, everything would be fine.

NoQ : Is knowledge necessary for that anyway ? Players that research at random will not affect the system (other than make it more stable). And players that try left behind pathes will prove to be more successful. Most players and up mimicking what successful one do. Believe me on that.

[zydonk]

Not on this planet, Ilu - there's no such thing as an open market for research. And - of course - there is no such thing as perfect balance, unless it is the utter quietude of death...

[Per]

I for once agree wholeheartedly with zydonk. I think there is a fundamental disconnect here on what the rules should do. In the sense of the origin post's use of the word 'balance', I do not actually want balance. Rather I'd want many temporary imbalances that can players can attempt to balance out / counter over the time of a game through tactical use of research and production. Such imbalances can be a fundamental part of the game, for example an early poking with mg vipers, that I do not want balancers (automatic of otherwise) to make worse just because it is frequent. So frequency alone is not an argument that something is unbalanced or necessarily bad.

[Giani]

Let's say that each time a player pay for a research it price increase by K%*[Number of research avalaible] and that all the research in the list drop by K% (K discussed later). At the end of each games, the host would send the result to a global server that keep track of all that.

Wouldn't that be awesome ? Each option in the research tree would slowly tend to a perfect balance. Even if someone make change to the stats afterward, suggest a new techtree or even a dev cause a new bug. If the flamers were too strong, obviously the players would try to research it more often, but then, the research cost for flamers would increase until it become as much attractive than other researches.

We could ask the server to automaticaly set that K constant according to the amount of changes detected recently. If a new version was changing the gameplay, it would automaticaly start to balance the research cost until things start to settle down again.

If the weapon line I am researching gets very expensive to research, why would I want to research other stuff? If I have heavy cannons and lot of upgrades, but it is very expensive to research, I prefer to use all the power to make units than to start to research other weapon line.

[Iluvalar]

Per, this would not affect such timing effect. Some research could give a bad short term bonus. As long as some players find it useful and research it in hope to obtain something better after some time, the balance will stay like that. Also It wouldn't change anything about the weapon modifiers. Which create most of the "temporary imbalance" you are talking about.

Giani, you dont get it. It's from game to game. In your exemple, you would start the next game and the light cannon research would be 76$ instead of 75$. So if you keep research cannons that game because you know some sort of overpowerful trick using cannon, the price would keep raising until it kill the purpose of your new trick. Otherwise, if you take another weapon the next game because you feel that all weapons are ok, the cannons cost would go down again and would stay the same as at start.

[NoQ]

Dispite there are chances it won't work out, i wish i could try that; that could be fun.

[Jorzi]

I know they did this in counter-strike source. It was quite interesting and imo it really encouraged more diverse use of weapons. It also produced an endless metagame of trying to find rarely used weapons and learning to utilize them to gain an edge. I find this type of metagame quite interesting and would like to see it at least as an experimental feature.