So, I know I'm going to get slapped silly for saying this, but balance is towards the bottom of my list of concerns. Normally balance happens by nerfing every strong point until everyone is the same. I realize that makes for the best competitive environment, but it makes for a very dull singleplayer environment. I prefer the Brood War system of balancing: If you can make everything overpowered, nothing becomes overpowered. Yes, having exploitable advantages for every race would likely make for a frustrating competitive multiplayer, but would still make the game much more enjoyable for the majority of players (Singleplayer and for-fun multiplayer).



I really don't want to see the game become generic and boring, like yourself. I firmly believe that identity and balance stand at opposition to one another. If they have to focus on one, I'd prefer identity.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
I have to agree that the balancing in Amplitude's games could be better. Just recently, I talked to a friend about the Era system of research in Endless Legend, and said to him that I could never agree to the opinion that it restricts choice, because the system would in theory allow for great freedom in picking exactly the technologies for your playstyle, but the balancing means that in the end, you always pick the same technologies. (We ended up having some disagreements over the distinction of a system and the items in it, but that's a different matter.)

In a system where expansion is king and siege defense is almost useless, nobody picks a Fortification building over the Mill Foundry. In a system where Long Range Kinetics deal almost as much as damage as long range missiles or melee kinetics, there's little incentive to pick the others, since killing your enemy quickly is crucial in a system where you can't have a designated tank.



More differences in kind would definitely help alleviate such issues. Unfortunately, many differences in kind also tend to make AI substantially more difficult to create.





On a related note, I would love to hear from a dev about their methods of balancing. Is there any system to how initial values are picked? How do you go about testing and adjusting?

I'd rather they just accept the AI will suck at launch, watch the player base for 3 weeks, and then patch both the balance, and add some playbooks for the AI.



As is most normal players don't care how good the AI is because it's "hard enough" while good players will be acing the game inside of a week (and that's without the usual custom race min/maxing). At least this way you might be able to see what better players are doing and upload some race specific playbooks rather than the % boosts we've all gotten used to hating.

I have to agree that the balancing in Amplitude's games could be better. Just recently, I talked to a friend about the Era system of research in Endless Legend, and said to him that I could never agree to the opinion that it restricts choice, because the system would in theory allow for great freedom in picking exactly the technologies for your playstyle, but the balancing means that in the end, you always pick the same technologies. (We ended up having some disagreements over the distinction of a system and the items in it, but that's a different matter.)

In a system where expansion is king and siege defense is almost useless, nobody picks a Fortification building over the Mill Foundry. In a system where Long Range Kinetics deal almost as much as damage as long range missiles or melee kinetics, there's little incentive to pick the others, since killing your enemy quickly is crucial in a system where you can't have a designated tank.



More differences in kind would definitely help alleviate such issues. Unfortunately, many differences in kind also tend to make AI substantially more difficult to create.





On a related note, I would love to hear from a dev about their methods of balancing. Is there any system to how initial values are picked? How do you go about testing and adjusting?