Man I miss playing Halo Reach multiplayer. That game was so fun. Nothing quite like sniping someone immediately after you come out of armour-lock.

6 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

Why play tribes when Halo CE and Halo 2 multiplayer were on PC?

Why play a (good) console shooter on PC when there are a lot of (good) games that didn't make the compromises needed for a console FPS on PC? The Halo series is one of the best place for FPSs on console, because thats where it played from its inception. That also means it is not neccessarily a good place for FPS gameplay on PC, because of how different the platforms are. Too bad that ever since the CoD-ification of the genre so few good PC ones are released. I love Overwatch for breaking that trend.

Anyhow, I like the comparisons made here. Nice read!

6 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Why play a (good) console shooter on PC when there are a lot of (good) games that didn't make the compromises needed for a console FPS on PC? The Halo series is one of the best place for FPSs on console, because thats where it played from its inception. That also means it is not neccessarily a good place for FPS gameplay on PC, because of how different the platforms are. Too bad that ever since the CoD-ification of the genre so few good PC ones are released. I love Overwatch for breaking that trend.

Anyhow, I like the comparisons made here. Nice read!

Thank you!

50 minutes ago, CRCL said:

Man I miss playing Halo Reach multiplayer. That game was so fun. Nothing quite like sniping someone immediately after you come out of armour-lock.

OH YOU JERK.

On the flipside I was a Jetpacking GOD.

12 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Bullet Magnetism is a feature in console-designed games that helps the round find its target to offset the clumsy aiming of thumbsticks. It's a necessary evil, as without it...

Oh, absolutely no necessary evil. It's easily possible to play shooters without bullet magnetism, if you play them with mouse and keyboard on anything that isn't a console.

The fact that thumbsticks are clumsy when it comes to FPS is absolutely true, and it's the very reason I'll never understand people playing shooters on consoles.

7 minutes ago, haslo said:

Oh, absolutely no necessary evil. It's easily possible to play shooters without bullet magnetism, if you play them with mouse and keyboard on anything that isn't a console.

The fact that thumbsticks are clumsy when it comes to FPS is absolutely true, and it's the very reason I'll never understand people playing shooters on consoles.

Also:
There Are Some Conveniently Laid Out Crates There So It Means A Gunfight Is About To Happen

Thinking back, Diablo was probably one of the first hand-holding games. None of the enemies there really had the power to kill you unless you wandered into a too high-level area (only really possible with Diablo II) and the most common way of dying was death by being too lazy to go back to town for potions.

As someone that plays both console and PC fps... I know now not to listen to a majority of you. Tribes, while fast pace, honestly was more akin to winning the lotto. Add in any type of latency and may there be mercy on your soul. Reach multiplayer was terrible. After 3 and till guardians it was all crap. Then again the first halos magnum was the the perfect analogy for something needing a nerf bat and ruining a game. Why ever take any other weapon unless it was the sniper or rocket launcher. Bloom was single handly the worst implementation in the halo franchise, and this ruined reach's chance of being a truly competitive game. While console shooters are clumsy, people's master racing of PC shows way to heavily in this posting. PC has many great FPSs of their own, over watch is simply better on PC.

Now to the subject at hand, we really can't compare a video game with a table top due to as major juggler stated. The meta will contiune to expand and there isn't much we can do about it. The constant cries of nerfs will stay regardless of what happens because once the top dog is take down, the next will rise, but it won't be the dog some wanted thus it isn't fair. And regardless of liking metas or not, they will happen.

I had similar conclusions some time ago. Why Warhammers were SO successfull for over 30 years? Cause the miniatures were somehow independent from the rules.

WFB/40k : Rules and balance getting messy and going south? Cool lets scrap it and release new Armybook/Codex or new edition where we can balance stuff out and give some love to weaker units.

Xwing : Rules and balance getting messy and going south? Lets patch it up with new things that will require additional patches next while neglecting old stuff... its kinda broken circle that leads to sick power creeps.

Even CCGs does it. MtG got its Standard formats that rotates cards entirely over a year or something. And in the formats where you can play everythin (Modern, not to mention Legacy) combos that win in turn 1 or gets insane power creep are very common.

It is simply next to impossible to develop new content and keep everything alive.

It's a "Let's use some other totally unrelated game type to talk about X-wing" topic. I love them.

Balancing the meta in X-wing is like playing Jenga with pieces of different shapes, lengths and weights!

At the beginning it's easy to keep it all in balance because there are few pieces interacting with each other, and their shape allows for some error tolerance.
But later on, when the pile is growing and growing, it becomes harder to know if the next piece will disrupt the balance if placed here or there. There are just too many variables in play.
The meta, once flowing in slow pendular moves, becomes more and more jittery. What the designers have been doing over the years was to overcompensate with more pieces (buffs, new ships or upgrades) on the opposite side of the one that looked like it the pile was going to fall towards.

What fails then? Well, just like a game of Jenga, you cannot really predict at 100% confidence whether the piece you are about to add will break the balance because for that you would actually need to test it in a identical test pile. But the designers testing experience will never be identical to real world experience. Only an approximation.

If we learnt anything from Jurassic Park was that Jeff Goldblum said that when a system is complex enough, the most minimal changes can lead to unforeseen vast consequences. The butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane at the other side of the planet and all of that.

At this point X-wing is complex enough to suffer from that. An apparently tame upgrade like Attani Mindlink or Deadeye can lead to incredible imbalances if the perfect storm of conditions happen. And the more variables the designers add to the game (ships, upgrades, maneuvers, etc), the higher the chance for this perfect storm to happen again and again.

I do not believe, dear @MajorJuggler, that one can perfectly predict the balance in this case regardless of how much analysis time they willing to throw at it. Not unless you design the game from the ground up, so that instead of arbitrary Jenga pieces we use Duplo construction blocks. That would indeed keep the balance under control, but result also in a much duller or limited game.

I believe that X-wing only salvation (at competitive meta level) is to introduce a "gravity dampening" factor that makes individual pieces contribute less (or in a less acute way), to the tilting, to reduce the current jitteriness of the meta, and to allow for more error tolerance in design.
The Jenga equivalent of playing with a wider base pile, with the Moon's gravity.
The key is to figure out what is the equivalent of that in X-wing terms.

And my bet is higher point squads, and wider more diverse competitive game styles (objectives, scenarios, something other than deathmatch 100/6).

7 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

The corollary: better game design will tighten up the relative power difference between squad/ship power levels, and result in far more ships/squads being able to see viable competitive play. The real world is not digital, it is analog, so, for example, lists that are tier 1.5 will still see table time, albeit less than tier 1. "Balanced" is therefore a relative term that can be quantified by how many ships fall behind the power curve.

Certainly better game design has a role to play. It is interesting to note that some of the most influential cards in recent metas have a common theme: time or work compression.

Any upgrade or ability that allows you to do more things in a set time window is going to be highly efficient and more effective. A basic T-65 should take 2 turns to target lock, and then focus. A T-65 with PTL takes 1 turn to achieve the same thing (ergo the PTL T-65 is an improvement subject to cost). As all squads are limited by total cost (100 points) there is a ceiling to total possible efficiency.

Global effects are the same - they allow you to do "x" without having to move (which takes time). And manoeuvre is a fundamental game character; removing this "rule" creates significant efficiency.

Some of the most powerful in game effects achieve either one of these characteristics, or both (attani mind link, palpatine, manaroo, or corran horn/quickdraw/dengar for multiple shots). Even regeneration is essentially delayed time compression (it's effectively an extra evade just applied slightly later).

Where some ships / squadrons have these abilities as inherent in their build 'vanilla' squads will always be behind the power curve (100 points of 4 x T-70 Blue Squadron X Wing with a 1 point upgrade for example vs the latest World list of Dengar & Tel).

Ideal 'fit' is therefore achieving as much work compression into a 100 point maxim as possible, whislt maintaining the greatest flexibility and reach of manoeuvre as possible (the ability to apply said compression to the widest area of the board as possible).

5 hours ago, Vitalis said:

I had similar conclusions some time ago. Why Warhammers were SO successfull for over 30 years? Cause the miniatures were somehow independent from the rules.

WFB/40k : Rules and balance getting messy and going south? Cool lets scrap it and release new Armybook/Codex or new edition where we can balance stuff out and give some love to weaker units.

Xwing : Rules and balance getting messy and going south? Lets patch it up with new things that will require additional patches next while neglecting old stuff... its kinda broken circle that leads to sick power creeps.

Even CCGs does it. MtG got its Standard formats that rotates cards entirely over a year or something. And in the formats where you can play everythin (Modern, not to mention Legacy) combos that win in turn 1 or gets insane power creep are very common.

It is simply next to impossible to develop new content and keep everything alive.

Your understanding of mtg seems to be fairly poor. Legacy and modern are both reasonably balanced, have active ban lists maintaining their balance, and even have new cards targeted for their consumption. Legacy for instance gains access to cards included in 'alternate' products like commander and conspiracy which gives them cards that will only be usable in legacy, vintage, or the supplementary product they came in.

Additionally mtg is a poor example as the (good) cards from the early years are generally far stronger than is currently acceptable which is what has lead to their seclusion. The analog would be that somehow t65s and ywinga are way too good so you can't play with them in regular games anymore.

Oh and it's a tcg which adds hundreds of cards to the pool every year so in order for weaker cards to see play they restrict standard to only the most recent additions so that the relative strength of things produces different metas.

In short, weak analogy.

8 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

On the flipside I was a Jetpacking GOD.

Ha! Then you were the one I hated THE. MOST... lol

4 hours ago, Azrapse said:

I do not believe, dear @MajorJuggler, that one can perfectly predict the balance in this case regardless of how much analysis time they willing to throw at it. Not unless you design the game from the ground up, so that instead of arbitrary Jenga pieces we use Duplo construction blocks. That would indeed keep the balance under control, but result also in a much duller or limited game.

Why am I tagged in this post? I have never argued that balance can be perfectly predicted.

10 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

The corollary: better game design will tighten up the relative power difference between squad/ship power levels, and result in far more ships/squads being able to see viable competitive play. The real world is not digital, it is analog, so, for example, lists that are tier 1.5 will still see table time, albeit less than tier 1. "Balanced" is therefore a relative term that can be quantified by how many ships fall behind the power curve.

2 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Why am I tagged in this post? I have never argued that balance can be perfectly predicted.

If I misunderstood you, I apologize for the unappropiate quote.
But I thought you said that a hypothetical "better game design" would keep some broken combos from happening (or your words "tighten up the relative power difference between squad/ship power levels"). As if there is a recipe to prevent small variation to produce unexpected (and undesired) results.

Also, even when the real world is analog, competitive level is an environment that looks more like how a river flows than to an evenly distributed grayscale.
Water follows the path of least resistance, always. And so do competitive players that given a ship that is tier 1 and a ship that is tier 1.099999, they will take the ship that is tier 1, most of the cases. The rest of the cases being taken for reasons that don't follow any logic other than faction pride, particular subjective preferences, lack of enough information, economical factors, or a combo of all these together.
Ships/upgrades/combos are totally forgotten once another slightly better ship/upgrade/combo comes out that does better what the old one did.
Entire factions vanish, like the Empire, when you can just play Scum and win more easily.

I don't think there will ever be a nice gradient of squads being used. Not anymore.

• It's almost guaranteed that given that the game has certain complexity and design freedom, it will produce combos that will be the best at whatever metric you choose.
• Most competitive people will flow to those combos, since they are the path of least resistance to winning.
• The meta will keep jittering between whatever the best combo at any particular moment is, regardless of buffs, nerfs, FAQ, or new releases.

17 hours ago, xanderf said:

LOL...'Halo' and 'skill' in the same sentence.

Obviously someone who has never played Tribes. (I think they did try to make a console version. Once. It didn't work - 3 dimensions of movement and actually having to AIM just not something gamepads were meant for...)

I can't believe it - a (non-Star Wars) video game I've actually played being mentioned on these forums! I did enjoy this game, though I wasn't (still amn't) very competitive, so I mostly played LAN in small groups.

2 hours ago, macmastermind said:

Ha! Then you were the one I hated THE. MOST... lol

"LOL BYE" *Jetpacks away from trouble*
"LOL HI" *Barnstorms a building in a Jetpack*

1 hour ago, Azrapse said:

If I misunderstood you, I apologize for the unappropiate quote.
But I thought you said that a hypothetical "better game design" would keep some broken combos from happening (or your words "tighten up the relative power difference between squad/ship power levels"). As if there is a recipe to prevent small variation to produce unexpected (and undesired) results.

No worries! It's easy to see "designing better" and jump to assuming that also could mean "designing perfectly". I have been fighting a losing battle against this misperception for years now.

A few points.

1) All squads have an element of cyclical balance, i.e. the "paper rock scissors" effect. Therefore:

• 1a) A squad's competitive "score" is not a singular value. If there are N viably competitive squads, then every squad (viable or not) has N different win ratios. A squad's win ratio vs itself is always 0.5, and a squad's win ratio vs any other squad is dependent on their relative power levels and their particular matchup strengths or weaknesses.
• 1b) If all of a squad's win ratios are equal or less than another squad's win ratios in every matchup, then it is mathematically dominated, and is not competitively viable. I.e. if Squad B is universally better (or at least as good as) Squad A in every single matchup, then Squad A is inferior in the absolute sense.
• 1c) In the idealized system where all players have perfect information, squads that are mathematically dominated have zero appearance rate competitively. In reality these squads still show up occasionally, since players do not act on perfect information. More on this below.
• 1d) Squads that are not mathematically dominated are considered to be competitively viable. The steady-state solution for the appearance rate of all squads is the solution of N equations and N unknowns such that the expected win rate of any given squad is 0.5. As long as there is a paper rock scissors effect, the meta will counter itself so no squad has an advantage.
• 1e) For at least the first few major tournaments after a discovery of a new squad (either by new release or delayed discovery like Parattanni), the system has not reached steady state solution, and some squads will have an expected win rate >0.5. X-wing is generally in this state, hence the competitive focus on "countering the meta game". If the game were to go a full year without releases, then it would certainly reach the equilibrium described in 1d.
• 1f) Local metas may differ due to a variety of reasons, notable player skill (a squad's win ratios can be a function of player familiarity/skill and therefore by extension geography in the broader sense), or simply preferences with particular squads (not modeled by the idealized system).

Conclusion of 1: you can have some squads that are generally not as good as others, but still see viable competitive play, just in lesser numbers than other squads. Cyclical balance is therefore an extremely powerful design tool for a designer, as there is a built-in margin of error when designing a ship to the game's power curve. The game designer's goal is generally to maximize viable squad diversity, which is indicative of both healthy game design and a fun play experience. Also note that a squad can be mathematically dominated, so its overall expected win rate in a given meta must therefore be <0.5, but if the design tolerances as tight enough, you may be able to play it without necessarily getting completely blown out of the water. In a system with poor balance, "Squad X" (say all X-wings) may have a win rate of 0.1, whereas in a better balanced system it might be 0.3 - 0.4, where "Squad X" is mathematically dominated in both cases.

2) Complexity creep is a design problem in any game system, grows exponentially with time, and inevitably pushes balanced design space into a corner. The designer's goal is to both identify all viable permutations of new design elements, and then quantify them, so a prediction can be made as to its impact on the overall meta-game (point 1d). Neither of these are trivial, but the more effective the design team is at both of these, the longer the game will remain in a healthy state. At risk of going slightly off-topic: as the industry continues to mature and barriers to entry rise, additional investments in both expertise and money (the former being directly related to the latter) will be made for AAA games specifically for better game balance. Identifying permutations is a very difficult problem, but one that I expect automation / AI to play a bigger role in the future, for any companies willing to invest the up front expertise and capital. FFG does not strike me as currently being as such a company, and the industry as a whole may take another 10-20 years to really get to this point.

10 hours ago, haslo said:

Oh, absolutely no necessary evil. It's easily possible to play shooters without bullet magnetism, if you play them with mouse and keyboard on anything that isn't a console.

The fact that thumbsticks are clumsy when it comes to FPS is absolutely true, and it's the very reason I'll never understand people playing shooters on consoles.

Wow congratulations you literally just made my argument for me regarding the necessity of thumbsticks.

And I'll tell you why we do. I've got long term friends on there that I don't have on PC, and a game franchise that's really only on console. It's also affordable in the short term, which I absolutely needed, and beg pardon being a filthy casual but I really don't feel like building my life around my PC. Consoles are valid and contrary to popular internet opinion, necessary for gaming to exist in any popular way in the modern era.

Please don't be uppity about other people's choices and preferred ways to play a game.

1 hour ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Wow congratulationsmantiteralle my argument for me regarding thwastelandse necessbody thumbsticks.

And I'll tell yoanyu why we do. I've got long term fnot sds on there that I don't have on P C, and a game franchise that's really only on console. It's also affordable in the short term, which I absolutely needed, and beg pardon being a filthy casual but I really don't feel like building my life around my PC. Consoles are valid and contrary to popular internet opinion, necessary for gaming to exist in any popular way in the modern era.

Please don't be uppity about other people's choices and preferred ways to play a game.

Filthy console peasant!

All joking aside, just because a medium is popular doesnt make it better. Consoles are objectively worse than PCs. They're just more convenient for mass consumption because anybody can take it out of the box and plug it in. But PCs will result in better performance with the same game. And it's cheaper in the long run than buying a new console every 2ish years.

Lets not kid ourselves either. Console gaming communities are toxic wastelands that make youtube commenters look like decent folk.

2 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Wow congratulations you literally just made my argument for me regarding the necessity of thumbsticks.

And I'll tell you why we do. I've got long term friends on there that I don't have on PC, and a game franchise that's really only on console. It's also affordable in the short term, which I absolutely needed, and beg pardon being a filthy casual but I really don't feel like building my life around my PC. Consoles are valid and contrary to popular internet opinion, necessary for gaming to exist in any popular way in the modern era.

Please don't be uppity about other people's choices and preferred ways to play a game.

*eyerolling* you do not need to build your life around a PC, that is just as obnoxious of a trope as "filthy console peasantry".

Games workshop never fixed their games, they dropped an entire game that had a lot of issues and the sales were just taking a dive because of their inability to make proper rules - the game is gone, Warhammer Fantasy, replaced by another game system that started out as an incredibly poor attempt at a game and I havent bothered following any of the news about it though it seems they made more books and a bit more proper rules - Age of Sigmar is a joke anyway.

Warhammer 40k has never been balanced and it never will, they will keep milking their playerbase with each consecutive new release of something too strong or unplayable. Please don't give them any credit for their constant failures, their model is the worst for gaming.

4 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Consoles are valid and contrary to popular internet opinion, necessary for gaming to exist in any popular way in the modern era.

I also own consoles and I like playing games with them

But I'd never play a shooter on a console. It drives me mad, and bullet magnetism just adds insult to injury. In fact, I can't play designed-for-console games with bad PC ports either (the Gears of War series comes to mind).

6 hours ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

*eyerolling* you do not need to build your life around a PC, that is just as obnoxious of a trope as "filthy console peasantry".

7 hours ago, BadMotivator said:

Filthy console peasant!

All joking aside, just because a medium is popular doesnt make it better. Consoles are objectively worse than PCs. They're just more convenient for mass consumption because anybody can take it out of the box and plug it in. But PCs will result in better performance with the same game. And it's cheaper in the long run than buying a new console every 2ish years.

Lets not kid ourselves either. Console gaming communities are toxic wastelands that make youtube commenters look like decent folk.

I didn't say popular meant better. Stop lecturing me on the merits of PC gaming.

It's not like I'm making these posts from a phone.

And honestly, as a member of the Elite: Dangerous community? I see far worse from PC communities. I really can't stand most of them.

On 5/9/2017 at 2:30 AM, Lampyridae said:

Also:
There Are Some Conveniently Laid Out Crates There So It Means A Gunfight Is About To Happen

Thinking back, Diablo was probably one of the first hand-holding games. None of the enemies there really had the power to kill you unless you wandered into a too high-level area (only really possible with Diablo II) and the most common way of dying was death by being too lazy to go back to town for potions.

Oh come on, Diablo 2 didnt really hold your hand, especially if it was your first time playing Blind. Blood Raven, (arguably the first real boss) herself could seriously screw you up if you didnt spend extra time to grind before you went after her. And even then you had to go after her with good tactics, you couldnt let her hid behind the zombies and javelins were your best friend against her

So basically, what we're saying here is that the JM5K is the Battle Rifle?

So the solution should be to introduce X-Wing Team SWAT, so anyone who wants to Battle Rifle can Battle Rifle to their heart's content in their Battle Rifle Only mode!

Now, any ideas for X-Wing Grifball?

X-Wing Griffball would be Decimators only. as they are the only ship with a melee attack.....