The official fixed crate topic

Fixed crates?

Yes
66
58%
No
48
42%
 
Total votes: 114

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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Darwin_ »

forgrin wrote:
gustavusadolphus wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:I voted yes, because I agree with Diarouga very much. Undoubtedly, it will solve many balance issues. I think that the EP has had a doctrine of minimal changes with maximal effect, and I think that this totally falls under this category. What made 1.2 ger/fre/RE Iro so strong was that they could have the crates to start TP. Without a TP or 200w, those civs are far more balanced. Yes, it does take away some uniqueness/thrill from the game, but I think never loosing a game due to the matchup is way more valuable than having a little bit more randomness. The EP is made for competitive play and making it as, well, competitive as possible. This change is so simple and is a great first, or even final, step towards a very well balanced game. There are some civs that I think could avoid fixed crates and still be balanced, or given like 2 possible crate options. Ports, russia, dutch and maybe even brits come to mind.


I think this is important when we are talking about a game. Remember folks its only a game. We should not take away asnything that adds fun and uniqueness.

If we go so far as to make crates fixed why not have every map fixed with fixed building locations and layouts. Why not turn the game into halo wars. Who knows maybe even one resource.


It doesn't take away "uniqueness/thrill" lol wtf are you guys on about. The only person who ever gets hype about crate starts is Interjection. I really don't see how this is a valid argument whatsoever, try playing China and you'll see there's plenty that can go on still.

I dont think that thrill/uniqueness were really the right words for what I wanted to express. I was just talking about that kind of feeling you get going into a game not knowing what exactly what you are going to do: market/tp or other thing. I honestly dont care about that at all, and I would just much rather have a more balanced game... Also, I dont think that that feeling entails fun for anyone playing a game which means something, be it monetarily or otherwise. I absolutely dissent losing a game due to the matchup, and I even hate going into a game not knowing what my build is going to be. So much rides on the starting crates, frankly too much for competitive play.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by forgrin »

gustavusadolphus wrote:
forgrin wrote:
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It doesn't take away "uniqueness/thrill" lol wtf are you guys on about. The only person who ever gets hype about crate starts is Interjection. I really don't see how this is a valid argument whatsoever, try playing China and you'll see there's plenty that can go on still.


Are you arguing that random crates are not unique and that getting that 100 extra wood is not thrilling?


Myself, no. Then again you are a man that greatly enjoys pool specs, so...
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Mitoe »

This is kind of random and a bit off topic, but for the record I think a wood start for Aztec is just as strong for Aztec as it is for Germany, if not stronger. TP + Firepit in age 1 is insanely good. Somehow I doubt you were doing that with Aztec though :P
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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Post by gibson »

forgrin wrote:
gustavusadolphus wrote:
Show hidden quotes


Are you arguing that random crates are not unique and that getting that 100 extra wood is not thrilling?


Myself, no. Then again you are a man that greatly enjoys pool specs, so...
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by gustavusadolphus »

gibson wrote:
forgrin wrote:
Show hidden quotes


Myself, no. Then again you are a man that greatly enjoys pool specs, so...
don't hate the playa hate the game


Thank you Gibson, we must remember we are talking about crates here not nitrates.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Darwin_ »

Honestly, I still just dont get the uniqueness argument. I personally would think that for the TWC and TAD civs, fixed crate starts would actually create more uniqueness in the builds that those civs do. The difference between getting 400w 200f and 300w 100f 100c with India is massive, and totally shuts out tons of options (starting tp/market, 10/10 or other things we haven't discovered yet). For Japan, Iro and sioux, different crate spawns are much more a balance matter than a options matter. Coin crate with all of them sucks garja balls, and wood crate is very good and actually fixes some of the Iro/sioux balance concerns. Its actually almost a matter of being worst civs and being mid-tier civs.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Darwin_ wrote:Honestly, I still just dont get the uniqueness argument. I personally would think that for the TWC and TAD civs, fixed crate starts would actually create more uniqueness in the builds that those civs do. The difference between getting 400w 200f and 300w 100f 100c with India is massive, and totally shuts out tons of options (starting tp/market, 10/10 or other things we haven't discovered yet). For Japan, Iro and sioux, different crate spawns are much more a balance matter than a options matter. Coin crate with all of them sucks garja balls, and wood crate is very good and actually fixes some of the Iro/sioux balance concerns. Its actually almost a matter of being worst civs and being mid-tier civs.


Fixed crates would lead to more and more of the same games over and over. Having them be random allows matchups to actually be fun!
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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n0eL wrote:What makes them fun? I just can't grasp why sometimes having a sub optimal start is fun. Is it fun to play china and then see your opponent got an extra crate than you? Just for shits and giggles? Or play against Dutch and they get a coin start when you are a civ that can't do anything with a coin start?

In my personal opinion balance makes the game more fun, there is already a random factor with the map spawn and treasuring that you can take advantage of with skill. Random crates don't offer the same bonus.


It makes each game different which is more fun. It's dumb for high level players to have the same matchup games just be the exact same. Random crates change it up.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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Post by dicktator_ »

I really like this idea of fixed crates. I think some people are overestimating the effect fixing crate starts would have on the game. Would it take away a small amount of uniqueness and variety? Yes. But saying that fixed crate starts would lead to players doing the same strats for each matchup every game seems kind of ridiculous to me. This simplistic view implies that players are bound to their strats based on which crates they start with, which is not true and if it were it'd be just as bad. It's also a smaller change than -100f for France or uhlan nerf for Germany, those civs would actually be similar to their RE counterparts if they undid those nerfs and implemented fixed crates. That said the effect on uniqueness and variety should not be overlooked. This is just a classic case of how much you value uniqueness and variety vs how much you value balance. For something small like this imo balance is more important, and it seems to me that the beneficial effect on balance outweighs the detrimental effect on uniqueness.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by fightinfrenchman »

dicktator_ wrote:I really like this idea of fixed crates. I think some people are overestimating the effect fixing crate starts would have on the game. Would it take away a small amount of uniqueness and variety? Yes. But saying that fixed crate starts would lead to players doing the same strats for each matchup every game seems kind of ridiculous to me. This simplistic view implies that players are bound to their strats based on which crates they start with, which is not true and if it were it'd be just as bad. It's also a smaller change than -100f for France or uhlan nerf for Germany, those civs would actually be similar to their RE counterparts if they undid those nerfs and implemented fixed crates. That said the effect on uniqueness and variety should not be overlooked. This is just a classic case of how much you value uniqueness and variety vs how much you value balance. For something small like this imo balance is more important.


People in this thread are complaining that they can't use the strats they want because the crates don't line up, so i definitely think that random crates helps lead to more unique games.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Darwin_ »

fightinfrenchman wrote:
dicktator_ wrote:I really like this idea of fixed crates. I think some people are overestimating the effect fixing crate starts would have on the game. Would it take away a small amount of uniqueness and variety? Yes. But saying that fixed crate starts would lead to players doing the same strats for each matchup every game seems kind of ridiculous to me. This simplistic view implies that players are bound to their strats based on which crates they start with, which is not true and if it were it'd be just as bad. It's also a smaller change than -100f for France or uhlan nerf for Germany, those civs would actually be similar to their RE counterparts if they undid those nerfs and implemented fixed crates. That said the effect on uniqueness and variety should not be overlooked. This is just a classic case of how much you value uniqueness and variety vs how much you value balance. For something small like this imo balance is more important.


People in this thread are complaining that they can't use the strats they want because the crates don't line up, so i definitely think that random crates helps lead to more unique games.

In some matchups, there is currently only one basic strategy civ x can use to beat civ y. If civ x gets the wrong crate start for the strategy, they have pretty much lost before the game has started. Think about something like German vs. Azzy. If Germany doesnt get a 200w start, they have lost because they wont have enough shipments in fortress to win, and a wood start is good for azzy, but not as comparably good as it is for Germany. Same goes for something like France vs. Russia. A wood start means that France has a far safer, easier and more powerful semi-ff, while what does russia get? An extra house or an earlier market? That is nowhere near congruous in power. Or even something like France vs. Japan on a coin start. Japan has to chop wood and has 100f more to gather before aging up, which is an insane number of vill seconds, while France is getting their second best crate spawn. On a wood or food start, that match up is fairly balanced, but on coin it is not. I could probably go on and on frankly lol

I think that random crates can sometimes lead to more unique games, but the crate spawn is such a factor in some matchups that sometimes the game might as well just flip a coin rather than load you into the game.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this game.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).


I agree, there is far too much complaining here
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Darwin_ »

Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).

The goal of the EP, if I am not mistake, is to create a more balanced game making minimal changes with maximal effect. This is just that. Playing 1v1 in this game can be so luck-driven that I almost always just play unrated, even though I would like to play rated. I do so just because it is so damn frustrating to lose to a player because the civ you played is wholesale weaker than theirs, the map is unbalanced, or the crate spawn that game just happened to be the most imbalanced it could be.

And also, in WCG it wasnt a problem because civ diversity wasnt encouraged/enforced, and you could just lame broken civs like Dutch or Japs and they were all OP and difficult to counter with different builds. Arguably, if you only looked at the civs that were actually played back then, balance was actually fairly decent.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).


Great points. I think some people on this forum need to step back and see the game is 10 years old and the people left playing it should focus on having a good time over "balance".
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by gustavusadolphus »

Darwin_ wrote:
Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).

The goal of the EP, if I am not mistake, is to create a more balanced game making minimal changes with maximal effect. This is just that. Playing 1v1 in this game can be so luck-driven that I almost always just play unrated, even though I would like to play rated. I do so just because it is so damn frustrating to lose to a player because the civ you played is wholesale weaker than theirs, the map is unbalanced, or the crate spawn that game just happened to be the most imbalanced it could be.


Why not consider you just lost fair and square and maybe you were out played?
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ?


I'm confused, you seem to think there is a difference between the two.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

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gustavusadolphus wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:
Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).

The goal of the EP, if I am not mistake, is to create a more balanced game making minimal changes with maximal effect. This is just that. Playing 1v1 in this game can be so luck-driven that I almost always just play unrated, even though I would like to play rated. I do so just because it is so damn frustrating to lose to a player because the civ you played is wholesale weaker than theirs, the map is unbalanced, or the crate spawn that game just happened to be the most imbalanced it could be.


Why not consider you just lost fair and square and maybe you were out played?


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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Darwin_ wrote:
Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).

The goal of the EP, if I am not mistake, is to create a more balanced game making minimal changes with maximal effect. This is just that. Playing 1v1 in this game can be so luck-driven that I almost always just play unrated, even though I would like to play rated. I do so just because it is so damn frustrating to lose to a player because the civ you played is wholesale weaker than theirs, the map is unbalanced, or the crate spawn that game just happened to be the most imbalanced it could be.

And also, in WCG it wasnt a problem because civ diversity wasnt encouraged/enforced, and you could just lame broken civs like Dutch or Japs and they were all OP and difficult to counter with different builds. Arguably, if you only looked at the civs that were actually played back then, balance was actually fairly decent.


This isn't a minimal change it is pretty big.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by gustavusadolphus »

We should also consider just starting all games in the colonial age if we want variables in the discovery to be the same. possibly even post-colonial.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Mitoe »

I've posted this elsewhere already, but since this is the most active thread on the topic and since no one seems to be offering much for random crates other than something like "it provides more diversity" or something subjective like "it takes more skill to play with random crates" etc.; here's one argument for random crates, or at least for why fixed crates aren't necessarily the perfect solution they may seem to be:

[spoiler]Context: n0eL is addressing someone who was arguing that random crates offer more diversity than fixed crates.
Mitoe wrote:
n0eL wrote:I disagree with that. Having fixed resource opens up the same variation. For example as Japan. If it's 300 w start you can do std consulate. You can do market. You can do tp and you can do double shrine. 200w start, you can't really do must of those things because you're age up is too slow. So you are limited by it.

That's only if you decide to give a civ it's ideal crate start after fixing the crates, which we inevitably won't for some civs. And this could affect matchups a lot actually, since I would imagine people wouldn't give a civ like Germany their wood crates. We could end up buffing a civ like Japan a lot actually by making this change, and swinging a lot of their current matchups. Now don't get me wrong, I actually do think fixed crates has potential to be more balanced than random crates, but let me try to explain how I've been thinking about it.

If we want to get to the root of the problem with random crates, it's not that a coin start is too bad for Germany while a wood start is too good, as the other civ should, in theory, be at just as much of an advantage or disadvantage as Germany. The problem arises when a coin start turns out to be bad for a civ like Germany, and good for another civ, let's say, Dutch—for the record I'm not even sure a coin start is much better for Dutch than it is for Germany, but we'll use this for the sake of example. This is the situation you get matchups that are potentially swingy depending on the crate start. Not when Japan and Germany both get coin or both get wood.

For the most part, however, most civs will be just as happy or unhappy as other civs with the same crate start.


Now let's just assume we decided to follow through with the fixed crate change. Great. We could potentially undo a lot of other changes to civs like Germany and France in favour of this simpler starting crate change.

But now you have new problems: you gave Japan that wood crate, but you left Germany with a coin crate. This matchup that used to be relatively balanced (debatable, but for the sake of argument let's assume it was balanced) is suddenly Japan favoured. And let's say this suddenly swung in Japan's favour in a lot of other matchups as well. Suddenly Japan is a top civ, and we're looking to make other nerfs to it that weren't necessary before.

On the other hand there could also be a civ that's suddenly disadvantaged in a lot of matchups that they weren't disadvantaged in before because of the crate change, and we have to give this civ buffs that weren't necessary before.


On the flip side, maybe fixed crates won't even change anything. If we were to assume that the Japan/German matchup is 5% in favour of let's say Germany, for example, on a wood start, and more or less equal on any other crates start, then what happens if we change the starting crates forever and the matchup is suddenly always 5% in Japan's favour. Maybe neither civ will move up or down on the tier list, so we don't bother applying any further changes to either civs, but the matchup will be forever changed, and the fact that the matchup is favourable for one side over the other will also remain unchanged forever. Isn't this potentially even more imbalanced than random crates? I'm sure clicking into a matchup where the difference between each civ is between 0-5% is more balanced than where it's guaranteed to be 5% for one side.


So I guess my point is, yes we could potentially solve some issues with some of those swingy matchups with fixed crates, but it's not going to magically balance the game. There will be more work that needs to be done.

I think maybe the problem isn't so much that random crates are inherently imbalanced, but the few civs that are much happier with crates that the majority of civs are unhappy with, e.g. Dutch, China (because they can always get wood when their opponents get gold), and probably a couple of others that aren't coming to mind immediately. Obviously we can solve their happiness with these crates pretty easily by fixing them, but how many other problems do we create in the process? how many other changes do we need to make in a world with fixed crates? If it's less changes than we need to with random crates, then maybe it's worth it. If not, then maybe we should try to solve this particular issue with these few civs.

I know my argument is going to be instantly shut down by someone arguing that a wood crate start is clearly way better for Germany than it is for Japan or something equally subjective, but what can you do I guess.
[/spoiler]

After thinking about it I'm more or less neutral on the fixed crates discussion (maybe slightly in favour of random crates simply because I don't like change), but I'll throw this out here as food-for-thought anyway since there aren't many people offering good arguments for random crates.

I guess the main question we have to answer is whether or not fixed crates will actually create less imbalances and go from there.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Darwin_ »

gustavusadolphus wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:
Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).

The goal of the EP, if I am not mistake, is to create a more balanced game making minimal changes with maximal effect. This is just that. Playing 1v1 in this game can be so luck-driven that I almost always just play unrated, even though I would like to play rated. I do so just because it is so damn frustrating to lose to a player because the civ you played is wholesale weaker than theirs, the map is unbalanced, or the crate spawn that game just happened to be the most imbalanced it could be.


Why not consider you just lost fair and square and maybe you were out played?

That is definitely the case in some games, but I have played afternoons of EP unrated doing the same matchups again and again: India vs. China, Jap vs. French, India vs. Russia. India and Japs are two of my main civs on TAD, both EP and RE (I mostly play EP). Truthfully, I really only started to notice how much my crates were affecting how much I won when I spent like 5 hours one afternoon playing as India vs. China. I think we played 10 games in total, and I lost 3 or 4 of them. All of those games I started with a coin crate and/or 300w, meaning I couldnt 10/10 or fast 14 vill agra, which seemed to be the deciding factor in this player and civ matchup for whatever reason. On the other hand, China always gets the same crates, meaning that he could learn from one game from the next and evolve his strategy based on the same starting factors. I, on the other hand, could not learn and evolve in the same way. If I thought of a better way I could do my build, I couldnt always do it the next game because I would get different crates. Me winning or loosing that specific matchup should not hinge on luck, thats just ridiculous. I see what you are saying about how we should learn to adapt and such, and you are right in your thinking, but there are builds/strategies in RTS games that are just objectively better than others. And when luck determines what options each player has, and the options are not of equal strength for both civs, that is just an imbalance, plain and simple.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by forgrin »

Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this game.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).


It's funny you point out the WCGs because it was almost entirely mirrors played with the civs that care the least about resource spawns. Almost like they were actively minimising that RNG factor...

Seems like your own example disproves the rest of your post.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Darwin_ »

@Mitoe I think you bring up a really interesting point. I agree with you wholeheartedly that if the EP team does decide to have fixed crate starts, they cant ignore balancing other things as well. There will still be things that will be overpowered in some situations, regardless of the crate start. Also, the actuall crate starts that each civ gets in a fixed crate scenario would have to go under tons of testing to make sure they were balanced, but I do think that it is possible to give each civ the crate start they need to be balanced.
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Re: The official fixed crate topic

Post by Darwin_ »

fightinfrenchman wrote:
Darwin_ wrote:
Rikikipu wrote:Hey guys, what do you want, you want to see your name in the TOP10 Elo of a 10 years old game or you want to play a game in order to have fun ? It's a RTS game, which means that the intersting feature of this game is strategy. And ofc, the more situations you face the more strategical it is so the more intersting it is for this games.

Also it's so funny to see that the World Cyber Games with the best players were played on unbalanced maps, with broken civs and random crates on the official patch and no one complained. Whereas here we got more balanced maps with fixed civs on an unofficial patch where people plays mostly unrated and it's not enough.

If you dislike randomness (I can understand it) because it brings unbalance per definition so you can't do properly your dick measurement with your opponent, there is a mod designed by Microsoft called Scenario where the concept is to have no randomness so just go play there (and i'm serious).

The goal of the EP, if I am not mistake, is to create a more balanced game making minimal changes with maximal effect. This is just that. Playing 1v1 in this game can be so luck-driven that I almost always just play unrated, even though I would like to play rated. I do so just because it is so damn frustrating to lose to a player because the civ you played is wholesale weaker than theirs, the map is unbalanced, or the crate spawn that game just happened to be the most imbalanced it could be.

And also, in WCG it wasnt a problem because civ diversity wasnt encouraged/enforced, and you could just lame broken civs like Dutch or Japs and they were all OP and difficult to counter with different builds. Arguably, if you only looked at the civs that were actually played back then, balance was actually fairly decent.


This isn't a minimal change it is pretty big.

Its effect is big, but the change itself is a small one.
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