Behavioral Economics and AoE3

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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

Again, I used "relatively" for a reason. It was a point specifically based on the comparison between Chess and Go, comparing their complexity and the degree of staleness in their respective metas.
Interesting to see how bad people become at reading comprehension when they perceive negativity towards something they like. "Perceive" in italics for a reason, people.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Le Hussard sur le toit »

Goodspeed wrote:
Le Hussard sur le toit wrote:
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I kind of think neither you nor SirCallen follow high level play closely. I would in fact say that the meta has been shifting a lot in the last twenty years. Computers have completely changed the way chess is played at the top level, with many opening that were considered bad being rehabilitated and many moves that would have been considered "too ugly" twenty years ago being played routinely (particularly with pawn play). The reason why top level chess is less interesting to watch than twenty or fifty years ago is that it has become so complex than us mere mortal can not understand anything. And with deep learning chess programs it is even better, players are discovering new way to play old position routinely now.
I'm aware. Note my use of the word "relatively". To illustrate the difference: In Go, playing the opening like people did 10 years ago is straight up game-losing at the pro level.
I definitely don't think that the meta is stale in chess today, in fact I'd say there has never been an era with a wider variety of openings being played (if we speak of top level of course, at lower level you can play anything you want).
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

Note my use of the word "relatively".
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Le Hussard sur le toit »

Well I don't read "relatively stale", I read "fairly stale". Which I don't agree with for reason stated above.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

And you stopped reading there, huh? The difference is that you're comparing Chess now to Chess earlier whereas I'm comparing it to a different game altogether. You can make claims about the Chess meta being less stale than it was 20 years ago, and I'll make claims about it being a whole lot more stale compared to Go. We don't disagree.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Goodspeed wrote:And you stopped reading there, huh? The difference is that you're comparing Chess now to Chess earlier whereas I'm comparing it to a different game altogether. You can make claims about the Chess meta being less stale than it was 20 years ago, and I'll make claims about it being a whole lot more stale compared to Go. We don't disagree.
And still you're the only one (or almost) on this forum to believe that Go is the superior game.
It's the same about aoe3 actually, you and Zoi want aoe3 to become like Go while we're happier with aoe3 being chess.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

???

1) I'm not talking about which is the superior game. I'm comparing staleness of the meta to illustrate a point about how it relates to complexity.
2) I don't want AoE3 to become more like Go. They're wildly different games. And Zoi certainly doesn't, he doesn't even play Go. I don't know how you made this connection in your head, but I'm interested, so please explain.
3) How the hell is AoE3 Chess?
4) How is your post in any way a reply to the post you quoted?
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Goodspeed wrote:???

1) I'm not talking about which is the superior game. I'm comparing staleness of the meta to illustrate a point about how it relates to complexity.
2) I don't want AoE3 to become more like Go. They're wildly different games. And Zoi certainly doesn't, he doesn't even play Go. I don't know how you made this connection in your head, but I'm interested, so please explain.
3) How the hell is AoE3 Chess?
4) How is your post in any way a reply to the post you quoted?
1) You're not talking about that right now but you did try prove it multiple time.
2) You started that comparison lol. Aoe3 should change because else it's stale like chess or w.e.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:1) You're not talking about that right now but you did try prove it multiple time.
I never tried to prove that. Though it's obviously the case, it's subjective and therefore not provable. And if we're not talking about that now, why bring it up? Did it offend you that deeply?
2) You started that comparison lol. Aoe3 should change because else it's stale like chess or w.e.
AoE3 should change else it becomes stale period. Not "like Chess". How did you get that from my post?
Do you disagree that RTS games which don't change tend towards a stale meta?
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Goodspeed wrote: Do you disagree that RTS games which don't change tend towards a stale meta?
It depends on what you mean by stale meta. The build orders slightly change every tournament, and the maps also change the way people play the game.
Aoe3 is still aoe3, it's not a new game if that's what you mean by "stale meta".
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:
Goodspeed wrote: Do you disagree that RTS games which don't change tend towards a stale meta?
It depends on what you mean by stale meta.
I would define it as a meta that doesn't change, or changes in minor ways at most.
The build orders slightly change every tournament,
Right, but note I said "tend towards". AoE3's meta never really had the time to properly settle. The game is relatively complex and relatively unpopular, so the meta needs more time to settle. It has also changed fairly recently.
and the maps also change the way people play the game.
Map changes count as "changing the game".

Imagine we played on EP7 and on the same maps forever. Would we slowly tend towards a stale meta as time went on?
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Goodspeed wrote: Imagine we played on EP7 and on the same maps forever. Would we slowly tend towards a stale meta as time went on?
I'm going to state something obvious, but the more you play a game, the more you understand it, and as a result the more it "tends towards a stale meta".
So the meta slowly tends towards a stale meta as time goes on, of course.
Slowly is the important word here. Reaching a stale meta would be problematic but we're far from that. Half of the civs aren't figured out at all (if you ask two different players "how should I play this civ", you'll get two different answers for these civs), and even the "stale" civs have different options.
And maps actually change, so the meta changes even more.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Le Hussard sur le toit »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:
Goodspeed wrote: Imagine we played on EP7 and on the same maps forever. Would we slowly tend towards a stale meta as time went on?
I'm going to state something obvious, but the more you play a game, the more you understand it, and as a result the more it "tends towards a stale meta".
So the meta slowly tends towards a stale meta as time goes on, of course.
Slowly is the important word here. Reaching a stale meta would be problematic but we're far from that. Half of the civs aren't figured out at all (if you ask two different players "how should I play this civ", you'll get two different answers for these civs), and even the "stale" civs have different options.
And maps actually change, so the meta changes even more.
In fact I think it depends a lot of the game. As game knowledge progress, it can indeed become quite stale (although "stale meta" and "boring to watch/play" are two different things) as people figure out the right way to play. But increasing knowledge of the game can also mean that you get more precise knowledge of what you can get away with and of the subtlety and diversity of the game, with the number of playable BOs increasing rather than decreasing as meta advance.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

I'm going to state something obvious, but the more you play a game, the more you understand it, and as a result the more it "tends towards a stale meta". So the meta slowly tends towards a stale meta as time goes on, of course.
Right. So you don't disagree.
Slowly is the important word here. Reaching a stale meta would be problematic but we're far from that. Half of the civs aren't figured out at all (if you ask two different players "how should I play this civ", you'll get two different answers for these civs), and even the "stale" civs have different options.
We're far from it because we have been changing the game, both with maps and patch changes. If you look at AoE3's history, the meta always becomes stale if the game is not changed for a while. This time is no different, though it will take longer because good balance has helped make the game more complex (a point I mentioned in passing in my first reply to Callen). The more complex, the longer it takes the meta to settle.

But I disagree with you when you say we're far from a stale meta. I think that's a rather optimistic notion, given the history of the game. Hopefully, it's going to keep getting changed.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Goodspeed wrote: But I disagree with you when you say we're far from a stale meta. I think that's a rather optimistic notion, given the history of the game. Hopefully, it's going to keep getting changed.
You base that on nothing though. You can't compare EP with the history of the game because balance and maps are the reason why the game became stale.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:
Goodspeed wrote: But I disagree with you when you say we're far from a stale meta. I think that's a rather optimistic notion, given the history of the game. Hopefully, it's going to keep getting changed.
You base that on nothing though. You can't compare EP with the history of the game because balance and maps are the reason why the game became stale.
If I'm basing my opinion on nothing, then so are you. We're both just speculating and our intuitive senses of where the game is headed apparently disagree.

I'll remind you that it's very typical for people to think balance is good right after a patch, and for that opinion to slowly change the longer we go without changes. Because of our frequent patching and our close monitoring of meta trends by way of polling, this hasn't happened with EP, but if you leave it alone for a year I guarantee it will happen.

All versions of ASFP were initially seen as David Kim reincarnate, but after a while people were abusing shit as much as ever. I specifically remember a tournament on ASFP 1.1a (or maybe it was 1.0 actually) where 90% of the high level games were Iro mirrors. On ASFP 1.2, Brits and Sioux ultimately turned out pretty dominant.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by RefluxSemantic »

In terms of perceived balance, there's a pretty big bandwagon effect though. For these patches it's at least as much about psychology as it is about reality.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

I'll remind you that it's very typical for people to think balance is good right after a patch, and for that opinion to slowly change the longer we go without changes. Because of our frequent patching and our close monitoring of meta trends by way of polling, this hasn't happened with EP, but if you leave it alone for a year I guarantee it will happen.
I agree with this. That's why we need to patch to make sure balance is in a good spot. Making 50 changes that don't improve balance (or even make it worse) isn't necessary however.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

[Armag] diarouga wrote:
I'll remind you that it's very typical for people to think balance is good right after a patch, and for that opinion to slowly change the longer we go without changes. Because of our frequent patching and our close monitoring of meta trends by way of polling, this hasn't happened with EP, but if you leave it alone for a year I guarantee it will happen.
I agree with this. That's why we need to patch to make sure balance is in a good spot.
I don't think this is possible, especially with 14 unique civs. Even in SC2, where they have only 3 match ups to balance, they don't manage. Eventually, some civs will always end up dominant and some will end up underwhelming.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Goodspeed wrote:
[Armag] diarouga wrote:
I'll remind you that it's very typical for people to think balance is good right after a patch, and for that opinion to slowly change the longer we go without changes. Because of our frequent patching and our close monitoring of meta trends by way of polling, this hasn't happened with EP, but if you leave it alone for a year I guarantee it will happen.
I agree with this. That's why we need to patch to make sure balance is in a good spot.
I don't think this is possible, especially with 14 unique civs. Even in SC2, where they have only 3 match ups to balance, they don't manage. Eventually, some civs will always end up dominant and some will end up underwhelming.
Yes, and then you patch the op/up civs.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by Goodspeed »

... and repeat
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by [Armag] diarouga »

Goodspeed wrote:... and repeat
Yes.
I think you didn't get my point. My point is that you need to make small changes from time to time to make sure that balance is good, but making 50 changes isn't necessary.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by zoom »

deleted_user wrote:1) Loss Aversion

Loss aversion states a person dislikes losing $5 more than they like winning $5.

2) Risk taking

Below a certain reference point (taken as one's current wealth) one tends to be risk-loving, while above it be risk-adverse.


Does this apply to AoE3? Would you rather not lose 5 PR than, say, gain 5 PR? Or for us 50% win rate folks, is AoE3 a negative suns game? Human nature naturally dislikes one loss more than they like one win? And if you are below your average PR, do you take more in-game risks? If you are at a PR record, do you play more conservatively?
Losing 5PR is mathematically far worse than gaining 5PR is good.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by RefluxSemantic »

I lived some extra years and now even more than ever I think the truth is that competitive games can quickly become a net negative experience to me. This is what makes single player games so great; they managed to create an experience where you have fun and don't have to deal with the frustration of losing. You sacrifise some satisfaction, but there are many games where there is plenty of satisfaction to be had from winning in them.
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Re: Behavioral Economics and AoE3

Post by iNcog »

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Garja wrote: ↑
20 Mar 2020, 21:46
I just hope DE is not going to implement all of the EP changes. Right now it is a big clusterfuck.

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