Why do people feel the need to rebalance games?

[Mole40k]

It's interesting that we are talking about balance now, almost 15 years after WW stopped patching TS. I was actually around playing the game back when WW did patch the game, and there would be updates every so often making railguns more / less powerful etc. So it's perhaps wrong to say that TS today is 'as the developers intended it' (whatever that means), as we not left with the game 'as they intended', but rather 'as they left it' (i.e. when they stopped making updates).

 

Another thing the think about in this discussion is the nature of gaming. Put simply, computer games have evolved massively since the launch of the original CnC games -- as has the nature of online competition. E-sports simply didn't exist back in the late 90s when some of us here discovered CnC (in my case TS and Ra2) for the first time. What I'm trying to say here is that the way we think about balance has changed dramatically over the years; as has the nature of games development. As some of you have suggested above, it's not good enough to think about 'what wins if I put my $1000 vs your $1000 of units' -- we need to look at the bigger picture and the way players actually interact with the maps and the units the designers have created.

 

Unfortunately TS is riddled with imbalances, and despite what Mechacaseal says (he is not a 'top player' by the way), there is a lot of spamming on TS, even at the very highest level where close-fought games descend into grind fests of titans / bombers / refs / sams with the odd disruptor or mk thrown in. The winner here isn't necessarily the one with the best tactics, but the one who manages economy, and unit preservation best: the one who builds consistently to set patterns. This is a skill in itself yes, but I don't quite think this is how the developers might have imagined the game. Oh, and don't get me started on the imbalance between Titans (GDI) and Tik Tanks (Nod), cos there's clearly an awful lot wrong there that needs amending.

 

So anyway, my point is this: games are imbalanced, and will always be imbalanced in a sense that, the more complicated they become, the more variables there are. Add in the human ingenuity factor, and the limited resources of the original CnC developers, and you see exactly why all the CnC games are imbalanced, and were always destined to be imbalanced. Unless you're playing Chess or something similar where the 'map' and 'units' are completely fixed, you will never achieve true game balance.

[X3M]

Well, board game designers say that chess still isn't balanced.

It is a saying.

It is a never ending process.

But you spiral towards the balance.

 

And perhaps the biggest mistake of EA games is that they never tried balancing the core of the game correctly. By watching how players play.

Blizzard did that, and you know their story... Success, even today.

 

Perhaps it is not to late. Perhaps some superior people from this site can make a "new" core. A core as intended. By simply observing outcomes/unit usage etc.

Of course ignoring money maps. But still, observe the money maps as well.

 

Indeed, $1000 isn't the only number to look at. $500 and $2000 should be looked at as well. In fact, all possible $ should be looked at. Best way to do this is to start with the minimum that is needed to get any unit. And that would be $3000. Then take multiple factors of this amount. And continue to test.

That would be a designers job.

 

However, use the community to truly test this. And take notes of every complain.

 

Change stuff every week, force players to update.

Every week, little changes should be applied; nerving titan attack power, increasing buggy speed. Stuff like that.