Idea: automatic weapon balancing

If other weapons become OP, it’s more incentive to uſe them, and after people ſtart uſing them more, things’ll balance out.

So we will just bounce from one OP weapon to other OP weapon forever.

3 Likes

This brings us back to the Lightning Fryer and Corn Shotgun example. Corn Shotgun can easily be called overpowered in comparison with Lightning Fryer. But even despite that, Corn Shotgun is still less popular.

I will say this again, because it seems that not everyone undestands. Popularity is not a measure of effectiveness and it will never be. Such system will never work because of that simple reason. This is not a coincidence that such simple solution is NEVER used in video games.

So the question is: what do we really want? To have all weapons that are equally popular, or to have all weapons balanced and worth taking? We can’t have both.

Popularity-based damage increase may help with the first, but there is no way that it could balance the weapons.

5 Likes

There’s a reaſon for this: Lightning Fryer is an auto-locking weapon, and Corn Shotgun is an auto-miſſing weapon. Hence, Corn Shotgun needs to be a lot more powerful to be worth uſing.

That’s not the reason. Corn shotgun is harder to use more effectively so that’s why it’s less popular.

3 Likes

I think it goes like this:

  • An unpopular weapon gets buffed.
  • More players are now encouraged to use it.
  • It now became popular so it gets nerfed.
  • And the cycle continues.

Nope, it means that Corn Shotgun is much more difficult weapon to use. It may be a bit stronger(it should be), but not to such insane extent as it is right now. On hard and elite missions lightning fryer is simply useless. Corn Shotgun, though far from the meta guns, is still relatively reliable. And based on popularity we should buff the much stronger weapon.

Difficult weapon will always be less popular than the auto-aim one. But this doesn’t mean we have to buff it.

1 Like

Yup. But when well implemented it’ll eventuälly ſettle down, becauſe as the changes aren’t inſtant, it’ll effectively become a ſmaller and ſmaller change each cycle until everything’s nice and balanced.

Why not?

Because we do not want to have completely overtuned weapon. That’s why.

1 Like

3 bolts, auto-locking and damage being similar to shotgun, that’s a recipe for having a broke weapon.

at least it would be useful, unlike now xD

I also repeating, I can not really see this working, not at least on it’s own. It’s better to take the long way and tackle the individual problems that weapons have. If the result of it is a better balanced game, sure we can wait all the time it takes. ^^

How about we let this update for a few future versions to see if it does actually work, considering all those will be SH missions? We actually haven’t tried them yet and there’s (almost) no harm to do so (except delays).

1 Like

All the Technical jargon tends to fly right over my head but I certainly trust much of it.
Point being part of the fun/frustration of the game is some weapons suck and others are excellent.
Accidently getting a weak weapon and trying to overcome it with a better one is all part of the game from the original chicken invaders from 1999 all the way till Universe if they become too balanced it will become a bit boring. I understand though tweaking the weapons to a certain point.
Some things have to suck to appreciate the things that don’t suck.

1 Like

This reminded me of this article. Although I really wanted all weapons to be balanced so I can finally use Laser Cannon without much problems.

1 Like

That’s why there is Moron Railgun, a lower version of Boron Railgun. Maybe if every weapon has its noob version, you could appreciate?

Yikes!

This brings us back to the Lightning Fryer and Corn Shotgun example. Corn Shotgun can easily be called overpowered in comparison with Lightning Fryer. But even despite that, Corn Shotgun is still less popular.

At the time those stats were given, that’s how it was. But this idea is an endeavour for the long-term. It might take weeks or months until it reaches a relative stability because right now there’s a very large disparity between the most used and the least used weapon. And Utensil is most used by such a high margin, that the bottom half of the roster all blends together into a pseudo-random order. Lightning Fryer is “more popular” by 1.3%, which is a near irrelevant difference. What I would aim for with automatic balancing is to eventually bring all of the weapons within 2% in popularity. (6.5%–8.5% range)

I will say this again, because it seems that not everyone undestands. Popularity is not a measure of effectiveness and it will never be. Such system will never work because of that simple reason. This is not a coincidence that such simple solution is NEVER used in video games.

It’s the best approximation we can use to automatically adjust the values so the weapons are closer in terms of effectiveness, without the extra work time required to fine-tune the stats manually. I don’t know why I’ve never heard of a video game resorting to such a system, but if it is indeed flawed, I want to at least see the consequences it has and understand the reasons why it would not be efficient.

So the question is: what do we really want? To have all weapons that are equally popular, or to have all weapons balanced and worth taking? We can’t have both.

You know what? I actually do care more about all the weapons being equally used than being balanced. Even if the perfect balance you seek isn’t an unattainable mirage, after reaching that point, the popularity is very likely to still be skewed in favour of some weapons, whether they are cheaper, easier to use, or whatever. If all the rebalancing takes place with a single version change and then is left untouched, the players will, sooner or later, find out which weapons work best in the new circumstances and then settle in with the status quo. If changes are made slowly, daily, automatically, players will need to constantly readjust, so the best weapon might not still be the best in a month’s time, without any additional effort from the developer.

1 Like

This discussion changed from “automatic weapon balancing” to the “do we even want balancing weapons?”

I don’t know how things can go more boring than using forks 100% of the time to be effective, but if you say so… Besides, how “Accidently getting a weak weapon and trying to overcome it with a better one” was a part of the original 1999 CI game, if there was only one gun in that game. Am I missing something?

I do not seek a “perfect” balance. I want all weapons to be usable and worth taking in game. And popularity-based dame buffing is opposite of that. A weapon that actually requires skill to use will be boosted to the extent that it will become new Utensil Poker. It doesn’t matter if its isntant change, or slow daily changes. Popularity will never contribute to balance, because majority of players aren’t playing on the higher difficulty levels and will often choose underperforming auto-aim weapon instead of a much stronger one that requires skill to use. I have already shown an example why it wouldn’t work, but you refuse to acknowledge that.

Ah, and this:

What? Irrevelant? Lightning Fryers popularity is 3,9%. Corn shotgun’s is 2,6%. This means that Lightning Fryer is 50% more popular, because 50% more people use it. This is a significant difference.
Claiming that “Lightning Fryer is more popular by 1,3%” only shows lack of your basic math understanding.

I think I posted enough on this topic, this discussion doesn’t lead to anything constructive. The question is: what do we even want in this game. It may turn out that majority of the community does not want balancing at all. In that case, we can implement automatic damage bonusses, or simply leave things as they are. But if we want to balance the weapons to the point that all are at least usable, it must be done manually. There are no shortcuts for that.

4 Likes

…But it’ll ſtill only be uſeful for the people who are good at uſing it, and make it worth the effort to learn. If enough people ſtart uſing it, it’ll become leſs powerful again.

Lightning Fryers popularity is 3,9%. Corn shotgun’s is 2,6%. This means that Lightning Fryer is 50% more popular, because 50% more people use it.

That 50% is relative. To turn this into absolute values, let’s assume there are 1000 players in CIU. Utensil Poker is used by 496 people. Lightning Fryer is used by 39 people. Corn Shotgun by 26. It doesn’t look so impressive anymore, does it?

Sure, you can make the weapons more in line with each other with a manual update, but if you want to achieve peak performance, I expect your options to still be narrowed down to 3 weapons at most. You could avoid that by adding many strengths and weaknesses to particular enemies, hypothetically, have Ions to be best at Asteroids, Neutrons to be best at Retro, Vulcan to be best at Comets, Photons to be best at Supernova, etc. so that every weapon excels in a particular situation. But then, you may be left at the mercy of the RNG right before a wave until the game decides to give you the present that you know will be effective in that wave.

In a dynamic balancing system, every weapon could have its turn at being best (or worst). If a weapon somehow becomes OP, but is not popular enough to have its damage reduced by the algorithm because it’s only used by the high-skill players, then so be it. When a casual gets good enough at the game, they’ll start using it, too. It would give people an incentive to become accustomed to using it. And once that playstyle becomes the norm, the weapon becomes popular and… guess what happens? A continuous and hopefully unpredictable slow cycle of weapons being put in and out of use. Or, in the worst case, just two weapons alternating as the go-to choice. Seeing weapons fall in and out of favour sounds like an exciting prospect.

I have nothing against doing weapon balance the traditional way, but here’s an opportunity to try something entirely different and see what comes out of it. If it sucks, it could at least be an experiment until the weapons are tuned by hand. But having an automatic algorithm sort of democratizes the balance. Players aren’t purely dependent on the developer to change the stats according to what they believe it’s right, but they affect them themselves through their behavior.

1 Like