is myth balanced? hard to say bros. what i am talking about is the developmental balance in the game, and not the user created balance such as captains trading and distributing units. asmodian, dac and rabican will help me reach my point.
i think on it's own, myth is fairly unbalanced. two quick examples: one team gets a mid tag at a different times despite starting from the opposing spawns; barb valley tourney's middle ground.
i guess you could argue here it was the map makers failing to balance the maps, yet we still choose to play them and pick them in competitions as if they are balanced. i guess it's fun to live in the illusion.
from the get go, the majority of myth 2 games are played on user servers while those mobas are hosted by neutral servers. "hosting" players used to be a huge source of imbalance in gaming, one that has since found balance through unified fast-speed internet connections and dedicated neutral servers.Asmodian wrote: I'm not sure why paris thinks Moba's (dota) are more balanced than myth. Moba's have 100 + champions with all different abilities. That in itself already makes the game less balanced.
asmo seems to think all of his tournaments were balanced, a great ode to a great tournament organizer; but alas he picked every map and unified the fallback systems.
and so the subtle illusions that the myth 2 we play is fair and balanced, even in our most cherished times and events, begins to fade.
i believe while dac is talking more about developmental and balance, the idea that the amount of different user-choices a player can make when selecting their hero has more to do with user influenced balance.
let's not confuse the two, as you could compare hero selection to unit trading. in the way the same units are 'available' to every team, so are the heroes/champions. even more balance in moba is the fact in competitive tournaments the professionals can ban opponents picks.
building your team composition is similar to choosing your unit trade, do you want extra disables with a 4-disable character and max puss? pick/trade for it. i'd say the wide variety of characters actually provides more balance because there is even more ability for counters, where as on myth some UT's are far superior to others and the only counter is to pick the same fucking trade whether you or not have confidence your team could play it. despite having over thousands of different potential unit combinations; some are OP, some are not. there is seldom any change in this. heroes respawn, our choice in myth 2 gameplay is no respawn.
This is left unchecked, unit trading points are never altered. While it seems like it would be a simple quick change, the way some plugins were created would cause a rework and re-release of that plugin; a massive effort really to cover all of the content we enjoy. Arguably on symmetrical maps such as grilling grounds (are there others with near-perfect symmetry?), you could say there is more balance than less. but, the balancing effect here has everything to do with user control. the trades which become staple strategies never become the default unit trades, and the game never develops to become more balanced.
the deathmatch mode could be the next best way to balance pvp games, but this community would never know because it values tradition and holding onto the past. this includes accepting the current meta as the 'end all be all' way to have played myth, "it's so balanced it's perfect, it doesn't need any updates". so be it, if it's your choice of belief and lens while examining the same substance.
but let's see, i think the simple fact that the mobas one speak's of get updated with meta changes every 2-3 months pretty much changing the game and restructuring the balance IN ITSELF makes those games more well balanced. as dac stated, myth is left relatively untouched. perhaps you look at those mobas as one game, maybe it's the LoL effect or just the way one percieve MOBAs, but they're not. the game the professionals in dota 2 were playing in their 4th Tournament International (mwc for dota) was a different game than they played last year in TI5. meanwhile, we constantly play the same game for some 2-3+ years at a time.
when a hero/champion becomes OP or irrelevant because they are suddenly useless or unbalanced, the hero/champion gets experimental nerfs/buffs until the developers are satisfied with hows its being used in the meta.
i guess from this point of view the developers of the mobas are unbalancing the game with each patch? perhaps, maybe they are doing both.
i'm not sure how long it's been since myth was truly dev balanced, if ever, but even meticulous shit like fetch remaining 6 points UT from TFL to M2 all-the-while they can suddenly shoot above melee and cancel projectiles (rather than deflect) is pretty major shit, not to mention the game switched from melee battles to artillery fights.
in fact more evident than the game having balance itself is the user input to balance the games, if we truly wanted balanced 2team/ffa casual/tournament games, NO UNIT TRADING would always be chosen.
perhaps it's the fact we have less 'known' players than those MOBAs have selectable heroes/champions are you put under the guise that myth is a balanced game.
trying to compare games who are constantly being developed to one that's development is now relatively stagnant seems like a poor choice.
and so y' see,
all units are not available to every team, a captain chooses their teams picks and bans creating a shift in balance starting in planning time (and going back to what i said before, a shift in balance can begin starting with the team's starting positions).dac wrote: All the units are available to every team, so it's self balancing.
if all units were available to every team, there would be no unit trading; you would be getting what unit trading defaults to, OR perhaps as you say, ALL units would be available beyond the default trade.
There is no in between I can see there in regards to a balance, a large part of the strategy and tactics in this game goes into giving your team an advantage and your opponents a disadvantage. it is all about creating an imbalance, which does not always come from what is truly balanced.
the greatest balance change/update m2 ever experienced was when project magma updated the melee system to be eerily reminiscent of TFL's, i can remember will -n- and shaister picked the changes in the patches apart piece by piece in the forums over 10 years ago.
and so y' see,
but there was dev input to change the pvp in myth 2 (of course we all know magma had their eyes on pve). ignoring these major changes to how units path find and respond, and saying the game was perfectly balanced all these years is most definitely hearsay to the reality.dac wrote: The pvp is actually perfectly balanced without any need to maintain it. It's why it's still so good with no dev input all these years later.
one of the most enjoyable parts of this game for me is the lack of balance and absolution in the pvp gameplay. i could start in a mid spot on pg-bc, downhill in 1v1 on web and have to trade differently, go back door a player in gimble ctf breaking 'gimble r us' user-created rules meant to balance the game. i could trade for all dwarves and get all duds, all bounces, all direct hits; or something in between. one of those dwarves could be dropping a satchel and it suddenly decides to go off... so much for all starting with the same units.
to me, this game is broken; it always has been, and it has always kept it exciting and me coming back since age 7. one of the reasons myth never picked up competitively beyond it's original company losing the rights is that it had definitive balance issues. we play a game now that was what you could say completely unintended. is a game designed to be played for a market of delayed dial-up users to be balanced for a generation of high speed internet users?
one company tried to recreate the vision and instead created one of the most unbalanced and quickly-forgotten pvp games of all time: myth 3. meanwhile on m2, east on if i had a trow continues to reach mid in 35 seconds with a larger defensive hill mid, and west reaches mid in 38 seconds, featuring a waterhole north with impassable practically on the flag, and better defensive positions for assassin and captures.
perhaps thinking that myth is a balanced game becomes something to take pride in following winning the most sought after competitive events, its difficult to rationalize pride over something that could have been unbalanced from the get go unless you indulge in the sadistic; yet even then, we've been stacking the teams for years. lets not get into competitive balance, we don't even play the same map and gametype combos in the same match anymore.R@bic@n ~Np~ wrote: par73 ez25: yo
par73 ez25: is myth 2 a balanced game ?
rabocan: mmm kinda .. not
rabocan: raid is basic map, some of the ffa starting positinos are really fuckedup
the games we play and speak of are never released perfect, they are always updated; their developers are always looking to seek a balance in the game they are providing their players, so that it comes down to 'skill'.
myth 2 is somewhat unique in the sense that following initial developmental release and updates, the users and players themselves updated and released their visions of 'myth balance'. what we play now is more our creation, our vision, than what the developers had originally sought after. Our, as in, the myth community. at the same time, we don't all trade the same, we aren't all distributed the same units; my dwarf duds, yours duds not.
everything that makes myth chaotic and unbalanced is what i love about it, and why it's so good all these years later.
myth is perfect in it's imperfections. that is why it is my favorite game of all time. one can choose to look at this game through whatever lens one chooses.
you could say, i differ.
