Punkuser - another idea

[Giant Killer General]

How difficult would it be to create a feature that can creates a new set of point values on the units?

I am not sure how popular it would be to change myth's traditional point values for units because it would completely change the dynamics of trades, strategies, etc., so it would have to be an option that can be turned on and off. But basically we all know that the point values for many of the units have been broken for the past 14-15 years. Is this feasible?

[punkUser]

I think you can edit the values in Fear, so couldn't someone make a plugin to do this? I'm not 100% sure though, I'll look into it... definitely something worth experimenting with.

[Dantski]

Which units would you look to change?

Off the top of my head...

Brigands from 2 --> 1 (ruh roh Brigand rushes inc!)
Bre'Unor from 3--> 2
Warlocks from 8 --> 10
Fetch from 8(?) --> 10

I sometimes get a bit sick of max pus being pretty much the one right trade for light maps too. Perhaps making wights/jmen more expensive or something too. I realize a lot of people wouldn't like a change here but I'd prefer pus as an addition to a force rather than a defining part of it.

There also some maps where certain units are a lot weaker than their trading value because of the other units on the map. Would people be more inclined to get stygs on Acts of Cruelty if they were 2 points instead of 3 for instance? I don't think so unless you also made them able to survive an FG hit.


On the topic of changing things, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a Myrk Giant on some maps but without the ability to throw things. Naturally it'll be less trade points to balance it out.


TLDR edition - Make brigs FIT

[Zak]

This would be really easy to do, just creating a tagset to alter the point values of units. You could put it into plugins when you play standard bungie maps or have ones for specific 3rd party plugins as well.

The issue is that some maps would require its own specialized point value because of what dantski said about balance changing from map to map depending on what other units are on it.

[punkUser]

Brigands from 2 --> 1 (ruh roh Brigand rushes inc!)
Bre'Unor from 3--> 2
Warlocks from 8 --> 10
Fetch from 8(?) --> 10

The most obvious ones to me are trow/FG... seems they need a bump to at least 30 if not a big more. Fetch are probably next up, and I'd argue HG/myrk might need some thought too. Warlocks I don't mind at 8... I don't really see too many people maxing locks since on the trades that they are in they are often hard countered by other units (i.e. trow). Brigs and bre obviously need some love too although I worry 1 might be too little for brigs (1.5 might be closer if it was possible without rescaling everything else).

As an aside, it might be interesting to run the numbers on what trades people take over a tourney (say last year's MWC) for a given map. That might give us some more evidence for what units tend to be worth more or less than their current UT values.

Anyways I *think* you can just screw around with this however you want in a plugin, and then play whatever maps with that plugin (tag set to be precise, as zak notes). If the trades themselves need to be altered further, that's obviously pretty common for MWC or similar tourney map packs.

So yeah I definitely think this is worth experimenting more with and am sort of surprised that no one has done it yet. Why not lay out some of the more obvious alternations, throw together a plugin, and play some games and see how they work in practice? Maybe could use it at the kickball events or similar?

As a side note... not that anyone necessarily cares, but I will note that changing unit costs changes damage numbers as well (since damage == fraction of unit costs). Obviously that's how you'd want it to be, but just don't be surprised The relationship is somewhat more obvious in 1.8 without the 2.56 scaling (cue another round of bitching I'm sure).

[Myrk]

It's a bit late in Myth's life cycle to go messing with Myth's balance.
I'd personally have changed pus damage so it couldn't 1-hit kill arty units, and removed duds from pus and dorf bottles from the game. But again, way too late in Myth's life cycle.

[Giant Killer General]

Okay this sounds like something that should definitely be done then if it is this easy. So if i understand correctly, a tagset could be made to alter the values on every single map played? And then if you wanted to alter them further for a specific map, you just do that within the plugin for that map itself (thus in Dantski's example, someone should edit the Acts plugin so stygs only cost 2 points)? If I had known it would be that easy then I would have brought it up long ago, not sure why it hasn't been done yet either.

As I hinted at in my push factor article, I would make the following unit cost changes:
-Brigands from 2 to 1 (I agree 1 might be slightly too low, if we could also alter their hitpoints slightly to make up for it. Maybe reduce their hit points by 25%)
-Bre'Unor from 4 to 2.
-Fetch from 6 to 8
-Dwarven heroes from 8 to 10
-Trow/FG from 24 to 30
-I agree with the suggestion to remove Myrk giant's throw. Remove that, then change their cost from 32 to 22. I would like to see Myrk giants on the battlefield as well.
-Myrks from 4 to 5
-Herons from 3 to 4
-Heron guard heroes from 8 to 14
-Wights from 3 to 4 (I agree pus is slightly overpowered)

My philosophy on these changes is that when the exact cost is in doubt, and there is a bit of a number range to debate, just take the number that is more similar to what it is now.

I don't think I am forgetting any...

Btw, analyzing trades in tournaments is not going to help this conversation much. There was plenty of examples of horrendous trades, even in the finals. But trust me I am an expert on this.

I am assuming you removed the 2.56 scaling for the dmg values and just made it 1 to 1? I don't think anyone would bitch about that...makes it much more intuitive. Of course BC dmg should be based off of unit trading points, not the actual unit health.

[Giant Killer General]

Well Myrk, that doesn't really matter since we are making this an option that can be turned on and off. It is never too late to add additional options to the game. If people don't want to play it, they don't have to. And since this feature appears to be very easy to do, there is absolutely no reason not to do it.

[punkUser]

And then if you wanted to alter them further for a specific map, you just do that within the plugin for that map itself (thus in Dantski's example, someone should edit the Acts plugin so stygs only cost 2 points)?

Sure. I'm no expert but it's equivalent to any of the maps that just have custom units on them (gens, etc), just in this case all you're doing is subbing in a copy with some modifications. And indeed a tag set could be used to change any units overall on any map.

Your changes all look like a good start to me. While I can understand the "it's a bit late to be changing the balance" argument, I don't see any harm in experimenting with alternates. Maybe they work out to be worse and we just revert back and use the defaults, or iterate more. But there's a possibility that they make more trades viable in liven up the game. I don't think GKG is suggesting we use them for the first time for MWC this year or anything, just that it might be something fun to play with

Btw, analyzing trades in tournaments is not going to help this conversation much. There was plenty of examples of horrendous trades, even in the finals. But trust me I am an expert on this.

True, but you'd still expect trends to develop over time. You could of course weight/correllate them with how often they tend to win as well The main thing to get out of such an analysis wouldn't be specific trades or anything, it would be overall outliers like... people always take max trow, people never take bre, etc. There may be some that aren't as obvious as those two

I am assuming you removed the 2.56 scaling for the dmg values and just made it 1 to 1? I don't think anyone would bitch about that...makes it much more intuitive. Of course BC dmg should be based off of unit trading points, not the actual unit health.

Correct, there is actually no change to gameplay per se, just to the display the dmg which was improperly scaled in Myth before, but properly scaled on the metaserver stats (i.e. if you looked at a players stats, or viewed a game on the marius site). It was clearly a bug in the ingame display and I fixed it.

The other improvements I did are:
1) Damage received is now tracked properly. Before if you lost a unit, you just took the full UT cost in damage, but no partial damage counted as received (although it did count as given... I know, bizarre). So if you were controlling 5 trow and didn't lose any of them, you'd get 0 dmg received no matter how much damage they actually took in 1.7.2. Now it is tracked properly.
2) Damage of all sorts is now tracked in greater precision internally. Thus things like BC are decided using internal fractional precision so ties are very unlikely. i.e. even if the UI says you both got 30 dmg, trust the perm as it keeps fractional bits internally now too.

I don't really think of this is contentious, but there was a 10+ page thread of bitching a few years ago about the 2.56 multiplier thing, so what do I know...

[Giant Killer General]

btw another unrelated suggestion:

Add a statistic to every game for dmg received. We have kills / losses, and damage done, but no dmg received. Really kills / losses don't even matter nearly as much as dmg dealt / dmg received

[Giant Killer General]

yea the bug with the damage received only being counted if you lost the unit has been in there since the very beginning. I remember that from bnet even.

[Giant Killer General]

It is obviously too early to use this for any tournament...but the potential is definitely there for it a year or two after this would be released. Throw it out there in the community and see how people embrace it. If everyone starts using it all the time then that would be pretty unanimous approval. Then the community would have made it the new standard for reg myth and then that would be the obvious answer on when to start using it in a tournament, mwc even.

[punkUser]

yea the bug with the damage received only being counted if you lost the unit has been in there since the very beginning. I remember that from bnet even.

Yeah all of this has been there from start. Surprising really that no one really took a serious look at it back in the so-called hey-day of competitive Myth. Meh, never too late to fix it up

Add a statistic to every game for dmg received. We have kills / losses, and damage done, but no dmg received. Really kills / losses don't even matter nearly as much as dmg dealt / dmg received

Yeah agreed. I considered doing something like this but ran into the issue that there was no space for additional columns, and each column set is somewhat related to the game mode that is being played. If people could agree on ideal columns for a given mode (such that we can fit in dmg received and so on) I can certainly look at changing it. The window for 1.8 is closing quickly though so I'd need some sort of consensus from folks ASAP.

It is obviously too early to use this for any tournament...but the potential is definitely there for it a year or two after this would be released.

Agreed, I see only potential benefits from playing around with this. So I'm no fear expert, but maybe Zak can throw together a plugin/tagset with your modifications from the post above GKG? Then maybe we can play some pickup/kickball games with it and see how it goes? I get my fast internet *tomorrow* after 10 months of crappy unplayable cell internet, so I'm definitely itching for some games!

[Zak]

http://hl.udogs.net/files/Uploads/%20Us ... values.zip

[wwo]

Fetch need to be the highest cost of any ranged unit; ties are fine, but they're the only ranged unit where the trading philosophy is "max or lose". Base the others (dw hero, lock, etc) off of w/e fetch end up being (imo, fetch=10, dh=8, lock =7).

[punkUser]

Neat Zak, although I think you forgot the wight change.

Definitely makes stuff like Trow trade a bit more interesting... if you go max trow, that costs you *all* of your maul. If you then try to max myrk you're left with very little left, heh. I'd be interesting to try a few games with it.

Agreed fetch might need to go even higher, but might as well start with somewhat smaller changes and see how they play out. The other danger of bumping too many units up high in UT value is it makes the trades on some maps end up with far fewer units overall... then again maybe that's the point, and it becomes less optimal to max those "power units" now.

[Giant Killer General]

ok zak threw this together VERY quickly, in like 5 mins. We did a bunch of testing, had probly 12 people bounce in and out over the course of a few hours. People downloaded it very quickly and tried it right away. Having pretty good success with it so far (the new myrk giants are awesome btw). We made a few additional tweaks so far from my last post:

fetch increased from 8 to 10
wights increased from 4 to 5. Wights also slightly increased movement speed and health (for sinking)

We have a few other things we want to test. These are the sort of things that have been debated for years but no one has actually gone out and tried it to see how its like. So we just want to experience that, see how it plays, and decide from there.

Also probably going to change myrms from 2 to 1, and also decrease their health like the brig. Still yet to be implemented tho.

Yes the changes are causing there to be less units available because most of them are point increases. Takes some getting used to, nothing too bad though.

[Giant Killer General]

btw for the columns issue, remove the "SURV" column. Nobody cares about that one anyway. I would re-order the columns too so kills and losses are paired together, and dmg / dmg received are paired together.

[Zak]

http://hl.udogs.net/files/Uploads/%20Us ... luesv3.zip

Latest version increases Fetch to 10 points, Wights to 5 (with a health and speed increase), forest giants are 30 points, myrms are 1 point (with a health decrease), barons have been replaced by generals, normal dwarves/dwarf heroes/dwarf mortars have been given a weak melee attack, and the shitty forest giants from the TFL multipack should be converted to the Badlands version now.

We contemplated removing duds from the game but figured that we should save that for a separate tagset, which will also remove all archer/soulless innacuracy to create Myth 2: MLG.

With enough testing we will figure out what changes are for the better and which are for the worse, and functionality should come before my creative freedom.

[switch]

Thrall elite changes? I won't be able to sleep unless I know.

[Zak]

I see no reason to change thrall elite, they serve their purpose fine on the only map you ever see them: Acts of Cruelty.

[SamTheButcher]

http://hl.udogs.net/files/Uploads/%20Us ... luesv3.zip

Latest version increases Fetch to 10 points, Wights to 5 (with a health and speed increase), forest giants are 30 points, myrms are 1 point (with a health decrease), barons have been replaced by generals, normal dwarves/dwarf heroes/dwarf mortars have been given a weak melee attack, and the shitty forest giants from the TFL multipack should be converted to the Badlands version now.

We contemplated removing duds from the game but figured that we should save that for a separate tagset, which will also remove all archer/soulless innacuracy to create Myth 2: MLG.

With enough testing we will figure out what changes are for the better and which are for the worse, and functionality should come before my creative freedom.

Since you are trying some new things out. Add the multi target for Bowmen. I set that up to try for myself. Its pretty cool but its not like a major change to the dynamics. Most of the time you use them as normal but its nice to have the option and it is more realistic anyway.

About the no duds and better accuracy on Bows.

I built a plug about 6 yrs ago "Blue Moon on the Wabe" There are no bottle duds and the Bows have perfect accuracy. When the Bows are set to have 0 "Initial velocity error" they will always hit exactly the spot you aim for or a stationary or constant moving target but it doesnt always guarantee a hit on the enemy you target.

How this changed the dynamic of the game was it forced you to keep dodging with your Bows. In a Bowmen duel you have to keep dodging (this goes for any unit being targeted by Bows) If you let your Bows just stand and fire at the enemy Bows they will be quickly killed because every arrow shot at them will be a hit.

It also encouraged using Ground Attack more with your Bows.

Here is what happens with normal Bows that have a set inaccuracy. Your having a Bowmen Duel the enemy Bows fire at you, you move to dodge but, because of the built in inaccuracy you actually move into the arrow. If you would have stood still it would have been a miss. When the inaccuracy is removed if you stand still you will be hit every time but if you move after the enemy fires it will always be a miss.

Unless..

your opponent anticipates where you will move and Ground Attacks that spot. The trade off is when using Ground Attack they will always hit the exact spot you aim for. You will not have a situation where you anticipated exactly where the enemy Bows would dodge fired at that spot but missed because of the built in inaccuracy. So this puts more control and responsibility in the Players hands. You have to always be actively using/controlling your Bows when vs other Bows.

It is sort of like the difference between having an automatic transmission vs a manual transmission. You can get better performance out of a manual transmission but you have to be a lot more actively engaged controlling it.

With the no bottle duds it removes the luck factor good and bad. It also makes it a little harder to Rush a duff cause you cant hope to get lucky with a dud.

You can get "Blue Moon on the Wabe" here http://static.livingcosmos.org/domains/ ... or-hg/gru/ Perfect accuracy Bows. No Bottle duds and about 99% no puss duds. Besides that it normal Gimble just set at night.

If you want there is "Gimble Head to Head" there also which lets you play CTF with 2 or 4 teams and pick which starts you want. So that you have the standard fights that people do in a 6 tm game. So you could 1v1 or 2v2 using the standard fights.

You can get the "Multi-Target Bowmen" Tag Set here. http://thebutchersmaps.weebly.com/ With this Tag Set active all your Bows (on any map with standard Bows) have the same mutli target capability of melee units.

[Dantski]

Duds with bottles and pus are an important part of myth as it is, no reason to change those IMO.

I'm also not a huge fan of changing values on Trows/FG's because making them more expensive isn't going to stop you trading for them but it does mean you get fewer units to combat them.

Myrmidons should be kept at 2 points, I already think they are underrated and making them 1 point instead causes them to be too strong.

Have to be really careful with significantly altering how many units you'll be trading for, if artillery is too expensive its just going to be melee pus fights (kind of what light maps have become to a degree anyway). On dark maps it will be trow + melee fights dominating more games than they do currently. Example on a standard Trow terries with new point values people will still most likely get 5 trow and 27 myrks and under the old values thats 228 trading points, with the new values of 30 for a trow and 5 for myrks its a whopping 285 trading points. So your options after trading for those are very limited indeed unless you add more trading points to the map. This example game isn't going to improve anything. Making Trows less resistant to destructive units might be the way to go.

[SamTheButcher]

I just noticed (I havent been to that page in a few yrs) on the link page with "Blue Moon" there is a plug "Gimble Challenge" Thats a map that is not even close to being finished. Its basically a solo run through Gimble. I have been working off and on for yrs. I get bored with it. I am working on scripting units with better AI. So that even if the computer controlled enemy has the equivalent unit points and a standard army it is hard to beat. You fight your way around the Wabe the enemy has a normal Gimble unit set and points (except on Leg). You also have a standard unit set/unit points. You first face a Rush then you face a Camper thats all thats on there right now. Eventually when finished you will fight around the map vs different unit sets and strats. There is no read me or anything. It was just there for other GrU members to test and give me feedback on. Its not worth DLing because its not finished, its buggy, and there are certain things you have to do that I had for testing. I cant remove it (I didnt set up the site) and I cant get in contact with Prince Pawn for him to remove. Anyway just in case anyone saw it and wondered what it was and you DL'ed it. You would be think WTF? If you were interested though in playing/testing it for me PM me and I can tell you some of the things you have to do to get it to work right when you play. Otherwise like I said its not worth it.

[punkUser]

Duds with bottles and pus are an important part of myth as it is, no reason to change those IMO.

Yeah agreed and I think tweaks to attacks (like dwarf melee?) are totally unnecessary for the moment. Let's just see if we can converge on what "balanced" costs should be in the current metagame, not try to reinvent Myth (although that might be a fun separate project, but has been done...).

I'm also not a huge fan of changing values on Trows/FG's because making them more expensive isn't going to stop you trading for them but it does mean you get fewer units to combat them.

Well eventually it is going to stop you trading for them, and that's the point. What if Trow were 100 points? Are you still going to max them out and have zero other units? I think not Even at 30 I start to question whether you really want 5 on Trow in modes like terries or king of the map, as you significantly hinder your ability to control the map that way (but testing is needed). At the very least it would force you to split your trow, which is a good start.

So your options after trading for those are very limited indeed unless you add more trading points to the map. This example game isn't going to improve anything. Making Trows less resistant to destructive units might be the way to go.

Right but you're presupposing that trade based on the old UT values. The idea is that maybe it's not the optimal trade anymore, considering you can get masses of other units instead now. 1 trow, or 10 souls? Similarly a lock only has to kill ~2 myrk now (or damage 4) to pay for itself.

Trow are definitely still in a weird place balance-wise, being both fast and strong (which I still question what Bungie's thinking was, but yeah ). That said, they are not immune to cost changes, they might just have steeper cliffs where they become not worth it than other units.

[Myrk]

Duds just reward people for sucking. One reason Starcraft succeeded where Myth failed at being an e-sport is because there's no luck factor in their units.
Perfect accuracy on bowmen would just make them useless against anyone who can dodge. The only reason they hit anything now is because of their random inaccuracy.
As for those trading point changes, if that went into effect on a map like Caer Cadarn, people would just skimp on souls, zerks or mauls and still max fetch and trow, because doing anything else would be retarded.

[punkUser]

Duds just reward people for sucking. One reason Starcraft succeeded where Myth failed at being an e-sport is because there's no luck factor in their units.

Nah, randomness is important to avoid the game being a simple math equation; it adds necessary variety and allows players who can plan for contingencies to apply that skill to better an opponent, rather than being able to simply just "play the moment". The key is to have enough randomness that it averages out over the course of a game/match/tourney, and Myth is fine in that regard. While frustrating, it's quite rare that a single dud decides a game, let alone a whole tournament or anything.

The reason SC has become a popular e-sport has almost nothing to do with randomness. There are lots of games with even more randomness than Myth that succeed. Like I said, the key is to have it regress to the mean properly over a reasonable interval.

As for those trading point changes, if that went into effect on a map like Caer Cadarn, people would just skimp on souls, zerks or mauls and still max fetch and trow, because doing anything else would be retarded.

So where's the breaking point? What if you could only have one trow or every other unit on the map? Still would go for that Trow? I don't think so. So where's the cross-over? I think it's worth finding even if the resulting cost is not reasonable.

Anyways, while there's nothing wrong with experimenting with whatever plugin changes you want, but once you start changing stuff beyond UT values it's clearly changing the game, and that'll get more controversial with people. If you stick to just UT values then it's not really any different than changing the trades, which is far less likely to alienate people.

[Myrk]

There's already randomness without factoring in duds because pus/bottles either explode instantly or bounce before exploding.
So what contingency plan would you recommend exactly for your 10 warr 1 pus army getting rushed by 13 warriors in a tight box formation, and the pus you just tossed into the middle of them dudded? Keep in mind if he leaves 1 warr over the dud pus you can't pick it up. Or how about getting rushed by 9 warrs and an empty ghol, which has now picked up the dud pus? I'm curious as to these contingencies that you think people can plan for in these situations.
But yeah, you're right, no tourney match has even been decided by duds. No regular games either. My bad.

[punkUser]

There's already randomness without factoring in duds because pus/bottles either explode instantly or bounce before exploding.

So that randomness is ok, even if it causes you to totally miss your target (or all targets) and have it be as useless as a dud, but duds are not? Not sure I follow.

So what contingency plan would you recommend exactly for your 10 warr 1 pus army getting rushed by 13 warriors in a tight box formation, and the pus you just tossed into the middle of them dudded?

Have a backup pus, or a duff, or similar. Or be prepared to retreat/get reenforced, etc. That's the point, you have to *plan* for the possibility of a dud. You have the option of being riskier and putting all your pus in one basket, but there's a chance that can backfire. That's the fun of it, not knowing exactly units N > units M because there's a little bit of variability throw in. You can elect to reduce the variability with redundancy/contingency plans or you can play riskier and push the advantage on more places at once, but with the full knowledge that you may have to adjust to one of them having something unexpected happen.

I think those sorts of risk/reward decisions spice up the strategic aspect of Myth a whole lot. You're of course welcome to disagree, and ultimately this is simply a matter of opinion. Both sides will argue that theirs requires more "skill"... typical human psychology. In my opinion though, interesting crap due to physics, duds, etc. is one of the main things that makes Myth worth playing for 10+ years. If you change that, it's not really Myth. That would be a far more drastic change than many of the ones that you've complained about in the past for instance, so are you really proposing that it be done, or just discussing it?

But yeah, you're right, no tourney match has even been decided by duds. No regular games either. My bad.

Somehow you read "rarely" as "never"? But I'm curious about the numbers and how much theory-crafting you're actually applying here. How many MWC games from the last few years have been fairly clear/indisputably decided by a dud? While I recall some important duds, I don't actually recall any offhand that were decided by one. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there was one or two, but I'm curious what the actual ratio is like.

[Giant Killer General]

Well I set out to do this with the theory that this would create a much greater variety of viable trades and strategies. This makes the game more newb friendly as well since they don't have to know the one "good" trade to get when they captain. All those wasted rabble games from newb captain trades will be greatly reduced. There is more creativity that can go into the trades and strategies. There actually will be a greater element of "counter strategy" with this now as well since half the previously units were inbalanced. The unit trade is now pretty abstract across the maps and gametypes. However there seems to still be ways to get a superior trade / strategy, which is now based mostly on the gametype and map, which matter much more now then before when considering what trade to get. For example, for trow FR or CTF you may still want to get the trow for the push factor. However for terries trow you may want go trowless. However that doesn't guarantee you a win if the opponent does something different, it is in all how you use the strengths / weaknesses of your trade against the opponent and exploit their weaknesses.

The testing we have done so far seems to support this theory. So while we still need to do more testing with more people, the arguments saying that you would still max trow / myrk, fetch, etc. are proving to be inaccurate so far. Really at this point I would just suggest everyone actually tries testing it first since that is far better than talking about what you think might happen without actually trying it. We have it up and running that can easily be tested by anyone.

Myrk is correct about the archers being slightly inaccurate does actually help you to hit things more often. When you send out a volley of arrows it is more like a shotgun blast instead of just a laser on a single point. Sure the "laser" is more deadly but a skilled player is going to dodge it constantly. As far as the pus / dorf bounces / duds, I don't know. Right now I am kind of partial to having a guaranteed small bounce on everything but no duds. So you can still click a unit to attack it and hit it, but it will be less effective than a carefully aimed attack ground click. Really it has been talked about for years and I just want to try it and see what it is like. Also as far as the dorf stab, it would be identical to the archer stab. I think everyone agrees the archer stab was a good change to have, so it is certainly worth testing to see if we can have the same success with the dorf.

I am not sure what to do yet with the myrm. I disagree that they were underrated, they have always been underpowered units. I never trade for them unless I absolutely have to get a few. Try fighting a myrm with a zerk and you will see what I am talking about. The tossup is whether they should be 2 pts but with more hp, or 1 pt with less hp. I don't know, but I want to test it though.

The after effect of having less units does kind of suck, as that was an unintentional side-effect of all of this. However it may be just a matter of getting used to it. Also I wonder if there is something we can do about that within the tagset as well to make up for that.

[punkUser]

It has been talked about for years and I just want to try it and see what it is like.

Indeed, and that's the power of being able to so easily make a plugin. Like I said I'm sort of surprised more people haven't played around with minor variances more... plugins tend to get carried away and change massive amounts of stuff.

Also as far as the dorf stab, it would be identical to the archer stab. I think everyone agrees the archer stab was a good change to have, so it is certainly worth testing to see if we can have the same success with the dorf.

Hard to say... while I don't mind the archer stab, I don't think it's critical to have in the game or anything. Also I could see a duff stab really throwing off some of the interplay with ghol. Since duffs are more expensive units, I like their higher risk/reward payoff and having a stab does sort of reduce the risk in the situations vs. ghol. Meh, probably not a big deal but I hardly see a need for the change.

The after effect of having less units does kind of suck, as that was an unintentional side-effect of all of this. However it may be just a matter of getting used to it. Also I wonder if there is something we can do about that within the tagset as well to make up for that.

I don't think there's much you can do in a tagset other than reduce the cost of other units (and since there aren't fractional costs, we're sort of stuck there unless we want to rescale everything - which btw, is totally doable as well). However you can obviously alter the trades on the specific maps if desired, as is often done for MWC anyways.

[Giant Killer General]

I also like Myrks' suggestion of removing the duds but leaving the bounces. Didn't think of that. So there is your randomness still.

Myrk really is correct though that duds have on rare occasion been huge deciding factors in tournament matches. 1 pus dud that now goes into the hands of the enemy totally can swing the match. That 1 pus dud is now like the other team getting 2 extra free pus. Just think of it in terms like that, every pus dud that the enemy can pick up (which is often the case) is the equivalent of them getting 2 more pus than you at the start. Just personally I can recall having played 1 tournament desert games where my team got like 3 more pus duds than the opponent and it just totally flips the game around, nothing you can do it about it except turn around, bend over, grab your ankles, and prepare to get fucked. And since it is a competitive skill-based tournament, that is really frustrating. And that was only only recently.

I disagree that knowing that there is an element of duds ever changes my strategy or how i approach a situation. They happen so infrequently. It adds no gameplay value, it just really sucks when a dud happens to you. Even when it happens to the other team it sucks, because now it took away from the validity of your win over them. And that is the worst part of all of this I think, the lack of respect due from the lack of skill. You want the players in this game to respect each other's skill, not have it diluted by luck. Even when the opponent gets a dud against me and I end up winning, that dud now took something away from my win. Because now they have the excuse, and its sometimes valid. Who knows what would have happened had that dud not happened? So no matter what, duds suck I think.

[Dantski]

Well eventually it is going to stop you trading for them, and that's the point. What if Trow were 100 points? Are you still going to max them out and have zero other units? I think not Even at 30 I start to question whether you really want 5 on Trow in modes like terries or king of the map, as you significantly hinder your ability to control the map that way (but testing is needed). At the very least it would force you to split your trow, which is a good start.

One thing that really comes to mind when discussing this is that Bungie really should have looked at and experimented more back in the 90's. Lets say we do some testing now and come up with Trow being 30 points as balanced, the testing will unfortunately be done over the span of dozens or hundreds of games rather than thousands and may not yield a fair result. I'm also concerned about the effect changing costs would have on all the maps with those units because you'd have to seriously consider giving players more points to spend if most unit costs are increased.

Duds just reward people for sucking. One reason Starcraft succeeded where Myth failed at being an e-sport is because there's no luck factor in their units.
Perfect accuracy on bowmen would just make them useless against anyone who can dodge. The only reason they hit anything now is because of their random inaccuracy.
As for those trading point changes, if that went into effect on a map like Caer Cadarn, people would just skimp on souls, zerks or mauls and still max fetch and trow, because doing anything else would be retarded.

Duds have been part of Myth since TFL, having them vs not having them is just an opinion call. If you didn't have them I assume you'd also have to give up bottles + pus ever bouncing too. Would you also make it so Fetch lightning is perfectly straight and won't occasionally hit a small hill instead? How far do you go with eliminating randomness and how much do you consider part of the game? (like bowmen accuracy)

The trading point changes are ideally there to provide more diversity than just the generic max trow/fetch/fastmelee on that kind of map. Its questionable whether we can ever get to a point where its a legitimate trade to get 0 trow or 0 pus on maps with those available and its a good thing to ask if we want that to be possible or not. I think Trows are the obvious main problem with balancing to start tinkering with considering they are the toughest/fastest unit that can't be frozen by pus or heavily damaged by artillery and are very cost effective. Now the way to deal with Trow if you don't have Trow of your own is to use archers/souls/bre to poke at it while having enough melee to protect those units. So ideally if thats the counter to Trow the trading cost of those units should beat the Trow right? Now you might argue that I'm wrong and that its just melee that counters the Trow but then the Trow has no reason to ever fight that melee does it? This again comes down to # of units you can trade for whether it be artillery/melee/whatever because perhaps in my example you could have max artillery and enough melee to cover off a Trow. In this case its a matter of can the defending artillery make itself worthwhile vs the potential max melee with the Trow? These are the questions that need to be asked so we can better answer them.

None of this is guaranteed to make it into future tournaments or anything Myrk but I believe its worth considering.

[Zak]

the increase in cost to myrks and trow should decrease the cost to soulless, making it less viable to get 5 trow and max myrks imo

[Giant Killer General]

I think the way I see this being used is not as a replacement for standard myth as it is now, but as a complement to it. I could see like 1 or 2 maps through the duration of a tournament with the unit trading altered in this way being used in a tournament, on select maps that could be popular with these changes implemented. Just a little bit of it to spice it up with something different maybe.

[Dantski]

Anyone remember the MWC08 NC vs A game where a pus from a wight explosion randomly bounced and stopped us from taking a flag?

Oh yeah here from 2.36 on.

[Giant Killer General]

Also I just want to mention that there is a big difference between duds and bounces. Bounces still go off and almost always still hit something for some amount of dmg. It is the duds on the clumped melee, or the pus duds that are picked up by the opponent, that can be the huge game changers. To me, bounces would be more comparable to the randomness in the archer shooting, which as previously mentioned, is a good thing. Bounces also reduces stalemates which could certainly happen. The best example of a stalemate, would most often occur in mort vs mort fights currently. Of course morts / dorf heroes don't have bounces, but normal dwarves could stalemate as well.

Actually that is interesting, do we like that dorf heroes and morts do not bounce? If so, why should normal dorfs be different? I think pus is a separate category so I still think there should be pus bounces because there is a good skill in aiming that, but curious to hear other people's thoughts on this.

We already experience dudless dorfs as well with dorf heroes. Do we like that? Anyone have any thoughts?

[punkUser]

Meh, I just fundamentally disagree on the randomness issue, and it really is just an opinion in the end as I stated. The real reason why people dislike randomness so much is simply confirmation bias... you remember when it works against you and not when it works for you, even within a single game. Randomness in video games is useful for the same reason you roll dice in board games... because unpredictability adds variation, and sometimes it's neat to have an uphill battle even if you did nothing wrong yourself. That's where you can really separate the men from the boys And I will note that randomness in Myth has far less of an effect than in any board game that I know of.

Again, there is a mathematical way to look at this though if we care enough to run the numbers... look at how the frequency of duds predicts victory/loss with other factors normalized.

Myrk really is correct though that duds have on rare occasion been huge deciding factors in tournament matches.

That's exactly what I said... I even used the word "rarely". I hardly consider that an issue, and it doesn't seem to affected the ability of good players to consistently win, often in very convincing fashions.

1 pus dud that now goes into the hands of the enemy totally can swing the match.

I will agree that pus duds are more of an issue that duff duds since they are much less numerous and thus do not regress to the mean as well (and as noted, they actually can actually give the other player the pus). I would heavily argue for not changing duff duds (having bottles occasionally fall on the ground adds a lot of fun in the ensuing fight), but I don't have a strong opinion on pus.

[NewMutator]

I say go ahead and test it out and see if you like it, if you're determined to tinker with the physics. From a design philosophy standpoint, I like the randomness, for the reasons that PunkUser outlined. I think puss duds are interesting, and though it may be true that they take away from the glory of a win, I don't see how that's much different than say, a fumble in football. As far as I'm aware fumbles are allowed, and have the capacity to determine game outcomes, despite their not having to do with player skill much of the time. The utility of this could be argued endlessly, as it boils down to a difference of opinion, as Punk mentioned. How much should random factors be allowed to affect the outcome of a game?

Having said that I think it's important to test out anything you think might be an improvement and see if it catches on.

I do think that mapmakers should consider alternate trade options in the future, for the same reasons that GKG outlined above.

I will also note that, aside from puss, all of the proposed changes are for tweaking dark unit sets. This leads me to think that perhaps light unit sets are somehow less "broken" overall, and that they offer greater variety in terms of viable possible trades. Is this a fair thing to say?

[Giant Killer General]

you didnt answer my other questions though punk.

You realize that morts only dud, and have no bounces? And dorf heroes have no bounces or duds? Has either of those affected the popularity of those units or positive gameplay of maps with those units? What is the reasoning to have 1 dorf type that has bounces? and 1 that doesn't have duds? Why shouldn't there be consistency? Lock fireballs don't bounce or dud either.

[par73]

fireballs have duded before but the percentage of it happening is close to the chance of a lit satchel charge being dropped

[Giant Killer General]

LN - as far as the light vs dark thing, yea that is probably fair to say. I never really looked at that comparison. Pus is probably the only thing inbalanced in light maps that I can think of.

The fumble analogy to myth pus duds is unfair. That is actual physics taking place there, so there is skill that can affect the probability and outcome of that. Some players fumble more often than others. In myth duds, it is computer generated randomness. Everyone has the same chance of dudding no matter what, it can't be helped. Completely different, you can't make that comparison.

[Giant Killer General]

ok so par, that was a bug that was fixed, which btw i have never seen happen in my life. Has anyone seen a lock fireball dud? How does that even work? Punk, are you aware of that?

[SamTheButcher]

Also I just want to mention that there is a big difference between duds and bounces. Bounces still go off and almost always still hit something for some amount of dmg. It is the duds on the clumped melee, or the pus duds that are picked up by the opponent, that can be the huge game changers. To me, bounces would be more comparable to the randomness in the archer shooting, which as previously mentioned, is a good thing. Bounces also reduces stalemates which could certainly happen. The best example of a stalemate, would most often occur in mort vs mort fights currently. Of course morts / dorf heroes don't have bounces, but normal dwarves could stalemate as well.

Actually that is interesting, do we like that dorf heroes and morts do not bounce? If so, why should normal dorfs be different? I think pus is a separate category so I still think there should be pus bounces because there is a good skill in aiming that, but curious to hear other people's thoughts on this.

We already experience dudless dorfs as well with dorf heroes. Do we like that? Anyone have any thoughts?

If you want to try it out "Blue Moon" has what you are talking about. When I made the duffs dudless I made sure not to remove the same bounce chances. So the bottles on that map are like what you are talking about. They have the same chance as always to bounce but they will never dud. The puss I tried to do that to and I cant remember right now the reason I couldnt but that is why it is like 99% dud free for puss. I couldnt remove all chances of puss duds and still keep the bounce chance possible. So the puss there has the same chance to bounce as normal puss and will 99% of the time explode. Its already made if you want to see how it works. I like it myself. You can still get the lucky bounce but you wont lose the game because of a dud.

What about allowing duffs to purposefully throw duds? For realism they should be able to. Why couldnt they throw a bottle without lighting it? Because one thing nice about having duds is that sometimes you can use them to your advantage. Like with 2 duffs fighting. One of you throw a dud and then later one of you are able to bounce that dud with another bottle into your opponents duff. If you could purposefully throw duds you could get creative with that.

As far as the UT and balance subject. What about changing some of the damage received values for units like Trow and others? Right now they have a amount resistance to some damage types. What about makings some changes there. So that some of the damage types have a greater effect?

I like the duff stabbing. Bungie put the sequence in there already then decided not to use it. I think it is far more realistic for the duff to be able to stab. He does carry a knife. It should be low damage but it is absurd that like a totally red Ghol can chase down and kill a Duff and the Duff cant fight back at all. I dont think that would have any major effects on game play at all.

I am pretty much all for anything to make the game more realistic and be able to do commonsense things even in the Myth fantasy world. Like why couldnt a duff throw purposeful duds? Why couldnt Bowmen have multiple targets? Why couldnt a Duff stab? Why couldnt Duff bottles be more reliable after 100's of years of Duffs making them? These things put more control into Players hands which opens more room for skill and gameplay options. The amount of control is one of the things that makes Myth so good.

[Giant Killer General]

To everyone that is pro-duds and bounces: Why don't we make dorf heroes dud and bounce just the same? Why don't we have morts bounce? Why do we not have all of the dorfs be consistent then? I want to hear your arguments for this. Because if you are against making it consistent with all arty units, then it seems it is just a matter of keeping it the same just for the sake of keeping it the same, with no real logic behind it. You are happy to accept the current standard because that was what was given to us by bungie 15 years ago and it must certainly already be perfect.

However if you are for consistent duds/bounces, then why not test that as well? There seems to be no logic behind this otherwise. It isn't JUST a matter of opinion, there is logic and valid arguments to be had here. The anti-bounce/dud position certainly has a valid argument that it would be more skill-based. The other side seems to just "like it" without any real logic or valid argument behind it. That is fine, but so you must answer my question as to why we don't make all the arty units or at least just the dorfs consistent in this regard. If you like it, then certainly you would like more of it?

Also consider this: Bungie most likely designed this game around their single-player campaign first, i.e. co-op. I agree duds and bounces makes co-op more interesting. I really doubt they considered any of the ramifications of these designs on multiplayer pvp, and they certainly did not foresee competitive tournaments. That is what this is addressing.

[NewMutator]

Do vetted dorfs bounce and dud less? If so, it would make sense and be consistent with dorf heroes not bouncing or dudding at all.

[Giant Killer General]

oh lets not talk about vetted dorfs. First of all, I have never seen a noticeable difference with a vetted dorf or archer, and I know they also need a crazy amount of kills to be even be considered vetted so rarely does that even happen.

Second of all, we shouldn't be looking at this from what makes sense from a roleplaying standpoint. That is a co-op line of thought. We should look at this as to what makes sense from a pvp gameplay standpoint.

Third of all, in order for that theory to be TRULY consistent that dorf heroes are really just vetted versions of dorfs instead of a different unit type, then vetting a dorf should also grant it increased range, hitpoints, attack speed, etc. And then what about heron guard heroes? We all know that is not how vetting works.

[NewMutator]

Archers vet by becoming more accurate (reduced velocity error) and by having reduced cooldown (recovery time) between shots. By the time they are at 4 kills they have 0 velocity error, which means they pretty much fire exactly where you tell them to. I agree this isn't really that noticeable in the heat of battle, but it's still significant.

Anyway, I don't know if bottle physics change as dwarves vet (they become more accurate and again, slightly reduced cooldown) which is why I posed it as a question.

[NewMutator]

You could say that fumbles and puss duds are incomparable because the games themselves are radically different, in addition to making a distinction between "real" and "virtual" physics, but I think the point still stands in that both are unanticipated events that can radically alter the outcomes of each respective game. Saying a fumble requires skill is not entirely accurate, because while a ball can be stripped, or dropped due to the compromised skill of the ball handler, sometimes it can occur as if by random chance for no discernible reason.

Also, I stand by what I said earlier, which is, go ahead and build the plugins for testing, and see how you like it. I'm not a priori against reduced randomness, but neither do I think it represents a clear improvement because, as PunkUser already alluded, duds factor into the risk/reward of trading for puss. If a player duds and it loses his team the game, that is a function of the risk associated with trading for a strategy that relies on puss for its rewards. That's just how I'm inclined to see it right now. If puss did not dud, I don't know how a pussless trade could be made viable other than through significant alterations to the unit trading system.

[Myrk]

I also like Myrks' suggestion of removing the duds but leaving the bounces. Didn't think of that. So there is your randomness still.

Myrk really is correct though that duds have on rare occasion been huge deciding factors in tournament matches. 1 pus dud that now goes into the hands of the enemy totally can swing the match. That 1 pus dud is now like the other team getting 2 extra free pus. Just think of it in terms like that, every pus dud that the enemy can pick up (which is often the case) is the equivalent of them getting 2 more pus than you at the start. Just personally I can recall having played 1 tournament desert games where my team got like 3 more pus duds than the opponent and it just totally flips the game around, nothing you can do it about it except turn around, bend over, grab your ankles, and prepare to get fucked. And since it is a competitive skill-based tournament, that is really frustrating. And that was only only recently.

I disagree that knowing that there is an element of duds ever changes my strategy or how i approach a situation. They happen so infrequently. It adds no gameplay value, it just really sucks when a dud happens to you. Even when it happens to the other team it sucks, because now it took away from the validity of your win over them. And that is the worst part of all of this I think, the lack of respect due from the lack of skill. You want the players in this game to respect each other's skill, not have it diluted by luck. Even when the opponent gets a dud against me and I end up winning, that dud now took something away from my win. Because now they have the excuse, and its sometimes valid. Who knows what would have happened had that dud not happened? So no matter what, duds suck I think.

Agreed with everything said here. When I win a fight I want it to be because I outplayed the other guy, not because he got a dud on my units. Likewise, when I lose a fight where I clearly played better than the other guy just because of duds (my record is 3 pus duds in a row) it makes me question why I even play this game.

So that randomness is ok, even if it causes you to totally miss your target (or all targets) and have it be as useless as a dud, but duds are not? Not sure I follow.

Somehow you read "rarely" as "never"? But I'm curious about the numbers and how much theory-crafting you're actually applying here. How many MWC games from the last few years have been fairly clear/indisputably decided by a dud? While I recall some important duds, I don't actually recall any offhand that were decided by one. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there was one or two, but I'm curious what the actual ratio is like.

The thing is with the "will it bounce or blow up right away" question is that players can deal with it. If I throw a pus at a dorf, for example; if I throw it just in front of the dorf I'll hit it regardless of whether it bounces or blows up right away. If the dorf has time to react, it can still be dodged. The closer I can get my ghol to the dorf, the more likely it is that the pus goes off. The dynamic rewards people who are able to get ghols closer to their target, which is a good thing imo. Likewise, if I throw the pus at the feet of a pack of melee, I'm guaranteed to hit them if it explodes immediately or bounces.

Other people have called out that there have been games decided by duds, and I'm sure close matches have ultimately been decided by duds. Can't say which ones exactly because there have been a ton of games played over the years.

Have a backup pus, or a duff, or similar. Or be prepared to retreat/get reenforced, etc. That's the point, you have to *plan* for the possibility of a dud. You have the option of being riskier and putting all your pus in one basket, but there's a chance that can backfire. That's the fun of it, not knowing exactly units N > units M because there's a little bit of variability throw in. You can elect to reduce the variability with redundancy/contingency plans or you can play riskier and push the advantage on more places at once, but with the full knowledge that you may have to adjust to one of them having something unexpected happen.

Look, we all know you increase the chance of pussing something by double-pussing, but in real competitive games, you can't afford to be throwing away 2 pus when it should require one to get the job done. In terms of unit trading points, killing a dorf with 1 pus puts you ahead, and using 2 pus on a dorf puts you behind. Doubling up on dwarves just to make sure they don't dud when they're needed puts you behind elsewhere as well. And needing to be reinforced also puts you behind because in real competitive games getting reinforced means somewhere else is going to have fewer units and be more vulnerable.

Duds have been part of Myth since TFL, having them vs not having them is just an opinion call. If you didn't have them I assume you'd also have to give up bottles + pus ever bouncing too. Would you also make it so Fetch lightning is perfectly straight and won't occasionally hit a small hill instead? How far do you go with eliminating randomness and how much do you consider part of the game? (like bowmen accuracy)

Like I said to Punkuser, good players can deal with bounces by adjusting where they throw. In my experience fetch shots don't involve any randomness whatsoever, and if they hit a hill instead of the target that's the player's mistake.