Hero Balancing and the OP Tempest

General GTG General Discussion
21

The biggest problem here?

You can highlight every Heros strengths and weaknesses all you want. In a game that is predicated in "hero interaction", you miss a vital aspect of the game. None of the Heros function in a vacume. You win with cleaver uses of hero interaction. 

You over value tempest and similar 'independent' Heros while overlooking ways to create interesting team interactions with more support oriented Heros. And I'd argue Fixer is as much a support hero as Visionary and Nightmists. 

This game is deeper than just damage and ongoing destruction. I feel it's easy to lose sight of that and get locked into the "Ill never win if X is/isn't on my team" mindset

22

Invisible Monkey,

There is a Sentinels of the Multiverse statistics thread at:

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/the-best-heroes-a-statistical-community-effort-2798

It has over 2000 games. I'd take a look at that first to get a feel for how the heroes stack up against one another. Feel free to enter your games there, too. I understand your desire to remove variables to decide which heroes need balancing, but I think the statistics are the best way to look at it.

Tempest is above average, but Dark Visionary, Legacy, Team Leader Tachyon, and Omnitron-X outperform him. You are correct that Fixer is in the bottom of the list of effective heroes. My house rule is:

Strike: You may discard a card. If you do Mr. Fixer deals one target 2 melee damage. If you don't Mr. Fixer deals one target 1 melee damage.

Spiff has a good one on his site, too. I disagree with you that Fixer doesn't outshine anyone. He is the most flexible character with the best damage shutdown combo (Grease Gun followed by a Salvage Yard to return Grease Gun).

On the topic of balancing, I am a big advocate for a balanced game because those ones are the most fun. However, that is not what the designers intended. They made a game that tells a story. In comic books the fights are not always balanced. The heroes don't mill around saying, "I'm not going to fight Galactus since I am not as strong as some of the other heroes." No, when the world is threatened they fight and try their best with what they've got.

That said, the designers didn't make a comic (well, they did, but...) they made a co-op game. And co-op games are most fun when you feel like you've helped so I understand your need to balance. That's why I use house rules.

23

Foote, you misunderstand, I think. The FUN in the game is figuring out those awesome interactions.  I would never deny that!  But when a hero consistently performs worse than almost any other hero in their place, it should be investigated to see if:

A) the players were just not creative, or

B) he really did have an issue in those matches.  

The idea is to create a body of data we can use, instead of relying on conjecture and none-analytical anecdotes.

the method I propose would allow not only independent review of the games and data, but a method to analyze the PLAYER'S methods to see if optimum choices were made for each circumstance presented, thus diminishing (or at least quantifying for future correction) play style's effect on the analysis.

 

the 3 man teams I suggest would account for interactions, as we would specifically choose heroes to maximize and minimize interactions with our test subject.

EDIT: Made sure Foote knew this was a partial response to them.

24

Invisible Monkey, are you following the stats project? The community is collecting pretty much everything you describe, and there's talk of converting the data into a format that's a little easier to manipulate. But as it stands, what you're proposing is *kind of* happening (you could make a local copy of the running spreadsheet that everything is appended to and sift out near-identical games), however the biggest problem is scale. Since the game relies so heavily on the randomness of the cards, you need a lot of games to be able to draw solid conclusions.

I, too, have thought of ways to evaluate an individual hero, but with the way the game works, it's just impossible. Because while two heroes may play a similar role (Expat and Chrono both deal lots of damage), they interact with other heroes differently. I think the current project is the way to go, as the sheer volume of games collected will eventually produce reliable data.

25

I've checked the statistics, and they are quite awesome. They are part of the reason I decided a more in-depth analysis was needed.  

As for telling a story, I'm all for that as well!  But for some heroes, the story seems to consistently be: The Worlds Most One Sided Fist Fights (in the villain's favor).  

My goal is not to get rid of heroes losing, or tell a bad story, but to increase the variety of story you would get with champions that at this time seem to embody the narrative of the Tragic Hero, Destined to lose despite his greatest efforts; a GREAT story if you find hope that he CAN win, but very boring if he is outclassed every step of the way.

Stories need variety, but some heroes lack the ability to produce that variety with any consistency.

 

I have played many, MANY losing games against Advanced villains, and I have enjoyed them as much as the winning games.  I'm not here to avoid losses.  The game would be too easy and less enjoyable.  I'm here to help bring characters to a more full-bodied existence.  I hate seeing players AVOID a hero who they think doesn't perform well or isn't fun to play.  This may just be their opinion, though.  But when their choice is justified by the statistics, then I feel this is something we can resolve by improving the hero.  Is that a bad thing?  Are we so set on the current capabilities of a hero that we wouldn't improve them to reduce the discrepancy between them and their allies?  

 

 

26

The discrepancy is not, statistically, significant, or at least it wasn't when I ran the numbers. If you feel a hero is underpowered, then feel free to house-rule, but if you can't beat advanced villains without certain heroes then I'd suggest that you just need a bit more experience playing the 'underpowered' heroes; chances are you just haven't got the hang of playing them.

(Before anyone mentions Expat or Fixer: I don't own Rook City, so I can't comment on them, but two heroes being debatably slightly underpowered is very much not the same as villains being unbeatable without hero X.)

27

There's a (quite passionate) discussion that touches on this very point in the Expatriette Fix thread. There are people who defend Expat as fun to play because they enjoy how she plays, while there are others trying to improve their own enjoyment because she just doesn't win as much. Likewise for Fixer (I love playing Fixer), the stats speak for themselves, while I think there's nothing wrong with him. Though to be fair, as a Fixer apologist, I would not be shocked if Fixer's stats improve as people learn how to play him :slight_smile:

28

Agreed, when (lets just say) a citizen attacks Fixer or everyone for damage he takes none, AND a target that you want to take damage is hit.  That is essentially negating an attack and getting a free attack all wrapped up in one awesome package.  I've seen Fixer really excel, but it usually involves Mantis and being a target for attacks rather than doing his own damage.

I think Fixer's fine performance wise, but if I could redesign a hero to play differently I would choose him.  Making mantis part of his base power and giving him some one shots would be the start.

29

Invisible Monkey, I totally see where you are coming from. 

But consider what "balance" is to game design and how it differs from "symmetry"

All Heros performing at similar win rates for all villains sounds like what you want to accomplish. It also sounds like symmetry to me. 

Just food for thought.

30

but if you can't beat advanced villains without certain heroes then I'd suggest that you just need a bit more experience playing the 'underpowered' heroes;

This is the stigma my method seeks to avoid.  ANY person could see the cards played and held each round, recreate the game up to any point, and see whether the hero was just played poorly or was played well and performed poorly.

The L2Play stigma (not that you meant it like that, BlueHairedMeetkat.  It's just a popular argument) is never backed with data, so it is just an opinion without basis, and therefore must be either proven correct or ignored.  It CANNOT be proven correct without evidence.  Here, we will GATHER the evidence, and we and the readers can then learn from others the new ways to play that they never realized before, or the players will be found justified in their cries of a poor performing hero.

I don't know WHY we would ever be against gathering this type of data.  It's just data.  We could learn a lot from it, and perhaps make SotM an even stronger game for our hard work!

I know sometimes "improvements" and "balancing" can ruin a game.  I don't want that kind of improvement.  WoW tried to make each class closer to the playstyle and capabilities of the other classes, and this made the game bland.  But what if improvements went the other way?  Give each hero their own individual strength; an area they play MUCH better than any other hero?  I think SotM does a great job of this with Legacy, Haka, Visionary, The Wraith, and many more.  But I feel some heroes, like Fixer and Chrono could use a little boost to strengthen their niche, and enhance their flavor.

Opinion aside, it is data that can be used to provide useful information about the game, in detail and in statistical broad strokes.

I will start collecting data on my games in the format I propose, and you guys can rip at my playstyle or compliment my creativity, and determine for yourselves if:

A) The data is worthwhile.

B) My and others' opinions on the heroes is justified or unjustified.

Who would you recommend I play as a villain, in which environment, for Mr. Fixer's first set of 20 tests? (10 with him, 10 without).

What duo pairs should be teamed with (and without) him?

31

For Fixer? Put him up against the Rat. Lets see how underpowered he looks then! MWAHAHAHAHA

For low damage/multi-ping characters like Fixer and Chrono, damage multipliers are absolutley king since they benifit from them exponentially. Legacy, Ra, Visionary, Argent can make a good fits there.

Fixer also lacks ways to quickly dispatch ongoing/environment targets. Argents and OmiX have power based destruction which is quite handy. A number of others can help here too.

Any hero who's very equipment dependant (looking at you OmiX and Wraith) love Salvage Yard after a board wipe.

If Fixer does not have a Legacy type boost damage, then you will benifit from someone who can dole out the hurting when needed.

Since Fixer is one of the fastest heros in game (only needing 2 turns to set up potentialy for the rest of the game) frees him up to work very well with slow build heros like AbZ. Try smaking AbZ with some Grease Monkey loving and see the damage/healing fly.

Fixer works best when used as an offtank type. Dont pair him with others like that.

32

Technically Fanatic has her One-Shot that deals up to three targets 1 Irreducible Radiant damage and redirects all damage they deal to her, but your point still stands.  Also Chrono Ranger has The Masadah now, so both ST heroes have ways to deal Irreducible damage.

 

Tempest was the first hero I played with, and I absolutely love him.  I've rarely had a game where he was ineffectual.  I've rarely played him against The Dreamer, however, as quite a few of his cards aren't terribly helpful against her.  Try him out against her and get back to me.  I understand where a lot of your criticisms are coming from, Invisible Monkey, but I think you might want to do a bit more testing.  I've rarely had a problem with DR or equipment destruction with Chrono Ranger, and Expat/Fixer have their merits (even if I have my own criticisms about them).  Generally, if you can actually get the cards you need, the Rook City heroes can really pack a punch.  I do often find, however, that they need other heroes to hold their hands when it comes to actually obtaining those cards.

33

I by no means want to derail or discourage this discussion as it is definitely super interesting! I do, however, want to put in my $0.02. I think that much of this discussion, as Foote pointed out, hinges on what one means by "balance". From my perspective, since SotM is a cooperative game, balance should not imply power symetry, like it would in a PvP game. Instead, it should imply "fun symetry", i.e., if, in the overall fan community, roughly the same number of people consider playing each of the characters to be "fun", then the characters are balanced (I also care about the intensity of the enjoyment; for example, if one character is generally enjoyed by a large number of people, and another is very intensely enjoyed by a smaller number, I would still consider them balanced).

Now, this sort of balance is certainly not going to be achieved in any given small group; one group may derive their fun from the character interactions, and another from optimizing the power of any given team. However, judging both by conversations on this forum and with fans in-person, I consider the game to be quite balanced indeed for the Sentinels fan community as a whole.

34

I'm inclined to agree.  I have my frustrations with certain decks, don't get me wrong.  But my group hasn't straight up outlawed any decks in our games or felt the need to house rule anything.  We have had some games be more tedious than we have liked, and a few decks provide us with less enjoyment than others, but this is still one of my favorite games.

Like, ever.

35

Your methodology is trying to single out player skill as a potential reason for poor performance, but the deck is still random. You give any hero (other than Team Leader Tachyon, Dark Visionary, and Grandpappy Legacy [maaaaybe the other two Legacies as well]) an awful initial draw and an unluckily shuffled deck, and they're going to hold the team back.

I'm not saying that documenting every move of every game would give us bad data, I'm saying that it wouldn't give us enough data. And even if enough people provided enough data points to draw conclusions, the amount of work to analyze each of those to say whether it should be trusted or not based on player skill would be astronomical.

36

Your methodology is trying to single out player skill as a potential reason for poor performance, but the deck is still random. You give any hero (other than Team Leader Tachyon, Dark Visionary, and Grandpappy Legacy [maaaaybe the other two Legacies as well]) an awful initial draw and an unluckily shuffled deck, and they're going to hold the team back.

 

Of course your hand will have an affect on the game.  So if I only played 1 game with this hero, I could expect it to NOT be a good representation of how well the hero plays.  If I play 10 games, however, now I have a backdrop 10x larger which can present a much more accurate picture of how well this hero plays.  If I play another 10 games WITHOUT that hero, then I have a "base line" at which games are played without our test subject.  And with all statistical measurements, the more times I test, play, and record, the more representative of the whole my statistical data becomes.

What this method has OVER pure statistics is the ability to do an in-depth analysis of each game play, with card draw %s, how much damage each hero dealt, how much they took, how much they resisted, how many cards they moved or destroyed, and how they interacted with their teammates.  It even opens itself up to playstyle criticisms to point out the flaws in the tester's strategies and understandings, so that future tests can be more optimum.

EDIT: Also, with the limited nature of beginning hand sizes, I think analyzing the play style will be easier and more intuitive than one might think.  We each analyze our next move every game already.  We would just do the same with these games, as if the cards were our current hand, not a full run game that has already been recorded.

ALSO, since Plague Rat was suggested with quite a few Duo Partners, the first tests will be against him.

EDIT EDIT:  Also, I don't want anyone to think I dislike this game in any way!  This is one of the best games I've played in a LONG time!  I'm simply trying to find solutions to my players' concerns that I see echoed in the statistics page on this forum.  I would NEVER reject a hero deck in this game!  They all have such awesome styles and stories!  But I would like to see those that do poorly fare better, for the sake of variety.  I don't want my players to stagnate into certain heros they won't play with certain allies, just because that hero doesn't do well without hand holding.  I want their personal enjoyment to overshadow the hero's capabilities and deficiencies, not the other way around.

37

One of the things you can do then is randomize your team. Spiff has a randomizer on his website. This can encourage players to find new, interesting combinations they hadn't thought of, and at the same time possibly discourage players from playing the same hero over and over.

38

What I'm trying to convey is that I don't think 10 games is enough to form a baseline. Maybe if you did 10 identical games where you only shuffled the decks, but you wrote earlier of mixing up the teams. The more changes you add to the test, the more instances you need for reliability. And 10 even sounds low to me, considering 40-card hero decks (though I readily admit I'm not real stats guy; I flew through the one I needed to take in undergrad, but that was a long time ago [in a galaxy far, far away]; 10 identical matches may well be enough to draw conclusions from for the specific situation involved).

39

 

10 games may be enough to form a reasonable base for those exact circumstances. The problem becomes that those exact circumstances are only as likely to happen again as you make them, and a randomizer has a very small chance of that exact combination. Changing even one deck has a large effect on what the whole point is of collecting this info; how "well' each hero does. So, in order to collect any amount of accurate and useful information, you would have to play so many games. Probably in the 100,000s +. Then all of that information has to be compiled and analyzed and so on. Adding decks to the game (as they will be doing) will only add more time required. 

 

For one hero, you would have to play every (or atleast a vast majority) set of circumstances 10 times (which is low, imo but your number) each. Do you know how many combinations of circumstances this game has if everything but 1 hero is variable?

40

What constitutes a good baseline can be fairly subjective.  This is statistics, where nothing is perfect, and yet sometimes people won't settle for less than perfect.

The idea here is NOT to create the perfect set of statistical values representing the hero in question.  It is to create a comfortable base that we can use to analyze and design and perform future, better tests AND a better understanding of the hero in question.

If I showed you 10 games where 9 out of 10 games a hero contributed the least damage, the least damage mitigation, the least card removals and the least card recoveries, it would be safe for most people to conclude that the hero in question was not holding up their end of the battle.

20 or 30 games would increase our confidence in the data, but would be unlikely to change the results (but it COULD happen, hence the confidence value).

If of those 10 games, the hero performed average every game, we could conclude that this hero is consistent, but not over or under whelming.

If of the 10 games, the hero was all over the place, then we could conclude that a MUCH larger baseline of games would be needed to get a strong statistical view of this hero's standing.

The number of games need only be increased if the data is inconsistent.  So we start with 10 with, 10 without, and check the consistency of that hero's contributions.