UNAC Power Rankings Discussion

[RobertBruce]

Even though things are not always balanced between inf, archery and cavalry, the thing I still truly enjoy about Warband and why I keep playing it more than any other game is the fact that every class takes a large amount of skill to be elite at.  Especially given how many skilled players there are now because of years of practice and hardening.  If people want exact balance, then having an all melee tournament would probably be the way to go so that it's all one class.  Or do an all cav or all archery tourney.  I like the variety of the three classes and since this game is old and not a several hundred million dollar game, we have to accept the setbacks of imbalances and problems with different parts of the game. 

I enjoy trying to utilize every weapon for every class by swapping, it makes the game more strategic to me.  Since the game is intended to really utilize melee, it is great that we have duel tournaments and team duel tournaments.  I believe there is a place for everything and this tourney utilizes all the classes and some teams use a little more lets say creativity with their equipment and class utilization than others, but in the end, every team should be trying their best to win.  So far with the streaming and the child board, all the team captains participation, and interest in this tournament, I would say from where Warband has been in the past to now it's moving in a solid direction.  If lots of people want to go back to the way Warband played out earlier in it's life span, one could create a tournament that reflected those values and limitations for example on weapon swaps. 

I think most people have moved on to taking every aspect of the game and utilizing it whether it be going all cav to try to win or 4 archers and 3 cav, etc. etc.  There are so many winning combinations out there and also skill levels that make things interesting. 

Don't have much time, so sorry if that makes no sense to anyone, feel free to just ignore this post

 

[Kherven]

A very well thought out and cohesive post, Tyrian. You bring up a lot of good points.

I think one problem, however, is you're expecting a competitive community to play by an honor system. Every developer should anticipate that players will use every cheap trick/tactic/whatever to their biggest advantage. It is impossible for even a player-led community to effectively police against that.

It is the responsibility of the developers to ensure that their version remains. While we can fight against outright exploits/cheating (looking through walls, texture editing, etc) the line becomes much blurrier when talking about what is good for the game. And to expect a competitive community to draw some arbitrary line is most likely unrealistic.

 

[T]

@X - I didn't say archers when used normally are OP. I think they are pretty close to balanced. It is when you drop them items to turn them into hybrid classes that they gain an edge over the others. So I wouldn't say BkS is inconsistent.

People say warband should be rock paper scissors...drops allow you to combine a paper into a scissors. (bypasses the class system)

You said, "Not using clearly intended game mechanics to gain an advantage because of some moral ideal is a very anti-competitive idea."

But that is exactly the problem I have with what most clans take advantage of. They are NOT clearly intended features of the game. And I agree that H cav are more balanced at 1000g...

@Robert - I get what you are saying. But I think the one critical flaw in your argument is that you assume this

"If people want exact balance, then having an all melee tournament would probably be the way to go so that it's all one class."

The beauty of warband is that it is so fluid and adaptable, and CAN be balanced with all classes present. You seem to be saying well, its broke, but lets just play through it and see what happens b/c its still fun...While thats true, I think it would be far better/more fun to fix it than play through the problems.


@Kherven - You are right, it is impossible to expect everyone to play by an honor system, in fact it would be pretty stupid. But that doesn't change the fact that you see there are problems...

You said yourself "Every developer should anticipate that players will use every cheap trick/tactic/whatever to their biggest advantage"

Problem is, warband devs did not, nor knew how to make a cohesive game based around competitive play. I am not blaming them, I am just saying there are loads of problems that I don't think should merely be played through or ignored/exploited as part of the game. Lust was even brought on to address some of them and he did...I just think it was only the tip of the iceburg he touched.

 

[Rhade]

This conversation is definitely going to go away from the Power Rankings discussion.

Should make a new thread regarding this, as some good conversation can be generated.

On the topic of said conversation, I agree with most points except that "all is balanced because all takes a high level of skill to be good at."

Infantry takes skill.
Cav takes skill.
Ranged takes skill.

Heavy cav does not take skill. You hold W and ride through people, you seriously don't even need to attack to be extremely effective. Heavy horses like chargers have a decent amount of speed, good maneuverability and are absolute tanks that seriously cannot be killed unless reared, all alone, and all 6 people are hammering on it and even then there's a chance it gets away due to the massive glancing.

Tyrian's also right about the fact that drops turn classes into hybrid classes.

 

[findecanno]

If an archer with a shield makes archer a hybrid class of archer/inf, then isn't cav also a hybrid cav/inf class? Is that an issue as well? Because of the vast reduction in athletics to a dismounted cav, a dismounted cav is at a severe disadvantage compared to a decent inf. Same thing goes with archers, especially since the patch. The reduced athletics make melee very hard for an archer, even if he does have a shield.

Personally, I would rather archers have their athletics back, but lose all their shield skill, so they couldn't even pick up shields. That way archers could still melee, but it would be based solely on their blocking ability, rather then their ability to deal with having bad athletics.

However, I doubt the game will ever get patched again, and having any kind of artificial restriction on what gear players can or can not pick up just seems like a way to divide an already small community.

 

[Mok the International]

This conversation is definitely going to go away from the Power Rankings discussion.

Should make a new thread regarding this, as some good conversation can be generated.

On the topic of said conversation, I agree with most points except that "all is balanced because all takes a high level of skill to be good at."

Infantry takes skill.
Cav takes skill.
Ranged takes skill.

Heavy cav does not take skill. You hold W and ride through people, you seriously don't even need to attack to be extremely effective. Heavy horses like chargers have a decent amount of speed, good maneuverability and are absolute tanks that seriously cannot be killed unless reared, all alone, and all 6 people are hammering on it and even then there's a chance it gets away due to the massive glancing.

Tyrian's also right about the fact that drops turn classes into hybrid classes.

Spears. They work too.

 

[Mr.X]

Tyrian, my biggest problem is that heavy horses are clearly intended to be in the game. The ability to pick up weapons is clearly intended to be in the game (in fact I remember that being one of the advertised features when Warband was coming out). Things like jumping horses on the clothesline in village is clearly not intended, so taking that out makes sense.

If we were truly following what the game intended, we'd play Khergits.

@Rhade,
1. Heavy cav being easy to play is not a good reason for it not to be part of competition.
2. Heavy cav isn't easy to play, especially when you consider it should take several kills to be able to afford and sustain it.

Infantry is easy to play. Just buy a shield and you can't die to anything unless the whole team's on you.

Do you see how me saying that inf is easy doesn't make it in any way true?

 

[T]

Sorry for sidetracking the thread Rhade.

No idea how this forum thingy works, so if ppl honestly think its worth discussing make a thread and I will talk there.


Last thing for here, X, are building your entire argument about one facet of heavy cav which was 1/8 of my argument. While you make some valid points, it doesn't address the larger picture. Also, your analogy with the inf is bogus. You know 100% that you are exaggerating about Heavy cav skill vs raw inf skill, you have been around long enough to know heavy cav is a relatively mindless activity, whereas a clueless inf will be shredded everytime...







Now, go back to talking about power rankings BkS is the best and is going to win we already know

 

[Cradoc]

Now, go back to talking about power rankings BkS is the best and is going to win we already know

If they can make it 

 

[Mr.X]

The problem is, heavy cav is not a mindlessly easy class to play. It's just as hard as infantry and archer. 
The statement that heavy cav is just pressing w sounds as ridiculous to me as that inf statement does to you.

 

[KoA John]

Anyone can be a good heavy cav

Its probably one of the easiest classes to be "good" at within a organized group

"You press W and sometimes you have to press A and D too" - Scott Ray paraphrasing a little

 

[Mr.X]

Anyone can be a good heavy cav

Its probably one of the easiest classes to be "good" at within a organized group

"You press W and sometimes you have to press A and D too" - Scott Ray paraphrasing a little

Anyone can be a good inf or archer too.

Heavy cav isn't a different class than light cav. It's like an infantry taking more armor. More armor = less speed. Its the same for cavalry, only the armors and speeds are exacerbated.

And again, that's not the point.
The whole crux of Tyrians argument, from what I understood, is that certain purposely placed items and clearly intended mechanics were deemed by BkS as against their idea of what the game should be, which is why they don't use it and make fun of other people who do use it. From a competitive standpoint, that makes absolutely zero sense. Purposefully not using items that give you an advantage when you can use them for no other benefit does not make any competitive sense. An archer not using a shield because he wants to have 60 arrows makes sense. I know a lot of archer players today don't do that because they don't think it's smart, but it makes sense. Not using a heavy horse because you think it's too slow makes sense. But not using a heavy horse or a shield because you have some moral obligation to the way you think the game should be played does not make sense competitively. From a roleplay standpoint it makes sense, but not competitively.

 

[Kherven]

...deemed by BkS as against their idea of what the game should be, which is why they don't use it and make fun of other people who do use it.

You should probably be careful not to confuse Rhade/Van's opinions and actions as all of BkS.

 

[Rhade]

It all boils down to no real risk.

Light cav risks dying easily for speed.
Heavy cav still has enough speed to be effective and is virtually unkillable unless an entire team can collapse on it; but it still has speed enough so this doesn't happen, and is also supported. What is heavy cav risking? It has all the advantages of light cav plus being a tank, the only real place it struggles is random plains and who plays that anymore?

Kickslashing takes no risk, and is employed in higher level infantry combat to lethal effect. Why not kickslash all the time? You can kick and block at the same time. Totally safe.

Splitting up into key points on the map doesn't take much risk because you can just run away if you get pushed, and solo archers have shields and awlpikes/spears so cav can't cav**** them and infantry will have a hard time catching up before support is there. Not a lot of risk there either.

Warband is a great game.
Warband is a fun game.
Warband is a poorly balanced competitive game because in well balanced competitive games there are multiple ways to achieve high-end proficiency where risk is rewarded and rewards require risk whereas in badly balanced games there is only one effective way and why the **** aren't you using this way because it's the only way? There are also ways developed to counter other high-end playstyles and the constant shuffling of of these playstyles against each other is what a real "metagame" is.

In the end, like I said, it's fun; but it's ****tily balanced with there being one real way to play, minimizing risk while taking very linear, predictable, safe choices the whole match because If you don't do that, you lose.

Onto power rankings discussion:

Most of you haven't updated since week 4. Stop being lazy.

 

[Kherven]

Feel free to tear apart mine.

It felt weird putting some clans in certain ranks, but I feel like thats the most accurate PR I can give going into week 6. Expect it to change wildly at the end of week 6.

 

[Shemaforash]

2. GA - GA is a bit odd, on one hand they are an extremely powerful team with power players from every class. They've shown they're more than capable of fighting with ping, but I think GA's biggest problem is consistency. They lose a lot of rounds to clans they really shouldn't, and its yet to be seen whether or not they're slipping or just not giving their 100% I think its the latter, but they may find not winning every round comes back to bite them in the ass. Either way, it still stands that this team has shown they are not to be messed with after their decisive victory against BkS.

I specifically think it's because I wasn't playing last match 

 

[Calamity]

Feel free to tear apart mine.

It felt weird putting some clans in certain ranks, but I feel like thats the most accurate PR I can give going into week 6. Expect it to change wildly at the end of week 6.

Feel a bit shafted, but we can't help the schedule or 2 weeks off. We have TMW and Balions in a row. After that, I hope things become a little more clear.

 

[Kherven]

Feel free to tear apart mine.

It felt weird putting some clans in certain ranks, but I feel like thats the most accurate PR I can give going into week 6. Expect it to change wildly at the end of week 6.

Feel a bit shafted, but we can't help the schedule or 2 weeks off. We have TMW and Balions in a row. After that, I hope things become a little more clear.

Yeah, definitely don't be offended by it. Like i said wK is a 1st place capable team (by end of tournament, they obviously are right now) , they just haven't had the chance to show it. I just made that list completely going by nothing but UNAC matches that have taken place.

 

[Calamity]

Feel free to tear apart mine.

It felt weird putting some clans in certain ranks, but I feel like thats the most accurate PR I can give going into week 6. Expect it to change wildly at the end of week 6.

Feel a bit shafted, but we can't help the schedule or 2 weeks off. We have TMW and Balions in a row. After that, I hope things become a little more clear.

Yeah, definitely don't be offended by it. Like i said wK is a 1st place capable team (by end of tournament, they obviously are right now) , they just haven't had the chance to show it. I just made that list completely going by nothing but UNAC matches that have taken place.

Even though I quoted you, it's not the first time I've seen it. It is what it is.

 

[RedKnight]

I agree with Kherven that we are pretty strongly  a solid 6th right now still. I expect our SF match should be seen as the battle for the title of best mid-tier team. However I believe that both of our squads have the ability to tighten up our play and push for a top four berth. When we play GA the following week it will be our real chance to prove we belong with the top tier teams. If we win Wappaw should be considered a legitimate top four contender. If we lose a relatively close match we can prove that while we remain in the 6/7 slot (depending on the SF match) the difference between the top 4/5 and 6/8 slots is not insurmountable and could be relatively fluid. If Wappaw is blown out, it will be evidence to me that UNAC is effectively a five horse race.

Further personally I would switch Balion to fifth and BKs to fourth respectively. I think that the last few weeks have shown a marked improvement in BKs. Their round one loss certainly placed the breaks on a number of high expectations for their performance. But they seem on the ascent exactly as Balion's play seems to be deteriorating. Now I would be the first to admit that a single match, or a few weeks of scores matches against different teams is hardly enough to place a sure judgement. But it seems to me when you have one team slumping, the other rising and they met directly we can take that score as a benchmark for their ranking, at least for the time being.