Alternate Match Rules

[Lord Rich]

Ok, so these rules will likely be hated by everyone but I thought I would post them up here for discussion anyway since I think they might be a nice idea. I will write down what they are first then put my reasoning for them afterwards.

• A match is played over 2-3 maps with one set per map
• Each map is played as a first to 4 rounds won with no spawn swapping
• There will be one closed, one open and one mixed map selected randomly
• Each team selects a faction and one of the 3 maps (from the 3 already selected maps) some time  before the match (ideally the day before or earlier), team 1 selects first
• Team 1 get spawn 1 on map 1, team 2 get spawn 2 on map 1
• Team 1 get spawn 2 on map 2, team 2 get spawn 1 on map 2
• The loser of the second map gets spawn 1 on map 3
• The winner is the team that wins 2 of the 3 maps
• If a team wins both the first 2 maps they win the match, the third map does not get played
• Draw rounds are ignored and a map will continue to be played until a team gets to 4 rounds won
• All unbalanced maps (Village, Vendetta, Ruins and Port Assault) are removed and replaced with more balanced versions or new maps

Ok so nuts right? We've lost random factions and spawn swapping for balance. Well there is a little sense in what I am suggesting so let me explain.

Factions
First off regarding factions, I actually think we are missing something here, I think the current rule set with random factions while being technically more challenging because you need to know how to use them all is actually removing some interesting elements from play. Essentially teams are forced at the moment to practice more generic strategies or techniques because there is no guarantee of getting a favourable faction if you base any strategies on playing that faction. So working out a really good tactic with the rhodoks is useless because you might only get to play them a handful of times throughout a tournament or league.

The other element to this is the lack of character to the teams, you could have teams with good cavalry choosing a good cavalry faction or teams with good rangers choosing a good ranger faction, basically let teams play to their strengths and fight against each other asymmetrically. This is not however the old style rules where you would pick a faction for each map, an individual map gives advantages to different classes and the factions generally do have class advantages (nords infantry, vaegir archers etc...), in this case you need to pick a faction for all the maps played so you need to consider the pros and cons, a faction strong on nord town might be weaker on ruins.

The reliability of knowing what faction you are playing lets teams specialise and offer up some truly unique play styles rather than the current system which encourages teams to spread their tactics and skills thinly to try to cover everything. It would also allow for more meta game elements to come into play, if a particular tactic with a faction becomes common, someone at some point will develop a counter and so on.

No Spawn Switches
Why remove something that makes balancing so easy? A few reasons.

Firstly the addition of symmetrical play in this way introduces the ideas of draws and the clunky tie breaker rules that need to accompany them for knock outs. There is no way to remove these tie breaker rules without first losing the symmetry, in general this doesn't become an issue because draws are pretty rare but I still think it would be nice to remove them completely. A win/loss system is far more satisfying overall and can work in every type of tournament or league.

Second, if you wanted to have faction selection but swapped spawns as well then you have already lost the balance the spawn swapping was originally intended for and you get away from the original intention of letting teams play the factions they want and that suite their style. Effectively removing the spawn swaps directly supports the idea of choosing factions.

Thirdly it allows for fewer longer sets. This keeps the conditions for the match the same for a longer number of rounds allowing for teams to develop better counters to a play that another team is using and encourages variation, pattern recognition and thinking ahead. With the focus on smaller numbers of rounds now a team can pretty much use only one tactic for each set and doesn't particularly need to adapt to any situations (unless they are losing in which they have little time to adapt).

When it comes down to the unbalanced maps that I mentioned in the rules, I think they have enough of a significant advantage for one team to say that playing on them is simply unfair. That isn't to say that you couldn't win, only that overall the advantage would be unfair in the system I propose.

For maps like Nord Town, I honestly think they are relatively balanced. They aren't symmetrical necessarily but if there is any imbalance on those maps it more often than not is because of factions if nothing else. There are pros and cons for each spawn but I don't think that either gives enough of an absolute advantage to call it unbalanced. Maybe one team or another finds a spawn difficult because they haven't developed good doctrine for playing on it, but overall I think you would be hard pressed to find a consensus among players as to which spawn is better or worse. On the unbalanced maps however, I think finding a consensus would be pretty trivial (maybe ruins less so).

*Puts on flame retardant armour*

 

[crazyboy11]

Are mirrored factions allowed? (if not, who gets first pick?)

I'd be interested in hearing some of these faction specific tactics, they must be pretty special if you want to use an entirely different rule set just to make it possible. This is the crux of this rule set right? faction choice and balanced maps?

Otherwise I don't really buy it, you're adding a few (I'm sceptical) faction specific tactics but taking away almost half of the maps and factions. Overall it sounds like we'd be losing out on more than we're gaining.

Also, I could make a convincing argument for one of the spawns on sandy bush, snowy village, and frosty battle being better. When your balance is provided by the maps alone, there aren't many left which can be considered balanced.

 

[Mr.X]

I would think a first to 4 seems a little short to me. At least first to 5.

 

[captain lust]

I honestly don't think we know enough about the game to decide which maps are balanced or not. And if anything, what we know about the game suggests an immensely weird and complex web of faction dependent imbalances that would turn a ruleset like this into a total head****.

For example, Nord Town. Pretty balanced map right? Except wait a second, Winter Cycle 2011 produced this:

Nord Town
Vaegirs 23-47 Vaegirs

Nord Town
Sarranids 9-30 Nords

Nord Town
Sarranids 36-44 Vaegirs

That's hefty enough to imply a serious balance issue.

Looking at the maps you listed here: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,201985.0.html

Ruins produces absolutely no major balance issues. Surprised you listed that one actually. Vendetta also seems relatively balanced. Village and Port Assault are frequent offenders but not in all cases.

Additionally you get weird things like Sand'di'boush where it seems perfectly balanced until you get something like this:

San'di'boush
Sarranids 26-43 Swadia

Which probably says crossbows have a serious advantage on the map (or Division C didn't realise they could take javs). In any case, I think this is likely to be a minefield and I remain convinced that my proposed ruleset, which effectively removes all balance issues, is the way forward.

 

[Lord Rich]

Are mirrored factions allowed? (if not, who gets first pick?)

Yes they would be allowed.

I'd be interested in hearing some of these faction specific tactics, they must be pretty special if you want to use an entirely different rule set just to make it possible. This is the crux of this rule set right? faction choice and balanced maps?

Otherwise I don't really buy it, you're adding a few (I'm sceptical) faction specific tactics but taking away almost half of the maps and factions. Overall it sounds like we'd be losing out on more than we're gaining.

Also, I could make a convincing argument for one of the spawns on sandy bush, snowy village, and frosty battle being better. When your balance is provided by the maps alone, there aren't many left which can be considered balanced.

Factions tend to have specific class advantages, while they all can do relatively similar things they do favour particular styles of play against one another. For instance in melee Swadia generally get stomped by Nords or Rhodoks, Rhodoks likewise have probably the worst cavalry in the game with low riding skill and short lances.

Obviously for the most part you could design a tactic for any faction, however if your tactic ends up relying on a particular class type then it will likely be much more difficult to implement if you are forced to use a faction which is weaker in that type. This creates a fundamental lack of trust between the strategic level and the combat level because the force multipliers can vary so much. With the factions been known you have a much better idea of the force multipliers in a particular scenario barring the other teams faction choice. Basically you know what your guys can do.

On the maps front, I honestly have no great attachment to the current maps, they were only roughly balanced for public play during beta and were never designed for competitive play. When selecting those maps I did it more on the issues of terrain imbalance, any arguments otherwise are difficult to sustain because even supported by data as in Lusts post, they would ignore the changing state of play.

Take the Nord Town stats for instance, its entirely possible that there is some more obvious or easier strategy for the team 2 spawn or maybe there was simply a strategy that got popular during the winter cycle and was used a lot. That does not however mean that the map is fundamentally broken, it simply means that at the time teams tended to know how to win more on one spawn. Obviously I have no way of proving this, but if you look at other competitive games they do go through periods of apparent imbalance but often right themselves without balance changes due to the fact that the players themselves develop direct counters to the tactics that are being used effectively.

The reason I picked those 4 maps in particular was because they do have a significant difference in the terrain available to both teams. All the other maps have only minor differences and usually offer up alternatives. I could see the maps listed being reintroduced if they simply had the spawns shifted so that they gave equal opportunity in terms of terrain to both teams. For instance you could place the team spawns at each ends of the ruined wall on Ruins. You could place both spawns in or outside of Village. I would also like to see people create more new maps and add some variety.

 

[Mr.X]

I have to say, balancing is a great idea, but the game should be able to be balanced while leaving large differences in gameplay allowed.
Take starcraft. The three races each have huge differences in the way they play, but they remain balanced. There are times and maps where 1 race had an advantage, which is fine because the players made that advantage.
I really think the switching spawns and factions, and the random factions, takes a good bit of the soul and individuality out of the game, and makes things so "balanced" that there's no difference at all in the teams other than players.

 

[captain lust]

I have to say, balancing is a great idea, but the game should be able to be balanced while leaving large differences in gameplay allowed.
Take starcraft. The three races each have huge differences in the way they play, but they remain balanced. There are times and maps where 1 race had an advantage, which is fine because the players made that advantage.
I really think the switching spawns and factions, and the random factions, takes a good bit of the soul and individuality out of the game, and makes things so "balanced" that there's no difference at all in the teams other than players.

It's a very different game. Even if it wasn't, what your saying isn't strictly true. Tournaments place lots of extra restrictions onto Starcraft. Just to give an example, Antiga Shipyard is only played cross-position (in well organised tournaments) because otherwise Zerg becomes hopeless and Terran becomes absurdly OP. That's nothing to do with the metagame, it's just that the map allows a tonne of options to the Terran player and severely limits the ways in which a Zerg player can win at a top level.

Warband needs some extra restrictions and although it would be good if the game had more natural balance, I also think it's wrong to dismiss swapping as an imperfect unsatisfying solution. Furthermore I think it's downright silly to say that based on the idea that it doesn't happen in Starcraft.

@AZAN:

I have two points to make in response to what you said. The first is that terrain is an odd thing to take as the rule of thumb when talking about balance. I can see how Village is arguably unbalanced because all the flags are inside and actually penetrating the perimeter of the village can be difficult in itself. So much so that it often leaves the attacking team compromised, either by position or by losses. However I don't see how the same logic applies to a map like Ruins where, granted one team starts higher than the other but 2 flags spawn outside the broken walls, and the third in a very neutral position. Combining that with a set of results that doesn't imply any sort of imbalance, the fact that it's possibly the most popular map and in my opinion, arguably the most well class-balanced map going and I think it's a particularly strange candidate for the scrapheap. Maps should always be looked at on a case by case basis to be honest. There's no other way to do it.

My second point is that I think you're massively contradicting yourself. On the one hand, saying advancements in the metagame will resolve issues over time, whilst on the other hand suggesting that old maps should be scrapped in place of new ones doesn't make sense. By your own logic that would produce the highest frequency of imbalanced matchups at any given point in the metagame. And in that situation, the last thing you want is a ruleset where you don't switch sides.

Sorry but I remain wholly unconvinced about this.

 

[Mr.X]

I have to say, balancing is a great idea, but the game should be able to be balanced while leaving large differences in gameplay allowed.
Take starcraft. The three races each have huge differences in the way they play, but they remain balanced. There are times and maps where 1 race had an advantage, which is fine because the players made that advantage.
I really think the switching spawns and factions, and the random factions, takes a good bit of the soul and individuality out of the game, and makes things so "balanced" that there's no difference at all in the teams other than players.

It's a very different game. Even if it wasn't, what your saying isn't strictly true. Tournaments place lots of extra restrictions onto Starcraft. Just to give an example, Antiga Shipyard is only played cross-position (in well organised tournaments) because otherwise Zerg becomes hopeless and Terran becomes absurdly OP. That's nothing to do with the metagame, it's just that the map allows a tonne of options to the Terran player and severely limits the ways in which a Zerg player can win at a top level.

Warband needs some extra restrictions and although it would be good if the game had more natural balance, I also think it's wrong to dismiss swapping as an imperfect unsatisfying solution. Furthermore I think it's downright silly to say that based on the idea that it doesn't happen in Starcraft.

I'm not saying it's imperfect and unsatisfying because it doesn't happen in Starcraft. I'm saying that the "rules" of starcraft weren't balanced, but the game was. I'm saying instead of being forced to swap spawns and factions which, I think, takes some of the individuality and spirit out of the game, we should be trying to balance the spawns and factions so that any match up is reasonable. Obviously some match ups will always be in a certain factions favor based on the map, but I'd say that's ok. The example I give is Starcraft. Some maps just favor Terran, like you said. The tournaments limit it so that the advantage isn't huge, but it's ok to have an advantage.