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Anonymous12/26/25, 08:43No.2308316
when balancing RTS should the dev focus on only the top players as they are fully capable of knowing the ins and outs of the game or should every player (or let's say every player with a certain amount of matches) be taken into consideration?
personally i lean towards option 1 but I've witnessed plenty cases where the top 1% have a "no fun allowed" mindset and where they even abuse some rare bug that only they know how to (fairly) reliably trigger
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Anon12/26/25, 09:06No.2308329
For every competitive video game ever I've always been of the opinion they should keep a handful (at least 2) factions/characters balanced and then do whatever they want with the rest. That way the community can ban stuff that's broken and usually only a small amount will be competitively viable anyways.
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Anon12/26/25, 09:36No.2308338
MPfags ruin fun out of a game so no. Too often units that were plain dumb fun were nerfed to hell that they are no longer used because MPtrannies cried about it.
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Anon12/26/25, 09:43No.2308342
It's just plain silly to sideline the vast majority of your userbase to chase the approval of eSports autists. The experience gap between the top and bottom is a game design challenge, not a difference of opinion.
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Anon12/26/25, 10:11No.2308351
>balancing RTS
and why it should be balanced?
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Anon12/26/25, 10:15No.2308352
Balance should be a tertiary concern, top 1% players not even that.
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Anon12/26/25, 12:29No.2308421
>when balancing RTS should the dev focus on only the top players as they are fully capable of knowing the ins and outs of the game or should every player (or let's say every player with a certain amount of matches) be taken into consideration?
If your game's focused on being an eSpurt focus on the top 1%, if not:
>Plot bell curve of players by games played
>Select players within deviation of mean
>Of those players:
>Plot bell curve by skill/win-loss metric
>Select players within deviation of mean
That's your bread and butter... listen to them.
Too many games fail becaue they focus on the most vocal*/highest ranked players and ignore the masses.*Balance via discord is the biggest mistake a dev can make.
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Anon12/26/25, 13:53No.2308470
I'm surprised there isn't some algorithm function equation that you can just plug into any ol strategy game to balance it out.
I mean they parse data from so much shit just plug all those metrics in and create some equation related to wins/losses.
Or alternatively. Just let the community balance their own game.
Warcraft 1 shipped with waredit.exe
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Anon12/26/25, 15:35No.2308538
Duh. When making a serious competitive game, the goal is to make it as no fun allowed as possible to keep it balanced, consistent, streamlined and fair so that the better player can always win and the worse is guaranteed to lose. The fancy, quirky, funny business belongs in singleplayer and casual custom online scene.
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Anon12/27/25, 02:09No.2309009
Dota Allstars focused on the top 1% the right way. They added OP abilities and balanced the game around the exploits. It was less about rock paper scissors balance and considering the utility of things in the context of the draft you're against. When Valve got the rights for Dota 2 they basically stripped everything down and focused on balance.RTS did what Valve did and focuses too hard on refining what C&C and WC did with the occasional gimmick thrown in. It's why the genre is totally stagnate outside of people who just want to mindlessly go through the same routines.
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Anon12/27/25, 10:54No.2309181
A well-balanced game has an ever-evolving meta and devs doing fuck all with the game for 20 years since its release.
>personally i lean towards option 1
That just speaks of your own self-inflated ego and deluding yourself you're a good player, and not a dumb monkey copying strats of others (without even understanding them)
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Anon12/27/25, 11:46No.2309199
All this competitive pros balance talk reminds about that Rainbow Six Siege fiasco where full team got raped by last member of the enemy squad who played on a character whose ability was to get up after being killed with 1 HP and a pistol with limited ammo, they were so assmad that they got Ubislop to nerf the shit out of the game
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Anon12/27/25, 11:47No.2309200
Or that time when known cheater and failed competitive trog who got kicked out of every esports team was trying to slime his way into BattleBit by abusing movement system
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Anon12/27/25, 13:41No.2309241
Depends on what kind of Strategy game you're going for, i fuckin hate the kind that cater mainly to competetive MP fags.
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Anon12/27/25, 14:17No.2309259
>but I've witnessed plenty cases where the top 1% have a "no fun allowed" mindset and where they even abuse some rare bug that only they know how to (fairly) reliably trigger
it's important to keep in mind that the top players are hypercompetitive almost by definition, how they win doesn't matter much to them as long as they win. so they can suggest some remarkably retarded bullshit from time to time.
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Anon12/27/25, 15:26No.2309292
You should always balance stats and such based on the skill ceiling where people are using the units properly because there will always be a low enough level where players can't micro.
At the same time, if a unit is disproportionately hard to use it's a good idea to rework it into something that the average player can use without getting carpal tunnel syndrome.
The opposite is actually way more common in RTS games where a unit or strategy will suck against "competent" players while simultaneously being the bane of lower leagues because it's much harder to counter than it is to use but devs refuse to address it because "xd git good" and it ends up demolishing the new player experience making a lot of newcomers quit early.
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Anon12/30/25, 13:55No.2311593
Dev should focus on making fun game.
Esports is a meme. You aren't displacing DOTA 2 and Starcraft 2.
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Anon12/30/25, 14:05No.2311601
For multiplayer games I'm fine with balancing based on the better players' performances. Lower ranked matches tend to have such variety in player skill that the better player generally wins. At the top of the ladder everyone is consistently good so faction/character imbalances will be more likely to be a deciding factor.
If something is only an issue in low rated games it's literally a skill issue and git gud is a better response than patching unit stats.
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Anon12/30/25, 18:12No.2311842
it’s fine for difficult strats to be strong
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Anon12/30/25, 21:48No.2312050
If a faction is busted it is going to be OP for everyone pros are just more technically skilled and better able to leverage the strengths of the faction.Of course the pros who know the game better than the vast majority of players should have a heavier say on balance changes, low ELO players will still play the faction that they like as long as it isn't changed at the fundamental level.It also depends on the game complexity, if you have 40 civs then balance and symmetricity is a high priority as you have about 1600 civ matchups, if you have 4 factions they don't have to be balanced
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Anon12/31/25, 05:11No.2312363
I have an asymmetrical multiplayer strategy RTS where I try to balance by defined unit niches and initial expected pros and cons for a players role. I conform balance to those roles
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Anon01/02/26, 19:21No.2314112
You should balance first and foremost to avoid poor meta. For instance, even if a game is really well balanced, if there's only one or two viable strategies then it's going to bleed players fast. A game should first and foremost be fun, because as it is said, if it's not fun, why bother?That's not to say balance should go out the window, because balance is one of the triads of an entertaining game--ensuring that there are multiple paths to victory and that players feel like strategy is a big part of the genre. It's just that treating it as the only thing that matters will cause other important aspects to be deficient.
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Anon01/03/26, 00:22No.2314291
>hmmm should we cater our game to 1% of players or 99% of players
you figure it out
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Anon01/03/26, 19:51No.2314734
https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/2_-_Quant%27s_Rule
>You might say that viability is only a concern for hardcore competitive players, but we think it matters for anyone who really wants to puzzle out the game. In other words, to strategise. No matter the game mode, it is a bit disappointing when the unit roster effectively shrinks as your understanding grows
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Anon01/04/26, 10:10No.2315087
if you aren't balancing for the top players then you simply aren't balancing because if the game is unbalanced at the top then all competitive play will eventually lead into unbalanced play as you climb
>where the top 1% have a "no fun allowed" mindset
you should balance around them not for them
how sc2 has decided to do it is incredibly retarded, for example
instead the balancing team should watch competitive play and adjust around it to how they want to game flow to be
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Anon01/19/26, 00:54No.2324116
they should pick a demographic and stick with it. any attempts to please both are futile because they are mutually exclusive and contradictory. set expectations appropriately via marketing. simple.
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Anon01/19/26, 05:15No.2324190
Make something fun
Stop this compfag bullshitWhat good is a game if only six greasy discord moderators are the only ones who play it? You can worry about balancing later, arguably, imbalanced games get MORE attention because people love exploiting broken shit.
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Anon01/19/26, 16:13No.2324466
Balance it for people who've learned the game's fundamentals and hit an acceptable skill floor, then make minor adjustments to keep high-level games playable.