Because you balance around what the top can do.
If you balanced archers around low level players you’d have to increase their damage because they don’t micro. Now imagine what viper with his micro would do with archers with even more damage.
As for the goth winrate they have been played a total of 68 games by 1650+. Hardly adequate to determine balance.
Except low level players can’t use stuff to its full potential. Which is why you don’t balance around them.
For the pros the winrate went down despite being buffed. This is what the data says. How would you explain this? For me it is the lack of data for pros. There overal winrate did increase, but even that is pretty much within the statistical margin. So also no real change since last month.
I dont say Goths needs a buff, but i dont think we can say Goths needs to be nerfed. Nothing in the data shows me Goths are too strong.
I storngly disagre and i would like to present a theoretical example.
Lets assume theire was a civ which got a super strong lategame, but very weak. Something like khmer but 2x more weak eraly and strong lategame. For the pros this civs would most likely suck becuase it is so bad ealy that it is unusable. The civs would not get nerfs therefor.
The average players on the other hand cant prevent their enemies from reaching lategame which results that every average players game end in this civ winning 70% of the times ruining the games balance for 99% of the players.
Not the best example but i hope you got the idea. We cant sacrifice the balance to cater to 1% of the playerbase only.
If the game becomes unfun to play for the average becuase they arent even considered in balance then the average play will lose interest in playing the game and eventually also in watching the pro players games. The game could die of this pro players only approach in the worst case on the long run.
Like i said:
First prio for balance is the top tier. I would go for winrates between 45-55% for the pros.
Second prio is everyone else. We can be a bit less strict, so 40-60% seems to be a good range for me.
Also: We know talk about 1 civ against all others. What will happen if one civ is used in most games, because they have a good winrate? That civ still has some weaknesses. People start to pick that civ as counter. And that civ will again be counter by another civ. In the end you still see many civs.
We literally have 20 years of proof of people loving this game despite being balanced around the top tier.
Yeah, 20 years in and the game is still loved.
Don’t think that will happen
Not sure how he missed that. We literally have 20+ years of evidence that people love this game
The reason to balance civs based on pro players rather than the average skilled player is simply because the average skilled played can learn how to deal with things they struggle with from better players.
If you struggle vs a particular civ or in a civ matchup you can get advice from a better play how to deal with it and improve yourself, hence no need to change the civ stats.
If it’s the case that even the best players (high apm or excellent macro/mico, strategy etc - whatever you consider ‘good’) can’t deal with a certain strategy or civilisation, then it’s reason to consider a balance change.
I think this makes sense.
I think you simply cannot use win rate data at all.
Not only is the sample size extremely small for 1650+ (which WoodsierCorn696 correctly argued should be the focus of balance changes), there are several major issues with using the data:
The pick civilization system heavily skews the data. Aztecs (a very strong 1v1 arabia civ) are likely to win a majority of the time vs random civ, even if that random civ turns out to be a very strong civ like Vikings.
On the flipside, people who pick random civs all the time (a good portion of the community does so) are generally lower rated than they should be, inflating the win rate of non-picked civs. I can say with certainty that Vipers win rate of all civilizations are completely useless and only clutter the data, simply because he plays random most of the time and pairs with much worse players.
Civ strengths are not transitive. If civ A beats civ B, and B beats C, it does not imply A beats C on that map.
1650+ is high level, but not at the point where they execute strategies close to perfection. (anecdotically speaking, I don’t know sh it how to play swamp and four lakes, but I still win most of hte games just by having a better macro on that specific game, or being simply lucky. random map generation brings so much variance on it’s own )
There are simply not enough games to reduce these factors of variance.
mirrors (which happen VERY frequently) don’t provide any civ matchup data (thus reducing the number of viable measuring points.
Frequency of balance changes and map rotations
35 civilizations means that players cannot learn all civilizations to their full potential
on Voobly the circumstances were nearly perfect. people mostly played arabia and random civ meta means pretty much all players have to play under same circumstances, and the big sample size actually provided some meaningful data.
On DE, the only way I see aoestats being useful is when players stick with the same balance for 3 years, the 1650+ community becomes a lot bigger, and data from a period over at least 1 year is collected, and play as few maps as possible.
I have proposed my solution here:
And your “solution” not only cripples goths but makes boom civs even stronger.
We don’t even have proof that Goths are op.
By the way, the original complaint was that their infantry could down castles. Your change does nothing against that.
Off topic
Again, you can’t expect to save everything only building TC and no army as a mangonel can take it down.
Honestly i don’t mind changing the true damage fire to castles but seemed too overpowered that is why i limited it to TC. My first idea was for both, i scrapped that.
Goths have a 58% winrate on 1650+ ELO, they are OP.
We should just return them to the February patch (35% Infantry discount from Feudal) and leave it at that.
Goths have a total of 68 games played. Hardly enough to determine balance.
They were already dominent in the previous patch too. Goths are a top 5 civ, and their winrate right now is too high.
They were perfectly fine imn February, and I think they should be again pushed back towards Feudal aggression, rather than large Militia Rushes.
If Goths need buffs afterwards, it should be minor things that cover their weaknesses, like +10% pop, instead of +10, and having Plate Barding Armour.
If the impact is negligible, why bother then?
Thing is that even if we disconsider mods, the game has so many arbitrary rulesets to be played that it would be impossible to consider all of them and still remain productive. There needs to be a standard, so a focus can be set. Focus on balancing two rulesets alone seems hard to nail already.
Now, I agree that at least every game mode (regicide, king of the hill, etc.) should be at reasonable states states of play, but I don’t even see major concerns with the “lesser modes”.
You were saying something totally different last month about Goths, and now all of a sudden they get free loom and they’re over powered? Yeah… can’t really take your opinion serious anymore on these forums. Another bandwagon jumper
I changed my opinion as soon as stats were made available, like any intelligent person.
Stats say free loom makes Goths worse for pros.
So how much does the stats really say?