The yabusame nerf was completely unneccesarry if you would ve just tested it in a scenario editor. Then you would ve clearly seen they might slightly overperform in skirm/goon fights, but are much worse against melee cav (which is good design imo) - also remember you cant micro yabusame the way you can micro goons, so that s another disadvantage. But from watching the ESOC discussion the pros saw one fight, didnt event look at ress spent and just said “naah OP” - just went with gut feeling, which often is misleading. Just my two cents
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I actually saw Kaiserklein saying the other day “remove Inca” lol. Twitch min 43:47
So it is not as if these pro players are above their own biases and self-interest either. I think that it is important that one of the inputs for feedback obviously comes from them, but it should be a representative sample, and beyond that, they should consider other ideas from this forum (which they some times do ofc) that are not extreme but interesting (not necessarily even by the amount of likes), and then try them out through tests to see if they can be introduced into the game, without breaking it but being as powerful as other existing cards/strategies/etc and nerf or buff accordingly. To be fair we just got introduced to the Public Betas and that could perfectly develop into what I’m saying.
Bottom line let us not forget that it is in their self interest (pros) to not promote a diverse meta and be conservative with their strategies and counter-strategies. Which is obviously not necessarily good for the game and it leads to stagnation.
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Also the insane sweden buffs which actually made them even more broken were probably massively influenced by our favorite sweden fanboy youtuber, so again they might be biased. IMO they should make decisions by numbers I.E. how do they perform in typical fights or how do they compare to other economy (in the case of sweden).
For example - looking at economic break even times (which says how long it takes for your economy to pay back its investement and after that you only profit). This video is a bit of an older patch, but you could see even then…torps were/are just insane how fast they pay back, compared to all the other economic things you can do. That hasn’t changed massively, and so its no wonder they get abused as they are today. The math doesnt lie in this case:
If they do have something similar - Or i mean if they ask me, i can also share my spreadsheets then they can make better decisions and actually put them into perspective. Currently it looks like they are tweaking numbers without much thought, for example without saying “oh okay, if we use these gather rates, torps still will break in half the time than shrines…do we want that?”
So yeah less opinions (they are biased anyway, mine too) and more facts- that s the way the ideal world should roll in my opinion.
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Oh we just need to open the scenario editor to figure out this ? Thanks for the tips.
I think I should tell that to top players so they can know if a change is good instead of playing the games for a ton of years, participating to multiple tournaments and undreads of discussions about balance and so on.
100% I would trust more a guy who test that in the scenario editor than those guys.
Until you remember they have the range of a skirmisher so melee cav even getting close to attack is rare.
Consider that one of the main reasons you micro goons is to get them out of range from the enemy skirms, but guess what? When you have insane range it mitigates that effect, also the 50% range resist helps a lot with that aswell.
There have been more fights since then and the opinion has hardly changed, also with the Japanese economy you definitely can mass yabusame as easily as a normal eco civ can mass generic goons.
Pros definitely should influence things to some extent generally they know what they are taking about even if they are sometimes biased,
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well second part wan’t really about pro advices you were talking about but part OP talked about African civs. idk maybe i lost my thought somewhere
Pro players paid more for the game, ends.
Thats stupid even 1/3 sweden and 1/3 Japan complaint topic by casual players in the forum but pro players consider they are ok. < In case this is truth.
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Balance should be based on the usage and win/lose ratio of average players… not personal opinions of few players.
Sure, you can decide which civ to buff or nerf based on average winrate but afterwards how do you decide which change should be made ?
Decrease starting crates of 50food ? Increase the training time of a units by 2 sec ?
Don’t tell me the average players will take good decision about this. They are unable because they have already made 10 mistakes in their gameplay before the change could be feel in a game.
This is where the expertise of very experienced players is needed because with a clean gameplay you can feel how a change impact the game a lot better.
Anyway don’t believe there is a few players that come up with an idea of change and hop it is implemented, no, they probably just ask to some players if for example a balance change won’t make something too OP or not. Most of the top players are complaining hard about the balance in the game since the release and so many just stop playing.
It should be enough to know that they don’t have any power on the patch change.
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It is good hear. I hope it is the top statisticians, the human factor scientists, and the mathematicians from Microsoft making the decisions according to the data they received. 
Top players know the strategy best so yes.
So often a low level player will complain about something being overpowered, for example, that isn’t overpowered at all they just don’t know how to counter it.
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I still think data should be the only thing to be considered for balance, even over top players’ opinions.
Since even top players have strong biases, data doesn’t. Data can sometimes be incomplete and not tell the whole story, but that’s easy to fix just by adding useful info like ELO difference, game duration, maps, etc.
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i liked your posts . literature used well. i have got life and im going to live it right now also recommend you. i dont care anymore what you said so 2 months later gang members can play eachother 4v4 or if u will be lesser , play against expert bot , dont forget handicap for bot. LOL
to : banana and sheep pp
Only stats of units, gives a very good guide for balancing stats. Devs practically can give stats-cost-speed to units only via a mathematical expression. You rise 2 parameters from the 3 and you take the third so that the unit will be balanced.
In second time there is the balance via statistic from rank games etc. You have to take into consideration and the duration of each game. Example, Mongols I expect to be power at the beginning, but weaker in the late game compare to other civilizations. This is something acceptable, it happens and to AoE2 etc… Balance will be needed so that the gap between win at start or end will not be very big.
Also statistics, gives you something that units stats don’t. They give you and the ‘easy to use’ parameter by players. For example in starcraft 2, most of the units have skills. You can make some ‘ways’ to take these into consideration. But how easily can users handle the skills. Statistics can help you for changes into your mathematical model-formula also.
So, there is a question, do we need a pro player for balance? The answer is why not… statistics gives how easily a middle user can handle situations. But a pro user has better micro-management of units. It is important not to have a ‘broken’ unit for pro players either. For not pro players, there are not broken units. Maybe there are units which someone handles better than others, but no broken ones. You can say that instead of pro users opinion you can see the pro players games statistics. So it is not absolutely necessary to ask pro players what changes to make, but it is sure to see the pro players statistics to make balance changes.
PS: Because the pro players statistics takes some time, it is ok in my opinion to ask them for balance changes. But each pro player will tell his personal experience. It might be correct or wrong. It is sure much better than a middle user opinion, but still not absolute. So you can ask some of them so that you get a way guide what changes to make.
seu post infelizmente e inútil cara
Data is useless without context. This context is what (pro) players provide.
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Sweeden is Broken in low, medium and High elos, for that reason u Will see the Nerf in the next patch.
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you cannot really use just pure win % to determine nerfs and buffs. if you’re playing with only one “overpowered” civ on quicksearch, you’ll just get your elo inflated until you’re winning roughly 50% of your games anyway. if your elo tanks after switching to another civ, you’re gonna drop till you’re winning half your games roughly. that’s how elo works (in theory). The reason top players have to be directly involved is they’re at a point where they won’t be losing as the broken civs, because they’re already at the top and won’t be kept down by players vastly more skilled than them. In other words, they see the top of the ladder and what really sticks out when mistakes are minimized. I do agree a lot of changes can come from average players (eg. the infamous cuir nerf) but for determining what’s truly overpowered or unplayable it often comes down to the top of the ladder
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Careful what you say about balance… devs will lock the thread if you say anything negative about it!