(Yeah it's big ... so is my deception atm)
When I played it in beta I said (referring to the map balancing): "hmm ... not very good, but they will improve it over time". I wasn't even thinking that the balancing will only get worst.
This is the game with the worst balancing I've played in my entire life ! ... and I'm playing multiplayer FPSs since Quake 1.
The initial beta balancing was somewhat mediocre, but there are plenty of games who had this problem in beta/early release state. What separates this game from others (in a bad way) are:
1. the patches that followed "succeded" in screwing it even worst, making the balanced map imbalanced and the imbalanced maps even more imbalanced
2. biased improvements. I have yet to see an improvement for the axis team ! ALL the modifications were made in favor of the Allies. This level of one-side attention is childish to say the least.
Some quotes from The Grand Patch Notes thread:
*** 19 Sep patch ***
Pavlov's House
-Added wall to block line of sight to one of the Allied tank spawns
-Allies now correctly get a forward spawn when capturing Zab's House
-German spawn protection was toned down to prevent Allied attackers in inside of the Voyentorg from being killed by spawn protection when objectives changed hands
Commissar's House
-Gave Allies 40 more reinforcements
-Default Allied spawn in more directly in line with Building 81
-Moved one of the initial Axis spawns back further from the Water Refinery
-Increased spawn protection and no artillery volumes for Allies
-Various cover fixes
*** 21 Nov patch ***
(Red October)
-Satchel objectives can now be 'captured' by destroying the target
Apartments
-Added additional allied spawn after capturing the first set of objectives
Grain Elevator
-Added a spawn for the Allies that is on the 4th floor. This for when the allies are defending the Foothold
Spartanovka
-Fixed a issues with spawn protection incorrectly showing up when one of the objectives was captured in the 16 player version. Also fixed an Allied spawn not working correctly on the 16 player version.
I politely invite a russian fan-boy to search The Grand Patch Notes thread or if it's not there to just indicate to me ONE or TWO balancing improvements in favor of the Axis that were done since this game was launched !
This was not all from the 21 Nov patch. Oh no ... why stop here ?
The 3 unsaid things regarding map balancing the 21 Nov Patch introduced:
1. Around 20% more reinforcements for the Allies on Station !
First time I saw this I was like: "Yes ! After 2 months they saw that the attacking team has the same number of reinforcements as the defenders and they tried to fix it". But "dang ... they made an itsy-bitsy mistake and they gave the reinforcements to the defending team !".
It doesn't take a genius to see that if the map is not won in maximum 15 minutes (which actually translates into unbalanced teams) then Axis loses on reinforcements. 70%-80% of the balanced games (both team having equally skilled players) ends with Axis depleted and Allies winning with 40-50 reinforcements left.
If this is a bug (you gave the reinforcements to the wrong team) it's just another "let's patch the patch" thing you got us used to. If this is somekind of sick feature then it's really really pathetic. I'm even afraid of the explanation I'll get (if I will get one that is).
2. More reinforcements for Allies on Grain Elevator !
Frankly, I didn't even notice it untill today. But it's real ... on the worst map for Axis the "balancing" was done by giving the russians more reinforcements !
I don't want to get into this too far because I'm not sure how the reinforcements are calculated on this map (remember the russian deplete if they don't keep D for 1 minute).
Still .. the decision baffles me and just looks like another nail on the Axis coffin.
I was expecting some closer spawns for the germans or further for allies, something to make B and C a little more easy to cap, instead I got ... this.
3. Lockable A (Building 81) in Commissars
I'm not going to say Commissars is favoring Allies. On the contrary: it's in favor of the Axis (this and Gumrak - thanks to the superior Panzer are the only ones who favor Axis atm).
What I'm going to say though is that Objective A is captured just by running there. The initial spawn is bad: as Axis you have 12-14 seconds to get there and that is the same time Allies have. What happened to "on the initial spawn the defending team must be closer to the objective" ? It's stupid to make me defend something that is captured by the time I get to it !
YES, MAKE BUILDING 81 LOCKABLE, BUT MOVE THE INITIAL AXIS SPAWN CLOSER (I suggest the wall where objective C starts - that's just 10-20 meters closer than what Axis have now) ... give me a chance to fight for the damn building.
And something else regarding this map: you've done everything to balance it, from arty protection to giving russians a gazillion reinforcements to (now) making A lockable and it's still screwed. Allow me to give you a hint: russians get raped at spawn !
So after these great balancing decision you can divide the maps into:
- balanced: Fallen Fighters
- imbalanced in favor of the germans: Gumrak (thanks to PIV), Commissars (thanks to many things)
- slightly* imbalanced in favor of the Allies (thanks to PPSH): Apartments, Barracks
- slightly* imbalanced in favor of the Allies (thanks to 10 minutes cooldown on Axis artillery): Red October
- imbalanced in favor of the Allies: Grain Elevator (reinforcements, spawn distances, spawn rape), Pavlov's (reinforcements, spawn distances and difficulty to get to the objectives, different type of cap zones, "the tunnel"), Station (reinforcements, spawn rape), Spartanovka (same reinforcements, same arty cooldown timers for both teams, difficulty to take the last cap zone, other small things).
* slightly means 5-10%, no big deal.
To paraphrase someone, I'm one of the 0,0001% who still plays this game, but with decisions like that I think you'll soon add another 0 in that number.
When I played it in beta I said (referring to the map balancing): "hmm ... not very good, but they will improve it over time". I wasn't even thinking that the balancing will only get worst.
This is the game with the worst balancing I've played in my entire life ! ... and I'm playing multiplayer FPSs since Quake 1.
The initial beta balancing was somewhat mediocre, but there are plenty of games who had this problem in beta/early release state. What separates this game from others (in a bad way) are:
1. the patches that followed "succeded" in screwing it even worst, making the balanced map imbalanced and the imbalanced maps even more imbalanced
2. biased improvements. I have yet to see an improvement for the axis team ! ALL the modifications were made in favor of the Allies. This level of one-side attention is childish to say the least.
Some quotes from The Grand Patch Notes thread:
*** 19 Sep patch ***
Pavlov's House
-Added wall to block line of sight to one of the Allied tank spawns
-Allies now correctly get a forward spawn when capturing Zab's House
-German spawn protection was toned down to prevent Allied attackers in inside of the Voyentorg from being killed by spawn protection when objectives changed hands
Commissar's House
-Gave Allies 40 more reinforcements
-Default Allied spawn in more directly in line with Building 81
-Moved one of the initial Axis spawns back further from the Water Refinery
-Increased spawn protection and no artillery volumes for Allies
-Various cover fixes
*** 21 Nov patch ***
(Red October)
-Satchel objectives can now be 'captured' by destroying the target
Apartments
-Added additional allied spawn after capturing the first set of objectives
Grain Elevator
-Added a spawn for the Allies that is on the 4th floor. This for when the allies are defending the Foothold
Spartanovka
-Fixed a issues with spawn protection incorrectly showing up when one of the objectives was captured in the 16 player version. Also fixed an Allied spawn not working correctly on the 16 player version.
I politely invite a russian fan-boy to search The Grand Patch Notes thread or if it's not there to just indicate to me ONE or TWO balancing improvements in favor of the Axis that were done since this game was launched !
This was not all from the 21 Nov patch. Oh no ... why stop here ?
The 3 unsaid things regarding map balancing the 21 Nov Patch introduced:
1. Around 20% more reinforcements for the Allies on Station !
First time I saw this I was like: "Yes ! After 2 months they saw that the attacking team has the same number of reinforcements as the defenders and they tried to fix it". But "dang ... they made an itsy-bitsy mistake and they gave the reinforcements to the defending team !".
It doesn't take a genius to see that if the map is not won in maximum 15 minutes (which actually translates into unbalanced teams) then Axis loses on reinforcements. 70%-80% of the balanced games (both team having equally skilled players) ends with Axis depleted and Allies winning with 40-50 reinforcements left.
If this is a bug (you gave the reinforcements to the wrong team) it's just another "let's patch the patch" thing you got us used to. If this is somekind of sick feature then it's really really pathetic. I'm even afraid of the explanation I'll get (if I will get one that is).
2. More reinforcements for Allies on Grain Elevator !
Frankly, I didn't even notice it untill today. But it's real ... on the worst map for Axis the "balancing" was done by giving the russians more reinforcements !
I don't want to get into this too far because I'm not sure how the reinforcements are calculated on this map (remember the russian deplete if they don't keep D for 1 minute).
Still .. the decision baffles me and just looks like another nail on the Axis coffin.
I was expecting some closer spawns for the germans or further for allies, something to make B and C a little more easy to cap, instead I got ... this.
3. Lockable A (Building 81) in Commissars
I'm not going to say Commissars is favoring Allies. On the contrary: it's in favor of the Axis (this and Gumrak - thanks to the superior Panzer are the only ones who favor Axis atm).
What I'm going to say though is that Objective A is captured just by running there. The initial spawn is bad: as Axis you have 12-14 seconds to get there and that is the same time Allies have. What happened to "on the initial spawn the defending team must be closer to the objective" ? It's stupid to make me defend something that is captured by the time I get to it !
YES, MAKE BUILDING 81 LOCKABLE, BUT MOVE THE INITIAL AXIS SPAWN CLOSER (I suggest the wall where objective C starts - that's just 10-20 meters closer than what Axis have now) ... give me a chance to fight for the damn building.
And something else regarding this map: you've done everything to balance it, from arty protection to giving russians a gazillion reinforcements to (now) making A lockable and it's still screwed. Allow me to give you a hint: russians get raped at spawn !
So after these great balancing decision you can divide the maps into:
- balanced: Fallen Fighters
- imbalanced in favor of the germans: Gumrak (thanks to PIV), Commissars (thanks to many things)
- slightly* imbalanced in favor of the Allies (thanks to PPSH): Apartments, Barracks
- slightly* imbalanced in favor of the Allies (thanks to 10 minutes cooldown on Axis artillery): Red October
- imbalanced in favor of the Allies: Grain Elevator (reinforcements, spawn distances, spawn rape), Pavlov's (reinforcements, spawn distances and difficulty to get to the objectives, different type of cap zones, "the tunnel"), Station (reinforcements, spawn rape), Spartanovka (same reinforcements, same arty cooldown timers for both teams, difficulty to take the last cap zone, other small things).
* slightly means 5-10%, no big deal.
To paraphrase someone, I'm one of the 0,0001% who still plays this game, but with decisions like that I think you'll soon add another 0 in that number.
