Multiplayer Balancing - Will Arma3's MP be balanced?

[onlyrazor 11]

Simulate doctrine lol. Isn't that what tacticool tactardation clans are for?

Nope, those are to make people think they use tacticool doctrine. In reality, it's probably a WWI-esque rush at the enemy lines with a Lee-Enfield (king of guns! Yeaaaa-) in hand.

[zimms 22]

Rye are you seriously making fun of people who try to play ArmA strategic and try to make it feel more realistic to them? You know that this game can be played differently than only Domination deathmatch all day long.

[rye1 21]

The tactical fairy is out again.

[[frl]myke 14]

The tactical fairy is out again.

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[rohan11221 1]

Is it just me of are the moderators getting really up tight as of late.

[hellfire257 3]

I'm sure you'll find out soon enough.

[[frl]myke 14]

Is it just me of are the moderators getting really up tight as of late.

If that would be the case, this thread would have been closed a long time ago but as you see, it is still open.

Besides that:

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[rye1 21]

Haha I think Rohan was taking the mick because he knows me, and knows I've played in tactical clans and communities for years yet zimms said apparently I play Domination like a casual.

I was more trying to break the surface of the idea of "Doctrine within ARMA". Superficially that's all good and jolly but in reality it's too much work for too little and not every one abides by doctrine, and the dogma that comes along with it. For example insurgents. You can throw them into one category but there is a grading basis off that to which tactical proficiency and the use of doctrine would be based off. Some insurgents may of been the 20 year old pissed off kid a week ago and now they have an AK in retrospect to the hard-dogs who have been fighting for 15 years and who abide by some form of tactical law or guidelines.

It's one of those "good ideas" that when you break the surface are not worth a glance. The best you can do is simulate elements of Doctrine as we have done in the MSO. For example, for the Russians we have Tunguskas moving in the elements they are meant to through Russian Doctrine to realistically move in, i.e. the minimum of 4. That's easy, they're a conventional element to the overall army. But when it comes to the unconventional elements, you cannot "control" them, they're outside of the box of that type of control. I recommend reading "Guerrillas in the Mist" by Bob Newman. And while you're at it read a military manual or handbook and think to yourself "How do we put this in ARMA?" - Not so easy now is it?

It adds to balancing, yes, so does the tactics each faction may use in reality but that doesn't mean we're going to see it anywhere near ARMA.

[kklownboy 43]

Well to have a "Doctrine", you have to field a Doctrine. Only the USA is able to come close. Soviets failed hard. Hence there is no Soviet now. Russia has Doctrine, its make everybody pay for fuel. Not sure how this can make a "balanced" MP game play? Since there isnt any balance in the world now or when the time frame of A3 comes out. This is a odd subject.

[onlyrazor 11]

Well to have a "Doctrine", you have to field a Doctrine. Only the USA is able to come close. Soviets failed hard. Hence there is no Soviet now. Russia has Doctrine, its make everybody pay for fuel. Not sure how this can make a "balanced" MP game play? Since there isnt any balance in the world now or when the time frame of A3 comes out. This is a odd subject.

I doubt military doctrines involve making people pay for fuel.

[Tonci87 163]

The Soviets had no doctrine? Yeah, tell that to the Germans, or the French...

[wipman 1]

Hi, the balance on the ArmA's MP world depends on the mission maker; the MP as i understand it... means coop, the balance is done by confronting the players side (better in equipment & tactics) to a supperior number of forces (more troops but with worst equipment) and you get to the balance by that path.

On the ArmA3 for what we've 'til now... seems that the OPFOR side have as much high-tech equipment as the BLUFOR so seems that, again... the balance in MP depends on the mission maker. We always had the possibility of confront the same number of troops with the same or equivalent gear and support, it didn't used to be this way because the PvP can be tedious and used to be tedious... because you had players guarding an emplacement or perimeter, or... patrols; that could find the other patrol or not, after 3h of playing. The RL can be not as fun as a game where you know where to go to shoot someone for a reason. I'd always found the ArmA/OFP balanced, was the missions what was unbalanced, but the game had the resources to be it; IMO. Let's C ya

[BasileyOne 10]

bitching about "balance" seriously contradict/interfere with whole definition of "wargaming" itself.

if you want "balance" play football or chess.

when you play WARgames, you're at war.

NOTHING fair in wars, trust me. and nothing really good there too.

bottom line: simulation IS fun. if you think different, then you should purchase different game and you're probably do, later.

[Streaks 0]

It's all fair and balanced until someone calls in an A10 lol

The franchise caters to a different mindset. Those of us who don't MIND being assigned a position or job of "just guard this sector" and doing so for an hour or more because it's IMPORTANT to your team. In my case I often will make a position at an airfield so planes can rearm/refuel and use my AI to help guard it from fixed positions as well. It can be a very important task to just drive a supply truck and earn cash with salvage too. etc etc

Balance in this game to me at least, would just seem silly.

[chortles 263]

It's all fair and balanced until someone calls in an A10 lol

Unfortunately you missed the definition of MP balance... "balance" is not about the stats of the the A-10, or about how its stats compare to the OPFOR ground attack jet (this isn't BF3 where they're identical)... Balance is about whether there's an OPFOR ground attack jet in the Editor AT ALL. :p

Remember, this is a game where the mission maker can make "BLUFOR insurgents vs. OPFOR conventional military". ;)

P.S. Insert the usual disclaimer how this "imbalance is realistic" is only plausible when the extent of the engine's built-in-level-of-simulation is comprehensive enough to be actually realistic... but it's not, i.e. the usual "unrealistic Tab targeting as opposed to more realistic guided weapons release" complaint earlier in this thread, as well as the claimed "the engine is limited to only Mach 0.8 so some vehicles' real-world advantages aren't actually simulated". Streaks, your own item in the "community wishes no discussion" thread inspired this disclaimer! :D

Edited October 13, 2012 by Chortles

[NoRailgunner 0]

Guess if A3 is still about "Adapt/Survive/Win" players will have to deal with certain different or "unmatched" stuff and features. It would be a bit naive to think that any conventional military has no trump card/asset up in their sleeves and is only focussing on balanced warfare.

[Mr. Charles 22]

Soviet Doctrine was quantity over quality, whereas the NATO doctrine is the other way round ;)

[kilroy the nerd 14]

If you mean infantry combat, considering almost every weapon will kill in 1-3 shots unless you purposely aim for a disabling shot, it's pretty balanced. Everything can kill in almost an instant, it depends on the operator.

Combined arms? Just add the vehicle's natural enemies and it can go either way. Similarly, as long as a tank rush has infantry to clear out nests giving it trouble that it can't hit, it balances out.

L-39ZA way too lame compared to the L-159 ALCA? Add a bunch of L-39ZAs and balance it out in numbers.

It's pretty much in the mission maker.

Edited October 13, 2012 by Kilroy the Nerd

[chortles 263]

Didn't even read what I said, huh? Balance is an Editor selection thing, imbalance is a mission maker thing -- we seem to believe the opposite, but then again I'm not going to believe that ARMA is somehow for "the chosen people"... Rye had a great comeback earlier to that malarkey.

Combined arms? Just add the vehicle's natural enemies and it can go either way. Similarly, as long as a tank rush has infantry to clear out nests giving it trouble that it can't hit, it balances out.

"Balance" is about whether those natural enemies exist in the Editor for the mission maker to add in the first place, and whether the engine simulates the aspects that give the "natural enemies" their real-world advantages! ;)

If you mean infantry combat, considering almost every weapon will kill in 1-3 shots unless you purposely aim for a disabling shot, it's pretty balanced. Everything can kill in almost an instant, it depends on the operator.

That isn't the balance issue, although both the MX and TRG-21 showing up in 6.5mm neatly dodges the perceived "damage nerf" disparity back when 1.62 released (with the accusations that so many weapons got nerfed for the sake of DayZ but that it happened to people playing regular ARMA).

The "balance issue" previously discussed many pages ago in this thread (I believe by Celery?) was about attachments, in ARMA 2 there was a seemingly great disparity of weapon attachments possible for BLUFOR weapons compared to OPFOR; it seems that the ARMA 3 solution was simply to implement the attachment system so that "all" (so far shown) weapons have the potential to be "tacticool'd" up, and to make it clear that the OPFOR this time around is akin to a First World military in terms of technology level, so less like ARMA 2's Eastern Europeans/Russians or OA's Takistanis (both Army and guerrillas) and more like BAF's British Army or PMC's ION... or heck, OA's US Army. :D

Personally I understand that there is in fact a comparable range of "Russian" attachments for "stereotypical OPFOR" weapons, but the extent of this just was not simulated in vanilla ARMA 2, by which I mean that many of those attachments were not available in the form of weapon variants with them. ARMA 3 seems to sidestepped this issue by weapon attachments a real thing (didn't ASC Weapons just make a weapon variant for each possible combination and swap them accordingly?) in the engine for the first time in over ten years of this engine, and by outright giving the OPFOR a "BLUFOR AR", so we may have moments like Iranian special forces with EOTechs and VFGs on their small arms.

(This article has photos of Russian special forces for shooting competition with accessorized AKs... including two separate instances of holographic sights. :p Just throwing these in to emphasize my point on "balance" with regards to small arms, that small arms balance in ARMA is NOT like stereotypical shooter balance.)

[galzohar 31]

If you mean infantry combat, considering almost every weapon will kill in 1-3 shots unless you purposely aim for a disabling shot, it's pretty balanced. Everything can kill in almost an instant, it depends on the operator.

Combined arms? Just add the vehicle's natural enemies and it can go either way. Similarly, as long as a tank rush has infantry to clear out nests giving it trouble that it can't hit, it balances out.

L-39ZA way too lame compared to the L-159 ALCA? Add a bunch of L-39ZAs and balance it out in numbers.

It's pretty much in the mission maker.

Exactly. While it's nice for the game to give mission makers plenty of options in how to balance their missions, in the end balance of an encounter of 2 sides with a different tool set (even if only slightly different) depends on which and how many tools are available to either side to make up for any differences.

War isn't fair, but in the long run nobody wants to play on the side that keeps losing. Or if the mission is boring enough, sometimes you get the reverse where nobody wants to play on the winning side because you win without even getting a chance to fight anything.

That said, I do hope the game does ship with some kind of balanced missions that we can play against each other, so we don't have to wait for mission makers to make their own. Then again I'll probably be making my own anyway, especially if the shipped game is lacking in that department.

[chortles 263]

Exactly. While it's nice for the game to give mission makers plenty of options in how to balance their missions, in the end balance of an encounter of 2 sides with a different tool set (even if only slightly different) depends on which and how many tools are available to either side to make up for any differences.

Pretty much -- the fantasy of asymmetrical balance (i.e. that x of something will be enough to balance out a qualitative difference of y) is way more difficult to pull off than semi-symmetrical "comparable assets" balance. Heck, I get the sense thanks to Gaia's comments that the story is so fictionalized specifically to keep ARMA 3 from being trapped in the "conventional BLUFOR vs. insurgent OPFOR, there's no such thing as balance, this is war" fantasy land... you know, because this is not war, this is a video game? As you said, "nobody wants to play on the side that keeps losing" -- key word here, play... :D

I'll probably be making my own anyway, especially if the shipped game is lacking in that department.

Unfortunately I've felt that "I'll just mod improvements in" has been a historical reason for BI not making some of those improvements in the vanilla game. Thankfully, Celery and Gaia's comments are signs that this doesn't seem to be the case in ARMA 3 -- that they recognize that there was a problem which limited ARMA's potential, and they can think of and implement a way to fix the problem while maintaining the potential (in the hands of mission makers) of ARMA.

The way I see "balance", in the Editor assign assets to both factions so that either one can play the "conventional" one, then the mission maker can create in-that-mission-only asymmetry by placing certain assets for one faction, while being also able to create symmetrically balanced missions by placing those assets for both factions. TL;DR: Balanced factions, imbalanced missions! :D

[Streaks 0]

Unfortunately you missed the definition of MP balance... "balance" is not about the stats of the the A-10, or about how its stats compare to the OPFOR ground attack jet (this isn't BF3 where they're identical)... Balance is about whether there's an OPFOR ground attack jet in the Editor AT ALL. :p

Remember, this is a game where the mission maker can make "BLUFOR insurgents vs. OPFOR conventional military". ;)

P.S. Insert the usual disclaimer how this "imbalance is realistic" is only plausible when the extent of the engine's built-in-level-of-simulation is comprehensive enough to be actually realistic... but it's not, i.e. the usual "unrealistic Tab targeting as opposed to more realistic guided weapons release" complaint earlier in this thread, as well as the claimed "the engine is limited to only Mach 0.8 so some vehicles' real-world advantages aren't actually simulated". Streaks, your own item in the "community wishes no discussion" thread inspired this disclaimer! :D

LOL, I understand what you're get'n at. I guess my post was more like "it all gets unbalanced when CAS shows up" :P I personally would be ok with things being as realistic as possible. If I'm on the ground and just die in an explosion I'd expect it's from a bomb etc from a plane I didn't even know was in the air. And if I'm in the air and just die then I'd.....oh wait that happens now! LOL :P :D Also.....aren't countermeasures able to be set to automatic in military aircraft now days??

---------- Post added at 12:20 ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 ----------

Pretty much -- the fantasy of asymmetrical balance (i.e. that x of something will be enough to balance out a qualitative difference of y) is way more difficult to pull off than semi-symmetrical "comparable assets" balance. Heck, I get the sense thanks to Gaia's comments that the story is so fictionalized specifically to keep ARMA 3 from being trapped in the "conventional BLUFOR vs. insurgent OPFOR, there's no such thing as balance, this is war" fantasy land... you know, because this is not war, this is a video game? As you said, "nobody wants to play on the side that keeps losing" -- key word here, play... :DUnfortunately I've felt that "I'll just mod improvements in" has been a historical reason for BI not making some of those improvements in the vanilla game. Thankfully, Celery and Gaia's comments are signs that this doesn't seem to be the case in ARMA 3 -- that they recognize that there was a problem which limited ARMA's potential, and they can think of and implement a way to fix the problem while maintaining the potential (in the hands of mission makers) of ARMA.

The way I see "balance", in the Editor assign assets to both factions so that either one can play the "conventional" one, then the mission maker can create in-that-mission-only asymmetry by placing certain assets for one faction, while being also able to create symmetrically balanced missions by placing those assets for both factions. TL;DR: Balanced factions, imbalanced missions! :D

Ah....but it's a game that's meant to simulate warfare, ergo it should be as realistic as possible IMO. Maybe there could be some option in the lobby setup for all parties to "sign" some kind of "convention" dealing with certain assets or bullet types before each match heheh :P

[chortles 263]

LOL, I understand what you're get'n at. I guess my post was more like "it all gets unbalanced when CAS shows up" :P

More like "when only BLUFOR has CAS in the Editor but not OPFOR". :D Whereas if you could, say, recreate the exact same scenario in the Editor but swap out BLUFOR CAS vs. OPFOR infantry for OPFOR CAS vs. BLUFOR infantry... then yeah, we've got the "balance" that I'm thinking of.

Also.....aren't countermeasures able to be set to automatic in military aircraft now days??

Does ARMA simulate that? No, and as pointed out in the "consoley" thread ARMA doesn't simulate a LOT of things. :p

Ah....but it's a game that's meant to simulate warfare, ergo it should be as realistic as possible IMO.

"Should", "could", "would"... but doesn't... yet. ;) The goal of "realistic as possible" isn't actually a bad thing... but ARMA falls short of that, and so far much of the footage coming out of E3/GC doesn't make me think that it'll be much different yet (didn't see the TOH flight model in action at GC for example) so my thoughts on "balance" are based on that opinion of the E3/GC builds.

[rufor 1]

They won't include TOH flight model in ArmA3, because( my best guess ).. they wan't to make money on TOH. Basically, consistent with cash-grab tactics.

[dmarkwick 261]

They won't include TOH flight model in ArmA3, because( my best guess ).. they wan't to make money on TOH. Basically, consistent with cash-grab tactics.

This is one of those posts with so much wrong with it, that it's just better to