The Balancing of SCCT

[Xendrid]

I played countless hours of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Spies vs Mercs back in the day. Addicting, and utterly fun. Every time I think of the unique atmosphere and interaction of the levels, the ground breaking features, and ridiculous amount of ways to play and defeat your enemies...I get overwhelmed with nostalgia and a deep longing for those long nights of SCCT mutliplayer. Yet there was a horrible issue of balancing. 8 out of 10 times, Mercs dominated. A seasoned Spy can get the mercs down pretty far in lives, but the game was just too unbalanced to allow the Spies to pull off very many victories. Thankfully, Ubisoft delivered a solution by allowing the host to disable items and techniques. My friend and I got tired of the balancing issues, so I basically took out everything that didn't really require skill. I also adjusted the lives to be more fair. This is basically the list of how my friend and I would play with the public, the results, and what we learned.

Mercs: Disabled EVERYTHING except Charge, laser, grenades, and EMF. Forbid players from using the Shotgun. Gave them two lives each for a total of four lives.

Spies: Disabled lethal drop technique, gave them the max number of lives. I can't remember for sure since it was so long ago, but I think it was 10 lives each for a total of 20. Whatever the max was.

I know what you're thinking, 4 vs 20!? Madness! No, this is Splinter Cell. The only times we lost as Mercs were against seasoned players, which were VERY hard to come by. As long as we used teamwork and were careful, we were unstoppable with this setup, but it was still a challenge, something lacking from every other public game. Always having 12-20 lives, all the gear and techniques, made it too easy and not fun as a Merc and a nightmare as a Spy.

So how did we fair as Spies? No problem. It was actually fun. Against a good player we would have a good fight on our hands, but we were good enough as Spies that it was pretty easy against players who were used to having super overpowered Mercs. When they got their second chance to be the Mercs, they would tighten up and take it more seriously and would increase their kills. That is if they stayed in our game long enough after we destroyed them as Mercs ourselves ;) For some reason they would get really upset that we beat them when they had everything unlocked except for Lethal Drop Tech and had 20 lives to our four.

What did we learn? Well, my formula was hardcore, but it proved the point that Mercs were overpowered beyond belief, as long as the player was relatively smart. I literally made them as weak as I could without removing EVERYTHING, and they were still deadly and hella fun to play as. When we would be playing with friends, we would lighten things up and adjust the lives and gear as needed depending on their level of skills. It made the game fun for all of us.

So what was my point of this thread? Give the options to balance the game to the players. So everyone from noob to the hardcore veterans can enjoy it. Long live the classic SCCT multiplayer experience, and may it come out of the dreadful shadows cast by Double Agent, Conviction and even Blacklist to make a triumphant return in the form of Project Stealth.

Thanks for reading.

[dYnAm1c]

I never head someone talking so harshly about the balancing of the Versus, I played it from release until the server were to emtpy to be able to play regulary.
In my opinion the versus is very well balanced as far as an asymetrical game can be balanced, it is VERY hard to balance something like Spy vs. Merc, gameplay and map design wise.
Giving the players rights to disable perks and items should only be able to an extend, I don't want to see every game having disabled 90% of the gameplay just because they think its more balanced (which by the way is also only based on your opinion and skill). I never had the feeling that the versus is so unbalanced as you think, I never had problems of mercs playing shotgun. In the end you can counter it by staying away from the mercs by using your own items like heartbeat or tracking sensors. I never changed anything when I created rooms and my mate and I were quite successfull with it.

[NeoSuperior]

All your formula proved was that:

1. People who you played against were not accostumed to your "kind" of game mode
2. People who never bother to set the alternative filters would never join

I don't think your idea is bad, but did you actually try it on more maps than just club, aqua and mus? Also I agree with dYnAm1c about shotguns. If someone wants to use shotgun in Factory, just let them  ;)

Wait... no Gasmask? Well with that it is possible to block narrow paths of the mercs 5 cam uses long, which amounts to 15+ seconds and no defense against Spy HOST CAMS (which going by your description were always 1 of you guys!) No, with no Gasmask this is not doable. As long as there is a narrow path spies can block mercs almost endlessly.

[Xendrid]

I never head someone talking so harshly about the balancing of the Versus, I played it from release until the server were to emtpy to be able to play regulary.
In my opinion the versus is very well balanced as far as an asymetrical game can be balanced, it is VERY hard to balance something like Spy vs. Merc, gameplay and map design wise.
Giving the players rights to disable perks and items should only be able to an extend, I don't want to see every game having disabled 90% of the gameplay just because they think its more balanced (which by the way is also only based on your opinion and skill). I never had the feeling that the versus is so unbalanced as you think, I never had problems of mercs playing shotgun. In the end you can counter it by staying away from the mercs by using your own items like heartbeat or tracking sensors. I never changed anything when I created rooms and my mate and I were quite successfull with it.

Don't forget my point was that the options to manually balance the game are almost necessary for this type of game. You also gave affirmation to this by saying how difficult it is to balance such a game.

All your formula proved was that:

1. People who you played against were not accostumed to your "kind" of game mode
2. People who never bother to set the alternative filters would never join

I don't think your idea is bad, but did you actually try it on more maps than just club, aqua and mus? Also I agree with dYnAm1c about shotguns. If someone wants to use shotgun in Factory, just let them  ;)

Wait... no Gasmask? Well with that it is possible to block narrow paths of the mercs 5 cam uses long, which amounts to 15+ seconds and no defense against Spy HOST CAMS (which going by your description were always 1 of you guys!) No, with no Gasmask this is not doable. As long as there is a narrow path spies can block mercs almost endlessly.

Haha yeah, I probably had Gasmasks enabled, it has been a long time.

All in all, there were too many advantages to the Mercs, if my friend and I could win game after game as Mercs with that setup, something was wrong in my eyes. We didn't just play on one map either, though we obviously had our favorites. I believe there was only one map we generally avoided and that was Factory. Without regulation it gave a predictable result. That is the case I wanted to make.

[NeoSuperior]

Sadly no matter what, in the end bugs always get into the way. Things like back-elbows or front-grabs will happen sooner or later and can decide the whole game.

Also host advantage is a very unfair component of SCCT. My win rate when I hosted games, or my mate was hosts was clearly noticable, escpacially in Intercontinental games.


Don't get me wrong though, I do agree that mercs were OP in most cases in SCCT. I think PS can prevent that. There are things that I always had in mind, for example to buff regular merc gun shots (more damage and/or higher firerate and/or higher precision), but weaken sniper fire (not lowering damage, but instead increasing the delay when changing from normal mode into sniper mode and/or lowering firerate in sniper mode).

[Xendrid]

Sadly no matter what, in the end bugs always get into the way. Things like back-elbows or front-grabs will happen sooner or later and can decide the whole game.

Also host advantage is a very unfair component of SCCT. My win rate when I hosted games, or my mate was hosts was clearly noticable, escpacially in Intercontinental games.


Don't get me wrong though, I do agree that mercs were OP in most cases in SCCT. I think PS can prevent that. There are things that I always had in mind, for example to buff regular merc gun shots (more damage and/or higher firerate and/or higher precision), but weaken sniper fire (not lowering damage, but instead increasing the delay when changing from normal mode into sniper mode and/or lowering firerate in sniper mode).

Yeah I particularly didn't like the fact that you could look through your partner's flashlight beam and see in the shadows. I never noticed the host advantage. The host varied and we often played against each other. Of course I don't recall playing with many people outside of the US. I can see it happening on an international level, that is a given.

[dYnAm1c]

Everything in SCCT was hostsided, from life to ammo. The host could easily change every value with a bit knowledge about memory editing.
I hope PS is using a different method or at least makes memory hacking very hard or impossible with DMA, variable obscuring or data shadowing.
Or maybe even an anti cheat?

[frvge]

We're not commenting on security. Time will tell.

[Roberto1223]

IMO your "custom mode" is pretty stupid.
Your entire ideal is based on a misunderstanding of the term "balanced gameplay". What you basically did is you "dumbed down" mercs and boosted spy lives so that newb spies "have a better chance of surviving during a match against good mercs".

The point of balancing an online game is to make changes to gadgets/gameplay so that people that actually know how to play the game can have a GG. You dont "balance gamplay" assuming one side/team doesnt know how to play and the other one does. Just because the game is asymmetrical and spies have a steeper learning curve, doesnt mean the game is unbalanced. Learning curve is one thing, gamplay balance is another.

For example, imagine call of duty multiplayer mode where defenders have more health and lives and attackers (bomb planters) have less than half of the lives and die with less shots. This would only produce a GG in a scenario where the attackers are a team of pro players and the defenders are a team of noobs. Otherwise, if both teams are at same skill level it would be extremely unbalanced.

You are "balancing gameplay" making all the wrong assumptions. Your premise is that the merc will always be a good player and the spy will always be a bad player, or that the same person will be very good at merc and very bad at spy ALWAYS. That is just false. You also gave all the noob spies a bunch of lives and took off all of your merc gadgets so that you dont "own them" so easily, yet you conveniently left EMF on and took MT off just to give the illusion that you are at a disadvantage, when in reality you are probably just gonna "ghost snipe" the shit out of those noob spies.

In short, when "balancing a game" you must assume IDEAL CONDITIONS, and by that I mean that you must assume that all players on both teams have a fricking clue about what the hell they are doing while playing the game. Balance a game for people that know how to play. NOT FOR PEOPLE THAT DONT KNOW HOW TO PLAY playing against people that DO KNOW HOW TO PLAY.

[Roberto1223]

I agree with Master Neo that "Host advantage", bugs and exploits unbalances gameplay. Now that is a real factor to consider, because even under ideal conditions (both teams know how to play as merc and spy), the host actually has an easier time getting kills or knockdowns.

[Xendrid]

IMO your "custom mode" is pretty stupid.
Your entire ideal is based on a misunderstanding of the term "balanced gameplay". What you basically did is you "dumbed down" mercs and boosted spy lives so that newb spies "have a better chance of surviving during a match against good mercs".

The point of balancing an online game is to make changes to gadgets/gameplay so that people that actually know how to play the game can have a GG. You dont "balance gamplay" assuming one side/team doesnt know how to play and the other one does. Just because the game is asymmetrical and spies have a steeper learning curve, doesnt mean the game is unbalanced. Learning curve is one thing, gamplay balance is another.

For example, imagine call of duty multiplayer mode where defenders have more health and lives and attackers (bomb planters) have less than half of the lives and die with less shots. This would only produce a GG in a scenario where the attackers are a team of pro players and the defenders are a team of noobs. Otherwise, if both teams are at same skill level it would be extremely unbalanced.

You are "balancing gameplay" making all the wrong assumptions. Your premise is that the merc will always be a good player and the spy will always be a bad player, or that the same person will be very good at merc and very bad at spy ALWAYS. That is just false. You also gave all the noob spies a bunch of lives and took off all of your merc gadgets so that you dont "own them" so easily, yet you conveniently left EMF on and took MT off just to give the illusion that you are at a disadvantage, when in reality you are probably just gonna "ghost snipe" the shit out of those noob spies.

In short, when "balancing a game" you must assume IDEAL CONDITIONS, and by that I mean that you must assume that all players on both teams have a fricking clue about what the hell they are doing while playing the game. Balance a game for people that know how to play. NOT FOR PEOPLE THAT DONT KNOW HOW TO PLAY playing against people that DO KNOW HOW TO PLAY.

You missed my point, but that's fine. This isn't the ONLY match settings I ever went with obviously, but this was the most extreme case and it had results that showed the Mercs still retaining a biased win/loss ratio even though they are nerfed to hell. If an experienced Merc player can dominate with such stacked odds, against countless other players, you have a balancing issue.

Do you then disagree that Project Stealth should omit the options for disabling equipment, techniques, and adjusting the ratio to lives? Otherwise you will find that once a player becomes good enough, you run the risk of having a huge skill gap in the player base making the online experience crap for them and their opponents. Imagine how easy the game was for my friend and I on the standard rule set played by the community of SCCT. Spies would be shredded to pieces. Regardless of being good at Spies as well, we had a much harder time winning, which was fine for us. It's just that when we switched back to Mercs it felt like we knew the outcome, we would win, there really was no denying it. Even without my main partner, I had no problem winning as Merc. That was my point. There is always a median formula that the majority will like. 12 Merc lives vs 20 Spy lives was always a good standard. But isn't that saying something in itself?

As far as Host Advantage goes, there are ways to remedy it and I would expect no less from a game in 2014.

[NeoSuperior]

Now this reminds me when I played as merc against spies with inf life and inf time. As you can see it is IMPOSSIBLE for the mercs to win with these settings. And what happened? I PWNed them so hard until the host decided to ragequit by closing the server.

Does this prove that settings of 10 lives for each spies are necessary? No, it does not! This example only proves that I played against noobs and could be reversed by me playing as spy solo and win by kills. It has no weight whatsoever. It can easily become a straw man argument, as I have NO idea at all, WHO you played against.

Also I have a theory: Most players you played against were playing as offensive spies who either try to kill the mercs or try to cam rush them. They are probably med level and use this against noobs. Why? Because it works and there are so many noobs around! (i.e. the "middle" of the foodchain). Now if they suddenly get into a game with more expierenced players than themselves (which I simply assume, you and your mate are), then their "tactic" obviously fails and they get crushed by you, the mercs.

So what will your "new" settings change? It will make it WORSE!

Here is my reasoning about that: Unrelated to the truth of my "theory" I posted above about the enemies you encounter, your settings will cause one thing for sure: Spies will play more aggressively, because they don't have to worry about running out of lives. THIS is the keypoint. Why should they care about stealth at all? If they play slow, their high number of lives will go to waste because time runs out and with aggressive gameplay and some luck they can get some %ages of the computers.

tl;dr your settings damage the stealth element of this game. There is no need for a "fight or fleight" instinct, because they can always pick to fight and in worst case respawn with full EQ.

Spies who play stealthy have a much better winrate when playing against equals, than aggro spies have.

Sadly all of the above only applies to the right environment. Sadly lots and lots of people either host a game with a shitty internet connection, or for some reason they cannot have a stable connection to players from another continent.

When it comes to mercs being overpowered, I personally see the problem more in BUG EXPLOITS. A lot of people live in denial about this matter, claiming that "Jump Bugging" and "EAX" are all "part of the game" (they are bugs, as much as people try to deny that fact). EMF ghosting is more of an acceptable greyzone for me though. And now look at these things. Notice something? They are all bugs that turn the game in the favor of the merc! THIS is the problem that PS should face first, IMO.

[Roberto1223]

This phenomenon you are observing can be easily explained by the fact that most people who buy a splinter cell game and are new to SvM have much more experience playing online first person shooters than anything like the SvM spy (which is considerably different from the single player mode spy).

Therefore, since the merc from SvM more closely resembles other generic first person shooters, the average newbie has an easier time learning how to play merc than learning how to play as spy.

That is why you see an apparent imbalance in SvM gameplay. You must consider these outside factors. Your experiments with the SvM gameplay settings do not control for these kinds of factors.

Also, you should seriously consider teaching people how to play every once in a while and not being such a try hard always owning noobs balls deep like that. Cut the newb some slack every once in a while and teach them something and you will make friends and it benefits the SC community. More decent players = higher probability of finding a GG.

You dont have to be all like "Oh shit everybody sucks therefore I will give everybody lives and own them anyway without giving a shit about anything".

LOL...


Your method of "creating a GG" is arguably detrimental to the community, because it just prevents newbs from actually learning how to play the game. I just makes more noobs even noobier by giving them too many lives and restricting them from learning how to evade mines and spy traps etc.

[Xendrid]

This phenomenon you are observing can be easily explained by the fact that most people who buy a splinter cell game and are new to SvM have much more experience playing online first person shooters than anything like the SvM spy (which is considerably different from the single player mode spy).

Therefore, since the merc from SvM more closely resembles other generic first person shooters, the average newbie has an easier time learning how to play merc than learning how to play as spy.

That is why you see an apparent imbalance in SvM gameplay. You must consider these outside factors. Your experiments with the SvM gameplay settings do not control for these kinds of factors.

Also, you should seriously consider teaching people how to play every once in a while and not being such a try hard always owning noobs balls deep like that. Cut the newb some slack every once in a while and teach them something and you will make friends and it benefits the SC community. More decent players = higher probability of finding a GG.

You dont have to be all like "Oh shit everybody sucks therefore I will give everybody lives and own them anyway without giving a shit about anything".

LOL...


Your method of "creating a GG" is arguably detrimental to the community, because it just prevents newbs from actually learning how to play the game. I just makes more noobs even noobier by giving them too many lives and restricting them from learning how to evade mines and spy traps etc.

None of this has anything to do with my post. A lot of you are trying to find all of the flaws in everything I said and argue offshoots of my conclusion. If arguing is what you came here for, you'll have to go somewhere else.

Maybe you guys think I'm trying to bash your favorite game. No one loves SCCT more than I do. It was the perfect game. I'm just bringing up my endgame issue here in hopes that it resonates with a future game that is claiming to throwback to the classic SvM. Because I do so hope I can get that old nostalgia back again, unlikely, but we'll see. Words are wind.

[Roberto1223]

I'm not trolling you. I am just challenging your claims. If you can't back up your claims then you shouldn't be in a discussion forum in the first place.


Anyway, lets put that aside.


So yes, I do agree that it is harder to win as spy that it is to win as merc, even as an experienced player playing against another team of experienced players. But to me it is only a natural part of the game.

Look at SCBL for example, it is a completely different take on SvM (both Classic and Blacklist modes are way different from SCCT SvM) and in both cases I would argue that it is more difficult to win as spy than as merc.

This shows that it is natural for spy to be harder to master, there is an inherently steeper learning curve on spy because of the fact that one is supposed to be hiding/sneaking or being in very vulnerable positions such as hanging from walls where one can become an easy target if not careful enough.

Even in blacklist mode, Ubisoft literally moved spies towards the median-gamer's expectations of a generic first person shooter in order to appeal more people. Blacklist mode is still full of UBERNoobs and owning spies is extremely easy as merc for other reasons such as shitty spawns, adrenaline and other factors.

Not to mention, ubisoft actually went with giving everyone infinite lives and turned the game into more of a wild goose chase than a game of tactical stealth, infiltration and objective neutrilization.
It just motivates spies to play like idiots and not like spies.

Gadget restriction and increase in lives is not a solution to the problem, and it has been proven by the failure of Blacklist SvM. (Of course the failure of Blacklist is also attributable to like 1000 other reasons, but lets not get into that).

In your game mode you are kind of doing the exact same horrendous mistake that ubisoft made with Blacklist.

You are dumbing down the game, and it will not help anyone, and it will not improve anything and it will not fix newbness.




Welcome to the forum by the way. You are now sorrounded by hard core PC SCCT SvM fans, so although your contributions and opinions are welcome don't feel offended if nobody agrees with you.

PC Master Race FTW...