FileFront Forums - Manual re-balancing

Ok, I'll address some issues in turn here.

1.) Re: the "manual balance" technique, if I see someone doing that on the WOLF servers where I admin, they're going to get kicked and/or banned. Maybe not permanently banned, but at least a three day ban. I don't like how a lot of the maps play out either, and I'm EAGERLY awaiting 0.6, but griefing your own team is not the solution. Try developing tactics to counter the advantage and join the other team. That said, if anyone TKs you for doing so, they'll get a nice kick/ban as well. At least, that's how I'd handle the situation.

2.) Re: who are the better players, I find that it's pretty much split evenly. You get good players on both teams, and neither team is ALWAYS more "n00bish" than the other. I agree that the Germans tend to draw the less experienced players primarily because of their gross equipment advantage, but as you start to get more experienced with the Allied equipment, not ALL of it is crap. I used to HATE the PIAT, but if you can get used to the arc of the weapon, it can be fairly powerful sometimes (it's still kind of inconsistent for me, though). That said, it's clear, and I'm sure the devs know, that the Germans tend to have a pretty ridiculous equipment advantage.

3.) Re: which maps are good, I think it depends partially on the level of the players playing them, and partially on the maps themselves. I too have yet to see the allies win Bocage. Hell, I've yet to see them hold a single flag throughout an entire match, including the one on their side of the bridge. I haven't seen the Germans win Market Garden in ages, though I played an excellent game last night on that map (by comparison anyway -- only a 200 point spread). So far, I haven't seen the germans win Stalingrad, but that map always sucked anyway.

Most of the maps showcase the imbalance of the mod, though, and a lot of the fan maps, while ambitious and interesting at first, are crap. Zielna Gora is pointless and to me feels as bad as the original Berlin map. That's a fan map, though, so I don't count that against the FH team. Valirisk is a fairly unbalanced map both in terms of equipment and in terms of (more importantly) placement. The Germans start considerably closer to the capturable flags than the Russians on that one.

What I've noticed mostly is that it isn't always that the maps themselves are unbalanced, but rather that the maps can become dominated by either side and once in a dominating position, it is damn near impossible to shift the balance again. I think this is because 1.) defense is MUCH easier than offense in this mod (as it should be, and as MANY people don't quite get yet), and 2.) many of the converted DICE maps (and even some of the FH ones) are a little small for the range of the weapons and vehicles in this mod. Also, I don't think people quite get how to actually attack effectively yet. They're too used to charging in blindly, on their own, guns blazing, and hoping that one or two other guys are backing them up, or not. Whatever. Also, whereas in Vanilla the tank is king, here it's clearly infantry. Many people don't understand that concept yet, and many people are only too happy to speed off towards a flag without either infantry cover or even an MGer.

We had a WOLF member play FH for the first time last night and, aside from noticing how much more level the tank gun trajectory is, he noticed (after I pointed it out) how MGs are now less about killing and more about suppression. He found the tank mounted ones to be more accurate, to fire MUCH faster, and to be much more LETHAL when you hit with them, which helped him understand why I'd told him "Just spray the gun in a general area. Don't worry about aiming. Your job in the tank is to make the enemy stay down, not to kill them necessarily."

This tactic was used to good effect last night on OMG. A German StugIII came rolling over the stone bridge, accompanied by a top-mounted MGer. The Stug couldn't capture the base and couldn't kill us all (I'd hidden in the concrete bunker, others were hiding behind the hill and the sandbags). The MGer was able to keep me pinned down in the bunker where I would've fired my PIAT from and killed the Stug if I could've popped my head up. If these guys had been patient and had been supported by infantry, the flag could've been theirs. Instead, the MGer who'd played quite well up til this point, dismounted to clear us out (he was a close quarters guy), at which point I popped up and put one between his eyes with my Webley (MAN that thing's powerful). Someone else then hit the tank with a PIAT and it was game over, man.

BUT, if they'd been able to keep our heads down long enough for infantry to assault the base in a group, we'd have been toast. THAT's how you have to take a position using a tank.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough here. Suffice to say that as 0.6 comes out, as people play smarter, and as we get newer, more balanced maps, there shouldn't be a need to "manually balance" the game. And if I catch folks doing that on the WOLF servers, I'll kick and maybe ban them (but will do the same to those who TK in response to this tactic). Play the matches out, or ask us to change the maps. Sometimes we'll change 'em ourselves without prompting because we KNOW the map is unbalanced or because there's no point in playing any longer (IE: one team controls all the flags and has pinned the other team into their main base and the other team just ain't gettin' out).