Manual re-balancing

[ScorpionTBC]

Recently, I have attempted while playing to re-balance some of the more horribly balanced maps, such as Bocage or Operation Bagration, by starting on the axis team, stealing the most overpowered item of the bunch (usually FW190), landing it, then letting allies take it or switching to allies and taking it myself.

Now this serves to alleviate two problems - first, the huge problem of axis having too many players on every underbalanced map, as no one wants to be on the business end of all that uber power, by switching to the other team. Second, the disparity in materiel is evened out a bit.

Despite the fact that this huge disparity in the value and strength of the german units vs. allied (even more so than historically speaking, given some of the placeholder units), the effectiveness of german air defenses vs. the ineffectiveness of allied ones, the one-shot-one-kill-every-time axis fausts, inevitably the axis side starts whining and crying and begins tking me.

Now, this poses an interesting ethical question. Normally on balanced maps, this is a tactic that I would never use, as it is a pure exploit. However, on the horrendously balanced FH maps, there is no fair fight from the beginning, and this hardly evens the odds given the overwhelming axis advantage.

The whining seems to me to simply be: "You're taking away some of the toys that we all went to axis to play with so we can wipe the floor with the allies with our big guns and 2 to 1 player advantage. We don't like that you are trying to even things so now we will call you skillless and tk you regardless of the fact that it takes no skill to win as the axis side on these maps."

In these circumstances, is this sort of tactic such a bad thing to do? It isn't as if I can actually even out the huge imbalance on my own. But it sure is fun trying.

-Scorp

[The Jackalx2k]

Things have been changed with the planes and many other things in .6

Also everytime I have played on Bocage at the WOLF.net server allied has always won. I have played that map like 12 times within the pass week and I think the germans only won like 2 times.

[ScorpionTBC]

Yes, but we don't have .6, I'm talking about the maps we DO have. Balanced maps are fun to play as is. As to Bocage, all I can say is that I wish I had played ONCE and had the allies win. I have literally never seen it.

-Scorp

[The Jackalx2k]

Yeah but what I was saying by "In .6 we have changed alot blah blah" is the fact that we changed a good amount in attempt in balancing the game. I mean we can't magically change it now for .5e...

[ScorpionTBC]

Right, and what I am saying is that through what would normally be considered an exploit, I attempt to rebalance them myself. This causes what can only be described as frothing madness in the axis team. So I was posing an ethical question. I in no way, shape, or form am suggesting that the FH team should rebalance the maps (I think that should have been done before new maps/items/etc added for .6, but that's water under the bridge and not relevant to this thread), so I'm curious if you read the whole message or not?

-Scorp

[Nijo]

Scorp most of the modified vanilla maps like Bocage just dont work too good with FH. It's way too small for FH's bigger guns.

[ScorpionTBC]

Nijo, et al...

1) The maps are not currently balanced.
2) I know that they will NOT and CAN NOT be balanced by FH team until .6 comes. I was not suggesting this.
3) I want to play FH before .6, since I like it better than vanilla BF.
4) I try to manually balance them by stealing axis units in an exploitive way. This pisses people off.
5) I was wondering what people thought of the ethics of playing in this manner were.

See? No request to the FH team for anything.

-Scorp

[Beast of War]

Originally Posted by ScorpionTBC

I try to manually balance them by stealing axis units in an exploitive way. This pisses people off.

I was wondering what people thought of the ethics of playing in this manner were.

-Scorp

Well, that way still has it's risks i think......are you never killed being an enemey "delivering" their equipment to the other side ? Or do you announce your defection plans ?

There are no rules in pub servers anyway, other then what the admin states in the intro screen or auto message.

[Mike 51]

LOL Beast, I don't think anyone flying a FW can be killed by the allies even if they wanted to...

As for allies winning, I've also seen it on Bocage, just because the team tends to be a lot more veteran, a lot less childish and a great deal angrier about the balance. Seriously, after a while FH allied teams as a whole play a lot stronger these days because they really really want the win and they want to prove the Germans can lose. The best example for me was Valirisk, when (as usual) the Germans had every flag and we were down 800 tickets to 200. We somehow stormed back, using strong tactics and a real will to win to counter their equipment supremacy and we somehow won I think 50 to 0. It's hard work, but if you take the attitude that the Germans are going to lose, and that every casualty you inflict is just proving how damn good you are in the face of this unbalance, you tend to do really well as a team.

Winning as allied, even on Bocage, is do-able. And more so as time goes on, I think, because more 'veteran' players are playing allied in greater numbers, and we're all so angry at the balance usually that focuses us a bit better. At least in my case.

[Turbo_tiger(DK)]

Originally Posted by The Jackalx2k

Things have been changed with the planes and many other things in .6

Also everytime I have played on Bocage at the WOLF.net server allied has always won. I have played that map like 12 times within the pass week and I think the germans only won like 2 times.

I have also seen the allies win Bocage loads of times, the main advantage the allies have is that they have two brigdes on to the center island, axis only have one - it is quite easy to pin down the axis at their brigde.

That said there are quit a few other maps that are very unbalanced.