Trickle-Down Balance - YouTube

Hi

Today I wanted to touch on something that has been coming up more and more

ever since a couple years ago when the TF2 developer team,

pictured here,

decided that they should balance weapons around competitive play

and that something is...

COMPLAINING.

A lot of people who play tf2 seem to have this assumption that when any weapon gets nerfed

it's automatically a bad thing unless you personally don't like that weapon and here's a thing. Yeah some weapons

don't

really deserve to get nerfed and some weapons do and at the same time some weapons deserve to be a lot more viable than they

currently are. Well, which players should be

influencing what deserves and what doesn't deserve well to put it simply the best players should put it more

complicatedly balance in tf2 and most high skill ceiling video games for that matter should be balanced around the highest level of play first

In other words we should always be looking at a weapon like this if it's balanced for the highest level of play it will

Be balanced for everything else directly underneath it. I decided to nickname this philosophy trickle-down

balance the name borrows its etymology from trickle-down economics or more commonly referred to as

Reaganomics which was introduced during his presidency in the 80s without getting too political here the whole concept of trickle-down

Economics was that tax breaks were given to the wealthy so that

Corporations would spend more money on giving back to their workers and pay rises hiring more people

Etc etc now while the name and extremely basic concept is similar, reaganomics actually has very little to do with trickle-down balance

But you can use this existing

concept to draw

Parallels to how it should work in tf2 we balanced a weapon at the highest point of its skill usage and as a result everything

Beneath it should be absolutely fine to quote Greg Street a design director on League of Legends

Which despite what you might think about the game has both a thriving casual and competitive scene?

He says it's worth pointing out that the more skilled players and especially

Professionals are the best at breaking your game as they'll be better at

exploiting balance problems now on paper this concept seems pretty simple

But as you affected to me when it comes to a game with over a hundred weapons and millions of players

It's not that simple this bell

Curve is a pretty accurate estimate of what the skill level of tf2 players should be as you can see the number of

Average skill level players is pretty high

That's why it's called an average and then on each end you have the very low skilled players over here usually people who are either

very new or are just

Inexplicably bad at tf2 then you have the heavy hitters the ones who have thousands upon

Thousands of hours in the game and have mastered movement aim and game sense to the point of near perfection you know

Professional gamers as you can see the most common players are not professional gamers, so as a game developer

Why would you balance anything around the lowest common denominator of your player base?

And that's where we whip out the magic word compromise

This is where things can get tricky you have to balance around the highly skilled people who are more likely to use a certain weapon

to the point of breaking the game

But you also have to take into consideration

The multitude of other players who will also be affected you have to make these people happy

But also keep these people from taking that thing and burning everything to the ground with it sometimes literally

It's not easy, but it is totally possible

So let's get into some more recent examples the base jump

and the last wave of

Balance changes the TF team has been doing this

awesome thing where they also list the reasons behind the change to a weapon which makes it easier to understand their thoughts on how that

Weapon is intended to be used

This is what they said about the base jumper players often complain that the base jumper is

frustrating to fight against because the target is simply too hard to hit right away about

80% of the tf2 community was all like huh because when you see someone using the base jumper in a pub

This is usually what happens

But here's a thing this person is very likely right about here on the bell curve now

Let's check in on what the base jumper looked like in the hand of someone who actually knew how to abuse its features

You guys can actually try and hit him okay

Fuck off so what the TF team means by this statement is that this?

Parachute caused way too many problems in the hands of someone who was using it to its full potential

So they removed the ability to redeploy it in midair and reduce the air control by about 50% done and done

But did this negatively affect the rest of the tf2 player base

No, it didn't because Joe Schmoe tf2 pub guy over here wasn't doing this to begin with it's like literally impossible

He was doing this so how about the Razorback well for most tf2 players this thing got a buff?

But the removal of the ability to over heal sniper is a hundred percent

directed towards

Competitive play the even say so in the description of the patch notes for the Razorback at high levels of play the sniper is

Easily one of the most influential classes during pretty much all points of the game

But mostly during slower points such as stalemates or defensive situations and because the sniper is most easily

Countered by spy or another sniper using the Razorback to effectively negate one of his counters is an easy choice

Meanwhile being able to survive any headshot under

185 damage by simply asking your medic to pocket you pretty much makes the sniper even more of a threat than he already is

So the TF team made a pretty smart choice here and removed

What essentially gives the sniper and answer to two major?

Counters in this high level of play while making it easier to use in pubs where multiple spies are more than common

they're

Expected and because you'd be pretty hard pressed to find an over healed sniper and a valve server anyway the nerf pretty much only directly

affects the end of the bell curve smart observation and subsequent solution on the devs part

I gotta say and the last example I can touch on here is the Vitis saw a weapon that was pretty much

fundamentally broken since its inception and completely screwed with the way overcharge advantages played out in high-level games in pubs

Ubercharge pretty much just becomes available to you whenever you happen and not die as medic for 40 seconds

but in a competitive environment

both teams are

Constantly mentally keeping track of when the enemy medic is about to have overcharged because being invincible is pretty powerful

And you should probably be aware of when that's about to happen if you plan on fighting someone now when one of the medics takes

a risk and lands a hit with ubirr saw that's usually just

Communicated to the team so that estimates for the medic is about to have you charge is adjusted accordingly

But when I met accused the Vitis ah who knows how much more they're going to have when they respawn because it's based on how

Much eber you had when you died

This would essentially make the skill of tracking uber worthless and because possibly getting some uber for taking

No risks was way more valuable than the alternatives this made the vitae saw an

obvious choice that basically meant if the other medic was running it and you weren't you were at an

automatic disadvantage which is always bad so the TF team acknowledged this and

Introduced the system you see today with organ collecting meaning now when you use the vitae saw in order to get your reward you have

To take a risk which puts it more on par with the uber saws design this change fixed the vitasaw's

inherent problems at a higher level of play while also making it interesting for the general community since a

Risk/reward balancing is always going to be of interest no matter what your skill level is now we still have a while to go before

Every unlockable weapon in tf2 is balanced in a way that fixes the problems seen at the highest level of play

But I can assure you that if these issues are handled from the perspective of trickle-down

Balance while also appealing to a compromise between the T of two pros and the T of two Joe schmo's we might very well find

ourselves in a world where no weapon needs to be banned in tournaments and every weapon class and play style has a place and

Function so I hope you learned something from this video

I personally think that game balance and weapon viability is one of the more interesting

Topics to discuss when it comes to TF2 and while we're on the topic of learning new things

How about I teach you a little bit more about discord. I know if you've seen the last few videos

You've probably already heard all about it. This is the last time. I'm gonna mention it

I promise you can go to my personal discord

which I think is one of the best Uncle Dane Communities / TF2 Communities *burp* on the planet and

You can go check it out by making your own discord account if you don't already have one and just type in the URL

discord.gg/uncledane or just click the link in the description of this video

Thanks very much for watching, and I will talk to you nieces and nephews next time. Bye. Bye