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Let's discuss about balance

Napisany przez scaftz, 25-12-2019, 14:20


Let's discuss about balance

Offline scaftz

#1
Title says it. Now that a racing event is coming up, i remember what i hated the most with this game. Since the devs apparently don't care as much about game balance anymore because iT's PRetTy MucH ComEDy wiTh ThIS GAme EngINe, guess all that left is us players that still cares about it. Hopefully the devs would bats an eye to this and made adjustments accordingly if things gets figured out correctly. in the end we are the one enjoying the results anyway. I would also like inform that this is not typical thread to preach about your favorite cars being sucks (Although i don't mind hearing about them, but please keep them on bare minimum) but more like to talk about the overall system within the game. Expect text walls. With that being said, now here it goes.

I will start with Performance upgrades. I have talked a bit about it on the other thread. This thing is quite as imba as the cars selection as it's also the factor of why higher class cars excels at URLs and etc despite having same scores with lower ones. Specific upgrades has too much powerful benefit than the other. Not gonna speak about the obvious which is tires upgrades, even the upgrades within the power package have weird score:performance gain efficiency, even with bugged 3 or 4 gears drivetrain bug excluded. Choosing which power performance part that would yield you optimal benefit is like trying to find a magic combination that will give you specific final score. 

We have no idea how much acceleration or top speed each part gives, some gives +Topspeed and ++Acceleration for +++score while the other is is +++Topspeed but +Acceleration for the same +++score and it's really confusing. And then there's this -10 and +10 Acceleration dyno that adds the twists. Furthermore that performance bars on the side of the screen on Performance shop are apparently useless asf. Not gonna mention that GTA SA have weird acceleration mechanism which increasing your max speed altered your acceleration as well, forming some sort of power output which might get your head blown trying to balance things up between parts with that.

I have brainstormed myself few solutions. Quite some time ago I have said on the other thread, "Handling upgrades should be treated different to power upgrades. Power upgrades can have it score raise linear while handling upgrades should be weighing more as score getting higher. For example something like stock,street,race,pro tires upgrades for E class gives +0,+5,+11,+22 while on B class it is +0,+9,+19,+39. With this formula, players will need to upgrade their tires to fit their car score range to have better score efficiency instead of putting most grip possible to their setup".

Now i tell about power upgrades. To avoid the complication with balancing between the parts, we can have the parts gains value more simplified in score and values. Engine, ECU and Turbo increase only acceleration and Transmission increases topspeed. Engine, ECU and Turbo's score and acceleration gains will share a same score:acceleration ratio value but varies in number so players can find the correct parts combination to get exact desired final score with any of the choice and results the same as long as the score is the same.

Transmission in the other hand would be tricky and might create another shipwreck in balance, but here it is. Since it is the only part that will change your topspeed, choosing which transmission upgrade to take would be similiar like choosing which tires upgrade that fits your car, track or score range. Transmission dyno should have changes as well. based on how much score they give, -10 dyno would act as if it's an acceleration upgrade equal with other acceleration parts, +10 dyno acts as topspeed upgrade with no acceleration value change as if it was stock, 0 is in between. 

Higher level Transmission upgrade have previous level's -10 dyno acceleration value and +10 dyno topspeed value added. Lower level Transmission upgrade can't have next level's minimum topspeed value. This is to avoid Infernuses shredding Street X with 200 KM/H topspeed builds.

(Assuming it's possible for dyno to alter part's specific value instead of whole car's value otherwise this topspeed:accel:score simplification thing is a bust unless drivetrain dyno is gone)

As for the score gains for drivetrain upgrades for each level on every class, I guess it should also weights more for higher levels and classes but i can't be so sure unless proper tests are done.

Weight Reduction and Brakes can stay as it is in my opinion, they are not much serves as augments or add-ons. Not so sure about Nitrous, i usually have them either on Street for low score leveling or Maxed on, well, maxed.

Handling changes for cars are not necessarily needed yet for this. the current stock and maxed values can still be used since it would massively changes the current balance after anyway.

That's all from me for now. Feel free to reply.

TL;DR Balance is suck and we need to find a solution for it.
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Offline yokou

#2
Thats quite good, i approve
[Image: QrcLpR1.png]
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Offline INAMANAHUTAN

#3
I agree with you.
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Offline Bunny

#4
I would really love to see something like this working on the server, however i don't expect it to happen soon since it's a radical update and requires (re)coding for days that nobody is up to occupy himself with. Balance will be updated later on, but we need to be patient and give this some time. I'm sure most of you know the situation in which the staff team is put right now (taking care of everything in the free time) and everyone is trying to focus on small things to keep the users busy and satisfied. A scripter like Quindo or Orbacle should reply to this thread as well, though I'm sure I covered everything. It's still a good idea that should be considered and I have a feeling it will.
dude I'm a rabbit, how do you expect me to sign
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Offline scaftz

#5
Not expecting it to be any soon neither. Orbacle is busy with newbie's gameplay improvement, Quindo is not very passionate with developing the server anymore and Bartek is just done with it. But while everyone is at it, i don't see why this topic should not be talked about. I do have the patience, if not i wouldn't be here anymore considering the last time balance have been fiddled is roughly more than a year ago.
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Offline Tekk

#6
TL;DR please? Moonbeam's handling is absolute bullshit and it's banned off the event until someone's gonna make something decent. The problems with the abnormal acceleration for some cars exist (Manana etc), but it's gonna be fixed at some point soon, as I've heard.
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Offline scaftz

#7
Added.

[Image: unknown.png]
True. I am actually wondering what's up with Komuh, he was the one who manage handling/balance the last time but he just disappears (or not really, just being less active in the community).
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Offline Bunny

#8
There are 2-3 people that could take over the handling making of the server and will do a great job out of it, but not 1 person alone imo. Will be something like consulting with the testowankos team to achieve good results.
dude I'm a rabbit, how do you expect me to sign
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Offline Tekk

#9
(27-12-2019, 16:31)Bunny Wrote: There are 2-3 people that could take over the handling making of the server and will do a great job out of it, but not 1 person alone imo. Will be something like consulting with the testowankos team to achieve good results.

Actually, that is something that did not work. Let me explain. Originally I took one of the E class cars handlings as a base, and changed / tweaked it to the point where it became its own thing. Not just for the sake of being "ooh, so fancy/different", but rather to make the controls unique and enjoyable. Before all that, Matt explained to me how his IRL car reacts to high speed driving and I tried to recreate that without going nuts with the numbers. I didn't want it to be OP nor make it impossible or annoying to drive.

In the end, the three of us (me, Matt and Orby) did some testing in the actual races, at different times. (All this was like 6 to 7 months ago). The car had pretty average performance and could be placed safely in between of the Intruder and Bravura. To the person who reads this: If you've tested the E class cars before, you should know the basic performance scale/graph of this class. But yeah, it had a little fishtaily but controllable steering, decent acceleration and an acceptable top speed. At the same time, it wasn't the absolute best at anything. It was okay-ish, and as Matt originally said, "it was something that he originally wanted", a "fun to drive car" that would be "similar to his Agila".

So, I don't know what exactly happened after this, as I quit the server on July 4th and only came back on October 14th, but when I asked him about the Moonbeam's progress, he said that the handling line I made can not be used due to the gamemode's script working in a different way. So he had to use "something else" and that "something else" later showed to me that the car feels like a tuned out B class car when it comes to controls.

The only thing that was significantly nerfed in the final release was the top speed and the acceleration. But these two parameters often aren't even as crucial - really, just look at the Sentinel, it's a good example. The car is a freaking brick, and its accel and top speed are not helping it on the corners at all.

Anyways, on December 24th (2 days before the update release), we finally did some testing with Orbacle, where I wanted to show/prove to him that the current handling is plain overpowered. There he used the max score Primo against the "300", "302" and "308" score Moonbeam (different setups). Later we switched cars multiple times to see if the specific person's driving skills and the map knowledge can heavily affect the results. I guess it sorta did, but only in the beginning. Though, then it became quite obvious when in one of the final tries I managed to show the 15 seconds difference between us on the finish line, and it's not even about me being such a great driver. The freaking thing absolutely destroyed one of the best E class cars without even being maxed. That's because this van often doesn't even need the brakes to enter the corners.

You may wonder, what's the point behind this huge essay? And now we're going back to the beginning. It's because two people from your team (who's also a part of the test team) made these changes to the current handling. The only significant changes they did were the accel and the top speed. I don't blame them, no. I know that Matt insisted that nothing else should be done to it and they left it as it is now. I even have the exact line from the logs where he says it to Yokou after he mentioned the handling being OP:

[2019-12-24 17:00:59] [Output] : (G) (8) MatthewChow: Race, but the handling wont change, only aceleration and top speed stats will.

What I'm trying to say, is that this job doesn't require a "hive mind". What it actually requires is some basic knowledge about the competitive aspect, the understanding of how the renderware engine works (also the hedit and the gamemode script) and the person who's not wishing to make "every favorite car of his" to be OP. I know, following this is not gonna be easy, but it's the only way to fix the balance problems. Either that or it's gonna stay broken.

---

That was my point. I'm saying all this only because no one else from the dev team cares enough or wants to speak up. Previously Berkayy and Yokou commented on the handling subject, but I'm not trying to bring them to this conversation. It's just I wasn't the only one who noticed.
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Offline MatthewChow

#10
The favoritism didn't come from me wanting the car to be OP, the favoritism comes from my certainty that any changes to that handling coming 1-2 days before the update launching would give a bad result, specially when seeing that the first thing that kept being brought up was either "make the car understeer" or " delete this handling and just copy the handling from Bravura with some alterations here and there". That is simply not the way I work and I worked on this car for way too long to see it get a random kick to the side like that. This kind of change is to be made way sooner than that in development and I made sure there were plenty of opportunities to do it. I made every alteration and experiment I was asked to from my testers, and many were made. If you think the van is good now, you should have seen then. I tried to get you in right at the first test, but you had me blocked. At the time it did have class B performance for real, if not better.
And you know damn well I'm oblivious to the competitive aspect of the game as I personally don't give a crap. I don't play races. My one and only criteria from the start was simply "to make it fun to go around", and because I'm this oblivious to the competitive side and already knew from warning that you could skip performance parts with Moonbeam, I played it safe and made Moonbeam's score higher than every other class E car, equivalent to having an extra part always on, so you could not fit as many parts in Moonbeam as you could with other cars within score limits, but even then, I went to race Moonbeam against other cars after the update coming and I didn't feel like I had any advantage. The other cars kept beating me like it always happens, so... I don't know, I haven't seen anything game breaking yet. I went to check the Race Stats and I didn't see any Moonbeam stealing a top time yet, so... I'm fine for now.
I'm not knowledgeable about the topic of this thread and I don't even understand it clearly, so, I cannot add good input to it. I wouldn't be capable to even if I wanted. My job is not to make handlings, that's why I asked for your help at the time, but, you can keep doing that job, since you're by far the most knowledgeable on it I know and with the strongest most sure opinions. I can make you our handling maker and the next car we add to the game, which comes sooner than you may think, will have the handling made from start to finish by you. You are by far the most capable of doing this job and I need someone to do it for me. We'll talk in February about it. I will teach you how the handling system works.
[Image: TEgVg7dMvlbFQYoF3YFE_iT3-MR9op3yBLZV4K_a...jfcQ=w2400]
I invite you to eat a sock.

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