duelking2000

Join Date 07/2012

Destroy buyout doesn't prevent steamrolling, instead it allows the players to choose how to lose

I believe destroy buyout to be a good example of the inherantly flawed idea of preventing natural steamrolling in this game as it removes, from the players perspective, his agency and ability to make decisions which allow him to win.

Agency is an interesting word. In video games it's often used to talk about a lack of agency, a lack of meaningful options available to the player, many times used to describe a story in which no matter what you do you follow a linear path and change nothing, you personally had no effect on the story. Ofcourse, in reality in single-player games the players really do have no agency, everything they do must have the game be able to respond appropriatly , otherwise the game itself breaks down. These games instead make the player feel he has agency, by making the game so good you don't want to actually deviate from the linear path or by guiving the player so many chocies that he feels he's changing things or even by simply keepign the pace of the game moving fat enoguh that they never stop to question if there could be a different choice to even take. However, this is all single-player. In competitive multiplayer you actually do have agency in the real sense of the word, your choices matter, what you do has a direct effect on the outcome of the game, to win or to lose. These choices are countered by the opposing playes, and the person who makes the better choices wins. This is what competitive games ultimately boil down to, and try to achieve the best they can whilst also being fun both for those who lose more than they win and those who win all the time, to keep them playing. This is often why random elements are added, to 'spice things up' or make a fight more even or sometimes just to give the losing players readily available excuses. I have no problem with this.

What I do have a problem with however, is when you have no real control over whether you win or lose, again not talking about RNG. In destroy buyout, when you buy someone out their stuff is wiped from existence and you gain claims depending on what their HQ level was. This is designed to make snowballing harder because one criticism of this game has always been that if one person gets a quick buy it's basically game over for everyone involved. What I feel this mode does however is go the complete opposite way, a buyout is not worth enough for it to be worthwhile no matter what stage of the game you get a buyout at. This would be potentially an easy fix, give the buyer a higher stock price, give them more claims etc. but I am beginning to think that doing this doesn't address the main fundamental flaw of this mode, not steamrolling causes situations in which you lose agency.

Imagine a situation where player 1 has bought out player 4 and is now the biggest, with players 2 and 3 being equal. In order to win the game players 2 and 3 likely need to beat player 1 first, before he can grow enough to just buy them both, however if player 2 grabs player 1 then player 3 is left with a lot of cash, whilst player 2 only has a bunch of claims. Player 3 wins because he has such a cash advantage that the stock price increase of player 2 was not enough to win. Claims are interesting in that they provide resources at the cost of tempo, it takes time and money to convert those claims into things producing money. Because of this, player 2 will never be able to get the new claims working quick enough to overcome the large cahs stockpile of player 3 and win, and there is no surefire way to attack a players cash, and there shouldn't be. So, smart players will know this, and instead players 2 and 3 will attack eachother, but wait, that means player 1 survives long enough to buyout player 2 or 3 when one of them takes over the other. So for both players 2 and 3, there is no winning, player 2 has to make the choice, does he want player 3 to win or player 1 to win? Neither option is a good outcome for him, so he cannot make a decision. He has no agency in this game anymore, his victory depends entirely on other people's decisions, for player 3 wins if player 2 decides to eat player 1, and player 2 wins if player 3 decides to do the same.
Now let's look at it from player 1's perspective. You see, whilst not as bad as the others, he also has this same problem. If he attacks player 2, player 3 will be strong enough to eat him, and if he attacks player 3, player 2 eats him. His only option was to have had enough money to be able to buyout both player 4 and another player at the same time, before anyone else can get a cash stockpile. That very rarely happens in destroy buyout. So player 1 also has no agency, his actions only let other players win. The situation is a deadlock, whoever strikes first loses, so no one can strike. The only option is to get enough cash to buyout the other 2 simultaneously, and only player 1 can do that since he's the biggest. So, if no one trikes, player 1 wins. Players 2 and 3 both know this, so they must both make the decision, 'do we let him win?' Player 1 is likely more skilled than the other 2, he got to a buy before they did. In an ideal world, as soon as player 1 gets a buy both of the others know the game is lost for them, so player 1 wins by default. Is this preventing steamrolling? But wait, player 1 can lose, so it prevents steamrolling... except then your not rewarding skill. Is it truely fair to have the winner be decided by the losers choosing who they want to lose to? No, no it is not.

The reason for this issue is simple, claims have no real instant value. A buyout rewards you with nothing. Without destroy buyout, you buy someone and you get all their buildings, their infastructure. This has real value. 4 steel mills is like getting 40 iron and 20 seconds worth of tempo, the build time of those steel mills. This is what leads to snowballing, this effective multiplied many times over. Without destroy buyout, you can grow quickly enough that the game is basically over as you assimilate everything that person had into yourself. With destroy buyout however, your not gaining tempo for the buyout, your losing tempo because you have to put those claims to use. A well known formula that could summarise this is time = money. Buying someone takes money, which is time. When you get their stuff you gain a lot of the time back. Without this stuff, a buying player just loses so much time that they cannot possibly win, unless their opponents agree to let them. Because of this, the idea of destroy buyout is inherantly flawed. If you give them more compensations, they will just steamroll again, if you don't, well in the ideal world that didn't matter, they still won as soon as they got that first buy, but in reality the buyer has to have his opponents agree to lose. If you don't reward buys at all... well what's the point of buying then?

TL;DR: Getting claims for buying someone prevents steamrolling the loosest sense. A steamroll doesn't happen only because the losers can choose who they lose to, which is not rewarding player skill, so in an ideal world they will choose to lose to the person who makes the first buy, which means they just steamrolled afterall.

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I"m with gameslayer in that I really don't like destroy buyout. It not only kills the flow of the game (you have to freeze everything to hunt all over the map and figure out where their good tiles are) but then you also waste time constructing new buildings - time that those buildings could have be making you money. Most of the time you're killing buildings you'd already want constructed anyway.

As an aside to this I just started an unofficial tally for those players that like destroy and want it as the default and those that don't. Let me know which side you fall on and I can edit the list.

Against

Gameslayer

Insync

Blackmagic

Hydroponos

nowfocus

Pro Destroy Buyout

Jaycobian

Zuzani

Blues (he said he's neutral but I'll put him here for now)

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There are a number of things I can agree on with Gameslayer: that destroy buyouts don't feel rewarding enough in their current state, that they offer avenues for other players to catch up through simply accumulating cash single-mindedly, and that converting claims to income requires a fair amount of starting capital and time when a player is often most vulnerable.

A reasonable example of why destroy buyout doesn't work well in its current state is this game from a Mohawk stream a few weeks ago. I get the first buy in that game and do end up winning, but only because Soren got close enough to a buy on Loader before Loader bought me (he was around 90% on me at some point while I was nowhere close to buying him). Soren suggests at the end of the game that my early buy netted me enough of an advantage to pull through the game, but I disagree, given that I was very much in a position to lose if Soren had been less of a threat (which may have then lead to Soren getting the buy on Loader, given what would have been his large cash lead). It seems like a very good example of what you describe as a loss of agency; the two leaders had relatively little control of who would eventually win.

That said, it feels like a stretch to argue that destroy buyout is fundamentally unworkable. The obvious tweaks, giving more claims and boosting stock price even more, don't deal with the timing issue at all but if the game goes on long enough (because the buyer has a significant enough lead, presumably), the lost time early will be made up for to some extent. A more direct time-boost could also be an idea, with something like a temporary adrenaline boost effect on the tiles you gained exclusive access to. Obviously there's still some lead time lost for planning, construction, and travel, but some of that would be regained (though also subject to black market).

Non-destroy buyouts can also take large investments of time to make profitable if the territory was poorly managed, deliberately mismanaged, heavily reliant on tech that you don't have, or running large deficits in key places that need to be covered quickly. To be fair, yes, you can avoid some of those problems by choosing buyout targets with that in mind while it's an unavoidable problem with destroy buyouts.

The reason I like destroy buyout in theory is because I do feel like regular buyouts can feel like swings in tempo that are too large, especially when offworlds are involved. It could just be a consequence of the way I play the game (generally fairly conservatively with regard to stock buying), but it often feels like buy targets are chosen for you based on existing circumstances. In this sense, losing a game because you guessed wrong in your early stock purchases or had your stock attacked by the wrong person seems to be an analogous problem to the loss of agency in destroy buyout.

I don't know what the solution is to making buyouts both adequately and more equitably rewarding. I'm willing to see more done with destroy buyout before declaring it terrible, though.

(Just spitballing: going off the idea that people love to suggest about acquiring a player's debt, how about a choice between a destroy buyout and acquiring everything plus debt? That's probably not balanced at all, introduces perverse incentives, and is possibly subject to silly manipulations, but it feels interesting to me as a concept.)

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I haven't played with DBO to fully make up my mind about it. I would rather have a mode where you acquire your targets debt. Anyway...

Destroy buyout gives you about 1/3 the claims and gives them undeveloped. I think this is the biggest problem. Additionally, buying someone no longer seems to make you a lot more expensive to buy. In game this means if you have to buy someone out and the only good tiles are offworlds, its going to be a good 2-3 minutes before you make any profit and a LOT longer to make the difference back. additionallly you get the extra life support consumption which you have to use at least 3 extra tiles to accomodate. All in all in DBO buying a company gives very very little benefit.

in the meantime the runner up gleefully hacks his wealth up to astronomical levels and buys out the leader because spending 500k to buy someone doesn't nearly make you 500k more expensive to buy usually. I don't like DBO a lot and think it needs fixing or removal.

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I like destroy buyouts because when I buy someone out, they're out of the game and I get a huge boon of claims. I get to place all those claims and know what buildings go where. (I can know where my opponent put various buildings, but you know much more clearly where buildings are that you placed and why you placed them there.)

In short, control buyouts (or whatever we call non-destroy buyout) often doesn't have the emotional lift that it should. It feels like you just bought another house to maintain. Yes, you should be getting money from it, but now there's twice as many things to fiddle with and fix. Also from an opponent's point of view, someone who buys someone else out is seen as the winner before the game ends. They have more money and resources, they're harder to trip up because they often have redundancies and multiple profit centers. It feels insurmountable for those playing against someone who buys someone out.

You guys are unquestionably much better at the game than I am and have much more insight into the changes in balance. The balance of the destroy buyout is probably not where it should be, but emotionally and cognitively it is much closer to where most of the development team wants the game to go.

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I'll start by saying I do dislike both Destroy Buyout and Majority Buyout (MB works fine in 1v1, but does not fit FFA, imo). Sorry, Scott and all.

But I am not sure if I agree with what people believe to be the main problem - i.e. destroy buyouts are not rewarding enough. I have complained about steamrolling in the past and I don't feel like complaining there's not enough of it now. The synergy of two modes is what really ticks me off. I'll have to test them separately to finally make up my mind, but as of now it feels like together they make no sense whatsoever.

Let's admit that situations when you're left with 3 equal parties and only one possible outcome: who blinks first loses - are nothing new. That's how it's always been. That's why 3-men matches are unplayable. However, without destroy buyout the parties are seldom equal - usually the first buyer has a clear advantage. Without majority buyout the chances to end up in situation like this are significantly lower.

What I really don't like is, indeed, the lack of agency (thank you, Gameslayer). Dying is easier than ever. You can be bought by any random player if they decide not to upgrade their HQ to lvl 5 and sit on their money instead. In a 4-men game it only takes about 100k or less to get a quick buy while upgrading to lvl5 can easily cost 50-60k. In an 8-men game the buyout is probably cheaper than upgrade. And yes, an early buyout may not be as rewarding as it used to, but you can't expect to play against Gameslayers and Blues who know that in every single game. Upgrading prior to securing at least 4 and preferably 5 shares of your stock became a gamble. You also can't expect others to defend you - we all know it happens less often than it does not. Is the person who buys you guaranteed to win? No. Good, the steamrolling nerfed. Are you guaranteed to lose? Yes. And not because you did something wrong, but because you decided to follow the natural progression of the game. Is this also good?

Now, you can't say an early buyout it not rewarding at all. It very well might be. If the buyer is left alone for enough time to recover. And ironically that's what needs to happen. Buying out the player who owns another player, instead of someone who only has 1 HQ, is the absolutely wrong move and essentially punishing. You invest much more due to higher stock price and life support and gain very little.

So when there's a single runaway, either due to an early buy or map+RNG, the problem is obvious. Take them down or leave them be - you lose in any case. But is this such a huge deal if there's no one with a huge advantage and all players make it safely to the late game? Ideally, all players (or at least two of them) will stay on par. So if player 1 goes after player 4, then player 2 can go after player 3 and do that as fast as possible. Not fast enough - it's a fair game. Player 1 pulled the triger first and deserves the win. If player 2 manages to overcome the time advantage of player 1, they deserve the win as well.

So maybe we are looking at this from the wrong angle? Maybe the flaws of destroy buyout are only the sympthom. Maybe the runaways are the real desease. Honestly, I don't know. I do know, though, that all of the above combined makes very little sense to me.

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Quoting DeftMunky,

reply 4

Also from an opponent's point of view, someone who buys someone else out is seen as the winner before the game ends. They have more money and resources, they're harder to trip up because they often have redundancies and multiple profit centers. It feels insurmountable for those playing against someone who buys someone out.

Well, as of now, surmounting is not advisable, since it's gonna get you killed.

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I don't tend to use these forums a lot for a number of reasons but i really need to point out that what Gameslayer is saying is 100% correct by all means.

Quoting DeftMunky,

reply 4

but emotionally and cognitively it is much closer to where most of the development team wants the game to go.

Well first of all i'd have to say that it feels like you didn't actually read what Gameslayer wrote, granted you most likely have and maybe you just felt like you addressed it properly. Then i'm sorry but i just need to make sure i understand this correctly you would influence the balance of the game based on how it feels emotionally to buy some one out? Just making sure we are all talking about actually having this be implemented in the upcoming tournaments and emotionalism shouldn't be considered over balance when we are talking competitive play, atleast not if you ask me.

I would agree that destroy buyout feels "better" to a curtain degree because it's easier to process what needs to happen from that point onwards, but at the same time it doesn't really make sense as a mechanic simply based on logic. Say for instance you as a team would buy like Mojang ( just a hypothetical ) would the first thing you would end up doing being stripping down everything they got going including shutting down Minecraft? I mean if we are talking stuff like emotions then logic should also have say in it. Granted i find both my own words regarding the buying of a company just now and the idealism of how emotions should play one of the most major roles in how the game ends up playing out with kind of change being brought upon simply based on that, to be utterly and down right sarcastic. A games balance defining factors shouldn't be with the idealism of emotions at the forefront.

Also consdering the games that i have played aginst Cubit32. Gameslayer and Pbhead the last 2 days have been very long and very dragged out simply because actually getting a buy on some one isn't good at all anymore since you don't actually pick up enough speed or become hard enough to buy out, just like Gameslayer has mentioned.

Just to make sure, i don't intend for this to be seen in an aggresive tone of voice, my words might just portray it that way, hence <--. Anyways have a good day.

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Quoting DeftMunky,

reply 4

I prefer destroy buyout because when I purchase someone, I don't lose the sense of ownership of what is going on in the game. When I buy someone out, there's a tremendous influx of resource throughput, but I have no idea what I have. The cognitive load often doubles and it's not a welcome feeling, it's not a "yay, I did something good" for me, I get even more snowblind to all the decisions that have to be made.

I like destroy buyouts because when I buy someone out, they're out of the game and I get a huge boon of claims. I get to place all those claims and know what buildings go where. (I can know where my opponent put various buildings, but you know much more clearly where buildings are that you placed and why you placed them there.)

In short, control buyouts (or whatever we call non-destroy buyout) often doesn't have the emotional lift that it should. It feels like you just bought another house to maintain. Yes, you should be getting money from it, but now there's twice as many things to fiddle with and fix. Also from an opponent's point of view, someone who buys someone else out is seen as the winner before the game ends. They have more money and resources, they're harder to trip up because they often have redundancies and multiple profit centers. It feels insurmountable for those playing against someone who buys someone out.

You guys are unquestionably much better at the game than I am and have much more insight into the changes in balance. The balance of the destroy buyout is probably not where it should be, but emotionally and cognitively it is much closer to where most of the development team wants the game to go.

I will agree that destroy buyout is not something that needs to be scrapped and thrown away, but I think it's a mode that does not set out to achieve its original goal, preventing steamrolls, and after this experimentation I've come to believe that steamrolling is potentially healthy for the game if the alternative is these stalemates. If I was going to decide the future of this mode, I would increase what player 1 gets for the buy, steamrolls be damned, and not really balance it any further. I don't know about anyone else, but I personally do not feel a cognitive overload when buying someone out because I am intune with what the other 3 people are doing on the map, I know their base as intimatly as my own (except where their carbon is), you have to because it's a competitive advantage to do so. However, when we bump it up to 8 players, then I absolutly do start feeling this overload. The game slows down in speed, it doesn't run as well because of all the million things happening, and you just get swamped because you suddenly own 5 bases. In large games, I actually prefer destroy buyout for these technical reasons, especially since you want the game state to be as simple as possible so you can do a successful host transfer if the host leaves., so I would like destroy buyout to remain as an alternative to be used in these situations.

I cannot agree about emotional lifts however. What this mode does is it allows newer players to compete against more experienced ones. This is a good thign to strive for ofcourse. Perhaps it also improves how much lesser players enjoy the game when playing together. I am not against that. I like the idea of modes that remove aspects of the game so that newer players can get used to it, sort of like training modes and stuff. Starcraft 2 does this with arcade games. I hate macro in SC2 so I play the arcade, where I can focus purely on the micro side of things because I enjoy that aspect of the game more. Customisation of your game experience is great. However, this is an RTS. You want to compete at a higher level? You are going to have to learn the complex situations, they are what define the genre. The ability to quickly assimilate and take over another persons territory is a skill that further seperates players from eachother, and honestly I cannot look at any of our current top playeers and say that any of us truely have mastered it. Yet.

The reason why I've always felt this game so compelling is because when I defeat someone I can look at their base and go HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I OWN YOU. YOU ARE MINE TO CONTROL. This cognitive overload that you describe to me is a welcome feeling. I am suddenly so much more POWERFUL. I JUST DEFEATED ANOTHER HUMAN BEING AND I AM REWARDED FOR IT. It's a high that is so much more unique to this game than any other RTS. I cannot enjoy the cold logical idea of 'right, this person is out of the game, 1 down 2 to go'. I just bought another house to maintain? THEN I WILL RISE TO THE CHALLENGE. I have just been given another opportunity to show my skill at this game, and I will make sure to not mess this up. I will not be ontop of it all, I will not be able to properly fiddle and fix all this new territory I got, but it's a challenge I shall attempt to do anyway. Also logically speaking, from the opponents point of view, he still sees someone as the winner before the game ends with destroy buyout on, he can just choose to subvert that and let someone else win instead.

You talk about emotional lifts with destroy buyout, but they are nothing compared to the pure thrill of 'winner takes all' that control buyout maintains, for me. You like your control, your order. You want to have all these pieces lined up for you and know that you are in complete control. I revel in the chaos, the entropy, the feeling of taming a hurricane of power with my own force of will. 2 different philosophies are at work here, and we cannot say objectively which one is better, we cannot throw one philosophy out in favour of the other. However, I will point to my original post, destroy buyout in this stage does not work from a competitive viewpoint. I shall also point to the fact that this game is one of the few RTS's around that fulfills my philosophy, and I want this game to remain different to the more mainstream RTS's. We should be praising the differences of this game, but not trying to make it attractive to a wider audience is indeed foolish. Still, the whole reason why I made this post is a warning. Destroy buyout is not the highest level of play this game has to offer, but there is talk of having it by default in quickmatch, which currently is our competitive mode, it has stat tracking. If it was possible for different queues, then I wouldn't mind quick match having destroy buyout and ranked match having control buyout, but quick match right now needs to fulfill both the new player and the experienced one. If destroy buyout is a thing in quick match, I won't be playing quick match. Don't alienate your core playerbase from the mode you want them to play the most of. Without your core playerbase quick match will die, you haven't go the numbers to prevent long queue times even with us. This mode is flawed for a competitive environment, don't try to make it the normal.

In summary, I just feel that the reason why you play is perhaps not the reason I play, and I wouldn't be suprised if most of the core playerbase agrees with me over you. That doesn't make your opinion invalid, but you shouldn't be trying to make a mode that is lesser in our perspective the default. Play destroy buyout in custom games, and leave quick match out of this.

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Soren_Johnson

Join Date 04/2008

+29

I'll just say that the reason we are playing with Destroy Buyout in the tournament is to get these type of discussions to happen!

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Oh indeed, I am not objecting to the tournament, my practise sessions just preparing for it have been eye opening. Just getting my foot in the door so to speak

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Soren_Johnson

Join Date 04/2008

+29

if you guys are playing Destroy Buyout 4p games, please stream them so I can see what is happening. With good players, that is just as valuable as the tournament.

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Cubez did some streams which you can find over at http://www.twitch.tv/chri594f Cubit might have streamed some too. That's like, 6 matches at least right there to look through

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Hello CEO's

I'm new to this game so please pardon my n00b when it shows.

I am an avid Data guy worked with INSURGENCY and NWI on building their competitive scene, and really big on mechanics and game design.

so I wanted to ask a few questions

What mode is the "default" balance state. And should other modes outside of that have tailored mechanics, IE racial/station bonuses for 4v4 could differ from 1v1 ect. This more or less sets the options/limitations on how to address the problem
Thinking of 4v4 on timings alone, I assume the "top" player will end up purchasing the "bottom" player which then (currently) shifts the power over to the second player. This is more or less my basis of understanding which is expounded on below
Is the first purchase of a company is supposed to be the 2/3'rds end of the game? or the half way mark. Where does its timing relate to the ending goal. This question needs answers from both a design goal position and an actual design position. (Do the goals match the play)
Snowballs are tricky, You don't want the game to be too linear resulting in GG out's (SC2) but you also don't want heavy Rubber bands (Dota). OTC in my opinion would not facilitate 10 minute GG's nor 50 minute Rubber games. Granted the game Does need to end and OTC to me has a good between time. But I have watched mostly 1v1's
Why would you (outside of pure mechanics as a win condition) buy a company? If the first player is buying the last player, what does the last player have or should have that would benefit the first player. Is it potential for growth? is it Existing infrastructure (which is last place infrastructure which instead of 1(me)+1(you) is more like 1(me)+.3(you) or .5), Should it be liquidation of a competitor in the market increasing the value of your production?

With this in mind Depending on the answer to question 2, I think sets how the mechanic should develop.

For example BO could maybe be changed into a "tier" of the game being reached, Once the first BO is reached Black Market upgrades could be unlocked (specific to 4v4) Or bonuses acquired per race faction.

For example, Maybe the first buy's last BO is too risky, based on player evaluation. Bottom player has no real assets (or corners on the market) and too much debt, So buying him out would not be a smart choice as player 1, Adding a Bankrupt along with BO mechanic could be interesting.

OR should the mechanic be getting the first BO sets you a step above the rest, (timing being the 2/3rd) And the first BO is more or less the "Game is ending soon"

To put this into other games perspectives, Should the BO be the first 2 towers in dota? Or cracking the racks. Is the first BO putting the bomb down? or starting the defuse.

One of the issues for me when talking about this is a more or less lack of data points to evaluate a game. While stock price is a good indication, It is not (in my opinion) a valid enough point to determine how games go for this conversation. The stock price is extreme relative but lacks a few metrics behind it. Showing something like Stock price WITH total liquidation value would hold more value. PA ran into the same issues more or less and instead of "units produced" some graphics would show "total army DPS" with "Total army Health" since the metric "unit" applied to drastically different power units.

Stock price graphics to me more or less show how the goal line is moving, not as much to how many yards you are gaining/losing.

I would rather see a modern business evaluation formula as well. This graphic would better show how a purchase of a company affects the total game. I could be mistaken in what exactly the Stock shows, so If I am wrong please tell me I'm here to learn! Providing that little bit of data to these conversation is always a good thing in my book

Again I apologize if these comments are Been there Done that, I'm new but wanting to dig into this game

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The devs aren't gonna answer that, because any answer they give will just alienate some portion of their playerbase, and I agree that it shoudl not be answwered, so I'll answer what I can for them and then they can distance themselves from this answer if anything bad comes of it.

1. The default state has always been in my eyes 4 player FFA. 1 vs 1 is also balanced for, but the main priority has always been 4 player FFA.

2. Usually yes, however there are situations in control buyout where the top player is so far in the lead hat he can afford ot take the risk and save up to buy the second player instead.

3. The game is designed around the idea of the first buy generally being slightly after most people hit level 5, which in dota I would say is the part where the carry has his first major item and the team are looking for teamfights. There are strategies to force a buy earlier however, particularly robot power plays. In dota this would be similar to a fast push strat with leshrac and death prophet, aiming to win in under 30 minutes.

4. I see no question here

5. Now this is the crux of the issue in this thread. To me, the buyout is generally for existing infastructure. To others, it's for the growth of the company. Mind you, claims are part of the infastructure. In this way claims and buildigns are linked closely together, preventing the seams between the 2 from being seen easily, which is why I used time, tempo, as a way of differentiating. The other reason is to eliminate a competitior that you think he will be more dangerous later on, perhaps because he has invested heavily in his own techs such as patents, or that he simply has a stockpile of cash so you cannot afford to not buy him. Your 1 vs 1 knowledge is also leading you astray on some of the games finer points too, you don't get an opponents debt when you buy them out, and a bankrupt mechanic basically exists. If you get into too much debt, your stock price falls so much that someone can buy you out for like 40K, which is nothing at that stage of the game. Again in 1 vs 1 this is harder to see, but as you get more players the amount of debt your allowed decreases heavily, contrast 190K debt in 1 vs 1 to 120K in 4 player FFA. Debt spiraling as we call it is not too uncommon, even at the higher levels of play (mostly because I'm in those higher levels of play ). This does mean that the person to buy first does get into a situation where if the interest tick is coming up soon he can wait to secure the kill more cheaply.

We kinda sorta have tiers already in place in the form of tech and special buildings. They are unlocked at level 2 sure, but it's only once you hit level 4 that you can afford to put them down, however in 1 vs 1 you rarely see this natural tier'd progression take place as offworlds are just too good in 1 vs 1. In larger games everythign else is buffed more though, making the choice of what to do a lot harder of a decision.

As I believe it, a buyout should be similar to when a dota teams carry has a major item, when they are pushing towers and threatening the rax. It's quite possible for the other team to come back at this point, such as because they have better, more synergistic heroes (more tech and investments), but hemmed into their own base as they are they need to do something before the game spirals out of control. With destroy buyout, I see a situation where the team that's hemmed in has a level and item advantage and all they haev to do is ensure they give as good as they get in a fight and they should come out ontop... man I'm really stretching this analogy

Regardless, I think your indeed asking the questions that should be considered, for I suspect many people within the game community, and indeed within the games own dev team, have different answers, although that's not necissarily a bad thing, this game is very diverse and open and doesn't adhere to a lot of standard RTS conventions such as an obviously defined midgame.

Finally, please say what types of graphs you want. Graphs are indeed a thign the team are going to be looing at at some point once the new UI launches and is polished, heck i'm pretty sure they have already started work on some.

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Destroy buyout is a Socialist policy that should be removed from the capitalist game, that's my emotional take on it.

IMO DBO and MBO are a symptom of an underlying lack of balance in the mid game, it's a crutch and a bad one at that. It seems to me that these mechanics are designed to minimise the snowball effect, but to me that is whole point of the game to snowball your way to victory, monopolies and mergers are the point of this game and your robbing us of that if you make DBO a default.

I think the game should be balanced for 6FFA, to some that is Chaos, I call it the Free Market. Certainly the most fun games I've played have been with least 6 players. I feel that the 4 player model is too constrained and as a result these new mechanics are forcing players to purchase their own stock and invest in tech, just to push the game longer, i feel forced into playing limited formulaic plays just to be in with a chance of winning.

Completely agree with 'Slayer and his Agency points.

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First off thank you Duel for your reply!

And yea, I think its good to ask those questions and more or less guide the thinking or discussion a bit. I will make a post for graphs because That is indeed my life and passion

As for Kingmorgan, I do See that point about Buyout/merger being focused around acquisition instead of Destroy liquidate build. I think that is valid, And I do also agree that there is a lack of centralized mid game, After upgrading to lvl 5 the "next step" is fairly ambiguous to new players and a core aspect of high level games. In other games Mid game is still ambiguous but has a little more obvious progression.

Maybe its not an issue of mid game, but rather an issue of mid game compared to "end game", Maybe mid game play is reached quickly after early game, and end game is So far away that mid game feels like early game. Not sure if there is any work to be done in that area, but I think that is valid thinking.

I think it is valid to suggest that mid game is a little odd in that mid game is more or less end game. that play is focused around high level knowledge plays that are not obvious to new players. So in that regard mid game is dependent on the skill level/knowledge of the players in the game. I think that putting some thought towards a more "focused" mid game mechanic or benchmark could be warranted. But I would be unsure how that would work Above my pay grade as it were.

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I admit I haven't played too many matches with destroy buyout on. I did watch the games Cubez posted/streamed. I don't like the mode at all. It removes almost all incentive to buy someone for their advantages, and turns it into buying someone because they are a stronger player, instead of being a strategic decision to buy someone out for their resources and production

Since it clearly looks like destroy buyout is intended to be "anti-snowballing" it has certainly achieved that. Buying out another player is a massive cash drain. Not only does it take a tremendous amount of cash to buy someone, it takes a substantial cash investment to make those claims usable again. All those buildings require steel/carbon to produce, which can be quite high cost if rebuilding an off-world or other special building, or depending on market prices. It takes a long time to recoup that investment, and using all your cash leaves you at a disadvantage end game because of the hacker shorts cash inflation.

The problem with snow-balling mostly revolves around special buildings. Patents were a big offender and have gone through several variations on what to do with them on buyout. Engineering bays don't offer research the purchasing player still has to spend time upgrading them. Then you have offworlds and hacker arrays, the 2 biggest offenders for snowballing. Sure you only get access to those buildings, same as the patent lab/engineering bay, but access to those buildings is their value. The offworld generates the cash, and the hacker array inflates it. Launch --> buy resource --> short. repeat until red buy button.

The destroy buyout attempts to address this, however all it does is temporarily remove the hacker and offworld from play in attempt to address the snowball issue by forcing a cash and time sink on top of the cash spent on buyout. Yes, in a infinitely long game the player with the most claims/offworld access will win, but the game is not that long. Destroy buyout went too far in the other direction.

Destroy buyout doesn't work for me as a concept. It's contrary to the image the game is representing. Capitalistic and economic. Destroying a colony and giving claims instead is not that. There is no business element involved. No longer do you buy someone because they have something you want. Instead its "can the extra access claims/offworlds raise the cash to win, and so often its going to be no.

I think that the offworld scaling should be looked at some more. The problem is blackmarket does not scale with the offworlds. 1 offworld can't/shouldn't be shut down. 2 will be destroyed. The third and 4th are safe because you can only destroy 1 per minute. It's not a linear improvement due to the inability for other players to cope with the increased number. 1=1 2=1 3=2 4=3 etc.

Additionally, the black market does not scale against colony size. It's fixed. The larger the colony, the safer from the black market. Adding a BM timer reduction per colony purchased may also help counter the growth.

The influence of the hacker array on shorting already high priced resources should be looked at as well. Shorting a scarce(high priced) resource should theoretically have less of an influence, since its already scarce and known to be scarce so being more scarce would have less effect. Currently, shorting already high priced goods is only used to inflate cash balances by buying a huge amount of resources to high price (artificial scarcity) and shorting that resource.

These elements are what leads mostly to the snowballing. I don't have a problem with the ability of players to raise cash on-world because that is the primary focus of the game. Your options for countering that production is better. The offworld is a trivial decision of "which resource is the most profitable to launch" Although the player who bought out the other player will have an advantage through number of claims and resource access, there should be some reason to buy out another player instead of accumulating cash until buying that final player.

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Really good thoughts,

This is why I am power whoring myself on data collection of the tournament games with these settings,

I personally feel I see DBO working in favor of the winning player as many times as it hurts the first player to do so. But I do think the mind set around the mechanic is not as intuitive as it would seem. I am also fully aware that DBO is not popular by any means although the games watched were still very interesting and exciting specifically group 2.

I will front page the data collection/analysis of these tournament games as soon as I get them and then we can get some hard numbers on what is going on

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Quoting KCIV,

reply 18

although the games watched were still very interesting and exciting

specifically group 2.

I will front page the data collection/analysis of these tournament games as soon as I get them and then we can get some hard numbers on what is going on

Nice, but jsut remember the entire balance of the game was shifted and my predictions and main issues with destroy buyout was not a factor in that group, because my issue is when there's 4 EQUALLY SKILLED players. Corewin tried, and he did well considering, but he was not at our level. This turned the games mostly in 3 player FFA, and that means player 1 can get an advantage and buyout 3 and there's nothign 2 can do. It was clearly seen when blues bought out corewin and got destroy himself as a result. Indczn is completly correct in that the biggest reason to buyout someone in destroy buyout is because they are a threat, if you ignore that threat and go for the juicy kill you die. This is ofcourse an element in control buyout as well, but not to as great of an extent, and those games where you buy out the threat you usually pay enough of a premium for it that you still arn't in a snowbally position, just the lead.

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I fully agree that the assumption you gave was on 4 equally skilled players.

but there is very few ways to actually determine what that means. Skill doesn't always mean in game actions. I agree the assumption is 4 equally skilled players, but that does not necessarily translate into 4 equally powerful opponents once the game starts. It is kinda like Win rates on maps in CSGO and SC2, The assumption is equal teams, but many times the lesser skilled team can win by utilizing in game mechanics, forcing the skill resolution of a win to be less on raw skill pre match, and more live adaptation. We found this specifically to be true for Competitive Insurgency (FPS).

It is very hard to say 4 equally skilled players will all make equally less mistakes. In those 3 games, specifically there were many times the front runner bought someone out, and then failed to execute equally skillful after that point. Even admitting so in the chat. Which is why I think its important to show data from those games.

I do agree that core was a bit of a wild card, which very much affects how the game turns out. But that is why the need for large data sets is important to me to remove the variance of the "wild cards" and of course no 1 game shows anything but how 1 game turned out. So I have to keep that in mind as well when I talk about these things.

Did the first player to buy someone out only have the cash to do so because of poor investment (cash now vs cash later)? and after the purchase did they make so many mistakes that they lost?

I feel one of the biggest issues we see in games of equally skilled players. is that the evaluation of threat is very limited and often times wrong.

You aren't going to see the 50% threat on a player investing back into his economy. He is playing for long term, where as every will see the short term cash player because his threat will be 80%.

like a better comparison for DBO is What were each players economy's. There were games were the front runner bought everyone out, no issues. And then others when the first to buy out was the second purchase, But without knowledge on their economies (data) it is very hard to say at least to me what caused that buyout or lose.

I may of course just not have played enough non DBO. So I may lack a true comparison.

I also think that testing DBO and MBO complicates the feeling for DBO specifically. What part of DBO do people dislike that is really a cause from MBO.

I don't want to disagree with you. I think you know more than I do about this game and how it works, However, I think There is more going on in those games than the pure win rate or "first to buy loses" really shows. Which is what I seek to prove one way or the other I do think that DBO currently is not in a good state, I am not sure if MBO affects this, or if it comes down to raw player choices, but That is what I seek to prove or at least provide data on for you (the veteran players)

getting those hard numbers Very much help sway developers as well

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I am definitely not against the idea of more and more stat analysis, I'm just making it known that corewin, to me, was a compelte and utter non-factor. Even if he was at 80% of me I would decide not to buy him because I knew my economy woudl be just so much better and he'd never hit that 100%. You can clearly see it in the first 2 games where I was in the front seat I would ignore corewin entirely because he was a non-factor. Once I took a back-seat in the rest of the game others might have evaluated it differently and thus it may have come closer to what I predicted, but it's telling that I could, in any game and at almost any time after level 2, know exactly which player corewin was because of the mistakes he was already making. Very minor things, but I felt that breaking this game theory gave me a significant advantage into preventing the potential deadlocks I describe in my original post.

I guess I'm simply reminding everyone that you can't decide if I'm right or wrong until we get more data points, and I don't think we are going to get enough data points in this tournament to come to a reasonable conclusion.

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Quoting duelking2000,

reply 21

on your first point, I felt that as a viewer as well, Core didn't seem too pressured, You may be wording it a bit bluntly

But I think You are right in saying that he was not up to the other players level and did not impact the game as much as say someone else. He also didn't sway the games negatively either which was my worry when he was added. Didn't want to see 1.00$ stock prices

of course he is brand new and MUCH credit to him! I have no doubt as he continues to learn he will be a frequent top contender. So massive kudos to him for sure.

As for your second point, I agree here as well.

I do not think 15 matches are big enough to give a clear and definitive conclusion, but I truly hope and expect them to at least provide a step in the right direction. Either by streamlining the analysis or collection process OR by noticing outlier trends which could result in meta shifts or balance tweaks.

And I Totally 1000000% agree on your point saying someone is wrong or right without real hard numbers to support it. As much as each players opinion is valid, I think conversation of who is right or wrong get VERY complicated too quickly to keep up

Meta knowledge of a game in veteran players is undeniable right? like if 100% of your core players see something as a problem then more than likely it IS a problem. But Having some data behind those points can really help address how to solve it, without catering to One specific mind set vs another. Or building to the next step in that solution.

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