One of the biggest issue CS:GO is suffering from is the same thing that League suffers from. Valve and Riot balance for the matchmaking plays, not the damn top tier play in either game. This includes maps in CS:GO's case where Valve's attempts to balance maps has gone quite wrong whenever they attempt something drastically new or even worse with all their attempted weapon changes.
But back on track, one of the best ways to start to discuss balance for maps is to bring up the discussion about the clutter and complexity of maps itself. If you were to compare and contrast the CS:GO versions and 1.6 versions of each map in the current map pool, it's really obvious barring cobblestone (and overpass since there's no 1.6 equilavent) that the 1.6 versions is superior. The 1.6 maps have enough intricities to them yet keep it simple and get rid of all the random bullshit that maps have (csgo inferno is the prime example of this). this would also help out with pistol rounds, though pistols in general need a 100% revamp.
But regarding the scoreline, the map does not have to enforce the 8-7 scoreline for it to be balanced imo. The main thing to note imo is that the map should at least allow for teams to display their skills on both sides in the best manner possible. Nuke doesn't allow this due to the heavy restrictions enforced on Ts. Dust2 is very stale at this. Quite honestly, the best map we have yet for CS:GO is cache, for which both teams can easily show that they're the better team on either side. In fact, I'll change my stance and state that the thing that matters most for map balance is "does the map allow for more skilled teams to consistently demonstrate and defeat the lesser teams?" Maps like Mirage, Cache does this fantastically. Maps like Nuke, etc of course not.
As long as the map allows for the better team to be able to work their way to victory without being too restricted by the map, then it's balanced imo.
Every Inferno T-side not played by tier 1 teams is like a 4-11 half with more then often some rounds coming from pistols, its incredibly boring to watch T2 teams player Inferno.
I agree with 3kliksphilip. My biggest problem with imbalanced maps is that pistol rounds become too important. Losing both pistol rounds on nuke is much more devastating than losing both on dust2. The pistol round is by far the most 'coinflippy' and less depended on map layout than gun rounds. Not every map has to be 50:50, but I feel it's too onesided when it's rare to see a team win more than 5 rounds as t (or ct). Balance alone doesn't make a map good, but it's part of it.
I'd argue that map layout is more of an issue during pistolrounds then on gun rounds because CT's have less utility grenades to stop an incoming push. When rotation distances are longer glock trains/tec9 rushes are more of an issue. Looking at 2014 where nuke was played more then it has been during 2015 the pistolrounds are 50/50 according to HLTV.org stats. Inferno pistol rounds were scewed in T's favour with 55/45 during the same timeperiod, Dust2 pistols even more so with 58/42.
So an higher overall score as T's on inferno or dust2 could be attributed to more pistolrounds won. But as long as we have the current system of economy we can't use round wins to balance maps. An 8-7 CT sided score are more common on maps with longer rotations for the CT's, both because they more often lose the pistol and because they get out of position in gun rounds.
But none of this actually has an effect on the balance of the game since the game is played as both sides. It only has an effect on if it's fun to play/to watch. It's not a discussion of balance but a discussion of enjoyment. In game balance is important in SC2 because it's a game of different strenghts and weaknesses, in game balance in CS is unimportant because both teams get to play with the same strenght and weaknesses. Imagine it beeing a SC2 game where you play bo2 on the same 1v1 map where you switch race and spawning position to your opponents between each game. The player who is stronger at both races will win most matches. In this scenario a tec9 rush (or any strategy/weapon/grenade that is considered unbalanaced) would be efficient cheese/good use of utility (which is not a balance issue since both players get the opportunity to do it).
3kliksphilip video, however interesting, is using balance to talk about enjoyment. Just watch it again but think "fun" or "exciting" whenever he uses the word balance. Thorins video talks about balance in regards to differences in teams because you can't have unbalanced CS as long as each team gets to play both sides of the game with their respective strenghts and weaknesses on that specific map.
Also, just to brag about how long I've played cs, most of these "balance" problems are attributed to the mr15 rules used today. Going back to ro20 would change how we think about cs-balance.
(I think this is the cs equivalent to saying that BW is better then SC2 ^^)
Going back to co rules (if that's what you mean) would change the whole meta and not for the better. While at times amusing trying to win as much time as CT being chased by 5 T's it would simplify everything that makes CS better than it's competitors.
That said, I don't think the problem with nuke and inferno is that they are too CT sided.At least that's no my problem with them, they were just as CT sided in 1.6 and they were my favourite maps. But now I don't enjoy playing them anymore. Both for different reasons.
Nuke just doesn't allow fast executes anymore and flashes are too easily dodged by CT's, every entrance inside is too small so you'll always have to line up which makes for an easy defence. It was similar in 1.6 but you could force CT's to reposition with wallbangs and nades, which sadly isn't possible anymore in GO.
Inferno is too cluttered, banana is too small and there's so many spots on both bombsites that are too hard to spot. Heck, the map would be infinitely better if they just removed cubby and the pillar at patio. or just remove all the pillars and cars on that map
Yeah! co! (I remembered it as rushers only, but of course it was chargers only). I'm not really arguing for a change back to co but pointing out that a lot of the "balance" issues are related to how we play the game, i.e the rules. A 16-5 score is possible because we stop playing when one team wins (as we should, anything else would be silly). Using final scores to balance maps is not even close to optimal in a CS context.
Nuke in 1.6 was just a big wallbang war which was silly in it's own way, the map design was as flawed back then as it is now. As you're saying BeeLz there are no good ways to execute on either site, but I think that the largest problem with the map is that you can't punish CT's for rotating between sites without having control of either both ramp and yard or upper site. Most maps only need one point to be captured for the T's to have an advantage during rotates (usually the mid area as in dust2 and cache but also "off-mid" areas as with mirage (CPL/Window) and cobblestone (drop)). Inferno is similar to this but because of the clutter the retake is harder for the CT's. It might be bad map design but it goes both ways. Overpass is even worse with the only connector between sites for T's beeing far from the respective sites and no way to punish rotates (or even lurkers). The only saving grace for getting a plant on that map is that it's so easy to smoke off the entire sites, and even with that it's heavily CT-sided..
On August 20 2015 22:02 Latringuden wrote: Also, just to brag about how long I've played cs, most of these "balance" problems are attributed to the mr15 rules used today. Going back to ro20 would change how we think about cs-balance.
(I think this is the cs equivalent to saying that BW is better then SC2 ^^)
Do you mean that every map should be played in 20 rounds each time?
I don't see how that's an improvement. you've won at 11 rounds won. What's the point of making more rounds?
On August 20 2015 22:02 Latringuden wrote: Also, just to brag about how long I've played cs, most of these "balance" problems are attributed to the mr15 rules used today. Going back to ro20 would change how we think about cs-balance.
(I think this is the cs equivalent to saying that BW is better then SC2 ^^)
Do you mean that every map should be played in 20 rounds each time?
I don't see how that's an improvement. you've won at 11 rounds won. What's the point of making more rounds?
I'll have to correct my misstake: it was called co20, short for chargers only 20 mins
The rules back in the days was that only the attacking team (T's on de_ CT's on cs_ maps) got points. You played with a timelimit of 20 or 15 minutes. This made for fast paced games where the chargers had choose between being quick and sloppy or slow and safe to get as many rounds that they could during the 20 minutes that they had. The map pool back then was ridicoulus with maps like de_prodigy, cs_siege and cs_assault. Maps who makes de_nuke look T-sided. The american CS-scene however played mr (max rounds) and when CPL picked it up the euros adapted. The mr rules were also more in line with the patches for the game which made it slower and added more recoil while moving with every patch (no jumping deagle headshots, crosshair on the awp or scope on the colt )
And tbh I don't think it would be a "better" way to play, I think it would change the meta and how we think about map balance since a lot of the balance in cs is attributed to how we play (as well as maps, economy, guns and so on).
On August 18 2015 11:46 amazingxkcd wrote: One of the biggest issue CS:GO is suffering from is the same thing that League suffers from. Valve and Riot balance for the matchmaking plays, not the damn top tier play in either game. This includes maps in CS:GO's case where Valve's attempts to balance maps has gone quite wrong whenever they attempt something drastically new or even worse with all their attempted weapon changes.
Which tbh is a good thing. Balance wise, it's great to have Valve balancing out maps based on matchmaking numbers. I just hope that design wise, they take into consideration that pros are able to pull way sicker tactics on more complicated map than any match making match ever will produce. A good example for what I mean is overpass. Personally, I dislike the map. I'm a casual, and whenever I'm soloqueing, I'm fine with stuff that I know. I rotate through Dust2, Inferno and Mirage. I don't even know all the angles of overpass (I'm double ak so I'm not expected to do so anyways ).
However, balance wise, I stopped playing Nuke since it simply is not fun to play it. While 60% CT sided doesn't read like that big of a deal, it indeed is to me. Simply because whenever I play on Nuke, there's that voice in the back of my head saying "bro, you're already in a disadvantageous position". I don't want to play from behind, even if soloQ and MM is kinda volatile at my skill level. But I do want to have the feeling that whenever I enter a game, I'm at the same chances as the other team's members to actually win this.
For me, it's about control, or at least the feeling of having control over the outcome of the match. I want to be able to say "we lost it because I screwed up, my teammates screwed up, w/e." and not "we lost that match because well, it's Nuke and we lost a pistol round when we played CT."
On August 18 2015 11:46 amazingxkcd wrote: One of the biggest issue CS:GO is suffering from is the same thing that League suffers from. Valve and Riot balance for the matchmaking plays, not the damn top tier play in either game. This includes maps in CS:GO's case where Valve's attempts to balance maps has gone quite wrong whenever they attempt something drastically new or even worse with all their attempted weapon changes.
Which tbh is a good thing. Balance wise, it's great to have Valve balancing out maps based on matchmaking numbers. I just hope that design wise, they take into consideration that pros are able to pull way sicker tactics on more complicated map than any match making match ever will produce. A good example for what I mean is overpass. Personally, I dislike the map. I'm a casual, and whenever I'm soloqueing, I'm fine with stuff that I know. I rotate through Dust2, Inferno and Mirage. I don't even know all the angles of overpass (I'm double ak so I'm not expected to do so anyways ).
But you have to balance maps for pros, you can't ruin the game for people who play it as a living just because casual players don't know how to play the game correctly...especially because they don't know how to play it correctly Imagine if starcraft 2 used the same reasonning to balance maps...
"For me, it's about control, or at least the feeling of having control over the outcome of the match. I want to be able to say "we lost it because I screwed up, my teammates screwed up, w/e." and not "we lost that match because well, it's Nuke and we lost a pistol round when we played CT."
If you lost the pistol round as CT on nuke, you or your teammates screwed up :D :D :D
On August 18 2015 11:46 amazingxkcd wrote: One of the biggest issue CS:GO is suffering from is the same thing that League suffers from. Valve and Riot balance for the matchmaking plays, not the damn top tier play in either game. This includes maps in CS:GO's case where Valve's attempts to balance maps has gone quite wrong whenever they attempt something drastically new or even worse with all their attempted weapon changes.
Which tbh is a good thing. Balance wise, it's great to have Valve balancing out maps based on matchmaking numbers. I just hope that design wise, they take into consideration that pros are able to pull way sicker tactics on more complicated map than any match making match ever will produce. A good example for what I mean is overpass. Personally, I dislike the map. I'm a casual, and whenever I'm soloqueing, I'm fine with stuff that I know. I rotate through Dust2, Inferno and Mirage. I don't even know all the angles of overpass (I'm double ak so I'm not expected to do so anyways ).
But you have to balance maps for pros, you can't ruin the game for people who play it as a living just because casual players don't know how to play the game correctly...especially because they don't know how to play it correctly Imagine if starcraft 2 used the same reasonning to balance maps...
This is what's bothering me with the balance discussion. It's not really a discussion about balance, it's a discussion about design. Good design in a map gives the T's a way to set up a strategy to execute or a way to be able to make the CT's over rotate so that one site is easier to take. Nuke doesn't do this very well and is a badly designed map. That doesn't make it an imbalanced map though since balance between the sides isn't affecting the outcome of the game. Even if CS:GO was totally CT-sided, with all maps ending 14-1 this would still be balanced since both teams get the same chance to get that 2nd T-round. It's a discussion about what's fun to watch and fun to play, what's good design in a map to make it feel fair and fun. It's not balance.
Map balance is important in starcraft 2 since the races have different strenght and weaknesses that are unique for them and the match up, imbalance will make games unfair/unfun to play/watch. Map design is important in starcraft 2 because of the same reason. Map balance in CS:GO in unimportant because both teams get the same chance to play with the same strenght and weaknesses. Map design is important because bad design will make games feel unfair/unfun to play and watch.
And yes: design should be made with pros in mind. They will have the best executes and setups and the diversity of possible smokes/mollys/flashes should be big so that CT's don't know what's comming as soon as they see the first smoke go down. That makes for a fun game and a fun map to play/watch.
On August 18 2015 11:46 amazingxkcd wrote: One of the biggest issue CS:GO is suffering from is the same thing that League suffers from. Valve and Riot balance for the matchmaking plays, not the damn top tier play in either game. This includes maps in CS:GO's case where Valve's attempts to balance maps has gone quite wrong whenever they attempt something drastically new or even worse with all their attempted weapon changes.
Which tbh is a good thing. Balance wise, it's great to have Valve balancing out maps based on matchmaking numbers. I just hope that design wise, they take into consideration that pros are able to pull way sicker tactics on more complicated map than any match making match ever will produce. A good example for what I mean is overpass. Personally, I dislike the map. I'm a casual, and whenever I'm soloqueing, I'm fine with stuff that I know. I rotate through Dust2, Inferno and Mirage. I don't even know all the angles of overpass (I'm double ak so I'm not expected to do so anyways ).
But you have to balance maps for pros, you can't ruin the game for people who play it as a living just because casual players don't know how to play the game correctly...especially because they don't know how to play it correctly Imagine if starcraft 2 used the same reasonning to balance maps...
This is what's bothering me with the balance discussion. It's not really a discussion about balance, it's a discussion about design. Good design in a map gives the T's a way to set up a strategy to execute or a way to be able to make the CT's over rotate so that one site is easier to take. Nuke doesn't do this very well and is a badly designed map. That doesn't make it an imbalanced map though since balance between the sides isn't affecting the outcome of the game. Even if CS:GO was totally CT-sided, with all maps ending 14-1 this would still be balanced since both teams get the same chance to get that 2nd T-round. It's a discussion about what's fun to watch and fun to play, what's good design in a map to make it feel fair and fun. It's not balance.
Map balance is important in starcraft 2 since the races have different strenght and weaknesses that are unique for them and the match up, imbalance will make games unfair/unfun to play/watch. Map design is important in starcraft 2 because of the same reason. Map balance in CS:GO in unimportant because both teams get the same chance to play with the same strenght and weaknesses. Map design is important because bad design will make games feel unfair/unfun to play and watch.
And yes: design should be made with pros in mind. They will have the best executes and setups and the diversity of possible smokes/mollys/flashes should be big so that CT's don't know what's comming as soon as they see the first smoke go down. That makes for a fun game and a fun map to play/watch.
A straight up 14-1 map is unbalanced though, just because winning the second pistol round outright wins you the game.
I think Thorin got it right when in one of his videos where he argued that it's great to have major final where the teams had to show not only that they're good but they're also polyvalent. Map balance that tries to get the maps to play out as close as possible to 7.5/7.5 on each side on average at least partially reduce that.
Fundamentally a map that favors one side within reason (14-1 is bad but 10-5 might be fine) is not imbalance, but it does promote a different set of skill than the one that ends 10-5 on the other side. So a team which excels on both T-favored map and CT-favorite map are displaying more ability, perhaps, than a team which can only take maps that happen to favor their stronger side (or their weaker side, depending on how it plays out).
I think that 11-4 is where balance starts to be iffy, because at that point the pistol round weighs to heavily on the outcome of the map. But beyond that, you don't need perfect balance. It's OK if some maps are harder to defend on and whatnot.
GO's map pool (map balance) is fine, even overpass is fun. Nuke is gone for good, don't even mention it. If you need to replace one map, let it be cache, it's really stale atm.
On August 18 2015 11:46 amazingxkcd wrote: One of the biggest issue CS:GO is suffering from is the same thing that League suffers from. Valve and Riot balance for the matchmaking plays, not the damn top tier play in either game. This includes maps in CS:GO's case where Valve's attempts to balance maps has gone quite wrong whenever they attempt something drastically new or even worse with all their attempted weapon changes.
Which tbh is a good thing. Balance wise, it's great to have Valve balancing out maps based on matchmaking numbers. I just hope that design wise, they take into consideration that pros are able to pull way sicker tactics on more complicated map than any match making match ever will produce. A good example for what I mean is overpass. Personally, I dislike the map. I'm a casual, and whenever I'm soloqueing, I'm fine with stuff that I know. I rotate through Dust2, Inferno and Mirage. I don't even know all the angles of overpass (I'm double ak so I'm not expected to do so anyways ).
But you have to balance maps for pros, you can't ruin the game for people who play it as a living just because casual players don't know how to play the game correctly...especially because they don't know how to play it correctly Imagine if starcraft 2 used the same reasonning to balance maps...
This is what's bothering me with the balance discussion. It's not really a discussion about balance, it's a discussion about design. Good design in a map gives the T's a way to set up a strategy to execute or a way to be able to make the CT's over rotate so that one site is easier to take. Nuke doesn't do this very well and is a badly designed map. That doesn't make it an imbalanced map though since balance between the sides isn't affecting the outcome of the game. Even if CS:GO was totally CT-sided, with all maps ending 14-1 this would still be balanced since both teams get the same chance to get that 2nd T-round. It's a discussion about what's fun to watch and fun to play, what's good design in a map to make it feel fair and fun. It's not balance.
Map balance is important in starcraft 2 since the races have different strenght and weaknesses that are unique for them and the match up, imbalance will make games unfair/unfun to play/watch. Map design is important in starcraft 2 because of the same reason. Map balance in CS:GO in unimportant because both teams get the same chance to play with the same strenght and weaknesses. Map design is important because bad design will make games feel unfair/unfun to play and watch.
And yes: design should be made with pros in mind. They will have the best executes and setups and the diversity of possible smokes/mollys/flashes should be big so that CT's don't know what's comming as soon as they see the first smoke go down. That makes for a fun game and a fun map to play/watch.
A straight up 14-1 map is unbalanced though, just because winning the second pistol round outright wins you the game.
It's certainly stupid but I don't think that it's bad map balance still, just bad design. Both teams gets an equal chance to grab the pistol and win the game. If we have the mindset that pistols are coinflippy it's even more balanced since it's then a 50/50 chance for each team to get 1-3 rounds as T.
This is also the issue with looking at scores for balance. The economy in CS has always made this sort of assesment "impossible" (it's certainly possible but not made on the fly). An 11-4 score is very different when the 4 rounds you win are pistol and eco rounds then when it's full buy gun rounds. An 8-7 score as T with winning pistol and ecos is very different from one where you lost the pistol and ecos. Just looking at the numbers from HLTV (during 2015) says it all. On avarage T's win roughly 33% of the rounds on nuke. This would be a 10-5 score in favour of the CT's, on avarage. Inferno has a 10% higher round win percentage for T's (42%). That's a 9-6 score. Dust 2 is 50/50 (pretty much, slightly favored for T's) which means that there are 2 (1.5) more rounds won by T's on avarage between Dust2 and inferno. Looking at the final scores when talking about balance is not indicative on what rounds have been won when or how well either team has actually played. This is even further complicated since half buys or rek9+armor have it's own balance.