Balance complaints in Black Ops 2? Treyarch are gonna “drop knowledge bombs”
By Jess Colwill on November 19, 2012 at 7:22 pm
“Of course you’re pwning! [Your favourite gun here] is so OP! Use a real gun, why doncha, then we’ll see who’s really Teh Best!111″
Sound familiar? Of course it does. Since competitive multiplayer was born, its first shrill cries of life were drowned out by angry players shrieking “Overpowered!”.
Balance in games is a legitimate concern, but is the gun overpowered, or are you actually just pretty good at using it? Nowadays in Black Ops 2, Treyarch have a new system in place, called Black Box, that analyses player data to see what’s really happening, without all that visceral, reactive emotion getting in the way. “There’s a lot of instrumentation in this game, there’s a lot of data logging, so I know exactly what the power band of a weapon is at all times. So I can combine how something feels with how it’s actually behaving. I know, I know this is going to happen: A million people are going to Tweet me and tell me that the [for example] ‘PDW 57 is overpowered, Vonderhaar what are you doing?’” design director David Vonderhaar said.
“What I’ll do is I can go and look at the math and I’ll go ‘Actually, you know what dude? You’re just good with it. Have fun, because the math says that it’s not overpowered.’ I have the averages, you’re being successful. That means Pick 10 is working, and if it’s overpowered I’ll know it for real. Like not because someone said it was, or because I felt it was, or because you sent me an angry Tweet because you got killed by the SRM Shotgun one night 17 times so you’re mad. The data will tell me the truth.”
I am sort of a data nerd, so I think this sounds amazing. But more than anything, it will end that age old question: Are you winning because your weapon is OP, or are you just really good?
Source: Destructoid
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interesting stuff. I wonder how accurate their algorithms are, because they need to effectively assign a skill value to a player that is unbiased by the weapon they are currently taking into account. eg. if a player seems to be a skilled player, is it because he is actually skilled, or because he uses the “overpowered” weapon a bunch.
personally I would like to see some tweaks to SMGs. they just seem too catch-all. if you’re using an SMG and can compete with ARs at medium-long distance, something is wrong.
I guess part of it is the maps being relatively close quarters, but still, on the more open maps SMGs are still too effective in my view. hopefully this sort of analysis is accurate and can clear it up.
There’s no reason to choose another type of primary weapon apart from a scope for 1 shot kills.
If the data isn’t showing the MP7 (at least) being OP then something is wrong, that thing is unstoppable.
Not like the call of duty series has a great history with balancing:
MW2 had the akimbo shotguns that took them not one but two patches to fix properly.
I thought the original Black Ops was actually fairly balanced in the regular mode, the killstreaks were perhaps a bit much but only against a team of muppets who were too stupid or selfish to keep a kit with an AA rocket and killstreak invisiblity up. Unfortunately HC mode was nowhere near this balanced, and the community’s preference for it killed the game for me in many respects. Silenced assault rifles killed in one shot at any range, effectively making that entire class of weapons dominate because they were effective at all ranges, had only 5% less movespeed than SMGs, and allowed you to remain stealthy and not flash up on the radar when the enemy team had a UAV up. But apparently HC is the ‘pro’ gamemode.
I didn’t play much MW3 multiplayer, but the akimbo briefcase gun was pretty damn powerful.
I think akimbo weapons in general should allow for short bursts of firepower, but have long reload times to compensate; I always thought it was ridiculous that akimbo people would be reloading just as fast as those who weren’t dual-wielding.
Anyway, if I do decide to get into Black Ops 2 Multiplayer, I hope they live up to this promise. The CoD developers have a strong tendency to talk a big game and then fail to deliver.
Only gun I’ve seen as OP is the Scorpion Evo III. It’s high fire rate with FMJ makes it very powerful and almost unstoppable in the close to mid range arena (most of the games maps are this). In Turbine (the only largeish map) rifles and snipers become very useful with all guns being usable in various situations.
This game needs more larger maps rather than gun criticism.
On the gun criticism side of things, hip fire is too accurate with the addons and even without. It makes life really too easy and renders Aim Down Sight rather pointless with anything smaller than a Rifle.
Wonder if the have a data counter that counts how many times people have been killed within 5 seconds of spawning…small maps, coupled with poo spawning mechanics make me want to RAAAAAAGE!!!
MOAR BOUNCING BETTIES!
tera,
Couldn’t agree more! no idea how people don’t see these… So many of my kills are from them :P
I guess checking for them is sort of against the constructed flow of the game. everything is supposed to be so damn quick, with maps being small, corners being tight and plentiful, and with so many ways to get to one place.
it’s like a race track having speed bumps.
The problem with black ops, and indeed all other games in the series (since COD4), is not “overpowered” weapons. The problems are twofold:
1) The combination of latency and very low ttk.
2) Some very binary, but skilless weapons. If everyone is running around with the FAL, top players are going to dominate, with very high kdr’s… making lesser skilled players rather upset. Enter the 100000x scrub weapons. Weapons like rpg’s, shock charges, bouncy betty’s. Weapons that don’t rely in aim or twitch, but simply give you a free kill before you get utterly outplayed by the next guy to come along.
It lets shit players have a 0.7k/d instead of the 0.1 they’d have without those concessions.
Balance makes FA difference when you have just enough game lag that by the time you have put a few rounds in someone they have already shot and killed you.
My last few public matches have been the same with Better than average ping, ~150fps, V-sync off. Can anyone tell me why I’m still lagging behind most others in the game!?
I wonder why I even bother with FPS’s anymore if they can’t create a fair field of play. Makes me think I’m better off with a dirt cheap low speed internet connection and a POS rig. FFS this grinds my gears!!!
Set your search preferences to best.. if that doesnt help get a better isp. Ping shouldn’t be an issue in blops2.
Wait – Games like TF2, Counter-strike, Battlefield etc have been tracking stats for years. Why does this sound “amazing” or, for that matter, even vaguely new?