Alpha Build Testing: Balance Updates
Many of you by now know that the team have been testing the current CS:M build, hunting for bugs and making sure that everything feels balanced. Although we post daily development updates which summarize these changes, we wanted to share with you our experiences and explain a couple of the bigger changes we addressed so far.
Ranged units
The challenge:
As you can imagine, balancing units with range was one of the first challenges we all agreed needed to be addressed. When we played on the first build, it was apparent that they were far too strong. A player could run a full 5 squad team of them and beat any other combination with relative ease. After many battles we identified the following factors:
Ranged units had a crit chance that was too high
Ranged units dealt too much damage
Ranged units had too much of an advantage such as being able to shoot over impassable terrain (mountains)
All in all, they are too oppressive
When choosing how to address these problems, we had to be very careful as we didn’t want to render them unusable but absolutely had to make some changes.
The solution:
After much consideration and testing we rolled out the following changes:
We reduced their chance to crit as well as their base critical multiplier
We decided that this change was necessary, due to a smart player being able to protect their ranged units via positioning there was too much reward for the lack of risk involved. If we take a unit like the duel wielder, they have a high chance to crit, however the caveat is that they are exposed and have significantly lower defences than other melee units. Even with these changes, ranged units are still able to deal occasional critical strikes which can be devastating to the opponent, but it’s not obnoxiously frequent.
Reducing the amount of ranged units in a squad
This was a particularly important change in regard to damage output. The more obvious solution would have been a flat nerf to their damage, however doing that would result in wounded squads being terribly ineffective. Making this change reduces the damage a full squad is able to do without penalizing weakened squads.
Removing the ability to shoot over mountains
This was a hot topic with testers, we have been discussing if the ability to be able to shoot over mountains is something we want or not. Regardless, we all agreed that in its initial state it was far too strong. As of now, we have disabled the ability to shoot directly over mountains which from a realistic point of view makes sense. We will continue testing this and see if it feels healthy or come up with another solution.
Ranged units can be blocked by enemy units
The final big change to ranged units to make them less oppressive was to allow enemy units to block their line of sight. This allows for players to make tactical decisions such as moving their shielded units in front of more fragile units to directly block any incoming arrows from enemy marksman. Friendly ranged units can still fire through their own allies allowing for a player to protect them in combat. This change alone indirectly buffs melee units making them more desirable to field and adds another layer of tactical play to battles.
Although there will be more unit balancing along the way, we feel like these changes already had a much desired impact on gameplay. As players, we didn’t feel like these units felt less desirable to take, in fact, the internal meta if you will in our test team is to take two squads of these units. As an opponent, although archers are still a threat, they are no longer so oppressive that they must be focused at all costs.
Critical strike changes:
The challenge :
Another issue we unanimously agreed on was the critical strike mechanic. Ultimately when it comes to game design and balance, you have two ends of a rope. On one end you have a very high critical strike chance with low modifiers, on the other, a much lower chance to crit but with more impactful damage modifiers. When we first tested, it was clear that landing a crit felt great and was often game changing, however they were far too easy to land which created an unhealthy situation where if you didn’t use cards or gear or units that enhanced your crit strike chance, you were putting yourself at a massive disadvantage. It ended up creating a feeling where you felt unlucky by not landing a crit rather than feeling of excitement when you did successfully critically strike.
The Solution:
We liked that critical hits felt rewarding and beefy so we decided to keep the damage modifiers high, but instead, reduced the overall chance to land them. Balancing continues, but the mechanic feels much healthier now and we are confident that we have found the sweet spot where critical builds feel rewarding but are not mandatory for every unit slot.
Units like the Duel Wielder now feel like a high risk but with the possibility of a very high reward, they can be absolutely devastating when landing their critical strikes, although as mentioned, they come with their own risks such as low defensive values, positioning them poorly can be extremely detrimental and could even cost you the game but with practise and a well thought out strategy employed, a single squad could potentially turn a game around in your favour!
Here are some unit loadout builds that we have been using:
There is of course much more than what’s mentioned here in regard to what we’re doing right now in terms of balance which you can see in our daily development logs and we will release articles explaining more of these changes in detail as we proceed. We will of course also be taking beta player feedback on board to so we really nail everything and ultimately have combat in a state that doesn’t result in stale metas forming, our goal is to reward smart play and outwitting your opponent as the win condition.
