I’m curious about how our approaches to the game influence our opinions about balance.
Do you play Clan Wars regularly?
Do you think the game is unbalanced?
Trying to see if there is a correlation.
Personally, I don’t really play CW, and I don’t have any big problems with how the game is currently balanced. Hovers are a bit too strong, but I don’t feel like they are unbeatable, and I’m having lots of fun no matter what movement part I’m using.
No. (I did the first two years I played though)
I believe the game is rock paper scissors with a bit of skill and luck…
Humans will always exploit the easiest (macro weapons from packs anyone?) and most efficient way to extract resources (farming/grinding). This will always result in a “Meta” for CW’s.
What I do find out of balance:
Squads and Fusion builds.
Do I have a solution for either imbalance?
Nope. Both are awesome integral parts of the game that I would not want removed nor changed even though I do not in particular participate with them now.
Not sure if this answers what you asked but there it is.
Don’t play clan wars… Don’t have that kind of time. 
I think its always been out of balance at the top end of the power score spectrum. When you get relics vs. relics, there’s always been a strong imbalance where you probably needed a certain set of parts to win.
A smart game developer knows to slowly make this a moving target so stupid whales relentlessly spend money on the new meta to stay competitive. Then, they go to forums, reddit and discord to cry about it. This isn’t unique to Crossout. Hardcore gamers are a miserable lot no matter the game.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the most fun to be had is at much lower power scores where virtually every weapon in viable and you never know what to fight against…
Yeah, my favourite battles are the ones where you see items from rare to relic being used.
Plus, too, and also, if you’re playing 16k builds, this monstrosity wouldn’t be competitive… yet at 6874, I get MVP! LOL
I’ve never played Clan Wars.
I couldn’t understand why I’d want to in the first place, and everybody I saw that was really mad at this game, seemed mad because of Clan Wars and Uranium. It didn’t look like trouble I needed, and I assumed the mode just wasn’t for me.
Plus, the META is hideous, I won’t use it, and I’m not sure that’s fair to inflict my clown-cars on people taking the game that seriously. I’d rather play where the META is less relevant.
I think the game balance over all, ebbs and flows with the player population, as far as PVP goes.
I think the matchmaker struggles to forge fun matches from an empty lobby, and when it does struggle the game feels more unfair and unbalanced, and maybe it actually is. The variations in power-scores of team-mates suggest that maybe it is sometimes, and I think this has a stronger influence on perceived balance and fairness, generally, than the seasonally overpowered weapon of the day, or the statistics of weapons, modules, and movement parts.
In regular PVP, I think the matchmaker jerks things around a lot, and getting the game you want and might enjoy (fairness/balance) depends a lot on how you build and play relative to the system used by it to set up matches, and it’s system works better when it has a large player pool to sort matches from, IMO. I think that when that system breaks down things begin to seem unbalanced and unfair, even if there aren’t OP weapons or movements parts in play to make things miserable.
Clan Wars is an entirely different animal than PVP, and matches are not arranged the way they are for PVP-Missions. Truly OP weapons, modules, and movement parts shine there and make more of a concrete difference there than they would in regular PVP Missions, where the matchmaker tends to lean on the scales in a variety of ways to make matches “fun.”
I don’t think regular PVP is a truly competitive (fair or balanced) mode, or a good place to measure actual “skill” at this game (if there is such a thing). It’s not as serious of a mode, and I think the matchmaker “flavors” the game a lot there. Clan Wars, on the other hand, is probably a cleaner and more refined place to measure the actual functionality of the features in this game, like guns, modules, and wheels, due to the lack of influence the matchmaker has there. It makes sense to me that OP weapons, exploits, and the META would reign supreme over that mode, and be defined by the players there. If the game is actually off balance, I would expect that to be the place where it’s evidenced, initially discovered, and the most pronounced.
That’s just my unscientific opinion.
Pretty spot on if you ask me.
I’d love to know the real inner-workings of the PVP matchmaking. I have a quad sledgehammer build that clocks in around 10K. Virtually every time I play it, though, I’m plopped in matches where I’m the lightest by 2k. I still do alright, so I guess I shouldn’t complain, but still… it’s a mystery. Then, I have a dual-assembler build 1000PS heavier than the sledge build that gets in matches pretty well balanced. I have my theories, but they’re just that. Theories. Either way, it’s still fun.
I think the matchmaker gets wonky and frustrating sometimes because of two main reasons:
You see a lot of the latter on weekends, and more of the former in the middle of a weekday, and occasionally both factors occur simultaneously and you end up in a really bad queue.
Best to change builds and PS at that point, or just play through it.
Ya, I forgot about that. That sort of forces the matchmaker’s hand, doesn’t it? Getting totaled by teams that chat all afternoon is a drag, but if you can even get one guy to group-up and play like a team-mate it makes it a lot better, even if you loose, IMO…still, the teams can be rough.
I get the impression that maybe those groups are peeling off of clan tournaments and then loitering in the PVP lobby. Sometimes they are incredibly organized, and those time stamps seem appropriate to me. That’s how it goes where I am.
I don’t play CW
As far as unbalances go there are some but to me it’s not that bad. It doesn’t irritate me to the point of frustration.
Do you play Clan Wars regularly?
Nope, the idea of being in a clan makes me loose any interest in playing the game, I dislike social stuff like being in a clan
Do you think the game is unbalanced?
Yes, this game might be a glorified rock paper scissors, but to me it feels like paper beats everything, scissors do nothing and rock only works if you have 3 scissors 2 papers on the team, but not in any other situation
Before considering anything else, think about the weapons you use, that might be the key point to not be able to see the absolute weapon imbalancement existing on crossout
The reason you dont see the imbalances in low power scores so clearly is because of many factors.
Yes, skipping the high powerscores skips a lot of the often times cancerous meta, however that is not the only reason, not even the biggest one.
The biggest reason you feel more comfortable in lower powerscores is because there is a bigger pop, hense many more players that have lower experience to the game, hense more players you can beat with experience only, regardless of build.
I have played in lower ps from time to time, i also played the arena event in spring and reached gold (and stoped there).
I have seen plenty of broken builds, some of them so broken they could contest fully fledged clan wars builds.
Humpback-echo whirls-little boys-hulks, budget gravastar builds, thunderbolt wedges, harpy hulks with trucks at 7k, Caucasus, fuse drones, even piercers had their broken status share.
For 2 years now every 2-3 patches there is a caucasus nerf or revamp, it surely is because low powerscores are so balanced and great.
Or do we forget how the forums were flocked a few months back with players complaining how heavy cab+borer+skinner ripped them appart?
Whenever i played with my low ps builds there were often times i was getting 2 or even 3 of the same seasonaly broken build per team per match.
And the tactics have always been the same, first clear out the trash then bother with the real players, and its usually the experienced ones that no matter the build will give you a hard time.
It is the exact same thing with higher ps, the only difference being the trash is more and a bigger portion of the experienced players play their gusto builds instead of meta compared to high ps.
Yes, less hovers means better game, but its not that low ps doesnt suffer from the same all around issues.
They simply get a bit more lost in the mass.
Small view insulting people. Do you stop other drivers driving down the road and insult them because they paid for the road you drive on? I’m curious how that view actually translates for you in real life.
If they are competitive, they don’t need to buy a single thing, Uranium pays for all of it easily. All of it. EASILY.
I bought everything sellable from packs the day they came out from the market from Uranium sales…you know upgrading (they called them fusions then) them the first day. No real life cash spent and fully upgraded day 1. Understand?
A good “general” (just framework) M.M. strives to achieve a 50% (median) win rate. If you win more often, do you find you face higher PS opponents or more squads until you lose?
In Crossout my unscientific opinion based on over 4 years of play, when I win a lot, seems like I start facing MM around 2k above my builds PS. Seems like when I lose… more equal my PS. 10.5k+ builds seem to face anything up to limit. Squads/Fusion builds do not seem accounted for in any way.
A “competitive” one must be much tighter. Remember, if everyone is playing a META build… it’s a true test of skill/latency. (mostly latency if we are honest about XO). If everyone is playing 27 different builds it is a test of builds, not skill v skill. The build selection inherently must be limited or “directed” by Devs regardless if F2P or P2P to make it so. The trick is to have enough “META’s” that there is enough variety in the META’s it doesn’t seem directed.
Great original topic.
yeah is too many noobs who use just meta guns/build,never they play guns/builds what they like them just meta they search
It’s weird, I’ve actually been noticing lately that my queue times are often shorter when I’m playing above 12kPS. However, that’s not consistent, so sometimes the reverse is true. I actually think the big update got a lot of veteran players to play more regularly than they had been.
I noticed it initially with cannons, in that I suck with cannons, and so it appeared that the matchmaker would typically give me a 1K advantage in PS whenever I used them. That’s when I started watching that trend.
It looks like the bonus/penalty has a limit, and hits a ceiling equal to about 20% of your PS one way or the other. Lower PS builds get less influence, and it scales up.
You can reset this trend (it’s cumulative and evolves this way and that) by getting in the queue, and when you enter the game, are at the map, then quit and leave the queue before the timer runs out. Your next match should be reset to regular values and all the players on both teams will be within about a 5-10% relative Power-scores. Works every time for me. Otherwise, I end up with a cumulative Power-score disadvantage that typically reaches about 20% of whatever PS I’m running. Maybe it gets more severe with players who are better than I, but IDK. I’ve seen lots of screen-shots from other players experiencing the same thing, and it looks like it has a ceiling of influence of about 20%
I’ve noticed the same patterns, but I often wonder if it’s my imagination. Mostly because the devs said a while ago that the only skill-based matchmaking they’ve ever attempted was in that ranked mode thing.
I think they change and tweak the overall parameters from time to time with updates, but the reset trick has worked for me for years (on PC). It brings the other players to within a few hundred points for me every time. I tend to play around 6K, and I’ll reset it after the gap reaches a 1k disadvantage, otherwise I’m fighting entire teams that have a PS2k advantage.
Sometimes those numbers can be misleading too. Like if I’m on your team and running cannons; just because I was given a 15% advantage in Power-Score doesn’t mean I’m going to be very helpful. I suck at cannons. The numbers might make me look like a frightening enemy, but I’m not.
I rotate my builds to avoid the issue. The overall idea is that the developers don’t want players to steamroll the game for resources and gratuitous murder. It hurts their bottom line (because your resource gorged) and other players get sick of being pwnd by pros and quit.
So, to me, it’s a good excuse to have a clown-car in my rotation that is fun enough to get clobbered in. I play along, and don’t try so hard to win all the time. It’s why I still have a fixed cannon build in my rotation. They don’t seem to score very many points even if I do well with them. It keeps my overall performance pretty vanilla and the matchmaker presents more evenly matched matches.
I’m pretty sure that it’s this principal (custom matches) that allows me to play art-builds, and often plain goofy builds, and still win.
I’ve seen other players demonstrate that they can just plow through this matchmaker feature with the META or just over-skill to some amazing degrees, like where they are up to a 4k disadvantage or worse, and still crushing it. It can be done, but I’m not that guy.
Now now… Not all whales are stupid whales. The stupid ones are the ones spending money to chase the meta without realizing that’s what they’re doing. Then, they come to the forums to complain the $60 toys they just bought are getting nerfed.
THAT’S HOW EVERY GAME LIKE THIS WORKS!
If I was stupid rich, I’d have every pack and part in the game… I just wouldn’t be crying about the nerf/buff/meta cycle like an imbecile.
If you have the money, spend it. Just know what you’re buying.
I have… And I do.