2010-01-26, 14:18:14
Some personal thoughts, which don't reflect any devteam discussion/devteam statement and should be seen as a tentative thesis:
The underlying problem of hb is not the balance, are not the feeder problems, etc. The problem has to be seen from a game developing point of view: The status of hb made it hard (impossible?) for developers to increase the map quality. Why?
It will allways be impossible to balance difference modes in a way creating equal gameplay, therefor in each mode imbalances might (will) occur. Every change to the game will have different impacte on each game mode. By focusing on one mode, namely normal, it's possible to get this mode to a state of balance (from one point of view) which is acceptable, but all other modes won't be taken into consideration - making them what we might call 'funmodes' or 'alternative modes'. The task for those modes is with the focus on normal newly set: They need to exemplify their being as a 'funmode' or 'alternative mode'. They need to express their non-balance. When this doesn't happen problems for the game developers are the result: players playing mostly one of those non-balanced modes complain about gameplay problems in them (you can see that for example here: http://btanks.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2546). Without knowing which modes who plays and with people playing multiple modes the feedback is given in a way which can hardly be sufficient for developers. This problem is intrinsic in any non-normal mode becoming as popular as hb (it can also be found in the mode refered by the hcl 'pro', tho in a far smaller scale).
It is possible to have bt as a closer to normal balance gamemode, but the problem will still exist. Hb needs a way to exemplify it's non-balance, the 'alternative-mode' essence. There are different ways to react to this problem, the one which had been chosen was found in a democratic way in the devteam discussions and is a viable one, tho not my personal favorite.
The underlying problem of hb is not the balance, are not the feeder problems, etc. The problem has to be seen from a game developing point of view: The status of hb made it hard (impossible?) for developers to increase the map quality. Why?
It will allways be impossible to balance difference modes in a way creating equal gameplay, therefor in each mode imbalances might (will) occur. Every change to the game will have different impacte on each game mode. By focusing on one mode, namely normal, it's possible to get this mode to a state of balance (from one point of view) which is acceptable, but all other modes won't be taken into consideration - making them what we might call 'funmodes' or 'alternative modes'. The task for those modes is with the focus on normal newly set: They need to exemplify their being as a 'funmode' or 'alternative mode'. They need to express their non-balance. When this doesn't happen problems for the game developers are the result: players playing mostly one of those non-balanced modes complain about gameplay problems in them (you can see that for example here: http://btanks.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2546). Without knowing which modes who plays and with people playing multiple modes the feedback is given in a way which can hardly be sufficient for developers. This problem is intrinsic in any non-normal mode becoming as popular as hb (it can also be found in the mode refered by the hcl 'pro', tho in a far smaller scale).
It is possible to have bt as a closer to normal balance gamemode, but the problem will still exist. Hb needs a way to exemplify it's non-balance, the 'alternative-mode' essence. There are different ways to react to this problem, the one which had been chosen was found in a democratic way in the devteam discussions and is a viable one, tho not my personal favorite.