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All this complaining about Sigvald when what he's bringing to the table is mostly his survivability which makes him superior to all the other melee lords on foot who not only have a hard time earning their cost but are also major liabilities due to how easily they can get sniped. You cannot snipe Sigvald with the same worn-out bag of tricks, and that's his main strength.
But it's of course ironic that people complain about that, but find it's 100% OK for Teclis on his parrot or the Pigeon Queen to have absurd levels of survivability while retaining the ability to majorly affect the course of the battle with their magic and stacking auras, something Sigvald can't match with his mere sword swinging.
There is no distinction in before or after. He scored the hit the same time as the stegadon of course because that’s how hit rolls do and should work.
The reason you’re fighting so hard for knockdown immunity is because it obviously does matter. Full strength inf unit not everyone gets knocked over so some still land hits at first. But late game they all get knocked over and the infantry have zero end game presence. Which I can only assume is your goal.
Trample on the other hand keeps hits rolling for both sides on the charge and simply reduces how good inf are at dealing damage whenever they countercharge cav.
Of course there is before or after, total war is not turn based and some attacks conclude before others. What kind of argument is that?
You are very good at projecting the worst possible intentions on me. There is no hidden agenda, I am completely open with that I only want a balanced game. The reason why partial knockdown damage mitigation is good for the game is because it simulates the expected outcome of shock lances charging handweapon infantry. If you take a lance to your chest while you are charging cavalry your prospects of dealing damage to that knight goes down. You even agreed to this because you supported lotus post about charge defense vs small while charging. The thing you can't stand seems to be the existence of knockdowns.
Even with units at some 30% hp the infantry deals damage just fine on mutual charges with functional knockbacks. You'd have to go down to so tattered infantry that they have fewer models than the cav, and at that stage the value imbalance between the cav and inf units would be really big. If we use the kotbs vs marauder example, the cav is 1200 gold avd 45 models while marauders are 500 gold and 90 models. In order to have a case with inf having the same or fewer models you'd have at least a 1200/250 gold advantage on the cav, almost 5:1, and in addition the infantry needs few enough models to not have more than 2 ranks. Even then, inf would do some damage since the jumping models often get their hit in. This is a big strawman that was not considered a problem in 1.10.2. Cycle charging SEMs before Dec 2. 2020 did this, but not really cavalry between 2. Dec 2020 and Rakarth patch.
There is absolutely no reason to be afraid is cavalry with functional knockdowns in 1.10.2.
However, the price we pay for having knockdowns that dont affect combat outcome makes 100eds of outcomes unbalanced.
I can't believe I have to spend time arguing this point.
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
You know very well and we've established it - I want cav to be rebalanced to be stronger. They're too weak right now for their price and they have an unfortunate balance in the charge interaction.
You want to use that as an opportunity to make cavalry lower skill units. Seems like a shame but I understand people get attached to a certain easy play style.
Haha your idea is what I want is hilariously warped.... I just want cavalry restored to what they were before they had their interaction with infantry accidentally broken. Does that make them require skill because they got accidentally nerfed vs infantry? Or did it just make them worse units? You're the one who wants to take this opportunity to not fix knockbacks not affecting combat outcome like it has always done.
The skill requirement of cav and inf is similarly changed. If cav requires more skill because you have to flee from 500g marauders, then the marauders now also requires less skill because they can now overextend safely. There's the bias right there if you think infantry requires more skill now.
Cavalry is actually balanced if they just repair disruption so that it again affects combat.
I also repeated my test for singe entities, I can't see the same hit reg when you're being knocked back so fixing cavalry should not have any negative impact on foot characters. I don't know how you tested it if you did, I tested foot nobles (bvl) who only has 40% knock ignore chance vs a single entity chariot (lowish md) and he got knocked back 3 or 4 times in a row without scoring a melee hit even though he started his animation, in both 1.10.2 and 1.12.0. Maybe other char with faster animation and or 80 ignore chance hits but if he does he would most likely also have hit in 1.10.2. At least foot nobles behave exactly the same in both my test.
We really disagree on just one thing. You want cavalry to not have to worry about charging into counter-charging enemies (as opposed to using tactics) by giving them a knockback advantage. It's a perfect example of a low skill game design.
I've endorsed lotus's trample idea and associated balancing approaches that maintain a high skill dynamic where you take into consideration how the enemy is playing but where cav trade more reasonably even when they do take a less advantageous approach.
TBD on the foot character discussion.
The thing is that in 1.10.2 you could not countercharge gw infantry without taking damage, you took half as much damage as now and half of twice too much is very nicely balanced! In terms of value you trade evenly before stags, now you trade down severely, more than 2:1....
So knockdown never kept you safe from return damage, it must made you take half of it, while a clean infantry charge still made full damage. What I want the most is for the engine to recognise this difference. Reward you when you set up a clean charge, but mitigate a good chunk of return damage if the infantry get hit by a lance charge while they charge.
The half damage part is great; the tying it so physics that inevitably become **** in the end game is not. No freebies, no low skill cav.
honestly though if CA were to create a public "initiative" stat that had something to do with who is more likely to land attacks on a charge, that could even be fun. But only if it were very intuitive for regular players how it worked. Attacks disappearing randomly just doesn't cut it.
honestly though if CA were to create a public "initiative" stat that had something to do with who is more likely to land attacks on a charge, that could even be fun. But only if it were very intuitive for regular players how it worked. Attacks disappearing randomly just doesn't cut it.
There is nothing random about it, perfectly dictated by model interactions. Models scoring damage retrospectively after being moved out of position is not damage not disappearing, its bugged out hit reg and it causes imbalance but let's not fix it because.... No reason actually.
Cavalry knockdowns were not abusive in any shape or form in 1.10.2 and they won't become abusive now. It would just restore balance and make knockdowns actually affect combat again. Win - win.
Disagreeing with you is not propaganda. Selling cav as abusive in 1.10.2 however is a bit of fake news.
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
honestly though if CA were to create a public "initiative" stat that had something to do with who is more likely to land attacks on a charge, that could even be fun. But only if it were very intuitive for regular players how it worked. Attacks disappearing randomly just doesn't cut it.
There is nothing random about it, perfectly dictated by model interactions. Models scoring damage retrospectively after being moved out of position is not damage not disappearing, its bugged out hit reg and it causes imbalance but let's not fix it because.... No reason actually.
Cavalry knockdowns were not abusive in any shape or form in 1.10.2 and they won't become abusive now. It would just restore balance and make knockdowns actually affect combat again. Win - win.
Disagreeing with you is not propaganda. Selling cav as abusive in 1.10.2 however is a bit of fake news.
you dont know what 1.10.2 was except that it was 100% not all about the knockdown dynamic you prefer. so no were not debating an earlier patch its a discussion of game design. and yes we disagree.
If nothing I say matters, remember tournament rules were changed so that cycle charging cav started to count as attacking in banner rules back then, because it was not considered abusive by the competitive scene. Not even in the late game. Single entities remained restricted, but not cav.
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
If nothing I say matters, remember tournament rules were changed so that cycle charging cav started to count as attacking in banner rules back then, because it was not considered abusive by the competitive scene. Not even in the late game. Single entities remained restricted, but not cav.
it's never been abusive to demolish infantry in this game. It was a well understood status quo that they were irrelevant in the end game. One might have even called them "support units".
I want cav to be strong. I just don't support bad game design.
Several comments removed. The two folks that seem to have taken over the discussion need to settle down or go off line if they wish to continue their personal repartee.
Post edited by dge1 on
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When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
Just a question about "skill" (which incidentally gets back to the diversity issue that I derailed a bit), I think there are different types of skill that fit different playstyles. e.g. I don't think playing dwarves require less skill than full mobility, but different ones (or at least we could hope to reach that level). If you are slow, you have to anticipate more. You have to start moving your units earlier to be in position when responding to a threat. The thing is, there are plenty of factions in warhammer to express different types of skill. The grand challenge should be to balance factions around that, of course it will never be perfect and some factions will still be higher skill, but you can't start if you aggregate different skills in a single performance indicator and claim the game should favour your definition (something both sides tend to do).
In starcraft typically (to take the balance ultimate benchmark) the 3 factions kind of follow those lines. I'm not a specialist but maybe terran is the most "micro" intensive, but it doesn't mean it requires less (edit: I mean more) skill than the others. Situation reading, getting your composition and timing right because you can't recover losses easily (protoss), or having an overwheling macro and understanding the overall resource trade (zerg) are as demanding.
Now now thibix, everyone knows that skill is measured by how many brettonian cav units you can yolo into counter charging elven spearmen at one time. That’s what makes the discussion of skill so important to this topic.
Fixing counter charging is also clearly related to sigvald and how he plays.
Now now thibix, everyone knows that skill is measured by how many brettonian cav units you can yolo into counter charging elven spearmen at one time. That’s what makes the discussion of skill so important to this topic.
Fixing counter charging is also clearly related to sigvald and how he plays.
All of this is just logic.
Well I WISH there was a way to make yoloing bretonnian cav actually skillfull and legitimate play, because it just screams yoloing. And I want a dawi frontline to feel unmovable and not trampled by anything faster as if it didn't matter. I want to make you guys see each other's point. I want mom and dad to stop fighting. Maybe I feel compelled because of the strong old couple energy I detect in these forums. What have you done to me.
When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
No problem.
But tbh based on this response, you don't appear to have understood the point I was making. So don't think we can really have any form of productive conversation here as it seems likely we will talk past each other.
Will just have to wait and see how it all plays out and what choices CA makes. Might even get a first look at Domination sometime over th next couple months which would be really great.
Now now thibix, everyone knows that skill is measured by how many brettonian cav units you can yolo into counter charging elven spearmen at one time. That’s what makes the discussion of skill so important to this topic.
Fixing counter charging is also clearly related to sigvald and how he plays.
All of this is just logic.
Well I WISH there was a way to make yoloing bretonnian cav actually skillfull and legitimate play, because it just screams yoloing. And I want a dawi frontline to feel unmovable and not trampled by anything faster as if it didn't matter. I want to make you guys see each other's point. I want mom and dad to stop fighting. Maybe I feel compelled because of the strong old couple energy I detect in these forums. What have you done to me.
When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
Just a question about "skill" (which incidentally gets back to the diversity issue that I derailed a bit), I think there are different types of skill that fit different playstyles. e.g. I don't think playing dwarves require less skill than full mobility, but different ones (or at least we could hope to reach that level). If you are slow, you have to anticipate more. You have to start moving your units earlier to be in position when responding to a threat. The thing is, there are plenty of factions in warhammer to express different types of skill. The grand challenge should be to balance factions around that, of course it will never be perfect and some factions will still be higher skill, but you can't start if you aggregate different skills in a single performance indicator and claim the game should favour your definition (something both sides tend to do).
In starcraft typically (to take the balance ultimate benchmark) the 3 factions kind of follow those lines. I'm not a specialist but maybe terran is the most "micro" intensive, but it doesn't mean it requires less (edit: I mean more) skill than the others. Situation reading, getting your composition and timing right because you can't recover losses easily (protoss), or having an overwheling macro and understanding the overall resource trade (zerg) are as demanding.
Sure, there are definitely different skill sets, and I think all of them are in play all the time to various degrees. The thing that I bounce on is when people think they are mutually exclusive, like if you have good micro you don't know how position or read the game. I don't think that is neither fair nor the way it works..... Some people also use the term micro in a negative manner like if it would just mean clicking fast on stuff.....
If I would refer to one thing with "skill" it would be simultaneous capacity. Anyone can dodge shots with the mage, or position a box or rush with the entire army if that is the only thing to focus on. Skill for me is the simultaneous capacity to do all these tactical considerations, reading the game, filtering, prioritising and still have the capacity left to dodge shots etc, while also not making any major mistakes. In order of importance dodging comes as low priority, missing to dodge a shot will not cost you the game but mispositioning or forgetting you lord might.... So therefore it often means that a player who is good at dodging actually is also a very skilled player because he dodge shots while also doing all the other things well and making no big misplays.
Builds or play styles that kind of requires less skill in my opinion are the ones that demand less of you attention to be competitive, or are more forgiving to misplays, or are just simplistic but effective.
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
Agree with all that. Now on the OP of build diversity regardless of how right his assertion was I assume the relevance of skill to this conversation is that cav takes more skill and some cav aren’t as viable as in the past.
So obviously the optimal way to rebalance is to ensure cav are worth taking without needlessly reducing the skill needed to use cav effectively.
The problem is cavalry use as always taken a level of skill as it was never beneficial to keep them in combat even light melee cavalry is pretty bad right now effectively loosing to chaff.
Melee cavalry has always been amongst the most micro intensive unit variety they can’t cut through units like chariots. They don’t have the melee sustainability of infantry. The can’t simply target units like missile units. On top of all that the elite variants cost as much as some SEM but are far more punished for taking damage as they’ll shed models.
Missile cavalry is amazing still but that has more to do with skirmishing and counter skirmishing.
The problem is cavalry use as always taken a level of skill as it was never beneficial to keep them in combat even light melee cavalry is pretty bad right now effectively loosing to chaff.
Melee cavalry has always been amongst the most micro intensive unit variety they can’t cut through units like chariots. They don’t have the melee sustainability of infantry. The can’t simply target units like missile units. On top of all that the elite variants cost as much as some SEM but are far more punished for taking damage as they’ll shed models.
Missile cavalry is amazing still but that has more to do with skirmishing and counter skirmishing.
Agree. They need some help to offset those many liabilities. In an ideal world a well used unit of cav shoukd generate an excellent return to cost.
The problem is cavalry use as always taken a level of skill as it was never beneficial to keep them in combat even light melee cavalry is pretty bad right now effectively loosing to chaff.
Melee cavalry has always been amongst the most micro intensive unit variety they can’t cut through units like chariots. They don’t have the melee sustainability of infantry. The can’t simply target units like missile units. On top of all that the elite variants cost as much as some SEM but are far more punished for taking damage as they’ll shed models.
Missile cavalry is amazing still but that has more to do with skirmishing and counter skirmishing.
Yea and I don't think the current state makes them require more attention really (ie require more skill), there is just one more interaction that counters them to add to the list of situations to avoid. They always required attention.
If we try to return to the topic of diversity, then it would benefit the diversity of tactics if shock cav and chariots again could punish wide build better when the wide builds lack both charge defense/bvl units and mass. Cheap great weapon infantry were strong damage dealers vs cav already in 1.10.2, but they were not equipped to tank shock cav. They were more damage dealers. Now they out trade them even if isolated and that's where the tables have turned.
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
The problem is cavalry use as always taken a level of skill as it was never beneficial to keep them in combat even light melee cavalry is pretty bad right now effectively loosing to chaff.
Melee cavalry has always been amongst the most micro intensive unit variety they can’t cut through units like chariots. They don’t have the melee sustainability of infantry. The can’t simply target units like missile units. On top of all that the elite variants cost as much as some SEM but are far more punished for taking damage as they’ll shed models.
Missile cavalry is amazing still but that has more to do with skirmishing and counter skirmishing.
It seems reasonable for Cavalry/Chariot to get some tweaks so long as we don't return to "free hits if you click quickly enough" like how it used to be. Change the trades so the relative damage inflicted on each side is more in-line with whatever CA envisions, but that was a really bad balance for interactions. The issue also exists atm with monsters attacking foot characters, where a Night Goblin Shaman can often be functionally immune from any attack from a Khemrian Warsphinx because the animation sends him flying before the hit can register. Rolls to hit should be consistent and reliable as well as not be able to be bypassed if a unit is clicked a certain way. Then you can use a number of decent suggestions to get the balance right, Charge damage reduction while charging, Trample, etc.
That being said, the biggest buff Cavalry can receive will still be from adding more complexity to the game through Capture points/reinforcements. In that context their speed becomes far more relevant and important and Cav will now have roles they can play that infantry can't. It is all well and good if Infantry trades well into Cavalry charge for charge, but if you are bringing in reinforcements to support a time-sensitive engagement then being able to get their quickly is important. Or if a player tries to reinforce with some ranged units and their opponent can run them down with a cavalry unit while they are isolated, the counter charge situation won't be relevant. Or using cav to take a point (or block a capture) while an opponent's infantry force slowly tries to respond will show the importance of speed.
Whereas currently in this game you pay for speed on units but the actual use you can get out of that speed is somewhat limited, especially when splitting your force is basically always a tactical mistake but will likely become a tactical necessity with Domination mode. How Cav trades on the counter-charge is not far off where it should be for balancing purposes but the ability to take advantage of the unique strengths that cavalry has is too low in the current game design.
cavalry should function differently from cavalry imo. cavalry are highspeed generalists, they should not be getting special antiinfantry bonuses. if they need a buff have CDvL not work while in melee, maybe antiinfantry units should get AI bonuses, and less charge Chariots are antiinfantry specialists, they should indeed be able to punish infantry, including chaff, and they should be very strong at punching through chaff units. Its hard to judge exactly where the latest changes landed, some chariots are clearly too strong and im not sure if others have been changed or not?
When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
Just a question about "skill" (which incidentally gets back to the diversity issue that I derailed a bit), I think there are different types of skill that fit different playstyles. e.g. I don't think playing dwarves require less skill than full mobility, but different ones (or at least we could hope to reach that level). If you are slow, you have to anticipate more. You have to start moving your units earlier to be in position when responding to a threat. The thing is, there are plenty of factions in warhammer to express different types of skill. The grand challenge should be to balance factions around that, of course it will never be perfect and some factions will still be higher skill, but you can't start if you aggregate different skills in a single performance indicator and claim the game should favour your definition (something both sides tend to do).
In starcraft typically (to take the balance ultimate benchmark) the 3 factions kind of follow those lines. I'm not a specialist but maybe terran is the most "micro" intensive, but it doesn't mean it requires less (edit: I mean more) skill than the others. Situation reading, getting your composition and timing right because you can't recover losses easily (protoss), or having an overwheling macro and understanding the overall resource trade (zerg) are as demanding.
Sure, there are definitely different skill sets, and I think all of them are in play all the time to various degrees. The thing that I bounce on is when people think they are mutually exclusive, like if you have good micro you don't know how position or read the game. I don't think that is neither fair nor the way it works..... Some people also use the term micro in a negative manner like if it would just mean clicking fast on stuff.....
If I would refer to one thing with "skill" it would be simultaneous capacity. Anyone can dodge shots with the mage, or position a box or rush with the entire army if that is the only thing to focus on. Skill for me is the simultaneous capacity to do all these tactical considerations, reading the game, filtering, prioritising and still have the capacity left to dodge shots etc, while also not making any major mistakes. In order of importance dodging comes as low priority, missing to dodge a shot will not cost you the game but mispositioning or forgetting you lord might.... So therefore it often means that a player who is good at dodging actually is also a very skilled player because he dodge shots while also doing all the other things well and making no big misplays.
Builds or play styles that kind of requires less skill in my opinion are the ones that demand less of you attention to be competitive, or are more forgiving to misplays, or are just simplistic but effective.
(Sorry to get back on that as it seems tangential but for me it is at the heart of how to design build diversity)
Indeed I agree all skills are required to a degree, but the accent given to some makes for gameplay diversity. I would just add one thing: build spread also create some trade-off between skills. The more elite, the less split-attention it requires, but also the less forgiving to misplays. Taking the dread saurian ror mechanically reduces your need for simultaneous capacity, while requiring much more situation reading (e.g. estimating the amount of focus fire it will take if moved there, not overextending...). Wide cheap builds are more attention taxing and less reliant on perfect positioning. This is not against what you said, but I think it is a strong argument to justify small, elite builds (then you have small elite fast fragile builds with elves and it gets more complicated).
Also all this is theoretical, like something to aim for, but then there is imperfect balance of course.
When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
Just a question about "skill" (which incidentally gets back to the diversity issue that I derailed a bit), I think there are different types of skill that fit different playstyles. e.g. I don't think playing dwarves require less skill than full mobility, but different ones (or at least we could hope to reach that level). If you are slow, you have to anticipate more. You have to start moving your units earlier to be in position when responding to a threat. The thing is, there are plenty of factions in warhammer to express different types of skill. The grand challenge should be to balance factions around that, of course it will never be perfect and some factions will still be higher skill, but you can't start if you aggregate different skills in a single performance indicator and claim the game should favour your definition (something both sides tend to do).
In starcraft typically (to take the balance ultimate benchmark) the 3 factions kind of follow those lines. I'm not a specialist but maybe terran is the most "micro" intensive, but it doesn't mean it requires less (edit: I mean more) skill than the others. Situation reading, getting your composition and timing right because you can't recover losses easily (protoss), or having an overwheling macro and understanding the overall resource trade (zerg) are as demanding.
Sure, there are definitely different skill sets, and I think all of them are in play all the time to various degrees. The thing that I bounce on is when people think they are mutually exclusive, like if you have good micro you don't know how position or read the game. I don't think that is neither fair nor the way it works..... Some people also use the term micro in a negative manner like if it would just mean clicking fast on stuff.....
If I would refer to one thing with "skill" it would be simultaneous capacity. Anyone can dodge shots with the mage, or position a box or rush with the entire army if that is the only thing to focus on. Skill for me is the simultaneous capacity to do all these tactical considerations, reading the game, filtering, prioritising and still have the capacity left to dodge shots etc, while also not making any major mistakes. In order of importance dodging comes as low priority, missing to dodge a shot will not cost you the game but mispositioning or forgetting you lord might.... So therefore it often means that a player who is good at dodging actually is also a very skilled player because he dodge shots while also doing all the other things well and making no big misplays.
Builds or play styles that kind of requires less skill in my opinion are the ones that demand less of you attention to be competitive, or are more forgiving to misplays, or are just simplistic but effective.
(Sorry to get back on that as it seems tangential but for me it is at the heart of how to design build diversity)
Indeed I agree all skills are required to a degree, but the accent given to some makes for gameplay diversity. I would just add one thing: build spread also create some trade-off between skills. The more elite, the less split-attention it requires, but also the less forgiving to misplays. Taking the dread saurian ror mechanically reduces your need for simultaneous capacity, while requiring much more situation reading (e.g. estimating the amount of focus fire it will take if moved there, not overextending...). Wide cheap builds are more attention taxing and less reliant on perfect positioning. This is not against what you said, but I think it is a strong argument to justify small, elite builds (then you have small elite fast fragile builds with elves and it gets more complicated).
Also all this is theoretical, like something to aim for, but then there is imperfect balance of course.
I agree with this, the only thing i will add is the ability to micro well opens up different unit ussage in strategies, i think wide range of strategies should be viable, those with high and low micro requirement, the only advantage i can see if someone is good at clicking fast is simply adaptability during battle to what opponent is doing, but if you build a low "clicking" strategy from the get go and put pressure on opponent micro hardly matters. Only issue is often players take armies they are not used to using and QQ that micro is too important, i mean look at ninjahund in the past, he had a micro levels of a foot and yet he did superb because the armies he took focused on what he was good at which was game knowledge (knowing good and bad match-ups for units) but when it came to playing vs top players he did not shine as much because they had game knowledge and could adapt to his strategies a lot more.
My view is all strategies should be viable be it high or low micro but being able to use all units in a roster to best possibility should be rewarded just as much as being able to pick a very good army.
I do however think that some kind of micro is needed an people who try to eliminate a reasonable amount of micro from the game and sell it of as strategy is sily to me, i mean AI is a perfect example why some micro does = skill, play vs AI get him to blob on your hero or stand in his way and he walks into you thus not using micro to walk around and just smash him with AOE's, that be a super crap state of the game if human players did it also, might aswell have auto resolve at that stage.
What good micro enables is execution of wider range of strategies, that does not mean those strategies are better than those of low micro like some people try to argue now and want reduction of micro.
People are confusing skill of a player with ability to click fast.
I played playeres with amazing micro who were bad at the game and i played players with micro of a foot who were superb at the game, a lot of people just refuse to adapt their armies/strategies and sometimes even factions to their own skill and instead try to force the game to change to adapt to them.
It seems reasonable for Cavalry/Chariot to get some tweaks so long as we don't return to "free hits if you click quickly enough" like how it used to be. Change the trades so the relative damage inflicted on each side is more in-line with whatever CA envisions, but that was a really bad balance for interactions.
This is simply not the case between infantry and cavalry in 1.10.2 as long as the infantry counter-charges. This here shows a unit of marauders gw and kotbs cycle charging each other and at every point of this interactions there is damage being dealt both ways in both patches. It just deals less damage in 1.10.2 because some of it gets mitigated by high mass/impact disrupting unbraced low mass infantry without charge defense. Note that even at the last engagement when units are at ~40% hp this still holds.
To extrapolate, I also modded unit size down to 12 models of cav vs 24 models of infantry, which corresponds to 20% of each unit, or 240 gold fighting 100 gold, and it looks like this just on impact and after 2 seconds: So could everyone please stop with misinformation about cavalry every abusing infantry in patch 1.10.2. I don't know what affects peoples memory of this patch, but maybe people just didn't counter-charge cav with infantry back then, or the memory is from tattered spears trying to brace vs more healthy cav or fast single entities, and that never worked well for tattered units. Above all they rout to terror before they even touch, but that's another issue... bracing could give a ld buff for example, that wouldn't be a bad change imo.
The issue also exists atm with monsters attacking foot characters, where a Night Goblin Shaman can often be functionally immune from any attack from a Khemrian Warsphinx because the animation sends him flying before the hit can register.
This interaction is controlled by the variable knock_reaction_ignore_chance and is as far as I know still working as intended for single entities. Mages have as little as 20% ignore chance and will be punted and not take or deal damage a lot, while melee heroes typically only has 40% (too little imo), and legendary lords have 80% (too much imo). I'd love to see changes to these numbers, but it's not really related to the "stag fix".
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
Just a question about "skill" (which incidentally gets back to the diversity issue that I derailed a bit), I think there are different types of skill that fit different playstyles. e.g. I don't think playing dwarves require less skill than full mobility, but different ones (or at least we could hope to reach that level). If you are slow, you have to anticipate more. You have to start moving your units earlier to be in position when responding to a threat. The thing is, there are plenty of factions in warhammer to express different types of skill. The grand challenge should be to balance factions around that, of course it will never be perfect and some factions will still be higher skill, but you can't start if you aggregate different skills in a single performance indicator and claim the game should favour your definition (something both sides tend to do).
In starcraft typically (to take the balance ultimate benchmark) the 3 factions kind of follow those lines. I'm not a specialist but maybe terran is the most "micro" intensive, but it doesn't mean it requires less (edit: I mean more) skill than the others. Situation reading, getting your composition and timing right because you can't recover losses easily (protoss), or having an overwheling macro and understanding the overall resource trade (zerg) are as demanding.
Sure, there are definitely different skill sets, and I think all of them are in play all the time to various degrees. The thing that I bounce on is when people think they are mutually exclusive, like if you have good micro you don't know how position or read the game. I don't think that is neither fair nor the way it works..... Some people also use the term micro in a negative manner like if it would just mean clicking fast on stuff.....
If I would refer to one thing with "skill" it would be simultaneous capacity. Anyone can dodge shots with the mage, or position a box or rush with the entire army if that is the only thing to focus on. Skill for me is the simultaneous capacity to do all these tactical considerations, reading the game, filtering, prioritising and still have the capacity left to dodge shots etc, while also not making any major mistakes. In order of importance dodging comes as low priority, missing to dodge a shot will not cost you the game but mispositioning or forgetting you lord might.... So therefore it often means that a player who is good at dodging actually is also a very skilled player because he dodge shots while also doing all the other things well and making no big misplays.
Builds or play styles that kind of requires less skill in my opinion are the ones that demand less of you attention to be competitive, or are more forgiving to misplays, or are just simplistic but effective.
(Sorry to get back on that as it seems tangential but for me it is at the heart of how to design build diversity)
Indeed I agree all skills are required to a degree, but the accent given to some makes for gameplay diversity. I would just add one thing: build spread also create some trade-off between skills. The more elite, the less split-attention it requires, but also the less forgiving to misplays. Taking the dread saurian ror mechanically reduces your need for simultaneous capacity, while requiring much more situation reading (e.g. estimating the amount of focus fire it will take if moved there, not overextending...). Wide cheap builds are more attention taxing and less reliant on perfect positioning. This is not against what you said, but I think it is a strong argument to justify small, elite builds (then you have small elite fast fragile builds with elves and it gets more complicated).
Also all this is theoretical, like something to aim for, but then there is imperfect balance of course.
I agree with this, the only thing i will add is the ability to micro well opens up different unit ussage in strategies, i think wide range of strategies should be viable, those with high and low micro requirement, the only advantage i can see if someone is good at clicking fast is simply adaptability during battle to what opponent is doing, but if you build a low "clicking" strategy from the get go and put pressure on opponent micro hardly matters. Only issue is often players take armies they are not used to using and QQ that micro is too important, i mean look at ninjahund in the past, he had a micro levels of a foot and yet he did superb because the armies he took focused on what he was good at which was game knowledge (knowing good and bad match-ups for units) but when it came to playing vs top players he did not shine as much because they had game knowledge and could adapt to his strategies a lot more.
My view is all strategies should be viable be it high or low micro but being able to use all units in a roster to best possibility should be rewarded just as much as being able to pick a very good army.
I do however think that some kind of micro is needed an people who try to eliminate a reasonable amount of micro from the game and sell it of as strategy is sily to me, i mean AI is a perfect example why some micro does = skill, play vs AI get him to blob on your hero or stand in his way and he walks into you thus not using micro to walk around and just smash him with AOE's, that be a super crap state of the game if human players did it also, might aswell have auto resolve at that stage.
What good micro enables is execution of wider range of strategies, that does not mean those strategies are better than those of low micro like some people try to argue now and want reduction of micro.
People are confusing skill of a player with ability to click fast.
I played playeres with amazing micro who were bad at the game and i played players with micro of a foot who were superb at the game, a lot of people just refuse to adapt their armies/strategies and sometimes even factions to their own skill and instead try to force the game to change to adapt to them.
Yes I completely agree with this. The discussion about skill vs builds here I think just stemmed from how domination mode and/or more esports-like game design direction would affect builds/diversity/skillset and whatnot, and my prediction there would be that a bigger focus on esports-like design would reward mobility and high micro more rather than less.
Don't fear the knockdown. Control it. Embrace it. Love it!
When it comes to micro/execution it depends on what the goal for the game is. If the goal is to make twwh a competitive esports like game, then execution needs to be rewarded. The skill ceiling must be high, otherwise its not very sensitive to skill. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but if you really want to make this game competitive, then more average players like the vast majority of us are, will be losing more often to the best players. That's why I think unit types and tactics in the spirit is sigvald is bad for the game. Why? Diversity is a good thing and many tactics should be viable etc, but my point is that unit types that require very little skill shouldn't be so high tier/dominant when it comes to shape the outcome of a competitive match. Xiphos (picking a random top player while he was still playing) would get waaay more value out of Waywatchers vs bret than I could because he is a better player, but we would get about the same value out of sigvald end games because anyone can execute sigvald....
I know, unpopular opinion, but if the goal is to make twwh a competitive and entertaining esports game, then there will likely be a higher focus on execution skills. It's entertaining to see good players play bad builds well but it's not much entertainment in seeing a bad player win with a very good but low skill requirement build grinding it out successfully while being outplayed by not outplayed enough....
I'm not sure how this could be an unpopular opinion, it is about the absolute broadest point that applies to any and all sport/esport of any type.
Execution in all sport determines who wins at the highest level, try winning in the NBA at the moment if you can't execute on 3 pointers, or boxing if you can't either hit more than you get hit or knock people out, or soccer if you can't score goals or block them, etc etc.
The whole discussion here is around what exactly should be the areas where players need to excel in order to be a top-tier player. To use the basketball analogy again, it isn't a coincidence that NBA players are often at least 1 standard deviation or more in height above the average population. That trait contributes to their ability to execute the skillset needed to perform well in the top levels of the NBA.
This makes your read on Sigvald quite incorrect as well, sure in the current gameplay where you have to kill/rout Sigvald to end a match he is a relatively low skill unit but add capture points into the mix and that changes completely. Suddenly you need to make sure you are getting value with Sigvald throughout the game as well as you can't rely on an endgame grind to recoup his value. He needs to be in the right place at the right time, be that killing stuff, blocking points being captured, taking points etc. Sigvald could very easily end up as a higher skill unit than Waywatchers in a domination style game mode.
TL;DR: You can't analyse which types of units are high skill in a vacuum, if the win condition for Domination turns out to be shooting a hot air balloon out of the air then Waywatchers will be a much lower skill unit than Sigvald as a slightly absurd example.
I got distracted from replying to this one sorry.
It's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
Just a question about "skill" (which incidentally gets back to the diversity issue that I derailed a bit), I think there are different types of skill that fit different playstyles. e.g. I don't think playing dwarves require less skill than full mobility, but different ones (or at least we could hope to reach that level). If you are slow, you have to anticipate more. You have to start moving your units earlier to be in position when responding to a threat. The thing is, there are plenty of factions in warhammer to express different types of skill. The grand challenge should be to balance factions around that, of course it will never be perfect and some factions will still be higher skill, but you can't start if you aggregate different skills in a single performance indicator and claim the game should favour your definition (something both sides tend to do).
In starcraft typically (to take the balance ultimate benchmark) the 3 factions kind of follow those lines. I'm not a specialist but maybe terran is the most "micro" intensive, but it doesn't mean it requires less (edit: I mean more) skill than the others. Situation reading, getting your composition and timing right because you can't recover losses easily (protoss), or having an overwheling macro and understanding the overall resource trade (zerg) are as demanding.
Sure, there are definitely different skill sets, and I think all of them are in play all the time to various degrees. The thing that I bounce on is when people think they are mutually exclusive, like if you have good micro you don't know how position or read the game. I don't think that is neither fair nor the way it works..... Some people also use the term micro in a negative manner like if it would just mean clicking fast on stuff.....
If I would refer to one thing with "skill" it would be simultaneous capacity. Anyone can dodge shots with the mage, or position a box or rush with the entire army if that is the only thing to focus on. Skill for me is the simultaneous capacity to do all these tactical considerations, reading the game, filtering, prioritising and still have the capacity left to dodge shots etc, while also not making any major mistakes. In order of importance dodging comes as low priority, missing to dodge a shot will not cost you the game but mispositioning or forgetting you lord might.... So therefore it often means that a player who is good at dodging actually is also a very skilled player because he dodge shots while also doing all the other things well and making no big misplays.
Builds or play styles that kind of requires less skill in my opinion are the ones that demand less of you attention to be competitive, or are more forgiving to misplays, or are just simplistic but effective.
(Sorry to get back on that as it seems tangential but for me it is at the heart of how to design build diversity)
Indeed I agree all skills are required to a degree, but the accent given to some makes for gameplay diversity. I would just add one thing: build spread also create some trade-off between skills. The more elite, the less split-attention it requires, but also the less forgiving to misplays. Taking the dread saurian ror mechanically reduces your need for simultaneous capacity, while requiring much more situation reading (e.g. estimating the amount of focus fire it will take if moved there, not overextending...). Wide cheap builds are more attention taxing and less reliant on perfect positioning. This is not against what you said, but I think it is a strong argument to justify small, elite builds (then you have small elite fast fragile builds with elves and it gets more complicated).
Also all this is theoretical, like something to aim for, but then there is imperfect balance of course.
I agree with this, the only thing i will add is the ability to micro well opens up different unit ussage in strategies, i think wide range of strategies should be viable, those with high and low micro requirement, the only advantage i can see if someone is good at clicking fast is simply adaptability during battle to what opponent is doing, but if you build a low "clicking" strategy from the get go and put pressure on opponent micro hardly matters. Only issue is often players take armies they are not used to using and QQ that micro is too important, i mean look at ninjahund in the past, he had a micro levels of a foot and yet he did superb because the armies he took focused on what he was good at which was game knowledge (knowing good and bad match-ups for units) but when it came to playing vs top players he did not shine as much because they had game knowledge and could adapt to his strategies a lot more.
My view is all strategies should be viable be it high or low micro but being able to use all units in a roster to best possibility should be rewarded just as much as being able to pick a very good army.
I do however think that some kind of micro is needed an people who try to eliminate a reasonable amount of micro from the game and sell it of as strategy is sily to me, i mean AI is a perfect example why some micro does = skill, play vs AI get him to blob on your hero or stand in his way and he walks into you thus not using micro to walk around and just smash him with AOE's, that be a super crap state of the game if human players did it also, might aswell have auto resolve at that stage.
What good micro enables is execution of wider range of strategies, that does not mean those strategies are better than those of low micro like some people try to argue now and want reduction of micro.
People are confusing skill of a player with ability to click fast.
I played playeres with amazing micro who were bad at the game and i played players with micro of a foot who were superb at the game, a lot of people just refuse to adapt their armies/strategies and sometimes even factions to their own skill and instead try to force the game to change to adapt to them.
Yes I completely agree with this. The discussion about skill vs builds here I think just stemmed from how domination mode and/or more esports-like game design direction would affect builds/diversity/skillset and whatnot, and my prediction there would be that a bigger focus on esports-like design would reward mobility and high micro more rather than less.
I'm not certain it would reward it more but i think more strategy paths would be open and that could be seen as an advantage by being less predictable but i dont neccessery think more micro = better player, you need to be able to know what to do with that micro, but there is a need for certain level of micro to be a good player in general, if you cannot turn to face opponents or cant micro to disable fire at will when all shots are missing then no way the player will be good, and clicking in any form of shape is micro, likewise i think there are factions more suited to dynamic play and others more suited to perfromance with less "clicking", its kinda why people are frustrated with Wood elves at the moment, due to the current state of cav WE's went went from high skill faction to pull of wins to just a 20stack point and click. True long term WE mains are furious how WE's play currently as they consider it low skill approach, i think more respect would be given to the 20stack from WE's if they did have to fear cav head on when they pick dryad front line.
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But it's of course ironic that people complain about that, but find it's 100% OK for Teclis on his parrot or the Pigeon Queen to have absurd levels of survivability while retaining the ability to majorly affect the course of the battle with their magic and stacking auras, something Sigvald can't match with his mere sword swinging.
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2 · 6Disagree 2AgreeYou are very good at projecting the worst possible intentions on me. There is no hidden agenda, I am completely open with that I only want a balanced game. The reason why partial knockdown damage mitigation is good for the game is because it simulates the expected outcome of shock lances charging handweapon infantry. If you take a lance to your chest while you are charging cavalry your prospects of dealing damage to that knight goes down. You even agreed to this because you supported lotus post about charge defense vs small while charging. The thing you can't stand seems to be the existence of knockdowns.
Even with units at some 30% hp the infantry deals damage just fine on mutual charges with functional knockbacks. You'd have to go down to so tattered infantry that they have fewer models than the cav, and at that stage the value imbalance between the cav and inf units would be really big. If we use the kotbs vs marauder example, the cav is 1200 gold avd 45 models while marauders are 500 gold and 90 models. In order to have a case with inf having the same or fewer models you'd have at least a 1200/250 gold advantage on the cav, almost 5:1, and in addition the infantry needs few enough models to not have more than 2 ranks. Even then, inf would do some damage since the jumping models often get their hit in. This is a big strawman that was not considered a problem in 1.10.2. Cycle charging SEMs before Dec 2. 2020 did this, but not really cavalry between 2. Dec 2020 and Rakarth patch.
There is absolutely no reason to be afraid is cavalry with functional knockdowns in 1.10.2.
However, the price we pay for having knockdowns that dont affect combat outcome makes 100eds of outcomes unbalanced.
I can't believe I have to spend time arguing this point.
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0 · Disagree AgreeCavalry knockdowns were not abusive in any shape or form in 1.10.2 and they won't become abusive now. It would just restore balance and make knockdowns actually affect combat again. Win - win.
Disagreeing with you is not propaganda. Selling cav as abusive in 1.10.2 however is a bit of fake news.
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0 · 1Disagree AgreeI want cav to be strong. I just don't support bad game design.
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1 · Disagree 1AgreeIt's not popular here to say that some builds require less skill to play competitively, but I think it's just the way it is and we can like it or hate it, but it doesnt change the fact. If I use myself as an example I can play some builds at top performance also vs the very best players in the game, but if I pick a high micro build and bring it vs Lotus_Moon he will have me for breakfast. Both of us know the game mechanics equally well, we both understand positioning and army building equally well, but when that is done he has much more spare capacity than me to micro all units individually. So even if I can build to stand a decent chance of taking games off of him, people would pay to watch him play but nobody would spend a dime on me trying to cause an upset with lower skill builds. So in terms of entertainment I believe esports would move things further towards micro skills, not away from it.
So domination could go both ways. If they make it good in terms of making the game competitive and entertaining it will cause and favour splitting forces and micro several engagements simultaneously, but if they do it wrong it will favour holding power.
Either way, there is a big chance that it will change the spirit of the game, which risks to alienate many of the current players. Will it attract many more new players to make it a big success? Could go any direction..... I am still hoping for a very subtle implementation that doesn't change the core game.
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0 · 3Disagree AgreeIn starcraft typically (to take the balance ultimate benchmark) the 3 factions kind of follow those lines. I'm not a specialist but maybe terran is the most "micro" intensive, but it doesn't mean it requires less (edit: I mean more) skill than the others. Situation reading, getting your composition and timing right because you can't recover losses easily (protoss), or having an overwheling macro and understanding the overall resource trade (zerg) are as demanding.
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3 · Disagree 3AgreeFixing counter charging is also clearly related to sigvald and how he plays.
All of this is just logic.
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2 · 1Disagree 2AgreeBut tbh based on this response, you don't appear to have understood the point I was making. So don't think we can really have any form of productive conversation here as it seems likely we will talk past each other.
Will just have to wait and see how it all plays out and what choices CA makes. Might even get a first look at Domination sometime over th next couple months which would be really great.
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3 · Disagree 3AgreeWhat game are we talking about here?
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0 · Disagree AgreeIf I would refer to one thing with "skill" it would be simultaneous capacity. Anyone can dodge shots with the mage, or position a box or rush with the entire army if that is the only thing to focus on. Skill for me is the simultaneous capacity to do all these tactical considerations, reading the game, filtering, prioritising and still have the capacity left to dodge shots etc, while also not making any major mistakes. In order of importance dodging comes as low priority, missing to dodge a shot will not cost you the game but mispositioning or forgetting you lord might.... So therefore it often means that a player who is good at dodging actually is also a very skilled player because he dodge shots while also doing all the other things well and making no big misplays.
Builds or play styles that kind of requires less skill in my opinion are the ones that demand less of you attention to be competitive, or are more forgiving to misplays, or are just simplistic but effective.
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2 · 1Disagree 2AgreeSo obviously the optimal way to rebalance is to ensure cav are worth taking without needlessly reducing the skill needed to use cav effectively.
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1 · Disagree 1AgreeMelee cavalry has always been amongst the most micro intensive unit variety they can’t cut through units like chariots. They don’t have the melee sustainability of infantry. The can’t simply target units like missile units. On top of all that the elite variants cost as much as some SEM but are far more punished for taking damage as they’ll shed models.
Missile cavalry is amazing still but that has more to do with skirmishing and counter skirmishing.
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0 · Disagree AgreeIf we try to return to the topic of diversity, then it would benefit the diversity of tactics if shock cav and chariots again could punish wide build better when the wide builds lack both charge defense/bvl units and mass. Cheap great weapon infantry were strong damage dealers vs cav already in 1.10.2, but they were not equipped to tank shock cav. They were more damage dealers. Now they out trade them even if isolated and that's where the tables have turned.
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0 · Disagree AgreeThat being said, the biggest buff Cavalry can receive will still be from adding more complexity to the game through Capture points/reinforcements. In that context their speed becomes far more relevant and important and Cav will now have roles they can play that infantry can't. It is all well and good if Infantry trades well into Cavalry charge for charge, but if you are bringing in reinforcements to support a time-sensitive engagement then being able to get their quickly is important. Or if a player tries to reinforce with some ranged units and their opponent can run them down with a cavalry unit while they are isolated, the counter charge situation won't be relevant. Or using cav to take a point (or block a capture) while an opponent's infantry force slowly tries to respond will show the importance of speed.
Whereas currently in this game you pay for speed on units but the actual use you can get out of that speed is somewhat limited, especially when splitting your force is basically always a tactical mistake but will likely become a tactical necessity with Domination mode. How Cav trades on the counter-charge is not far off where it should be for balancing purposes but the ability to take advantage of the unique strengths that cavalry has is too low in the current game design.
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4 · 3Disagree 4AgreeChariots are antiinfantry specialists, they should indeed be able to punish infantry, including chaff, and they should be very strong at punching through chaff units. Its hard to judge exactly where the latest changes landed, some chariots are clearly too strong and im not sure if others have been changed or not?
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0 · 7Disagree AgreeIndeed I agree all skills are required to a degree, but the accent given to some makes for gameplay diversity. I would just add one thing: build spread also create some trade-off between skills. The more elite, the less split-attention it requires, but also the less forgiving to misplays. Taking the dread saurian ror mechanically reduces your need for simultaneous capacity, while requiring much more situation reading (e.g. estimating the amount of focus fire it will take if moved there, not overextending...). Wide cheap builds are more attention taxing and less reliant on perfect positioning. This is not against what you said, but I think it is a strong argument to justify small, elite builds (then you have small elite fast fragile builds with elves and it gets more complicated).
Also all this is theoretical, like something to aim for, but then there is imperfect balance of course.
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1 · Disagree 1AgreeMy view is all strategies should be viable be it high or low micro but being able to use all units in a roster to best possibility should be rewarded just as much as being able to pick a very good army.
I do however think that some kind of micro is needed an people who try to eliminate a reasonable amount of micro from the game and sell it of as strategy is sily to me, i mean AI is a perfect example why some micro does = skill, play vs AI get him to blob on your hero or stand in his way and he walks into you thus not using micro to walk around and just smash him with AOE's, that be a super crap state of the game if human players did it also, might aswell have auto resolve at that stage.
What good micro enables is execution of wider range of strategies, that does not mean those strategies are better than those of low micro like some people try to argue now and want reduction of micro.
People are confusing skill of a player with ability to click fast.
I played playeres with amazing micro who were bad at the game and i played players with micro of a foot who were superb at the game, a lot of people just refuse to adapt their armies/strategies and sometimes even factions to their own skill and instead try to force the game to change to adapt to them.
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1 · 2Disagree 1AgreeThis here shows a unit of marauders gw and kotbs cycle charging each other and at every point of this interactions there is damage being dealt both ways in both patches. It just deals less damage in 1.10.2 because some of it gets mitigated by high mass/impact disrupting unbraced low mass infantry without charge defense. Note that even at the last engagement when units are at ~40% hp this still holds.
To extrapolate, I also modded unit size down to 12 models of cav vs 24 models of infantry, which corresponds to 20% of each unit, or 240 gold fighting 100 gold, and it looks like this just on impact and after 2 seconds:
So could everyone please stop with misinformation about cavalry every abusing infantry in patch 1.10.2. I don't know what affects peoples memory of this patch, but maybe people just didn't counter-charge cav with infantry back then, or the memory is from tattered spears trying to brace vs more healthy cav or fast single entities, and that never worked well for tattered units. Above all they rout to terror before they even touch, but that's another issue... bracing could give a ld buff for example, that wouldn't be a bad change imo. This interaction is controlled by the variable knock_reaction_ignore_chance and is as far as I know still working as intended for single entities. Mages have as little as 20% ignore chance and will be punted and not take or deal damage a lot, while melee heroes typically only has 40% (too little imo), and legendary lords have 80% (too much imo). I'd love to see changes to these numbers, but it's not really related to the "stag fix".
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