Because this is not a battle between empire and Marlinist faction but battle between players supporting different narrative/goals/whatsoever.
Mathematically, the balance on this CG has been a miss
- Thread starter Magister Mundi
- Start date
I guess we're done with this thread then?
If you don't think that it's close, engaging and actually genuinely "interesting" then I'm very sorry that you have been disappointed. Most of the rest of us have been waiting for something like this for a while: a CG where the "winner" was not determined by Saturday lunchtime.
As has been stated in various other threads, if the level of support for the Marlinists had been the same as for "Mad Bomber" Ryder then NMLA would have walked this one, but that hasn't been the case. Noone could have predicted exactly how much support each side would get before the event.
So the arguments so far have been:
1. One side does more work (on average) than the other for less credit reward.
If you would like to make up your credits with the difference between the two CGs, meet me in open and I'll drop you a couple of million CR of LTDs.
2. One side does more work (on average) for less Lore/RP reward.
Who knows what the actual outcome would have been if the NMLA/Marlinists won? Look at the EBM outcome - that would likely have been no different no matter who won. Liz Ryder becomes Riz Lyder, Imperial engineer. No missile racks won. EBM lead turns out to have been a red herring. No closer to finding true suspects. To be honest, other than the shiny, not much difference story wise.
3. @Factabulous produces nice but meaningless graphs.
They present figures. How you interpret them is up to you.
The reason for ignoring the the quantitative part is that it's irrelevant. Who cares what the totals are when the goal is to get to 100% for both sides? Surely that's the only real comparison you can make to see who's closest to completing their goal?
Say side A has a goal of 100m and side B 100bn. Side A gets 50m and side B 80bn in 1 day. Who's closest to completing their goal? Side B needs 20bn whereas side A only needs 50m.
Or am I missing something by not reading 130 pages of a statistics book?
4. Not getting a high enough tier for doing "more work".
If it's credits you are after, see above. If it's the pat on the head you get for reaching a particular tier or doing better than the other side, sorry. You could always just invent your own tiers where NMLA get tier 4 after 2m CR and call it a win? Who has to follow FDev's tiers anyway?
5 It's "unbalanced"
Yes. It is.
There are RP reasons for it - lots of work done my the Imperial Navy so less for independent commanders to do vs. very few combat pilots for the NMLA side.
There's also RL reasons for it - last combat CG was over by Saturday afternoon.
Nah
Balance has been a miss?
Hmm, maybe they're talking about the hourly contributions towards the targets:
View attachment 191240
Hmm, nope, can't be that ... they're swapping around and overlapping.
Maybe he's saying one was always in the lead, so the other had no chance:
View attachment 191241
Nope - can't be that - the Marlinists were in the lead, then they were gradually overhauled by the Imps.
It's pretty ironic that the first really close CG battle in probably years in the first to attract so many 'it's unbalanced' comments. Almost like people are just comparing the raw numbers and making assumptions
(And ofc the CGs were actually favouring the Marlinists, if you look at the relative support numbers from last week)
...that's not... that's not how that works. We have a ratio for the entire event up to this date. That's what those numbers represent. We aren't going to lose contributors - it's cumulative. The numbers only stay the same or increase. Yes, the average contribution could change tomorrow, maybe because a bunch of people join one side or the other and put in a huge amount of effort, or conversely a bunch of people stop bothering and do something else. But up to this point in time, there's a clear picture of how much on a mean-based average each person has contributed.
I think you might misunderstand how this part of statistics work, and while I'm really not trying to be rude or dismissive, educating you on this isn't really something I have the energy for. I would suggest looking up mean, median, and modal averages and getting a feel for how they work, however.
It definitely is.
The only thing from my point I think you're missing is player numbers involved in each. I'm of the opinion that the amount of effort a player puts toward their preferred faction should be rewarded equally. Not that the RP or lore of the galaxy should shift equally, just that one person's efforts should be treated and tracked in a way that is equivalent to another player's efforts, as I explained in my response to Merlin_Rum.
The rest is subjective, and like I said to others, fair enough.
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Then why it is labeled as community goal. It's clear one part of the community figth vs. other.
Okay. Those graphs aren't really relevant to the point I'm making, as I've explained a couple times now, but if that's your only response, I'm guessing you're not actually interested in understanding my point or actually engaging with me in any meaningful way. So... enjoy yourself, I guess?
What you're actually suggesting in the first post is that it's not fair that the Marlinist "lose" while their average contribution per commander is higher.
This would be a novel way to determine a CG i.e. actively discourage "casual" participation. Essentially to win a CG of this type you should ideally pick a small number of contributors who have endgame ships and a week to dedicate to the gaining of combat bonds - and gank any other player trying to contribute to your side as they'd just drag your average down.
In the last CG I was top 10% for the Empire. I got about 10m credits bonus for about 10m credits handed in. Conversely (IIRC) I could have handed in about a quarter of that number and gained more credits and a spiffy missile.
It was a choice I made and I'm fine with it. Others are, obviously, free to make their own choices based on how they'd like to be "rewarded".
While the mechanism is what it is then you play the system however you like. It's not ideal for everyone, you know what you're signing up for when you start.
Ultimately every competitve CG is going to be in some way unbalanced except through extreme luck, because Frontier has to set the targets and tier thresholds in advance, but the players showing up (and effort put in) can easily vary by a factor of ten. It will always be possible to point to some metric on which it's equal and some on which it's unequal and you can just pick whatever you like.
If the tiers, rewards and targets are exactly identical, then the side with the most players in the first few hours [1] gets a walkover victory. It's fair in a mathematical sense, but not at all balanced in terms of likely outcomes.
If the tiers, rewards and targets are not exactly identical, then everyone can point to some way in which they're not identical as evidence that it's biased against one side or the other, especially in hindsight when the actual participation numbers are known, and the effect of factors which might not have been possible to predict in advance are known.
(Obviously for a story CG, it doesn't have to be balanced in the first place - if the only points players can get involved with the story are the ones which happen to have absolutely quantitatively identical sides then we're mostly going to be reading about NPCs doing stuff in Galnet)
[1] Which is, of course, strongly influenced by the years (or not) of lore around each side. Just because it's not a quantitatively measurable factor - the Empire has "6 Lore" and the Marlinists have "2+0.5i Lore" - doesn't mean it's not a factor. All CGs are rigged, especially the unopposed ones.
Yes, obviously it's a test to at least some extent - the first two CGs for bulk trade and rares trade were the first ever to be held with players having access to Fleet Carriers (and the first CGs at all for about a year, too, which also matters!). This led to a record rate of deliveries - by a massive margin - in both CGs. They guessed too low on bulk trade, and too high on rares (though too high is better as that at least gave them time to revise it downwards a bit mid-week). Best to get the calibration work in early on fairly low-stakes CGs (does it really matter that much if we get a 15% or 25% discount on Gutamaya for a week, or if 3 or 8 refinery stations are upgraded) so that later ones can be more finely balanced.
It might just be luck but I'm actually quite impressed how close they've managed to get this one on the "% of Tier 5 complete" metric.
Think about what Frontier actually has to do to balance a competitive war CG:
1) Estimate the total players on each side
2) Estimate the total bonds handed in by each side
3) Estimate the effect of having tier targets which when met increase the payout for future participants and make that side more likely to attract mercenaries
4) Write up storyline content for both sides and estimate the impact of that on who joins which side, in the context of existing lore
5) Have it completely messed up when it turns out that all the players have free will after all and do something unpredictable
So at the start of this week, what data did they have from the Eurybia CG?
- Marlinists had scored 41B credits of bonds (8800 participants) by the end
- Empire had scored 5.5B credits of bonds (2400 participants) by the end
... but the scores earlier in the week were closer to only 2:1 in favour of the Marlinists - it only really started swinging out on Saturday night.
And they want a storyline this week where the Marlinists are trying to evacuate ahead of the arrival of the main Imperial fleet by holding off the vanguard.
So, firstly, the Tier 5 targets. This one they seem to have guessed almost right on - based on the early scores from the RP/Lore contributors, the Marlinists should need to go about twice as far to complete, or it'll look like a walkover to start with. So T5 targets at 25B/45B means that neither probably gets met, but they could be.
But then you have the mercenary effect to consider - it's always easier to join the winning team. So if the Marlinists can turn a marginal victory on Saturday into an overwhelming one by Wednesday, then they're going to extend their lead. One way to counterbalance that is by setting the Empire mid-tier targets lower down, so that the Empire starts giving (slightly, basically irrelevant for veterans, of course) higher payouts sooner, and therefore can catch up. On the other hand, the Marlinist mid-tiers are more important as they have "partial victory" effects at Tier 3 and the Empire ones don't - in a standard competitive CG, if one side gets to Tier 5 it wins, whereas in this one, if the Empire gets to Tier 5 but only after the Marlinists get to Tier 3, the Marlinists get a partial victory too.
Did Frontier get it completely right? No - with the full benefit of hindsight, knowing what we now do about how many participants in the last one just showed up for the module, probably both CGs should have had targets about half what they actually are at all tiers on both sides. That would probably have led to Marlinist Tier 3 (some objectives complete) and Empire Tier 4 (overall victory at CG end). But the asymmetric tier distribution is probably in about the right place to try to balance out the various effects, just aimed too high on both sides overall.
Of course, Frontier only gets one upfront guess and has to live with it. It's never going to be perfect, but the more data they get the more it improves.
(Back when they were doing regular CGs and players were regularly taking part they got it down to a fine art with the trade CGs as to what targets to set, based on the location, trade goods, etc. so that it would be a close race to the finish for the final tier on the final day)
Mean effort per participant is a really easily distorted metric, though. I don't think it's actually meaningful for looking at CG balance.
At the moment, as you say, the Marlinists are putting in 3.3M bonds/participant, and the Empire are putting in 2.6M bonds/participant.
Say that four thousand extra players each show up, kill a few CZ Eagles for the Marlinists, hand in 50,000 credits of bonds, and go home.
The Marlinists then gain 200 million credits of extra bonds (marginal, in the grand scheme of things) but their bonds/participant ratio falls to just 1.6M bonds/participant - much less than the Empire! Well, obviously now they deserve to lose, the lazy rebels ... despite none of the existing participants having worked any less hard?!
Equally, say that the bottom 50% of the Empire participants hadn't shown up at all. Looking at the threshold estimates from Inara, they probably handed in only around 300k bonds each on average, maybe a little less. So if they weren't there, the Empire would lose about 429M credits of bonds - not even enough to drop them behind the Marlinists on a "percentage of Tier 5" metric, it's that small a change - but the mean bonds/remaining participant would go from 2.6M to 5.0M! Well, clearly then the Empire would deserve to win!
(The effort distribution in CGs is usually very roughly a Power Law distribution, and the mean is not a useful measure for those)
Of course they will. And now - with the data from this CG added on - they have a pretty good idea of exactly how much extra support it will attract (both to the side and to the CG as a whole), and can set tiers and targets so that the overall outcome remains unclear even with that incentive on one side.
If Frontier always avoided things after the first time they "failed" they'd never do anything (and "by what metric?" is always an important question - in terms of getting record-breaking participation in a Warzone CG it was a great success!). Every single interesting thing Frontier has ever done has been declared a "failure" by some players, often very loudly, and it (fortunately!) hasn't stopped them trying.
Who needed to be kneecapped @Rubbernuke ?
I'm sure it can be arranged. Freddie 'four-fingers' is free after lunchtime.
I'm sure it can be arranged. Freddie 'four-fingers' is free after lunchtime.
All I said is that those graphs do not tell the full story. Such as the slope of progression. How players number changes over time. But even from them I can see that this CG was decided around the 30th hour - it is clearly visible on the second chart.
I do understand the handy cap attempt, but why it is based on the previous one is totally beyond me.
And for the book. It's great read about statistic and data interpretation ... would you miss something depends totally on your interests.
Finally, IMHO, using handy cap to balance the values of different community support is really bad thing. And current attempt is a clear miss again.
For those who are actually interested in correct statistics:
OP tries to calculate contribution per participant. For this he uses the total amount of participants and total amount of contribution. Then he compares the results. This would work if the ratio of participants would remain static over the course of the CG.
Currently the ratio is 3.69:2.86. Problem is, (IIRC) that for the most time the ratio was more like 3:1. So it's entirely possible that both sides roughly contributed the same amounts per participant and that only changed when lots of people joined the smaller side in the last few days. Maybe to get rewards from both CGs?
Anyway, if I am not wrong the whole calculation doesn't make any sense because it's based on wrong and misleading data. If you want an accurate picture you would need to take a look at participants and contribution for each day.
@Kietrax
Do you still have the numbers for the other days?
OP tries to calculate contribution per participant. For this he uses the total amount of participants and total amount of contribution. Then he compares the results. This would work if the ratio of participants would remain static over the course of the CG.
Currently the ratio is 3.69:2.86. Problem is, (IIRC) that for the most time the ratio was more like 3:1. So it's entirely possible that both sides roughly contributed the same amounts per participant and that only changed when lots of people joined the smaller side in the last few days. Maybe to get rewards from both CGs?
Anyway, if I am not wrong the whole calculation doesn't make any sense because it's based on wrong and misleading data. If you want an accurate picture you would need to take a look at participants and contribution for each day.
@Kietrax
Do you still have the numbers for the other days?
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Less "it's not fair that they lose" and more "it kinda sucks that their contributions are not treated as equivalent to the other faction." I realize the monetary reward is pocket change even at the highest tiers for anyone but the newest players, but it's more the principle of fairness: if more effort is being put in by one team over the other, then that team's progress toward their goals should reflect that. As I mentioned earlier, I'm fine with the RP ramifications and the like being decidedly unfair (and for the record my CMDR is Federation-aligned and currently signed up for both factions, so I don't really have a strong bias toward either), but just on an out-of-game mechanical level I feel as though it should be an even playing field.
Honestly, I could get behind that if it was clear that FDev plans on going in that direction. Or if not get behind it, at least respect that approach. It's just that I'm not sure that IS the approach. If it was, I'm not sure why they would have bothered on trying to introduce a handicap this time around - if the Patreus side of the Empire (or the Empire in general) is going to get pummeled because that's how player sentiment goes and that's fine, then that would presumably mean that FDev wouldn't have tried to balance it. However, the fact that they did is why I wrote this in the first place.
I appreciate the thoughtful and thorough response, and I definitely want to respond in some depth when I get the chance. I think you raise some very valid points. However, it's 2:44 am where I am, so I'll need to return to this in about eight hours or so. Just wanted to assure you that I'm not ignoring your response or anyone else's, I promise.
Well, I think I for one am done as I don't think there's much more I can add here that hasn't been added by others.
Genuinely sorry you didn't enjoy this CG. Hope you have a better experience next time.
Well, I certainly had my conclusion. It is very unlikely for me to participate in handy capped CGs in future and even if I do it would be just to ensure my access to exclusive rewards. I have played other games where handy caps were attempted in different ways - it is always a roflstomp for one of the sides regardless. The other part I do not like is allowing players to participate simultaneously in two contradicting sides.
COMPLETED CG - Fight for the Empire with the Regulatory State of Ackwada
I jumped in with a full load of passengers cabins, like a fool... but seems are no need for that, right ? Will be only a boom-boom CG ?! Cuz I confess, the in-game description say something about passengers in need to evacuate... Can anyone share some light on this, please ?
And here:
COMPLETED CG - Fight for the Marlinists with the Duduseklis Empire League
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. Agreed. I also enjoy a well-prepared cheese wheel.
And here:
COMPLETED CG - Fight for the Marlinists with the Duduseklis Empire League
Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. Agreed. I also enjoy a well-prepared cheese wheel.
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Without reading the rest of the thread...
Is it required that the CG be balanced?
I mean traditionally that has been the case but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that FD would want to set up CGs that are unbalanced for narrative reasons - commanders might still manage to push things the other way but that just makes that difference all the more interesting and pushes the story in a different sort of direction.
Perhaps we'll be seeing more of this in the future too.
More interesting CG rewards, more unbalanced CGs.