definitely keep it as a hobby, I love your videos but a big part of that is the passion behind them

Your explanation of how The Stick is designed and balanced is really well done. Whenever myself or my friends talk about balance, we always think of the standard "Numbers up, numbers down" approach. But trying to instead think of characters and mechanics as "How can this be countered/played around?" is much more interesting, and allows for much more fun ideas and gameplay. As you said, The Stick is incredibly deadly, but it has a number of drawbacks, like a long cooldown, a limited range, and that neither the player nor The Stick can move while it's active. It's clearly designed as an area denial tool, and it can be incredibly strong, but only if the player takes steps to create a situation where it can be strong, and/or if their opponent(s) don't take steps to prevent that situation. The numbers don't matter nearly as much, because the strategies for and against The Stick become a long line of choices, a series of attacks and counter-attacks, like Chess with even more options. I like the idea of games being designed as a system of rules, with the abilities of different characters creating new rules when activated. Don't stand here. Don't move too fast. Don't turn left. Don't stop moving. Follow the rules, or face the consequences, with abilities that cause more risk for the user having more dire consequences for the rulebreaker. The fun of the game now comes from working with these strange limitations, and how you counteract them. Follow the rule until its timer runs out, or stop the rule by killing/stunning the user, or use another rule which stops the first rule, _or_ (If you're able to) _use the consequences of breaking the rule to your advantage against the user_ . For example, Rainbow 6 Siege has Lion, a character with a 3 second map wide scan which marks the locations of enemies that move during it. Most people sit still during a Lion scan, which lets him push the attack. But, you can also stand in the area of a Mute Jammer, which blocks electronic systems like Lion's scan, letting you move without being detected. Or, even better, if you're in a well defended position, you can _choose_ to move during a Lion scan, purposefully making your location known. A Lion that knows where you are will normally push aggressively to try to kill you, so they can be baited into a trap, such as a tripwire bomb, or letting them waste bullets shooting a barricade and shooting back when they need to reload.

Fantastic video! I love the idea that competitive games are only as daunting as the community makes them out to be because, otherwise, like you mentioned with the Fortnite example, picking up and playing is the best way to get started and doing your best to ignore toxicity, meta discourse and general top player worship are the healthiest things to keep in mind to keep your love for a title growing when fresh into it. I actually feel Blizz is moving in a great direction with balance for OW2 as it's probably in the best state it's ever been in, but of course that's my 400 hours probably doing a little of the work there lol. Of course even in that game characters still rise through each season's power levels following every patch. Even then, I feel them going 5v5 allows for a lot more individual impact than the game ever had when it started and it feels nice to really succeed as characters like Pharah or Sojourn that reward considered approaches. Also props for the shared spotlight between Ult and Melee footage. It may be a less expressive platform fighter than Melee, but the character diversity and general sense of "balance" are probably a first for the series even when played at the top level. Also the expansion pack approach to balance is an interesting one because I feel, at least in fighting games, we saw it phase out when Ultra Street Fighter 4 ended and I can't help but feel that was for the better what with a paywall towards a more rounded product etc. It's a give and take and some games wear more routine updates better than others of course. Anyway banger as always bruv!

Game balance is an illusion. You can never have a perfect set of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" and even if you do... that's boring. Passing the torch on who gets to be OP for a while is important for game longevity, so long as it's still beatable, with a combination of luck and skill. And that's really all that matters: No match should ever have a 100% predetermined outcome.

in the first 2 minutes you showed 6 games i absolutely adored, this is THE channel

Great video, very happy youtube recommended it to me even tho I don't watch any dota content anymore

That Blizzard comment is how I feel about League of Legends lately. Riot go out of their way to balance TOO much, to the point of making abstract changes that fundamentally break the rules of the game so that everything has to be played THEIR way. For example, modifying the amount of experience certain roles get when played in different positions, or disabling item effects until midgame. Drastic changes to catchup experience also makes it feel like you just don't have much agency in games.

Good video and grats on 10k subs! Well deserved imo.

Cool video, enjoyed a lot. Impact is the most important part of any gameplay full stop! One thing you sort of brushed on but I think deserves more light is that when it comes to the hero meta, the important part is that the "best hero of the meta" is only strongest when being played to it's maximum potential, but no one other than the very top ranks can actually play like that, therefore for the most part the meta doesn't really matter. The other thing is fringe cases where something is so over powered that it makes it easier, but also the majority of players have a tendancy to blame a hero being OP when they lose to it, because it's easier than self-evaluating :)

Guilty Gear Strive

Path of Exile just had a situation like this. Big patch notes for the new season, first changes in four months, and instead of doing a hundred little number tweaks of abilities, they instead released all new support gems. People in the community bitched about how the meta is the samey, but now that we've had like 48 hours to chew on the actual release, a lot of the new supports are actually really cool and build enabling. One melee skill had a mechanic where you deal more damage with each hit, but also take a small but scaling bit of damage with each attack, and now a slightly modified version is available for all melee strike skills. There was a specific necklace anoit called vengant cascade where all attack projectiles (mostly bow builds) came back to the player after each shot, effectively doubling damage, and becoming mandatory for those builds. Now that anoint was gutted, but its a somewhat nerfed support gem, and can work with spells now too. Another one was added called volitility, it doesnt affect your average damage much, but allows it to have bigger spikes of high or low, which is really good for ignite or bleed builds, because only the strongest one is applied. They have significantly changed the meta, without doing blanket number tweaks. Many new builds are coming out of just a handful of new gems, and from the regular new unique items and seasonal content.

Ironically, Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm really had that "fuck around and see" feeling to it despite most of their games being just as you described. Idk how it is now, I stopped playing when they axed the competitive scene. But they definitely knew that balanced doesnt always mean better.

I find it funny to use strive as an example of major expansions and reworking systems when strive is also one of the most well balanced games in its genre where every character feels very distinct from each other.

Awesome vid!

Probably the best thing about Dota is that while changes sometimes have a goal in mind, a lot of the time it's just wait and see what happens. The best example of this is OD. He had the worst winrate in the game and Icefrog would barely touch him. But suddenly someone figured out a build and went "hey this meme item works great on him, let's share it" and he gained like 40% extra winrate overnight. They could have buffed him to hell and back, but instead no changes and some waiting did the trick. Sometimes they just buff heroes so people remember "hey this guy exists". Or what they recently did with Ogre "oh yeah he is dumb as fuck, doesn't make sense he's an int hero. Moved him to strength." Or the whole universal nonsense. Just drop an entirely new attribute into the game because we can, and see what happens. Sure, they tweak it to not be under or overwhelming, but a lot of it is just massive changes for the hell of it and letting us figure it out. If it doesn't work, it doesn't. There was a bit where we had elemental damage. Nobody liked it so it got removed. But this willingness to experiment and rework is what keeps the game great.

Which is why League is a balance nightmare. It relies too much on numbers than the opportunity of action. If you're against AD, get armor; if you're against healing, get anti-healing; if you're against true damage... My point is, numbers does the job, but the action of buying silence and using it is better than percentages. League is more popular because of numbers, you can get stack-checkers and 300 year champions. Dota's heroes are both and not at the same time (items, shards, and more). It's like they've made an environment where you can fight back if you have a phd and you're teammates also have one-just stack the camps pos 5!!!

I think one issue when it comes to stuff like meta (at least when thinking about my competitive game of choice, League of Legends) is that players are just... lazy. Sure the meta is there and there is some stuff that is stronger than other stuff but a lot of players (especially at the highest level) don't really put in the effort to properly find counters to established strategies and that creates this aura of sanctity around the meta or the familiar that is then absorbed by lower level players and creates stagnation. Then suddenly one mad lad discovers a new, better strategy that had been there for months or even years and people just didn't bother to check and suddenly Kog'Maw is viable again and I want to tear my hair out or something

Valve is on completely different level tho when other companies revenue depends on how well their game performs so experimenting with balance may just hit your paycheck meanwhile dota 2 revenue may as well be rounding error on Valves overall revenue so they can do basically whatever with dota

thanks for the video

I think I got abit lost by the end of it, competitive online games being constantly tweaked is a point I understand, but with the other games… are you pointing out the mechanic tweaking that’s become a common trend? I’m not entirely sure they share the same purpose on the multiplayer and on the single player fields

once games establish a meta, they start becoming a sequence instead of an interaction. frequent changes in balance keep players thinking about strategy

I miss times when in Hearthstone there were not so many nerfs. Like, some op decks could exist in the game for a whole year, and people were dealing with it, adding cards especially against this decks. Yes, that weapon-destroing slime is useless against a lot of opponents, but when you use it against that nasty deck and break their strategy it is so satisfying.

When overwatch just came out, every character felt like "oh, it is so op". Now everyone are just meh.

As a person who has been playing fighting games like Street Fighter and King of Fighters for the past 30 years, I have one thing to say: the meta doesn't exist. When people talk about "shaking up the meta" it usually means somebody just used something in a way other people didn't think about because of their narrow mindedness.

Thank you Mr. Video Games Are Bad

Came here on Adam Millard’s recommendation. Feel somehow traitorous for preferring you. Well if he’s gunna point us to the direct competition then he knows the risks 🤷‍♂️

One thing about competitive games that's often overlooked is that, when you broaden the scope to not just videogames, they're the original games. Single player games are a incredible recent thing.