Following recent suggestions to Inferno's layout, I began thinking of map balance in
general.
Do they have to be balanced?
It's important to understand that it's a very big topic that everybody will have different
opinions on, depending on why they play and follow the CSGO scene.
To demonstrate this, watch Thorin's video for a different perspective.
Firstly, what is the definition of 'balanced'?
In his video, Thorin considers it a balance of the map-pool as a whole, rather than of
individual maps!
He argues that since different professional teams have unique play-styles, balancing is
more about having a variety of different map styles to choose from and a fair way of picking
them, so that each team can play to their strengths and their opponents' weaknesses.
I wouldn't even have imagined it from this perspective!
However, for this video I'm going to remain boring and consider it from a more traditional,
'per-map' basis where I consider 'balanced' as having equal potential to be won on both
CT and the T-side.
Any match is naturally balanced by switching teams half-time.
This doesn't say anything about the map itself though, since using this logic, any layout
is 'balanced'!
To get around this, I see it as a game of two halves and consider a very one-sided map
to be wasting up to half of its potential.
When designing a map, I feel that the focus should be on designing a layout that showcases
the skill of the players, both as a team and individually.
It feels horrible to be cheaply killed by a sniper half a mile away, or from not looking
the right way when entering a bombsite with hundreds of corners.
A map that I consider to be very balanced is Dust2.
As a terrorist, when I die, it's generally because I was out-played by the other team.
On Nuke, on the other hand, it's normally because the enemies are all camped out in
obscure positions and there's no chance of a fair fight when up against similarly skilled
opponents.
Each side has to bring value to a match.
And sure, everybody loves the easier side.
People play CSGO, craving the next epic ace or situation where they single-handedly hold
off an entire team until support arrives.
This happens all-too-often on CT-side, where the enemies have to come to you.
But remember that for every kill you get, another player has died and has to sit out
for the rest of the round.
From his point of view, it's no fun if he did everything right but the map itself was
against him and instead he's reduced to being just a target to reward the other team with
points, money and clips for frag-montages.
Some people will point out that the beauty of a map like Nuke is that every victory for
the terrorists means something!
Sure enough, it does.
It often means that the CT side made a big mistake or that some fluky, risky strategy
paid off.
That's not about skill!
That's luck.
Once the next round begins, even if the terrorists have enough money for everything they want
to buy, the map is too CT-sided to make much of a difference.
The outlook remains bleak for that round, even if it means that they'll probably win
the game in 20 rounds' time.
Add to this the unpredictable nature of the pistol rounds and you'll often see matches
determined by how the first couple of rounds of each side play out.
It's wasted potential and for every exciting match played on Nuke, there are a hundred
more where it plays out in a predictable, boring fashion.
Now I'm not saying that each game should have 8-7 scores for each half.
There will inevitably be matches where this doesn't happen.
But I feel that if you average every game out, a good map should come to about 50-50.
Here are some graphs created by Valve from the data that they've collected from popular
CSGO maps.
And here they are, ordered by balance.
If you had to rank the maps from favourite to least favourite, is it similar to this
list?
If so, you probably enjoy playing on balanced maps!
But these findings are further complicated by how different tiers of play result in different
balances.
For example, the highest skill levels are most likely to win the first 3 rounds as terrorists,
but are then less likely to win the remaining 12 rounds.
From this you can conclude that the higher the skill level is, the more advantage CTs
have once they've got enough money to defend properly.
Since the majority of the rounds are played out in this state, it's fascinating to see
that the balance in this situation is closest for Dust2.
In fact, it's only ever been beaten by Overpass for balance (and since then the map has become
CT-sided), so Dust2 remains the most consistently balanced map for all skill-levels.
And remember that this data is collected from matchmaking.
The pro-level teams will be above this again and I would expect to have even more of an
advantage on CT-side if the trends continue.
Tactics will no doubt have more of a role to play as you move up into professional tiered
matches but on a personal level, they have a natural advantage when in a defensive position.
Thorin's arguments for one-sided maps made sense to me when I watched his video but,
with hindsight, I don't see how the points don't also apply to balanced maps- if not
more so!
For example, he brings up the case of TSM VS NIP on Nuke.
They both have history of having a strong CT-side on the map and yet NIP managed to
win the first 3 as terrorists.
They lost the remaining 12 rounds of the half, only to then pull it back and win once they
were on CT.
He uses this as an example of how two strong CT-sided teams should battle it out on a CT-sided
map, where they display their mastery on the stronger side by locking the map down and
denying the other side most of the rounds.
It certainly makes the rounds where terrorists manage to win more exciting.
But I feel that it devalues the rest of them, both to play and to watch since it's usually
filled with slaughters as the terrorist side fails one rush after another.
I feel it's wrong for the outcome of a match to be determined by so few rounds- especially
notoriously random pistol ones.
Victory in CSGO should be a delicious and delicate combination of a number of factors,
like skill, economy, team-work and so on, like a well-made meal.
When a map is so one-sided I think it puts too much emphasis on one element.
If CS:GO is a roast meal then Nuke is a plate full of potatoes.
Yes, they're nice, but you need to leave room for everything else.
As T-side, even a strong team with a good economy and tactics doesn't give them a good
shot at winning the round!
It's infuriating.
Compare this with balanced maps.
Every round is equally important and winnable if the teams do the right things, unlike Nuke
where it's easy to see the outcome half an hour before we reach it since victory is all-too-often
decided from the random nature of the pistol rounds.
When the map is balanced, it opens up a lot more opportunities for the teams to play in
their own style, rather than sticking to an over-powered, tried and tested CT defence
that you can't do much about, even if you're prepared for it.
In fact, I'd argue that a balanced map gives CT-sided teams MORE room to shine: surely
that would be better testament to their ability than simply trouncing teams on a CT-sided
map?
15-0 as CTs on Nuke?
Well done, you stuck to a tried-and-tested defence on the easier side.
15-0 on Dust2?
Incredible!
You successfully gauged your opponents' attacks and countered them.
Balanced maps give teams more options, more counters and in my opinion, a higher skill-ceiling.
It's about understanding the opponent and devising a counter-strategy, rather than just
being good at CT-side and choosing CT-sided maps and losing on ones that aren't.
That's right.
I think that balanced maps have the potential to have a higher skill-ceiling.
With one-sided maps, once the tactics, counter-tactics, counter-counter-tactics of the map are done,
what determines the winner boils down to the ability of the players and the map's natural
biases.
If both teams are ridiculously talented then it's the positioning that plays a big part
in who will win.
I see a biased map where one team has limited options as being like a chess board where
some pieces are missing from one of the sides.
In low-level games, this won't matter that much, but in higher ones, even a mere pawn
can make a big difference.
Let's look at the skill-ceiling in balanced maps instead.
I still love the map but people are saying that Dust2 has become stale.
Is that because it's too balanced?
I don't think so.
It just isn't complex enough.
Just because a map's balanced, doesn't mean it's good!
Here's one that I made in 2 minutes.
It's balanced.
Doesn't mean it's fun to play.
The difficulty is that it becomes exponentially more difficult to balance maps as you add
more to them.
This isn't helped by tactics that may be thought up for the map in a week, month or years'
time.
What I don't like is people confusing complicated, one-sided maps as 'having a high skill-ceiling'.
It's just bad map design.
Enough of this, let's get to my conclusion.
Ultimately, Valve chooses what happens.
They have things of their own to balance: CSGO's success depends on pleasing a number
of different audiences, ranging from the newbies and case-openers, all the way to good players
and professional leagues.
And they, with their infinite wisdom, have decided to remove Nuke from the main map pool.
I suspect that they wanted to give their new Train map a chance to be tested and that they
chose Nuke to go since it has consistently scored the lowest in terms of round outcome
balance, has had the fewest successful bomb plants and more rounds with all terrorists
being eliminated than any other map.
And perhaps these factors have knock-on effects, like fewer people being interested in the
map and therefore poorer spectator stats for Nuke matches and twitch streams.
I know that I'm less likely to watch a totally one-sided match than, say, a close Inferno
game where the balance tips every couple of rounds.
So in conclusion, map balance is a touchy subject but I want more balanced maps and
think that they benefit the game as a whole, both to watch and to play.