Frowny
Joined: Apr 27, 2020
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 Posted:
Jun 14, 2020 - 22:13 |
 
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A lot of you all have been playing Blood bowl and seem pretty OK with the current intentional imbalance of it. I'm not overall convinced this is actually good for the game. Certainly some skills are outrageously better than others (block vs pass block), to a point where it either traps beginners or actually reduces your choices (you really only have ~2 choices with each skill, not the dozens presented)
That being said, even without making it Balanced with a capital B, I think the game could be slightly more evenly distributed without changing the current overall structure.
I also would really enjoy it if I could use more of the fun silly skills instead of immediately taking block and dodge of everyone and only then getting to branch out a little. It would also indirectly boost some of the unused (but cool) positionals that start with situational skills that aren't worth their cost right now. (skink chameleon, dark elf assassin and runner etc.)
Also, its a fun thought experiment.
Skills
General
Kick- Functions regardless of where the player is standing inc. on the line of scrimmage or in the wide zones.
Rationale: Quality of life improvement. While obviously not realistic, its a game! Might as well make it easy so ppl don't forget. Always feels like a gotcha moment when you only have 6 players let anyway. Doesn't really change balance. The current version is complexity without depth. This just reduces the complexity.
Pass Block- Activates on both Pass and Hand-off actions
Rational- Would be much less situational and more useful and would apply to many more teams.
Passing:
Dump-Off- Whenever a block action is declared against a player (including this player themself) within quick pass range of this player, they may immediately declare a pass action before being blocked. The player with Dump-off must either be passing or catching the ball.
Rationale: Adds a reason for 2 passers on a team, also frees up the passer from taking dump-off, since they tend to be tight for skills (accurate, sure hands, pass, safe pass, etc.) Plus its quite a fun skill I wish people could use more of.
Kick-off return- Also functions on the line of scrimmage. (but players must dodge if appropriate).
Rationale: Its already a pretty situational skill. This makes it an interesting doubles pick on elf teams for linemen to run away. I don't think this affects balance much. It also avoids making situational skills even more situational skills.
Agility
Shadowing: 8 or less instead of 7 or less
Rationale: Cool skill. Just a slight overall buff. Also indirectly a nerf to dodging away (elves), since slower players are now more likely to follow.
Mutation:
Very Long Legs: In addition, add 1 to movement in any turn when this unit stands up from the ground.
Rationale: Make a very narrow skill slightly more generally useful (who actually intercepts anyway? and then having a buff skill for already a narrow skill leap is a bit weird). Now it also combos with jump up so you can go even further (imagine a frog crouching for a jump). Also a buff to Slaan, who are already one of the weaker teams.
Other:
Regeneration: Rolled before apothecary
Rationale: Slight buff to trolls and vampires, who are on the weaker side anyway. Also a quality of life improvement.
Strength
Grab- Additionally, Grab cancels Dodge on block actions.
Rationale- dodge is one of the best skills in the game requiring people to take a single narrow counterskill, tackle. This gives you a 2nd option (applies only to blocks, doesn't work for dodges away). Gives some variety to who can pick it. Also a slight nerf to elves and amazons, who are currently above average strength.
Juggernaut- Additioanlly, cancels block on the defending player during blitz actions
Rationale: Block is the single strongest skill in the game. The only counterskill, wrestle, is still not quite a counterskill, as it still leaves the block player in an OK position (no turnover, opponent is on the ground) Adding a 2nd counterskill seems reasonable. Also an indirect buff to minotaurs and rat ogres especially who are currently the weakest big guys. Also a slight buff to nurgle/chaos/renegades, who are all on the weaker end. I think they would all pick this on 1-2 players for blitzing purposes.
Strong Arm/Hail Mary-Combine these skills, make accessible to both Strength and Passing Players.
Rationale: Strong-arm is currently just worse than accurate, and hail mary is at trap for new players, but is kinda cool. At least combining them makes them slightly more interesting.
Pile On: Instead of allowing a reroll, the player may place themselves prone to add +1 to injury rolls before the roll is made.
Rationale: Pile on went from overpowered to literally unusable. This hopefully puts it somewhere in the middle. No pile on has an KO+Cas rate of ~42%, old pile on has an injury rate of ~ 66% percent, this has a middle rate of ~58 % and also can't be used on armor break rolls.
Thoughts?
Are there other skills you all wish existed?
I wish there was more in the line of hypnotic gaze- really interesting and truly different skills for different teams, although that is well beyond my current balancing efforts |
Last edited by Frowny on %b %15, %2020 - %01:%Jun; edited 1 time in total |
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juck101
Joined: Nov 16, 2003
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Jun 14, 2020 - 22:23 |
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To be honest so many skills are underpowered compared to the main choices. Dodge MB Block Guard are all miles over the rest. Thankfully some utitly for tackle claw SS means at least you need to include some variety but the majority are not good enough.
Even rolling passblock, KOR and shadow as one 20k choice still wont appeal over the main choices.
Yeah I agree a ton of skills need a facelift and combining. |
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Dominik
Joined: Oct 29, 2004
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Jun 14, 2020 - 22:32 |
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| Frowny wrote: |
Mutation:
Very Long Legs: In addition, add 1 to movement in any turn when this unit stands up from the ground.
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Physically very long legs make you less agile on the ground.
Floor gymnasts for example are usually short people. |
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Rags
Joined: Nov 09, 2008
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Jun 15, 2020 - 00:29 |
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Well done Frowny. Admirably thoughtful and imaginative. What about Diving Tackle working player to ball rather than ball to player? This could allow throw targeted for player to escape from tight spot, and open up some new OTTD options |
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Strider84
Joined: Jun 03, 2009
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Jun 15, 2020 - 00:32 |
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I kinda like the game as it is now, but I have to say I was positively surprized. Nothing too fancy, some small changes giving some real alternatives but not game changing. some good thoughts. |
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awambawamb
Joined: Feb 17, 2008
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Jun 15, 2020 - 00:59 |
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Claw: a player with claw that falls on the ground count has having Av7, too.
make it a double edge sword and see what happens! |
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MercutioT
Joined: Mar 19, 2015
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Jun 15, 2020 - 01:35 |
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I've always thought that the existing Dump-Off skill would be cool and more playable if it had an extra line:
"Additionally, this player may attempt a Quick Pass during a Hand-Off action".
Among other things, this would make Dump-Off a cool pick for a Orc/Underworld thrower for moving the ball to a player attempting a TTM TD. |
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Frowny
Joined: Apr 27, 2020
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Jun 15, 2020 - 01:53 |
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| Strider84 wrote: | | I kinda like the game as it is now, but I have to say I was positively surprized. Nothing too fancy, some small changes giving some real alternatives but not game changing. some good thoughts. |
What do you mean by diving tackle? Do you mean Diving Catch? That sounds clever, but I'm not sure quite what you mean.
Some other silly new skills that might be fun but would definitely affect balance:
Man-to-Man (G): When blocking or blitzing, this player may choose to not allow both offensive and defensive assists.
Rationale: Provides a counter-skill to guard, but like wrestle, not complete- you can't benefit either.
However, might be too strong on certain players, notably St4 linemen (lizardmen, Black orcs), who can get 2D blocks without any assistance. That being said, they can usually do that anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter too much.
And another one:
Solid Fundamentals (G): Block dice rolled by and rolled against this player can not be modified and always have their original effect.
Note that this means this player can never benefit from the block skill or any defensive skills (side step, stand firm, fend), but simultaneously, any player they block will be left to their own devices. Totally nullifies both block and dodge, but also makes your own blocks more risky and takes away any defensive skills.
Kinda a reset skill, cancelling out overtuned players stacking Blodge+Side-step etc. Probably strongest on linemen as a defensive skill, like a turn-over generating (or reroll eating) wrestle, but also useful for blitzing blodgers, who are now just regular dudes with a very expensive TV. I think it would be interesting. |
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fidius
Joined: Jun 17, 2011
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Jun 15, 2020 - 02:36 |
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I fully agree -- in fact the OP skills problem is the main reason the game is unfair to new players. Until you buy in to the fact that the community has it "figured out" and you should only take "canon" skills in a specific order, you will lose pretty consistently. Obviously positioning is key too, but sub-par skill choices make learning positioning very frustrating.
Personally I feel it would be much easier to dumb down the OP skills rather than bring others up. Split Block into offensive and defensive, split Dodge into defensive and movement, split MB into armour and injury, introduce an anti-Guard skill... Many of these "half" skills would still be superior to most of the others but the degree would be more manageable. Then we could talk about adding new fun skills for fluff and flavour. |
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Nelphine
Joined: Apr 01, 2011
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Jun 15, 2020 - 04:28 |
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My thoughts are not about the skills themselves; it's about the pricing of the skills.
I've put together this group:
https://fumbbl.com/p/group&group=12181&op=view
where I've suggested repricing base players. I would actually suggest taking this further so that skills are priced on utility when you learn them, not on whether they are a double. So if you have a player with block and dodge, those 2 skills together cost 50k - whether you started with 0, 1, or 2 of them; and if you learned them, the cost is the same regardless of them being normal or double rolls for your access.
So skill access would only influence what skills you can pick, NOT what skills cost.
This also means that (as seen in that group page) certain skills would only cost 10k, no matter what (such as pass block). So pass block + thick skull would only ever cost you 20k, even though the same player would have to spend 50k to get block + dodge, regardless of skill access.
I haven't yet fully detailed stat costs when learning them, but it would PROBABLY be very similar to today, except that MV would only cost 20k for some players (based on the movement speed of all the players on the team - it would remain 30k for most players that you normally want MV on) and AV would only cost 20k. But I'm not totally sure of the stat costs yet. |
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tussock
Joined: May 29, 2011
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Jun 15, 2020 - 06:44 |
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| Frowny wrote: | | A lot of you all have been playing Blood bowl and seem pretty OK with the current intentional imbalance of it. I'm not. |
As a point of game design ... you're wrong.
Blood Bowl has way too many choices, and particularly way too many combinations of choices, on top of problem of optimizing for the local meta around other people's combinations of choices. Even one more good skill would make those decision trees hundreds of times harder to optimise.
New players don't have it easier with more good skills, they have a hard time now because there's so many skills that are almost equally good. When Block and MB and DP were just better, this game was easier to get into, the old nerf to MB and DP and the existence of Wrestle (and thus Juggs) make learning it harder.
Making even more skills into competitive choices just makes the game harder to get into. |
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Relezite
Joined: May 21, 2007
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Jun 15, 2020 - 09:27 |
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I like these ideas a lot. Good work mate. I agree with you that I wish they would have a look at skills like Shadowing and Pass Block to make them more than just deep niches. I don't think skills need to be even, and I don't have anything wrong with 'core' skills like block and dodge, but yeah lets buff shadowing and make it more interesting.
I do disagree with juggernaut and kick. Juggernaut is quite strong as is, negating block would make it supremely automatic. Im not sold on the need for another wrestle-like skill to bypass block, but I could see more ways of messing with it, like allowing a grab player to move a block player with a both down (assuming they have block themselves) Kick however is not a player skill, its a team skill, and thats why the positional requirements are merited. If kick could be taken by anyone it would be sacrificial kick lineman on the LoS everytime. Playing kick is a tradeoff of power for tactics. |
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sebco
Joined: Feb 14, 2005
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 Posted:
Jun 15, 2020 - 09:41 |
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| Strider84 wrote: | | I kinda like the game as it is now, but I have to say I was positively surprized. Nothing too fancy, some small changes giving some real alternatives but not game changing. some good thoughts. |
Same for me. A lot of good ideas in my opinion. |
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stej
Joined: Jan 05, 2009
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Jun 15, 2020 - 09:43 |
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Radical idea, what about skill trees?
So the choice you make now limits the choices you can make later?
It would be a very different game and would force either pure cookie cutter or interestingbvariety |
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Garion
Joined: Aug 19, 2009
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Jun 15, 2020 - 09:43 |
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| fidius wrote: | | I fully agree -- in fact the OP skills problem is the main reason the game is unfair to new players. |
Its not unfair.... this is how literally every game works. There is never balance between guns in fps, or weapons or spells in mmos l etc...
I'd argue learning the game, what works and what doesn't is part of the fun. It is part of your narrative as a blood bowl coach.
Also there are plenty of guides out there that make it pretty clear what the core skills are.
Finally I don't think OP skills is what makes new people lose. For example I once made a chaos pact team with 3 big guys and all sub optimal skill selection. They had a good win ratio. What I'm getting at is good blood bowl risk reward fundamentals are what makes a good coach. Tv efficiency/management is just the cherry on the cake.
Edit: tussock is also correct |
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