Plants make too much money when they lose in G&G.

Quite frankly i coulden't be bothered to read you ramble on so i commented on what i read as the title

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@wolfmoon2682 wrote:

Oh i also forgot to mention i'm reporting it to an admin, i highly suggest others do the same and not feed the troll. 

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Excuse me, that is incredibly rude... I spent something like 20+ hours to get this information and put a lot of effort into the process. Would you like each and every game match posted? Just because you don't agree with me there is no reason to call me a troll, and certainly no reason to report the post as such.

This is basic math and even if you outright exclude any contributions of the player the numbers average out.

True or false a perfect plant victory on wall nut hills is rewarded with 3750 bonus (1250 garden and 2000 perfect)

True or false a perfect zombie victory on the same map is rewarded with 9000 bonus (3500 garden, 3500 completion, 2000 perfect)

True or false a perfect plant loss is rewarded with 3500 bonus (3500 completion)

True or false a perfect zombie loss is rewarded with 0 bonus

3750/7 (both minimum and maximum time for a perfect win) is 536, 0/7 is 0

9000/12 (roughly an average G&G match, don't believe me try it yourself) is 750, 3500/12 is 292

750 (zombie win)+ 0 (zombie loss)= 750 and 536 (plants win)+ 292 (plants loss)= 828 then divide both by 2

Which is greater plants 414 or zombies 375?

Oh, as for Team Vanquish 2000/5 (again an average match, don't believe me give it a try) = 400, right in between the two payouts.

Are payouts equal? Yes, if anything they favor plants. Does that mean that G&G is completely balanced? No, if it were zombies would not win as frequently. Is that an issue because of coins? No.

It is a nice amount of research in this post and while I do not disagree with anything in particular you have said I do find that I have several issues with the conclusions you have drawn from that information. I also find that I have some issue with the CPM results. For Zombies Win, Zombies Loss, and Plants win your level of play is very similar and all have around the same CPM results when bonuses are excluded. Your Plants loss CPM differs and since that supports the stance you are taking I have some issue with that.

Now onto your results. I agree that a perfect victory by that plants is better than a complete loss. I also agree that a percect victory by the zombies is better than a perfect loss. I do not think you will find anyone who disagrees with that. If you think that is the complaint from people in regards to Gardens and Graveyards you have missed the point. You also have conviently left out the information that would have demostrated why the coins awarded is flawed. You have shown why the coin totals for the zombie perfect win, Zombie complete loss, plant perfect win, and plant complete loss are right.

Those are not the only results however. The other six options do not have the same completion bonus or perfect result options. For the zombies in every case it is better to capture another garden.  Capturing one garden is better for the zombies than capturing no gardens. Likewise capturing two gardens is better for the zombies than capturing one. This continues on this pattern for the zombies.

Unfortunately the same is not true for the plants. For the plants it is better to have the zombies capture all seven gardens than only capture some of the gardens. The completion bonus is to large to only apply when the zombies capture all seven gardens. If the game was to be balanced it should have been a 2000 coin participation bonus that was given no matter how may gardens were captured. I also would like to see the gardens defended bonus changed from 250 to 500 for balance if that was changed. 

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@awkrewen wrote:

It is a nice amount of research in this post and while I do not disagree with anything in particular you have said I do find that I have several issues with the conclusions you have drawn from that information. I also find that I have some issue with the CPM results. For Zombies Win, Zombies Loss, and Plants win your level of play is very similar and all have around the same CPM results when bonuses are excluded. Your Plants loss CPM differs and since that supports the stance you are taking I have some issue with that.

Now onto your results. I agree that a perfect victory by that plants is better than a complete loss. I also agree that a percect victory by the zombies is better than a perfect loss. I do not think you will find anyone who disagrees with that. If you think that is the complaint from people in regards to Gardens and Graveyards you have missed the point. You also have conviently left out the information that would have demostrated why the coins awarded is flawed. You have shown why the coin totals for the zombie perfect win, Zombie complete loss, plant perfect win, and plant complete loss are right.

Those are not the only results however. The other six options do not have the same completion bonus or perfect result options. For the zombies in every case it is better to capture another garden.  Capturing one garden is better for the zombies than capturing no gardens. Likewise capturing two gardens is better for the zombies than capturing one. This continues on this pattern for the zombies.

Unfortunately the same is not true for the plants. For the plants it is better to have the zombies capture all seven gardens than only capture some of the gardens. The completion bonus is to large to only apply when the zombies capture all seven gardens. If the game was to be balanced it should have been a 2000 coin participation bonus that was given no matter how may gardens were captured. I also would like to see the gardens defended bonus changed from 250 to 500 for balance if that was changed. 

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First of all thank you so much for taking the time to read what I posted. Given the rest of the comments I got, I really appreciate it.

To address your concerns,

Note the following

Plant Victory: 4707 - 3750 (2000 perfect, 1750 defend) is average 957 earned coins

Zombie loss: 2917 - no bonus just 1493 earned

Plant loss: 5895 - the 3500 completion bonus is average 2395

Finally Zombie victory: 12044 - 9000 (3500 completion, 3500 capture, 2000 perfect) is 3044

In both case zombies overall had an average higher score of about 600 the reason I feel is likely the capture bonus +10/100 for victory scenarios or more likely a decrepency in ability to play foot soldier vs peashooter. The second scenario being unlikely since Team Vanquish results were nearly identical. What is curious is regardless of if I played 6 minutes or 12 the values stayed equally apart.

To address the selection, I did account for the discrepency in end game capture/defend bonus (3500 v. 1750) this I discovered had a lower impact since zombie wins took nearly twice as long as plant wins thus balancing the CPM. Basically, 3500/12 = 1750/6. I did leave out the middle 5 points due to the size of data required. I chose to focus on best/worst case scenarios. I acknowledge that as a flaw, I had to make choices since just the 40 scenarios took over 20 hours of playtime. (Not even including Team Vanquish) Moreover, the isolation of Wall Nut Hills was only temperary, had the other maps been out of circulation another week I might have been able to get more data. (Playing about 6 matches to record 2 wont be happening with any reasonable speed)

On the topic of the middle areas, do consider that once the perfect win bonus of 2000 is removed from the equation both plants and zombies recieve a lower overall payout. (Partly why I focused on end points) With one point captured zombies earn 500 and the plants 1500. Two points is 1000 to 1250. 4 and 5 should favor zombies as by that point in the match they are winning. Which leaves point 3, which once captured does favor zombies even though they control less than half the map. In this case Zombies 1500 and Plants 1000 player ability aside this is the only point to wrongfully favor zombies.The catch is to add 250 to all gardens changes the victory payout. If you add the proposed 250 per point (Which honestly is not unreasonable from a value stance) that adds 1750 to the average I got making 6457 which divided by playtime is 1185 (vs 826), gently beating the zombies 1051. The problem I then have is that plants get a bonus for defeat and zombies go home with nothing. Ideally, in a well balanced game perfect victories should occur for each team equally 50% plants and 50% zombies. which is why I averaged win and loss. For this new scenario the plants average is 844 vs. 656 a much larger difference than currently. On top of which if gardens payed out equally to both teams, plants would also have a coin advantage at 2/5 points midpoints.

The overall point I am getting at is the unbalance is an issue with team balance and gameplay, not in coins. The better the balance the more likely both best and worst case scenarios will occur equally. What I want to explain is coins are not what is out of balance, and further if an alteration is made it very likely will create a new disbalance only this time in the opposite manner. If plants can be assured that most of the time they will make more coins out of a match, and over time definatly will, wouldn't most coin seeking players just migrate to the plants side?

Again, thank you for taking the time to actually point out flaws in my argument rather than outright shutting it down.

Just FYI - there will be some scoring tuning coming in the future:

Justin Wiebe ‏@JA_Wiebe Mar 26

1. @dylansegroves16 The new scoring tuning will be in the next major update. Still in testing phase.

Finalzidane you missed what I consider the main arguement in what I replied. The fact that the CPM increases with each garden captured for the zombies but actually do not follow the same pattern for plants. 

Example for Zombies for each garden captured Estimated numbers based on a linear progression. For 0 gardens 260 cpm, 1 garden 350cpm, 2 garden 450 cpm, 3 garden 525 cpm, 4 garden 600 cpm, 5 garden 675 cpm, 6 garden 750 cpm,  7 garden 1050 cpm.

Same examples for Plants based on the same progression. For 0 gardens 800 cpm, 1 garden 425cpm, 2 garden 400 cpm, 3 garden 375 cpm, 4 garden 350 cpm, 5 garden 325 cpm, 6 garden 300 cpm,  7 garden 500 cpm.

As you can see as soon as the plants lose the first garden it is in their interest to lose all the gardens. Defending the gardens at 250 points per garden and a 3500 completion bonus for not defending the garden makes it pointless to defend the gardens. 

As you can plainly see the coins per minute totals do favour the zombies if you take into account everything and not just the two best outcomes for the plants. To make matter even worse of the 50 games I have tracked so far it has taken on average to the third garden for the number of plant players and zombie players to even out giving the zombie an initial advantage. The third thing working against the plants in on average one of the top 3 zombie players(Top 25%) tend to switch back to the zombies at the end of the round. It is possible a random player joining the plants would even out but it is more likely to be in the remaining 75%. This leads to on average the zombies having a slight skill advantage to the plants. 

I believe that the maps are fair and can be won. I tend to mostly play with the same group of people and we seem to have little problems winning a reasonable portion of gardens and graveyards as plants. However I also understand many people do not play with the same group of people on a regular basis and therfore have issues with the plants be at a disadvantage. 

To summarize the zombies have a coin advantage when looking at all seven gardens and all eight possible results. They also tend to have a number players advantage due to players prefering to play zombies either to unlock or level their zombies or to gain more coins. Finally the zombies tend to have a skill advantage as the players who wish to unlock everything tend to also be the top players. I do not think that changing the game so the plants have an advantage in one of these 3 areas would do much to impact it negatively. If you could earn more CPM as a plant it is likely to balance out the number of players on each team as those who switch sides to earn coins would choose to play plants. You would still have players choosing to play zombies to level their zombies as their is no garden ops for zombies but some sort of balance needs to be made for gardens and graveyards. 

In my perfect scenario perfect victories should occur no more than 20% of the time. 10% for each faction and 80% of the time should end in some split of the gardens. This would place more emphasis on that the coins were balanced throughout all possible outcomes. You seem to be basing your numbers off the idea that every match should end in a perfect victory for one side or the other thus not taking into account the other 6 possible outcomes. Also is any particular reason that there is a half minute variance between zombie victory and plant loss. I may have misread what you meant but 10 outcomes of each should lead to a much smaller deviation than that. Unless it is your style of play that causes that deviation. If it was just a couple of matches for each result I could see that  much difference but after 20 matches the numbers should be closer together. Unless one or two matches were extreme outliers. Your coin per minutes results for a plant loss without bonuses seems to be out of line with your coin per minute results without bonuses for the other three results. Did you have to change you playstyle to optain a plant loss?

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@awkrewen wrote:

Example for Zombies for each garden captured Estimated numbers based on a linear progression. For 0 gardens 260 cpm, 1 garden 350cpm, 2 garden 450 cpm, 3 garden 525 cpm, 4 garden 600 cpm, 5 garden 675 cpm, 6 garden 750 cpm,  7 garden 1050 cpm.

 

Same examples for Plants based on the same progression. For 0 gardens 800 cpm, 1 garden 425cpm, 2 garden 400 cpm, 3 garden 375 cpm, 4 garden 350 cpm, 5 garden 325 cpm, 6 garden 300 cpm,  7 garden 500 cpm.

In my perfect scenario perfect victories should occur no more than 20% of the time. 10% for each faction and 80% of the time should end in some split of the gardens. This would place more emphasis on that the coins were balanced throughout all possible outcomes. You seem to be basing your numbers off the idea that every match should end in a perfect victory for one side or the other thus not taking into account the other 6 possible outcomes. Also is any particular reason that there is a half minute variance between zombie victory and plant loss. I may have misread what you meant but 10 outcomes of each should lead to a much smaller deviation than that. Unless it is your style of play that causes that deviation. If it was just a couple of matches for each result I could see that  much difference but after 20 matches the numbers should be closer together. Unless one or two matches were extreme outliers. Your coin per minutes results for a plant loss without bonuses seems to be out of line with your coin per minute results without bonuses for the other three results. Did you have to change you playstyle to optain a plant loss?

 

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On your first comment, can a simple adding of coins change that decrepency between plants and zombies? Seems to me that by the very nature of progressive losses plants will always have an issue of this kind. Also, unlike the zombies plants are not on a fully steady decline, it spikes at the end. What if instead of additional points for gardens, completion bonus was award to all matches eliminating that spike?

You are right that perfect wins/loses should be rare but in either case divided equally. Again the reason I took extremes is, the time needed to collect x10 matches for each team on 7 points would be far more than I had available. But, the changes to bonus coins also most affect these areas. (Plus as of now that is the most common reason people site for switching to zombies, greater victory results.)

For the half minute variance in playtimes I assure you I played to the best of my ability for both plants and zombies in each and every match. I originally wanted to take the average for all 20 and apply it to each team, but when I noticed the discrepency I determined that to be unfair. Unlike the perfect plant win scenario which is game timed to 7 minutes about 5:45 factoring my death ratio (which was surprisingly consistent) the overall game is much more affected by my playing. The single biggest factor is as a plant I was always on the point, unlike when I played as a zombie and the other team left it vacant. I stress for anyone claiming zombies to be too good, that a single player constantly guarding the point makes a measurable difference. I actually discussed this very topic with someone as I played, for that matter they were the first to point it out. Though I have to say being on the point as a peashooter was an odd sensation, though surprisingly effective.

Real quick, I want to add after the last post and this also plays a part in the last point, I think I discovered why there is a discrepency of 600 between teams. This is like due to the time spent KO'd (Remember game CPM doesn't factor this time) As a zombie I was only a nuessance since if plants out numbered me I didn't harm the plant team. Conversely, as a plant I am enemy #1 since zombies cannot advance without removing me first. The result is smaller vanquish streaks through the duration of the matches. The added time KO'd may also have played a part in the time gap between teams. 

Last thing to touch on for the coin results I'm honestly not sure where you see an error.

Plants Win - bonus is 957 while Plants loss is 2395 roughly twice as much in twice as much time (while allowing additional time to get vanquish streaks)

Zombie Win - bonus is 3044 and Zombie loss is 1493 again roughly twice as much for roughly twice the time

Since I factored out bonuses, this only reflects my contributions so x2 time is x2 results. So I'm not sure I see the issue.

I see the point you have on the error in match wide bonus distrobution, so my question then is what is the solution? A simple addition of coins across the board doesn't seem to solve the problem. It only boosts plant cpm at every point. Putting Plants and Zombies on equal ground capturing/defending still leaves a problem with the endpoints. Would an always rewarded completion bonus (Possibly prorated) be a viable solution? A perfect reverse of the cpm line would balance the issue, but would leave players who ultimately lost very disappointed.

To deal with player disbalance, the only real solution I see is to limit the disbalance to 1 instead of 2. Because if people even think they are better off on one team, even if they are not, switching will still occur.

As for the top 3 players switching, I get the feeling those are the ones who pad their k/d. Or possibly coin hunters. The reason I say this is, one of the only significant differences in acquiring coins come from the longest vanquish streaks. Which if the player was on the capture point would not last long.  The other being the zombie exclusive engineer who can easily get several thousand coins in a match for teleporters. (Until there is a plant equivalent nothing can be done about this)

I can safely say there is some sort of coin error, for both teams, my question now is what are the solution(s)?

I actually agree with you about the only possible soultion to the CPM is to have the completion total be added to every match. I would reduce it to 2000 and add it to every match. That would balance the total and make it more advantageous to the plants to stop the zombies. Right now a plant player gets the most CPM for a perfect victory, second most CPM for a zombie perfect victory and after that for defending gardens. How crazy is it right now that the second best CPM a plant player can get is from the zombies taking every garden. If the completion bonus was added to every match the coin bonus for the two sides would be more fair. 

Just because of how extreme it is I am going to repeat. Right now the second best CPM a plant player can earn in gardens and graveyards is by the zombies taking every garden. I am just amazed at that flaw.

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@awkrewen wrote:

I actually agree with you about the only possible soultion to the CPM is to have the completion total be added to every match. I would reduce it to 2000 and add it to every match. That would balance the total and make it more advantageous to the plants to stop the zombies. Right now a plant player gets the most CPM for a perfect victory, second most CPM for a zombie perfect victory and after that for defending gardens. How crazy is it right now that the second best CPM a plant player can get is from the zombies taking every garden. If the completion bonus was added to every match the coin bonus for the two sides would be more fair. 

Just because of how extreme it is I am going to repeat. Right now the second best CPM a plant player can earn in gardens and graveyards is by the zombies taking every garden. I am just amazed at that flaw.

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Now the only concern left is how to make Pop Cap aware of this...

I think 2000 would be a nice bonus, though perhaps a prorated 2000-3500 would be ideal. But, 1500 is nothing to debate over. Again, I want to thank you for taking time to consider my findings and make sure the effort didn't go to waste. I really is too bad there aren't more players like you around the forums, I think a lot more would be accomplished that way. Unless anyone else has comments on the idea of a completion bonus at the end of each match (or other solutions) I imagine this case is closed.