broken arrow has struggled to find a balanced sweet spot since its launch in June, and new statistics show that despite the developers’ best efforts, one side continues to win out. Walking the fine line between factions is a challenge that even the best RTS games face, and Steel Balalaika’s realistic, modern military take on it is no exception. To alleviate community concerns, we’ve tracked metrics behind the scenes and published more detailed win rates, but it appears the deck still slightly favors one team.
Ed’s review of Broken Arrow found that the unerring attention to detail was both a blessing and a detriment. It’s a difficult and demanding game to master, and the more you get sucked in, the more likely you are to turn away. The story of rising global tensions, pitting American and Russian militaries against each other in both a single-player campaign and a skirmish mode of up to five-on-five battles, is grim and uncompromising, but that’s part of its appeal. Unfortunately, so far Broken Arrow has struggled to maintain balance between the two teams, but that may be about to change.
In a new blog, the developer explains that Broken Arrow is “the first major project and a significant milestone” for the team, which was created by “an incredibly close-knit group of around 10 people.” Since its launch, the studio has expanded in size and brought on new specialists to “develop projects more efficiently, expand the in-game arsenal with new units, and bring ideas that once seemed too ambitious for a small team to reality.”
“Balance is one of the important non-technical aspects of our game and other games of this genre. Players themselves have enjoyed engaging in ‘forum wars’ debating the strength of particular units. Since the game’s release, we’ve seen heated debates about faction strength, ‘overwhelming’ units, and other balance-related topics.’ Initially there were no official statistics, but the team has since developed internal metrics that now allow them to quantify sentiment.
The winning percentage between the two teams “has remained largely unchanged over time, with a consistent difference of about 7 percentage points.” This favors the Russians, with a win rate of 53.66% compared to 46.34% for the Americans (overall ELO range, not considering mirror matches). Statistics show that America has a slightly better win rate at some ELO levels, but that’s only for a small percentage of players.
Perhaps even more noteworthy is the distribution of all available specialization combinations, shown below. This is a measure of Russia’s popularity (how often that combination is selected) and win rate, and the big takeaway is that all of the Russian options outperform all of the American options. “The latest patch was built directly on these data insights,” the developer explains, noting that they hope the numbers will help players “better understand the reasoning behind certain balance decisions and how future balance decisions may be shaped.”
While Steel Balalaika is working to level the playing field, there is definitely some good news to share. We’re working on one of our most requested features: alliance bots that can fight alongside you. The goal is to make these teammates “predictable and reliable teammates, yet flexible enough to adapt to different in-game situations.” This feature is currently in final testing and will be included as part of custom lobby options soon.
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Are you a player who follows a meta strategy or do you prefer playing as the underdog? Let us know on the Community Discord server. You can chat with staff and readers alike.
