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Author Topic: Starcraft II  (Read 31021 times)

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patito

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #80 on: May 25, 2010, 07:13:49 AM »

Actually, there's been a few attempt to mix the RTS and FPS genre, where your units are controlled by actual players, and in that regard the human mind is way better than any AI. However in practice the games turns out way more frustrating to the guy in command, since you know, every unit has a mind of its own. That's why an AI that sophisticated is way harder to implement than you'd think.
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Ziiro

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #81 on: May 25, 2010, 07:16:08 AM »

Savage was passable, and I'd really like to see more companies take an attempt at a game like it. It felt like it was the groundwork for a new genre altogether, but it never really took off.
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Mongrel

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #82 on: May 25, 2010, 07:38:00 AM »

Mixing the RTS and FPS systems kind of takes things to an extreme micro zoom-in level, so in that regard, yeah it's easy to mess up. The AI required for an individual FPS bot is much more intensive than anything you'll need for a single unit in an RTS.

It might work if you simplified it. So you have some humans as platoon commanders, and a chain of command with only one or two tiers at most.

The main thing AI addresses in a situation like that is the very natural resentment and independence of the privates. Just look at how people flail around in TF2 when thrown together - and that game is a masterpiece when it comes to inspiring impromptu teamwork. Making some guy "be in charge" is kind of a neat idea, but I can see how it would totally fail with real people, since a) it's a game and b) almost no one goes into those games with any background in tactics or real training. With sophisticated enough AI, that's not as much of an issue because even if your units still have 'a mind of their own', the player's command isn't being questioned or ignored to anywhere near the degree it is with real players.

It reminds me of paintball games, actually. You just get a bunch of people together and they may do okay, or they may do terribly, but when you have the military guys or the SWAT team come in on their off day (yes, they really do) they just make total mincemeat of everyone. Not because they're physically better prepared (though that certainly helps), but because they have advanced training in tactical movement and coordinating those movements. They know how to REALLY work as a proper team. With a good AI, you can code at least a little of that trained teamwork into the units. Maybe it won't be perfect, but there's really none of that right now. Most units are just mindless HERP DE DERP drones.
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Frocto

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #83 on: May 25, 2010, 07:54:58 AM »

jesus mongrel, you are out of control
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Mongrel

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #84 on: May 25, 2010, 08:34:53 AM »

I had a long weekend. For most people this would mean extra work on the Tuesday back, but since I went out of my way to clean stuff up on Friday, I found a grand total of one order and one billing check waiting for me today.

I guess what I'm trying to say is JESUS CHRIST I'M BORED.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #85 on: May 25, 2010, 08:39:52 AM »

- You could have a more conventional RTS where your base is managed for you, only you make requests for particular units or issue certain overall goals. This might seem bad at first, but if every player is subject to the same rules, then it actually comes out fair.
- As a variation on the above, you could have an RTS where there are two forcibly 'defined' roles. There's a field command (micro) and a supply command (macro). In single player matches, a player must choose one or the other, with the AI commanding the unchosen option. You could even expand the choices to include a third, fourth, or fifth slot (relief/recovery, split field commands, etc). In such a game you could have 1 on 1 as one league and an alternate league with multi-man teams where humans fill each slot. The key here is that the 1v1 is not viable without AI that's at least a little better than we have now.

The problem with these two ideas is that they are terrible. Now some of your other ideas were decent, but these two really create a problem where players will feel like they are powerless to fix any problems the AI creates, because they would be.

The former idea creates a situation where players do not have much room to differenciate themselves from other players. Sure, you can change your goals at key times to try and create a better outcome, but it feels like in practice the system would be prone to being too slow to implement any sort of change in production direction and would not allow a player to take drastic measures to quickly bring about a different result.

The latter idea sounds like it would be fun in more of a DotA style situation where you have human players staffing every role but seems like it would be incredibly stiffling or frustrating as soon as the majority of the roles were played by AI, especially the single player situation.

Quote from: Frocto
Well, what about Leoric the Skeleton King? He may be a character from a game that is almost a completely different genre than RTSs other than the currently used interface due to the fact that DotA was made as a WC3 custom map and HoN and LoL are just the first attempts at making a stand alone game in the genre and as such, borrow perhaps too heavily from DotA because DotA evolved over a long enough time that it started to get a lot of things right and they didn't want to put the time in to create something very new that may have sucked-- TANGENTAL RUN ON SENTENCE OF DOOM ABORTED

*couple breaths*

I think Diablo is a pretty cool guy. eh only has one active ability and doesnt afraid of anything.

Genre differences aside, I believe your point was not that King Leo is an example of an RTS allowing for less micro but that he was a playable character in a game that also has micro who requires less micro than say Holy Knight Chen and yet is a strong, viable character who isn't overpowered either.

Now let me just say, I always liked Leoric back when I was learning DotA but these days, I don't know if I'd actually want to play him anymore, especially if they made a port of him in HoN1. For the uninformed, his ultimate is reincarnation which will automatically cast if Leo is killed while he has enough mana to cast it and the spell isn't on its understandably long ass cool down. This allows for some cool tactical thinking if placed in the hands of a pro, especially since a reincarnated Leo comes back with not only full health, but full mana allowing him to always come back able to cast his one active ability, a single target stun and light nuke. The main tactical advantage it provides is due to the conditioned concept of heroes that is in most players minds which during a key moment can cause them to misjudge the situation due to Leoric's nature.

Vis a vie:

"Phew, that guy almost got me! but I got back to a friendly tower/hero and we are both very low on health, so he'll just fuck off now. Aww shit he just ran in and killed me anyway cause I wasn't expecting such a suicidal attack. Now he reincarnated and walked away, what an ass. How dare he make a graveyard of me!"

Similarly, people can be tricked the other way as well, anticipating the reincarnate and so seeing Leo as an undesirable target when faced with multiple attackers. He can use this aura of futility to get in and inflict unexpected damage and then get out before danger looms over him, saving his ultimate for a better time.

The problem is his two other abilities are passive buffs to his fucking auto attack and this really seals his fate as a boring ass hero who really has few options at his disposal to effect a fight with. He's a dirty rotten double liver and he can stun someone that he clicks on, woo. Oh, he steals life with he hits someone, something any hero can do with a lifesteal item, and he has a big crit chance, so you don't buy him a crit item either.

HoN now has heroes like Pandamonium who has abilities as such.

- a big cannonball jump that doesn't automatically hit the guy you target but that you actually have to land on people, however you can hit multiple people with it and you can even use it to jump over terrain like normally impassible ledges, etc.

- a flick move that does automatically hit the guy you target, but only slows them and lowers their armour so your other moves are easier to land and do more damage when they do. However, it takes up valuable time to do so other people could disable while you're doing it.

- flurry, a quick forward lunge move that hits everyone in an arc infront of you and pushes them while you fly into them, essentially disabling them as long as they are getting hit by it. The move has charges that build up to 4 over time and the ability does not go on cool down until you use all the charges allowing you to save up for big 4 hit flurries that knock people in a direction for a while or use 2 now and then 2 more in a few seconds to disrupt something. Lots of possibilities.

- a channelled ult that can be interrupted, but that locks down a single target and beats them up for a bit



Tim, a very experienced DotA veteran that I play with, always hated Leo back in the day for being a boring hero with few options to effect a fight with. I saw his point but I still loved playing the Skeleton King because of his powerful ult, generally cool look and cocky stride2. But now that HoN has created far more interesting heroes that require more finess to play, I honestly couldn't see going back to him. I don't see Panda as being more "micro" based either. To me, mirco is having a bunch of units under your command and then having to baby sit each one because they have complex abilities eventhough most of the time I want to be controlling all of them as one unit. Chen was that hero in DotA and in HoN it's Ophelia because they make creep armies that you have to micro to be effective. Panda has complex abilities, but he's just one guy and you always have control of him. Is Mario a "micro heavy character"? Is the Doom Marine too micro intensive?

A DotA analogy just doesn't work for me because it's not an RTS. You control one guy so there's no such thing as micro.

1 If they do ever port Leo into HoN, his reimagining should be as a hero called Kongor Jr. Who inherits his reincarnation abilities from his estranged father, Kongor, HoN's version of DotA's Roshan the Immortal. Hellfire blast could be replaced with a banana resembling boomerang throw or maybe he just throws a large banana peel at people and the slip on it.

2 Leoric's model was just the generic skeleton warrior who nercomancers raised in WC3. Blown up to the size of the mighty Skeleton King his animations that were exaggerated due to the intended small size of the model looked delightfully pimpish, almost boastful.
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Mongrel

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #86 on: May 25, 2010, 08:48:49 AM »

Yeah, that last point seems key... like I'm not sure if talking about DotA is useful to talking about micro in RTS games, because in conventional DotA you only control that one guy.
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Makaris

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #87 on: May 25, 2010, 09:10:37 AM »

Man, text bombed since last night so I'll read all this in a bit, but first I just gotta say; how many people arguing here have actually played StarCraft 2?

StarCraft 2 saw huuuuuuuuuuuuuge improvements in micro/macro AI.  I'll give a few examples from my ZERG perspective cause I think they were most affected by the change.

In SC1, units didn't surround your enemies optimally.  They would go after them if you attack-moved (the equivalent of "W+M1" for the TF2 people), sure, but it was kind of a mess that functioned only somewhat okay if you were hurting for time and didn't have the attention to spare.  But if you were up on your micro you could go for a surround, which would increase the overall effectiveness of your force, at the cost of your having to overview the whole thing and possibly letting some other part of your game slip.

Same thing with getting optimum firing arcs.  SC1 they didn't form firing lines as efficiently as they could.  You could fix this, but same tax applied.

In SC2, surrounds and firing arcs are handled automatically.  That's a huge victory to the anti-micro crowd, but IMO it kinda made Zerg much blander to play.  Still, so far I prefer the environment of SC2 to SC1, but we shall see how it holds out in the long run.

The other big change was MBS, or Multiple Building Select.  You can now select multiple buildings (durr), hot key em or whatever, and BAM your macro-level production is way, way easier to manage.  This was also hotly debated before implementation.  What I think is important for people to know is that regardless of which way Blizzard had went (old school or modernization), neither would be OBJECTIVELY better.  

Overall I'm very satisfied with the bargain Blizzard has struck to appeal to the broadest audience possible, as more people means more competition, and new blood is good.  I just hope they give Zerg a little more bells and whistles before release.  Minor complaint.

EDIT: and stop talking about DoTA oh my god it has nothing to do with RTS games.  Hilariously DoTA would, really, but JUST micro... but I wouldn't even give it the terms because it isn't an RTS.

EDIT 2:  Supreme Commander was aight', but wasn't played the way you would think.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #88 on: May 25, 2010, 09:21:41 AM »

Well that's DotA's thing, that's why people like it and it's good. RTSes let you make an army and attack and defend against someone in a miriad of ways that I honestly find too dizying to be enjoyable due to the fact that to be successful, you have to strive for as close to constant understanding of the whole battlefield and constant control of all elements.

FPSs by and large have always made you one really powerful guy against mobs of retarded losers. Now the more modern ones try to make you feel like you're part of a team against less asymetrical opponents and multiplayer ones have always given you equals as opponents since Quake and CS but DotA is cooler. The single players FPS, Modern Warfare, that sort of thinhg are just an act, scripted set pieces that mimic outwitting dangerous opponents or being in the right(or wrong for you Halflife fans) place at the right time. But they are just an interactive movie, always the same everytime.

The multiplayer games like TF2 are cool, but they don't give you the same powertrip that DotA does. You don't feel powerful unless you actually outclass your opponents.

DotA makes you a powerful entity in a sea of crap and even if the other "Heroes" on the other team outclass you and beat you, you still spent the whole game being the best thing that your side had to take on the enemy, something for the shittier troops to rally around or get wiped out by. Kazz made a good analogy when he said in DotA you are basically the tank or the helicopter or something in an army of infantry.

Now, DotA isn't very atmospheric and the real focus of the game makes your clear enemy and only real concern the vast majority of the time the enemy players, but only because the AI of the rest of the map is as simple as a tower defense. I think that in future DotA's influence will lead to more exciting "battlefields" in games where a future Ace Combat game will change from

"Defend the fleet from air attacks until it destroys the enemy super sub by killing 20/20 attack planes and then hearing the checkpoint noise while we script a bunch of stuff to make it look epic"

to

"Defend the fleet from air attacks until it destroys the enemy super sub by actually successfully defending it from air attacks. I don't care how many planes you shoot down and there will be enemy players escorting the dumb AI attack planes."
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Frocto

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #89 on: May 25, 2010, 09:29:13 AM »

Oh yeah. I meant to say this earlier but forgot. Why don't they give Zerg Queens an "Attach to Hatchery" ability that makes them Spawn Larva automatically? If you want to use the MP for something else, you just detach them.
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James Edward Smith

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #90 on: May 25, 2010, 09:31:36 AM »

Oh right, shackle queens to their hatcheries where they belong right? You'll be saying we shouldn't have given them the vote next!
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Makaris

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #91 on: May 25, 2010, 09:32:11 AM »

In Fighting Games it feels great when I can land a throw, or a series of clever cross ups.  If only RTS games had cross ups!

INNOVATION!

Edit:  I'm not really going to touch the Queen in this argument.  It's been covered over and over by people way way more in the know than you or I.  In the end I think the mechanic is flawed, but not staggeringly so.
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Mongrel

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #92 on: May 25, 2010, 10:23:18 AM »

No I haven't played SC2 yet, though that's more a function of "Jesus Christ, this costs HOW much?" and also the fact that my computer would simply stop and cry if I tried to install or run it.

At some point in the far-flung future, I'm sure I will give it a try and have fun playing Protoss and maybe Terran as well.

...unless there are no more Redecks-in-space animations. In which case BOYCOTT  :rage:
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Kayin

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #93 on: May 25, 2010, 10:33:48 AM »

Let me see if I can follow this discussion to its natural conclusion:

Frocto: So King Leoric in DoTA is much easier to play than other Heroes. Should he be weaker?

Dudes: YESSSSSSSSSS

Frocto: Zerg require less micro to play than Terrans. Should they be weaker? Or how about Engineers in TF2? They take less skill to play than other classes, should they be weaker?

Dudes: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Frocto: So why can't I have a guy that requires less skill TWITCH to play, but is still just as good?

Dudes: Because twitch is skill.

Frocto: :bam:

I guess I need to reiterate that I said LESS micro, not REMOVE MICRO ENTIRELY, but I figured I was being credit for having some intelligence here. Anyway, here's an idea. If people don't like micro but still want to play, introduce a race that requires strictly less micro to be good and maybe even has some strategies based around build order!

You could call them, I dunno, Zerg or something.

First of all TF2 example is awful. It's a teambased game not meant to have inter-class balance. If that shit was played seriously in a dueling environment IT WOULD BE FUCKING STUPID.

Secondly, there is already usually the easiest race to micro in RTSs. You want more so? Well this is just going to get bad at some point and it's probably not much worse than where we are right now. Macro is, in general, non-interactive. At the beast it's the least interactive. Thats just not healthy for a game. Frocto, no offense, but I don't even think you have any idea what you're even arguing, so let me be fair here... What micro would you get rid of? And if you say templars casting psionic storm, I am going to disregard any opinion on multiplayer games you ever have so I can continue loving you, okay?

edit: Queen example is a fair example, but I think thats more just poorly considered attempt to give the Zerg something to do. Questionable design!

But some people find that "I'm smarter than my opponent, but I'm just not fast enough" to also be keyboard-breakingly frustrating.

I haaaaaate when people say this. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

:huge: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

Because very rarely is that player actually smarter than his opponent. His opponent knows and is using every facet of the game to his advantage. Not only is the losing player usually not playing smarter, he usually even has insanely wrong ideas on what the smarter strategy even was! "Oh I was going to flank him here and attack from this ledge and ambush him!", even though none of these 'tactics' would be rewarded by the game. Players want to play the game how they envision it and want what they consider to be the best tactics and strategy to be the actual best. Games don't work that way though. I think this is why Tower Defense picked up so hard.  A lot of people in RTSs think the BEST THING EVER is to make a HUGE BASE and reach unit cap and watch their enemy CRASH UP AGAINST THEIR DEFENSES AND DIE (I was one of those people too!)..... well, thats not reality and the closet thing to that (TA: Kingdoms :D) was awful. So everyone just played a single player tower defense game and that problem was solved FOREVER. Also Makaris. When SC2 comes out and if I decide to really give it a go, I'll probably be doing crazy micro stuff within a week or two and having a crazy APM (Because I'm an asshole with asshole-hands), but he's still going to beat me with solid strategy

Also why play an rts if you're not going to respect the time aspect! TBS, problem solved! Anyways in general mongrel what you're saying has a good mix of highly questionable ideas and a few good things here and there, but it's faaaaar removed from being an obvious upgrades to the genre. What your describing is some other thing! It may be a good thing and may be a thing that should exist, but I'm not sure how much it has to do with Starcraft or even RTSs. They're their own little genre BEYOND just being a game of strategy in real time. Someone might recommend improvements to RTSs in general, but thats really not what you did, you just described a game that could theoretically exist that doesn't surpass RTSs, but is it's own thing. Which is fine and you probably realize that, but I just want to make sure that is clear. It's a shame a lot of types of games don't exist, but I can't really blame Starcraft II.

Just some random stuff.

* <3 Geo
* How good was Supreme Commander? Well, in the second one they dramatically reduced the scale of the game so players might actually be encouraged to click things
* Just another reminder that Starcraft still manages to be the only RTS that matters.

edit: Actually, heres more on micro. Micro breaks the rigidity of the game. Changing the little details allows each encounter to not be determinalistic. Micro also smooths out balance issues because it is a skill with a very high ceiling that allows people to overcome adverse situations and counter units and so on. It also helps the game not have a HORRID slippery slope (pull something genius and skillful and you might be able to hurt your opponent enough to come back). Now, normally someone saying "Well why can't their be a race like THIS" I can be like "yeah, sure, more asymmetry is good!", but I knew intuitively that this was wrong here. The reason, which I can now put to words is a bit of the above. A macro oriented race (to a significant degree against) lacks the same ability to be dynamic as the other races, thus making it a pain to balance. Such a thing would fluctuate between too good and not good enough and, considering the amount of races in an RTS, causes far more damage than say.. a grappler in a fighting game (whom usually are on the receiving end or causers of the worst matchups in game -- but there are usually enough matchups to smooth this over). The issue is because such a race, while all races as rather assymetrical, does not exist within the same paradigm(not sure if this is appropriate, but I'll use this word anyways) as  the other races. This makes the whole race a liability and not some easy addition.
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Makaris

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #94 on: May 25, 2010, 11:18:44 AM »

edit: Actually, heres more on micro. Micro breaks the rigidity of the game. Changing the little details allows each encounter to not be determinalistic. Micro also smooths out balance issues because it is a skill with a very high ceiling that allows people to overcome adverse situations and counter units and so on.

The entire post was good but I just want to comment on this part as it pertains to Dawn of War.  Dawn of War was more StarCrafty than other 'modern' RTS's.  It had Macro and Micro aspects, unit abilities, all sorts of stuff.  The overall issue with the game was that the skill ceiling for everything was really, really low (when compared to StarCraft).  That hurts a games long term appeal, and certainly won't attract high level competition.

And just as an overall rule of thumb, because I'm tired of seeing people misinterpret this;

Protoss: SC1 Easiest Micro.  SC2 Hardest Micro.
Terran: SC1 Hardest Micro.  SC2 Mid-level Micro.
Zerg:  SC1 Mid-level Micro.  SC2 Easiest Micro.

Not true in 100% of all instances, but overall it's a good thing to point to if we want to argue how much micro is a good thing.

Edit:  Humously, Queens are seeing more and more use outside of "Spawn Larva Machines" as the game evolves.  Who knows, maybe in a few years people are going to be thinking back to now and wondering what the hell we were thinking?  Of COURSE you want to save up your energy for transfused Ultralisks; it's the Go-To strategy for your Queens after all!  DUH!
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Ziiro

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #95 on: May 25, 2010, 11:20:45 AM »

I think for the sake of Starcraft it'd be interesting to run a 2v2 co-op game. As in two players controlling the same race. You could have one player dedicated to Macro, another dedicated to micro. "Here, I made this army, use it." "Alright!". Or, if both players are equally skilled, you have some interesting resource management to deal with.

Me and a friend did this in SC1, and I'd like to see the mode return in SC2.
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Makaris

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #96 on: May 25, 2010, 11:29:31 AM »

I don't know if anyone shares my experiences, but I'd like to tell a little story about myself back in 99' when I was getting pretty decent at StarCraft. [sidenote; no one was good at StarCraft in 99]

There were these games back then (probably still around in some form or another) called Comp Stomps, which were usually big 7v1 games with a bunch of people beating down an AI controlled opponent.  The point was to inflate your win rate so you can feel like a tough guy.

Well, by this time I was already 'too good' to play in Comp Stomps if not for one thing; SC1 had a very strange format for how alliances worked.  Basically, a 7v1 Comp Stomp was spawned as a FFA, then the seven humans would click on the option to ally with each other.  That's all well and good, but there was a second option that you were expected to click on as well; Allied Victory On/Off.  This led to games where one (or more) people would not set up Allied Victory.  

Every Comp Stomp was a dramactic event; everyone masses for the intial rush.  The attack on the computer happens and then ends just as fast... and then you wait to see IF the End Game Score Screen comes up.  If it doesn't... SOMEONE WAS A TRAITOR!

These would often evolve into hour long games of backstabs, petty alliances, treachery and witch hunts.  It was fantastic fun.  I would join these games either as a back stabber, or in the hopes that someone else was a backstabber and then feel justified when I killed everyone.  It was especially fun when the backstabber brought along an ally (or two) and it became sort of like World War 2 with everyone hastily allying with suspected enemies to bring down the AXIS OF EVIL.

My god, I doubt any real RTS could be so fun.  
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Büge

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #97 on: May 25, 2010, 11:52:25 AM »

I guess what I'm trying to say is JESUS CHRIST I'M BORED.
Wanna go build a go-kart?
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Mongrel

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #98 on: May 25, 2010, 12:19:09 PM »

Let me see if I can follow this discussion to its natural conclusion:

Frocto: So King Leoric in DoTA is much easier to play than other Heroes. Should he be weaker?

Dudes: YESSSSSSSSSS

Frocto: Zerg require less micro to play than Terrans. Should they be weaker? Or how about Engineers in TF2? They take less skill to play than other classes, should they be weaker?

Dudes: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Frocto: So why can't I have a guy that requires less skill TWITCH to play, but is still just as good?

Dudes: Because twitch is skill.

Frocto: :bam:

I guess I need to reiterate that I said LESS micro, not REMOVE MICRO ENTIRELY, but I figured I was being credit for having some intelligence here. Anyway, here's an idea. If people don't like micro but still want to play, introduce a race that requires strictly less micro to be good and maybe even has some strategies based around build order!

You could call them, I dunno, Zerg or something.

First of all TF2 example is awful. It's a teambased game not meant to have inter-class balance. If that shit was played seriously in a dueling environment IT WOULD BE FUCKING STUPID.

Secondly, there is already usually the easiest race to micro in RTSs. You want more so? Well this is just going to get bad at some point and it's probably not much worse than where we are right now. Macro is, in general, non-interactive. At the beast it's the least interactive. Thats just not healthy for a game. Frocto, no offense, but I don't even think you have any idea what you're even arguing, so let me be fair here... What micro would you get rid of? And if you say templars casting psionic storm, I am going to disregard any opinion on multiplayer games you ever have so I can continue loving you, okay?

edit: Queen example is a fair example, but I think thats more just poorly considered attempt to give the Zerg something to do. Questionable design!

But some people find that "I'm smarter than my opponent, but I'm just not fast enough" to also be keyboard-breakingly frustrating.

I haaaaaate when people say this. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

:huge: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE

Because very rarely is that player actually smarter than his opponent. His opponent knows and is using every facet of the game to his advantage. Not only is the losing player usually not playing smarter, he usually even has insanely wrong ideas on what the smarter strategy even was! "Oh I was going to flank him here and attack from this ledge and ambush him!", even though none of these 'tactics' would be rewarded by the game. Players want to play the game how they envision it and want what they consider to be the best tactics and strategy to be the actual best. Games don't work that way though. I think this is why Tower Defense picked up so hard.  A lot of people in RTSs think the BEST THING EVER is to make a HUGE BASE and reach unit cap and watch their enemy CRASH UP AGAINST THEIR DEFENSES AND DIE (I was one of those people too!)..... well, thats not reality and the closet thing to that (TA: Kingdoms :D) was awful. So everyone just played a single player tower defense game and that problem was solved FOREVER. Also Makaris. When SC2 comes out and if I decide to really give it a go, I'll probably be doing crazy micro stuff within a week or two and having a crazy APM (Because I'm an asshole with asshole-hands), but he's still going to beat me with solid strategy

Also why play an rts if you're not going to respect the time aspect! TBS, problem solved! Anyways in general mongrel what you're saying has a good mix of highly questionable ideas and a few good things here and there, but it's faaaaar removed from being an obvious upgrades to the genre. What your describing is some other thing! It may be a good thing and may be a thing that should exist, but I'm not sure how much it has to do with Starcraft or even RTSs. They're their own little genre BEYOND just being a game of strategy in real time. Someone might recommend improvements to RTSs in general, but thats really not what you did, you just described a game that could theoretically exist that doesn't surpass RTSs, but is it's own thing. Which is fine and you probably realize that, but I just want to make sure that is clear. It's a shame a lot of types of games don't exist, but I can't really blame Starcraft II.

Just some random stuff.

* <3 Geo
* How good was Supreme Commander? Well, in the second one they dramatically reduced the scale of the game so players might actually be encouraged to click things
* Just another reminder that Starcraft still manages to be the only RTS that matters.

edit: Actually, heres more on micro. Micro breaks the rigidity of the game. Changing the little details allows each encounter to not be determinalistic. Micro also smooths out balance issues because it is a skill with a very high ceiling that allows people to overcome adverse situations and counter units and so on. It also helps the game not have a HORRID slippery slope (pull something genius and skillful and you might be able to hurt your opponent enough to come back). Now, normally someone saying "Well why can't their be a race like THIS" I can be like "yeah, sure, more asymmetry is good!", but I knew intuitively that this was wrong here. The reason, which I can now put to words is a bit of the above. A macro oriented race (to a significant degree against) lacks the same ability to be dynamic as the other races, thus making it a pain to balance. Such a thing would fluctuate between too good and not good enough and, considering the amount of races in an RTS, causes far more damage than say.. a grappler in a fighting game (whom usually are on the receiving end or causers of the worst matchups in game -- but there are usually enough matchups to smooth this over). The issue is because such a race, while all races as rather assymetrical, does not exist within the same paradigm(not sure if this is appropriate, but I'll use this word anyways) as  the other races. This makes the whole race a liability and not some easy addition.

I gotta ask, where do you get the idea that I hate micro? Because I picked up on Frocto's side of the argument?

If I was going to make a game "brainless" or "kill all the skill", I'd destroy the macro elements - which you rightly pointed out are far less interactive - before I destroyed the micro elements. I agree that what micro brings to a game in terms of balance and variability it adds.

What I don't think is the answer is for the skill ceiling to be raised simply by making it impossible for any player to make all the required decisions in the allotted time. I understand that this is not twitch skill and that the real challenge is a form of triage, but this is still "dumb" game design (dumb in the sense of of brute-forcing a challenge to a player, not in the "HURR I HATE U BLZARD!" sense).

When I brought up real-world tactical command, it's because (gross oversimplification follows) in real life, a commander has to made fairly rapid, time-sensitive decisions, but those decisions are absolutely nothing like the decisions made in most RTSes.

There exist people who want to play a game that has a player make decisions that are more like the decisions a commander might make in real combat. Does that mean a perfectly realistic game? No. But being all dismissive and saying these people should go play in the turn-based sandbox for retarded children is silly and needlessly condescending. Do I think there are stupid people playing video games? Sure. But I would hope that you don't think that everyone who fails at a game fails because they're some kind of drooling group-home escapee.

It's all well and good to talk about how these dummies need to understand that games don't work the way they want them to and that they are dumb for not realizing that and should play DotA or whatever, but that ignores the fact these people just want to have fun and that it's the job of game designer to make fun games that as many people as possible should enjoy.

I've heard this for YEARS in all game genres. Yes, stupid players bitch about losing because they wanted to play a game "their way" or in spite of not having practiced or whatever, but the "good" players also bitch. They think skill means they're good game designers, or that unskilled players don't even deserve to play, or that balance tweaks should always reduce luck an increase skill (the exact proportion of luck in a game can be a really nasty topic, lemme tell ya). Both sides hate the other, but the best games allow everyone to play and have some fun, without forcing people into their own little kiddie pools.

Look at games like TF2. Before TF2 there was TFC (primitive team play with sorta-dynamic class balance), there was CS (the FPS players "twitch city bullshit" flagship that everyone loves to hate), there was HL and other scripted FPS games (neat story etc.), and finally there was the 'Doom' legacy (the DotS of the FPS world, where you are a MIGHTY AND ANGRY GOD RIP AND TEAR RIP AND TEAR). TF2 takes some of the best elements from every single one of these games and blended them to make a game who's 'long tail' will be played out by not just 'pro' players, but players of every description and skill level for years. Bitching about hats aside, the game is an incredible triumph of design. Frankly, I consider a game a failure if the only people still playing it six years later are the "I was at the top of the ladder" crowd. That's not a good game, that's just a crowd of idiots desperately hanging on to long-gone bragging rights. Sure the pubbies are annoying at time, but that's more of a personality thing than any real comment on their skill. Even players who are terrible are fine to play with if they try hard and at least make the attempt to do what needs to be done.

Is that a bit demanding of me, that I ask for a game that really reaches for the heights of grand design? Oh hell yeah, I'm sure it does. Entitlement, baby. But after fifteen years of the same old game repackaged, seeing SC2 come out and literally symbolize this makes me a bit >:(  

 :tldr: I also 'haaaaaaaate' that arrogant nonsense that says that every bad player is also dumb. The best games allow players of all skill levels to play together, without disproprotionately penalizing skilled players. I don't want some half-assed retreads, I want to see the heights, the very best the game industry can offer. And without a doubt, I have seen more games killed by 'good' players than ones killed by 'bad' ones.

EDIT: Makaris raises a perfect example of how a game could be created with existing technology to be a hell of a lot more fun. You don't have to do it that way, but there's literally millions of things that no one's tried yet.

EDIT2:

Quote
assymetrical

Kayin you make the best typos. :happy:
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Ziiro

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Re: Starcraft II
« Reply #99 on: May 25, 2010, 12:30:05 PM »

I guess what I'm trying to say is JESUS CHRIST I'M BORED.
Wanna go build a go-kart?



Not right now Cosgrove, we're trying to argue game genres and skill here.
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