WYSIWYG- Harmful, or Helpful?

This is something I've been thinking about myself... What you see is what you get, a nice motto. Obviously it means a unit will never be different or change depending on circumstances. Be that lathe speed, health/speed multipliers, whatever! But the question is... How has it affected gameplay and how has it helped expand or limit the game?

The principle is generally very very limiting, which can be some what sad as ideas that seem so nice are immediately shot down, because of this. It hampers the ability to balance in a more interesting way. (See TA's Economy/lathes.)

It's a bit of a mix I'd say, I'm not sure whether it's good or bad, though I do often see myself wishing it hadn't existed from time to time...

Thoughts?

I find the way Uber is hiding behind that concept a little too much.

ie. We don't have multi-transport dropshits (with teleporters like supcom2) because it's not "WYSIWYG".

Well, you know what else is not WYSIWYG? How much energy/mass a power gen/mass extractor is outputting. Or how much mass a wreck is. Or the DPS of any unit.

I don't get why some stuff must be WYSIWYG while most of the game is not. Even more when it come against the ability to add essential units to the game.

That's not what is meant by WYSIWYG. Static values are perfectly acceptable - what's not acceptable are identical looking things behaving differently. A transporter that uses teleports looks identical whether it has 0, 1 or more units loaded - that's not WYSIWYG. But a power plant always produces the same amount of energy = WYSIWYG.

And your transporter example can be worked around while maintaining WYSIWYG, as Sup Com 1/FA shows. And just look at the issues that teleporter transports introduced in SupCom 2.

Edit: WYSIWYG doesn't rule all that much out. It doesn't rule out abilities, upgrades, etc. As long as it doesn't violate the "looks the same but acts different rule". There's a line though - the difference has to be visible without needing to pay huge amounts of attention, for example. The upgrades in SupCom 2 for instance were OK (the problem with them was that they could appear instantly due to research, which is just a bad idea all round).

The point of the WYSIWYG 'rule', so to speak, was to prevent the unnecessary complexity that clutters SupCom 1/2, and to some extent TA. So far the balance hasn't been able to give us the necessary depth to make this meaningful. Its coming, don't worry.

I think WYSIWYG IS GREAT. However upgrades are fine as long as they are visible and not instant and don't need to much micro. The com upgrades in Supcom1 are a good way to do upgrades. So too were the factory upgrades. The mex upgrades were bad as there required too micro but at least they were still WYSIWYG.

it wasnt unnecessarily complex though...and now we have PA that is SO basic, they would have made up the basic part if they promised the 100 unit roster...which isnt even close to what we want (we have 31, thats including scouts, transports and combat fabricaters (didnt include economic fabricaters which +9 = 40.....))

FYI, the term "Units" has always included structures in TA-style RTSs.

Honestly, If it weren't for WYSIWYG then I would probably not still be playing PA. When I play supcom FA or SC2 I just get confused and frustrated. With PA I can glance at something, know exactly what it does, and what I can/need to do about it. I don't need to worry about silly micro or some upgrade that globally reduces damage take by enemies or increases enemy damage, I know how much damage things do and that they won't change. As for multi-unit transports, they don't counter WYSIWYG necessarily, as I explained in this post: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/multi-unit-transports-implementation.65744/
And uber seemed to like that idea, and seems to be working on them, or at least looking at them, so who knows?

I don't think wysiwyg really is core to any of the issues people have. I guess it requires uber to do a little more work in implementing things well but that's about it.

The only thing it prevents is the inclusion of complex research trees and invisible buffs, which is a very good thing imo.

Wysiwyg maks the game very casual. Without much knowledge of the game players are able to see what is going on.
The Problem that comes with wysiwyg is the reduction of complexety.
No stealth is possible. Emty transports to force a wrong reaction are not possible. Decoy commander ore units are impossible.
A nuke silo without a visible nuke would need your opponent to think about some things (hie long is the launcher in the game, is a nuke in construction, is it supported?) Instead of yust looking at the visualisation of the building progress.

Wysiwyg maks you just look and not thing. You just click.
With some radars and scouts you can see everything and yust need to react.
Now we have no thinking in the game, just micro and a bit of macro (macro is also stupid because you dont need to think like you would in fa (upgrade system and energy managment).).
Atm, micro is the only thong that needs realy attention and makes the game a strange tactic rts with unitspam like cnc4.

Generally in a game you don't have the time to check a giant fleet of transports for units and you can't afford to take the chance they're empty.

Also it's entirely possible to stealth. Just take out the enemy radar first.

That's the false idea that is behind WYSIWYG. But in reality it never worked out and just made it harder to balance the game, as well as making the whole energy economy worse than it has to be.

The idea behind and the result we got.

Reduction in complexity is not a bad thing. Complexity for it's own sake is a bad thing.

That's not true. And not just in the "Take out their radar" method, either. Stealth does not break WYSIWYG. The "What you See" part isn't that literal

Empty transports to force a reaction are just ... boring? And you can always pad your force anyway to draw fire away from the transports that are actually carrying things.

Decoy's are interesting; it's one case where I'd accept a break in WYSIWYG, purely because the unit's actual design is to imitate. Other things that break WYSIWYG don't do it by design, they do it to either hide the difference or due to game limitations. So I'm not entirely sure it counts as breaking WYSIWYG, any more than stealth to hide a unit does.

That's not adding complexity, it's really just adding randomness. Without WYSIWYG, how can you think when it is literally impossible to know what state a unit is in? If you scout a nuke after it's built, you have no way of knowing what state it's in. There's no thinking involved, how can their be - there's nothing to base the thinking on. If anything, seeing the nuke allows you to involve thought even more, because it then comes down to your skill at judging how far along the missile is and whether you have time to counter it in different ways.

I think there are ways of having a more TA/Sup Com style construction system without breaking WYSIWYG. From memory, the method was chosen more to make it easy for new players rather than due to WYSIWYG concerns specifically.

The only thing not WYSIWYG in SupCom to my knowledge is the commander upgrades.
Upgraded mex and factory's had a different looks and strategic icons.
You could see the units in the transports and know what was comming. ( unlike the astreus.)

Nuke and tactical missile silos aren't.

Are they in PA?

In PA you see the missiles being built.

Form a user experience perspective this is really good. It allows a player to visually "grasp" what is going on in a intuitive way and that is really good, because it gives you the feeling that you can understand and learn.

See, nothing is more frustrating for you as a new player like amassing those tank units you saw that the enemy had, then go to war just to notice that the tanks the enemy had were 10 times better and stomped your army into the ground, just because, well, some "magically" thing went on you don't know of.
If you do this to many times in a game design, new players will quit playing it very fast.

And for the limiting thing, this is not a law. My guess is, that it is more like a guideline for Uber. So if it really would limit game design in any serious way, you can bet that they would bend it or abandon it without a hassle.

criz.

WYSIWYG is totaly helpfull for clearaty and i wouldnt want it any different for other rts's ...
no matter if upgrades and/or research are involved as i dont see a problem to have units be visibly changed in order to show if they are better ...