"The Tanks felt Slow so we Sped Them Up"

A few of the balance arguments from the livestream irked me and need to be addressed.

Is the Movement from T1 to T2 Happening at the Right Time

You're looking at it wrong. It shouldn't be "is it happening at the right time" but rather "is it happening, when is it happening, and why is it happening". There shouldn't be a single right time. Rather, in certain situations when your opponent is using specific units and strategies in certain ways it should be more beneficial to produce a few T2 units than to continue to increase production of T1 units. T2 should not be something that will put you in a good spot no matter how you use it as soon as you get it up. Rather, it should give you access to a set of units with niche roles. Riot tanks, for example, that can destroy great swathes of weaker units like doxes but are destroyed by more heavily armored units. Tank destroyers, units that can deal great damage to a single target but are easily overwhelmed. These things allow for more diverse strategies.

One way to look at it is by looking at StarCraft. In StarCraft units require a certain building to be built not because they would be OP early game if you could get them up that early, but rather to control the pacing of the game. Granted there would be a few edge cases (Dark Templar for example), but as a whole starcraft would be fairly balanced if every unit for each race could be built from the respective gateway/barracks/spawning pool without any prerequisites.

In PA, on the other hand, T2 units are being designed so that if you can have them, you should make them. If you could build a vanguard and a pelican within the first 3 minutes in PA, would you build infernos? If you could spam slammers at the start, would you ever make doxen? Probably not, and here is where we have the problem. If tiers are being used, they should only be used to control the pacing of the game and there should never be in a situation where if you could start at T2 instead of T1, you would doubtlessly do it.

tl;dr You're doing it wrong.

The Tanks Felt Slow so we Sped Them Up

They were supposed to be slow. That was the difference between bots and tanks. The tanks tanked the damage from turrets, allowing them to do more of it vs them, but were slow and bots could simply outrun them if an engagement turned unfavorable. The bots were fast but had paper thin armor, meaning that vs turrets they were grinded to mince meat. They were superior raiders and could escape from unfavorable confrontations and in favorable confrontations wouldn't let anything escape alive due to their speed. The whole balance was dependent on that speed difference. You made the tank faster aand "Now we had a tank and a bot that basically did the same thing".

If it ain't broke...

"So we took the bot, the dox, and turned it into a grenadier", messing up the bot balance in doing so.

In the live build, both bot and vehicle starts are viable. Bot fabbers take a little longer to make but doxen are better for raiding and stingers are more cost effective than spinners. Vehicle fabbers are built more quickly and ants are decent enough at countering raiding doxen. In the balance build? If you build bot first and the other guy sends a couple of ants at you when your com is building power on the other side of your base, good luck taking them out without losing an exorbitant amount of fabbers because there's no way in heck that that grenadier is going to be able to take out those ants as long as they're given a minimal amount of micro.

Wait, what?

Not only have you made bot first non-viable, but you've also increased the amount of micro needed and thus increased the APM ceiling. :|

"And now I have this... I attack a base I can have Infernos and Grenadiers..."

So what does that do when someone uses an army of ants to defend? It does nothing because the grenadiers can't hit anything. Essentially what you've done here is once again reduced variety because turrets are now useless. They're outranged by tanks and walls won't increase their HP vs doxen. Ants provide a better defense.

tl;dr Just because it's got similar mechanics doesn't mean that it's not used in completely different ways. Don't make a mechanic change to a unit when that change could reduce the viable choices a player has at any given time and when that change also increases micro.

There are going to be Direct Upgrades and that's okay because we want it to be a reward

Oh my...

Let's look back to TA. Was the T2 Core Goliath a direct upgrade over the T1 Raider or the Gator? No. Was it still something that rewarded a player that went T2? Yes, without a doubt. Same thing goes for the Maverick vs the Peewee or Rocko. A greater level of strategic diversity is its own reward. If you gain units which can do more roles or do specific roles better than a T1 unit but fail at other roles that the T1 unit does well at, then you will still use that unit. You simply need to look at how you use it. There should be some overlap, for sure, but there should not be a unit that straight up does everything another unit does, but better. Instead, a unit can do a specific function another unit does and do it better, but be inferior at doing another function of that unit. For example, what if levelers were made fixed turreted? They would still be used at offenses due to their high firepower. In a retreat however all they would be is a defenseless target because they couldn't shoot. Would they perform frontal assaults better than ants? Yes. Would they be able to retreat with as few losses or as much damage done to the enemy army as ants? Definitely not. Are there situations in every point in the game where you would prefer either over the other? Yes.

... Especially Since, Unlike in Previous Games, Factories don't Upgrade

If the unit is metal efficient enough, then you'll get more bang for your buck by turning off the T1 factories or reclaiming them and instead building more t2 factories because the t2 units are simply in every way a better use of your economy. Simply because the factories are there doesn't mean that they are automatically useful.

Also, for the record, TA factories didn't upgrade and in SC2 it was the units themselves that upgraded, not so much the factories. The only game to have done it was therefor Supcom/FA (Can you count that as two games?)

The T1 units Still Add firepower, so it's not bad that we have direct upgrades

...

Not as much as T2 units...

Also the logic itself is kinda broken there. No real reason is given for why it's not bad that we have direct upgrades. Circular reasoning is circular?

And there are lots of debates over "You should make this one a tank hunter and that one a raider"

"Those changes are so small and so minute the vast majority of players don't notice and it doesn't truly matter"

I don't even...

Everyone could tell the difference between a raider and a gator in TA, or a raider and a goliath. Raiders were fast and had lots of HP with less firepower. Gators were also fast but with less HP in exchange for more firepower. Goliaths were slow and tanky with a high damage AoE cannon. These were things that people had no problem telling.

As for it not mattering if few people notice...

I'm sure that the vast majority of players didn't notice the HAL Eye Theta change. Does it still matter? Yes. The vast majority of StarCraft 2 players also probably don't notice the balance changes. Do those balance changes still matter? Of course. Simply because few notice doesn't mean that it is of no consequence.

Agreed with you completely.



Ah well. Always mods

I agree with this:

Maybe you can see what disturbed me the most

I want to say some stuff about these points, though:

I agree that Bots should be faster than tanks, but T1 tanks really felt too slow. Especially since they were that squishy.
Slow units that are squishy and don't do that much damage feel weird.
That's why they needed to be faster.
Bots might need another speed increase to balance this.

I think grenadiers are really helpful at assaulting bases because they destroy buildings very quickly.
They are also not that useless against armies because armies tend to be a blob of units and if that blob is large enough, a "miss" is still a "hit" on another unit.
They kind of work like T1 artillery from SupCom 1 now, which i like (because it was my favourite unit somehow XD).
I agree that it might be a problem if T1 bots don't have a unit that can go up against individual enemy units/small groups effectively.

I did cringe a lot when they talked about balancing the game but ah well they are the pros. They do seem to be listening to some of our concerns even if they come across as being ignorant to it so all is not lost.

It’s a bold move, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off.

Yea the balance is improving, but I don't think it's heading the right way. And when meta said that they are ok with making certain units obsolete I felt very disappointed. They are basically going against what 70% of active community really wants.

He0s kinda right. It's not really wrong but it is different from what most of us want. I kinda get the feeling sometimes that they are making this game play like they want and not how the community wants, which is I guess their right, but then why expose so much to us. Don't get me wrong, I like that hey tell us so many things and are so open, but when a majority wants something in a game where community input is supposed to matter and they don't get it, it kinda feels pointless to me.

Yea, sadly.

Fun fact. This forum is not 100% of the active community.

Statistics are frequently pulled out of thin air (for want of a polite phrase ).

Yeah he's right. 76% of statistics are made up.

This is probably be true.

But I'd still like to see who these other guys are, and hear their arguments as for why they want upgrades over sidegrades.

It doesn't matter how they build the game so the T1 stage lasts X long. Someone WILL figure out how to get to T2 faster.

And since T2 is so much more powerful than T1 both in unit firepower and economic boosts, the entire game revolves around when to step up to T2. So the entire game revolves around a tech race.

"Is my opponent going T2? When do I go T2?" etc.

If you go T2 a few minutes after your opponent, you're screwed because their economy is now so ridiculously larger than yours.

Pretty much everyone I talk to talks about how much they hate the mechanic of losing the game because I went T2 a minute or two after my opponent.

And that's exactly the game they are building.

And pretty much all I see from the community is frustration at what they're doing – and Uber just talks about how they're the pros and we won't like it no matter what they do so they're gonna do whatever they want.

I'm concerned that Uber is killing their game before they even finish it.

I don't think it really matters, but I agree that reasoning is always helpful.

The reason why I don't think it matters is because the people that want nothing but sidegrades will never compromise on that vision, and once decided on an approach the devs aren't going to compromise either (prior to reaching an approach, of course, discussion happens, but I think we've moved on from that phase).

Personally, I think a combination of sidegrades and upgrades are the hallmark of any RTS. If you maneouvre yourself into an economical advantage, you should benefit from that in a direct manner. There comes a time in any match when you are outmatched. This applies to reality, both historical and modern. Certain tanks have bigger guns than other tanks, heavier armour, and a comparative top speed. The only difference is their exorbitant cost in comparison.

The numbers can be balanced. If the numbers are so huge in comparison between the tiers, that can be addressed. I'm ignoring that because we're debating the very notion of upgrades vs. sidegrades, and not the specific numbers thereof.

Any concerns of "Uber are killing the game" based on numbers can be remedied. Those that are disappointed in the general direction are unlikely to be remedied, for better or worse. And I do feel for those that are disappointed, even if I'm not amongst them myself.

A combination of upgrades and side-grades can indeed work. The issue is that the most interesting player engagement is generated not by the "better units", but by the "different units". To me, that suggests that it's only reasonable to start doing the "better units" once you have exhausted your imagination for all the possible "different units" that you can come up with. I wouldn't have a problem if PA had 200 unique and interesting combat units, and then the focus shifted towards making upgrades.

Well, as an arbitrary number, I think 200 would be far too vast. Mental retention here is a major factor for player interest and understanding. It's why so many tiers of so many RTS games often open up stronger units. You have a spread of units in T1 that all perform different roles (presuming competent design), and then you have a spread of units in T2 that all perform different roles, and in various cases completely separate roles to any T1 unit. However, they are still stronger than most, if not all, T1 units to safeguard the economic investment that went into making them.

I mean, without any upgrade at all, there is no point in having tiers at all. It'd simply make them an economic roadblock to getting to more advanced sidegrades that can instead be competently balanced by increasing build time or other costs of the sidegrades themselves. After all, they're sidegrades in this instance, and not upgrades.

Continuing on that line of thought, you could extrapolate that locking any unit behind any tech-based barrier is ultimately redundant, and have everything accessible from the word go. If everything is a sidegrade, then every unit choice is a tactical (if not strategic) decision on the behalf of the player and there is no need to funnel the player upwards through these arbitrary tiers. Because there are no levels of "power" anymore.

Tiers are a good arbitrary mechanic in tech-based RTS games because upgrades are required in order to finish games decisively. Players should be rewarded for economic victories, no?

Sidegrades do not ultimately result in victory - advantage through options is not the same as advantage through power. Upgrades decide victory quite emphatically. The problem, as ever, is getting the numbers right.

Actually, there is a very salient reason to gate the more unusual side-grades. It's entirely possible to allow them all to be available from the start. For example, Zero-K does this. The issue is that this does not lead to a game with so much as a learning-curve as a learning-Berlin-wall-with-barbed-wire-and-armed-guards. It is entirely possible that you might see a super expensive heavily armoured assault bot on the battlefield within the first two minutes of play. However, this ends up being the cheesiest of cheeses, meaning players have to be prepared for anything. It places a large mental burden on the player, and creates a lot of traps that inexperienced players can fall into, where they think that something is very powerful at the start of the game, but it is entirely the wrong time to deploy it. Hence the more unusual things should be gated so as to control when they appear in the game, and when players need to start worried about things.

And this is why it could be possible to have very large numbers of side grade units. Although I admit that 200 is a little arbitrary it is not beyond the realms of possibility. If there were, hypothetically, a silly number of different unique roles, players would only really need to worry about accessing the full roster in longer and longer games. One could even conceivably run a flat balance as a play-test, then with the experienced drawn from that just start putting the more and more situational units further and further "up" the tech-tree. Thus, as the game goes on, players will naturally equilibrate at the game length and level of complexity that they feel comfortable with. A quick match amongst in-experienced players may only unlock one or two tiers, but a longer match between "pros" (or a good old fashioned comp-stomp) might unlock many more. This way, players get to choose their own level of comfort and complexity.

Of course, this is a bit speculative and for the time being, PA only really needs two tiers. However, it is an interesting avenue of investigation for the future.

Sidenote @brianpurkiss :: anecdotal evidence incoming!

You were complaining that a two minute headstart into T2 created an insurmountable problem. In competitive, 1v1 Dawn of War (and similar games like Starcraft), heading into T2 (or choosing to stop for T1.5) a few seconds late (assuming you weren't up against a gimmicky rush build like a rushed Chaos PGen into T2 for Defilers) meant the difference between a huge advantage and equal footing.

If we're assuming competitive Planetary Annihilation, then 2 minutes is a huge headstart and you shouldn't be letting your opponent get that kind of headstart on you. Practise and optimise your build order. Compare replays against those that achieve T2 ahead of you. The problem arises when a T2 rush is 100% the safer choice compared to a T1 (or T1.5) rush, in which case there's no incentive to T1 and it becomes useless.

However, I don't think that this is the case in PA.

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@YourLocalMadSci ::

The burden of knowledge was something I was leading towards, and I'm glad you brought it up. However, what point is simply gating the units if all they provide is options? If the options only become useful at a certain level of competency, you're locking out game functionality (and enjoyment) until players achieve said competency - which, in the theoretical case of 200 units . . . indicates severe levels of competency.

You're preventing people from enjoying all of the units the game has to offer. It's why (I feel) traditional RTSs often provide upgrades, to make the player feel like he has more power at disposal throughout the game as it progresses, and allows the player to ultimately experience every level of gameplay the game has to offer. By locking off an potentially-infinite number of sidegrades, whose benefits are not immediately apparent, you limit the scope of the game based on player competency and - quite simply - intelligence.

Most of the people here have a good understanding of PA. Some of the people here have an excellent understanding of PA and also a great (if not excellent) understanding of games design and related games within the genre. It's the expert knowledge problem. You're suggesting a fix to a design issue that seems appropriate to you (and others of your level of competence that feel similar ways). You're not suggesting a fix that would necessarily translate well to the general userbase, bearing in mind that for any successful game the casual players dwarf the competitive elite, often by an exponential margin.

You don't play Dawn of War to unlock the Bloodthirster by getting good at the game. What fun would the Relic units be if you couldn't get them playing the game at your own pace? You've seen something advertised that you cannot comprehend the benefit of, nomatter how cool or appealing it looks.

A game has to attract people first. Competency comes later as a matter of course, depending on the effort invested by the player (and to an extent his or her latent natural talent within the genre).

This is ignoring the need for an economic victory as well. Certainly, Civilisation wouldn't be fun if I couldn't run for a Diplomatic victory on my first attempt.

Are you proposing that a semi-familiar tech system that is shallow enough for the lowest common denominator to comprehend is this game's "attraction factor", rather than... you know... Planets and Asteroid Smashing?

If so, that's interesting...

Haha, not at all. While I like RTS, I definitely Kickstarted this game for two things. Planets, and the smashing thereof

However, to discount it as a factor would be foolish, I feel. It's a part of building a game in general I find, one that is overlooked when a lot of very competent people get together and come up with a plan that they think fixes things. I've seen it before, in modification teams, and I'm seeing some of it here now.

By and large, this community is the best I've been in, however, so it's not like I'm getting my pants in a twist or anything. I enjoy debating this kind of stuff, as generally there's no right answer.

I'd say that the real strong point to a flatter-balanced tech progression is that you're not "forced" to tech up at a predefined optimum (which you must learn) just to keep pace with your opponent. You can stay at the Basic tier for the vast majority of the game regardless of your competency at the game, while teching up allows those that feel completely comfortable and in full command of the Basic tier can "dip their toe" so to speak into the more advanced, specialised units.

If the Basic tier always has an unit that functions in the vast majority of the roles you might want it to (though obviously not as efficiently as an advanced variant) and retains its relevance at most stages of the game, then it essentially allows the player to dictate their own comfort-zone, ability and competency levels without being forced into using a set of units they're not comfortable with based on some arbitrary jump in power levels.

Essentially it allows the player to subjectively define the way they want to play, rather than being mandated into a tech race that you would need familiarity with the game to judge correctly.

Except that the advanced units need to offer something the basic units don't, in order to both be useful and class as some kind of an advantage (even as a sidegrade). So, if it is an advantage of some kind, players are still forced into learning about them, because they will be at a disadvantage if they don't.

It's just that said forcing will be more subtle and less apparent for the player. Which would actually increase frustration, in my opinion. At least having the tech levels visible and having a distinct increase in power allows players to instantly recognise when a game has progressed to the next tier.

Which again has direct (if not exact) real-life connotations. Arms races and technology escalation exists for a (well, various) reason(s). Originally I'd imagine tiers represented something like general DEFCON levels, at which certain elements are mobilised that you had no need of previously.

That said, this is more apparent in game where the factions are not direct mirrors of each other. In PA, all factions are the same faction. So I can understand the need for a flatter structure and a more diverse unit base. But I wouldn't just go for flatness alone. To assume that a single type of power structure will suffice for your needs is both completely out of touch with any kind of reality (including technological progression) as well as generally invalidating the need for anything other than a single unit (in theory). We're not making Singularity: The Game here. There should be room for upwards evolution within the scope of a single game (or games).

Bear in mind that a Basic unit can still be relevant when an Advanced unit is on the field, even if the Advanced unit is in virtually every way an upgrade to the Basic unit. However, this depends heavily on unit design (I would agree with you that direct 1:1 upgrades are a waste of space) and economic balance (assuming harass is a viable factor and falling back onto Basic units if you can't afford Advanced units is a viable gameplay strategy to fall back on).

When did I say that we were proposing only 1 power structure?


That isn't what flat-balanced means y'know?