Creating vs Destruction in the game

In the videos I've seen from you guys, there is a lot of focus on destroying things, but I just want to know if you also focus on the beauty of creation. For me it seems implicit that there will be A LOT of creation due to the developers mentioning 12 hour games etc. 12 hours of pure destruction will for me only stress me out, but we all know that we can create things for hours on end.

I guess what Im trying to figure out, is the balance between creation and destruction. Sometimes destroying things so that new bases/units/artillery can take place, is a massive reward, but the destruction alone can make you feel a bit miserable. The competive scene may disagree and want faster pace, but the average joe as myself, may just want the beauty of creating big things, guns, artillery, and when we destroy, we like the visual effects, but also the oppurtunity to relax after the storm, and start creating again.

Any thought's or do I make no sense? It's okey if I dont

I like your thougtsh ....






Edit::
Pledged and fullfilded my pledge yesterday still have 20 usd left to spend ,,thinking of buying a shirt of the Alpha Commander .. just like Yellow shirts.../.............\/..........

You can play SimCity if you like, just set the AI difficulty to low or something
Also, i advise you to check out Civilization 5. That's really a stress-free strategy game with different goals on how to win. You don't even need to destroy things to win, just defend yourself and go for culture or science win.

edit in case i was unclear: "SimCity" = playing Planetary Annihilation building pretty base game.

[...I guess what Im trying to figure out, is the balance between creation and destruction..]

Some creation is needed and will be ingame to balance out all the destruction, but its unavoidable that this game will weight more heavily in the destruction department.

The end game will be a broken star system full of destroyed burning planets and were armys of smoking husks rests on feilds of ash.

I'm fairly sure that it'll be a destruction centric game, but first you need to build the tools for said destruction. Sure, your end goal is to destroy the enemy base using an asteroid, but first you need to build a rocket to get your engineers onto the asteroids, thrusters on the asteroid, defences to stop your commander getting killed, and an army to wipe out the enemy defences so that you can drop the asteroid without getting mullered by missiles. To do that requires an economy, so you can be fairly sure a good base will be necessary for the destruction.

Okey one of the sole reasons I really ask this, is cause Mavor himself is visioning this game to last for quite some time (he even mentioned 12hours, maybe he was hinting to a specific mode, I dont know).

I am curious just how they plan to reward destroying a base/planet. Reward it with an upper hand how? And if you get an upper hand early, does it mean death too soon? What about defenders advantage?

What do you guys think would be fun? When do you guys have the most fun playing RTS? We can pretty much sum up that only a small minority likes short Starcraft competive matches, just look just how incredible dull the ladder in starcraft is, how many threads on ladder anxiety, nobody wants a game that gives you the grief, except for the minority of the competive scene. Lets not turn this game into an epic fail that is Starcraft 2.

A rather well known player from Starcraft 2 made a huge article and a mess in Teamliquid when he posted this reddit article:
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft_2_will_be_dead_before_legacy_of_the/)

For those who dont want to read a wall of text, let me try quote something not extremely out of context.

He further details what made Brood war so fun, and this is a real success compared to SC2 (which would not sell if it wasn't made by Blizzard)

So yes, this is why I want to discuss this topic, creation versus destruction. If this games becomes too competive, people wont play it, just look at SupCom which I love. Only a handful plays the ladder, most want to play 3v3 or more, where they feel safer. So should we really focus on the competiveness in this game? I think not, I think that competive gameplay should rather be a mod, like a Pro mod we had in Call of Duty 4. This game (PA) should focus on the casual player, and if we focus too much on destruction, I fear this game will make a lot of people cry and refuse to play and just down right quit. Why make the same mistakes over and over again?

I don't quite get this topic. Do you want to make sure that are plenty of modding options (that's what I'm getting from the quote you included)?

As for your 3v3 comment: the way I see it, people don't play 3v3 for more creation, they play it for more destruction.

Honestly speaking, I cannot imagine anyone, ever, buying a game called Planetary Annihilation for its lovely creative properties.

I want the game to be accessable right from the start towards the right audiance, the casuals.
Then I want good moding options for the competive scene instead.

You see, when Broodwar came out, we had like what, Unreal, Half life and starcraft? Today we have a gazillion other games to compete against, so if a player is today thrown into a brutal 1v1, he WILL quit, or maybe the tough ones will stay for a bit and research some strategy, learning it more.

Forged Alliance, see how many complained about T1 spam. Then sure, there WAS a way to fix it(strategy), but too late, the game became dead. It should be easy to create, and easy to destroy, but hard to win. I actually dont know what a good balance in that would be, I only hope we can discuss this so the game is received good by the regular players, a good first impression. It should be social, have chat system and be focused on fun rather then competiveness. We want this game to be played, not feared.

That doesn't make any sense. That's like building a house before you build the foundation. You have to understand that what you see as the "competitive" game is actually the BASE game. Everything for casuals has to be built on top of the base game. You can't start with a casual game, because to have a casual game, you first need a game with some units and buildings and such. This (plus balance), just so happens to be what most people play when playing competitively.

Do you mean that there should be a lot of back and forth battles? If so, then I agree, but it should only be hard to win if it's against equally skilled player. If not, that's just tedium.

Yes, but also, do we want the game to be easy to jump into play, hard to master? Cause I had a really hard time making my friends play Forged Alliance 3v3 with me, I had to tell them that forget about winning, just enjoy the creation, just enjoy having fun during the gameplay and totally forget about the outcome. That game is very hard.

I dont really follow what you truly mean. But I think that you mean that the game needs a core which has to be somewhat balanced, so that some units/buildings/strategies wont become too strong? And that every building needs to be balanced so that every unit/building can be competitive?
If so, yes this I agree on, but having to practice a lot just to stop something that is easy to spam (lets say T1 spam from FA), so that you finally can enjoy creating more awesome stuff, is very unfriendly towards the audience that are new to the game. The balance also need to take into consideration how easy it is to stop something, cause we wont see any planetary annihilation if the game often goes into 8 minute mark and dead commander.
I want to encourage my friends who haver never played this game, when we gather at LAN to try this game out, and we have fun from the start. When we play RTS now, everyone is so silent in their first step (read: weeks or even months..), so much concentration. Other games that are very popular lets people get away with slack, they can talk, they can let their "guard" down and just try out awesome stuff. They dont get rushed and squished and fucked in 5-15 minutes (ranging SC2 too FA).

A good game does have a core as you mentioned, but is it really impossible to create a good RTS game that friends can gather up and play it like casual Poker, talk and drink and do stupid ****, and then let the game have awesome moments?

Can there truly be destruction on an epic scale if the game is not friendly in the creation of your base and planets? It should be fun creating, intuitive and awesome, and then you wanna destroy, like the kid in his sandbox who makes lots of ****, then we just tramp on it in the end. If this is hard to pull off like SC2 and FA, then there wont be any players planets to destroy. And I will struggle to recruit them just as I did in FA. And I wont even try, I will say, **** it, Im tired of being the retard motivator just to get my friends base and economy on a normal level, yes just normal.


PS: I am not ranting or anything, I just want this game to be awesome

I don't think it became dead... maybe to you!

Simple games are boring, simple sucks.

Did you fear Forged Alliance? That's basically my favourite game, mainly because of the complexity.

From a purely mathematical perspective, if you kill all the enemy's stuff, and you still have some stuff left: Creation > Destruction

But I'm not sure that's what you mean. Personally, I would be glad to have a "sandbox" mode where there is no opponent, and I can just build stuff in peace. No, not the map editor, it's not the same. I want to be limited by resources and abilities, but unlimited by the pressure of a foe. Its the difference between (Forgive the Minecraft reference) NBTEdit and Creative mode. Both are useful, but they produce a different experience.

But if that's now what you have in mind, I could use some clarification.

Yeah, look at Go. I bet that people will grow bored of it in a few weeks!
Simple =/= simplistic.

I know several people who dropped SupCom/FA after a few plays, who almost never played against other humans or who downright refused to play it because it is a fearful game. Not Allegiance fearful, but there are too many ways to screw up and too little learning tools. It can be things as stupid as having to learn a starting build and APM-rush it to have a chance to be competitive.
Though I do think that there are several ways to avoid most of it, like less micro no stupid veterancy system!), a more streamlined economy (no incoherent buildpower/metal/energy ratios in factories at least), no adjacency bonus, a (even) more powerful UI...
Fortunately, at least most of those should be in PA anyway.

This is quite off-topic, but I still don't really understand what OP meant there.

I actually agree with the OP, if I understand him correctly. It is an issue of balance. Yes, there will and must always be destruction as that is the point of the game. What I think the OP means is "what is the motivation to build." Not for himself, as that he has inherently from his desire to create, but is his opponent motivated to build?

I know this sounds odd, but to keep the FA reference, think of it as what is to stop someone from doing a T1 rush? Yes, it [/i]is[/i] a viable action, but not necessarily a fun one. Is there any reason to tech up? Yes, the units are better, but why put all that money and time in? What is the benefit from building? From creating? On the flip side is the world where everyone turtles and the game devolves into a usually quick mass battle at the end where the loser is taken out with one well placed nuke. There is a fun middle ground that involves a good back and forth, but that is definitely hard to find.

Everyone can and does come up with his or her own reason, but occasionally that results in Starcraft 2's issues, or the problems FA faced.

I doubt there can really be one solution to make everyone happy. In the end I guess it will just boil down to hoping you find someone with a play style compatible with yours.

This is getting off topic, but I'm replying to the hardcore/casual discussion that's springing up.

You have to target the hardcore first. It's possible to play a hardcore game casually, but it's nigh impossible to play a casual game hardcore.

Look at Starcraft. The Korean superstar players play the exact same game as the casual players. There's no pro-mod for the hardcore scene.

Aim high. If you fall short, then you've still gotten somewhere. If you aim low and fall short... you go nowhere.

^^^ Well said.

I think the OP has a good point. There's a lot of excitement in watching that artillery cannon come online or firing off the first nuke. Of course the building is for the purpose of destruction, but I look forward to figuring out the best ways to set up fire bases and defensive lines. The beauty of creation in a war game serves as a stark contrast to the battlefields full of smoking wreckage.

Also, the beauty of creation in an rts can be related to veterancy. I'm not talking about stat increases, but it's fun to boast to your friends over kill counts on specific canons or tanks.

I don't think that the game needs to slow down for online competition though. If you don't want tense competition, don't play with competitive friends. Or play against an AI. That's where Sorian's work comes in. When there's an AI with a wide range of difficulty settings, but that always does interesting things, it makes for great team play. You can beat up on an AI all day long, and no one's sensitive feelings get hurt.

So bummed, I wrote a considerable response on my iPad and lost it due to a timed out user session.

So in a nutshell: I've heard a few concerns, (1) balancing the tension between casual and competitive gameplay and (2) finding players you'll have fun with.

The second concern (finding players you'll have fun with) can be eased through (1) a match making system that pairs players with similar skill and interests (competitive/casual) (2) playing friends you know you'll have fun with and (3) AI skirmishes that can be configured for casual play or competitive training.

The first concern (balancing casual and competitive gameplay) seems difficult. I see a few factors to consider: social features like chat/match making, game pacing, intuitivness of game mechanics, intensity of punishment of making a strategic mistake, etc... Keep in mind Neutrino mentioned PA is a fan service, so it probably won't be geared towards new players. With that in mind, what do fans want? From what I've read our community lacks consensus.

I'd like an easier game to play (than SupCom) with added depth from new mechanics (spherical maps, terrain deformation, objective match types). I'd prefer a few mechanics which are concise and elegant, rather than many mechanics which are verbose and unwieldy. I'd prefer a game geared towards being social and having fun with friends, rather than a 1v1 competitive honey badger ladder.