Dummbing down

Is there any danger of this happening? or can we expect to see great complexity.

I'm pretty sure the whole thing is built on the premise of being simple and accessible. This doesn't mean there won't be fun and competitive gameplay, but learning the game isn't meant to be complex.

Just because the rules of games like Chess and Go are simple doesn't mean that a match cannot be incredibly complex and strategic.

Oh god, don't get me started on Go, I saw an anime featuring it and decided to try it out, but after 20+ hours of trying to figure it out I still can't get my head around it properly, just too many patterns to look out for and so many options. But I certainly wouldn't mind if PA ends up a bit like that, it's good to keep the brain active and a lot of the AAA junk coming out these days just doesn't fill that need .

I find the easy to learn, hard to master principle the best.

This way you can get a wide range of skill levels in the community, so you could establish leagues which makes it easier for new players to get into the game and not completely frustrated.

I think whether the game is "dumbed down" is dependent on what you expected to begin with. As I understand it, the game should basically be TA with planets.

TA was micro heavy. You had to designate every single wreck you wanted to reclaim, every single target you wanted your artillery to attack on the radar (unless you paid for a building that allowed radar-based auto-targetting), and the menu was clunky.

Admittedly, those are either design limitations or technological limitations, which PA won't really have too much of in terms of gameplay mechanics, but long-time RTS players are used to micro, and long-time RTS players have a tendency to be stubborn as a flat lego.

truth. I do hope we see some strides in minimizing micro though.

From what is written here by the devs, their goal is to minimize the micro needed.

Area of attack for formation, basic automation, all seems to point to this.

We'll see !

:sigh:

Actually if you just set patrols for construction units they would reclaim any nearby wreck automatically, and shift clicking to queue up targets with the bertha type artillery worked well, you could queue up plenty of targets in 10 seconds with easy and then focus back on your macro. TA had a huge amount of automation if you knew how to use it.

So true.

If it's needless micro, get rid of it. Things like individually clicking on a wreck to reclaim, or clicking a mass extractor to upgrade, one after the other, again and again...

Yet things like these are hailed as 'complexity' But it's not, it's not complex at all, just tedious. So make the game more efficient, so we can focus on the ACTUAL GAME!

Everything I've seen on the livecasts, they're quite clear about keeping the game light on micro. So much so, that I'm not even confident they've got hotkeys in on stuff.

Seriously, though... not that I'm addicted to micro, but I hope they don't forbid it. How could they possibly forbid it, you ask? Easiest way: make it where inputs aren't accepted till the previous one resolves. I hope they don't do that.

They won't remove micro, I'm sure there will still be an advantage to microing units, but because of the scale of the game, it is much more efficient to macromanage 3 battalions of tanks into a surround and destroy maneuver than it is to micromanage a single battalion of tanks so that they take minimal damage.

In most games, micro is the result of 1 of 2 things. Either A, you have Starcraft players that are ******* neurotic about mashing the right mouse button, or B, microing is required because of the way efficiencies in the game work. I think the most infamous example for SupCom players is the 4-mass-storage ring for Extractors that you HAD TO BUILD or die under a crushing tide of Monkeylords.

In TA, if I remember correctly, because of the terribad pathfinding, you had to micro tanks or they would end up literally clogging your assault pathways. Getting tanks to assault through choke points was kind of like taking butter to a flamethrower.

I laughed.

I r B dum down wit teh best ov tem

A while back I played Homeworld 2 online. It took me a while to catch on but the thing I loved about Homeworld 2 was so simple, yet if applied right had such depth.

Games aren't necessarily made better just by adding more units.

very true, havings lots of units is meaningless if they're not significantly different.

Very true & made worst with if the unit count increases, Mavor stated he want to aim for a million units running in game - add lots of unit types & it'll get too complex to understand what's going on.

With that amount of units I would like to better ways to select unit types - hot keys for sure but simple menu to show every unit type build to which you can select all of the one you wanted would work well. Better yet, draw a ringed outline on the planet & then have the menu throw all the unit types in that area & then select - that would be powerful.

The "Million units" thing is more a Technical goal than an actual expectation for gameplay.

Mike