Risk vs Reward

OTA (up to 3.1) isn't a problem. Anything beyond that, and I don't have any solid numbers to back up my arguments.

Would be extremely surprised if they were off the top of your head

It's mostly the issue that a lot of us don't like how it feels and how it would feel to players looking into the game. It's like, I could get a perfectly legitimate email from an arabian oil prince about giving me 1mil dollars, it's still going to go into my spam folder even if the email filters dont get to it first, because the feel of it just off so it's going to get at most one second of my attention span (not to imply that that's the timeframe for this topic; I'm referring to new players looking into the game). Consider how the Etherium game, without even a shred of gameplay out there, is currently getting bashed by people here for being "defective" or "Supreme Command clone," among which even people who take the more "lets wait and see" side in this thread, I think it's a fair complaint against the methodology applied.

But getting back to the main issue. Everything about the "gameplay" of the game has to be perfect,

- it has to be enticing
- it has to be fun to play
- it has to have longevity
- it has to be interesting to talk about
- it has to be interesting to think about
- it has to be fair (ie. balanced)
- it has to require years to find all its secrets
- it has to be complex enough that nobody can say "this is the best thing every game"
- it has to be interesting to watch (esports = publicity = more players)
- it has to be fun to play at a low level
- it has to be fun to play at a mid skill level
- it has to be fun to play at a high skill level

etc.

Right now, at least to some of us, it looks like the current direction is just focusing on "fairness" (kind-of, more like the problem of "using everything") tacking "fun" for granted, as a given if it's "fair," and ignoring the rest. And I understand the position of some may be "well that's what they're working on now, and the other stuff will come later" but some of us just don't have faith in that approach. We believe there needs to be a lot more of the points at once and "fun" among others needs to be in there as #1 not secondary or "a given," nothing more.

I understand that may occasionally sound "aggressive" but it's really nothing more then a position. I'm sure everyone here will be at least somewhat happy with whatever the guys come out with.

You'd be surprised at how many of them are.
But yes, I have a source for all this information should I need it.

I have created a super scientific chart to explain my grievances with the concept presented in the original post:



The graph on the left is a blue player falling behind a red player in a game of linear power increases. He's behind but he's never HUGELY behind. He can possibly catch back up at some point.

The graph on the right is the blue player falling behind with this concept of a gargantuanally powerful "meta" upgrade, which the red player reaches first. As soon as the red player reaches that point, he is no longer just 5% better or 10% better than the blue player. He's suddenly like 500% better. The blue player will probably be crushed immediately.

The only way for the blue player to stay in the game is to make the same leap at roughly the same time.

The jump becomes the game. That is, it is vitally important that I make it before you do. The argument may be that there's a whole game of attack and counterattack going on in the leadup to the jump because I'm trying to hurt you (or outright beat you) before you can make the jump. If you jump 60 seconds ahead of me, though, I'm probably screwed, because for those 60 seconds you are going to be immensely more powerful than me. I must make the jump pretty damn quick after you or it's over.

You could just make the factory be the game winning moment, like building a spaceship in Civilization, because once someone gets there it's probably all over except the crying anyway.

If you read my post I acknowledged that tweaks made to the controlling text document varied the stats between them. A stumpy and bulldog are comparable. They are fundamentally the sane type of unit. The differences are down to balance only.

If we look at t1 and t2 tanks in pa- the t1 is a single gun basic tank. The t2 is a twin gun larger tank.

All the amazing differences you quote from ota are purely balancing numbers. The pa tanks can easily be adjusted to match. As such it really doesn't worry me if the balance isn't there now.

What is more difficult to tweak or implement is gaping holes in the unit roster like hovercraft or amphibious tanks, all terrain units, stealth units, mobile rocket launchers and so on.

Hello, and I would like to start off with an elcor-esque statement. Not offended.
I agree with you in that I cannot know for sure, but based on past experiences, I can be very darn close to sure. When you have direct upgrades, it doesn't increase diversity. Having unit X be unit Y but better, then your situation isn't diverse, it is just progressed. It is pre-programmed progression. Let's say if you are playing chess, you can tap your pawns 3 times before moving them and that allows them to do a special move. Would you ever not tap your pawns 3 times before moving them? Why bother even having the normal movements in the first place?

I really liked FA conceptually. I really wished that it had a mode where an entire match was done in a single tech level. I liked tech 1. I liked tech 2. I liked tech 3. The problem is, though, that they were EXCLUSIVE. Of course, you would be shooting yourself in the foot to just go straight to tech 3, but that doesn't make anything but tech 3 interesting. It is a goal to reach. Why not just have games start off in tech 3? It just draws out the game at that point. If all tech levels were useful, I feel that the game would have been so much better.

You may be OK with unit obsolescence, but I am not. I have seen it many, many times before and it ALWAYS ruins the diversity. I really like the style and everything about PA, but the balance defines replay-ability. If I can't enjoy the balance, I won't enjoy the game.

Incidentally, where I think this concept would be really painful is in a game with more than about 4 teams.

Like, 1 on 1, okay, I can see it, I guess. We're battling it out, trying to keep each other from going meta, keeping each other on our toes, etc. Spending too much metal going meta can cause you to get overrun. I get it.

But 8-way FFA? Sheeeeeeet. I'm going to be out there trying to stop all of my neighbors from going meta, fighting hard, unable to go meta myself due to this effort but somewhere one of you f'ers is going to be turtled up with your neighbors ignoring you (maybe too busy fighting me) and you are going to go meta. 5 minutes after that you're going to be the most powerful force in the game by a wide margin and the rest of us get crushed. And that will probably happen in every FFA to the point where everyone turtles to meta because that's your only hope. Your only real chance to win is to be that guy.


No sir. I don't like it.


I think most RTS games try to avoid having that "jump to meta" precisely because they want to help keep the game close. The challenge, I suppose, is how to present the player with interesting choices that do not result in sharp increases in power.

You know.....this is actually a good argument for Experimentals, which in other games might be called "heroes". The interesting thing with hero units is that while they represent a sharp jump in power, they can only be applied to one part of the map.

Where I think the SupCom line may have started to go awry was that there were no limits on experimentals. I mean what's experimental about a unit that you build a dozen of? BFME2 gave you a limited number of heroes and you could only ever have 1 of each type out. You can't build 15 Gandalfs. There's just the one. Maybe SupCom could have done better by keeping the experimentals but reeling them in. Maybe you can build Krogoth, but he's Krogoth. Not "a" Krogoth but "the" Krogoth. You can only have the one. If he blows up you can rebuild him but you can't ever hit the field with 20 of them.

It gives players an interesting way to throw a lot of resources into a powerful option but rather than a global improvement (as with "Meta" or "T2"), it's a local event. The opponent isn't universally behind, he's just behind here.


This is why I think PA should be more about map control (eliminate T2 mex, force people to get shitloads of T1 mex) and why I think large global power jumps should be eliminated.

(And don't say you hate experimentals because mechanically speaking, the nuclear missile is just a Krogoth that flies to the destination, hits the ground and explodes in a huge fireball that kills everything the real Krogoth might have killed before blowing up due to damage taken. It fits the bill. Asteroids are the same thing, but moreso. I propose that in the next patch, the nuclear missile model be changed to a giant flying robot.)

FFA are kinda extreme in that regard. One player will always get lucky and get to tech. I don't think balance needs to completely focus on FFA. It's a dicey game mode anyway.

I agree that the balance shouldn't focus on FFA. I'm not a fan of FFAs anyways.

But the balance can't ignore FFAs.

It needs to take FFAs into consideration and not break them so they're not luck based and/or tech race based.

There is a no way an 8player FFA or the like is not luck based. Sure skill still matters, but if you have 8 equal players there will be far more luck in it than in 1v1 or 2v2

I completely agree that luck is a factor and can't be completely balanced out – which is why I tend to ignore FFAs.

But balance can be done so that luck is less of a factor.

My suggestion, naturally, is to blur the lines between the two tiers so they aren't really tiers. That would drastically reduce the tech race and subsequent luck that goes along with it.

FFAs:
Of course you can't eliminate the luck factor but since right now a considerable part of the games played are FFAs I think the balancing should take that into account.
And having such a large jump in power simply makes the problems of FFA even worse.



@Slamz' Chart:
I want to point out that there is something missing: A considerable increase in power for the red player before he reaches the meta tier because of the resources invested into building the meta-factory.

It's also worth mentioning that this chart is not only a factor for Metabolical's theory crafting from the initial post, but it's also very accurate for the current gameplay.

Current balance iterations are built around this giant jump concept.

I theory craft that the new balance changes will make it all the worse.

I dislike 1v1's because they tend to be "Flavor of the Month" in terms of strategy -- especially "cheese" attacks, like the old comm rush. Things that work against a single opponent 1v1 can easily leave you crippled in a long game where you have to kill more than just that guy.

But more to the point, part of why FFA's feel so random is because of the T1 -> T2 jump. I fight hard in T1 and beat my nearest neighbor and take all of his metal but having 2x metal due to aggressive expansion is not as good as having 4x metal due to peaceful turtling and upgrading.

The game will always be about that power jump, so long as there is one. We can increase the time it takes to get there and make that T1 phase more interesting but ultimately it is still about getting to that power jump.

2v2, 3v3, 4v4, all pretty solid.

as far as 1v1x7s or stuff like that, those are the most fun though, takes a lot of reaction and careful planning to avoid being singled out and play the odds better. You could never get bored with those and winning never feels so satisfying.

that pretty much counts for every game weither it is in the form of teching up, expanding or outproducing your enemy ... because in the very end you WANT to overpower your enemy in some way

It doesn't need to completely focus on FFA, but it still has to work as a strategy game in a situation where the game is not symmetrical. \

That's my point. In every post I've ever made on this topic, I have always said that ratios are important.

Let's talk Sins of a Solar Empire, yeah?

The game has 6 ship types. There are strikecraft, corvettes, frigates, cruisers, capital ships and titans.

Strikecraft can only be hosted on another ship, so let's just discount them entirely as a ship type, as far as we're concerned they are a cruiser. .

The game is more or less balanced so corvettes, frigates and cruisers will always form the core backbone of your fleet.

The purpose of them is to protect your capital ships. And the purpose of the capital ships is to force your opponents multiple small fleets to group up to focus their fire.

It gets kind of messy, because capital ships have different abilities that enable them to deal with large groups of units and so on. But that's the general premise, and it generally works pretty well.

Titans (the experimental units) are only ridiculously OP because the only way to deal with them is to focus lots and lots of firepower on them, but you can't do that by focusing your frigates on them because they have anti-frigate abilities. It basically gets to a point where the only way to deal with a Titan is to build your own.

That's not a strategy game. That's a Battle Arena.

Well, this is probably the first thread, of this length, where I have actually read every post. This discussion has been the most engaging topic since the expiremental topic that came up in early Alpha.

What puzzles me is that Uber took that experimental topic and all of our comments to heart. We almost unanimously rejected the notion of super units because we did not want the game to completely center around getting them for the win condition.

This T2 economy power jump concept has exactly the same effect on game play that experimentals would have. I just don't understand why Uber is not seeing it. We have been arguing for unit diversity and a lack of upgrade unit types since, Day 1 Alpha(almost).

I have been trying to see Uber's point of view on this and I have come up with a couple possible rationals that can explain it.

They are concerned about the unit roster getting too big. In alpha the fact that we had just the most common unit types made sense. There was a lot of work to do on the engine still and they were trying to overcome technical challenges that were unique to the concept of this game, while wanting to provide us with something that they could get feed back on. They are already behind the release date that they expected and may be worried about getting it to a release before their distributors start to get nervous. As a result they are trying to figure out what they can do with the assets that they already have that will produce an enjoyable game.

--OR--

They have decided to go with what they have and leave the rest to the modders. This thought process would be the most disappointing for me to confirm. I hope this is not the reason. However, it does kind of match with the type of feedback that we have been seeing coming from them. That feed back is essentially a dismissal of our pleas for more unit diversity and multiple paths for victory. Even the posting of this thread suggests that they are set on the path they have chosen. Meta's example was intended to show that by changing the cost and time needed to reach it, the "Meta" tech level could be offset by good harrassment at the T1 level. What he actually ended up doing was proving our point. Anyone who spends their effort in stopping a player from reaching Meta and fails has lost the game for sure. It is an all in gambit and there is no recovery from that failure. What this means is that the only way to improve a player's chance of victory is to rush for meta and hope to reach it before your opponent.

Uber, Listen to us. Even if there is a lot of momentum pushing you in the direction you are still going it is dragging the game toward a waterfall of linear uninteresting game play. If mods will have to be built to facilitate the diversity we are seeking it will fracture the game base and undermine your intent to create a game that will stand the test of time and is appealing to E-sports and players at a competitive level.