Casual players like me

Why not let the player chose himself his rating?
Also showing his win rate ratio and stuff. If somebody wins to much autoset him one rank/league higher.

Guys, while the OP's approach may give off a sense of entitlement, from what I can tell his thesis is that RTS games should incorporate better immediate feedback when the player is doing something silly or stupid, particularly visual feedback. Tightening the action->result feedback loop is also being mentioned in the OP, but that may have the opposite effect as it could make recovery from mistakes almost impossible.

This is a really interesting problem, and one that has been tackled fairly well in FPS games, but those have really tight feedback loops to begin with, and the punishment for mistakes in an FPS game is one death out of 25 or more, rather than one whole match.

Tooltips may work, but I'm not confident players will read things in front of them. Modifying explosions or sounds or making things flash or beep seems a more sensible approach, though flashing and beeping should be kept to a minimum to avoid it being ignored as simple noise. One thing that might work for PA's streaming economy is for costs to be highlighted in red if it would make a net loss and you have little in reserve (that is, not enough to pay for it without stalling somewhat), and yellow if it would make a net loss but not enough to slow the economy.

Anyway, focus on ideas for better feedback mechanisms. That will help RTS design in general.

I don't see the entitlement. It's a simple fact of life that you'll get a lot of players who want to be able to be reasonably proficient at the game without gluing themselves to a wiki or youtube and spending hours at a time practicing build orders and engagement tactics. You can argue all you want about whether it's right or not that these players want that, but at the end of the day they exist and ignoring them is severely cutting down your audience.

I don't think that they should be able to play on a pro level, and that's not what OP was asking for. What OP IS looking for is some way to figure out (either while playing or in skimming a replay after playing) "This is what I'm doing wrong and here's how to fix it" fairly obviously without having to play the "now what reason lost me the game THIS time" game. Which seems like it would be really useful for all skill levels.

I think for a game like PA, it'd be damn useful if there was some indication that wasting resources, particularly metal, was bad. This is something that usually ends up being the biggest difference between newbies and pros.

For instance if net income is negative, the numbers turn red, and when it's positive they turn green. How about something simple like if when storage is filled but you still have a positive income (ie - wasting resources), the net income number turns yellow to signify caution?

Heck, maybe when net income is negative, it shouldn't turn red? People generally would want net income to be negative most of the time anyway.

The biggest feedback issue I can point out with a streaming economy is that when you are overspending, your only penalty is time wasted. That you are spending more time building units/buildings than you would take if your economy was healthier isn't actually a problem if your opponent is doing the same. This means that, unlike an immediate spending economy, your only limitation is your opponent, and their capitalization on your mistake can be quite delayed if it comes at all.

The first solution that comes to mind is to use a build timer for construction that shows a par time (what it would take if no resource proration was happening, given the amount of buildpower being used) and an actual time, so there would be an indication that you actually are slowing down.

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=43825
Here are some of mine and knights ideas, to make it easier learning this game.
Build in guides and good tutorials, aswell as viewtopic.php?f=61&t=43949
Matchmaking vs AI could help you.

I am really surprised after reading about your experiences in Starcraft 2, they probably have the best online ranking system of any RTS out there. I had a rough start as well, but ended up in the gold league after playing a ladder afterall.
However I agree with your post, mistakes in Starcraft 2 are much less forgiving than a game on a much bigger scale like supcom or TA.

Get supply blocked in SC2? oooh **** wait 30 secs before being able to do anything... lol

Only if you're above average. I thought it was great as well, until I watched my girlfriend play (she's quite below average). It took her a lot of games to get placed right, because her ranking was dropping pretty slow despite being mauled every game.

The game should downgrade players faster, especially at the start of their carreer.

As i started to play, it was pretty rough to, therefore i only played 2v2, 3v3 etc, but after some practice, i felt it was ok.
Maybe its true that You shouldnt be to much under average, but you will get downgraded fairly fast if you loose 10 games in a row(at the start of career).
As long as you know what you are doing, the rating system should work quite fine.(only if u are even worst than bronze league average, it wont work)

Half the people playing the game are below average :roll:

And it turns out you aren't downgraded all that fast. Asking someone to play 10 matches knowing they'll lose is already pretty bad (most people will give up after 3 hours of being stomped with no chance of winning, and I don't blame any of them) but after 10 matches, you're not low enough yet if you're really new to the whole RTS genre. You'll need to lose 20, maybe 25 matches. Few people will play that long if they lose constantly.

And as long as you know what you're doing... these people don't. That's why they're so far below average. They have a lot left to learn, and the game wasn't very conductive to letting them learn on their own level. It expects everyone to be familiar with at least the first Starcraft, or some other competetive RTS game, right from the start.

Although I think they're improving in that regard with their new gameplay modes for starters in heart of the swarm, and that's probably a very good idea.

In most RTS games you have the tools to analyze a game and why you lost it. I'm not sure how this whole "don't want to waste my time with replays" works with "playing 10 30min games i loose anyways because i have no idea what i am doing". You could start a game of SupCom with the same BO every time and still do well. Knowledge on how to play game properly isn't hard to obtain. It might be hard to execute, but skill comes from repetition and knowing what you did wrong to avoid doing it wrong next time.

It's like crashing a car 10 times because you passed a red light. Unless you bother to identify your fault (driving pass a red light), you will crash more cars.
There's a difference between casual players, who will play the game once in a while, and lazy people, not willing to invest a single minute to improve their chances and ultimately their own fun.

You don't have to aim for MLG over 9k elo high level play. But if you don't bother at all it's probably just a waste of your time and the guys whom you playing with.

Let me clarify a few points:

Most of the negative responses here are directed at me personally. I know that I can go for help in the forums, read guides, watch replays, etc. In fact, I did for SupCom2. But I also know my own reluctance to do so, and I know that people like me (that is, people at my own skill level) will be equally reluctant, and maybe they won't even know that they can. If everyone at my skill level gets frustrated and leaves, then I have no choice but either become a hardcore player, or leave with them.

The sense of entitlement you picked up from the OP is actually pretty insightful. I didn't notice that myself. It's not right but you're going to get a lot of that from people like me, and I have a feeling that I represent a population that has the potential to play PA a lot. Remember, all that most people have seen of the game is a Kickstater trailer which shows a bunch of explosions and a planet getting asteroid-ed. That's an exciting idea and a lot of casual players are going to think it looks fun. You guys are excited about a hardcore RTS, but most people are excited about a game where they get to destroy planets. And it would be cruel to dump them into the masochistic "expect to lose your first few dozen games" environment some fans are describing, especially since this is a game with an emphasis on multiplayer and no campaign.

People like that want to have fun. It can be fun to lose the first few games as long as you're making some progress. But the first win is crucial, and if I don't get it within a few matches, I'm going to start losing hope that I can ever compete. The 10 games of Starcraft I mentioned is actually dedicated for a casual gamer. Assuming 30 minute games, that's 5 hours of clobbering (yay i can do math) - not many people can put up with that.

Looking past the huge rant of the OP, I really just want some visual cues as to when I'm making rookie mistakes, and I don't want to be forced to consult external resources just to compete at the bottom rung of the ladder.

I must admit that i feel similar:

I play games for fun. some of my friends go all psychological and try to predict everything i do and counter it and account for counter-counters.

I don't. I enter a game, play for my fun. if i loose, i loose. if i win, HELL YEA. If i loose by a ridiculous amount, i check the replay for a bit. if i see he plants down 2x the size of my base in half the time, the other guy is better and i quit watching after 2 minutes and go play the next round.

I understand some people love to analyze and theorize and try and perfect their game to the max. I don't. This is why i quit Starcraft 2: it's not a game. It's a number crunch. There are a handful of strategies that work. Replicate those strategies and you win.

I play my games for fun, i like Supcom because i enjoy the idea of big armies. I also love the flow economy. And i love experimentals.

I'm pretty sure that with RTS you have to consult external resources. I have yet to see an RTS that had a proper tutorial. They teach you how to move your camera and place stuff. But how to actually play is really hard to demonstrate in a tutorial, especially if the game changes over the course of multiple updates.

So what once was considered good in the tutorial might just be completely out of date couple of weeks/months down the line (i.e.I think the FA tutorial tells you to start with 2 power-gens and 2 mass-extracotrs but in real play everybody is starting with Factory first)

I'm hoping that PA wont have such huge problems with "why did my zergs just die against those Marines" as we only have one unit pool. So it should be pretty obvious that your scissors are fighting against rocks, or that you lack anti air etc.

I played RTS games for years before consulting external resources. Hell, I played RTS games for years before we even got internet. It's certainly possible, as long as you're grouped in with people who are just messing around like you are, and not going in with a "MUST WIN RAAARRRRGHHH" attitude that's pretty prevalent these days.

A seperation of leagues could go a long way in that regards, too. Not just seperating by skill, but also by interest in winning vs messing around. There'll probably be a bunch of game modes for that pretty soon, just have to advertise them properly.

Well with much under average, i mean like the worst 5-10%
At the start, if u know u getting stomped all time, u could loose like 15 games in a row on porpuse(just leave at start)
With to know what they doing i mean, knowing the basics, you shouldnt just start with multiplayer, that wont work in ANY game. First playing tutorials or campain would help. Seriously it doesnt matter what game, nor how good the matchmaking is, if you start with multiplayer right after you installed the game, u wont be able to do anything. It is pretty normal to loose the first games if u dont know the game(or similar ones). Name one game where u can stomp w/o knowing what you are doing

What about endgame statistics to motivate you looking at your replay? Like "Hey, you just spend 1/5th of the mass of your opponent" popping up or so, which are simple statistical stuff, but which would relay you to some background chart regarding production etc.? I think this would make identifying some hints on what went wrong (average army size, production and all this kind of stuff?).

It would at least tell people, that something is wrong with their style of play. If they are however unwilling to invest like a few minutes to start thinking "Did I do something wrong?", I can hardly see good help for these players, unless someone is willing to take them by their hands, which requires a lot of motivated personnel.

I've played a number of shooters where this worked quite well. I won 3 matches of Shoot Mania in a row the first day I played

The problem is, most of these people aren't interested in finding and disconnecting from 15 games in a row. People who do that generally are already quite devoted to the game, which means they're not in the bottom.
Also, you shouldn't make them find help, you should give it to them. Retaining new, unexperienced players is quite a difficult (but important) task. They're the dedicated players of next month. But only if you make sure they keep playing and don't tell them "figure it out or leave"

Maybe some couching system like in dota 2?

Some might say that you can't teach players to play well by using in-game resources. I'm more ambitious than that. As a bit of a game designer myself (mostly an app designer, but I develop some games as a hobby), I see it as a challenge. How can you make a game that actually teaches you how to play well, while still being hard to master?

Unfortunately, as I'm not on the Uber team (and am nowhere near qualified), the best I can do is post suggestions and rants on the forums

So how can PA address the problem you mentioned and avoid teaching habits that will become outdated as the metagame changes? You're right about the tutorial: it's only good for teaching the interface, not strategy. You should be able to learn simple strategy within the game itself. The example you gave of the dominant build order is a tricky one; you almost have to lean on replays for that.

Statistics are always interesting. However, most RTS games already have these and still suffer from frustrating problems. While it can communicate that something is wrong with a player's style of play, I think it's more likely to be interpreted by a casual gamer as "I'm just not good at this". Careful, constructive design is crucial.

Here's an idea that I got while writing this post. What if there was a replay tutorial?
The first time you lose a multiplayer match, the end-game screen will point you to the "Watch Replay" button (which should be promiment in any case), saying something along the lines of "Find out how to win next time".

When you click on it, it will teach you the controls of the replay interface just like a normal tutorial, and give you tips as to what you should be watching for. "Watch your opponent's build order. Knowing what to build early in the game will help get your base running faster." "Watch your opponent's economy. Are they stalling? Are they wasting resources? How much do they let their storage drain before backing off?"
"How big was your opponent's army before he or she attacked?"
"Still not sure how you can improve? Post your replay on the forums and ask for advice! [Instructions on how to do that]"

The idea needs some refinement, but I think it fits everyone's goals of helping casual players not only learn the strategy of the game, but also teach them how to learn more strategy.