Do we need tech levels?

Its exponential not because of the upgrades, but because of the amount you can build.

Think of it like mitosis:
1
2
4
8
16
32
64
124
248
496

and so on.

Exponential because the amount increases in a curved fashion.

What? I mean, you can build constant amount of mexes and it depends on map, and it's a linear grow in all it's glory. [output of one mex]*[amount of mexes].Yeah, with upgrade of all mexes to tier 2 all the output is tripled and again tripled when all mexes upgraded to t3. Let's make make it 2, 6, 10. It's "linear" now, it doesn't affect T2 as it is. Does it help with any problem? Not really. You may just raise units cost as well.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/exponent ... ential.htm

That is not linear growth.

Yeah. It's also exponential. Stop pissing semantics. Supcom has exponential tiers. This is not debatable. If you don't believe it, go to the wiki and count how many zeroes each tier gets. It's all there.

The gulf between small scale and large scale tiers can be so incredible that units are incapable of interacting on a meaningful level. Supcom showed that, while cute, a 75HP LAB has no place on a field sporting 9300HP assault bots. This 50 page thread has already gone full circle multiple times trying to explain not only WHY it is bad for gameplay, but why it is not necessary at all.

Given Uber's limited budget, tell us WHY should they design a unit where its only purpose is to exist for a couple minutes before being replaced by a larger unit that does the exact same thing? Because that does not make any sense.

It seems the problem is on your end. Try using the same language that everyone else uses, because it's wasting everyone else's time.

My argument about TA being also exponential is correct than?

Ok-ok, if you say so.

I'm suprised by this fact no less than you. Why people always trying to explain obvious things nobody arguing with, but evade direct questions about things that are not obvious.

Because it adds depth to early game stage, expanding possible early development techniques. Without it only possible options for early game would be "rush" or "turtle" (in bad meaning of "turtle" word - i.e. loosing technique). In other words, if you can't rush to some tech point, when you can build small force of units that will obliterate big force of units made by your opponent - then your only anti-rush option is rush back.

About limited budget. There is no need (while this is prefferable) to design completely new unit for each intermediate level. You may go starcraft way, by just adding number to some stat - that's bad for L&F. You may go supcom2 way, by adding procedural differences like more barrels or increase units in size - that's not so good for L&F either, but better than simple number. You may actually design one version for most advanced unit and then strip it down for lower versions. I'm going to model one tank to illustrate that when I would have time. Together with size changes and maybe different colored projectiles, it would be good enough for L&F while being easier to model (As it's more like LODs, lower versions could be done from higher version automatically by removing artist-marked parts).

From gamedesign level, you should pay most attention to highest level of units - that's where real scale belongs and that's the level where most of time game is done. Slight imbalance in lower tiers is affordable and could be fixed by community afterwards.

But yes, efficiency is not required, it's just nice addition. Grouping is required. There should be no more than 7 units per UI tab. Never.. That's my point and nobody ever explained me WHY we should stick with hardcoded two groups with 6 units in first and 20+ in second.

Oh, sorry for to talking to you as to mathematically educated man =). Small lecture: you can't refer anything as linear or exponential unless you have possibility of theoretical or practical infinite grow of base parameter.

For economics, tiers are not base parameter, nor they are infinite. Mexes (or, more generally, resource stations) count is.
Therefore
1. Linear economics. With each new station you got constant increase in your income. You have 3 mexes? You have +6. 4 mexes? +8. That's what FA/TA use. Every strategy use it.
2. Exponential economics. With each new station you got your last income doubled. Or tripled. Like 1 station? +2. 2 stations? +4, 3 stations? +12. 4 stations? +48. Never heard about that ever used.

Saying that FA has exponential economy is just misleading lie. You may say that is has exponential teching system, which is mathematically incorrect, but at least not logical lie (cause it really looks like being just tripled each time). But this is not a flaw of the system, so you rather shall say that FA has exponential gaps between tiers, cause it is a fault of particular system implementation, not system itself.

What argument about it being exponential?

You said that TA's economy is also like FA/FAF's economy.

Considering how your arguments has gone from tech levels to whether or not these games had an exponential economy, you are effectively changing the topic because your arguments aren't working out.

(And this is on top of the fact that FA's economy is the same as TA's economy, so if your saying that TA's economy is exponential, then FA's is too, making your argument Null).

I'm pretty sure that what people mean when they say that FA has an exponential economy is that the FA economy has exponential growth which it does. With T1 mexes the economy grows exponentially until all available t1 mexes has been capped. With T2 mexes the economy can grow exponentially with a lower effeciency until all t1 mexes are upgraded. With t3 mexes and metal storages the economy can grow with a lower efficiency until all mexes are upgraded. With metal fabricators the economy can grow exponentially until the unit cap is reached. The effeciency is diminshing rather than increasing.

As for teching I think you should look at effeciency which should be valued for cost. T2 and T3 power generators are more effecient sources of income for metal spent compared to t1 power generators therefore obsoleting lower tech as effecient energy sources. In this case the effeciency is increasing at higher tech levels. Whether or not this increase is exponential, linear or logarithmic doesn't matter so much if the effeciency gains are prevalent.
The same applies to strength of combat units. If the effeciency for cost increases with higher tech levels then higher tech units will obsolete lower tech units for sure. Its' not so much about increase of stats but rather about effeciency.
I'm gonna let effeciency of combat units be undefined but effeciency of higher tech units should not like in the case of the Loyalist simply being a better combat unit than all lower Cybran tech.

Post you've replied consists of three parts. Two of them about economy. One of them is about teching. And it covers it all. Funny enough, you decided to skip that part, including underlined sentence for most TL;DR-ish people.

I'm just giving up. You guys doing everything just to keep talking on high-level of "TA style", "SupCom style" while I'm trying to convince you going deeper and dissect this styles into components to acknowledge what is real problem and what is real success. I'm sorry, but that's just dumb. We are not making sequel neither for FA, neither for TA, why the hell we shall stick with one of two broken systems?

Why not try to understand what is broken and to make non-broken system, preferably with most possible strategy depth. But no, you are insisting on discussing "FA got exponential tech/eco/whatever and that's why it's bad. TA hasn't such thing, that's why it's great". Just forget about TA, FA. There no such games, ever. You're living in world where minesweeper is most strategic game ever. So what now?

So, now you are telling me, that increase of income with same number of resource stations is efficiency decrease. Interesting. What next?

Right. I'm trying to make you understand, that unit obsoletion is not the problem. Starcraft have even more radical efficiency upgrade system, it got more efficient units for same cost. And nobody talks about unit going obsolete. Efficiency == obsoletion. It's just matter of how you will implement upgrade so you won't end up with 3/4 of your units unusable.

That helps to dampen the effect of exponential growth. In fact, lots of things in Supcom worked to reduce the effects of an exponential economy. It helps, but that's it. Extraction points are not themselves exponential; it's the ability to constantly reinvest in the economy that does it.

This statement makes no sense. Starcraft units don't become obsolete, because every unit has a role, unique micro, strengths and weaknesses that no other unit can compare with. The game is focused on the nuances between units, and it does that very well.

In Supcom, a Tier 2 tank does not gain any special weaknesses. It does not gain any special strengths. It does not gain any new roles, and its micro stays pretty much the same. The only thing "new" about the unit is that it costs more and has more power, but not quite as much as zerging the lesser tier. That is true for EVERY SINGLE TIER UPGRADE. That brings up a very big question of "So what"? Has the game gained anything by adding these units? Not really.

In fact, the only thing that really happens is the game's scale ends up reduced. A hundred tiny units become 20 medium units, which become 5 big units, or half of a super unit. That's collapsing the unit count as the game advances, which is the exact opposite of the dev goal of [lots of robots blowing up]. So why would Uber implement something that directly detracts from that vision?

What? A SC upgrade affects all viable units. It effectively renders the non upgraded version obsolete. Upgrades do not cause other units to stop being viable, but it can make or break a strategy.

What the ****? No. Stop. Just stop. Get off the forums, go back to FA, and screencap your economy every 2 minutes. Then come back and show us what happens.

The effeciency for cost from higher tiers of mexes is diminishing rather than increasing. I thought this would be clear from the context. For example T1 mexes are more than 8 times as effecient for mass cost compared to T2 mexes. Mass fabricators are less effecient than mexes but on the other hand mass fabricators get more effecient in higher techs as energy sources become more effecient and adjency bonuses become higher.

Upgraded marines does not obsolete unupgraded marines because unupgraded marines become upgraded marines so Starcraft is not a good analogy in this case. Cybran Loaylists obsolete all lower tech cybran combat units as main combat units because Loaylists are simply better for cost. You can argue that the route to obtaining the most costeffecient combat unit contains alot of interesting strategy to overcome the teching cost but I think that there are several other interesting ways to escalate a conflict. If you have read this thread you should know that I am not alone in thinking that combat unit obsoletion and monoculture battles are a bad thing.
What you mean by "Efficiency == obsoletion" I don't know because higher tech/tier units can still have different roles without being generally more effecient than lower tech/tier units.

You still haven't answered this.

When you upgrading marine attack damage, un-upgraded marine is obsoleted

So, you still didn't get what is "efficiency upgrade"? It doesn't add new roles, it's just make old roles kick more asses per second.

That's bad implementation. StarCraft doesn't have this effect, while still utilizing similar efficiency upgrade system. It's just "you should not make your MK2 tank magnitude more powerful than MK1 tank". That's only fact we may extract from FA experience. SupCom2 have similar issue - overpowered efficiency upgrades compared to everything else.

I really don't understand how you are able to answer differently to me repeating same thing in one post.
Also

You guys are on same side (against me), but have opposite opinions =). Probably just because non of you actually understands against what he is arguing and what he is trying to prove.

But, finally, @bobules got my point, still he doesn't recognize it. StarCraft is efficiently obsolete all unupgraded units. It's just replace all existing units with new versions.

Consider replacing all your Mantis bots with Rhino tanks upon T2 upgrade in FA. It will be the same. And no "obsoletion" problem.

StarCraft utilizes very similar system, it's just implemented differently. So, problem isn't in system itself, or it's idea. Problem is in implementation.

Oh, crap, man... It's just crap. Really, what exactly you are trying to prove? Do you understand it? And now, what I'm trying to prove? Do you understand it? Hint: no, no. Maybe my english is terrible, I apologize, but not that much. You are just not paying attention.

I already told BulletMagnet, that "efficiency for cost" is nonsense. As your eco grows, price is growing too, that's ok. But this breaks all your "efficiency for cost" logic. There is just "efficiency" and there is "cost". They are not hard-linked.
But, bobules is right,

That's also an answer for your last question, BTW.

Tiers are not efficiency. FA just messed things up. Tiers are just groups, locked initially and then unlocked as your eco grows. They are made to make learning curve not too steep.

FA tiers contain both efficiency upgrades to previous units + new units.

Loaylist do not obsolete t1/t2 arty, it's done by t3 arty (partly, t2 arty is magnificent anyway). Loyalist is t3 "tank". It designed to obsolete any unit with same role ("tank") below. FA problem is that it's not hiding old units when you are upgraded to new tier.

It should have been implemented as two tabs (basic units, special units) per factory and with each factory upgrade, some units became replaced and new added. If you also replace all units on battlefield now AND auto-upgrade all factories - gameplay problem is solved, no more obsoletion!

Actually, that's exactly what everyone wants: separate units to basic and advanced, with only most efficient variants available. Most of people wrongly think that this is somehow preventing efficiency upgrades and tiers (that's different things - tiers and efficiency upgrades) though.

I'm arguing that's incorrect. We may have separation, efficiency upgrades and tiers all together. I also argues that tiers are required if you have too much basic or too much advanced units, to prevent steep learning curve. Tiers do not take much effort to implement.

Question about "why we should spend resources on efficiency upgrades if most of game is done with most upgraded units" is correct, but that's other question.

I did, actually. But I'll repeat myself. Why not? I'm doing this for last 6 pages anyway...

Starcraft implementation is incompatible with streaming eco, as streaming eco has tendency to grow. Starcraft eco has tendency to shrink (as resources are spendable). That's why you can't just upgrade units without increasing their cost.

In starcraft each crystal you spent is precious. If it's wrongly spent - you lost your game. TA/FA is much more resilient to errors. It's not matter of resources, it's matter of time. If you spent few seconds in wrong direction, you may still recover.

So in StarCraft strategy decision is less about "when" to update, but more about "in what order". In FA/TA quesion is about "when" to update.

Steaming eco is about "when", not "in what order", as you may upgrade everything at once.

But research stations, if proper explanation is to be found, are viable enough. Actually, I already suggested that. We may implement that:

1. There is only two factories per type (land/air/naval/orbital/whatever): basic and advanced.
2. Initially they have 5 basic units, 5 advanced units.
3. Initially there is basic count of structures you may build, no matter by ACU or by engi.
4. There is "tech station" structure to be build initially.
5. When tech station is built, new structures, new advanced units are added. Units and structures are not separated into different groups in UI. They are just appended to common list.
6. Tech station is actually research station, you may upgrade it to new levels, adding more structures and advanced units (that's tiers without efficiency, anti-steep learning curve). If it's got destroyed - you lost all this options.
7. Tech station may have efficiency upgrades, that make all new units more costly and more efficient, no matter are they basic or advanced. You also may select existing unit and tell it to upgrade itself (for a cost, of course). Same with structures - all new structures are more costly, but more efficient, and existing structures may be upgraded. Factories are also upgradeable, but this only increase building rate, nothing else.
8. Tech station may have options upgrades, that add new advanced units. Like amphibious upgrade replaces all current designs with amphibious variants, if that's possible. But this is more starcraft-ish variant.

I think that something like (in spirit of) 1-6 should be done anyway. In other words - we need basic => advanced separation and unlockable groups without efficiency increase, no matter how they are implemented. My variant is just most simple.

Efficiency upgrades (7) are nice addition to early game and, if properly implemented, don't require too much additional effort on design and balance.

Options upgrades (8) are... I don't like them, actually, but they have their use in assaulting specific planet types. Also, some special things, like metal planet reactivation could be done via teching station interface as well.

If anyone care about explanation: more advanced units and more advanced structures require more complex and more precise production, which require more computational power than one single unit or structure may bear. So there is special structure that do this computations "out-of-source". To handle even more advanced computations it should be upgraded.

This is not necessarily true. Say that both player A and B upgrade armor and damage of their marines so that the damage is increased 1 for every shot and the armor reduces the damage from every shot with 1. The marine vs marine battle is unnaffected.

It is not the same. The Rhino tank is slower than Mantis bots. 4 mantis, which is roughly equal for cost, will in most situations destroy a Rhino tank. This is a typical example where a higher tech unit is not generally more effecient for cost but more effecient in some circumstances.

This is very different from Starcraft upgrades where an upgraded marine is simply a better unit than an unupgraded marine.

"Upgraded marines does not obsolete unupgraded marines because unupgraded marines become upgraded marines." The thing is. You can't have both upgraded marines and unupgraded marines which you have already said yourself. This might be semantics but from this follows that marines doesn't obsolete themselves. Their stats become "better" from the upgrade. Even if 1 player has better upgraded marines than the enemy it doesn't mean that the other players marines have become obsoleted. Maybe the player without upgrades have 4 marines when the other player only have 2 because he had to pay for the upgrade.

Effeciency for cost is very important in an RTS. If you could build unlimited amounts of T1 mexes then you would not make higher tier mexes because they are not as effecient. T1 mexes allows your economy to grow faster than T2 mexes. In this case "Effeciency" means "mass produced per second" while "cost" means "mass, energy and buildtime required to make the mex".

Arbitrary putting units into tiers I can be in favor of. Like the distcinction you made between T3 and T4 in SupCom. It does reduce the learning curve abit to not have an overwhelming amount of units in just 1 tab if you separate them into meaningful categories.

However the way to lock and if you should lock theese tiers/categories is offcourse another big balance discussion.

Cybran Medusa, T1 arty, have 30 range. Loyalist have 25. The range difference is really small and Loaylists can hunt down the slow artillery easily. The Loyalist can deflect tactical missiles so Loaylists are almost immune to Mobile missile launchers and renders them highly inneffective in a standoff.

I highly doubt that everybody wants that. I don't want units to become obsolete. Only having the most effecient variants available implies that some units will simply not be effecient for cost to be viable. There is a big difference between being more effecient in a certain situation than being more effecient than previous tier units.
A superheavy tank can be viable not because it beats its' cost in medium tanks alone but because in a cramped situation not enough medium tanks can get in range to kill the superheavy tank for cost.

Tiers that simply divide units into different categories I am in favor of. How to lock units and tiers away that are not yet suitable can be discussed.
I'm against effeciency upgrades in the way that they make a unit stronger without adding to that units induvidual price.

When we say that FA has an exponential economy we mean that the FA economy grows exponentially without running out of resources. A streaming economy is simply an economy where income and expenditures are a steady stream.

Even the economy in Starcraft grows exponentially. As you get more harvesters mining minerals, your income per minute increases and you can make more and more builders. You can then expand and start mining there and make builders at a faster a faster rate and expand even faster. The big difference is that the mineral patches run out. In SupCom the mass patches never run out and you can build mass fabs and power generators until you hit the unit cap.

I agree about your conclusion but not your analysis.
Timing attacks are very important in Starcraft. In Starcraft the buildorder are very important for what Strategy you are going to execute.
In FA if you go air first and make a bomber to bomb enemy engineers might give you an advantage if you are succesful but is hardly going to win you the game. Likewise sending out some early Light Assault Bots instead of making an engineer can let you kill some enemy engineers but it is only giving you a small advantage if you are successful.

I think your implementation of upgrades and tiers could work.

Would you agree to this?
An increase of 50% of HP on a main frontline unit should increase the induvidual unit price atleast by 25%.
An increase of 100% on damage on a kiting unit should increase the induvidual unit price with atleast 50%?

I'm sorry for skipping, I may argue with some of your points considering FA and StarCraft (and agree with others, as you pointed out some of my errors, just to be honest), but as we got into agreement, more or less, about general points (about unit locking), it's all irrelevant, so I'll just skip.

About implementation and (arguably possible!) efficiency upgrades.

It's good to see, that we are also on same side about how efficiency should be handled (price should increase), if should be at all.

I can't agree or disagree with particular numbers as we still don't know the resource system of PA (is it local or not).

Particular combinations are subject for playtesting and balancing. Basic idea is not to make upgrades overpowered, so you are not required to follow efficiency path ASAP, but to make them powerful enough, so they are may really tip the scales (otherwise they would not be considered as viable). So, my opinion that upgraded unit should be slightly better than number of unupgraded versions for same price.

Second problem is to make efficiency upgrades themselfs lengthy and costly enough so you will have to play with each level of efficiency for a while. That's about balance again. Can't be really done without more information about scale and economics.

And third technical problem is to how implement unit changes to maintain different L&F without putting too much of effort into intermediate phases. I suggested to make units changing in size, change color and size of projectile/beam and make a few switchable layers of additional details, preferably changing top-view shape and appearance of unit (like adding red bulky rocket launchers on top or removing/scaling tracks for tanks). That's could be tested already.

All right. I found the problem. The reason that everyone is in contention with Nightnord, is because he is no longer talking about a successor to Total Annihilation. He is trying to make an arbitrary upgrade system for a game that is meant to represent battle between pinnacles of technology.

It's not about the idea being good or bad. The problem is that what you propose is not in the spirit of the game.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TotalA showed an initial system where units were separated not so much by cost as by role. Advanced units did not unquestionably destroy lesser units (although many mods have done otherwise), they instead opened up new options for battle. Superior options were more expensive, yes, but they didn't dominate the game world. Instead they added on to the previous options.

Supcom tried something different. New tiers helped to consolidate unit spam and suppress an exponential economy. It opened up new options as well, but the big issue is that a lot of units stepped on each other's toes along the way. New units took over the same role as lesser units, by using obscene changes in scale that were arguably unnecessary. It was more an issue of redundancy than anything else.

Supcom2 got rid of the fluff. Early game units became late game units, and more advanced roles became available as the game moved on. This is similar in spirit to how TotalA worked. But this was linked to a research system that sounds a LOT like what nightnord is proposing. It also came with a complete economic overhaul, towards an upfront payment system. The problem wasn't so much with it being good or bad. The problem was that it wasn't what people expected. It was simply a completely different game.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The question I have for nightnord, is why do you want to add these things? Adding complex features for complexity's sake is not good enough. Why does a player need tech research? Why do units need to become obsolete? How is the game being improved by adding these things? More importantly, can the same goals be accomplished in a simpler, more direct way?

Unit scaling can be addressed by tweaking the economy. Tech trees can be managed with infrastructure; on a simple level with factories, and a more complex level with generators and supporting units. The unit cannon is a prime example of how a high tech building can directly improve low tech units. Superior forces can be accomplished with sheer numbers, which is kind of the point of the game. Unit obsoletion is accomplished by taking the bare minimum of units needed for the game, and then adding units anyway. So why is something else needed?

I did answered that already. TotalA got too steep learning curve and to prevent that happening to PA we should somehow separate units into different groups and unlock them group-by-group. More sophisticated options more expensive and therefore need to be placed in higher group, unlocked on according level of economical development. That's enough to make TotalA system "good" for me. How exactly it could be implemented is another question, I suggested one solution - by building and upgrading single structure (no upgrades or researches. Just upgrade of structure itself). If you may come with another, simplier/more in-game spirit solution - cool! But I feel like that's simplest solution.

Last part is why we should think about groups now, not later. Or it will end up just as TotalA - tons of units and (relatively) zero community.

I never liked TotalA. For me, best RTS ever is SupCom. I'm trying to keep it's spirit, removing it's problems. And that's not only me. A hell lot of bakers never heard about TotalA and consider PA as "SupCom 2: reimplemented". For me, to keep spirit of SupCom we need upgrade system to keep early game more intesting. That's why I'm suggesting efficiency upgrades as simple addition to proposed unlock system. If you do care about gamewise rationale for that - I may provide one.

I don't understand why we shouldn't make a game a little bit more in-depth and more in-favor for great part of community if it doesn't take much effort to implement?

Anyway, I still don't understand why someone arguing against unlock system? That's essential part for promoting the game for masses and take almost zero effort to implement.

If I face palm any harder, I might die.

I'll cede that TotalA had a pretty steep learning curve. Part of this was due to lack of tutorial and somewhat vague in game help. But it was steep because it did things no other game did. Streaming resources are something that didn't happen before. Despite being a critical life skill, few people could understand it. Stuff like wreckage, 3-d terrain and simulated projectiles were all very new to the RTS franchise. Lets not forget the left-click interface. Every time I go back I have to relearn that.

A lot of those problems were all UI things. They had little to do with unit balance.

Supcom did a great deal to fix most of the UI issues. Unit icons and strategic zoom made large scale battles far easier to understand. Better commands and a more useful tutorial got players in the action much faster than before. And, well, modern players just have more experience with games in general.

One thing players don't have experience with is waging real time battle across worlds. The number of new options and potential issues are, quite frankly, immense. Why add more complexity to something that is already going to be complex? Is an upgrade or unit unlock system going to add to that? Why are players slogging through some stupid upgrade scheme for EVERY single planet? What happens when players want to invade, but can't use half of their units because they're locked out? And if it's something that you only do once and promptly forget for the rest of the game, why even have it at all?

For a scheme that seems simple, it certainly raises a lot of hard questions.

I dont remember TA being complicated at all, the streamlined resource system pretty much meant you can build faster and more efficiently since micromanagement didnt exist and the unlimited queue made it even easier. The steep learning curve is reflected in the multiplayer aspect of the game and not the gameplay itself.

Resource managing and expansion bases were something you could not learn offline cause no AI was hard enough, however it still showed what you should do in order to fund bigger armies and projects... but then again, that was rather obvious.
Wreckage was both a curse and a blessing, in Supcom it was an incredible economic boost.

Its not that "few people could understand it", it was that every guy had unique styles and often adopted multiple strategies, so it looked hard alrite. So many good ideas to choose from. The best thing you could do was watch replays later introduced by the SY Clan with the TADemo, but then it might have been too late for it.

All RTS are hard to play by definition, because it requires the player to find the most efficient way to destroy an opponent who's doing the same. Be it Starcrap, TA, SupCom1, SupCom2, CnC or Earth 21XX, all highly skilled players will look like gods to all newbies and of course discourage them, it even happens in games like Battlefield 3 :|

The idea that Total Annihilation had an impenetrable learning curve- or a steeper one than other RTS games is rubbish anyway. The first three ARM missions(of the Total Annihilation demo) did all they needed to do to immerse you into the command and control interface as well as the feel for what all your units are capable of. Streaming resources isn't much different from Westwood's Command & Conquer games' Tiberium economy, yet no one complains about those games. Really, for me it was just a matter of porting RTS experience from one game over to another.

Hard to play against veteran online players as a newbie, maybe, but this only matters if you care about online play in the first place. And even then, how is this experience any different from any other online game?