Don't forget the casuals!

Fair enough, I have no intention of telling you what you should or should not enjoy.

But I would say that it does make it quite a bit harder to enjoy a game where, for example, artillery is literally completely useless if the opponent box-selects their army and spams move commands to its left and right at 200 apm.

Tell me about it! :lol:

Still tons of fun, especially coming from a former CNC player who could only dream if doing that kinda crap!

I agree, ledarsi it seems like you think that casual players are idiotic noobs.

Um. Wat?

All this game feature causes is "never build artillery"- to say nothing of its ridiculousness. What do you mean you could only dream of doing that?

There's no shortage of these things in SupCom 2 to the point that the game is practically unplayable.


And I should think casual players are noobs, it's sort of an obvious consequence. They don't play to win, and thus they will lose to someone who does. Within the context of the game this makes them weak players, but they might be quite intelligent people.

Are you saying you built artillery for the sole purpose of killing land units? And playing casually doesn't mean they don't play to win, in every game, people will play to win, or else what's the point in playing a game? Casual players just like having fun while playing to win, without the stress of serious competition.

CNC didn't have physics engine, so I was making a joke.....trying to lighten the mood.

Also being a casual player only makes you a compeditive noob, but not a noob in general.

Doesn't mean we play the objective any less, we just don't keep up with the meta and so suffer from it when the people from the meta deside to unleash it on the casual players and somehow think that is fair game.

So yeah, we might be noobs to you but that doesnt mean that anyone who is is undeserving of their say on these forums, and nor does it grant you the right to disrigard what some of the people here think and say just becuse you have decided to label them.

Ah, the physics engine, that makes sense.

I'm not suggesting your opinion of what is fun in a game is based on your strength as a player. Just that SupCom 2 was a casual game that was fundamentally borked if you took a serious look at it.


Alright, let me paint a picture for you of what was the 100% maximally effective strategy in SupCom 2 for quite a long time.

Start game. Build three research stations. Run ACU directly toward enemy spawn. Do NOT build mexes, factories, or anything else that you are "supposed" to build.

Observe enemy opening, and select ACU upgrades. Usually take ACU veterancy (+10% HP, +10% damage) and basic main line ACU upgrade. This means the enemy ACU will lose badly if he tries to fight you. Every shot of yours deals 10% more damage, and you have 10% more HP (and faster regen).

If there is water, stand half submerged in it. You can still shoot, but your ACU cannot be targeted by anything except torpedoes (yes, this really was a thing).

Kill enemy opening. Every structure, burn it to the ground. Use kills to further upgrade ACU. And there is nothing the other player can do about it unless they also built research stations and got ACU upgrades. In which case the game is a tie.

In the likely event that they built anything else, they lose. If at any point your ACU gets in range of theirs, they cannot escape because your ACUs walk at exactly the same speed. And yours has more damage and HP.

Oh, and by the way, the ACU for the UEF was way, way stronger than the Cybran/Aeon ACU's for quite a long time, and vastly more so with advanced upgrades. So always pick the UEF ACU to do this.

This strategy was, for an unacceptably long time, the absolute strongest single build you could possibly do. Does this sound like a strategy game to you?

Actually the two air factory opening could beat this pretty bad. The acu doesn't have anti air until upgraded and even then it's not the best anti air out there. Target the unguarded research stations and the engineers, than te line commander isn't too hard to take down. The problem was spotting it quick enough.

[/quote]Alright, let me paint a picture for you of what was the 100% maximally effective strategy in SupCom 2 for quite a long time.

Start game. Build three research stations. Run ACU directly toward enemy spawn. Do NOT build mexes, factories, or anything else that you are "supposed" to build.

Observe enemy opening, and select ACU upgrades. Usually take ACU veterancy (+10% HP, +10% damage) and basic main line ACU upgrade. This means the enemy ACU will lose badly if he tries to fight you. Every shot of yours deals 10% more damage, and you have 10% more HP (and faster regen).[/quote]

Or you know, just build a PD to ward off the enemy commander, this is in no way a full proof plan.

Not in any of the games I have played, but may have been a thing in an earlier patch.

You might have well said /wingame.

A commander rush is eaisly detected and beaten so if it was the domonant stratigy then really who was the one was was the noob?

Rushing for air beats this, turret pushes beat this, turteling beats this......Turteling!

Uhhh yes, becuse what you just described was a stratigy, and it in no way is the best one out there, not by a long shot.

Frankly your inexperiance with SC2 just goes to prove that your reasoning for calling the game bad is the fact that you really didn't know how to play, so infact are just a noob as you insist on calling me!

Oh I am well aware that the ACU rush is counterable. However there is no denying that it is a totally blind cheese that wins outright against a very large portion of the player base, no reactive counterplay possible. Only metagame proactive counterplay.

I played a lot of SupCom 2 for a few months after it was released. I was unashamedly one of the trolls that ACU rushed for 500 games just to prove it was dominant so they would fix the damn game. Or at least just that one thing. The game was honestly FUBAR, but I was in denial about it as I had just spent a chunk of change on it.

My point is that casual players A) will not invent builds like this, and B) will not see this as a fundamental game design flaw (upgrades do not cost resources). They will have a "gentleman's code" not to play like this, or do "kk no rush 20min" or similar nonsense to get around fundamental game design flaws.

And you are sorely mistaken if you think that's the only broken thing, it's just the one that springs to mind as the most obvious that should have been fixed pre-alpha, much less months after release.

The game should have been designed without research. And if research was non-negotiable, it MUST have a resource cost to require all players to build economy.

Thats laughable, I have a friend who does that as his primary stratigy, and only really plays once a week!

Yeah.....some players do indeed play like that but just like in SupCom FA they really are the minority, and so painting us with the same brush proves that you arn't really dicussing this from a point of view beyond that.

Yeah, no.

What the game needed was to remove the passive reserch generation for the commander and the reserch stations/converter.

Have the upgrades for units be visable when applyed, and only be applyed to new units produced instad of the ones in the field.

That would have fixed the reserch.

Your Honor, in the light of the preceding admission against party interest, the prosecution rests.


On a more serious note- "casual" as used colloquially might translate into lack of frequency, like being a "casual golfer." But in game/system parlance, you can be a "hardcore" gamer and not actually play much. It's an attitude, not the number of hours logged. However players with that attitude typically do play a LOT to practice and become stronger players.

Then how do you define it then?

By actual ability to play the game?

By hours spent playing?

Or somthing else?

There is no research. This was confirmed a very long time ago. You seem to have gone from saying the game should be designed for the competitive, to ranting about the problems with supreme commander 2. I would think the only difference between casual and competitive is the stress.

I said it- it's an attitude. Min-maxing, doing things as fast as possible, as efficiently as possible, figuring out the game, being the best, and thus winning.

The way I see it, casual players are playing because stuff happening is entertaining. So-called "hardcore" gamers are playing because excellence is aspirationally appealing, and inventing new things that work better and crushing people with them is its own reward.


And I am 100% aware that PA will not have research (thankfully)- I was referring to the way SupCom 2 should have been designed.

What about those in between?

Guess they are just players.

In between the attitudes?

I think you are reading my previous post as being in between in terms of ability, and my point was ability is pretty much irrelevant.

A player might have the attitude of a hardcore gamer and not actually be that strong (yet- that player will be motivated and will likely improve fast). In fact, every time a new game is released, all the hardcore gamers are in this position of being really, really bad at a game, but still having the attitude of aspiring to play it perfectly. Eventually it will get figured out, and players will develop, and eventually get labeled the so-called "hardcore" resident community of that game.

Conversely, I suppose it is theoretically possible to have a player who is by sheer luck so gifted at a particular game that they could be a very strong player despite only playing it with a casual mindset. But getting strong at a game usually takes some work, and I rather doubt there is anyone gifted in such a specific manner.

The mindset of aspiring to perfect play is the best short encapsulation I can think of for the hardcore gamer attitude. Absence of this attitude makes a player casual- they're playing to interact with the system, not to master it.

I got to Masters in Starcraft for a while without ever paying attention to the meta, does that count?

Not to mention that I like playing to win very much, but I'd rather play to win in a way that makes the game enjoyable, which means I tend to search for the best way to win that is still fun. Where does that rank on the casual - hardcore scale?

Also, to everyone, don't underestimate the number of casual players out there. They seem outnumbered, because they don't show up to the hardcore area. They're all the guys playing singleplayer and vs AI games where you never see them.

Bros, bros! I already said dumbing down the core game is the wrong way to appeal to casuals. The core game should be as deep as possible. The best way is to have easy mod tools (no coding required), so there will be lots of fun custom maps. And also easy distribution, ie no Uber lockdown of any kind. Let modders copyright infringe all they want, have all the adult content they want, and let them have the rights to their creations.