Pay to Win?

Does ryu have the same options as blanka? Street fighter is considered pretty damn balanced all things considered.

This thread is now quite long, and I'm gonna be honest: I haven't read much of it (but I will later).

I think one way of handling this such that the balance is not broken but the pledgers get their moneys worth (btw, I am a $100+ pledger and I would be fine if they were purely cosmetic... some awesome particle effects would be cool too ) is to do the following:

Make the pledger commanders different to the standard commander in both appearance and function.
Try hard to balance them.
Release more commander types, which either need to be dropped/unlocked or cheap cheap microtransaction (<$2). Also balance them.
Create one of these new commanders such that they are functionally extremely similar or possibly identical to the pledge commanders. But ensure that they do NOT look the same.

If I have a commander that say, has 10% less hitpoints for 5% build speed, that may be balanced on the whole, but what if there are certain strategies where seconds of build time count? The commander might be balanced, even with the use of these strategies, in a vacuum, but if only one player can make use of the commander in question, then his pool of strategic options are limited, and you've taken some of the skill and strategy out of the game for that player.

Yeah, but both players can play as either Ryu or Blanka. You wouldn't think it was exactly great if you were locked out of Ryu because someone paid 55$ instead of 50$.

Or just dispense with the pleasantries and ensure players all have access to all functions of commanders, though not all LOOKS.

Uber already said they will make sure the commanders are balanced. I just wish they would close this thread, because, as someone said a few posts above, the thread is now long enough that a lot of people don't even read it all, thus not noticing Uber repeat over and over that it WILL be balanced.

Skimmed, can't be bothered to read everything.

Little unique abilities, that's cool.

Having to fight a commander I've never seen, will never see again, and he's got a skillset that alters combat approach? Not cool.

Custom dance moves.

Are exactly the sort of things I want Notice I always mention mechanical differentiation as the cause for my concern. I want them to LOOK distinctive, bad-***, and scream "I'm a backer, I've been playing this game since beta/alpha, and I AM COMING FOR YOUR FACE."

Nope. People presumably choose their commander before the start of the game. it’s not like we start a game and then suddenly one player can then go choose his alpha commander depending on what’s going on. There is no reduction in “strategic options”, the regular player simply has different “strategic options” to those of the alpha commander player. Again, the commanders in FA were balanced, not because everyone could play cybran, but because of the abilities of the commanders were on an equal footing.

Only if you can cancel it. I don't want to be a sitting duck, break dancing while I'm dying. That would be so underpowered man.

I'm Kidding! :lol: :lol: My goodness, people are taking this very seriously. People. There doesn't have to be a stat change. Maybe the commander can hop two feet or something. Or brakedance. Or do a melee attack that is awesome but completely not useful in most circumstances because, you know, most stuff is ranged. Perhaps the upgrades are what are different, in regards to how SupCom Com upgrades were slightly different, but balanced against each other. You guise. Guise. Benefit of the doubt. We'll have enough to complain about come alpha and beta

Can you make me a Commander that struts instead of merely walks?

Preferably while something from Saturday Night fever plays in the background that not only I hear but overrides the sound on everyone else's client when the see me 'struttin that ***'?

If games are won or lost purely by which commander you've chosen, either we've done something wrong or one of the player's is way more distracted by dancing animations than they should be.

There's no reason to close the thread, as long as people keep the conversation civil. The concerns people are talking about are valid, people will just have to trust us to address them. That's kind of the nature of game development.

Part of what games have to deal with is balancing imbalance. Just like the street fighter example, two very different characters can be overall balanced.

You do realize this kind of stuff is par for the course in SMNC, right? You really don't want us to get too creative with these things. I mean I know you guys want the school girl commander and all but really...

Can the progenitor swap between normal walking animations and moon walking whenever he wants too?

Now that would be awesome. Especially, you know, on the moon

There's so much fun we could have with this. A mini-nuke that makes a fart noise when it lands. Dances. Lasers coming out of it's eyes. Party balloons that pop if you shoot them. Capes! Oh boy.

With a kilt.





In case anyone is unsure, I find this entire discussion hilariously ridiculous. Carry on, I have popcorn. And a commander that's better than yours.

Sorry but the only new game I've put any reasonable amount of time in to over the last 2 years is Civ V.

Oh and if I could justify, and hide it from my wife, a $1K donation I'd want the most ridiculous commander possible.
Some kind of cross-dressing jive-turkey dinosaur sounds about right.

These are some delectable dev responses. Best to enjoy ramped-up response time before everyone gets latched onto hard work.

Awesome people have awesome ideas. Am I awesome yet?

From the perspective it is okay if you make the alpha-commander like a krogoth, we can balance it in beta
This is actually true for many little tiny questions some people ask in the forums: They willl be sorted out by play-testing first by you guys @ Uber and aftwards in alpha and beta.
So lets discuss this topic again when we are in alpha.

What no they aren't, they're making mountains out of speed bumps and holding up traffic.

If the Commanders lean more towards TA style than SupCom style(Which seems to be the best option considering the other factors that are leaning to TA style) than suddenly you have a commander that isn't all that great at combat, and certainly doesn't improve much or at all over the course of the game, they're a LOCAL influence and don't have any effect on your Overall Strategy.

I'll Ask again until I get some answers;

TO ALL WHO WHINE ABOUT BEING LOCKED OUT OF STRATEGIES AND OTHER BS, I ASK THIS; HOW MANY STRATEGIES ARE THERE CONCERNING JUST THE COMMANDER, AND HOW MANY STRATEGIES WOULD THERE BE IF THERE WERE DIFFERENT COMMANDERS?

All these comparisons to SupCom ACUs are flawed because they aren't like TA, if you want to use ACUs as examples, you can't consider any of the upgrades, and ignore the rest of the faction they are from, as we'll all be using the same faction.

Mike