Pay to Win?

Thanks for the chuckle. Isn't early interest in a project wonderful?

You sir, just made my sig.

/thread. PLEASE!

This is a bit nitpicky but he said do balance perfectly not make it perfectly balanced. There can be quality of game balance and doing it perfectly means the quality is maximised. I don't know what that is but I know some things which it is not. Different commanders would have different advantages on different maps and I agree with Sirlin's definition that good balance needs variety.

Sure, me too. That is irrelevant though. A lot of this thread is missing my main point (which seems to be shared by some others...).

Balance is not the issue here. The issue is asymmetric options.

I am not complaining about the balance of units which have not been implemented. The problem encompasses all possible ways to balance mechanically different special commanders.

To put it simply.

• If special commanders are well balanced then there will be situations or strategies that are better implemented when you start with a special commander.
• Many players will not have access to these special commanders.
• Many players will have strictly less options.
• Therefore many players will be at a disadvantage.

Yeah no.

They wont have less options once in game.

They wont have a disadvantage.

That's what balance means.

Yeah, see now we're getting to the point I was making before.

Commanders have little direct influence on Strategy, yes they are the ones laying the foundation for it(building buildings and such) but they aren't the one acting it out, that falls to the units(which everyone has the same) so unless there are strategies that involve ONLY the commander(like SupCom2's Commander Rush) it doesn't matter that's different about them along long as the commanders are balanced because they have no effect on the strategic outcome.

Mike

But they will; they won't have access to a commander.

And yes, it does matter that some people have different commanders while others don't. It doesn't matter whether this commander is overpowered or unbalanced or not, it's the mere fact that it's different. Everyone ought to have the exact same options or voluntarily limit himself to some, but not be forced into having less options.

That is before being in-game, then they wont have to option to chose a different commander, once in-game they will have the same amount of options, they will be different, but not less.

Choosing a commander is part of the game.

Sorry this is clearly false. Define "strategic outcome".

Pre-game yes, but that wont change that they still have the same amount of options once the game is started, once your out of the lobby and playing the game.

The will maybe have different option, but non 1000$ pledgers wont have less options, and having different options wont cause a disadvantage.

So they have less options. Whether this lack is in pre-game or in-game doesn't really matter.

It wouldn't really be fair if everyone I'd play against online was forced to be Cybran while I could choose from all factions. Or if I could choose my own starting location, but others had a fixed one.

I know what you mean by in-game. In this context that definition is not useful. You are making choices which effect later situations as soon as you choose a commander. So in a more game-theoretical sense you are playing when you choose the commander type. It is an action that has later strategic ramifications so has to be considered part of the game in general.

Think of it this way, if my commander fires a 200* dmg shot every 2* seconds and yours fires a 100* dmg shot every second* who has a better chance in a battle against 100 units?

Answer it doesn't matter because we both die. I want to know what kind of strategic impact you think different commands would have. Otherwise you're just arguing for argument's sake.

*Arbitrary numbers

Mike

no but that is because factions in supcom2 are unbalanced as crap and were talking ONE commander here not an entire set of units and he might have one or two abilities differentiated slightly from what the standard commanders have.

and he where saying that standard commanders would have less options and therefore have a disadvantage, and no they wont have any disadvantage.

... what?

I still don't see how being able to separate win stats based on commanders does not solve this issue. It allows you to do a 'fair' comparison to someone regardless of if they have 20 commander options or 2, you only look at the ones you have.

So a group of people that helped make the game possible have something that generic player doesn't, something that in itself may not be inherently better or worse than you have. A large number of games, video or real, survive and even flourish because of it, maybe PA can too. You're scared that it will break the fairness of the game, why don't we wait and see before we scream bloody murder that Uber is trying to break their own game.

You where saying having more options would cause disadvantage, but once they're in game they have the same amount of options, and therefore, once in game they do not have a disadvantage.

it means that there might be a slightly different strategy involved (even though I doubt they would even have that big differences) but that doesn't mean those who doesn't have the special commander have any disadvantage.

If those 100 units are cheap, low health, tier 1 units, than the commander with the faster ROF wins (to OrangeKnight).

No, I wasn't saying the standard commander had less options; the 'normal' player has less options because he can't choose the 'special' commander.

I just think that, in all RTS'es, the players should have the exact same options. Now you might say 'but a Cybran player doesn't have the same options as an Aeon player', but that's because the Cybran player chose to play as the Cybrans and the Aeon player chose to play as the Aeons. So they, in fact, had the same option.

... Now this is extrapolatable (is that a word? ), currently, because every single human being can just pledge whatever the amount needed is to get the option to play with this 'special' commander. But after a month, they won't be able to anymore, so alas, that doesn't work.

Mind you, I don't have much against special skins (although ideally there should be an option to disable them), but actual game changing things shouldn't be limited to a select few in my opinion.

I also think that making something someone paid more for sets a dangerous precedent. I'm not backing the game so it can turn into a DLC-ridden plague corpse.

Yes to real, legitimate expansions, with new gameplay features.

NO to microtransactions that fracture the community or give certain players an advantage, however small. The custom commanders might be only a little bit, but then what if you can buy a little bit more with 5$ per other unit? 20$? it's a dangerous, slippery slope, especially for an RTS game.

by now it doesn't really matter any more if the custom commanders have extra abilities or not.

Since, everyone knows they will be overpowered, unbalanced and just awesome, it's enough to give them a bad *** visual design to convey an air of invincibility.
Even if the devs say "the just look different" no one will believe it any more and at least fear the hidden superiority...

I see it clearly ... a vision vivid before my inner eye ... units committing suicide en masse as an alpha commander enters the battle ... asteroids called down on own planets to hasten the end ... players hitting frantically the disconnect button of their internet connection ... taking the axe to the power cable of their PC ... just awesome.

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Now define strategic impact. I get the feeling you mean something like "on average" or "large scale".

I am saying that there exists a situation where one commander is better than the other. You seem to be saying that in 99% of cases the commanders are exactly the same so the 1% case does not matter. But it is so easy to remove the 1% case by making the mechanics identical.

Here is an example using your arbitrary numbers. Say there is a scout with 150HP, the 200 damage comm will be able to kill the scout if it pops in to range while the 1s reload commander would rarely kill it. This could affect your opponent's factory choice if one scout falls below 200hp and the other does not.

Whenever you make the commanders different I can provide a case where one commander is better than the other. This affects your actions and your opponent's actions.

@thedbp you missed my point completely. I don't think I can say any more for that.