Pay to Win?

I think you've missed the point of this thread by a wide margin. There won't be any microtransactions in this game. It's only about the possibility for a DIFFERENT commander for those who pledged a certain amount. The only "issue" is whether something is "better" because it's limited.

This thread so needs to die.

Someone did call /thread a couple or so pages ago...and it almost held.

In the spirit of douchebaggery, I'd like to point my finger at googlefrog for raising this from it's ever so brief death.

Reading over my 'just woke up' post- it sounded more hostile than I intended. I'm not accusing Uber of wanting to microtransaction out the game, just that I feel like giving someone who paid more, more options, is effectively the same thing to me.

Sure, maybe if the 100 units weren't shooting at you, and that's only if they're the low health, tier 1 units(FYI, they won't always be those), the point I'm making is that the commander isn't a global influence, it can only attack 1 unit at a time, it can only build or assist 1 thing at a time and it can only do some in a local manner as opposed to an army.

Oh Can I play too? What if the scout has 201HP? The great thing about balance is you can do it anywhere and solve problems from multiple angles, these aren't last minute additions, you can bet anything Uber implements will be heavily scrutinized by them throughout he Alpha and Beta.

This still goes both ways, the only point is that the changes can't be something just plain better or extra, they have to be something different with a proper set of Pros and Cons.

Mike

Indeed. But that is the whole point.

There will be scenarios where the 'special' commander will be better if it's different. And one player would have been able to choose said commander, while the other wouldn't.

That's my whole point.

This isn't even about balance. This topic has absolutely nothing to do with balance at all.

Who needs it to go both ways? So for all situations you can make up two commanders to be better or worse in that situation? Sounds irrelevant. Anyway here is what I think we have agreed upon with this.

For all balanced and mechanically different commanders, A and B, there exists a situation where A is better than B.

So now I have no idea how you can say some players lacking access to A is fair.

Maybe we should stop because it doesn't look like you are going to get this.

please send a custom commander to neutralize this thread!

sorry my constructive and serious side died somewhere in this thread. rumour has it, that a custom commander has been seen at the scene of the crime....

Your custom commander isn't exactly the same as mine, I won't let that stand!!

Pwer to the ppl yo! Things need to be equal! I want your commander too, even though I paid less! *pulls out a billboard*

I object. Implying that the game will be perfectly balanced without restriction is similar to implying that it will be perfectly bugless, the developers will always work exactly 9-5 and never crunch, there will be no design problems, the server will never go down, the modding API will allow all mods anyone ever wanted to create with no security holes- it just ain't gonna happen, because such things require unbelievable sums of resources and Uber work in the real world where mistakes happen and time and money is limited. There's nothing derogatory about implying that the final product might be imbalanced. Hell, it certainly will be imbalanced. And it certainly will have bugs. Because that's the reality of building software, especially games, when you don't have unlimited time and money.

The trick is to not introduce more points where imbalance (or, indeed, bugs) can occur without a good reason, and focus your efforts on where they are most needed- i.e., minimization, not elimination. Adding extra gameplay mechanics violates this principle because, simply put, it's unnecessary, and it introduces risks and expenditures and lowers the available resources to create, balance, and debug the other units.

That is undoubtedly true. However, it is also irrelevant. For imbalance to occur, this situation would have to be game-changing for A, even in a small way (and as some have noted, not all situations are), and secondly, there would have to be no way that an equally-skilled B could exploit A's use of this situation to turn it and gain an advantage himself over A.

For example, Zealots are undoubtedly stronger than Marines in melee combat. However, if a clever Terran masses a bunch of rines in a ball, when Protoss attempts to abuse his melee superiority, Terran is going to pwn his *** and win the game, even though Zealots are stronger than Marines in melee and Protoss deliberately attempted to use this advantage to win the game.

Ignoring the hypocricy (seriously, what are you guys trying to achieve with posts like these?), extrapolating this beyond reason, where I to pledge $100000 I'd demand an invincible Monkeylord buildable in one second by my ACU with no resource cost. Get the point?

But seriously, it's not me whining that I want a fancy commander. As I said, I'm all for custom skins (but ideally, there should be an option to turn them off (client side)); it probably attracts money, and the more money, the better, right?

I just don't want people to have more options than others. RTS'es need to be equal, in my opinion. And I highly doubt commanders with special abbilities or such will attract money, because I've seen people here saying they don't want them (or, that they won't use them) while having pledged enough money to get them.

Badly.

Just lightening the mood, or at least trying to

I understand the viewpoint. I was exaggerating. I'm just not sure if it will end up being a problem or not.

Personally, I just hope that they have different kinds of commanders to choose from gameplay wise, rather than one stock commander, but that's an entirely different discussion.

I trust uber to make good decisions for the game. Hell, Galaxy Map. How in the world can that possibly go wrong? Hopefully the end of this thread is near...

But that is exactly the point that was made 20 pages ago, there is going to be ZERO OP'nes they already promised and confirmed that.

what people here are saying is "DUUUUHHHH THAT GUY WHO PAID 50 TIMES WHAT I PAID SHOULD NOT HAVE SOME COOL LITTLE DIFFERENCE, BECAUSE THAT WOULD TOTALLY COMPLETELY UNBAL-.. MAKE ME HAVE A DISADVANTAGE IN THE GAME, AND IT BE SOOO UNFAIR"

I'm voting for cosmetic only.

Anything with in-game effects (whether balanced or not, doesn't matter) needs to be available to all players.

in agreement with neutrino here, just let it lie, sure if 2 units have different mechanics you can compose a situation where there is a minor differentiation in a ability to handle the scenario. this is unavoidable, but also doesn't matter in this case, for similar reasons that have been mentioned, you have ONE commander and if he shoots faster / does less, then just deal with it, use bigger units, and more importantly armies are rarely mono unit, and therefore any advantage he gets against one class he loses against another, and not being able to pick one type at the beginning of the game is not a large factor since a player always has a way to deal with whatever advantage / disadvantage that a particular enemy has, using UNITS, which are SHARED. you don't counter a commander w/ yours you counter it with units, so EVERYONE has the same play options there. just adapt how you need to with what you have, and sure someone might win or avoid losing by the skin of their teeth with the commander differentiation, but that would happen even with just a variety of standard commanders.

/end rant

maybe neutrino should just make a statement he read the thread knows about the thoughts, will use testing and design to make sure no huge adv exist EG just plain shoots faster. then forcibly close this thread, it isn't helping anyone, they know , we know they know, just trust em man.

/end post rant rant

this please.

Oh ok, fair enough.

Well, I dont think it'll be much of a problem. I just think, as I've said already, people should have the same options. Nobody should have less options just because he or she couldn't pay some money because he or she wasn't born yet (hey! We're talking about never-ending games right? ).

Cosmetics is fine though. But actually different stats? Nah.

The problem isn't overpoweredness or such, as miliascolds seems to think. The problem is the fact that it's different, and not available to everyone.

And to be honest, I don't get the 'calm down' responses. We're having a discussion here, I assume we're all calm? Isn't a forum made for discussing stuff? Granted, we've been saying the exact same thing for a dozen pages now, but some still don't get what I'm trying to say, and maybe I'm misunderstanding people as well, so...?

You aren't forced to open this thread...

Why don't people get this?
Anyway, look at this thread.
- Many people complain about in-game changes. The others defend it by demonstrating that it wouldn't matter. But no-one demonstrated that the game would actually be better with in-game changes. Only that it would (possibly) be as good.
- Cosmetic only would take less development and less balance time.

So in-game changes bring more problems for more work with no benefit for the game.
So if the devs want to kill this thread, they should do the logical thing : follow the KISS principle and use cosmetic-only variations.

Never say that.