POLL: Environmental Effects - Engaging or Disruptive?

There is so much in the game that is inferior to the possibilities of today's technology - gameplay should not be dictated by what is possible today and extrapolate this but instead on what is believable and fun. The way air and naval units are designed are straight from WW2, today's possibilities and thus doctrines are quite contrary to that. But since those designs allow for more interesting gameplay they have been chosen over contemporary military capability. The same holds for fog.
The original post detailed the different sorts of environmental effects he could think of. He didn't imply anything but explicitly stated random effects being one possible option.
Finally your binary view on this topic is tiring. For you everything is either destroying everything or not having any impact at all. Sit down, have a cup of tea and make up 2 effects with meaningful localized impact on a gameplay situation. If you can't imagine anything between your two extremes you seem to be unable to constructively contribute to this topic.

You are aware that you can have timed environmental events instead of random ones right?
As well as mobile nonrandom environmental effects?

And what's so bad about the environment being able to kill units?

That may be true, and I do understand why.

Nevertheless, what's the difference between having to deal with a volcano, or being attacked by two players at the same time in the early phases on a FFA match? Both scenarios you're likely screw.

So, why one is acceptable and the other absolutely not?

You could have buildings that utilize the natural disasters listed in tier 4 as an alternative to nukes so that you could have a larger choice of what type WMD to unleash on your enemy.

Well once you can predict given proper intelligence gathering.

The other you cannot prevent even given time to prepare and just screws you for the sake of having a event to screw over the player.

Timed events would still be random events since they'd take place randomly across the surface of the planet. Since everything is randomized on the planet, the events themselves would still be somewhat randomized so you could get screwed over due to the random event that kills your units.

That's bad.

Easy. One is player driven, the other is random driven.

I can and have fought off and won against two people attacking me against the same time. I can fight against players attacking me, that's the point of the game.

I can't fight against a randomized acid rain that destroys my base.

One involves strategy of who to attack, when to attack, how to defend, etc. The other is completely luck based and un-defendable.

The solution is simple, if the environmental effect has a predictable location and timing, then you can avoid building your base where acid rain falls.

So instead of creating a cool environment, you can simply replace the mountain prop with a death prop.

Both of which the players will avoid interacting with, and will probably mod out of the game at the first chance they get.

Greaaaaaaaat.

If by randomly across the surface of the planet, you mean procedurally generated similarly to biomes, then sure.

Volcanoes will always be in the same area, and can have visible startup indicating the timer.
Hurricanes can roam along the same path, and that path can be made visible.

There's really no reason for the things you're saying are random have to be.

I don't know about you, but I'd want my base close to a volcano. Free defenses.

But what if all of your spawns are right next to a volcano and none of your opponent's have spawns next to a volcano? This is made more difficult when you're on a 10 way FFA and only have one spawn.

Same issue with hurricanes. And you're now saying that there'd be a line where hurricanes simply just go along all the time?

And no matter what you say, they are random. What you're saying is still random since the planets are still randomly generated and the spawns randomly placed.

And if there's visuals for "hey, at this time there will be a volcano eruption, then there's practically no point as only the most incompetent players would have units there at the time of the eruption and the only things that would be destroyed are economy buildings, unless you're screwed over by your spawn point.

There is simply no positive gain from environmental effects with how PA is build.

Just because we can add it, doesn't mean we should.

Edit: Also worth mentioning that even though this poll is very flawed, the majority of the community still indicates that they do not want environmental effects that have destructive capabilities.

I think it would be trivial to have the start location algorithm not place starts near hazardous features.

This, very much.

And all the people against destructive forces seem to be completely oblivious to their defensive and tactical benefits.

Currently there is nowhere, on any planet, that you cannot fly over. And the only things you can't build on a a scarce few chasms and mountains.

There need to be areas where nobody goes without a VERY good reason. Destructive forces are the best way to do that.

How is there a defensive benefit to having a area no one can to?

It doesn't defend you, it corners you.

-Oh look enemies are attacking us!

-No problem, our defenses can handle it.

-What's this!? A tornado is destroying our defenses!

->dies<

Point made.

Having an area already designated as uninhabitable means half a choke point has been made for you, and makes defending from that direction easier. Expand the other way, or go around, or build in it if the temporary benefit outweighs the risks.

To summarize the two main stances so far:

• Environmental effects can elevate biomes from eye candy to gameplay elements.
• Environmental effects are inherently flawed and unfun.

I would suggest everyone to take a step back and come up with environmental effects that are permanent, local, deterministic and undamaging and then discuss those for a change. I would also like those opposed to effects such as fog, clouds, forests, that might hinder sight or movement or building placement to explicitly state how such effects differ from present gameplay elements such as mountains, bodies of water and the distinction between radar and vision. It seems to me that those opposed to extended environments are against terrain playing a major strategic role in general and would be better served with non-random maps. Since this is a topic unrelated to the one here and on a different design layer entirely, I would encourage everyone to refrain from extending the scope of this thread.

A bomber flight is decimating the enemy's defensive line, when the already brisk winds in the desert biome take a turn for the worse and tornadoes catch the bombers and toss them to the ground like spoiled children with unwanted toys. The defensive line is scattered, but momentarily spared. At least until the next wave of bombers.

Do you blame the weather for changing, do you blame the air force commander for flying his bombers in known inclement weather, or do you credit the defending general for holding out in an area naturally protected from air attack?
I believe they say it's a poor general who blames the weather.
But, millenia ago, it wasn't uncommon to pray to the weather, either.

Pray to the RNG gods, brian, and wear your lucky socks. If luck had no place in competition, we'd all play Tic Tac Toe.

I apologise if this Poll is biased in your eyes. I included as many steps between 'Where we are now' and 'Environment destroying things' as I could think of, hence Tier 1.5. I tried my best to predict the arguments people would have about Tier 4 by saying it would likely be modded. I also separated what my personal views were in my OP, and did not let them affect the various Tier options.

I do not think we're going to come to any clear consensus by voting over individual effects like fog or grassy terrain modifiers or jungle terrain modifiers or rocky terrain modifiers. I was attempting to get a gauge on the community's feelings towards the whole range of Environmental Effects without influencing them, and providing options for those who feel only a little improvement is needed (Tier 1.5).
I do not feel my OP influenced results. I mean hell, I personally said that I'm for Teir 2 in the second half, and yet look what people voted for. Just because you don't like the results doesn't mean the Poll was at fault or biased. Despite my concerns over Teir 4, it (and therefore previous Tiers) are popular with the community.

On an unrelated note, to wade into this discussion on Tier 4, I think if events could be predictable, avoided or defended against (like Walls stopping/redirecting a Lava Flow), then they could have a place in PA.

These events would have to be localised and predictable through visual clues. If a Volcano has some lava streaming out of it and a few lava cracks, it might blow at any moment. If a Mountain has had a lot of snow fall on it, an avalanche might occur.

Some of these events need not be utterly destructive either; an avalanche might just bury and disable your units until they could dig themselves out, thawed out, or you sent to flamethrowers in to help them out.

They could also be player-triggered - drop a Nuke on a Volcano, guess what's going to happen? This adds an extra tactical dimension to gameplay.

I agree with others' concerns about spawns - one should not spawn next to an active Volcano, that would suck.

I take it you do not like COH2 then?
In TA meteor storms were fine.....It was not like it would wipe your entire base out, lets not forget the fact the meteor storm was across the entire map, only lasted about 10 seconds and maybe 2 or 3 would fall in your view.