Unstable Equilibrium Aversion topic

I am not talking about how games are made. I am talking about how players improve in them. In any RTS a nooby will first have to read descriptions and think for each command he gives. This naturally greatly reduces the speed he is playing at. A player who knows a specific build by heart will just instantly place all buildings as they are needed without any need to think about it. Instead he will think about the greater picture: What is my opponent doing? How should I react? etc. pp. This learning effect is it that results in good players being speedy.

I dont think that is true. Sure not everybody will be able to reach 300+APM, but that is not needed. Not even in SC2. I am pretty sure that any average human below the age of 30 is able to reach 100 to 200 apm after a while of training. The first -and by far the most important increase- from like 20 to 80+ has not much to do with the physical ability of your hands but rather with the time you need to think about each click. Like I said: a player who knows a build by heart will naturally have higher apm than a player who has to plan out each step as he makes it. Thats a matter of pure training.

I've never seen an RTS (or any strategy game for that matter) where it wasn't perfectly viable to win a match even when the other player seems to have the advantage for most of it. In fact in many games it's downright common. You never know who's going to win when you're still only halfway through. The exception is Checkers .

Forgive me for copy/pasting from my post in the other thread:

-If you create game mechanics that give the underdog an advantage, you only make games drag out longer (or in extreme cases, forever...like a Monopoly game where everyone is nice to the broke player) Whereas mechanics that let people "steamroll" each other in the late game will bring a swifter conclusion to what may have otherwise gone on forever.

-A comeback victory that is truly "against all odds" carries an incredible sense of achievement. That excitement is minimized if there are mechanics that give the underdog an advantage.

I've siad precisely about the preception and cognition time, not about muscle reflex. Brain and neural system have limits too, unfortunately, and those limits are not only individual, but is also different up to 40 times.

It has nothing to do with the cognition time. It is about learning builds by heart. Any average person should be able to simply learn a build by heart. If you know a build perfectly by heart you actually dont even need to think about it very much anymore, therefore freeing your mind for other thoughts. Surely there are some people who are better at at, but thats really just a question of constant repetition to learn.

A game that allows winning just by repeating the same set of actions in particular order is just boring, since it implies that there is just one "right" way to play it, and the one who perform it faster is winning. That's why I dislike Starcraft or any other Blizzard RTS so much: they have zero creative element and little to no strategy, just a competiton in speed of repeating build order and some tactics represented in targeting enemy units with their counters and clicking their special abilities in time. From what I know about PA it is (still) unlikely it will work that way, at least I hope so, because if it is, I've wasted my money. Assuming that is correct, any APM in PA will be mostly cognition-dependent, since one will need to take decision what to do next. Of course, there are some repetitive patterns dependent on chosen strategy, but highly-automated SupCom-like UI will make sure they'll not require a thousand clicks. However, even cognitive APM dependency should be removed, thus completely eradicating any possibility of playerbase devolving into the constantly stomped "noobs" and openly hostile "pros". Nothing should be able to instantly turn the tides of game, and any existing advantage should be a result of prolonged, systematic actions, reasonable by every player. Of course, games will be longer this way, with 45 minutes minimal duration, and an average around 75-90 minutes, but I think good RTS match cannot (and should not) be shorter.

How big a disadvantage is is depends on how much it would lower your chance to win. In FA, losing a big part of your army is not as bad as it is in starcraft 2, cause you might still be able to win by sniping the enemy ACU etc after that.
By this definition, I think the developers should just make the frequently happened disadvantages smaller and make the rarely happened disadvantages bigger, so the equilibrium would be like a river then suddenly a waterfall.

You are misunderstanding me. I am saying that any good player will have to have a very good plan (there can be many plans that he might chose from beforehand) what he wants to do in the game. This plan usually manifests in what needs to be build at a certain time. This is a very general concept of how to "be good" in RTS that can be found in Starcraft just as much as in SupCom:FA. Having a plan does not mean that you dont need to think about the game anymore. It just means that you dont need to think about what you want to do, but rather about what your opponent is doing and what you need to change in your plan to achieve victory. This is how FA works and this is ALSO how SC2 works. It is a concept that is so basic, that it works for FA just as much for SC2. Also you are kind of unfair to SC2, it definitely has far more than just one "right" way to play it and has a ton of different strategies, with some new one popping up every now and then. But we are not here to discuss if SC2 is a good game or not, PA will be vastly different in many aspects anyway

First I would not say that "pros" are openly hostile in general, good players can be pretty nice people aswell. Second there is no way to remove "cognitive APM dependency" without removing the RT from the S and making it a TurnBasedStragey game instead. Thats not what we all want. I hope...

That would make for boring games.

Usually that is the case in most good RTS already.

For really huge teamgames this time might be okay, but there is a good reason why any other good RTS has game times between 10 and 45 minutes: It just plays out best. Observers dont get bored watching half an hour of build up time and players can play dozens of games each day to practice, without the need for a time-machine.
Also it hurts far more to lose a game after fighting 90 minutes for it. Losing a game to a 3 minutes-cheese in SC2 is annoying but at least does not waste any time.

I would be very curious to read your sources.
(Note that this isn't sarcasm, I'm genuinely curious, having myself quite low APM)

Real-time strategy is a mapping of turn-based one onto real time simulation. It's much more about representative characteristics than about gameplay: after all, battles in real time are more natural and just look so much better. That mapping should neither compromise core concepts of strategy genre ar add any significant requirements to player, nor devolve gameplay into tactics. Implementing such mapping is up to developers, but it's not really that hard, and were done more or less successfully before, in C&C Tiberian Sun, Warzone 2100, Earth series, Perimeter and vanilla SupCom. It's enough to keep the pace slow, gear balance towards late game and add strongly negative feedback to it to reduce significance of random events. It may be boring to someone, but if so, maybe they're like tactics more than strategy (which is, by definition, wide-scale and long-term planning). Tactics games is good in their own way, but they are not really a strategic ones to anyone who prefer to call things by their actual names.

I believe it's individual. I'm OK with losing a match after 2 or even 5 hours of play, but get mad if killed after 5 minutes, especcially several times in a row. In case of long match one physically cannot lose too often, and if he lose, it seems like a natural conclusion to the events of match.

Relation between cognitive APM and fluid intelligence is obvious, as well as dependence of any type APM to perception speed. As to the fact of IQ genetic corellation, it is widely known, for example chart on this wiki page shows correlation between nations and IQ, and corresponding research also mentioned. Note that there is no correlation of IQ to life quality or information availability, and only reasonable explaination is a genetical one, and it is given in source works - the longer organized civilization on given terriotory exists, the higher IQ its population have. Most of the page, however, devoted to denial of obvious facts, since public recognition of that facts by scientific community can have cataclysmic political and economical consequences.

I think, I would have to agree here with kane, how long games should be or how annoying losses will be depends highly on personal taste and on things like the entertainment value of the game in general and a game session in particular.
Aside from that, games should be oriented towards the players interests not observers, the observer role should always be secondary, but that's just me.

I wonder why you say vanilla SupCom. In my eyes nothing changed in this regard towards SupCom:FA with the sole exception that FA requires more mapcontrol, which is a blessing to the gameplay.
However I think that both SupCom and FA are both fine example of how PA should be: The need to be fast should raise from the fact that you have to control huge armies all over the place, not from the fact that the user-interface is a challenge itself.

This is a view I have read quite alot of times and I just cant agree with it. In my eyes RTS is not defined through the fact that games take 3 hours, but rather through the fact that you need to build up a base to build an army of some kind to wipe your opponent of the map. So SupCom:FA is an RTS, just as much as SC2. Tactical games dont feature base-building, they focus solely on the tactical component of moving Units around.

Oh please no, what? correlation between genetics and IQ? Isnt that a field of research that should be buried under the rubble of some wars of the past?

probably because a person who is fighting starvation through farming all his life just will have never thought about most problems that are presented in a IQ-test. This has nothing to do with genetics and has even less to do with what we are actually talking about.

It is widely known in the genetics community that people with high IQ breed people with high IQ.
IQ is just as genetic as the mental illnesses.

I've not said that RTS is defined through match duration. It is defined through definition of strategy, definition of game, and notion of real-time battlefield simulation. Match duration can (and most likely, will) be imposed by 'strategy' aspect, since there is no wide-scale or long-term planning when your base can be wiped out in first 3 minutes by hero and two footmen. And genre of one given game is defined not only by the ability to do something, but also by its importance. In Starcraft, tactics is much more important than strategy, controlling units during encounter and using their abilities is the core of gameplay. On strategic level, sending your units to attack enemy group or base is an elementary action. If a real world army where general need to order private to throw a grenade, will be defeated in a couple of days, and so such a work is delegated to a lower level command. The work of a general is strategy, and the work of, say, leuitenant, is tactics. Ang a game genre should be chosen according to whose actions it simulates most of the time.

By denying truth, one achieve nothing. I think that equality of conscious beings is independent of anything, including natural differences in their abilities. Achieving it is possible, but there are couple of problems to be dealt with, such as physical or mental abilities inequality, social mechanisms that allows and even favors exploitation of that inequalities, and, ultimately, lifespan limit which makes the whole human natural selection process unavoidable.

In China situation you described is quite common - due to extreme overpopulation many people there are farming all the time just to have something to eat, and still they have average IQ even above USA and other wealthy countries. That is because Chinese civilization one of the oldest on the planet, and intelligence became a criterion important to natural selection earlier there.

wall o' text inbound.

It may be an idea to move the topic away from examining the link between IQ and performance (even in RTS games). As all neurologists, psychologists, behavioural analysts, and anyone else who has experience with measuring Intelligence and competency know, these things are notoriously difficult to measure. Individuals can be highly talented at one aspect of RTS play, and extremely deficient in another. A good game caters to a broad audience, and allows multiple different ways to achieve victory, encouraging a player to balance the appropriateness of certain strategies with their ability to execute them.

As for the unstable equilibrium issue, I believe the key mechanic you are looking for (if you want the equilibrium to display some stability) is one of diminishing returns. It is important not to punish players who do well, just to give other's a leg up, however, you can reward them less.

For example, in a normal scenario, if two players control 50% of the available metal each, then one player gaining a small advantage over the other will give them more metal. They can put more metal into making more units, which will capture them more territory, and give them more metal, snowballing their advantage. This will result in the loosing player digging in, extending the game, and resulting in a long slog with a known victor. Although a comeback is possible, they are unlikely, and often require brilliance on the behalf of the underdog, or stupidity on the behalf of the favourite. As these qualities are normally the opposite of what got them both into this situation in the first place, such comebacks are rare (although frequently impressive).

Instead, many games have a system whereby moving from 55% to 60% control of the available resources grants the player less advantage than moving from 50% to 55%. The idea is that a player is still rewarded for succeeding, but the reward is less the more successful the player is. This will tend to result in games which centre around the the equilibrium point. An example of this in PA could be that capturing each mex point gives you slightly less metal than the one before.

However this can have the disadvantage that breaking through and achieving victory is nigh impossible. Mechanisms need to be created to allow breakthroughs (for example super-weapons, although there are others) otherwise the end result is WW1 the game. An endless stalemate. The variety and appropriateness of breakthrough mechanisms must be very carefully considered to avoid this.

Weather or not Uber should encourage this is a matter of debate.

Mex upgrades in FA have some of this effect on some maps.
Typically you want to upgrade mexes in your base first. After that you might consider upgrading other mexes in your territory rather than upgrading the safe t2 mexes to t3 because t2 mexes are more effecient for cost compared to t3 mexes.
Outer mexes can be upgraded but they can be a target of bombers, tacnukes, raids and such which means you are unlikely to upgrade outlaying mexes out even though you control more territory than your opponent.

No. At no point in the game should a player be penalised for winning, which is what this essentially boils down to.

So long as there are no mechanics to favour either side, the game can be fair. If it's not, the game is broken.

The game should be won by which ever player played the best. Not because the game took pity on them and gave them a hand when they were losing.

Mechanics will obviously favor 1 side. Just look at economy. The player with a larger economy will obviously be able to make more stuff than the enemy.
We are talking about reducing slippery slope. Game ending when the commander dies obviously gives the losing player a chance to hit back even when he is "mechanically" behind in economy since that a player doesn't have to kill all the enemy units in order to win.

Now lets look at mechanics that hinders the slippery slope.
Upkeep in warcraft 3. The larger army you have the less gold you get from mining. This is obviously a setback to the advantage of having a larger army. I don't know how a similiar mechanic could be introduced into PA without feeling arbitrary and unneccessary

Distance between players. Even if 1 player is behind the time it takes for units to reach them gives them time to make economy and counters before the enemy units reach. In a game where expansion is prevalent this effect is much smaller as expansion and frontlines reach eachother and the player that control of most territory gets the upper hand. If expansion isn't that important the distance between players gives the losing player more time to deploy counters and eco before the enemy reach their base.

Reclaiming wreckeges. This gives the player on the recieving end of a failed comsnipe attempt the ability to actually come out ahead economically.
It also makes raiding less effective as the player on the recieving end can reclaim lost units and enemy raiders.
In frontline battle however it doesn't necessarily give the weaker player any advantage as the stronger player are more likely to push back the weaker player and claim the wreckeges.

Nothing wrong with a slippery slope.
Artificial enhancers and penalties for players is a very silly idea.

Lets leave the no child left behind to the states.

A slippery slope leads to games that are ended before "victory" is displayed, and means small numbers of mistakes = large difficulty in recovering from them. I came here to be judged on my performance over a 20+ minute game (hopefully closer to an hour+), not "woops i built the wrong 2 units here" or "woops I expanded a little too much there" and then I lose after 15 more minutes because it *looks* like i might be able to win but not really because i've slid too far away from victory.

That's not a mechanic favouring one side, that's an advantaged gained through gameplay.

What I'm talking about is arbitrarily adding mechanics to change the game from the normal flow to give underdogs a helping hand. Lets say there are 5 oranges on the table, and two players have to grab as many as they can, as quickly as they can. One player manages to grab 3, the other only gets 2. The game should not then hand a banana to the player with 2 oranges, or take one of the other players oranges away to even things out.

Else, what's the point in grabbing 3 of the 5? Might as well save time and take just 2, which would give you a lead over someone who takes the time to get all 3.

And I'm all for that, so long as it's a persistant mechanic that is in effect from the go. Not something that changes when someone takes an obvious lead (as was alluded throughout the thread).

If the likes of mass fabrication still exist in PA, such mechanics wouldn't help, as the person with the higher economy would still be able to field a larger army. It would just be a case of adding another economy layer, which isn't beneficial to anyone.

This is perhaps the best equalizer there is, and is a 'natural' resource that both players have. What will really give the underdog players a chance is good intel, and reacting to threats efficiently. A larger army doesn't mean a win. Especially if your enemy knows exactly what you have, where you are heading, and has time to prepare a counter.

Again, this isn't something that helps just the 'losing' player. The same rules apply to both sides. A good player will not throw a force at his opponent without knowing that it has a good chance of success, unless ofcourse, it's a distraction, or just to clear the way for another attack.

Anyone that feeds easy mass to the enemy, whether they have a higher or lower economy, is likely to lose, and not because the other player had an advantage.