A Year of Rain - 2v2-focused RTS

What are the gameplay/design components that give it a "focus on 2v2"?

On November 11 2019 19:54 Harris1st wrote:


RTS is the last genre where I would complain about graphics TBH.

And honestly, in pretty much every somewhat competitive game I play I optimize graphics to the best settings for competition, meaning most stuff is disabled or very low anyway...
I don't want visual clutter and don't see what's going on because of that

On November 11 2019 23:38 blunderfulguy wrote:
My sleep deprived impressions, for whatever they're worth:

Since I started seeing people play it, I've wondered why only SC2 players seem to be playing and not War3 players with how similar it is to the latter. Sure, SC2 is more popular overall, but I feel like the target audience isn't/shouldn't be the SC2 crowd unless they're going after the casual and co-op SC2 audience. Watching a couple of games during the beta, there was a lot missing and I got bored very quickly and wanted to get into a new RTS like I always do, I just couldn't get into it though. Now, watching a minute of the full game, it already looks a lot better overall which is great to see.

Going for a 2v2-focused multiplayer with the roles seems like an odd decision to me, and matchmaking for 2v2 only seems like a flatout bad decision for a new RTS (maybe I'm just a little burned from Dropzone and other small team/co-op RTS/tactics games that died way too quickly, idk). A lot of it still feels like "a big mod for War3 with some extra gimmicks tacked on" to me, I hate to say. I hope the campaign is decent, but from what I've seen so far, it again reminds me of War3 and some Dota 2 custom maps from years ago in its gameplay, and of Dota 2 short films in its cutscenes.

I was hoping to see some interesting, unique spins on the classic RTS campaign, taking notes from other RTS and building off other Daedalic games like Shadow Tactics (which I think wasn't actually made by them, only published) and Silence, or adding cool twists like what Iratus did for Darkest Dungeon clones. So far, I'm not seeing a whole lot of that.

It's only $20, which seems like a good price for what you get (to me, an extravagant War3/Dota 2 custom campaign and multiplayer maps). Other than regular RTS patching and map updates, I don't know what they plan on doing down the road but they seem to have bigger plans than just that (but probably still very reasonable for that team).
If the 2v2 thing works out for them, hopefully they can do something like add new co-op content or new heroes. If it doesn't work out, I hope it's still successful enough that a really small team and the community can update it and keep it moving forward together, maybe rework 1v1 content and matchmaking and ladder and whatnot. And get some War3 people (modders, casual fans, casters, and hardcore/pro players) to get in on everything, maybe it's just me but that feels like a big miss.
Now that the full game is out and more people are getting more time with it, casted games should (fingers crossed) be more interesting and (hopefully) the multiplayer will be easier to get into for all types of players.

+ Show Spoiler +

On November 13 2019 22:59 Harris1st wrote:
Dunno. It's pretty modern to go for a team experience. Just watch all the shooters with main game balanced for 3v3 (Apex) or 5v5 (OW)

1v1 just puts a lot of stress on you and most people don't want that. At least not for a casual experience

On November 15 2019 19:39 Harris1st wrote:


Hmm.. difficult actually. What I meant was there is no "ladder anxiety"

If you look at MOBA's and solo Q. After a game you immediately requeue because you always have the mindset of you were the better player in the last game and your team was trash.
In 1v1 you can blame balance or some BS strategies but deep down you always know it's your own fault.

From personal experience I can say if I play 2 hours of 1v1 in Starcraft I am physically and mentally exhausted, but I can play MOBA's for hours and hours. Some of that probably comes from Starcraft beeing a really taxing game but I would guess a lot is because of the different mindset

On November 15 2019 20:50 Wombat_NI wrote:

Different strokes for different folks, I personally don’t play any team games because I find solo queuing too irritating and am out of sync schedule wise with a lot of my friends.

If it’s not people being spectacularly unhelpful, terrible, abusive or just a lack of team coordination I find it draining playing team games.

1v1 games I don’t have to worry about anything but me, can play whenever and don’t have to bug friends or try to sync schedules and can just get on with it.

Just based on gaming trends I think I’m in the minority on this and in other regards (such as achievements), where I think most are stupid and prefer to just play games with my own rules and challenges I come up with myself.

In WC3 I did prefer 2v2 with my friend, equally I sucked at Blizz RTS then compared to post SC2, so I would like to play an even more 2v2 focused game similar to WC3 for sure. I’d just like the option for 1v1 queueing just to practice/kill downtime when friends aren’t online.

On February 11 2020 04:39 Manit0u wrote:
Posting here in case people have missed the update. The team is basically abandoning this game since it hasn't sold as well as they were hoping for and they simply can't sustain it as a small studio.

You can still play p2p with lobbies and such but all matchmaking, leaderboards and stats are gone. There will be no more development done for the game either (they even dropped work on improved pathfinding that they were going to introduce).

Really sad. I thought this game had potential and needed maybe another year of dev time after launch to iron out all the issues and give it necessary polish to make it actually really good.