Also haven't seen Jakatak for ages, dude didnt'change, which I find weird, this is allowed only for Keanu Reeves!
Immortal: Gates of Pyre - F2P RTS from SC community - Page 2
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12116 Posts
Also haven't seen Jakatak for ages, dude didnt'change, which I find weird, this is allowed only for Keanu Reeves! | ||
PurE)Rabbit-SF
United States387 Posts
Either way, looking forward to see and play the game when it comes out. | ||
mindjames
Israel320 Posts
From the trailers, I find it a bit hard to intuit what the different units are about. In SC, you can sort of guess how tough a unit is, how quick it is, whether it's ranged or melee, whether it's a spellcaster, etc. - just by how the unit is designed visually (most of the time, at least). I wonder if that's a concern of theirs. | ||
Fanatic-Templar
Canada5811 Posts
On March 19 2021 20:53 DevilDriver wrote: That brings up a thought: Who actually prefers the BW, resp. the SC2 campaign? I played both and I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I actually slightly prefer the BW one. In SC2 they tried to distance themselves quite a lot from standard multiplayer and invented a lot of stuff, that in my opinion did not really fit into the game, but just made it more complex (too much fan service imo). I personally like the minimalistic and more macro based approach of BW, it just would need more refinement. I totally get though why someone would prefer the modern version, because the BW campaign story was barely told by the mission itself and more by the sparse dialogs around them, so it is was hard to really engage in/emphasize with the story. Wings of Liberty has my favourite campaign, although I should note that I've never used the Mercenaries functionality even once. The custom upgrades for your units was interesting enough without completely altering the way the game functions. Heart of the Swarm is the one I hated most, the entire game being focused on hero Kerrigan made it super one-dimensional. The fact that post Wings campaigns have no transports or Nydus Worms is massively telling. That's why I like Wings and SC1 over the two SC2 expansions, the reason I like Wings over SC1 is mostly the increased pressure. Almost every mission in SC1 operates on the basis of turtling until you have the army you want, then running over everything. SC2 missions force you to make more decisions and earlier, which I found very satisfying. | ||
Hider
Denmark9237 Posts
On March 19 2021 15:57 Spawkuring wrote: I've been following the game for almost a year now, so I can explain some details about the game. - There were no control groups, so deep micro was ridiculously hard to pull off since you pretty much had to keep everything in one hotkey - Pathing was buggy at the time. There's still work to be done as their goal is to make pathing more spread-out ala BW but without the sheer clunkiness of it - No damage/armor types existed, so the meta hugely shifted to dervish-heavy armies (the ranged unit with a blink) - Animations and control were much clunkier. This was just recently smoothed out a few days ago, but of course there's still more polish to be done since it's still early in the dev cycle - Balance wasn't a high priority, and that still remains true today since the core systems need to be built. Tech trees didn't exist in the build that Battle Report was recorded on for example, so that led to a lot of "mass late-game units in the first few minutes and A-move to win" I agree with vult here in that there isn't anything in the battle report that makes me excited. From your comments above, it's my interpretation that they haven't really yet figured out how to make units feel smooth and responsive. In the frost Giant interview the devs expressed that what they felt was core to blizzard-rts was responsive units (i guess they are mostly thinking of sc2 here). Beside that they didn't say anything that I thought was interesting whereas I could agree with almost all the other design decisions made in Gates of Pyre. But they are secondary to getting the feeling of controlling units right. It leaves me quite worried about the priorities that they after 3-4 years have experimented with all types of different of mechanics - but still is far inferior to Starcraft 2 when it comes to the most important one. On a different note, is it just me or does the unit movement speed in general feel quite slow? Like around 30% slower than both starcraft 1 and 2? The team is working to get a lot of core features in so that they have more footage to show off, since it's pretty difficult to show off the crazy micro the team hypes up while the game isn't currently in a state to express it, s I still don't understand why that is the case and frankly reasons like control groups or "balance" are irrelevant here. The very first thing you should do in a prototype is to nail micro. You can have the best interface, best lore, best ressource-collection/base building/expanding gameplay. But it will be a failed game if microing units doesn't feel awesome + has an infinitive steady skill curve. If all you can do is just make long talks about depth of micro but cannot actually implement good micro interactions after 3+years of development time something has just gone wrong. Kickstarter money will be given when I see the micro. | ||
Archeon
3235 Posts
On March 20 2021 01:41 mindjames wrote: Been familiar with this for a while, crossing my fingers for these guys. From the trailers, I find it a bit hard to intuit what the different units are about. In SC, you can sort of guess how tough a unit is, how quick it is, whether it's ranged or melee, whether it's a spellcaster, etc. - just by how the unit is designed visually (most of the time, at least). I wonder if that's a concern of theirs. From talking to them yes, unit recognisability is a concern of them. I mentioned to them that I have trouble keeping their infantry apart and they told me that they got similar feedback from playtesters and are working on it. | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland20731 Posts
SC2 controls like a dream but big fights are borderline impossible to impact outside of basic positioning given how quickly they go down. Broad brushing but some sort of medium between the really elongated fights of WC3 with its high HP values and whatnot and SC2’s great unit control but ‘terrible terrible damage’ would probably be optimal if anyone could deliver it. | ||
Alpharius
Vietnam38 Posts
On March 20 2021 04:09 Fanatic-Templar wrote:That brings up a thought: Who actually prefers the BW, resp. the SC2 campaign? I played both and I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I actually slightly prefer the BW one. In SC2 they tried to distance themselves quite a lot from standard multiplayer and invented a lot of stuff, that in my opinion did not really fit into the game, but just made it more complex (too much fan service imo). I personally like the minimalistic and more macro based approach of BW, it just would need more refinement. I totally get though why someone would prefer the modern version, because the BW campaign story was barely told by the mission itself and more by the sparse dialogs around them, so it is was hard to really engage in/emphasize with the story. I think the main purpose of those unusual mechanic and unit in some mission is to have more variety in PvE content, which of course many can't be applied to PvP because of balance. I also think traditional BW macro mission has its own appeal, and it would be the best to have a balance between 2 types of missions. So as I stated before, something like Dark Crusade campaign is probably something developer will go for. On March 19 2021 20:53 DevilDriver wrote: Wings of Liberty has my favourite campaign, although I should note that I've never used the Mercenaries functionality even once. The custom upgrades for your units was interesting enough without completely altering the way the game functions. Heart of the Swarm is the one I hated most, the entire game being focused on hero Kerrigan made it super one-dimensional. The fact that post Wings campaigns have no transports or Nydus Worms is massively telling. That's why I like Wings and SC1 over the two SC2 expansions, the reason I like Wings over SC1 is mostly the increased pressure. Almost every mission in SC1 operates on the basis of turtling until you have the army you want, then running over everything. SC2 missions force you to make more decisions and earlier, which I found very satisfying. The pressure in SC2 campaign is why they are so enjoyable to play, some are very interesting, like the firewall, some are very rigid, like a fixed timer slapped on the screen. But all of them are used to pressured player to do something, instead of sit back and macro, and most important of all to prevent the mission going on too long, pretty much all SC2 missions are around 22 minutes, and almost never go pass 30 minutes, while some big mission in SC1 might even go beyond 50 minutes, which is very tiring toward the end. About the Nydus worms and transport you mention, I think it's because they can be used to cheese the mission, so Blizzard don't want player to have access to them. My thought on the SC2 and expansions: Wings of Liberty is really good, I think is because of the versatility of the Terran army offer much more freedom in mission design. Heart of the Swarm focus way too much on Hero unit (Kerrigan), and I tried to play not using her, but it's also kinda boring. I honestly not sure how Blizz can design unique mission for a very macro-oriented race like Zerg, so I won't be too harsh on this. Legacy of the Void, is ok, they have mostly macro mission and some of them are repetitive, but the idea of customized unit is cool. | ||
YolBolsun
United States7 Posts
On March 19 2021 17:26 Harris1st wrote: Don't expect some Starcraft/ C&C level movie awing cinematics and stuff but there will definitely be a campaign. They also said they have a ton of lore already. The idea is that everyone can play like they want kinda. So if you are a silver leaguer you can focus on micro while macro (auto build workers and other stuff) will not get you too far behind. We'll see how it turns out I like the general idea this game has. Imagine a third ressource in SC2 which you need for your spellcasters ( Vipers, HT's, Ghost,...) Means you can't turtle up and go into lategame because you don't have casters then. There have to be constant fights for this third ressource. Sounds pretty awesome if you ask me. Someone make a Sc2 mod for this They actually did early tests in the sc2 arcade. If you look up vanguard then it is basically an earlier version of this. | ||
xsnac
Barbados1365 Posts
also units seem to be clumping... | ||
insitelol
845 Posts
This project is doomed. User was temp banned for this post. | ||
Riquiz
Netherlands395 Posts
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Creager
Germany1828 Posts
Personally not a fan of the art direction, the lore seems pretty boring and it looks like they have further bastardized C&C and SC gameplay, which isn't really resonating with me as well, as SC2 basically already took all the good things from C&C (unlimited unit selection). Sorry, this approach really doesn't ring my bell as there's really nothing for me to stand out and make this interesting aside from trying to cater towards the RTS community by... being an RTS. | ||
Hider
Denmark9237 Posts
@speed: The game is intentionally more forgiving that sc2, so they intentionally slowed down dps and probably speed too to give players more time to react. Imagine playing Sc2 in normal speed - would experienced players prefer that game-mode? The devs talked a lot about how they want to maintain the high skillcap of Sc1 and Sc2 while reducing the skill floor. However, this significantly reduces skill cap as well. In the end a lot of their changes make the game more Wc3 like - however Wc3's skillcap came from having to control multiple heroes. Where does Gates of Pyre skillcap come from? SC2 controls like a dream but big fights are borderline impossible to impact outside of basic positioning given how quickly they go down. TvZ micro looks fine to me. As I see it, alot of the micro reward comes by reacting to the opponent casting abilities. Take storm as an example: You reposition your units to avoid the AOE damage. As Sc2 is now the quicker you react the less damage you take. If you give players more time you reduce the skill-cap. People will mention that "but if you get hit by one big AOE or one misclick it's GG". However, that is not necessarily related to the micro interaction itself, rather it's related to the snowballness of the game/lack of defenders advantage. If those things are solved, the game will feel more forgiving. In my opinion I prefer the high-speed micro interactions you see in an Sc2 TvZ over the Wc3 slowmotion micro (or anything in-between). My focus would instead be to make everything else easier such as macromechanics, interface, knowledge-barriers etc. so even low-apm players can spend all their time controlling their units. You don't want to make micro easy. What you want is to design abilities that are fun to use and feel fun to play against for a 60 APM player as well as a 350 APM player. If you cannot obtain both, then the game is unlikely to succeed and that is why the initial prototype should have been focused on ensuring that micro feels great - because everything else is secondary to that. | ||
Creager
Germany1828 Posts
On March 20 2021 19:28 Hider wrote: My focus would instead be to make everything else easier such as macromechanics, interface, knowledge-barriers etc. so even low-apm players can spend all their time controlling their units. The problem I see with lowering the skill-ceiling with regards to anything macro related is that it further limits options to distinguish oneself as a player and form 'an identity' - like being a super cheese-oriented player that relies on perfect build execution/building placement/stellar micro OR a macro machine that excels at unit production and strategic choices, but maybe lacks in the micro department. The more choices I have available for diverse playstyles, the better, otherwise it will just come down to who uses unit X or Y better. | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland20731 Posts
On March 20 2021 19:28 Hider wrote: Imagine playing Sc2 in normal speed - would experienced players prefer that game-mode? The devs talked a lot about how they want to maintain the high skillcap of Sc1 and Sc2 while reducing the skill floor. However, this significantly reduces skill cap as well. In the end a lot of their changes make the game more Wc3 like - however Wc3's skillcap came from having to control multiple heroes. Where does Gates of Pyre skillcap come from? TvZ micro looks fine to me. As I see it, alot of the micro reward comes by reacting to the opponent casting abilities. Take storm as an example: You reposition your units to avoid the AOE damage. As Sc2 is now the quicker you react the less damage you take. If you give players more time you reduce the skill-cap. People will mention that "but if you get hit by one big AOE or one misclick it's GG". However, that is not necessarily related to the micro interaction itself, rather it's related to the snowballness of the game/lack of defenders advantage. If those things are solved, the game will feel more forgiving. In my opinion I prefer the high-speed micro interactions you see in an Sc2 TvZ over the Wc3 slowmotion micro (or anything in-between). My focus would instead be to make everything else easier such as macromechanics, interface, knowledge-barriers etc. so even low-apm players can spend all their time controlling their units. You don't want to make micro easy. What you want is to design abilities that are fun to use and feel fun to play against for a 60 APM player as well as a 350 APM player. If you cannot obtain both, then the game is unlikely to succeed and that is why the initial prototype should have been focused on ensuring that micro feels great - because everything else is secondary to that. If you slow it down, not necessarily by making the game speed slower you give more opportunities for micro giving benefits over A-moving. A high level player will crush a considerably worse one in a small supply skirmish in SC2, far more so than in a max v max scenario (depending on unit composition). Even at the very highest level there’s so much micro the pros can’t execute given max v max scenarios, for example manually targeting with Collosi, or tanks to maximise their effectiveness. As I said SC2 is generally pretty good for micro it just doesn’t scale particularly well, damage output vs unit hp is just so high. TvZ has plenty of great micro but a lot of that is in the constant smaller skirmishes and probably because it’s not a matchup where you build to one 200 v 200 big fight. | ||
Hider
Denmark9237 Posts
On March 20 2021 19:53 Creager wrote: The problem I see with lowering the skill-ceiling with regards to anything macro related is that it further limits options to distinguish oneself as a player and form 'an identity' - like being a super cheese-oriented player that relies on perfect build execution/building placement/stellar micro OR a macro machine that excels at unit production and strategic choices, but maybe lacks in the micro department. The more choices I have available for diverse playstyles, the better, otherwise it will just come down to who uses unit X or Y better. I think of it this way: If you make some parts of the game significantly easier, you need to ensure that you add depth/variation and proper skillcap in other parts of the game. I think that is possible to obtain; e.g. you can have players that rely on aggressive timings, defensive playstyles or multitask-based harass playstyles. If you slow it down, not necessarily by making the game speed slower you give more opportunities for micro giving benefits over A-moving. If we are talking about movement-based micro e.g. banelings move towards your marines and you need to split them/kite back. What matters for the "reward of micro" is whether your marines will react fast to your commands. If units react sluggishly it barely pays off trying to move them back. Instead you are forced to pre-split. The overall speed of the game doesn't impact whether there is an incentive or not to split. What matters is whether the movement speed + reaction time of the unit is fast enough in relation to the penalty of not moving. If you increase HP + reduce movement speed the "incentive"/reward of micro is likely to stay unchanged but you reduce the skillcap. All else being equal unstimmed marines have a much lower incentive to do micro as stimmed marines because the movement speed is significantly less. The more time you get players to do the same commands the lower the skillcap is. Think about aiming in an FPS, if you give players 10 seconds to aim at an opponent everyone can do a headshot. However, the best players are the ones who can do an instant flick. It's the same logic in an RTS. The best players are the ones who can do the most accurate clicks in the least amount of time. If you give players more time to do the same clicks you reduce the skillcap. Another component is that it also appears to me that army sizes are smaller than in Starcraft. That's another factor that leads to a lower skillcap. It's simply easier to control 15 units than 30 units. | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland20731 Posts
On March 20 2021 22:06 Hider wrote: I think of it this way: If you make some parts of the game significantly easier, you need to ensure that you add depth/variation and proper skillcap in other parts of the game. I think that is possible to obtain; e.g. you can have players that rely on aggressive timings, defensive playstyles or multitask-based harass playstyles. If we are talking about movement-based micro e.g. banelings move towards your marines and you need to split them/kite back. What matters for the "reward of micro" is whether your marines will react fast to your commands. If units react sluggishly it barely pays off trying to move them back. Instead you are forced to pre-split. The overall speed of the game doesn't impact whether there is an incentive or not to split. What matters is whether the movement speed + reaction time of the unit is fast enough in relation to the penalty of not moving. If you increase HP + reduce movement speed the "incentive"/reward of micro is likely to stay unchanged but you reduce the skillcap. All else being equal unstimmed marines have a much lower incentive to do micro as stimmed marines because the movement speed is significantly less. The more time you get players to do the same commands the lower the skillcap is. Think about aiming in an FPS, if you give players 10 seconds to aim at an opponent everyone can do a headshot. However, the best players are the ones who can do an instant flick. It's the same logic in an RTS. The best players are the ones who can accurate click in the least amount of time. If you give players more time to do the same clicks you reduce the skillcap. Another component is that it also appears to me that army sizes are smaller than in Starcraft. That's another factor that leads to a lower skillcap. It's simply easier control 15 units than 30 units. I don’t think that necessarily follows, SC2’s unit responsiveness and general microability of units is top notch, probably the smoothest I’ve experienced, that aspect is great. It’s that it’s later hugely negated by the design philosophy of ‘terrible terrible damage’. By slower I don’t mean slow, should have said had longer engagements, which could be accomplished in a number of ways. Let’s say a hypothetical slower PvT where it was possible/desirable to target Collosus fire, make sure Immortals weren’t wasting shots on marines instead of marauders, and Terran players splitting bio against Collosus fire, plus the usual duels, some warp prism pickup shenanigans. Let’s say via whatever means that’s doable, the Marus, Partings of the world probably open up bigger gaps vs their opponents than they would now. If the game was super slow then yes, there could be a contraction between the skill floor and ceiling for sure. Especially given that this game is going to be less macro intensive nailing the micro aspect in big battles is going to be that much more critical. | ||
Archeon
3235 Posts
I don't think that a higher skill generating less crass rewards reduces the skill ceiling. After all if you continuously generate advantages you still get ahead. According to them former sc2 pros crushed their other testers even with a very incomplete understanding of the game mechanics, so the ceiling is definitely there. Or to put it slightly differently: In a system that's a bit more forgiving the player who makes less mistakes and optimizes more elements is more likely to win. | ||
Hider
Denmark9237 Posts
It’s that it’s later hugely negated by the design philosophy of ‘terrible terrible damage’. What are we talking about here? Colossus? The reason this unit sucks is because it isn't micro-friendly as it is too slow to properly move around and particularly responsive. Anyway if they wanted to increase HP a bit in order to add a bit extra duration to battles - that's reasonable. Reducing movement speed though is much more problematic. Are you also implying that Sc2 in normal game speed doesn't have a much lower skillcap? Let’s say a hypothetical slower PvT where it was possible/desirable to target Collosus fire, make sure Immortals weren’t wasting shots on marines instead of marauders, and Terran players splitting bio against Collosus fire, plus the usual duels, some warp prism pickup shenanigans. If they are more practical to do in a much slower paced game then you can still do them today. The more likely reason we are not seeing target fire on Maurauders by Immortals is because its not efficient micro to target fire in a lot of cases due to having to walk in range before you can attac and if the maurauders are microed back you will keep chasing the units instead of auto-attacking. Colossus target firing though is often times very practical and hence you see this very frequently. TLDR being that the practicality of target firing is related to the unit-design interactions - not the general gamespeed. Let’s say via whatever means that’s doable, the Marus, Partings of the world probably open up bigger gaps vs their opponents than they would now. If the game was super slow then yes, If what differentiates the Marus from the average GM terran players is some type of new target-firing that they theoretically could do today but just don't have the required 700 APM to do and thus opts not to do it then that implies that the skill-cap has been reduced. They are now doing less important micro --> reduction in the slope of the skill curve. If your design philosophy is that everyone should be able to do the type of micro that only the best players in Sc1 and Sc2 today are possible to do, then yes you will succeed in obtaining that by significantly reducing the speed of the game. As I see it the only way you can somewhat mitigate the reduction in skillcap is by creating several new micro-interactions that are heavily rewarded (so even the 10th highest micro-priority you do in a battle has almost the same importance as the most important type of micro). If you succeed in that the reduction in speed will only be equal to a minor reduction in skill-cap. However, that's quite difficult do design and not something I think is gonna be the case in Gates of Pyre. What's more likely is that after a couple of hundred APMS during a battle, everyone beyond that has significantly less value. | ||
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