Immortal: Gates of Pyre - F2P RTS from SC community - Page 2

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.

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"

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

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.

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.

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.

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

@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.

SC2 controls like a dream but big fights are borderline impossible to impact outside of basic positioning given how quickly they go down.

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.

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.

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.

If you slow it down, not necessarily by making the game speed slower you give more opportunities for micro giving benefits over A-moving.

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.

It’s that it’s later hugely negated by the design philosophy of ‘terrible terrible damage’.

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,