we feel that it's important to disclose that while Uncapped Games is funded by Tencent, who is also the parent company of Wowhead, the two companies are completely separate and independently operated
yeah, that's a red flag right here. It's all good until at some point Tencent will take over. China ain't funding and buying western game companies thru Tencent because they love games, they do it because they love data, especially about western consumers. And more importantly they want to control the narrative and sway the views of young(er) generations. And we're not talking about a short time strategy either. They have planned this out for decades to come. Anyone thinking otherwise is either naive or delusional.
On July 01 2021 19:08 Silvanel wrote: I think many people do not realize that in mutiplayer, even in games like Stellaris or Europa Universalis IV APM does matter. When You cant pause, or Your pause options are limited and time flows in real time it is always advantegous to do things fast.
APM/speed/execution seem like a feature of the "Real Time" part of RTS, You cant realy make it go away. Even in games that on surface do not have dexterity component player who does things faster usualy have advantage. The game would need to be extremly slow for speed to be of no importance in "real time" setting.
Sure it helps, but in a game like SC2 it is more than a help. If two players know *what* to do in each situation and can make the decisions at the same speed, but one player has much faster hands, they will almost always win the long game very decisively, even with a few additional better decisions (early game not so much, there it really feels like 1 good choice or reaction over your opponent can be decisive).
Speed *should* be an advantage in an RTS, but with mechanics like creep and fine-grained supply management, it becomes a bit much. Once you're on 3 bases and both players have an army and a form of harassment out, even just managing the macro cycle + map vision takes a lot of consistent actions, a fair few of which (like building supply) could probably be cut somewhere without damaging the core gameplay too much.
Curious if they surprise us given their goal and ideas. Will be skeptical unless proven otherwise. I still believe you can create a successful new version of Warcraft or StarCraft including attracting the masses.
On July 01 2021 20:12 lolfail9001 wrote: Speed will always be an advantage in actual real-time strategy by design.
Making speed matter but not become the ultimate gatekeeper in RTS however sounds really fucking hard.
It is not really. Just increase health of units, integrate supply in all military buildings and remove supply depots and weaken all game ending abilities. Change the abilities and stats of units so that an a-moved unit still have most but not all of its power.
Increase the importance of terrain and decrease the speed of the fastest units. Suddenly maneuvering and holding different positions on the map would matter more and clicking faster would matter less.
Make sure that flying units are always less powerful than ground units in a direct battle so that positioning matters more.
It's kind of funny to read what Dkim says, when he was on, when they gave us Medivac Boost, Muta extra speed + regen, Oracles that 2 shot workers and Widow Mines.
With that said a designer should design for the vision of the game and that vision is not always the same.
Personally I have little faith in Kim to make a good RTS considering his vision for Starcraft was questionable at best. Some of the most egregious design and balance errors were under his reign as lead balance designer. Infestor Broodlord, Colossus deathball, "terrible terrible damage", Swarm Hosts vs adding Lurkers.
Yea, I just don't know about that. Good luck to him I mean nothing personal but, still. I think the new balance team that took over when he left did a far superior job.
On July 01 2021 18:04 Bomzj wrote: For me Warcraft 3 was much more entertaining than Starcraft 2 which I play nowadays nevertheless . Warcraft 3 is less mechanical and more alive: health, magic fountains, artifacts, heroes and critters camps. No need to build N+1 bases and having to set up sophisticated keyboard layout (rapid fire stuff is not about skill). The good thing games become more entertaining and at the same time more easy to control and faster to play/watch. Boring Starcraft 1 needs a lot of camera hotkeys and 0-9 control groups and super fast clicking. Starcraft 2 is much more interesting and huge improvement over Starcraft 1. So I believe a new RTS would modernize those aspects and improve boring stuff like building bases and clicking everywhere without putting efforts to think. All in All, Starcraft is not RTS, it's rather RTC (Real Time Clicking).
I would disagree with you hardcore on the Starcraft games, agree on the Warcraft ones.
I’m sure I’ve missed playing some, Warcraft 3 is the only RTS I’ve played that simplified/cut out some of the macro elements and substituted in other mechanics that kept a lot of strategic depth.
Hero choices, how to creep and crucially how to adjust to item drops (that have an element of RNG yes) add a layer of dynamic adjustment that is pretty cool. Other games it’s just traditional RTS with less macro or less micro and I dunno they just don’t feel as satisfying to me.
One elephant in the room for me is, who plays RTS now? Do they like the clicking, the feeling of intensity and having to juggle lots of balls etc? I would argue, that yes actually people who do play these games now don’t view the mechanical requirements as an impediment to an optimal game, but actually like those elements. Not everybody, of course.
Why do I not play World of Warcraft? I prefer mechanical games over games where grinding and getting gear is a big part of the game.
If WoW changed overnight to being a much more skill based action game where gear wasn’t a huge deal I’d certainly pick it up, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the folks who’ve been playing it for over a decade would not be happy with those changes:
David Kim with an absolute loser mentality. Speed is part of the game, its part of the skills to be fast and yes sometimes it will make you win games over smarter opponents. In any RTS speed and execution matters. You can slow down the pace all you want, you will need to be faster than your opponent to win and complete the most actions. Man u guys are so entitled and can't deal with the complexity of speed, apm and other skills meanwhile. Reynor said it : you need the hands and the brain. Man DK clearly targets gen Z who wish to win without putting the effort, what a worthless generation.
what's wrong with games being hard? why does everything have to be ''accessible'' games like dark souls has an audience, the mechanical aspect combined with the strategy is what made Brood War so good.
On July 01 2021 22:48 atchosvk wrote: David Kim with an absolute loser mentality. Speed is part of the game, its part of the skills to be fast and yes sometimes it will make you win games over smarter opponents. In any RTS speed and execution matters. You can slow down the pace all you want, you will need to be faster than your opponent to win and complete the most actions. Man u guys are so entitled and can't deal with the complexity of speed, apm and other skills meanwhile. Reynor said it : you need the hands and the brain. Man DK clearly targets gen Z who wish to win without putting the effort, what a worthless generation.
Ridiculous generalisation, the argument isn’t that mechanics are bad it’s that in a strategy game the mechanics are such a cornerstone. You’ll have more success copying some builds and grinding out mechanics than trying to figure things out and improvising strategically.
This is also not factoring in other games that are more social in nature.
People who want that fix, will get it elsewhere. Not just other video games but online chess and poker, neither of which are particularly easy to get good at last I checked.
I know DK gets a lot of hate but personally I feel Wings of Liberty was very close to perfect and with the few (gigantic) blunders in design being much better understood in the RTS genre now I'm extremely excited to see what he comes up with in the future. Having an additional 11 years for this genre to develop since the release of SC2 has allowed everyones understanding to increase dramatically. I'm rooting for you, David Kim!
I find it sort of amusing how years ago the conversation around SC2 was that it was way too easy and the mechanics weren't difficult enough, making it less appealing to hardcore people thus weakening its playerbase while today every single "new" RTS developer is saying the complete opposite. Just a weird observation I have had, maybe its just a warped perception of the discourse back then on my part :p
While i think it is a great goal to make the mechanical requirements to play less of an issue for beginners (though it has to be said that this is already partly fixed by matchmaking itself, you absolutely can play with minimum apm, you just will be bronze or silver league), especially when it comes to actions which simply are not 'fun', i hope some of these studios working on rts titles fix imo the more important core issue: RTS games usually (at least the starcraft ones 100%) are not good at making people interact with each other. By that i don't mean the usual complaint of people saying it's not social, no i mean the core gameplay itself. There is no real incentive to interact with your opponent, there is no game mechanic which kinda forces you to do so. Compare that to all the popular games right now where each game has some form of mechanic which does just that and you'll see a potential problem. It's not a problem for people who are already into rts, they just interact, but what about new players? New players sit in their base, don't do anything with their opponent for most of the game, that's just not fun. Add to that the problem of being able to die at basically any moment, so there not being any real expectations one can have at any given match one plays, and you have a recipe for a game which is hard to get into.
It's easy to pick apart a handful of quotations, but it's neither here nor there until we actually see something tangible. The reality is I think we have lost a lot of natural RTS players to MOBA type games (certainly in my friend group that's where they disappeared). It's certainly worth thinking creatively on the RTS genre.
How they can improve upon BW, I don't know but that's why I'm not a game designer. However, I think the attack-retreat micro of BW is the best sort of thing that can be re-implemented in modern RTS- if you are a noob you can a-move in and right click-retreat out. Anyone can grasp that idea. But as you get better, you can control your army more effectively. And then have the armies move in predictable ways and incentivize spreading out your troops and suddenly concepts like the tangential zealot conga line into a-move attack (so that all the zealots attack at once) or magic box attack in creates more options for the better player. But the run of the mill player can still move their army around easily and throw down a cool spell or two.
But unless it's turn based, speed will be one of the biggest factors from absolute noob to semi-competent. Age of Empires II- as well- firstest with the mostest makes a huuuge difference amongst my friends. It doesn't matter how strategic you are- if you only make two soldiers, and I have a hundred, I'm going to win even if my unit composition sucks. Strategy and Speed will always go hand in hand- even in SupCom games where you can automate unit production and resource production is infinitely automated. (But I really hope they don't learn from SupCom because I really don't enjoy those games compared to Age or BW.)
People that have played RTS before moving to moba would definitely come back to RTS provided there is quality game with the proper support that mobas receive. We had an exodus of rts players from sc2 to moba games in 2012 because sc2 was largely stagnate balance wise. moba games kept their attention ever since because balance/changes for the mobas was managed on a very regular basis. Having new champs to play in mobas and balance changes on a regular basis always kept the game fresh and new in a way. I think the next big RTS should take the same approach, but instead of getting new champs on a regular basis races in the next rts could get new units and unit abilities would get tweaked regularly or w/e. I think it is something to at least consider.
That speaks to me about a lack of understanding of why exactly Starcraft is fast.
Starcraft is fast because it's a very complex game where there are multiple things to do at any given time and it scales exponentially. The first minute or two aren't fast, but as income increases, worker count etc there are more things to do making them mid and late be much faster (see also game speed of WoL vs LotV).
As a poster on the first page said, a player can play slow and build everything slow, but there will be people who make it faster, who can make more units, who can make more buildings, faster. And thus those players will have the macro advantage.
To make Starcraft (or any RTS) slower, you literally need to dumb it down. That or make any building and unit bulding time take forever. You cannot make Starcraft slower without making it simpler.
EDIT: On top of that, isn't the best part of sc2 micro? Marine and baneling split, loading units into medicavs vs disruptors and trying to dodge, great EMP/STORMS, Blink Micro etc. And all of those require speed. The only way to not have speed be advantageous for thos units, it's to make all units like roaches and brood lords.
EPT
. Warcraft 3 is less mechanical and more alive: health, magic fountains, artifacts, heroes and critters camps. No need to build N+1 bases and having to set up sophisticated keyboard layout (rapid fire stuff is not about skill). The good thing games become more entertaining and at the same time more easy to control and faster to play/watch. Boring Starcraft 1 needs a lot of camera hotkeys and 0-9 control groups and super fast clicking. Starcraft 2 is much more interesting and huge improvement over Starcraft 1. So I believe a new RTS would modernize those aspects and improve boring stuff like building bases and clicking everywhere without putting efforts to think. 
