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On July 04 2024 04:39 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2024 14:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Seems like they'll be increasing the rate of in-game currency earned during the final week too. No, it's the correct way around for them to exploit people's psychology. This way they can start too low on purpose and adjust until they reach a minimum at which people are somewhat ok with what they get (without paying). Once they reach that point they can add the paid model. This way, nobody will complain
Yikes, the old "massively lower expectations and then slightly raise them enough to get away with becoming predatory" business model? I guess we'll see. I hope not.
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Like it or not, but it's true that it's much better for them to make the progress slower initially and then improve its speed than the other way around.
It's very hard to find the sweet spot right away, so whatever they choose - they will probably change it later.
And in this case it will feel better for players when devs "gift" them faster progress than before, compared to when devs "take it away" and make progress slower, right?
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On July 04 2024 09:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2024 07:47 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
Ideally, shouldn't they want progress to be oppressively slow if you don't pay? My only concern there is that I'm not sure how you hit the sweet spot where playing with what you have access to is fun enough that you want to get more units, while access to the fun units is gated behind enough hours of play that you're willing to pay a few bucks to skip the grind. Grind-to-unlock games are balanced around an expected rate of play, obviously tuned fairly aggressively to make the real money shortcut seem like a realistic alternative. But they have ways of course-correcting if it turns out their initial projections were off. Let's say they projected that the average highly-engaged player should be able to unlock 1 new unit per week, at a rate of 40 hours worth of games played per week. After the first week, they find that the average highly-engaged player actually only plays 30 hours per week. They can simply introduce "double currency weekends" to compensate. Note that it's always better for the designers to be too stingy than too generous, because it lets them ease up on the grind pressure which players will see as a necessary relief. If it were the other way around, you could severely damage your monetization effectiveness, your economy, and your player perception as you will need to inevitably nerf the grind rate to staunch the flow.
Or just introduce daily/ weekly tasks to get some curreny.
1. Login
2. Play x games
3. Win x games
4. Win x games using y unit
This way even less playing guys get some currency
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United States12240 Posts
On July 04 2024 18:31 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2024 09:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:On July 04 2024 07:47 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
Ideally, shouldn't they want progress to be oppressively slow if you don't pay? My only concern there is that I'm not sure how you hit the sweet spot where playing with what you have access to is fun enough that you want to get more units, while access to the fun units is gated behind enough hours of play that you're willing to pay a few bucks to skip the grind. Grind-to-unlock games are balanced around an expected rate of play, obviously tuned fairly aggressively to make the real money shortcut seem like a realistic alternative. But they have ways of course-correcting if it turns out their initial projections were off. Let's say they projected that the average highly-engaged player should be able to unlock 1 new unit per week, at a rate of 40 hours worth of games played per week. After the first week, they find that the average highly-engaged player actually only plays 30 hours per week. They can simply introduce "double currency weekends" to compensate. Note that it's always better for the designers to be too stingy than too generous, because it lets them ease up on the grind pressure which players will see as a necessary relief. If it were the other way around, you could severely damage your monetization effectiveness, your economy, and your player perception as you will need to inevitably nerf the grind rate to staunch the flow. Or just introduce daily/ weekly tasks to get some curreny. 1. Login 2. Play x games 3. Win x games 4. Win x games using y unit This way even less playing guys get some currency
Right, exactly. Same aim. And I think David Kim also said they were planning on "engagement quests" like this for launch.
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On July 04 2024 07:47 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
Ideally, shouldn't they want progress to be oppressively slow if you don't pay? My only concern there is that I'm not sure how you hit the sweet spot where playing with what you have access to is fun enough that you want to get more units, while access to the fun units is gated behind enough hours of play that you're willing to pay a few bucks to skip the grind.
It really depends on the targeted audience. Mobile games, sure. But if you have a PC audience that is most likely somewhat hardcore and well-educated, like in RTS, then you need to be more careful to not make it too obvious/cumbersome or people will rebel.
On July 04 2024 22:58 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2024 18:31 Harris1st wrote:On July 04 2024 09:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:On July 04 2024 07:47 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
Ideally, shouldn't they want progress to be oppressively slow if you don't pay? My only concern there is that I'm not sure how you hit the sweet spot where playing with what you have access to is fun enough that you want to get more units, while access to the fun units is gated behind enough hours of play that you're willing to pay a few bucks to skip the grind. Grind-to-unlock games are balanced around an expected rate of play, obviously tuned fairly aggressively to make the real money shortcut seem like a realistic alternative. But they have ways of course-correcting if it turns out their initial projections were off. Let's say they projected that the average highly-engaged player should be able to unlock 1 new unit per week, at a rate of 40 hours worth of games played per week. After the first week, they find that the average highly-engaged player actually only plays 30 hours per week. They can simply introduce "double currency weekends" to compensate. Note that it's always better for the designers to be too stingy than too generous, because it lets them ease up on the grind pressure which players will see as a necessary relief. If it were the other way around, you could severely damage your monetization effectiveness, your economy, and your player perception as you will need to inevitably nerf the grind rate to staunch the flow. Or just introduce daily/ weekly tasks to get some curreny. 1. Login 2. Play x games 3. Win x games 4. Win x games using y unit This way even less playing guys get some currency Right, exactly. Same aim. And I think David Kim also said they were planning on "engagement quests" like this for launch.
Quests like that are almost always cancer because they feel like you have to finish them before you do what you really want to do. Ideally, you just finish them by doing whatever you wanted to do. But that's rarely the case, at least for a significant portion of the player base.
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On July 02 2024 04:56 Miles_Edgeworth wrote:
Have about 2 hours in the beta so far and I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. I am finding losses much more frustrating here than in Starcraft or Warcraft (maybe due to less stuff to do in game with limited macro?) and it's compounded by not having access to all the units so you can't really experiment with strategies or counters very effectively.
I have two young children so I don't have much time to play, so the short match times are appealing, but the need to grind for several hours per unit unlock and the way the game wastes your time with bots in the matchmaking queue is really offputting. Ironically, this game feels like it caters far more to hardcore players over casuals than Starcraft does.
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Ye this is my sentiment as well. I really really wanted to have fun, but I just didn't. I didn't feel it was near as noob friendly. I didn't like fighting the UI. Sometimes the king crabs would go where I didn't want them to and I don't even know how to get them to consistantly go where I wanted them to. AOE units just destroy, if you look away for quarter second, it's way worse then most rts games and I feel like I have to play even faster than sc2 to be able to keep up because it's so hard to get map vision.
Right now, this is looking like a flop for most players and I won't recommend it to anyone cause I don't want the current state to be their first impression of it. So many of my friends don't like it.
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On July 04 2024 09:44 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2024 07:47 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
Ideally, shouldn't they want progress to be oppressively slow if you don't pay? My only concern there is that I'm not sure how you hit the sweet spot where playing with what you have access to is fun enough that you want to get more units, while access to the fun units is gated behind enough hours of play that you're willing to pay a few bucks to skip the grind. Grind-to-unlock games are balanced around an expected rate of play, obviously tuned fairly aggressively to make the real money shortcut seem like a realistic alternative. But they have ways of course-correcting if it turns out their initial projections were off. Let's say they projected that the average highly-engaged player should be able to unlock 1 new unit per week, at a rate of 40 hours worth of games played per week. After the first week, they find that the average highly-engaged player actually only plays 30 hours per week. They can simply introduce "double currency weekends" to compensate. Note that it's always better for the designers to be too stingy than too generous, because it lets them ease up on the grind pressure which players will see as a necessary relief. If it were the other way around, you could severely damage your monetization effectiveness, your economy, and your player perception as you will need to inevitably nerf the grind rate to staunch the flow.
There's ways to do that too without raising cries of exploitation, although it's generally more effort on the development side. The most common way is to just introduce a second currency, e.g. new units require standard crystals, but also omega tokens! If you look at gacha games they have about a billion resources, all restricted at different rates and serving "different purposes" (hero unlocks, levels, skills, gear, artifacts, weapons, ...)
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Anyone else feels like this game is a bit too boring? I got in the closed beta played a few games and it feels really boring.
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On July 06 2024 05:07 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote:
Anyone else feels like this game is a bit too boring? I got in the closed beta played a few games and it feels really boring.
Yep
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I am really enjoying the beta. I also feel losses are way less frustrating than in SC, maybe because of the shorter games. I really think that leaving macro duties from the player is a great idea, focusing the game just on fighting.
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I never cared much about the fact that David Kim was a GM random player in Wings of Liberty that could take games off the pros at the time, it was neat but I thought it was kind of poisonous for the discourse around what was expected from developers of the game.
But damn with Battle Aces he certainly made a game here that he can personally beat ass at. This motherf-er is at the top of the ladder at 41 years old beating Clem who still had a flagellum tail when DKim and co. were developing SC2. Lebronian longevity! Sure, he had a head start, but think back to when you had a flagellum—you were probably first in line out of the balls too.
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On July 07 2024 03:28 MegaBuster wrote:
I never cared much about the fact that David Kim was a GM random player in Wings of Liberty that could take games off the pros at the time, it was neat but I thought it was kind of poisonous for the discourse around what was expected from developers of the game.
But damn with Battle Aces he certainly made a game here that he can personally beat ass at. This motherf-er is at the top of the ladder at 41 years old beating Clem who still had a flagellum tail when DKim and co. were developing SC2. Lebronian longevity! Sure, he had a head start, but think back to when you had a flagellum—you were probably first in line out of the balls too.
Its parting david kim is arround 10k
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where???
I have to say the 'unit decks' on the leaderboard is not well thought out given you change your shit every game. Is it most used single deck? Last used? It'd be nice to see some kind of rolling average of their compositions over the last few games. The neo-RTS companies are really cutting back on stats and sensemaking elements, not that they've ever been good with SC2.
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There's a lot I like about the game.
Some are obviously imbalance, but you can definitely tell how some deck build are quite refined in how they transition between 2nd, 3rd base and post 3rd
My only real complaint is air units. Poorly designed for one.
But larger problem is, it creates an artificial need for anti air unit type. And unlike other RTS, they aren't locked into a longer tech path, and come online fairly early.
Still, I am pretty impressed. Especially in some games I faced some unit comp I didn't think would have that well synergy.
My main deck is wasps, hornet and bombers as t2, t3 I am still uncertain. And faced a recall heavy deck, the bombers are great at resetting their recall numbers and wasps to swarm them over. (Sadly I lost at the end)
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On July 07 2024 03:28 MegaBuster wrote:
I never cared much about the fact that David Kim was a GM random player in Wings of Liberty that could take games off the pros at the time, it was neat but I thought it was kind of poisonous for the discourse around what was expected from developers of the game.
But damn with Battle Aces he certainly made a game here that he can personally beat ass at. This motherf-er is at the top of the ladder at 41 years old beating Clem who still had a flagellum tail when DKim and co. were developing SC2. Lebronian longevity! Sure, he had a head start, but think back to when you had a flagellum—you were probably first in line out of the balls too.
At least we don't have to worry about 'balance' this go around. Also I think you're vastly overestimating his abilities.
As for rank and MMR it's pretty much inflationary at this point. You can't see MMR unless your account is flagged for it. Once an account is 2k it can't go below that and matching restrictions are lifted.
There is definitely 'skill' in the game but it also feels pretty binary and solved.
Still no incentive for any diversity in your deck, and in fact you're punished for going that route.
The economy balance needs to be more volatile. Expanding should be more favored/rewarding than it is currently.
I'd like to see a time reduction for both teching and expanding.
I think the only real way the game evolves is adding additional slot(s) inside of your deck. One for core units and also requiring an energy(gas) unit to be selected for one of those slots. Then I'd do another foundry slot as well as an advanced foundry slot. I wouldn't touch starforge and in fact I would probably lower the cost by 50 or 100.
Once that is done as the energy units are thoroughly iterated through the game will be in a much more enjoyable state.
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United States33505 Posts
Interesting post from internal data regarding the strongest cards/units. I didn't think they'd be so open about certain cards having as much as 60% win-rate, which seems insanely high to me (would love to hear from Magic the Gathering or other CCG players about that number).
I always felt their implicit 'sell' was that they'd try to make all the cards/units at a similar power level and situationally usable, so as to not make the game P2W and promote deck variety. Seeing this kind of post with a "go use these units!" message instead of something like "we want to bring these units in line" makes me leery going forward.
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On July 08 2024 01:57 Waxangel wrote:https://twitter.com/donaldwsjr/status/1810005235387044234Interesting post from internal data regarding the strongest cards/units. I didn't think they'd be so open about certain cards having as much as 60% win-rate, which seems insanely high to me (would love to hear from Magic the Gathering or other CCG players about that number). I always felt their implicit 'sell' was that they'd try to make all the cards/units at a similar power level and situationally usable, so as to not make the game P2W and promote deck variety. Seeing this kind of post with a "go use these units!" message instead of something like "we want to bring these units in line" makes me leery going forward.
Having played Hearthstone a lot, it needs to be a combination of win% and play %. In RTS, skill level matters too, as something can be completely broken at casual levels while being irrelevant at the top. This is partly why play % matters so much, you will not have a success game without a large playerbase of casual having fun.
I agree the win % should not ideally go over 55%, and every deck needs solid counters.
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On July 08 2024 01:57 Waxangel wrote:https://twitter.com/donaldwsjr/status/1810005235387044234Interesting post from internal data regarding the strongest cards/units. I didn't think they'd be so open about certain cards having as much as 60% win-rate, which seems insanely high to me (would love to hear from Magic the Gathering or other CCG players about that number). I always felt their implicit 'sell' was that they'd try to make all the cards/units at a similar power level and situationally usable, so as to not make the game P2W and promote deck variety. Seeing this kind of post with a "go use these units!" message instead of something like "we want to bring these units in line" makes me leery going forward.
I've never played MTG 'seriously', but my gut says 60% wouldn't be that unreasonable in MTG, though there's three major caveats :
1 ) The game keeps balance against strong units with strong removal. Your best creature will always only be as strong as a well-timed 'Swords to Plowshares', and your strongest removal is only as good as the strongest creature it can hit. A card being imba pushes the meta toward including solutions to that card.
2 ) Formats exist. MTG is a mess of ways to play the game, and while 60% passes my gut-check for casual magic, I'd be surprised if that were still true for tournament legal stuff. Tournaments and formats keep ban lists for cards that are 'too op' in that they singlehandedly warp the meta.
3 ) MTG has 60 card decks and mechanical limits (Legend rule) on how many of one card you can put in a deck or have on the field. Even if one card is super strong, you still have to be able to draw and play said card. I haven't played yet, but I imagine Battle Aces has much smaller 'decks', which would make OP cards much more impactful.
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On July 08 2024 01:57 Waxangel wrote:https://twitter.com/donaldwsjr/status/1810005235387044234Interesting post from internal data regarding the strongest cards/units. I didn't think they'd be so open about certain cards having as much as 60% win-rate, which seems insanely high to me (would love to hear from Magic the Gathering or other CCG players about that number). I always felt their implicit 'sell' was that they'd try to make all the cards/units at a similar power level and situationally usable, so as to not make the game P2W and promote deck variety. Seeing this kind of post with a "go use these units!" message instead of something like "we want to bring these units in line" makes me leery going forward.
Wasp being that low is really surprising, the amount of utility they give feels so OP.
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On July 08 2024 01:57 Waxangel wrote:https://twitter.com/donaldwsjr/status/1810005235387044234Interesting post from internal data regarding the strongest cards/units. I didn't think they'd be so open about certain cards having as much as 60% win-rate, which seems insanely high to me (would love to hear from Magic the Gathering or other CCG players about that number). I always felt their implicit 'sell' was that they'd try to make all the cards/units at a similar power level and situationally usable, so as to not make the game P2W and promote deck variety. Seeing this kind of post with a "go use these units!" message instead of something like "we want to bring these units in line" makes me leery going forward.
Guess we need bans for Ladder/ Tournaments
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EPT
