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On November 09 2024 19:35 Creager wrote: Having watched PiG's recent video on the matter it's kinda shocking that they seem to treat the game more like a TCG than a RTS, which at first glance sure looks enticing, but how much do you have to dumb down the gameplay to reel in the right audience for this?
When I played Hearthstone or Magic I welcomed the strategic part without the mechanical aspect, so I wonder if many people will like to have some sort of middleground?
The problem is that they aren't even hitting the middleground really. The game is quite APM-intensive. It rewards a lot of multitasking.
I think of it more like they removed the basebuilding, macro etc. and replaced it with the "card-game"-selection part.
I don't think that widens the target audience. To widen the audience you need to make the actual battle micro exciting. Can anyone make a highlight video out of Battle Aces that caters to the average MOBA player? If not the game's potential is very limited in scope.
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On November 10 2024 19:03 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 19:35 Creager wrote: Having watched PiG's recent video on the matter it's kinda shocking that they seem to treat the game more like a TCG than a RTS, which at first glance sure looks enticing, but how much do you have to dumb down the gameplay to reel in the right audience for this?
When I played Hearthstone or Magic I welcomed the strategic part without the mechanical aspect, so I wonder if many people will like to have some sort of middleground? The problem is that they aren't even hitting the middleground really. The game is quite APM-intensive. It rewards a lot of multitasking. I think of it more like they removed the basebuilding, macro etc. and replaced it with the "card-game"-selection part. I don't think that widens the target audience. To widen the audience you need to make the actual battle micro exciting. Can anyone make a highlight video out of Battle Aces that caters to the average MOBA player? If not the game's potential is very limited in scope. i wouldnt quite say the game requires a lot of multitasking, its more about micro. I think you can play this game with relatively low APM compared to what you would need with starcraft and still hit a top rank.
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The game is really in the exact same boat it was before. The gameplay loop is fun to play, albeit uninteresting to watch, and the engine is solid, but the monetisation is atrocious and goes too far towards pay-to-win.
If they wanted to do a similar thing to LoL or whatever, they could shift towards preset unit packs, functioning like races/factions in a typical RTS. It's a lot easier to balance having a bunch of free factions and then further paid ones. But that would involve removing the entire card system which is really what makes the game unique.
As for DK's comments, he doesn't exactly have a great history of listening to his playerbase and responding appropriately, and given it's Tencent, the monetisation is largely out of his control anyway
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I haven't played too much - one game I selected Crabs and Recalls. Recalls are ranged but can't shoot up, as I discovered when my opponent built a bunch of air units and I couldn't do anything, lol.
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On November 12 2024 04:14 SoleSteeler wrote: I haven't played too much - one game I selected Crabs and Recalls. Recalls are ranged but can't shoot up, as I discovered when my opponent built a bunch of air units and I couldn't do anything, lol. Thats why there's a deck building aspect and I think they give you a warning if you don't have AA at tier 1
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If they add a good single-player mode - not just skirmish vs AI - I'd like to try it. Unit responsiveness seems to be good and unit micro in general seems to be rewarding enough.
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United States33388 Posts
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This is going to sound REALLY bad but why are we even talking about monetization when your avg concurrents is 200 players? Major changes to gameplay and overall vision needs to change. That should be top priority. "How can we get more players?" then worry about monetization later. If we can't average at least 1000 concurrents I don't think it will be sustainable in the long term anyway. I love battle aces, and I want them to succeed. I already put 73 hours into it. But if we can't get the players then it's all for nothing. The biggest complaint seems to be imo that it feels more like a custom game or arcade game than a fully fledged RTS. Do something with that. Expand your scope. Find ways to draw in new players. I know money probably isn't infinite, but do what u can, change something. get creative.
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Unexpectedly good news. I didn't see them folding to the negative feedback right away. Just hope they keep it up for the full release, p2w has no business here.
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United States12235 Posts
On November 12 2024 12:54 CicadaSC wrote:This is going to sound REALLY bad but why are we even talking about monetization when your avg concurrents is 200 players? Major changes to gameplay and overall vision needs to change. That should be top priority. "How can we get more players?" then worry about monetization later. If we can't average at least 1000 concurrents I don't think it will be sustainable in the long term anyway. I love battle aces, and I want them to succeed. I already put 73 hours into it. But if we can't get the players then it's all for nothing. The biggest complaint seems to be imo that it feels more like a custom game or arcade game than a fully fledged RTS. Do something with that. Expand your scope. Find ways to draw in new players. I know money probably isn't infinite, but do what u can, change something. get creative.
I agree. I haven't played the game, but from what I've seen it seems to skew too hardcore in terms of micro requirements, but at the same time the game's not deep enough. Where is the attraction for casual players? People don't just jump on a free game because it's there - there needs to be that broad appeal to draw them in. You're not immersing them in a world because the robots have no personality. It's not a progression-based campaign. There's no increasing difficulty or rule modifiers. There's nothing aspirational to strive for outside of raw competition, and that is hugely intimidating for casual players.
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Yeah in this day and age - making things monotonous identity wise (all robots) feels so out of date.
The broader audience wants characters, unique identities, or at the least more distinct races and aesthetics to the robots. An evil robot race, a light robot race, etc. A hero unit or cosmetic captain that you can identify with and customize. This is a big factor that makes the game less visually interesting too.
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I don't really agree at all. Deadlock isn't casual not newbie friendly. Even single player huge hits like black myth wukong isnt beginner friendly, nor factario. RTS genre isn't as big as shooter or Moba but certainly there's already a big hidden playbase.
We also don't want them to over expand their scale, look at stormgate and its entire mess with starving resources. Meanwhile all popular indies or competitive games, only really need one good mode. Anything else is just a bonus
I think out of all the new rts, this has by far the highest probability to outlive all of them. There's very few complaints in the gameplay, everything negative is on monetalisation.
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On November 12 2024 12:54 CicadaSC wrote:This is going to sound REALLY bad but why are we even talking about monetization when your avg concurrents is 200 players? Major changes to gameplay and overall vision needs to change. That should be top priority. "How can we get more players?" then worry about monetization later. If we can't average at least 1000 concurrents I don't think it will be sustainable in the long term anyway. I love battle aces, and I want them to succeed. I already put 73 hours into it. But if we can't get the players then it's all for nothing. The biggest complaint seems to be imo that it feels more like a custom game or arcade game than a fully fledged RTS. Do something with that. Expand your scope. Find ways to draw in new players. I know money probably isn't infinite, but do what u can, change something. get creative.
Outside of TL.net I would have NEVER heard of this game (yet). People don't even know this game exists (yet). They are just starting to do some marketing. Give it some time. Also even on Tl.net there are multiple people who do not want to beta test/ bug fix another upcoming game... I'll play on release and not a second sooner. If it sucks then, too bad. if it's good then, Yay me!
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On November 12 2024 17:37 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2024 12:54 CicadaSC wrote:This is going to sound REALLY bad but why are we even talking about monetization when your avg concurrents is 200 players? Major changes to gameplay and overall vision needs to change. That should be top priority. "How can we get more players?" then worry about monetization later. If we can't average at least 1000 concurrents I don't think it will be sustainable in the long term anyway. I love battle aces, and I want them to succeed. I already put 73 hours into it. But if we can't get the players then it's all for nothing. The biggest complaint seems to be imo that it feels more like a custom game or arcade game than a fully fledged RTS. Do something with that. Expand your scope. Find ways to draw in new players. I know money probably isn't infinite, but do what u can, change something. get creative. Outside of TL.net I would have NEVER heard of this game (yet). People don't even know this game exists (yet).
well.. thats not entirely true. they got their game in front of millions of people at their big reveal, to get their trailer in that game show it was leaked it costed companies $300k entry. People saw the game, most weren't interested. Not because the game is bad imo but they definitely did market it. i'd be surprised to see marketing to that level again after the return was so low.
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On November 12 2024 17:33 ETisME wrote: I don't really agree at all. Deadlock isn't casual not newbie friendly.
Exactly. Deadlock works because it's "exciting". I can watch a few highlights and be inspired to want to try out the heroes, some tricks or abilities.
Battle Aces is unmarketable. Big clump of units a-moving against each other is not something you that will cater to a wider audience. And it's ironic because the exact reason they are going for simple units is to cater to casuals, but it will end up having the opposite effect.
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On November 12 2024 18:49 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2024 17:37 Harris1st wrote:On November 12 2024 12:54 CicadaSC wrote:This is going to sound REALLY bad but why are we even talking about monetization when your avg concurrents is 200 players? Major changes to gameplay and overall vision needs to change. That should be top priority. "How can we get more players?" then worry about monetization later. If we can't average at least 1000 concurrents I don't think it will be sustainable in the long term anyway. I love battle aces, and I want them to succeed. I already put 73 hours into it. But if we can't get the players then it's all for nothing. The biggest complaint seems to be imo that it feels more like a custom game or arcade game than a fully fledged RTS. Do something with that. Expand your scope. Find ways to draw in new players. I know money probably isn't infinite, but do what u can, change something. get creative. Outside of TL.net I would have NEVER heard of this game (yet). People don't even know this game exists (yet). well.. thats not entirely true. they got their game in front of millions of people at their big reveal, to get their trailer in that game show it was leaked it costed companies $300k entry. People saw the game, most weren't interested. Not because the game is bad imo but they definitely did market it. i'd be surprised to see marketing to that level again after the return was so low.
Maybe I saw that. Don't quite remember. Even if I saw that my line of thinking would have been: Look, a interesting but unfinished and unpolished game that will release in 2 years. Listen, this game might succed or fail, I don't know and don't care much either way. It's in closed beta right now and I refuse to extrapolite success based on concurrent players of a non available product.
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On November 12 2024 20:36 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2024 17:33 ETisME wrote: I don't really agree at all. Deadlock isn't casual not newbie friendly. Exactly. Deadlock works because it's "exciting". I can watch a few highlights and be inspired to want to try out the heroes, some tricks or abilities. Battle Aces is unmarketable. Big clump of units a-moving against each other is not something you that will cater to a wider audience. And it's ironic because the exact reason they are going for simple units is to cater to casuals, but it will end up having the opposite effect.
yeah i blasted through 700 hours in deadlock after I got my hands on it.
I played 4 games of battle aces, uninstall.
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United States12235 Posts
On November 12 2024 20:36 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2024 17:33 ETisME wrote: I don't really agree at all. Deadlock isn't casual not newbie friendly. Exactly. Deadlock works because it's "exciting". I can watch a few highlights and be inspired to want to try out the heroes, some tricks or abilities. Battle Aces is unmarketable. Big clump of units a-moving against each other is not something you that will cater to a wider audience. And it's ironic because the exact reason they are going for simple units is to cater to casuals, but it will end up having the opposite effect.
The closest comparison I can think of is actually Mechabellum. It's another competitive robot game, but it's an autobattler, it has round-based escalation, it's easy to analyze the battlefield and see what's happening, it's fun to watch the battles unfold, and there are many upgrades and variations you can apply to cover unit shortcomings. Mechabellum gets 3,000 concurrent players per day. The creator built the game because growing up in China he always admired the top Warcraft 3 players, yet couldn't be one because he lacked the APM. Mechabellum appeals to that broad audience in that way. Battle Aces almost seems like the polar opposite approach where it's fun if you're already in that top 1% of RTS players and want to test your APM limits through a series of active skirmish rounds.
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On November 13 2024 00:28 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2024 20:36 Hider wrote:On November 12 2024 17:33 ETisME wrote: I don't really agree at all. Deadlock isn't casual not newbie friendly. Exactly. Deadlock works because it's "exciting". I can watch a few highlights and be inspired to want to try out the heroes, some tricks or abilities. Battle Aces is unmarketable. Big clump of units a-moving against each other is not something you that will cater to a wider audience. And it's ironic because the exact reason they are going for simple units is to cater to casuals, but it will end up having the opposite effect. The closest comparison I can think of is actually Mechabellum. It's another competitive robot game, but it's an autobattler, it has round-based escalation, it's easy to analyze the battlefield and see what's happening, it's fun to watch the battles unfold, and there are many upgrades and variations you can apply to cover unit shortcomings. Mechabellum gets 3,000 concurrent players per day. The creator built the game because growing up in China he always admired the top Warcraft 3 players, yet couldn't be one because he lacked the APM. Mechabellum appeals to that broad audience in that way. Battle Aces almost seems like the polar opposite approach where it's fun if you're already in that top 1% of RTS players and want to test your APM limits through a series of active skirmish rounds.
Yeah in a strict mono battle style micro in one place. :D
Nothing much tactical about the game either.
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On November 12 2024 20:36 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2024 17:33 ETisME wrote: I don't really agree at all. Deadlock isn't casual not newbie friendly. Exactly. Deadlock works because it's "exciting". I can watch a few highlights and be inspired to want to try out the heroes, some tricks or abilities. Battle Aces is unmarketable. Big clump of units a-moving against each other is not something you that will cater to a wider audience. And it's ironic because the exact reason they are going for simple units is to cater to casuals, but it will end up having the opposite effect. I kinda agree and disagree It's difficult to market for sure but i think it just needs to be through word of mouth..
The game is exciting because how much momentum swing there is. And the game is extremely fast paced. Watch day9 stream and he loved it (other than no stats and micro transaction bit).
And on the point about newbie friendly, it's easier to get into because it has very little complexity of macro. But it is still very multitasking and mechanics heavy, the macro isn't THAT easy, especially with the hard counter mechanics with 0 build time
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