Northern Ireland25315 Posts
On July 31 2025 21:56 ETisME wrote:
Agreed with many points above as well
And it's perfectly fine to have a different TTK, but it needs to have all the other bits and pieces to work well with it
SC2 is extremely well designed around fast pacing, clump/declump, and smooth patching, low TTK and rebuild time etc
SG to me, never nailed it quite right for both playing and viewing
Good points, I think many critics of SC2 semi-diagnosed the problem, but not fully. It’s not just TTK.
1. TTK gets more brutal with scale.
2. Not all unit interactions are as frustrating as others.
3. IMO some of the frustrating stuff has to exist if you have an extremely responsive engine, and give Terran incredibly microable, massable, high DPS ranged units.
SC2 has some of the most satisfying skirmish micro at lower supplies of any RTS, across factions and with many different units it just becomes harder to do as much meaningful micro at big supplies.
Let’s take the Colossus and the Disruptor, and assume their strongest versions. Against 1 or 2, you can flank well, take a good engage, maybe dodge a ball. Against 6? The TTK being high just sees your army melt before it can do that much, so you need whatever counter unit. Which is often less fun.
However, it’s not just that dynamic. It’s also how easy the terrible terrible damage is to execute versus mitigate that’s frustrating to many. Or, the demands of engagements.
As Toss main whose Terran off is (was) about as good, TvZ is pretty mechanically demanding, and unforgiving but in a way that feels fun. There’s more trading, there’s less of having an unkillable ball that eventually you have to deal with. I think a super fun dynamic and a bit underrated is creep, and Terran having an edge off creep, and Zerg having one on creep. Do you risk pushing deep, or do you play it too safe and take your foot off the Zerg throat? I think the micro interactions are great here as well. I can’t remotely do them at the level the top boys do of course, but I’m surprisingly adept at splitting bio. You’ve got flanks, you’ve got trying to bait mines, you’ve got retargetting mines, you’ve got bane splits to counter your splits. You’ve got stutter step on the retreat, you’ve wraparounds to try and lock you in.
I think that’s pretty good stuff, and it’s all with a high TTK.
TvT is probably a better example again in terms of it not purely being a TTK issue. I fucking hate the modern TvT early game, but I’m certainly not alone in enjoying a good marine/tank mirror. Marines melt to tank fire, and really melt to tanks with attack upgrades. People don’t tend to complain about this TTK, although some find it boring. But not the same terrible terrible damage complaints, not nearly. Why is this? Simply because you can’t A-move with tanks, and you can outmanoeuvre it, it feels hard, but pretty fair. Conversely, if a Toss gets a potent deathball, they can just walk around with it, unless they really fuck up, it tends to be a problem you have to deal with eventually.
Which brings me to point 3, which ties into Frost Giant’s approach. They didn’t learn that lesson, but they lowered the TTK at the same time.
Now, those who didn’t lose as much faith in SG may correct me and the meta has shifted or whatever, when I was last fully engaged and checking things out, one thing really stood out. Ranged units, functionally similar to bio hitting critical mass and just kiting everything to death. Sure they’d kill things slower because of the TTK, but a similar dynamic. However, you have some counters, but you don’t have nearly as many as SC2 does. End result if you’re playing someone who’s got a certain level of micro and they don’t fuck up, it felt incredibly fucking hard to actually do anything, and just as frustrating as anything in SC2.
You see something similar at lower levels in WC3 when pally/rifle got popular. Survivability + endless kiting is frustrating if there’s not a counter play that’s similar in execution required.
I think with a modern engine, you need to consider what that does to ranged units and how they outscale melee massively. If you don’t have other potent counters it can get pretty oppressive.
Marines have potent damage output, and are amongst the most microable units in all of RTS, but they’re damn squishy. Archers in WC3 are quite squishy too, decent damage output but one of their main weaknesses is their turn speed. They’re strong but you can’t just endlessly stutter step with them.
I feel Frost Giant maybe didn’t factor all of this in, because I’m seeing similar mistakes to SC2, but with less upside.
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On July 31 2025 23:24 WombaT wrote:
Now, those who didn’t lose as much faith in SG may correct me and the meta has shifted or whatever, when I was last fully engaged and checking things out, one thing really stood out. Ranged units, functionally similar to bio hitting critical mass and just kiting everything to death. Sure they’d kill things slower because of the TTK, but a similar dynamic. However, you have some counters, but you don’t have nearly as many as SC2 does. End result if you’re playing someone who’s got a certain level of micro and they don’t fuck up, it felt incredibly fucking hard to actually do anything, and just as frustrating as anything in SC2.
You see something similar at lower levels in WC3 when pally/rifle got popular. Survivability + endless kiting is frustrating if there’s not a counter play that’s similar in execution required.
I think with a modern engine, you need to consider what that does to ranged units and how they outscale melee massively. If you don’t have other potent counters it can get pretty oppressive.
Marines have potent damage output, and are amongst the most microable units in all of RTS, but they’re damn squishy. Archers in WC3 are quite squishy too, decent damage output but one of their main weaknesses is their turn speed. They’re strong but you can’t just endlessly stutter step with them.
I feel Frost Giant maybe didn’t factor all of this in, because I’m seeing similar mistakes to SC2, but with less upside.
Most of the counters are currently functioning well. (Some critical mass air situations are probably the only major outliers.)
Assuming we're referencing let's say Exo in place of the marine:
Vanguard has Vulcan & Atlas
Infernal has Hellbourne & Hexen (Necrotic Hexfield)
Celestial has Saber & Animancer (Dark Prophecy)
All of those pretty much dunk on the unit extremely hard. Brute charge and Kri roll can also be solutions, but if it's only brutes you should be very mindful of the engagement (with the current version the skill gap has to be large if infernal is struggling anyway).
Argent is similar but a bit more problematic. (Heavy tag, mineral only. Better vs Vulcan, worse vs rest of the non casters)
I doubt it stays in its current form long term. Having a +2 range upgrade available by itself is wild, let alone adding 25% damage to it.
Also not sure why a "heavy" unit is the most nimble out of all of the non speedy units.
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On July 31 2025 16:32 TaShadan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 16:13 Hider wrote:On July 31 2025 15:28 ETisME wrote:
It's clear why they failed. It's because their vision of things like longer TTK just didn't work out well, and they are basically salvaging whatever they can but ends up with a completely weird spot.
The logic was "people say Sc2 is too fast and unforgiving". "But Wc3 is probably too slow". The sweet stop must be in the middle. I was always quite sceptical of that. Not that I thought it couldn't work but I felt like the high speed of Sc2 functioned as a band-aid fix to make the game feel good. With a lower speed you need to add a lot more micro interactions that feels satisfying and rewarding. And I don't think they accomplished. Casting a Psi storm on Marines and one-shotting them feels damn good. Casting an ability that ticks their damage to 30% less so. It's one of those cases where I understand their reasoning, but it's too simplistic. And they gradually realized these things - but way too late. The sweet spot already exists. Broodwar. AT least in terms of DPS, time to die (units and buildings), speed of units, build speeds etc.
I kinda agree. And I think what Brood War has is:
* Effectively lower DPS because unit spreads out more (this is really hard to implement with sc2 type pathing)
* Super overpowered abilities - but not spamable (at least hard to do so).
When I look at Stormgate. I don't even mind the TTK in terms of basic unit damage too much. However, give me something exciting. The battles aren't exciting. Some of the new Stormgates provide a bit - but I need ALOT more.
My philosophy for a "next-gen RTS" would be try something like this:
* Sc2 type responsiveness and intelligent pathing.
* Slightly lower TTK than sc2 for basic attacks.**
* Strong natural defenders advantage but with lots of battles out on the map. Losing a single skirmish won't matter too much.
* Super strong abilites. And I want to be very creative with new types of abilities I want players to do something that looks and feels awesome and can change the outcome of the battle if done and timed well. (and has counterplay)
* Movement-based micro is the primary APM component of the game.
This would be my receipt and it is inspired by a combination of BW, Sc2, but also MOBA's. Some of the abilities in MOBA games I think are quite cool and I wonder if part of the concepts could be adapted to RTS games. For instance, I have some ideas for "assasin-type" units that can go in and out to snipe stuff. High burst but very fragile and super high skillcap units.
I am well aware that it wouldn't be everyones prefered RTS game. I am not making everyone happy - I am trying to make a game that works well for a specific target group.
Am I confident it would work? NO, but my plan would be to get to a stage where I could verify my hypothesis and test and reevaluate as quickly as possible.
Frostgiant did the opposite. Never had an idea in mind for what they actually wanted, and didn't try to adapt fast but just "assumed" it would work out.
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EPT
