EPTStormgate/Frost Giant Megathread - Page 70
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gfzutrdfws
1 Post
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25444 Posts
On January 30 2024 21:14 gfzutrdfws wrote: arcade'ish? (Blizzard'ish)? What the fuck does that mean? Arcade was feeding coins into a machine and play your game. Tekken and Street Fighter were played that way, and they require an insane amount of complex mechanics. How do you play World of Warcraft and Diablo on an Arcade machine? realistic battle simulator like Total War. Is it realistic? Right so the term ‘arcade racer’ to describe games that eschew attempts at simulation isn’t a long-established term? It’s pretty damn obvious what ‘arcadeish’ means in this context, likewise ‘Blizzardish’ given it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of mostly Blizz RTS mechanics | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On January 30 2024 04:59 _Spartak_ wrote: Patch notes for the new build: Sounds good except for auto-splitting brutes. Automating micro is a terrible rabbit hole for a game wanting to be competitive to go down. Especially when hitting last second splits was the biggest part of the micro involved with them so far. You would never think of auto blinking stalkers or auto splitting marines, because that would ruin the skill differential involved with them. Automated control groups aren't too bad given they don't affect top level play that much (except in specific things like if a player is cheesing they can have each spawning unit add to a hotkeys without needing to go back and select it). But auto micro? Definitely the first thing I've seen from FG that makes me doubt them | ||
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qwerty4w
19 Posts
https://steamcommunity.com/games/334920/announcements/detail/3887234011192023191 Blizzard RTS games have traditionally been quite "fight the UI"-ish, with Warcraft 1 only allow the player to select 4 units at max and Starcraft 2 has some monotonous "macro". It's great to see Frost Giants changed their game design philosphy to some degree. | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
Stormgate is already making macro easier and less monotonous than sc2. They have to make up for that by allowing as great a range of player expression as possible through things like decision making and micro. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2558 Posts
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
Managing your apm is one of the skills that make rts so unique. I don't see how it's every justified to make it easier. Also, it's a ranked game? It's correct that you should lose because someone had better control than you. If you can't split brutes on time, your rank will be a bit lower than it would otherwise. Would people be in favor of automatically splitting marines when banelings come near? Because it's also a tough skill check? The answer should be no. If you aren't good enough, you're making a mistake trying to split last second if the first place. | ||
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LunarC
United States1186 Posts
A game designer who believes whole-heartedly in "fight the opponent, not the UI" is in my opinion disregarding the satisfaction in pulling off a combo in Street Fighter or perfectly timing a round of zealots in the middle of controlling a shuttle+reaver. IMO the reason new players are put off by real-time control RTS's is that these games don't do a good job teaching players hitting their build timings is fun. Micro is fun! I think they could borrow a lot of ideas from rhythm games. Those are all about hitting your marks at the right time, are fun, and are easy to get into. This runs the risk of constraining players to specific build orders. Perhaps the end point of the lessons should be how to modify build orders or come up with new ones. There was a Day9 video way back in the day that basically outlined how he came up with his own Guardian timing build order. It opened my eyes to why competitive SC is fun. There's nothing close to that sort of teaching in any of these games. Definitely can learn from fighting games as well. Well-designed fighting games have easy-to-execute, effective moves. They help newbies feel powerful without much skill required. But those moves are easily countered by skilled players. This creates an incentive to start learning more about the game. You could consider the equivalent in RTS as "cheese". But "cheese" in RTS is often a kill move. The effectiveness is way too high vs. the skill required; it requires way more skill to block. There's no better way to get new players to quit than exposing them to cheese. Conversely, winning against a cheeser makes new players feel like a god. By that logic, effective cheese strategies should be viable openers but should not be an instant kill moves. TL;DR: RTS can be more real-time simulation (like Supreme Commander) or real-time control (like SC). I think real-time control is more fun to play and watch (I think most SC fans agree). IMO real-time control gets a bad rap because games don't do a good job teaching people why macro and micro are fun. There are other genres RTS could learn from to teach new players. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2558 Posts
On January 31 2024 10:12 Fango wrote: Well sure, one unit micro'ing itself gives you more apm to do things elsewhere, but it doesn't add anything to the game. Like I said, they're already going easier and more forgiving on the macro end. Managing your apm is one of the skills that make rts so unique. I don't see how it's every justified to make it easier. Also, it's a ranked game? It's correct that you should lose because someone had better control than you. If you can't split brutes on time, your rank will be a bit lower than it would otherwise. Would people be in favor of automatically splitting marines when banelings come near? Because it's also a tough skill check? The answer should be no. If you aren't good enough, you're making a mistake trying to split last second if the first place. I think a clearer and different way to state your point (assuming I understand it) is something like: "Automated micro at a level further than we see in SC2 is antithetical to what I want out of an RTS." It isn't that automated micro itself is bad, it's just that it changes the focus of the game away from what you're familiar with and know you enjoy. You'd consider it bad because you don't like the outcome, but that doesn't actually make it bad in an objective, universal sense. To play with your example, auto-splitting marines vs banelings would change the focus of the game - the use case for banelings would become more for busts and running banes into mineral lines, rather than head-on engagements with MMM. Additionally, it'd put more emphasis on baneling landmines and likely open up some micro awkwardness where a baneling or two is included in your ling/ultra for the express purpose of forcing your opponent's marines to waste time pathing and not shooting. It's an example of 'automated micro' that doesn't result in 'no micro', rather 'different focus'. It'd also fuck TvZ balance of course, but that's a different issue. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25444 Posts
On January 31 2024 12:27 LunarC wrote: I think real-time strategy is a broad enough genre to support games that are closer to real-time simulation where APM is not as important (like Supreme Commander) vs. real-time control where APM and reaction speed is more imporant (like Starcraft). There's always going to be tension between those that prefer their RTS to land closer to one end vs. the other. That being said, I don't think SC fans will accept SG landing even closer to real-time simulation than SC2. A game designer who believes whole-heartedly in "fight the opponent, not the UI" is in my opinion disregarding the satisfaction in pulling off a combo in Street Fighter or perfectly timing a round of zealots in the middle of controlling a shuttle+reaver. IMO the reason new players are put off by real-time control RTS's is that these games don't do a good job teaching players hitting their build timings is fun. Micro is fun! I think they could borrow a lot of ideas from rhythm games. Those are all about hitting your marks at the right time, are fun, and are easy to get into. This runs the risk of constraining players to specific build orders. Perhaps the end point of the lessons should be how to modify build orders or come up with new ones. There was a Day9 video way back in the day that basically outlined how he came up with his own Guardian timing build order. It opened my eyes to why competitive SC is fun. There's nothing close to that sort of teaching in any of these games. Definitely can learn from fighting games as well. Well-designed fighting games have easy-to-execute, effective moves. They help newbies feel powerful without much skill required. But those moves are easily countered by skilled players. This creates an incentive to start learning more about the game. You could consider the equivalent in RTS as "cheese". But "cheese" in RTS is often a kill move. The effectiveness is way too high vs. the skill required; it requires way more skill to block. There's no better way to get new players to quit than exposing them to cheese. Conversely, winning against a cheeser makes new players feel like a god. By that logic, effective cheese strategies should be viable openers but should not be an instant kill moves. TL;DR: RTS can be more real-time simulation (like Supreme Commander) or real-time control (like SC). I think real-time control is more fun to play and watch (I think most SC fans agree). IMO real-time control gets a bad rap because games don't do a good job teaching people why macro and micro are fun. There are other genres RTS could learn from to teach new players. Agreed. Even if it’s not comprehensive or super on top of the meta, I feel there should be a fully featured proper tutorial section, in the client. Grab a few pros to do a few tutorials, explaining what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Show some examples of fun micro, have some interactive ones It’s long been an issue with RTS games, the information is out there but it’s quite diffused. Different forums, Reddit YouTube, Discord. If I’m the hypothetical newbie rather than the veteran that I am, man I wanna get playing games, knowing vaguely what I’m doing, and what I need to work on to be good at this kind of game. Not log or tab out and actively having to find good starting blocks to build from who knows where? | ||
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VelRa_G
Canada304 Posts
I'm personally very supportive of this change. It'd be difficult to balance brutes in low level vs high level play, and personally I'd rather spend my attention on multi-prong or on other aspects of the fight than trying picking out low-health Brutes in a chaotic battle. As Monk points out, you're still incentivized to pre-split vs Vanguard to deny Veterancy so you can still play Brute Osu if you want  | ||
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qwerty4w
19 Posts
"Fights between the player and the UI bias strategy away from a pure expression of what units can achieve with their abilities. and this bias is often particularly strong for new players, which can delay how long it takes for someone to start playing the 'real' game." | ||
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LunarC
United States1186 Posts
On January 31 2024 18:01 qwerty4w wrote: Monk's reason was mentioned in the Zero-K article above: "Fights between the player and the UI bias strategy away from a pure expression of what units can achieve with their abilities. and this bias is often particularly strong for new players, which can delay how long it takes for someone to start playing the 'real' game." I took a look at Zero-K and am not surprised at all that Zero-K looks right at home over on the side of "real-time simulation". I do think it's a good thing to be aware of as a designer. I'm all for making actions feel meaningful. But I caution against treating it as a Platonic ideal the way Zero-K does, because it sacrifices the fun tactility and rhythm of good "real-time control" type games. To be clear I think the Brute Split is a good change because newbies will get most of the Brute's potential even without casting Split. And casting Split is no longer so onerous that it would put them off from learning micro. That said, the extracted benefit is too subtle for my liking. It's not easily apparent to new players why they should bother casting Split manually. Monk said they're open to tuning that. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16711 Posts
On January 18 2024 21:39 JimmyJRaynor wrote: possibly misleading consumers via Kickstarter messaging? You could be correct, however, a more thorough investigation is required to make a determination on the issue you bring up here. Time will tell if consumers were mislead during the Kickstarter campaign. This time next year, we'll know what's up. I don't get how people are always so charged up about instantly donating to Kickstarter the nanosecond it is offered. I am waiting until the last day of Stormgate's Kickstarter to decide whether or not to donate. My decision will be 10,000X more informed than the people who donated to Stormgate on day one. If I donate Frost Giant will have access to my money just as fast as anyone donating on day one of the campaign. Kickstarter #s went up by ~3,000 in the last day. So I guess some people do employ the above strategy I mentioned. That is refreshing to see! On January 31 2024 10:12 Fango wrote: Would people be in favor of automatically splitting marines when banelings come near? Because it's also a tough skill check? The answer should be no. If you aren't good enough, you're making a mistake trying to split last second if the first place. That is an interesting point. in C&C you could auto split your infantry with the "X" button. Despite the "X" button, there was no shortage of micro things to do in C&C. On January 31 2024 12:27 LunarC wrote: TL;DR: RTS can be more real-time simulation (like Supreme Commander) or real-time control (like SC). I think real-time control is more fun to play and watch (I think most SC fans agree). IMO real-time control gets a bad rap because games don't do a good job teaching people why macro and micro are fun. There are other genres RTS could learn from to teach new players. If you must "teach" someone how something is fun ... that is a huge barrier to entry. No one had to teach me how SC1 , Mario 3 , Mario 64, or GTA3,4,5 or Fortnight were fun. My wife is loving Palworld. Zero "teachings" on "how to have fun". As soon as I stop having fun I play something else or do something else. | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On January 31 2024 16:21 VelRa_G wrote: On the subject of Brute splitting, Monk provided the reasoning here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/1ae1p22/comment/kk6eawj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 I'm personally very supportive of this change. It'd be difficult to balance brutes in low level vs high level play, and personally I'd rather spend my attention on multi-prong or on other aspects of the fight than trying picking out low-health Brutes in a chaotic battle. As Monk points out, you're still incentivized to pre-split vs Vanguard to deny Veterancy so you can still play Brute Osu if you want There was already an upgrade that made them auto split, so by the time you have 30 brutes or here's loads going on in the game you'd have it anyway. Or if a player was confident in their skill they could delay the upgrade and manually split. It seemed like a good cost/reward trade-off. As for Monk's comment, I don't think I agree with him. He said their internal testers couldn't play the game because opponents had better splits? Isn't that what you want? Lesser players getting bopped by those with good micro? Remember those with worse micro can split earlier instead of trying for the last second, and they'd lose an appropriate amount of DMG/HP during the fight because of it. It feels, to me, like claiming an opponent having better blink micro in PvP or bane hits in ZvZ, isn't a good reason for them to win. Once a ladder exists, players should be players others on the same skill level, and the more options they have to improve skills, the more they can improve. Making micro automated does nothing but take away. | ||
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tili
United States1332 Posts
On January 31 2024 22:38 Fango wrote: There was already an upgrade that made them auto split, so by the time you have 30 brutes or here's loads going on in the game you'd have it anyway. Or if a player was confident in their skill they could delay the upgrade and manually split. It seemed like a good cost/reward trade-off. As for Monk's comment, I don't think I agree with him. He said their internal testers couldn't play the game because opponents had better splits? Isn't that what you want? Lesser players getting bopped by those with good micro? Remember those with worse micro can split earlier instead of trying for the last second, and they'd lose an appropriate amount of DMG/HP during the fight because of it. It feels, to me, like claiming an opponent having better blink micro in PvP or bane hits in ZvZ, isn't a good reason for them to win. Once a ladder exists, players should be players others on the same skill level, and the more options they have to improve skills, the more they can improve. Making micro automated does nothing but take away. Personally, I think there should be a 'middleway' where splitting manually gives some benefit (white health?) whereas the brute dying produces fields w/o white health. The balance is between lower-skill players rarely even getting fiends in the early game (if they're bad at micro), and higher skill player losing skill expression against newbies.... providing some substantial benefit to manually splitting seems like the clear answer imo, and white health seems like a very strong/clear benefit in the early skirmishes with few units. Also, the fact it degrades over time means you wouldn't be incentivized to do outside of a battle. | ||
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qwerty4w
19 Posts
The matter is not making game harder vs easier, it's not having more skill differentiators vs less skill differentiators, the matter is what you want the skill differentiators to be. There's more nuanced micro and more rhythm game or QTE-like micro, an RTS game can have any amount of the former without the latter (Zero-K as a micro heavy RTS with a lot of automation is a great example of this). A game's competitive community are people already invested a lot in their game specific skills and generally don't like changes of skill differentiators. A game developer that is trying to get some new audience need to weigh their opinions carefully if they don't want to lose the old audience. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2558 Posts
On January 31 2024 21:44 JimmyJRaynor wrote: From the Zerospace thread... Kickstarter #s went up by ~3,000 in the last day. So I guess some people do employ the above strategy I mentioned. That is refreshing to see! That is an interesting point. in C&C you could auto split your infantry with the "X" button. Despite the "X" button, there was no shortage of micro things to do in C&C. If you must "teach" someone how something is fun ... that is a huge barrier to entry. No one had to teach me how SC1 , Mario 3 , Mario 64, or GTA3,4,5 or Fortnight were fun. My wife is loving Palworld. Zero "teachings" on "how to have fun". As soon as I stop having fun I play something else or do something else. All of those games taught you how to have fun in them, you just didn't realize they were doing it. Fortnite taught you how to have fun by giving you games of 100 'players' where only 20 of those were humans, and all of those humans were around your skill level. Mario 64 taught you how to have fun by starting you in a hub world and limiting your exploration until you were ready for it. Much different experience if it starts you in a bowser stage or clock tower. SC1 has a long and granular campaign that eases you in to the 'actual game' and paths you through faction tech trees piece by piece. It's part of why I maintain that a robust campaign in a new RTS is a must - it's way easier for a designer to teach the player how to have fun when they can control the variables, and it's hard to control the variables when your opponent is a human. | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On February 01 2024 04:15 tili wrote: Personally, I think there should be a 'middleway' where splitting manually gives some benefit (white health?) whereas the brute dying produces fields w/o white health. The balance is between lower-skill players rarely even getting fiends in the early game (if they're bad at micro), and higher skill player losing skill expression against newbies.... providing some substantial benefit to manually splitting seems like the clear answer imo, and white health seems like a very strong/clear benefit in the early skirmishes with few units. Also, the fact it degrades over time means you wouldn't be incentivized to do outside of a battle. This is also totally fine. But the way they've done it at least in this patch just makes it so there's no potential to even split micro to begin is definitely too far in that direction. I still think lesser players should just split earlier to get fiends but making it so players who micro get a clear benefit (such as white health) works just as well. | ||
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LunarC
United States1186 Posts
On February 01 2024 11:07 Fango wrote: This is also totally fine. But the way they've done it at least in this patch just makes it so there's no potential to even split micro to begin is definitely too far in that direction. I still think lesser players should just split earlier to get fiends but making it so players who micro get a clear benefit (such as white health) works just as well. I'm not gonna lie, Brutes not producing 2 Fiends unless manually casting Split doesn't make much sense to me intuitively. To be honest the whole visual design of the Brute doesn't suggest to me that it can turn into 2 Zerglings. How about taking it a different direction entirely? The Brutes look bloated like they could explode right? Keep the current "Brutes will always produce 2 Fiends if killed" and "Split is performed by the lowest health Brute". But turn Split into an ability with a 1 second wind-up delay that causes the Brute to jump a short distance and explode where it lands, dealing damage and slowing enemies in a small AoE. Perhaps add an upgrade where the explosion also Infests enemies. The damage doesn't need to be huge and the cast time means you can't just spam it or catch a retreating army easily unless you set up a smart ambush. And if you can focus down Brutes before they can jump you'll negate the damage and slow. Split is just a very unsexy ability, even from first reveal. It's only interesting right now to people that like fiddly mechanics. | ||
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