EPT[A] FlowCraft - A effort to improve the game - Page 2
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aiuradun
Denmark115 Posts
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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The_Frozen_Inferno
Canada98 Posts
Putting the time and effort in to making a mod that can actually showcase proposed balance and design changes rather than just having rampant theorycrafting and loud posting is the only way we'll ever get any results or data whatsoever about the viability of our ideas. Back in Oct. 2010 when SC2 had just come out, I thought terran was the most imba thing ever (when I was silver league, and getting 7minute 3rax stim rushed on close positions lost temple). So, I went into the editor and nerfed terran into the ground and started playing around with the melee balance myself. As I learned more and more about the editor, I ended up effectively making my own altered melee mod - just to see what would be cool. Laertes above is completely right about needing to maintain a vision for what kind of gameplay you want to aim at. My mod ended up having so many units, and so many options, that it's actually impossible to balance. Sure there's a lot of cool stuff that you don't see in standard (reavers blowing up MMM and abomination+lurker vs irradiate) but that doesn't necessarily make it competitive. It might be fun to the casual-tryhard, but not to a serious RTS player. When the options become too many, and the execution too convoluted (as with some of your new abilities), the potential for strategic gameplay goes away. It becomes impossible to strategize and account for possible counter strategies and timings and all that high-level stuff if there are too many options to consider. In essence, my mod became too coin-flippy and chaotic to balance. So, I eventually gave up the ghost and decided it's just a fun melee-esque mod showcasing my advances in understanding the data editor rather than a serious balance mod. All the same, best of luck at making your altered melee map a success. Everyone knows that making the changes is the easy part. Figuring out which ones to make is the hard part. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10382 Posts
On November 07 2012 02:54 RFDaemoniac wrote: "Hard counters have been removed. More specifically, the whole bonus damage system has been removed" I would disagree with the idea that the bonus damage system creates hard counters. For example, the siege tank does bonus damage to armored, but is clearly better against smaller units because of splash, which are also usually light. In this way the bonus damage system helps lessen the hardcounter of the ultralisk against the siege tank, or roaches against siege tanks. While this is not always the case, I think it provides evidence that the whole system shouldn't be scrapped. Agreed. Units like Immortals just happen to have really large bonus damage against units that don't do well against it. Bonus damage helps balance the game. | ||
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NoM.Mur
Finland6 Posts
On November 06 2012 22:09 decemberscalm wrote: I have one question though, with macro mechanics gone's do you plan to add any sort of actual difficulty for macro? That's been a pretty key element to SCBW and SC2, players can show off their extreme skill by having flawless macro AND do everything else at the same time. Ever since I removed the macro mechanics I have been thinking that did it make the game easier. There is clearly less to do, because you don't have to spawn larva, drop mules or plan the chrono boost usage. On the other hand, now the midgame is longer, it takes longer to get the full saturation and there will be more action and decisions before you can get it. Questions that have rosen to my mind are: 1) is it now more important to spend your money ASAP and try to get even a small edge? (Because a small lead in the begining will have more time to get bigger and bigger until the lategame.) 2) will the player get punished for supply blocks even harder? 3) Building supply is harder. The 200/200 won't be reached nearly as fast and player will have to worry about the supply production throughout the early and midgame. This is true expecially for the zerg, who can normally just produce the overlords after the larva pops out and then not worry about it until the next larva cycle. Plus there can normally be only very little action/threads before the 60 - 80 worker mark has been secured. At least from the zerg perspective things feel a lot harder now. There is only limited amounth of larva and it takes so long to get the full saturation. You have to worry constantly about the enemy and ask yourself that do I produce units or do I produce drones. For other races it sure is equally important to expand as quickly as possible, but not to over extend. Along with some of my teammates I have made a strange observation, we will start floating money! How is that possible... It might be just the lack of experiance in this new situation though. On November 07 2012 02:54 RFDaemoniac wrote: "Hard counters have been removed. More specifically, the whole bonus damage system has been removed" I would disagree with the idea that the bonus damage system creates hard counters. For example, the siege tank does bonus damage to armored, but is clearly better against smaller units because of splash, which are also usually light. In this way the bonus damage system helps lessen the hardcounter of the ultralisk against the siege tank, or roaches against siege tanks. While this is not always the case, I think it provides evidence that the whole system shouldn't be scrapped. I agree with you. That part were written little unclearly. I removed the bonus damage system because: 1) I wanted to test is it possible to balance a game without it and how it will affect the gameplay 2) It made the game more simple. Very easy to understand the basic stats. Less paper, rock, scissors 3) Like you said, everything is not a hard counter (like the tank), but the ones that were are no more (for example Immortal or Baneling). Don't get me wrong, there still should be "light counters" to units (if we want to use the word counter). Some units will perform better against certain unit mixes than others. So we could say that there is still little bit paper, rock, scissors. I'm sure there is no right way, but personally I like this approach more. Example: Terran makes a lot of marines. Protoss mixes some Immortals in, since they are great vs marines. Terran player will start producing more Marauders since they have more hp and more range than marine, and can deal well with Immortals. Protoss starts adding more zealots since they are great (especially with chager) against marauders. etc. But there is no unit, that can completely "counter" the enemy force and would completely wipe them out. As I said before, if it looks like I have to incorporate a bonus damage system to balance the game correctly, I will. On November 07 2012 09:38 Laertes wrote: I encourage the maker of flowcraft to stick with a "guiding goal", such as the one above, or one of his imagination. That is a good advice.  | ||
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PunchTheBag
Russian Federation26 Posts
Good luck with developing, i hope some days we will see several solutions of sc2 issues (like a nerf of deathball and defensive advantage) in a pro level. Can anyone take interview with any progamer to give him a question about these concepts? And one more important (very inportant) thing - please make an in-game rating (maybe like ELO or Iccup) system (and maybe one-in-all map where players can choose the map to play). It is very annoying to play against unknown-skilled opponent (he can do a brilliant timing push or go "battlecruiser first" tactic with 6 workers). Without that system people wants play this map onky with known friends, and it very impedes popularity of mod. And sorry for my english :D | ||
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darkscream
Canada2310 Posts
I'm sure the mod is fun to play but there's certainly nothing we can learn about balance from it. This isn't starcraft anymore. | ||
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SiskosGoatee
Albania1482 Posts
Aside from that, unless you make each unit hit both ground and air, hardcounters will always exist, one banshee can kill infinite roaches. | ||
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