EPTThe Philosophy of Design: Part 2 - Unit Design - Page 32
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Garmer
1286 Posts
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Blasterion
China10272 Posts
On January 25 2012 22:40 Garmer wrote: look at those vessel vs defiler.... in sc2 there isn't something like that, i wish the hunter seeker was more useful... Look at Mine laying and Mine clearing in SC2 there isn't something like that, you don't have that devastating push weapon that cost 0 supply. I wish I had my mines back. | ||
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Garmer
1286 Posts
 , but i do not want BW units back, just better units design | ||
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jodogohoo
Canada2533 Posts
like... if sc2 was in compeditive competition with other rts making companies... would sc2 get away with all the stupid shit that the company is doing? note: sc2 is a great game but there are some things that... just frustrate me. custom games... and etc.. things that other people have come up with in their criticism... | ||
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Xiphos
Canada7507 Posts
On February 22 2012 08:46 jodogohoo wrote: alright, my one question is... if we know what makes a good game... why doesn't another company make a game that is what sc2 should have been. with better unit designs. mechanics. with better online design, not bnet 2.0. with all the good things that sc2 is missing. why isn't another companying looking at what's missing and making it happen. sc2 is only good because it's got some sort of irresponsible monopoly on the rts market. like... if sc2 was in compeditive competition with other rts making companies... would sc2 get away with all the stupid shit that the company is doing? note: sc2 is a great game but there are some things that... just frustrate me. custom games... and etc.. things that other people have come up with in their criticism... Because PC gaming is essentially dead. There is just that much more profits to gain from consoles. With consoles, you do not need to worry about the average computer spec and therefore much easier to perform fixes because everyone is playing universally on the same system. This decreases their workforce and therefore need less budget. Also judging by the numbers alone, console games have outsold many of the best PC games. So it would be logical decision on which industry to invest. | ||
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pezit
Sweden302 Posts
On February 22 2012 08:46 jodogohoo wrote: alright, my one question is... if we know what makes a good game... why doesn't another company make a game that is what sc2 should have been. with better unit designs. mechanics. with better online design, not bnet 2.0. with all the good things that sc2 is missing. why isn't another companying looking at what's missing and making it happen. sc2 is only good because it's got some sort of irresponsible monopoly on the rts market. like... if sc2 was in compeditive competition with other rts making companies... would sc2 get away with all the stupid shit that the company is doing? note: sc2 is a great game but there are some things that... just frustrate me. custom games... and etc.. things that other people have come up with in their criticism... Because not a lot of people care about game depth to the degree of which we're discussing here, most people already think SC2 is extremely complex and going further would only make it less popular. | ||
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jodogohoo
Canada2533 Posts
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coolcor
520 Posts
On February 22 2012 09:01 Xiphos wrote: Because PC gaming is essentially dead. There is just that much more profits to gain from consoles. With consoles, you do not need to worry about the average computer spec and therefore much easier to perform fixes because everyone is playing universally on the same system. This decreases their workforce and therefore need less budget. Also judging by the numbers alone, console games have outsold many of the best PC games. So it would be logical decision on which industry to invest. PC hasn't been dead for a while. Steam sales are actually more than consoles for a few games especially low budged indie games. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-23-cthulu-saves-the-world-sells-100k-on-steam http://www.destructoid.com/portal-2-sold-better-on-pc-than-xbox-360-or-ps3-210194.phtml http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33963/Team_Meat_Roughly_600000_Sales_For_Super_Meat_Boy.php PC exclusives don't do to bad either. http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2011/01/four-months-after-amnesias-release.html With these figures at hand, we must confess that it gives us new confidence for the PC. The sales that we have had (and are having) are more than enough to motivate developing a game with the PC as the main (and even only) platform. Based on what we have seen, the online PC market is just getting bigger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this growth. We think that other developers that consider making their game exclusive to a console might want to think again. Oh and I'm sure blizz is happy they don't have to pay 40k per patch like the consoles demand. http://kotaku.com/5884842/wait-it-costs-40000-to-patch-a-console-game An indie rts game designed to be an esport would be interesting especially if someone like day9 was helping to design it. I'd really like that to happen. Skullgirls is from an indie company designed to be a competitive fighting game so it could be similar budget to that I guess. (though it is console exclusive) Achron is an indie RTS and I thought it was a lot of fun but the graphics are bad and the gameplay is confusing to spectate with all the time travel so it would be hard to make it work as an esport. | ||
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lorkac
United States2297 Posts
On January 25 2012 22:42 Blasterion wrote: Look at Mine laying and Mine clearing in SC2 there isn't something like that, you don't have that devastating push weapon that cost 0 supply. I wish I had my mines back. I miss when Hellions cost 25 less minerals and carried 3 small nukes. Those were the days when RTS games were more balanced. | ||
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LuckoftheIrish
United States4791 Posts
On February 22 2012 09:01 Xiphos wrote: Because PC gaming is essentially dead. There is just that much more profits to gain from consoles. With consoles, you do not need to worry about the average computer spec and therefore much easier to perform fixes because everyone is playing universally on the same system. This decreases their workforce and therefore need less budget. Also judging by the numbers alone, console games have outsold many of the best PC games. So it would be logical decision on which industry to invest. We'll see. The new Unreal engine is supposed to be incredibly powerful. Too powerful, in fact. The PS3 hasn't yet been maxed out and the XBox720 is supposed to be slightly short of its specifications. Unreal Engine 4 will be more powerful than the PS3 can handle, and since a PS4 isn't coming out any time soon, that will force its games onto PCs for a few years. | ||
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karpo
Sweden1998 Posts
On February 22 2012 14:38 coolcor wrote: PC hasn't been dead for a while. Steam sales are actually more than consoles for a few games especially low budged indie games. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-23-cthulu-saves-the-world-sells-100k-on-steam http://www.destructoid.com/portal-2-sold-better-on-pc-than-xbox-360-or-ps3-210194.phtml http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33963/Team_Meat_Roughly_600000_Sales_For_Super_Meat_Boy.php PC exclusives don't do to bad either. http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2011/01/four-months-after-amnesias-release.html Oh and I'm sure blizz is happy they don't have to pay 40k per patch like the consoles demand. http://kotaku.com/5884842/wait-it-costs-40000-to-patch-a-console-game An indie rts game designed to be an esport would be interesting especially if someone like day9 was helping to design it. I'd really like that to happen. Skullgirls is from an indie company designed to be a competitive fighting game so it could be similar budget to that I guess. (though it is console exclusive) Achron is an indie RTS and I thought it was a lot of fun but the graphics are bad and the gameplay is confusing to spectate with all the time travel so it would be hard to make it work as an esport. Link all you want but you still only cherry picked a few popular PC titles. Overall console gaming utterly trumps PC and the amount of console to PC ports hurts the sales even more. Sure there's niche games that sell well but overall consoles are where it's at and that's a fact. Diablo 3 is coming to consoles, Guild Wars 2 is maybe coming to consoles, Dragon Age 2 was ruined because of consoles, Fallout would have been alot better if it weren't for consoles, Skyrim is worse due to consoles. It's telling what state PC gaming is at when ID Software, a renowned PC developer, now limit their game engines to fit them on the 360 and PS3. | ||
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jodogohoo
Canada2533 Posts
On February 22 2012 14:38 coolcor wrote: An indie rts game designed to be an esport would be interesting especially if someone like day9 was helping to design it. I'd really like that to happen. Skullgirls is from an indie company designed to be a competitive fighting game so it could be similar budget to that I guess. (though it is console exclusive) Achron is an indie RTS and I thought it was a lot of fun but the graphics are bad and the gameplay is confusing to spectate with all the time travel so it would be hard to make it work as an esport. wooot lets do it lol =p | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
On February 22 2012 08:46 jodogohoo wrote: alright, my one question is... if we know what makes a good game... why doesn't another company make a game that is what sc2 should have been. with better unit designs. mechanics. with better online design, not bnet 2.0. with all the good things that sc2 is missing. why isn't another companying looking at what's missing and making it happen. sc2 is only good because it's got some sort of irresponsible monopoly on the rts market. like... if sc2 was in compeditive competition with other rts making companies... would sc2 get away with all the stupid shit that the company is doing? note: sc2 is a great game but there are some things that... just frustrate me. custom games... and etc.. things that other people have come up with in their criticism... I think its because of a serious misunderstanding of the gaming market by investors. Look at the direction games have headed. They're more like glorified cutscenes. The gaming industry is bigger than the movie industry in the US now. It's absolutely monolithic. If companies continue to focus on pouring out these bloated interactive movies, they're going to be spending an ungodly amount of resources on making them pretty and accessible. When you focus on making games as expensive as possible, you have to market to a larger audience, which means dumbing them down. This is true across every genre. RTS is especially hurt by that though, because RTS relies on attracting the cleverest players and appeals to a more intellectual audience to begin with. Hence, RTS these days is a very weak genre. I often ask myself why there aren't more indie developers pushing RTS. However, if you look at Riot and S2 with LoL and HoN clearly there is a strategy market for indie developers. It can't be that there isn't the market, it just has to be that companies are actually that stupid. If I was a programmer you bet I'd be all over that kind of project. However, I don't have the technical expertise to get something like that off the ground. | ||
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Johnzee
United States216 Posts
On February 22 2012 08:46 jodogohoo wrote: alright, my one question is... if we know what makes a good game... why doesn't another company make a game that is what sc2 should have been. with better unit designs. mechanics. with better online design, not bnet 2.0. with all the good things that sc2 is missing. why isn't another companying looking at what's missing and making it happen. sc2 is only good because it's got some sort of irresponsible monopoly on the rts market. like... if sc2 was in compeditive competition with other rts making companies... would sc2 get away with all the stupid shit that the company is doing? note: sc2 is a great game but there are some things that... just frustrate me. custom games... and etc.. things that other people have come up with in their criticism... You incorrectly assume that we know what makes a good game. We have some good ideas, certainly, but no one's ever made a game without some real or imagined flaws in design or development, and it's unreasonable to keep remaking things that we thought were good in a new game. It suffocates new ideas that may come to be the canon for "good game design". People are constantly looking at games like Brood War through the rose-tinted glasses and saying that it did mechanics/unit design/ect better. But we can only see the end product of 12-plus years of progaming to what the game that we call "Brood War" has become. Brood War was not what it was one, two, or even 5 years to from its inception. It still has some truly crap design in it, ranging from largely unused units (Scouts, Dark Archons, Guardians, Queens), to what the OP terms "micro-reducing abilities" (assuming you want to call that bad design in the first place - Queen Ensnare, Arbiter Stasis field, Ghost Lockdown). Which brings me to the problem of generally calling micro-reducing abilities or "micro-less" units "bad design". This is in no way bad design. It is a different design with a specific purpose. Losing micro in one area opens up opportunities for multitasking or micro in other areas. It may not be the design you had in mind, but it doesn't make it bad. Take this example, for anyone who plays a DOTA-style arena game: the last-hitting mechanic. In DotA and DotA II, you last-hit creeps for gold. You could also last-hit (attack) your own units and prevent enemy players from getting the gold from killing your creeps yourself. This was the standard. DotA was immensely popular and remains a model of "good" game design. But when Riot formed and decided to create League of Legends, they didn't think so. They thought the idea of "denying" enemy players your creeps was counter-intuitive (why should players accept the idea that they should kill their own allied units? In what world does that make sense?). So they limited the ability to one character and eventually got rid of the mechanic entirely. To some, this made LoL seem less skill-intensive by lowering the amount of micro required to play - to others, this streamlined the design, focused the gameplay a bit more, and things just made sense. And LoL is immensely popular and a model of "good" game design. Now Blizzard DOTA is taking another step by removing the last-hit mechanic entirely. If you contribute damage to a creep and it dies in a certain amount of time afterwords (essentially "assisting" in killing a creep), you get gold. One might imagine that this streamlines the game even more, allows players who don't normally get last hits (like support characters) to participating in gaining resources for items and feel more active in the game, and opens up the time previously spent microing for last-hits to do other (perhaps more exciting) things, like earlier teamfights and roaming. The OP is titled "The Philosophy of Design", making us believe that there is the (singular) game design that should be adhered to, yet this is clearly not the case. OP is basing "good" on Brood War standards, which is fine if you want to remake Brood War. Things like Sentry Force Fields don't have a place in that design. But when we watch the ASUS ROG tourney today and FXOLucky goes up against d.Bischu, we're not going to automatically give it to Bischu because he can place some good force fields. We're not going to assume that Lucky masses hydras against a Colossus-equipped army and engage off creep on a choke point in the middle of Lost Temple like the OP screenshot would suggest. There WILL be a dance between these players, as there has been in the past - it just won't be the one you'd have in Brood War. | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
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Marti
552 Posts
On February 25 2012 01:24 Johnzee wrote: After reading OP and first several posts I decided to come back here around page 32-33 and contribute my 2 cents to the discussion - only to find that this thread is somehow mutating unto some hideous PC-vs-consoles pissing contest. Let's get it back on track People are constantly looking at games like Brood War through the rose-tinted glasses and saying that it did mechanics/unit design/ect better. But we can only see the end product of 12-plus years of progaming to what the game that we call "Brood War" has become. Brood War was not what it was one, two, or even 5 years to from its inception. It still has some truly crap design in it, ranging from largely unused units (Scouts, Dark Archons, Guardians, Queens), to what the OP terms "micro-reducing abilities" (assuming you want to call that bad design in the first place - Queen Ensnare, Arbiter Stasis field, Ghost Lockdown). Which brings me to the problem of generally calling micro-reducing abilities or "micro-less" units "bad design". This is in no way bad design. It is a different design with a specific purpose. Losing micro in one area opens up opportunities for multitasking or micro in other areas. It may not be the design you had in mind, but it doesn't make it bad. I don't have much to actually add i just wanna point out that dark archons guardians and queens see usage every now and then. And by that i don't mean in a random game, if you watched proleague you might have seen a PvP where ( i think it was jaehoon ) a dark archon feedback'd 4 templars, basically preventing the other toss from casting a single storm, you can't do anything against feedback yet you wouldn't call it a micro reducing ability right ? Jaedong also used guardians and i've seen a TvZ where the zerg used queens vs terran mech. It's all from this season. It's not that those units are impossible to use, it's just that they are not needed, why would you make a scout instead of a corsair ? I've only ever seen one use of this, a one base allin PvZ build ( i assume it was jumper who did this ) : scouts kill hovies much faster than corsairs, hence you can snipe an hovie and sneak a dt, but you wouldn't get scouts to deal with mutas right ? Those units don't see much use because of the metagame, not because they are outright bad or can cost you the game, you COULD make them, there's just a better option in most cases, but getting guardians on maps where your nat has a cliff is not that uncommon, it's not that the unit is bad, it's just that you can make something that's BETTER instead. ( By the way , mazur just used scouts in the gambit cup, granted Breakz isn't as good as him, and i don't see why anyone would do that unless they're 100% their opponent won't get mutas / hydra bust, but still somewhat legit in the situation he was in, i'm not denying he could've raped him with sairs, i'm just saying they CAN see usage. ) I don't really see this " truly crap design " you talk about, i mean, i know brood war isn't perfect but when i think of the flaws of the game, it's mostly BO advantages and wins in mirror matchups, not arbiters, i mean, you can EMP arbiters, yet i wouldn't call EMP a micro reducing ability, you can more or less dodge the emp, and even if it was impossible, EMP doesn't outright win a game or anything like that. Storming is arguably one of the easiest things to do and it's still not as easy as 1a, i feel really sad when a storm obliterates 20 hydras, but it's not like it's imbalanced or micro limiting. I am not too sure where i'm going with that but i guess my point is that even if brood war has flaws, it doesn't bring a stupid situation such as a wrap prism flying into your base, with 4 sentries in it, and then forcefielding your ramp forever while the toss warps in 4 zealots and kills all of your workers without you being unable to do anything about it and going like, " well he used forcefields and warped in an army, i guess i lost ... " | ||
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Timmsh
Netherlands201 Posts
On February 25 2012 07:08 Marti wrote: I don't have much to actually add i just wanna point out that dark archons guardians and queens see usage every now and then. And by that i don't mean in a random game, if you watched proleague you might have seen a PvP where ( i think it was jaehoon ) a dark archon feedback'd 4 templars, basically preventing the other toss from casting a single storm, you can't do anything against feedback yet you wouldn't call it a micro reducing ability right ? Jaedong also used guardians and i've seen a TvZ where the zerg used queens vs terran mech. It's all from this season. It's not that those units are impossible to use, it's just that they are not needed, why would you make a scout instead of a corsair ? I've only ever seen one use of this, a one base allin PvZ build ( i assume it was jumper who did this ) : scouts kill hovies much faster than corsairs, hence you can snipe an hovie and sneak a dt, but you wouldn't get scouts to deal with mutas right ? Those units don't see much use because of the metagame, not because they are outright bad or can cost you the game, you COULD make them, there's just a better option in most cases, but getting guardians on maps where your nat has a cliff is not that uncommon, it's not that the unit is bad, it's just that you can make something that's BETTER instead. ( By the way , mazur just used scouts in the gambit cup, granted Breakz isn't as good as him, and i don't see why anyone would do that unless they're 100% their opponent won't get mutas / hydra bust, but still somewhat legit in the situation he was in, i'm not denying he could've raped him with sairs, i'm just saying they CAN see usage. ) I don't really see this " truly crap design " you talk about, i mean, i know brood war isn't perfect but when i think of the flaws of the game, it's mostly BO advantages and wins in mirror matchups, not arbiters, i mean, you can EMP arbiters, yet i wouldn't call EMP a micro reducing ability, you can more or less dodge the emp, and even if it was impossible, EMP doesn't outright win a game or anything like that. Storming is arguably one of the easiest things to do and it's still not as easy as 1a, i feel really sad when a storm obliterates 20 hydras, but it's not like it's imbalanced or micro limiting. I am not too sure where i'm going with that but i guess my point is that even if brood war has flaws, it doesn't bring a stupid situation such as a wrap prism flying into your base, with 4 sentries in it, and then forcefielding your ramp forever while the toss warps in 4 zealots and kills all of your workers without you being unable to do anything about it and going like, " well he used forcefields and warped in an army, i guess i lost ... " I think it is awesome when somebody manages to warp a whole army in your main, while sentries forcefield the ramp.. Sure, you can't micro against it when the forcefield is there, but it's a risky move. The same holds for walking over a big buried baneling army, both only require scouting to prevent it, still everybody loves buried banelings. My point is that people just complain about balance (in this case, game design) when they are frustrated because of their own play. The reason why people love buried banelings killing armies, is because it doesn't happened to them yet.... Edit: I noticed that i overfocussed on your last point, while i agree with the rest of your post :-) | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
On February 25 2012 07:31 Timmsh wrote: I think it is awesome when somebody manages to warp a whole army in your main, while sentries forcefield the ramp.. Sure, you can't micro against it when the forcefield is there, but it's a risky move. The same holds for walking over a big buried baneling army, both only require scouting to prevent it, still everybody loves buried banelings. My point is that people just complain about balance (in this case, game design) when they are frustrated because of their own play. The reason why people love buried banelings killing armies, is because it doesn't happened to them yet.... Edit: I noticed that i overfocussed on your last point, while i agree with the rest of your post :-) I think it is awesome when somebody manages to 6 pool your main. Sure you can't micro against it when you built your gateway on 14 at your ramp, but it's a risky move. /s | ||
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Johnzee
United States216 Posts
On February 25 2012 07:08 Marti wrote: I don't really see this " truly crap design " you talk about, i mean, i know brood war isn't perfect but when i think of the flaws of the game, it's mostly BO advantages and wins in mirror matchups, not arbiters, i mean, you can EMP arbiters, yet i wouldn't call EMP a micro reducing ability, you can more or less dodge the emp, and even if it was impossible, EMP doesn't outright win a game or anything like that. Storming is arguably one of the easiest things to do and it's still not as easy as 1a, i feel really sad when a storm obliterates 20 hydras, but it's not like it's imbalanced or micro limiting. I am not too sure where i'm going with that but i guess my point is that even if brood war has flaws, it doesn't bring a stupid situation such as a wrap prism flying into your base, with 4 sentries in it, and then forcefielding your ramp forever while the toss warps in 4 zealots and kills all of your workers without you being unable to do anything about it and going like, " well he used forcefields and warped in an army, i guess i lost ... " Perhaps "crap" is too strong a word. But my point remains the same: if you choose to define "good design" here as a game that doesn't allow "cheap", "unfair", or "stupid" game situations you'll find that BW was still chock full of them; for example, Reaver drops and Storm drops (they were actually good back then) could obliterate an entire mineral line and you would lose just as fast as you would with your Warp Prism scenario. | ||
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DaemonX
545 Posts
Just make a low tier unit of each race 'massive' - preferably a unit that has a limited mobility and role elsewhere (ie queen, or maybe make a terran building crush forcefields when landing, and push units aside rather than being unable to land. Fixing forcefields seems like a small price to pay for losing building blocks). Then you can respond to the forcefields of your opponent defensively, microing against them by 'stomping' them (the existing massive units are all so large they squash ALL forcefields near them instantly, these would only stop 1 square at a time), but you can't easily aggress protoss with this technique without a severely gimmicky or diluted build order (queen rush lol!). | ||
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