On May 14 2014 06:22 Figgy wrote: Free to play. Constantly changing environment.
These are the biggest things MOBAs have far and above current RTS.
I get bored after 100 ladder games in SC2 after I've hit master 4 seasons in a row and have nothing left to do in the game? I quit I get Bored after 100 Solo Q games in League and hit Gold this season? Oh try one of 50 new champs I haven't played yet that have completely different playstyles. Also 5 different roles that play much differently from each other keeps it fresh and exciting.
SC2 has gotten stagnant, very very stagnant. Most of the people who watch don't even play the game anymore.
You could also try some of the many arcade games that in sc2?
3 different races, with 3 different matchups, with each matchup having multiple different ways to play it optimally. Then there's cheesing, testing new builds, inventing new timings, etc...
An RTS is only as boring as you make it.
No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
All competitive games deal with massive amounts of repetition. It seems to me like you're comparing casual MOBAs to competitive SC2. It's not really a sensible comparison. At high levels of MOBAs you really have very few builds to choose from and they do get plenty repetitive.
That's why I thought the MTG model might make more sense. Rather than try to make one set metagame, you constantly delete, modify, and add units to the races to develop a larger story. Like a lot of small expansions. I think you'd have to have a much more long-term thought process for that to work though.
I'm not a pro, but I do consider myself a fairly decent Dota gamer. At the very least as decent as I was in sc2 (which was high masters, constantly on the verge of GM). And I can tell you with certainty that sc2 is way more repetitive than Dota2. Its complete bull that there are "very few builds to choose from" because there are no builds. You pick the item thats best for the situation and state of the game, which will almost always vary due to every game being wildly different. And even if you do the same "build" every game, the game still ends up with plenty variations as you'll never be facing the same enemy heroes, the same allied heroes, and every battle and engagement is different and requires you to do different things. There is no "grab everything and 1a".
I do agree that one of the reasons dota is doing well is because they're not afraid to change up the model. While its in their thoughts, they're not obsessed with balance like Blizzard is. Every year or so theres usually a huge patch that changes the state of the game drastically, as well as the addition of more heroes which you have to take into consideration when drafting. A game that constantly changes will have a varied metagame.
On May 31 2014 23:34 DoubleReed wrote: Maybe once LotV comes out we can have games where people pick some of the crazy broken abilities and upgrades from the campaigns. Have some Torrasque-Strain Ultralisks facing Immortality Protocol on Thors?
The thing is that those things all don't work for SC2 multiplayer design.
SC2 falls into the old "let everything develop", "never tinker around with timings", "don't design anything narrow" of classic RTS games. The first thing that would happen with those campaign things is that you'd be facing 10pool raptors jumping up your cliff, and how are you every going to hold that? Then you'd get 4gate superstalkers and 2rax mercenary allins and whatever stupid bullshit people can come up with to make the game as bad as possible.
To make these kinds of ideas work - design your own units; choose from a unit pool; have insane variety of abilities around; have insane amounts of diverse units around - you need to take a step back first. You need some very standard mapsetup around which you design the units. And most of all, you need some strong anti-timing attack mechanics early on, that prevents that some super early game combo becomes the only playable option.
On May 14 2014 06:22 Figgy wrote: Free to play. Constantly changing environment.
These are the biggest things MOBAs have far and above current RTS.
I get bored after 100 ladder games in SC2 after I've hit master 4 seasons in a row and have nothing left to do in the game? I quit I get Bored after 100 Solo Q games in League and hit Gold this season? Oh try one of 50 new champs I haven't played yet that have completely different playstyles. Also 5 different roles that play much differently from each other keeps it fresh and exciting.
SC2 has gotten stagnant, very very stagnant. Most of the people who watch don't even play the game anymore.
You could also try some of the many arcade games that in sc2?
3 different races, with 3 different matchups, with each matchup having multiple different ways to play it optimally. Then there's cheesing, testing new builds, inventing new timings, etc...
An RTS is only as boring as you make it.
No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
All competitive games deal with massive amounts of repetition. It seems to me like you're comparing casual MOBAs to competitive SC2. It's not really a sensible comparison. At high levels of MOBAs you really have very few builds to choose from and they do get plenty repetitive.
That's why I thought the MTG model might make more sense. Rather than try to make one set metagame, you constantly delete, modify, and add units to the races to develop a larger story. Like a lot of small expansions. I think you'd have to have a much more long-term thought process for that to work though.
I'm not a pro, but I do consider myself a fairly decent Dota gamer. At the very least as decent as I was in sc2 (which was high masters, constantly on the verge of GM). And I can tell you with certainty that sc2 is way more repetitive than Dota2. Its complete bull that there are "very few builds to choose from" because there are no builds. You pick the item thats best for the situation and state of the game, which will almost always vary due to every game being wildly different. And even if you do the same "build" every game, the game still ends up with plenty variations as you'll never be facing the same enemy heroes, the same allied heroes, and every battle and engagement is different and requires you to do different things. There is no "grab everything and 1a".
I do agree that one of the reasons dota is doing well is because they're not afraid to change up the model. While its in their thoughts, they're not obsessed with balance like Blizzard is. Every year or so theres usually a huge patch that changes the state of the game drastically, as well as the addition of more heroes which you have to take into consideration when drafting. A game that constantly changes will have a varied metagame.
I'm not that good but games are usually a lot more than just "grab everything and 1a." Even at gold level you see scouting, micro, and harassment. If that's all you mean then there is plenty of variation in Starcraft as well.
On May 14 2014 06:22 Figgy wrote: Free to play. Constantly changing environment.
These are the biggest things MOBAs have far and above current RTS.
I get bored after 100 ladder games in SC2 after I've hit master 4 seasons in a row and have nothing left to do in the game? I quit I get Bored after 100 Solo Q games in League and hit Gold this season? Oh try one of 50 new champs I haven't played yet that have completely different playstyles. Also 5 different roles that play much differently from each other keeps it fresh and exciting.
SC2 has gotten stagnant, very very stagnant. Most of the people who watch don't even play the game anymore.
You could also try some of the many arcade games that in sc2?
3 different races, with 3 different matchups, with each matchup having multiple different ways to play it optimally. Then there's cheesing, testing new builds, inventing new timings, etc...
An RTS is only as boring as you make it.
No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
All competitive games deal with massive amounts of repetition. It seems to me like you're comparing casual MOBAs to competitive SC2. It's not really a sensible comparison. At high levels of MOBAs you really have very few builds to choose from and they do get plenty repetitive.
That's why I thought the MTG model might make more sense. Rather than try to make one set metagame, you constantly delete, modify, and add units to the races to develop a larger story. Like a lot of small expansions. I think you'd have to have a much more long-term thought process for that to work though.
I'm not a pro, but I do consider myself a fairly decent Dota gamer. At the very least as decent as I was in sc2 (which was high masters, constantly on the verge of GM). And I can tell you with certainty that sc2 is way more repetitive than Dota2. Its complete bull that there are "very few builds to choose from" because there are no builds. You pick the item thats best for the situation and state of the game, which will almost always vary due to every game being wildly different. And even if you do the same "build" every game, the game still ends up with plenty variations as you'll never be facing the same enemy heroes, the same allied heroes, and every battle and engagement is different and requires you to do different things. There is no "grab everything and 1a".
I do agree that one of the reasons dota is doing well is because they're not afraid to change up the model. While its in their thoughts, they're not obsessed with balance like Blizzard is. Every year or so theres usually a huge patch that changes the state of the game drastically, as well as the addition of more heroes which you have to take into consideration when drafting. A game that constantly changes will have a varied metagame.
I'm not that good but games are usually a lot more than just "grab everything and 1a." Even at gold level you see scouting, micro, and harassment. If that's all you mean then there is plenty of variation in Starcraft as well.
I feel we're going full circle here. Heres my post just last page as to why sc2 is more repetitive than dota:
On May 31 2014 03:37 Excludos wrote: No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
On May 14 2014 06:22 Figgy wrote: Free to play. Constantly changing environment.
These are the biggest things MOBAs have far and above current RTS.
I get bored after 100 ladder games in SC2 after I've hit master 4 seasons in a row and have nothing left to do in the game? I quit I get Bored after 100 Solo Q games in League and hit Gold this season? Oh try one of 50 new champs I haven't played yet that have completely different playstyles. Also 5 different roles that play much differently from each other keeps it fresh and exciting.
SC2 has gotten stagnant, very very stagnant. Most of the people who watch don't even play the game anymore.
You could also try some of the many arcade games that in sc2?
3 different races, with 3 different matchups, with each matchup having multiple different ways to play it optimally. Then there's cheesing, testing new builds, inventing new timings, etc...
An RTS is only as boring as you make it.
No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
All competitive games deal with massive amounts of repetition. It seems to me like you're comparing casual MOBAs to competitive SC2. It's not really a sensible comparison. At high levels of MOBAs you really have very few builds to choose from and they do get plenty repetitive.
That's why I thought the MTG model might make more sense. Rather than try to make one set metagame, you constantly delete, modify, and add units to the races to develop a larger story. Like a lot of small expansions. I think you'd have to have a much more long-term thought process for that to work though.
I'm not a pro, but I do consider myself a fairly decent Dota gamer. At the very least as decent as I was in sc2 (which was high masters, constantly on the verge of GM). And I can tell you with certainty that sc2 is way more repetitive than Dota2. Its complete bull that there are "very few builds to choose from" because there are no builds. You pick the item thats best for the situation and state of the game, which will almost always vary due to every game being wildly different. And even if you do the same "build" every game, the game still ends up with plenty variations as you'll never be facing the same enemy heroes, the same allied heroes, and every battle and engagement is different and requires you to do different things. There is no "grab everything and 1a".
I do agree that one of the reasons dota is doing well is because they're not afraid to change up the model. While its in their thoughts, they're not obsessed with balance like Blizzard is. Every year or so theres usually a huge patch that changes the state of the game drastically, as well as the addition of more heroes which you have to take into consideration when drafting. A game that constantly changes will have a varied metagame.
I'm not that good but games are usually a lot more than just "grab everything and 1a." Even at gold level you see scouting, micro, and harassment. If that's all you mean then there is plenty of variation in Starcraft as well.
I feel we're going full circle here. Heres my post just last page as to why sc2 is more repetitive than dota:
On May 31 2014 03:37 Excludos wrote: No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
Sometimes in RTS variety doesn't come from the race itself. For example, total annihilation/supcom/PA has very similar races but the maps provide much more variety than sc2 ones. What matters is how much you have to think when you play the game. When I play SC2 i find myself thinking less than when I play TA, because there is much more areas where my decisions are important.
On May 14 2014 06:22 Figgy wrote: Free to play. Constantly changing environment.
These are the biggest things MOBAs have far and above current RTS.
I get bored after 100 ladder games in SC2 after I've hit master 4 seasons in a row and have nothing left to do in the game? I quit I get Bored after 100 Solo Q games in League and hit Gold this season? Oh try one of 50 new champs I haven't played yet that have completely different playstyles. Also 5 different roles that play much differently from each other keeps it fresh and exciting.
SC2 has gotten stagnant, very very stagnant. Most of the people who watch don't even play the game anymore.
You could also try some of the many arcade games that in sc2?
3 different races, with 3 different matchups, with each matchup having multiple different ways to play it optimally. Then there's cheesing, testing new builds, inventing new timings, etc...
An RTS is only as boring as you make it.
No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
All competitive games deal with massive amounts of repetition. It seems to me like you're comparing casual MOBAs to competitive SC2. It's not really a sensible comparison. At high levels of MOBAs you really have very few builds to choose from and they do get plenty repetitive.
That's why I thought the MTG model might make more sense. Rather than try to make one set metagame, you constantly delete, modify, and add units to the races to develop a larger story. Like a lot of small expansions. I think you'd have to have a much more long-term thought process for that to work though.
I'm not a pro, but I do consider myself a fairly decent Dota gamer. At the very least as decent as I was in sc2 (which was high masters, constantly on the verge of GM). And I can tell you with certainty that sc2 is way more repetitive than Dota2. Its complete bull that there are "very few builds to choose from" because there are no builds. You pick the item thats best for the situation and state of the game, which will almost always vary due to every game being wildly different. And even if you do the same "build" every game, the game still ends up with plenty variations as you'll never be facing the same enemy heroes, the same allied heroes, and every battle and engagement is different and requires you to do different things. There is no "grab everything and 1a".
I do agree that one of the reasons dota is doing well is because they're not afraid to change up the model. While its in their thoughts, they're not obsessed with balance like Blizzard is. Every year or so theres usually a huge patch that changes the state of the game drastically, as well as the addition of more heroes which you have to take into consideration when drafting. A game that constantly changes will have a varied metagame.
I'm not that good but games are usually a lot more than just "grab everything and 1a." Even at gold level you see scouting, micro, and harassment. If that's all you mean then there is plenty of variation in Starcraft as well.
Yeah, but all of that stuff is very standardized. E.g. you don't scout an opponent and afterwards go like "oh, ok he has this and may do that with it". It's just a "OK, he is doing build X and I should respond with Y because that is the way it has always worked". Meanwhile in DotA you just won't be facing the exact same hero setup over and over again. Rather the opposite, it's something special if you and your friends train a certain setup and it's tricks. Same principle applies even stronger to Hearthstone (though inherently not a good spectator eSport imo). You face a certain Hero with your deck, and next game you may face a completely different Hero to begin with, or even if it is the same Hero, the card overlap is often not that big. You just don't get into the exact same situation that often.
On May 31 2014 23:34 DoubleReed wrote: Maybe once LotV comes out we can have games where people pick some of the crazy broken abilities and upgrades from the campaigns. Have some Torrasque-Strain Ultralisks facing Immortality Protocol on Thors?
The thing is that those things all don't work for SC2 multiplayer design.
SC2 falls into the old "let everything develop", "never tinker around with timings", "don't design anything narrow" of classic RTS games. The first thing that would happen with those campaign things is that you'd be facing 10pool raptors jumping up your cliff, and how are you every going to hold that? Then you'd get 4gate superstalkers and 2rax mercenary allins and whatever stupid bullshit people can come up with to make the game as bad as possible.
To make these kinds of ideas work - design your own units; choose from a unit pool; have insane variety of abilities around; have insane amounts of diverse units around - you need to take a step back first. You need some very standard mapsetup around which you design the units. And most of all, you need some strong anti-timing attack mechanics early on, that prevents that some super early game combo becomes the only playable option.
I could see these custom unit design / custom unit picking / custom tech picking working out really well.
Imagine Hearthstone, but instead of being dealt cards randomly you and your opponent pick cards in alternation. You have 5 seconds to decide on a card, then your opponent has 5 seconds for his card and so on. The last card you picked will be visible for your opponent and vice versa.
On May 14 2014 06:22 Figgy wrote: Free to play. Constantly changing environment.
These are the biggest things MOBAs have far and above current RTS.
I get bored after 100 ladder games in SC2 after I've hit master 4 seasons in a row and have nothing left to do in the game? I quit I get Bored after 100 Solo Q games in League and hit Gold this season? Oh try one of 50 new champs I haven't played yet that have completely different playstyles. Also 5 different roles that play much differently from each other keeps it fresh and exciting.
SC2 has gotten stagnant, very very stagnant. Most of the people who watch don't even play the game anymore.
You could also try some of the many arcade games that in sc2?
3 different races, with 3 different matchups, with each matchup having multiple different ways to play it optimally. Then there's cheesing, testing new builds, inventing new timings, etc...
An RTS is only as boring as you make it.
No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
All competitive games deal with massive amounts of repetition. It seems to me like you're comparing casual MOBAs to competitive SC2. It's not really a sensible comparison. At high levels of MOBAs you really have very few builds to choose from and they do get plenty repetitive.
That's why I thought the MTG model might make more sense. Rather than try to make one set metagame, you constantly delete, modify, and add units to the races to develop a larger story. Like a lot of small expansions. I think you'd have to have a much more long-term thought process for that to work though.
I'm not a pro, but I do consider myself a fairly decent Dota gamer. At the very least as decent as I was in sc2 (which was high masters, constantly on the verge of GM). And I can tell you with certainty that sc2 is way more repetitive than Dota2. Its complete bull that there are "very few builds to choose from" because there are no builds. You pick the item thats best for the situation and state of the game, which will almost always vary due to every game being wildly different. And even if you do the same "build" every game, the game still ends up with plenty variations as you'll never be facing the same enemy heroes, the same allied heroes, and every battle and engagement is different and requires you to do different things. There is no "grab everything and 1a".
I do agree that one of the reasons dota is doing well is because they're not afraid to change up the model. While its in their thoughts, they're not obsessed with balance like Blizzard is. Every year or so theres usually a huge patch that changes the state of the game drastically, as well as the addition of more heroes which you have to take into consideration when drafting. A game that constantly changes will have a varied metagame.
I'm not that good but games are usually a lot more than just "grab everything and 1a." Even at gold level you see scouting, micro, and harassment. If that's all you mean then there is plenty of variation in Starcraft as well.
I feel we're going full circle here. Heres my post just last page as to why sc2 is more repetitive than dota:
On May 31 2014 03:37 Excludos wrote: No, its boring. Yeah theres a couple of different things you can do, but mostly it comes down to practicing certain builds and how to execute them. Sometimes you get great games which is back and fourth, goes into lategame, and ends up as a game of the minds and skills. But for the most part its a grind.
In dota, you'll end up playing a lot of games before you loop around to a game thats exactly alike as another oen you played. This due to the enormous size of the heropool and the even bigger amount of ways to combine them. No one plays "one hero" like you play one race in sc2. Jumping from one race to the next is really difficult if you've gotten somewhat decent at the game. Jumping from one hero to another is the norm in dota.
edit: Just to make sure you don't think I'm shitting on sc2 "just cause" I'm a mindless dota fanboy or something, I really want a good rts game that succeeds. But it needs something different than the now stagnant 3 race formula, or the even worse "1 race with different models and textures" that every other rts seems to have. Once I'm done with my exams I'm going to sit down and make an rts prototypegame myself. I'll probably fail, badly. But maybe I'll stumble upon some interesting ideas at least.
Sometimes in RTS variety doesn't come from the race itself. For example, total annihilation/supcom/PA has very similar races but the maps provide much more variety than sc2 ones. What matters is how much you have to think when you play the game. When I play SC2 i find myself thinking less than when I play TA, because there is much more areas where my decisions are important.
yeah. At least speaking from subcom, that comes from you not having to worry about early timings so much. The game always develops long if you want to and gives you more things to think. It's just way more stable than Starcraft, which can be over in a minute if you don't scout that proxy, canonrush, 10pool, immortal/allin, baneling bust, mass hellions, doomdrop, DT tech, mutaswitch... Also, the races may be similar. But there is like a thousand units and you won't ever have all of them around in a game, unlike SC2, where you will often find nearly all units (apart from some that are really bad) being used in a single game.
On May 31 2014 23:34 DoubleReed wrote: Maybe once LotV comes out we can have games where people pick some of the crazy broken abilities and upgrades from the campaigns. Have some Torrasque-Strain Ultralisks facing Immortality Protocol on Thors?
The thing is that those things all don't work for SC2 multiplayer design.
SC2 falls into the old "let everything develop", "never tinker around with timings", "don't design anything narrow" of classic RTS games. The first thing that would happen with those campaign things is that you'd be facing 10pool raptors jumping up your cliff, and how are you every going to hold that? Then you'd get 4gate superstalkers and 2rax mercenary allins and whatever stupid bullshit people can come up with to make the game as bad as possible.
To make these kinds of ideas work - design your own units; choose from a unit pool; have insane variety of abilities around; have insane amounts of diverse units around - you need to take a step back first. You need some very standard mapsetup around which you design the units. And most of all, you need some strong anti-timing attack mechanics early on, that prevents that some super early game combo becomes the only playable option.
I could see these custom unit design / custom unit picking / custom tech picking working out really well.
Imagine Hearthstone, but instead of being dealt cards randomly you and your opponent pick cards in alternation. You have 5 seconds to decide on a card, then your opponent has 5 seconds for his card and so on. The last card you picked will be visible for your opponent and vice versa.
The same thing can be done with an RTS game.
I think this kind of setup (with a game designed for it) as TheFish is doing for SC2 in the mod below would work best. Different categories from which you choose one out of X units. http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/450553-the-making-of-a-mod
If you want to rush, you use a setup with lots of rushy units. If you don't, you can play for certain combos, insane lategame, timing attack based styles, lots of mapcontrol units, a deathball combo etc. Your gameplan is somewhat preset from the units you choose, but there will be lots of possibilities to set up and how those setups interact.
I don't know. I think both games are appealing to different sorts of things that people like and I think it's a mistake to try and take apply one game everywhere. It's like when people started playing Settlers of Catan, and then would think games like Axis and Allies would be improved if the board changed everytime like in Settlers.
For me, Moba's have a horrendous knowledge base to get into. I like having a limited set of units that I know I will face and that I can micro the hell out of. Shuttle-reaver for instance. And when I go to moba's I only play a handful of units and play the hell out of them. But the number of items and characters you can face, I don't actually like. I guess it keeps it fresh for people that play it a lot. But I don't even want to look at Dota 2 because I have at least gained a working knowledge of LoL, but I don't really want to start over.
I prefer the mind games of proxy robo, proxy dt even if I'm generally a macro player. I like figuring out timings, learn how to counter timings. And because there are so many micro opportunities in BW, it never feels like the same game. Especially if there is any amount of drop play. It's only really boring if peoply play a 15 minute no rush sort of game.
I like mobas, but to me things like last hitting minions are equivalent to probe and pylon production. Necessary to execute well, but if we're highlighting rote parts of games...
On May 31 2014 23:34 DoubleReed wrote: Maybe once LotV comes out we can have games where people pick some of the crazy broken abilities and upgrades from the campaigns. Have some Torrasque-Strain Ultralisks facing Immortality Protocol on Thors?
The thing is that those things all don't work for SC2 multiplayer design.
SC2 falls into the old "let everything develop", "never tinker around with timings", "don't design anything narrow" of classic RTS games. The first thing that would happen with those campaign things is that you'd be facing 10pool raptors jumping up your cliff, and how are you every going to hold that? Then you'd get 4gate superstalkers and 2rax mercenary allins and whatever stupid bullshit people can come up with to make the game as bad as possible.
To make these kinds of ideas work - design your own units; choose from a unit pool; have insane variety of abilities around; have insane amounts of diverse units around - you need to take a step back first. You need some very standard mapsetup around which you design the units. And most of all, you need some strong anti-timing attack mechanics early on, that prevents that some super early game combo becomes the only playable option.
I could see these custom unit design / custom unit picking / custom tech picking working out really well.
Imagine Hearthstone, but instead of being dealt cards randomly you and your opponent pick cards in alternation. You have 5 seconds to decide on a card, then your opponent has 5 seconds for his card and so on. The last card you picked will be visible for your opponent and vice versa.
The same thing can be done with an RTS game.
I think this kind of setup (with a game designed for it) as TheFish is doing for SC2 in the mod below would work best. Different categories from which you choose one out of X units. http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/450553-the-making-of-a-mod
If you want to rush, you use a setup with lots of rushy units. If you don't, you can play for certain combos, insane lategame, timing attack based styles, lots of mapcontrol units, a deathball combo etc. Your gameplan is somewhat preset from the units you choose, but there will be lots of possibilities to set up and how those setups interact.
Yeah, but you need some kind of way to prevent prebuilt decks. And one way to do this is to choose from a set of units in alternation.
On May 31 2014 23:34 DoubleReed wrote: Maybe once LotV comes out we can have games where people pick some of the crazy broken abilities and upgrades from the campaigns. Have some Torrasque-Strain Ultralisks facing Immortality Protocol on Thors?
The thing is that those things all don't work for SC2 multiplayer design.
SC2 falls into the old "let everything develop", "never tinker around with timings", "don't design anything narrow" of classic RTS games. The first thing that would happen with those campaign things is that you'd be facing 10pool raptors jumping up your cliff, and how are you every going to hold that? Then you'd get 4gate superstalkers and 2rax mercenary allins and whatever stupid bullshit people can come up with to make the game as bad as possible.
To make these kinds of ideas work - design your own units; choose from a unit pool; have insane variety of abilities around; have insane amounts of diverse units around - you need to take a step back first. You need some very standard mapsetup around which you design the units. And most of all, you need some strong anti-timing attack mechanics early on, that prevents that some super early game combo becomes the only playable option.
I could see these custom unit design / custom unit picking / custom tech picking working out really well.
Imagine Hearthstone, but instead of being dealt cards randomly you and your opponent pick cards in alternation. You have 5 seconds to decide on a card, then your opponent has 5 seconds for his card and so on. The last card you picked will be visible for your opponent and vice versa.
The same thing can be done with an RTS game.
I think this kind of setup (with a game designed for it) as TheFish is doing for SC2 in the mod below would work best. Different categories from which you choose one out of X units. http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/450553-the-making-of-a-mod
If you want to rush, you use a setup with lots of rushy units. If you don't, you can play for certain combos, insane lategame, timing attack based styles, lots of mapcontrol units, a deathball combo etc. Your gameplan is somewhat preset from the units you choose, but there will be lots of possibilities to set up and how those setups interact.
Yeah, but you need some kind of way to prevent prebuilt decks. And one way to do this is to choose from a set of units in alternation.
I don't think prebuilt decks would be bad. You could also force players to have different decks by not allowing them to play the same* deck twice in a BoX. And consider a "king of the hill"-BoX mode alltogether: Winner stays with the same deck, Loser can choose a new one.
ya wat is the future of RTS rly. I wish starcraft3 will become more like broodwar. But lets not make it a discussion about that. But i def hope RTS has a bright future
The problem with adding more abilities / trees / etc to an RTS is that it becomes much more difficult to balance then adding a hero in a MOBA. I don't think adding more variation is necessary, but rather creating opportunities for players to do more with what they already have, for example microing units.The reason SC2 feels like grab everything and 1A is the ball of death problem that everyone has complained about since day 1. However, I don't quite agree that SC2 is repetitive, that mindset seems to come from someone who's grown tired of trying to improve and hit a wall. Mechanics are a grind, but the mind game that comes from SC2 is what makes i fun.
Can someone post a video or explain all the positioning and micro battles in Mobas? I cant see anything besides kiting and blink. Is it like Quake where you are fighting around powerups?
And also, some people like the competitive nature of sc, thats where they feel it is fun, mobas are in general more relaxed and easier to play with friends, (tho high level is obv competitive.)
On May 14 2014 05:01 urboss wrote: - We keep similar types of units as in StarCraft - There are no minions - We add in heroes that can resurrect - There are no buildings that need to be built - Units can be warped in at the start point (in batches) - The warp in takes some time - The opponent can always see what is being warped in ahead of time - There is no economy: Gold for warp-ins increases steadily over time - The number of players per team is fixed
Does this sound to anybody else basically like Warcraft 3? A game that many Starcraft fans (myself included) weren't really big fans of?
Also, you missed 1991's Mega Lo Mania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Lo_Mania) from your list of RTS games. It was my first exposure and an awesome game (one of my favourites until I played the first C&C).
People have different taste in gaming. Trying to make a game that appeals to too many different tastes is likely undesirable. Just because a game is less popular than it used to be doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it and that it needs to be changed. Would you change the rules of chess?
On June 02 2014 10:58 Xyik wrote: The problem with adding more abilities / trees / etc to an RTS is that it becomes much more difficult to balance then adding a hero in a MOBA. I don't think adding more variation is necessary, but rather creating opportunities for players to do more with what they already have, for example microing units.The reason SC2 feels like grab everything and 1A is the ball of death problem that everyone has complained about since day 1. However, I don't quite agree that SC2 is repetitive, that mindset seems to come from someone who's grown tired of trying to improve and hit a wall. Mechanics are a grind, but the mind game that comes from SC2 is what makes i fun.
I don't really think "hard to balance" is a valid excuse when trying to push a genre. It will always be hard to push a genre.
Its harder to balance a 3 race RTS than a 2 race RTS, didn't stop Blizz from trying. Its harder to balance a 4 race RTS than a 3 race RTS, didn't stop blizz from trying. It being hard to balance just means developers need to suck less and try more. That's not a flaw in he design, thats a flaw in the laziness of people.
EPT
