we sux

[knorke]

Agreed, lolzy statement is lolzy

thinking about it, it is not so lolzy but true
Every spring game to date has some fundamental error that makes it hard to be accepted by a broader audience.

S44
small units, big ranges.
When zoomed unit close enough to see the units, the map textures look ugly and unplayable because you can not see what you are fighting. Zoomed out you are playing with icons. No or little teamcolor on units.
Only a small number of flags (the middle of the map) is ever fought over which defeats the point of having such a flag system. I think units shooting each other from long distance while basically standing still does not appeal to many players even if its realistic.

Evolution RTS
many things surprising similiar to TA if you get past the graphics and some extras ie "power" to unlock units: multiple "simliar" labs (veh,all terrain vs veh+kbot) viable at start, mexes, radar, etc.
Problem: balancing based on rps-style skirmish/raider/swarm/fighter etc system that is not easy to get because it makes no sense.
Everybody knows/understands how a tank easily explodes a jeep. A jeep slaughters infantry with his machine gun. Infantry destroyes tank with bazoook.
With a bit of rts experience you just know that. Actually everybody can understand why a jeep has weaker armor than a tank. Or if a machine guns bullets uselessly bounce of a tank, than that is even visible. The armor system in evo is not visible and when looking at a unit i can not tell what kind of armor it has or if i see an evo weapon firing i dont know what effect it has on what units.

Kernel Panic
good game, feels complete & coherent. all units unique. Not sure why it is not played more often. Its like some underground totally cool hipster indie band everybody claims to like but nobody actually listens to.
do want zomgrandommaps. After a few games on the same map it tends to get a bit boring and openings to rps like. If the map is too large it sometimes feels like you are just ordering units around and with factories on repeat, dunno sometimes feels a bit simple.

GundamRTS
eco system does not work out imo.
maps not suited: for example if you do not need to expand (fine with me) why are the maps so large? Does not even allow for different directions of attack because the start positions are always at the map edge.
anime background is no problem to me.
Far too many different mechs. Imo remove all mechs except 3 to 4 for each techlevel. Maybe combine some units into upgraded forms of each other.

P.U.R.E.
been a while since i played a working copy of that and only ever got to play real old versions in multiplayer so i cant comment much. unique units. seemed ok, everything a bit slow maybe.

E&E
nice game, "epic" version sucked because of icon warfare and no added value, actually less skillfull. Again redundant units and again teching up was building the same as before just bigger, boring.

The Cursed
quite like it but rarely ever got to play. non ta-style eco would be nice. With the addition of the second more tradionell looking faction maybe the most promising for a game with unique units, "mainstream"-acceptable gameplay & graphics.

CA/Zero-K
imo still *a, UI troubles but otherwise always interessting to see what they do next

So much for now released non-ta games. Forgetten any? inb4 tutomod. I know there are more small games like Cuberor Finest and all that but they seemed more like testing/tech demos than real games.
I rest my point, its easy to see why the TA part of spring attracts the most players.

blablubbla so much text \o/

[Wombat]

s44
i would add that its the game that sux most of ur pc 'power' (personaly cant play it becouse of lag after like 2-3 squads lol, prolly ati again, these haters!)

evorts
u better watch ur back now for comparison to *ta :D

gundam
i agree @ eco
same to too many units, maybe less units in labs but add morph option ? (if its this way already, sorry, didnt play for a looong time coz of lack of partner )

zero-k
yep, ui is big problem for me, i disabled everything chili related and get like 40 fps more

HOW ABOUT U HATE ATI LESS ;___;

[Neddie]

S44: We're working on a compromise solution for view distances, but this will require new maps. Same with the flag system and combat over flags.

Evo: Could be improved with a visible armour widget like we used in S44.

KP: Could be improved with hosting and promotion. I still owe z a few things for KP, and I'll bloody well deliver.

Gundam: I got three women and two men to play and enjoy it this past month. It takes a lot to get used to, but with more tutorials from Smoth, and some missions, this is pretty much a home run. I'll play with you sometime Wombat. We can get Coresair and some more people onboard.

P.U.R.E: No comment.

E&E: Would have liked scale compromise. Balance had a lot of work undone. Out of development, won't return.

The Cursed: Sexcellent.

Zero-K: No comment.

[Wombat]

would be cool, i would also play THIS sometimes :<

[zwzsg]

S44

small units, big ranges.

Zoomed out you are playing with icons.

SupCom's the same, and it only got praise.

Kernel Panic

do want zomgrandommaps.

It's planned. Well, has been for almost a year, and these days I prefer to waste time playing commercial games rather than modding, so don't expect it anytime soon.

KP: Could be improved with hosting and promotion. I still owe z a few things for KP, and I'll bloody well deliver.

I turn off my computer whenever I sleep or am away, so I can't run autohost myself. And I'm not too knownledgeale about distant servers.

As for promotion, I tried a bit, and it takes way too much effort for a lone guy.

[SwiftSpear]

it's hard to steal StarCraft fans with a game with zero competitive support structures.

sacrifice part of the donations to a prize for winning 1v1 tournaments, no other way (wont happen tho, so gg lol)

The main thing that sets competitive star craft aside from competitive spring is a sane global ladder system. We had a ladder, but it never worked well.

I honestly believe there will never be another highly successful pure RTS game aside from starcraft though. I've had alot of time to think about it, and I just think the window is gone. Starcraft came at a time where what it did technologically was the forefront of warefare simulation in games, and what it did developmentally was build an extremely solid and well paced competitive game. You can't make a game that can sell war simulation the way starcraft was able to in it's youth and have the rounds so short paced with so many holes in the realm of realism any more, and you can't make a new super solid competitive RTS and actually sell it because people are too "used" to the forumla, it's too overdone and there's not much new to be seen.

So were stuck with sequels, games where there is some gimmick, or games that tap into some universe that already exists and have too many "rules" to the way things can interact to really create a starcraft solid RTS game.

[smoth]

/me flys in on an umbrella


sum 1 is talkin about gundam :)

Maps: large because there are a lot of high mobility units, bases at edge of map because I am trying to get the most out of the map size. There is a need to expand as making expansions(conyards) means free unit healing. very important for skirmishers like heroes or holding a front line. Play gundam on a small map and a player who isn't mentally retarded will eat you alive in the first 5 minutes.

Econ: being worked on but needed to be in a functional way. I still only ever get vague descriptions when I ask what people hate about the econ. Make an actual critique and I will read it.

Units: eventually the research system is going to be expanded to a tree-like system. this means that you choose your tech development as the game goes on. All units have different roles, this has been expanded upon further in next version and even more plans exist for further unit expansion.

as far as people butthurt over me doing this universe instead of something generic, your tears are delicious esp with a spoonful of rage. I will never do a generic rts game like starcraft as I think it is a waste of time, there are other games that do that. There is no money to be made in a gundam rts, it is too niche a market and the gundam fans often prefer turn based strategy games. So I am making the game I want. Don't bitch about it because I don't care what you want because you are doing 0 work. Now, I have chimney sweeps to dance with.

[Wombat]

.

sacrifice part of the donations to a prize for winning 1v1 tournaments, no other way (wont happen tho, so gg lol)

The main thing that sets competitive star craft aside from competitive spring is a sane global ladder system. We had a ladder, but it never worked well.

ye but sc ladder is made to pick group of ppl to compete in a tournaments so they can win cash (counted in thousands), in spring it was to make someones e-peenis bigger, so why bother ?

[Johannes]

ye but sc ladder is made to pick group of ppl to compete in a tournaments so they can win cash

That's not the main point of SC2 ladder at all, it's more geared towards noobs who want to see a shiny rank and more importantly, be able to play a game easily with the matchmaking vs same strength opponent.

Pretty sure almost no tournaments pick participants by ladder ranking

When you take away the matchmaking and are left w just the epeen, people can still bother, it's fun to compete just for the heck of it too. The epeen reward just needs to be bigger maybe, to get more people (not SC-quantity but more) people interested? Ladder or tournaments or whatever needs to be marketed so (be it w money prizes or not) that many more people than just few 10s or whatever of people watch it. It's down to better/kooler/more advertising and such
Hmm i don't know how coherent this last sentence was but maybe it will do

[knorke]

Maps: large because there are a lot of high mobility units, bases at edge of map because I am trying to get the most out of the map size. There is a need to expand as making expansions(conyards) means free unit healing. very important for skirmishers like heroes or holding a front line.

and thats why you get porc creeping and loling around with hero units, sometimes a bomber fleet.
I dont see why "high mobility" units would require big maps? And wouldnt they be even more usefull and feel more mobile if they could actually use their mobility to go around stuff?

hate about the econ.

start would be that buildings automagically turn on/off depending on what ressource you need atm, ie like metalmakers.

Make an actual critique and I will read it.

So I am making the game I want. Don't bitch about it because I don't care what you want

if all you ever do is read stuff and want to do stuff your way anyway, then why should anyone bother. of course you can make your game the way you want without any listening to critique but then you lose any reason to complain why nobody plays it.
If the game is just for fans who are just want to see as much stuff from the series included as possible, then thats fine but i dont really think good gameplay comes from that.
as for as "omglolol its not generic but special like i want live with it" <- i guess emmanuel would says this too about his game

starcraft got popular because it had good (not perfect, remember pre patches?) gameplay but blizzard didnt let it die, made new patches and battle.net didnt die shortly afte like many other games. If westwood online had survided, maybe everybody would be playing Red Alert 2 now?

ladder:
nobody cares about winning money Oo
its all about epenis.

[Wombat]

'That's not the main point of SC2 ladder at all'

not the main, but one of two, so what u say is also obviously correct, second are tournaments, and im pretty sure than yes, how the feck u imagine urself organising official tournaments ?

second part of ur reply is obviously wrong.

nobody cares about ladder/playing ladder games

@ knorke 'ladder:
nobody cares about winning money Oo
its all about epenis.'

if they are living from playing it, then yes. and all top cs/sc etc player live like this

[luckywaldo7]

About SC2, I'm pretty sure I read something recently about Chris Taylor saying that Starcraft 2 is proof of success in a huge marketing budget.

[Wombat]

same with sc1, everybody know that ta would be more popular if they had same budget for marketing as sc

[zwzsg]

Yeah, Starcraft success is largely due to a gigantic marketing effort.

And for ladders, we just need the Spring higher ups to stop ignoring the recent advcement in ladders and elo and start integrating them in the lobby protocol instead of sticking to their no ranking is perfect so let's stick with the worst ranking method mantra.

[smoth]

Maps: large because there are a lot of high mobility units, bases at edge of map because I am trying to get the most out of the map size. There is a need to expand as making expansions(conyards) means free unit healing. very important for skirmishers like heroes or holding a front line.

and thats why you get porc creeping

Sometimes but isn't always the case.

and loling around with hero units, sometimes a bomber fleet.

Sometimes but isn't always the case.

This is an issue that I see, people play a few games and return with critiques such as this. Do I think it is easy to porc against nubs? yes. Have I see it be broken? yes. What you describe is not the case in most games and while you may not see me in lobby I have played 100s of gundam games. I don't have a gold star from specing. I have players who will play one match, then give up when they get raped by a player using char. I then find out that the char player was some really experienced player and realize they would have lost with anything he uses. Hell goode tried to pork and I ate his base.

I am not trying to be dismissive, I simply do not see enough evidence to support what you are claiming.

I dont see why "high mobility" units would require big maps? And wouldnt they be even more usefull and feel more mobile if they could actually use their mobility to go around stuff?

There is a whole pile of units who can go up and over the hills in gundam, is this what you are talking about?

hate about the econ.

start would be that buildings automagically turn on/off depending on what ressource you need atm, ie like metalmakers.

How is the game going to know what resource you want to stack up? what if I am building up refined while teching? It is not easy to say what a player needs atm, how would you even need ATM and get enough to build something that instance, even in *A it doesn't work this way. Unless you are talking about trying to meet the eco drain that the player has. At which point I remind you gundam doesn't do m/e a sec as costs are up front with respect to purchasing units.

So turning off depending on need strikes me as an odd request considering your familiarity with the econ.

Make an actual critique and I will read it.

So I am making the game I want. Don't bitch about it because I don't care what you want

if all you ever do is read stuff and want to do stuff your way anyway, then why should anyone bother. of course you can make your game the way you want without any listening to critique but then you lose any reason to complain why nobody plays it.

Don't alter my words in a quote to fit your interpretation of what I said. i didn't say that, so don't quote it as such. Here is the deal, this community the thieving pile of shit that it is seems to exalt two things, the stolen ota content and completely ip free projects(because they can plunder the art assets). Projects such as mine and starwars get shit around here because they are neither. So to that I do thumb my nose. But what you are implying is not true and perhaps is a misunderstanding. I am making gundam rts and I make it for me, yes. Do I try to consider feedback, yes, I do. That does not mean I will merely bend to every player whim though. To that end you need to at least consider that this is my project and I am doing a lot of work to see it through. If someone offers to add a feature they would like to see, if it makes sense I add it. If someone wants me to change the design I am going for to shoehorn a gameplay element in because they like it, I will not. Ex: Someone suggested resource harvesting in gundam(before your code) and I did not see any reason for something like that as it makes little sense in universe.

I want to reiterate that I think you misunderstood my post.

If the game is just for fans who are just want to see as much stuff from the series included as possible, then thats fine but i dont really think good gameplay comes from that.

eventually the research system is going to be expanded to a tree-like system. this means that you choose your tech development as the game goes on.

I can see how this was vague. Better explanation: eventually you will not have access to half of the units you have now. Whole unit subsets will be locked based on difference research decisions. Right now I first have to add all the units in before I start adding alternate tech branches. Which is what I am doing right now, trying to fill out branches so I can start breaking unit sets up.

As far as "as much stuff from the series" I skip many many units because there is no point to them(case in point: gm precession type, gm command, gm cold climate, all not being added because they are not different enough) I try to add units which I feel have a tactical role or add something to the game. Some things are a bit unclear but I can try and make it a bit more clear. Other things are still in balance limbo as I move their cost up, down or shuffle them in tech.

pick a unit and then another unit from the same faction. I'll explain how they are different and we can debate that point, we may need to bounce around a bit but I honestly don't mind going over them.

perhaps we should have this discussion in a separate thread, if you would like I can request a mod split the thread.

[Forboding Angel]

Evolution RTS
many things surprising similiar to TA if you get past the graphics and some extras ie "power" to unlock units: multiple "simliar" labs (veh,all terrain vs veh+kbot) viable at start, mexes, radar, etc.
Problem: balancing based on rps-style skirmish/raider/swarm/fighter etc system that is not easy to get because it makes no sense.
Everybody knows/understands how a tank easily explodes a jeep. A jeep slaughters infantry with his machine gun. Infantry destroyes tank with bazoook.
With a bit of rts experience you just know that. Actually everybody can understand why a jeep has weaker armor than a tank. Or if a machine guns bullets uselessly bounce of a tank, than that is even visible. The armor system in evo is not visible and when looking at a unit i can not tell what kind of armor it has or if i see an evo weapon firing i dont know what effect it has on what units.

It isn't rps knorke. You've played it enough times to know better than to say that.

The damage and armor types are just modifiers. You don't need to look at the tables, you don't even need to know that they exist. Once again, you've played enough games over the past few weeks that you know this already.

As a parallel, I don't have the foggiest idea what is better vs what in sc2, and I know basically zilch of how the armor system works in sc2, but you play a few games and you get a pretty good idea of what is good vs what. Same thing went for RUSE when a bunch of us were playing it, we didn't know shit about the internals, we just played a few games and figured it out.

I've said it a million times. For those of you who like being picky lets say it again.

Raiders are good vs economy structures and the smaller units
Riots are specifically designed to be good vs swarms of raiders
Skirms are good vs mobile units
Assaults are for baserape
Support stuff like arty is good vs bases and defenses

Air:
Fighters are good vs other air units (duh)...
Gunships are more for killing mobile units, but can be used vs base structures with reduced effect.
Bombers are for killing base structures, they can kill packs of mobile units too, but they do reduced damage to mobile units.

Now, can you honestly tell me that that is hard to remember? Even moreso, the above doesn't even matter except in 1 v 1 matchups. When is the last time you had a single lone unit as your 1 man army in evo? You haven't, because you can macro up an army in notime. Anything can kill anything. Period, just if you're using something for a purpose that it was not designed for, it will prolly take longer with that unit than with a unit designed to specifically kill whatever you are attacking.

As an example, it will take a light skirmisher somewhere around 5 - 7 shots to kill a mex. It takes a lightning raider 3 shots. The difference when you have more than one unit? Negligible.

This is common among all RTS games in existence! The only difference in Evo's case is that I made the modifiers public and the counters soft - medium instead of rock solid hard like sc and sc2.

[knorke]

gundam eco:
yes i meant depending on what the factories "try to drain." With pay upfront it would be harder to implent.
But then there is the question if paying upfront even makes sense with this eco and its constant income?
Basically atm eco managment is turning stuff on/off alot which is not very fun or tactical imo.
Maybe you wanted it to feel like you have to balance your resources or something but it does not, feels like turning stuff on and off with waiting in between

i dont feel like deeper discussing the other gameplay points that makes little sense i think...
but i played and specced some games myself too and while i dont know who is good a gundam i think at least some players were experienced at least. I think pintle & dorne are? Still got games that didnt feel good/"round" or would not end after an hour (ie on gunmetal harbour)
Maybe upload good replays to replay.adune.nl to show what its meant to be played, makes more sense than talk in forum i think...

@ knorke 'ladder:
nobody cares about winning money Oo
its all about epenis.'

if they are living from playing it, then yes. and all top cs/sc etc player live like this

do these players make up 0.1% or 1%? Thats like saying everybody who plays an instrument does it to become a rich pop star and if somebody paints a picture he wants to it to be the next Mona Lisa.
Sure it might be nice to see a computer game in TV, with the big competion and fans blabla but nobody logs in to battle.net thinking "must play moar next week i am a millionaire."

[Johannes]

'That's not the main point of SC2 ladder at all'

not the main, but one of two, so what u say is also obviously correct, second are tournaments, and im pretty sure than yes, how the feck u imagine urself organising official tournaments ?

second part of ur reply is obviously wrong.

nobody cares about ladder/playing ladder games

@ knorke 'ladder:
nobody cares about winning money Oo
its all about epenis.'

if they are living from playing it, then yes. and all top cs/sc etc player live like this

I don't know for sure how exactly most SC2 (official? are there unofficial ones) tournaments are organised but ofc there's many many ways besides inviting based on ladderrank. I don't know so much about SC2 tourneys but most i remember looking at, were open or invite. Obviously you provideed no proof.

What he meant is that for Spring players or all of the non-pro SC players money gained is not important motive for competing (some better reasons for playing challenging multiplayer game: Intellectual challenge and krushing noobs), if money was so important to them ofc Spring would be better than SC2 since it's free! Ofc some cash prize can add to the excitement for amateur competition too but it's not the most important thing.

Not really going to encourage someone to start playing spring when the majority of 1v1 pros have played for well over 2000hours. It would take a beginner like 4 years to even near tournament winning skill.

This is bullshit btw. It shouldn't take too long to get top level in any Spring game if you're smart and have understanding of RTS from another game. And are determined about improving. How much of that 2000h was even actually spent playing well and not dicking around or afkspeccing

[SwiftSpear]

ye but sc ladder is made to pick group of ppl to compete in a tournaments so they can win cash (counted in thousands), in spring it was to make someones e-peenis bigger, so why bother ?

Cash isn't as much a motivator as you think it is. SC had shit for cash in it's tournaments for years. White Ra travels to america to try to win the price of his plane ticket, prize money that he promptly spends 50% of buying vodka at the club for the majority of the other players in the competition.

There IS big money in SC today, but it's all in Korea, and there is yet to be a white guy to win a Korean tournament. Sure, there's the romanticism of "maby I'll be that one guy", but the Koreans practice for Star Craft the way the Chinese gymnasts train for the Olympics, that competitive drive for american and European star craft players has nothing to do with a realistic expectation of making money. You can make as much money working at pretty much any minimum wage job than your average SC2 pro player makes. The competition is the motivator, the drive to be better than everyone else.

Spring doesn't have that. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've killed it, but blizzard works hard as hell to encourage it, whereas there really hasn't ever been a spring development that really made the lives of competitive players easier, or made mass gaming more realistic. They need a number to shoot for, they need "I have to be platinum 2200 rank!". If you spark the competitive drive the tournaments follow naturally.

As it stands, the spring ladder had a plethora of bad design choices and errors all of which were discussed at length but never fixed, and additionally, one of the primary methods of going up the ranks was simply cheating the system, which was quite broken. It basically ruined it for everyone.

But it's not only ladder, it's things that were missing like the TL community for SC. Competitive players on the forum, because this is by enlarge a development forum, have always kind of been shirked aside, and no strong competitive community ever arose. Another missing aspect is any type of tutorial or training systems. Many competitive starcraft players started out getting lessons from higher end players to accelerate that "4 year learning curve" someone else mentioned to a much more achievable goal. We've just never really had and strong or solid competitive play mechanics in spring. It's just the way it is.

[Wombat]

Obviously you provideed no proof.

and u did (actually i checked blizzard site and all open tournaments are like ' maybe u will win some prize' or ' we got 20 penciles for winners!')

if money was so important to them ofc Spring would be better than SC2 since it's free!

do u read again before u click 'submit' ?

-----

ill answer to swift later, too many smart things to reply to at work ;p