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In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

waywardstrategy.com

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Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#31

Post by throwaway6734 »

2bitencryption wrote: post #4
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #2

I feel like there’s been little going on in RTS land. Did I miss any significant releases?

Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch. It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap... As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MO…

If you're interested, the age of empires 2 community has been growing over the past year with the release of the definitive edition

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#32

Post by thrower123 »

2bitencryption wrote: post #4
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #2

I feel like there’s been little going on in RTS land. Did I miss any significant releases?

Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch. It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap... As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MO…

RTSs went off the deep end catering to competitive multiplayer, and that's where I stopped caring.

You can just play single-player Starcraft 1 or Age of Empires or Red Alert against the AI or the campaigns, and it's a fun little experience.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#33

Post by chrisfosterelli »

ironman1478 wrote: post #15

I think its cool seeing what factors are considered in RTS balancing. I guess an equivalent for fighting games would be invincible vs non-invincible DPs or weird things like movement options. In RTS games balancing seems a bit more quantifiable. In fighting games there is a lot of guessing at what actually counters what unless its extremely obvious. Its hard to tell if a matchup or strat is good/bad due to the charac…

I know Apex Legends balancing is pretty aggregate stat based and with each release they monitor aggregate stats like what % of X character is on the winning team over all games or what % of X character killed Y character as well as different team compositions, along with similar stats for individual weapons, to try to balance the overall engagement statistics as much as possible.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#34

Post by Retric »

thrower123 wrote: post #32
2bitencryption wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch. It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap... As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MO…

RTSs went off the deep end catering to competitive multiplayer, and that's where I stopped caring. You can just play single-player Starcraft 1 or Age of Empires or Red Alert against the AI or the campaigns, and it's a fun little experience.

SC2’s co-op significantly extended the games popularity. It lacks much strategic depth, but it’s still surprisingly fun if repetitive.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#35

Post by scotty79 »

If you want to see really brutal hard counters try Clash Royale.

Game is really fun, and requires a lot of thinking but it's absolutely ruthless.

Every single unit has multiple hard counters. When it comes to combinations everything gets more messy and fun.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#36

Post by jgon »

harpersealtako wrote: post #25
2bitencryption wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch. It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap... As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MO…

MOBAs ate them because they have a lower skill floor. If I understand 50% of how to play a MOBA, I can play the game and have fun. I am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad. They have cooldowns, but it doesn't matter, I just spam all my moves when I see a bad guy. If I don't see a bad guy, I can kill the enemy turrets and little cpu creatures. If I'm having trouble, I can…

I think another thing is that MOBA's have downtime. You need to walk to places, you need to back, buy items, etc, etc. It's been a while since I played Starcraft, but my memories of it were basically that if you weren't doing things at literally every moment, you were probably going to get beat. You could try and use better macro, and tactical understanding but you'd eventually run up against someone who was equivalent and had better micro/apm and just lose. Which meant that every match basically felt like a sprint from start to finish, which was exhausting. Eventually it got to a point where it was hard to jump into a match because I just wanted to game and not go all out. I had pre-emptive anxiety/exhaustion about the intensity of a match. A moba can still feed that competitive desire and has moments of intensity, but it feels much more balanced than RTS' ever did to me.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#37

Post by ajuc »

harpersealtako wrote: post #25
2bitencryption wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch. It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap... As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MO…

MOBAs ate them because they have a lower skill floor. If I understand 50% of how to play a MOBA, I can play the game and have fun. I am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad. They have cooldowns, but it doesn't matter, I just spam all my moves when I see a bad guy. If I don't see a bad guy, I can kill the enemy turrets and little cpu creatures. If I'm having trouble, I can…

You ignored itemization and counterpicking in MOBAs, which is like ignoring build orders, army composition and macro efficiency in starcraft and just focusing on microing your army :)

I was in the same camp when I only played RTS games, but after my friend got me into dota I have to admit there's a lot of depth there that I wasn't aware of.

Also the win conditions are much more obvious in RTS games, just after I switched I had no idea that pulling, stacking, wave cutting, denying was important. Also the vision battle is more involved in MOBAs.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#38

Post by Majromax »

bluescrn wrote: post #16
2bitencryption wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch. It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap... As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MO…

With a MOBA you’re relying on other players. If you lose at Starcraft, you only have yourself to blame, you can watch the replay and see exactly where you went wrong, and steadily improve.

> If you lose at Starcraft, you only have yourself to blame, you can watch the replay and see exactly where you went wrong, and steadily improve.

That's not really true. A typical player can watch the replay of their losing match and see the proximate cause of the failure ("my army got blown up"), but looking at the game analytically to find the ultimate cause is/was much more difficult. The art of doing so was a regular feature of the Day[9] daily videos.

That complexity is part of what makes strategy games (real time or otherwise) compelling: seemingly simple choices or optimizations compound into a much larger advantage later on. However, those small-scale advantages are rarely highlighted by the game itself as important, and optimization usually asks a lot of the players.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#39

Post by ajuc »

jgon wrote: post #36
harpersealtako wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MOBAs ate them because they have a lower skill floor. If I understand 50% of how to play a MOBA, I can play the game and have fun. I am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad. They have cooldowns, but it doesn't matter, I just spam all my moves when I see a bad guy. If I don't see a bad guy, I can kill the enemy turrets and little cpu creatures. If I'm having trouble, I can…

I think another thing is that MOBA's have downtime. You need to walk to places, you need to back, buy items, etc, etc. It's been a while since I played Starcraft, but my memories of it were basically that if you weren't doing things at literally every moment, you were probably going to get beat. You could try and use better macro, and tactical understanding but you'd eventually run up against someone who was equivale…

Yup this is more important - in starcraft you will lose a game you almost completely won if you stop context switching for a few minutes.

On the other hand you can abandon starcraft game at any moment with no consequences and it doesn't last for 50 minutes. If you got toxic teammates in DOTA you are pretty much stuck with them for almost an hour.

Re: In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

#40

Post by rollcat »

bluescrn wrote: post #16
2bitencryption wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's some underground scene for hardcore RTS players, but as a (formerly) casual follower of the Starcraft 2 pro scene, it seems like MOBAs ate their lunch. It's really a shame, since there was nothing quite like the intensity of a 1v1 match between two players controlling an army with a nearly unlimited skill cap... As much as I've tried, I simply cannot make any sense of the on-screen visual overload of MO…

With a MOBA you’re relying on other players. If you lose at Starcraft, you only have yourself to blame, you can watch the replay and see exactly where you went wrong, and steadily improve.

I love team ladder in SC2. Somehow we tend to avoid blaming each other, rather we analyse our team games and see which plays worked well and which didn't. In 1v1 the road to improvement is usually macro, macro, scouting, and macro - in teams it's communication, communication, teamwork, and communication. 60% winrate last season :)

Also arranged teams have a very strong advantage over random teams, you can really punch above your weight if your teammates understand how to support you.

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