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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

#61

Post by chrishynes »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #52
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…

I'll disagree with the other poster. MOBA games, particularly Dota, have a pretty high threshold of entry compared to RTS. You've got 100 something heros, each with 4+ abilities. Then you've got basically as many items, half of which have an active of some sort. That's a big initial bite to get down. I played Dota for at least a year until I finally felt like I even understood the baseline. The skill cap on say SC2 i…

Yes, but the abilities and item actives are all quite similar in broad categories -- dash, stun, slow, etc. Same with items -- broad categories of damage, magic, health, armor, etc.

To OP's point, you don't have to know the entire 100 hero roster and all of their abilities to have fun, just the general things they can do "Oh I just got stunned by that ability, might want to dodge next time"...

Obviously to be good you need to know them all, but not to get started and have fun at lower levels of play.

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

#62

Post by Regic »

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…

These were my exact thoughts about CS vs Quake back in the days. Quake had no downtime, all action while CS had time between rounds or just tense moments without anything actually happening. I think this dynamic was an important point behind the success of battle royal games too. An all action game is like an action movie without a moment's pause - it just doesn't work for most people.

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

#63

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

chrishynes wrote: post #61
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll disagree with the other poster. MOBA games, particularly Dota, have a pretty high threshold of entry compared to RTS. You've got 100 something heros, each with 4+ abilities. Then you've got basically as many items, half of which have an active of some sort. That's a big initial bite to get down. I played Dota for at least a year until I finally felt like I even understood the baseline. The skill cap on say SC2 i…

Yes, but the abilities and item actives are all quite similar in broad categories -- dash, stun, slow, etc. Same with items -- broad categories of damage, magic, health, armor, etc. To OP's point, you don't have to know the entire 100 hero roster and all of their abilities to have fun, just the general things they can do "Oh I just got stunned by that ability, might want to dodge next time"... Obviously to be good yo…

Yeah, there's some sparseness to it all that simplifies, but that's also offset by most abilities having a geometric component to how they're targeted or have area of effect.

Respectfully, OP doesn't know the game. You can indeed have fun playing casually like that, but your win rate will reflect the lack of what you don't know. You can't even see the game until you get some months under your belt, imo. Sound is another underrated aspect: you need to know exactly what spells are going off, how your allies or enemies will position them, based on nothing but hearing it and knowledge of the game.

There's no way I would have learned Dota without a friend to pull me along. It's a big problem with the genre as a whole. LoL is a bit more forgiving and ability spammy, but has all the same issues. And I say this as someone that got near the top of the 2v2 ladder in LoL beta (RIP original twitch malphite combo).

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

#64

Post by ancientworldnow »

pmoriarty wrote: post #54
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 am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad." One day maybe there'll be games with just one move... just to dumb games down to the lowest common denominator and not leave anyone out.

This is just hungry hungry hippos.

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

#65

Post by emasirik »

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…

Well, fighting games do offer high crush/low crush options, where hurtboxes (the vulnerable portion of your character) are shifted higher or lower, to make a move suited to cleanly beat either approaches from the air or sweeps. Beneficial properties like this can be balanced by a number of things -- speed, recovery time, damage, range, for a few examples!

I realise you may already be familiar, but I figured it'd be worth expanding a little for other readers.

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

#66

Post by MathYouF »

pmoriarty wrote: post #54
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 am gorilla. I have 4 moves: punch, slam, eat banana, and my ultimate ability, get mad." One day maybe there'll be games with just one move... just to dumb games down to the lowest common denominator and not leave anyone out.

As much as I loved it, Assassins Creed had a combat system like this.

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

#68

Post by ironman1478 »

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 really don't think the MOBA comment works for Dota 2. Its not really about the characters, its about the map, position, and timing (itemization + push timing). The characters are important, but frequently people pick meta characters and get bopped. This wouldn't be an issue if dota had new people playing the game, but I want to say that dota is at this point filled with people who have been playing for a long time. So, you'll see people who at low levels just destroy people with characters that are supposed to be bad because they just know where to stand and abuse the map or creep aggro. Its wild.

Just as a specific example. If you take two teams of equal MMR and one had all the character counters so they "should" win. If the team with the better characters doesn't know how to pull the safelane, they will just straight up lose. Full stop. They will get gold starved and unless the other team throws (which is very common lol) they should lose.

Also, losing like this in dota is anti-fun. Its really not a good time for like anybody, the winner of the loser. Its just one team dumpstering another and it happens at all levels.

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

#69

Post by capableweb »

Animats wrote: post #46

There's a real world version of this, the DePuy Quantified Judgement Method.[1] It's fairly simple - weapons have a weight value (sword=1.0), you add that up for the forces committed, there's a quality of troops multiplier for each side, some adjustments for defensive preparations, and you get a measure of combat strength. DePuy was a US. Army colonel, and the weights come from analysis of real-world battles. His obs…

Except real-world doesn't have any counters at all but instead anything can happen at any time almost. The outcome of encounters in war is controlled by endless amount of parameters, just because someone has more swords than another doesn't mean they will almost always win. See Simo Häyhä, the Finnish sniper who killed ~500 Red Army soldiers during the Second World War as an example of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4

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

#70

Post by thom »

pete5x5 wrote: post #50
thom wrote: post #13

First half of the title got my hopes up as a Magic: the Gathering player, but alas, it was not an argument in defence of hard counters costing only two mana.

"In defense of Mana Drain: how to lose friends in cube draft"

If you’re tired of Mana Drain in cube, you’re tired of life.
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