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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

#81

Post by BadInformatics »

the__alchemist wrote: post #42
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #2

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

AOE2 gets balance and content patches about once a month. It's remarkable on its own that a 20 year old game is still getting balance patches. I suspect this is a due to a mix of evolving strategies, a changing skill-level distribution, and feedback loops from subtle changes, catalyzed by added units and civs.

The community staying very active has been the biggest factor here IMO. The predecessor to the current Definitive Edition, the rather disastrous (engine-wise, not content-wise) HD Edition, was created in part by co-opting community made mod content and hiring on some of the creators. This has continued for both the Definitive Edition and AOE 4.

Likewise, most of the biggest pros and casters started their careers 5-10+ years ago working on community tournaments and other grassroots events. Even though there's a lot more money now with investment from Microsoft, Red Bull and others, that grassroots core has stuck around and feels (at least to me) more fresh than the very corporate machinery around Blizzard RTSes. It's funny to think that the most anticipated LAN tournament is literally held in someone's apartment (https://www.ageofempires.com/news/nac3-tournament/)!

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

#82

Post by ufo »

blt wrote: post #53
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dota has an interesting approach. They collect tons of statistics, but ultimately the game design comes down to one person, and they complement the stats with a lot of interviews with top ranked players to get their subjective perspective. The end result is the game has gotten better balanced continuously with time. There were a handful of patches that were a regression, but usually are on top of it pretty fast. One…

Did they try rotating the camera 180 degrees? I can understand how this might be confusing. Like a mirror track in Mario Kart, it would make the map feel totally different.

It certainly is confusing. I remember that someone once made a video with the flipped map and most of the comments were about how weird it appeared: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/5rmbd3/

However, I wonder this is something that people would get used to, if they played it for a while. As far as I know, it was never seriously tried anywhere.

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

#83

Post by ddek »

oneplane wrote: post #20
thrwawy12345 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has a thriving pro level tournament scene and online multiplayer culture.

And Age of Empires 2 on Voobly is still active as well, with userpatch updates being released. Then there is Age of Empires 4 that is nearing completion which might be an Age of Empires 2 DE contender or might be an AoE 3 dud.

Unlikely. AoE4 looks more like a Civ competitor than AoE2, in that it'll look beautiful, have wildly divergent civs, and almost entirely be played SP long run.

AoE2 does so many things wrong by 'modern game' standards. The graphics are 2D. Pick any two civs, they're 80% identical. New, goofier mechanics (Flemish Revolution) are disliked by the players (although still used). It's still an incredible game.

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

#84

Post by sofixa »

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…

That smells like bullshit.

Asymmetric warfare ( or guerilla warfare) has been successful time and again since the Napoleonic wars, regardless of how overwhelming the enemy was. And Napoleon himself won multiple times against the odds ( so much so the Coalition made a deal to only attack when he isn't in command).

And there's the usual incompetence, bad luck, or tactical/strategic brilliance.

Just in the last century we have the Russians ( in Russo-Japanese war, WWI, Winter war, WWII), Austro-Hungarians, Italians, Ottomans, Americans ( multiple times), Arabs ( against Israel) fail miserably against a theoretically inferior in terms of size and weaponry enemy.

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

#85

Post by ddek »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #5
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #2

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

Sure feels like the genre is mostly dead. Kind of sad

Concentrated, rather than dead. SC2 and AoE2 are the only games still running strong. SC2 seems quite alive. I play AoE2 competitively, and it's stronger than ever.

In terms of new games, yeah it's pretty dead. AoE4 looks cool, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if its near as fun to play competitively as AoE2. Wacky civ specific strategies make games more predictable, and 2d is more ergonomic than 3d.

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

#87

Post by EamonnMR »

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…

A hard counter in RTS parlance is a unit or tactic that will win a fight even even if they are grossly outnumbered. A classic example would be a ground unit that cannot hit air units. Any number of those ground units will die to a single air unit.

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

#88

Post by Jiokl »

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…

Also, MOBAs give you that team play experience, which reduces the amount of weight/pressure on you as an individual. 1v1 ladder anxiety is a huge under-appreciated issue and one of the things RTS's can do to avoid it is a bigger focus on team PvP.

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

#89

Post by Jiokl »

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…

But you don't have to know any of that straight off the bat, because you have other players on a team to rely on. You can play with a friend who'll carry you if need be. SC2's relentless focus on 1v1 is a huge detriment, and it seems like the entire RTS genre has decided "well, that's what we do".

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

#90

Post by Jiokl »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #63
chrishynes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anot…

> There's no way I would have learned Dota without a friend to pull me along

But that's something that MOBAs can do that RTS games can't. Which is another reason why MOBAs ate RTSs lunch. I'm not sure why you're focusing on win rate when there are plenty of people who play MOBAs who are quite frankly garbage at the game(s).

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