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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

#141

Post by Haga »

post-it wrote: post #45
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…

> One of the more pernicious problems they've faced is the team that holds the base on the bottom half of the map has consistently had an advantage, as much as 5%. This appears to be related to the perspective being 3d in the shape of top down, vs a literal 2d top down view. They've tried a few different ways to balance this, but what's ended up working best is trading it off vs first pick in the lineup drafting phas…

Turn the camera for one team?

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

#143

Post by code_duck »

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.

We’re getting close! PSO2:NGS has a button for “Simplified Movement” which will trigger whatever attack it deems appropriate at the time.

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

#144

Post by matttb »

dragontamer wrote: post #96
emasirik wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

High / Low options are rarely the option people think about at the high level. That's just a simple mixup (worst case scenario, you're forced to guess in case you can't react in time). What he was talking about is the DP, the "Dragon Punch", also known as Shoryuken, that Ryu / Ken are famous for in Street Fighter. The mindgame is that Shoryuken is 100% invincible: no matter what your opponent is doing, the Shoryuken…

High/low crush is different than high/low options. He's talking about things like Street Fighter's Rose s.HK going over attacks that hit low or sliding attacks that duck under attacks that hit high.

Also people cannot SRK/DP on reaction to all attacks or the game would be completely broken so saying '2nd to attack wins' is a bit odd since it's only in the situation where both players use an invincible move.

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

#145

Post by TulliusCicero »

fxtentacle wrote: post #14
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #2

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

Since nobody has figured out how to integrate loot boxes or gambling into RTS yet, other genres are currently much more profitable.

I'd love to see a competent PvE-oriented RTS with the MMO-lite treatment: co-op missions, entire campaigns, customizable armies, unlockable units, mission rewards, purchasable (with in-game currency) items, bigass raids, the whole shebang.

SC2 co-op mode took a big step in that direction, and it was well received and has become fairly popular...but a game built around that as its primary locus could be so much more.

I know many more traditional core gamers would practically vomit at this idea, but I think there's room for plenty of different styles under the RTS umbrella. And bringing in tons of money with one style might well benefit the others.

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

#146

Post by MayeulC »

beefjerkins wrote: post #140
MayeulC wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still playing relatively old ones with my friends: * Supreme Commander & Planetary Annihilation * Sins of a Solar Empire * Zero-K

Sins of a Solar Empire is such an underrated RTS in my opinion. Do you play the base game, or do you try out some the mods (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) as well?

Agreed, that's a personal favorite. We mostly play the base game (with all the DLC; one nice thing is that it's enough for the host to have them).

I've tried some mods, but Star wars Interregnum seems to crash for me after a while. I think it's a known issue on Linux: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/265#issuecomm...

These mods seem nice, but I am not so much into these other universes, and the base game is pretty solid already. I might try them again at some point for more variety, notably Sins of the Prophets.

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

#147

Post by AussieWog93 »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #132
AussieWog93 wrote: post #99

Supreme Commander's gameplay is nothing but hard counters[1], especially with the reclaim system (you can harvest a dead unit to reclaim 80% of the mass used in creating it). The gameplay is deep and revolves around scouting and predicting what the enemy will do and when they'll do it. It's still very active today, through to a mod called FAF. [1]The exception to this is the Cybran SACU, which I believe has no true c…

Not someone who played the game much, but a quick glance at the stats suggest that the size of a SACU death ball would be limited by a nuke? I also concede it'd be hard to build a nuke without other players noticing.

Nukes are fairly limited in their use.

The missiles are expensive and take a long time to build (I blieve around 8k vs 3.6k for an anti-nuke), and move across the map so slowly with such a huge warning (pulsating hazmat icon as a radar signature, plus a "strategic launch detected" blaring out the speakers of every player is a bit of a giveaway!) that they can't really hit anything except a stationary target.

Most successful strategies I've seen with them involve rushing T3 and firing a missile from a stationary launcher before the enemy can build antinukes, sabotaging the enemy's antinuke installations with a wave of strategic bombers, or using nuclear subs/Yolona Oss to surprise/overwhelm an enemy with antinukes very late game.

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

#148

Post by no_time »

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 not necessarily a bad thing, there is beauty in simplicity. Take Downwell for example. It's surprisingly engaging for a mobile game with only 3 on screen buttons.

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

#149

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ipnon wrote: post #119
AussieWog93 wrote: post #99

Supreme Commander's gameplay is nothing but hard counters[1], especially with the reclaim system (you can harvest a dead unit to reclaim 80% of the mass used in creating it). The gameplay is deep and revolves around scouting and predicting what the enemy will do and when they'll do it. It's still very active today, through to a mod called FAF. [1]The exception to this is the Cybran SACU, which I believe has no true c…

SupCom has remained interesting to RTS players long past its expiration date. The official servers have been down for years! Games are played on unofficial servers now.[0] Real military strategy[a] is all hard counters. Anti-ship missiles barrages need only one to land to knock an aircraft carrier out. Stealth aircraft are sitting ducks over integrated anti-air defense, over blue water the stealthiest plane is invisi…

Not an expert, but urban warfare is more complicated and doesn't have as much 'hard counters'; they had to fight tooth and nail, door to door to (re)take cities in the middle-east.

Of course, if you take the gulf war you can see it in action, with most of Iraq's tanks and airplanes being taken out via airstrikes.

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

#150

Post by Cthulhu_ »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #99

Supreme Commander's gameplay is nothing but hard counters[1], especially with the reclaim system (you can harvest a dead unit to reclaim 80% of the mass used in creating it). The gameplay is deep and revolves around scouting and predicting what the enemy will do and when they'll do it. It's still very active today, through to a mod called FAF. [1]The exception to this is the Cybran SACU, which I believe has no true c…

I should get back on that one, I loved playing it at the time (against CPU, never a fan of online play), just building layers of defenses and have a constant stream of CPU forces get destroyed against it.

The one I'm thinking of had early support for multi-core and multi-screen, with the minimap / overview on the other screen. But it was still constrained; would have loved to test that defense of mine against all 7 other CPU players on a big map. Might try it again on my newer system.

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