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Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

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Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#301

Post by oreally »

nekusar wrote: post #96
PtaQQ wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, PtaQ here, BAR’s Community Manager. I’m sorry this was your experience. There are definitely some very competitive lobbies, but harassment is not acceptable. Please report any players involved, as reports are the only way we can identify patterns and take action. We have an active moderation team and do review them. For a more relaxed experience, I’d recommend trying less established meta maps. Lobbies marked “r…

These days, online public lobbies are almost always hostile. Doesn't matter the game, either. You can ban words, phrases, etc. The hostility is also through actions and not just insults. The only way to have actual fun gaming is a private group of friends. Think lan party, and definitely not public.

There is a trend in online mobile game design, that the best interaction between players is through limited-option emotes and solo gameplay masqueraded as 'multiplayer'. That's saying something. People don't know how to give feedback that doesn't tilt someone else. They'd rather label others names instead.

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#302

Post by MasterBel2 »

estearum wrote: post #265
fc417fc802 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with the term, thanks. I'm suggesting that if you're consistently losing to it that's a skill issue. Sure, you might find the gameplay boring but then that's a complaint about a perceived failure in the game design (notably only from your perspective, not necessarily other's). I appreciate that you're more interested in casually playing off the wall builds for fun rather than competitively playing to win…

Yes, it is a game design failure (obviously) insofar as it seems not possible to make a perfectly balanced game. But games weren't previously perfectly balanced either, presumably. But they didn't have this same "herding" dynamic because there wasn't an entire industry (literally!) of people trying to discover and disseminate knowledge about the imbalances. And no, the issue isn't "I like to casually play with off-th…

FWIW, meta pressures exist without an entire industry dedicated to them.

I’ve been playing BAR since it was called Balanced Annihilation and it peaked at 1 concurrent 8v8 daily and there was little/no youtube presence to speak of. Meta pressure was still huge, to the point that trying (now-meta) then-off-meta strategies would have you mocked, called a troll, and sometimes kicked from the room. Pretty much everyone was a meta slave, except for a few (mostly top) players who had their own quirky meta-rejecting style.

I think there’s a global desire for comfort/safety which drives meta, and this works without an industry. Copying is safe, playing the same map endlessly is comfortable, and fun for fun’s sake is neither. And ego seems to have something to do with it too. Players with less ego seem to experiment more, change things up more, break the meta more.

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#303

Post by MasterBel2 »

aetherspawn wrote: post #28
Panzer04 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This very much depends on the lobby. I don't think this is unique to BAR either - it's just that 8v8 is the most popular mode. Lots of players mean more chances to get a toxic guy who doesn't recognise their own faults and blames others. I actually just don't really agree about the assertion on player slots. If anything, the better players get the more likely they are to play a front slot, because they have an outsid…

My OS floated around 10-15 and I virtually always ended up having to go front in every lobby, which is the position I hate the most because I don’t like playing my strategy game like an RPG - that is, micro-ing just a dozen of units and optimising every rocket or bullet hit or whatever, which is kind of what front is like. Front has zero opportunity or resources available to build any kind of economy, and once the T2…

I’ve spent a lot of time coaching players at your level and there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what’s going on here.

Front line players absolutely have the economy to go t2 on their own, and I like to prove this regularly. Paying tech is simply to speed up your t2 con (and everyone else’s) by ~30 seconds.

If you’re too busy to pay for a t2 con you’re even more too busy to build t2 mexes, so you don’t need one in the first place. (I usually overpay for my t2 con to speed it up even more)

Your units should not be meat grinding. Take battles you can win or back off to safety.

Static defences are more cost effective than mobile units - that gives you the freedom to invest in your t2 transition.

Finally, there’s lots of viable diversity even in the first few minutes of the game (even up to 50os). If it doesn’t seem that way, there’s an opportunity to try new things and figure them out.

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#304

Post by MasterBel2 »

bar2 wrote: post #233
aetherspawn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My OS floated around 10-15 and I virtually always ended up having to go front in every lobby, which is the position I hate the most because I don’t like playing my strategy game like an RPG - that is, micro-ing just a dozen of units and optimising every rocket or bullet hit or whatever, which is kind of what front is like. Front has zero opportunity or resources available to build any kind of economy, and once the T2…

I was top 30 in 8v8 a few years ago. The recipe was pretty simple. Step 1 - Raid and harass nonstop in the early game, never fight fair engagements, abuse range, tax your opponent's attention. Ideally harass multiple players to mess up all of them. Greed behind this, it's not expensive to raid. Step 2 - spam pulsars (Clyret's meta)

This is pretty good advice

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#305

Post by orng »

estearum wrote: post #167
bheadmaster wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta-gaming is a natural progression in all human games. Chess players find "metas" like openings. It's just that video games are too simple and have very restricted meta set.

Which is also why chess is profoundly boring unless you're playing a casual game against a casual opponent.

True. I used to really enjoy playing casual chess as a kid. Analyzing the positions and try to come up with strategies on the fly was a lot of fun. When I realized that "proper" chess was mostly about memorizing positions and plays and sort of have it all pre-computed I lost all interest in playing.

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#306

Post by Volshok »

Apocryphon wrote: post #182
icexuick wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voice on the website is a full real person. He's a professional voice actor that goes by the name of "Razkharn". Awesome guy.

I don’t mean the voice actor I mean the writer of the lore entries

I’m the Narrative Lead for BAR, and none of our content is LLM-generated, as anyone who has suffered through editing my rough drafts can confirm.

Our Lore Guidelines state: “No LLM-generated content, but using LLMs for editing or brainstorming is acceptable.” I think the main AI-related tool we use is a NotebookLM with all lore for checking/referencing things

Edit: I'm curious what sections read as LLM generated?

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#307

Post by Dodrekai »

jansan wrote: post #100
tobinfekkes wrote: post #87

This is amazing to see TA on HN. I grew up playing Total Annihilation in the 90s because my cousin worked for Cavedog and got us a CD for free. It is still one of my favorite games to this day. So many great memories with that game, countless hours playing with my brothers, getting up early to play before school, asking my parents for extra chores to earn more computer time. Games aren't the same anymore. I still hav…

I had the most intense battles with my brother, even well into our 30s when we only met a few times a year. It is sad that there never really was a successor that was as good. They could have lifted the 255 units limit, made the game more balanced, added a few more maps and units (but not too many), enhace the graphics (but keep it 2.5D, I do not want 3D in this kind of games) and make connectivity easier. Cavedog re…

You can easily double the unit limit. find the "totala.ini" in the root folder and change UnitLimit to 500. Yuo can have more butyou need a patch if I remeber correctly.

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#308

Post by zipy124 »

antisthenes wrote: post #125
aetherspawn wrote: post #14

Great game, technically impressive, but the community can be quite mean and toxic. I played for around a year after having played other TA Spring RTS for a few years prior, and if you don’t follow the exact meta of the month (whatever that might be) in terms of build order and things, people can get really aggro and your team can vote to kick you and take your units. Also, one particularly aggravating part of the com…

This is a classic take by a non-competitive player that would be better suited playing PvE or campaign games. That being said, there's nothing wrong with that. Just understand that when people are trying to win, they have skin in the game, and are investing time and effort to win every game. > Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is…

> Yes, it is courtesy not to waste other people's time. Not sure where the controversy is, rather than your misunderstanding. Usually it's quite evident whether the game is lost (again, if you are a somewhat competitive player).

My experience from many years playing LoL and other competitive games is that it isn't. I can't count the number of times everyone wanted to surrender and then we clawed it back and won. Worse is that these are usually THE funnest of the matches since.

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#309

Post by cissikatt »

encom wrote: post #7

>All development updates, tech support, finding friends and all player and developer communication takes place on Discord. [ eye rolling emoji ]

Discord is the worst. Forums can be searchable for decades. When Discord is not cool enough to be around anymore, everything is gone.

Re: Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)

#310

Post by estearum »

MasterBel2 wrote: post #302
estearum wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is a game design failure (obviously) insofar as it seems not possible to make a perfectly balanced game. But games weren't previously perfectly balanced either, presumably. But they didn't have this same "herding" dynamic because there wasn't an entire industry (literally!) of people trying to discover and disseminate knowledge about the imbalances. And no, the issue isn't "I like to casually play with off-th…

FWIW, meta pressures exist without an entire industry dedicated to them. I’ve been playing BAR since it was called Balanced Annihilation and it peaked at 1 concurrent 8v8 daily and there was little/no youtube presence to speak of. Meta pressure was still huge, to the point that trying (now-meta) then-off-meta strategies would have you mocked, called a troll, and sometimes kicked from the room. Pretty much everyone wa…

Yes, I am aware they exist. But the addition of an industry that systematically finds and disseminates this obviously accelerates the process of discovery and dissemination.

This is like saying "scientific progress exists even without scientists talking to each other." It sure does, but collaboration and competition among them dramatically accelerates the discovery process.

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