In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by yellowapple » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 5:57 PM UTC

retsibsi wrote: post #111

maverwa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one big reasons why RTS are having trouble is, that loosing in an RTS, as a new player, can be one of the worst experiences in gaming (not counting player toxicity): you just spend several minutes, maybe a lot of them, playing this game, you finally got your T2 fab, and then the enemy nukes you with his experimental artillery and you are just gone. No way to understand what exactly went wrong. To slow? Wrong…

> Compare that to a shooter I wouldn't claim they're quite so opaque, but Quakelike FPS games have a similar problem. They appear to be about shooting, but in fact at least 50% of the game is resource control (and even the combat itself is more nuanced than a new player realises). So when you're a new player losing to an experienced player, it can be super confusing and demoralising. Confusing because you probably do…

I've definitely had similar feelings in Half Life 2: Deathmatch. I'm particularly fond of "low grav high kill" servers due to the fast pace (the low gravity enables a lot more movement around the map, and the "high kill" - i.e. weapons buffed / health nerfed such that getting hit by anything results in instant death or close to it - ups the stakes). Unfortunately, such servers often feature "sniper" maps, wherein players "in the know" will scramble to find the "hidey holes" and repeatedly slaughter any of us unfortunate schmucks.

It got to the point that on such servers I'd protest by refusing to use guns at all and used a crowbar and grenades exclusively. Not sure if anyone really took note of what I was protesting against, but it sure got me on top of some monthly crowbar kill leaderboards :)

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

#182

Post by BlueTemplar » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #176

LegitShady wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 colossus and some zealots to slow advance vs 50 marines is a close fight and much cheaper on the Protoss side. Dark Templar vs anything on the ground without detection? Burrowed investors against anything without detection?

Colossus vs Marines is closer to the hard counter idea, but Flame Tank vs Riflemen makes the Colossus vs Marine fight look fair. The "Stealth vs Detection" thing isn't quite the same. When you have a mixed-army (ex: Light Tanks + Flame Tanks) go up against another mixed army (ex: Riflemen + Rocket Launchers), the "Hard Counter" remains in fact, a hard counter. No amount of "support" will allow those Riflemen to damag…

The HP & DPS explanation only goes so far :

Consider speed-UNupgraded Zealots vs stutter-stepped Vultures !

Zealots have a clear advantage in terms of HP an (most likely) DPS, and yet they lose badly...

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

#183

Post by BlueTemplar » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #33

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.

Zero-K does it too for the different factory matchups :

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/278908415756206080/86...

(I assume this is for ranked 1vs1 rather than casual lobsterpot though ?)

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

#184

Post by dragontamer » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #182

dragontamer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colossus vs Marines is closer to the hard counter idea, but Flame Tank vs Riflemen makes the Colossus vs Marine fight look fair. The "Stealth vs Detection" thing isn't quite the same. When you have a mixed-army (ex: Light Tanks + Flame Tanks) go up against another mixed army (ex: Riflemen + Rocket Launchers), the "Hard Counter" remains in fact, a hard counter. No amount of "support" will allow those Riflemen to damag…

The HP & DPS explanation only goes so far : Consider speed-UNupgraded Zealots vs stutter-stepped Vultures ! Zealots have a clear advantage in terms of HP an (most likely) DPS, and yet they lose badly...

Flametanks are faster than infantry in Command and Conquer. IIRC, Riflemen and Flametanks have roughly the same range as well.

Flametanks have pretty much every advantage over riflemen:

* Cost in terms of combat efficiency: one flametank can take out multiple dozens of riflemen.

* Flametanks have more speed.

* Flametanks require less micro / APM. To keep riflemen alive vs Flametanks, you need to constantly micro-them outside of the Flametank's movement (by default, riflemen sit still and shoot their rifles. As the flametank approaches, they get run over and instant-killed before the flametank even fires a shot).

APM-advantage, Movement advantage, cost-efficiency, DPS, armor. Everything. Everything about the Flame Tank beats Riflemen on every aspect you can possibly imagine.

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

#185

Post by naravara » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

antifa wrote: post #162

naravara wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard recently ended development on Starcraft 2. This prompted a lot of hand-wringing. There’s also a few new studios cropped up that have announced intention to produce new, competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C). These include: - Sunspear Games, which is making a game called Immortal: Gates or Pyre based in an SC2 mod called Vang…

> competitive RTS games in the Blizzard tradition (in contrast to models like Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, SupCom, or C&C). I don't know how to interpret this other than "it'll be a destroy-your-mouse high APM obsessed click-fest that will ignore all lessons and modern inventions in the RTS genre over the last 20 years." IMO the worst thing that could happen for the industry is 5 more Starcraft remakes.

Even in SC2, click-speed is not a significant determinant of winning or losing for anyone below Diamond. It's simply not an issue for the vast majority of the player base (75% of players are Platinum league or below) so I don't know why so many people have fixated on that as the thing to blame problems on. It's like saying "basketball revolves around dunking" even though dunks are basically not an element of the game for anyone playing below the professional level.

Insofar as there are barriers to entry to the game at lower leagues, the challenge is more the mental challenge of keeping track of a bunch of different variables and keeping up with the multi-tasking. It's not nearly as execution dependent, at that level, as most fighting games or even a Soulsborne. It's a mental acuity and habit-formation challenge rather than a dexterity one. Better players will have more actions per minute (assuming they're not spamming), but it will be because they're making decisions more quickly, not because they have concert pianist fingers. I got up to Gold league playing mostly with a trackpad. I know someone who got to Diamond on a trackpad as well.

There's lots of problems with SC2's design, but they mostly center around a poor onboarding experience, doing a bad job of communicating the ripple effects of early decisions, a surfeit of high-lethality units that settle battles or games in a second, and the availability of multiple "cheese" strategies for each faction that are much much easier to execute than they are to defend against. But those are all addressable within the broader framework of a Blizzard-style RTS with better unit design, UI/UX, and tutorial or single player game modes.

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

#186

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

nestorD wrote: post #41

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #2

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

If you are not familiar with it, OAD[0] is a fully open source RTS with an active community of developers that keep making it more and more polished at every release. [0]: https://play0ad.com/

I haven’t played in too long, thanks for the reminder to jump back in.

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

#187

Post by ipnon » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #149

ipnon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, it is perhaps at a level between the tactical and strategic that hard counters mostly exist. At the highest strategic level, hard counters are nonexistent in a game theory way. Institutions like the UN and the US military prevent much of anything significant happening at the greatest levels of geopolitics. This can be seen in the abundance of world wars in the early 20th century, and their absence in the late 20th and now 21st centuries. Then at the utmost tactical level it is truly man versus man. There are few, if any, hard counters for that.

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

#188

Post by lumost » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #180

lumost wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the tldr of hard counter play in most RTS games. It’s fun for experienced players who understand the rules/decision tree and enjoy learning the tricks and edge cases - terrible for new players who just get crushed by rules they don’t know and can’t know without going online for 10 hours. In many cases, the joy of RTS for new players is map control. Hard counters tend to break this gameplay loop for them as th…

10 hours isn't much. Also new players might still lose with 80% of the map because they might not know how to scale their economy properly, or, in RTSes, just lack the speed to execute that.

Considering a “long game” is in the 80 hour range of play time, 10 hours for startup can be somewhat excessive.

It’s true that new players may think they are in control when they are really not - but it’s easier to understand when the other side had larger/more units.

There is a reason why new players in RTS games tend to overbuild defenses - they’re default goal is to play for and secure the map.

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

#189

Post by BlueTemplar » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:16 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #184

BlueTemplar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HP & DPS explanation only goes so far : Consider speed-UNupgraded Zealots vs stutter-stepped Vultures ! Zealots have a clear advantage in terms of HP an (most likely) DPS, and yet they lose badly...

Flametanks are faster than infantry in Command and Conquer. IIRC, Riflemen and Flametanks have roughly the same range as well. Flametanks have pretty much every advantage over riflemen: * Cost in terms of combat efficiency: one flametank can take out multiple dozens of riflemen. * Flametanks have more speed. * Flametanks require less micro / APM. To keep riflemen alive vs Flametanks, you need to constantly micro-them…

I meant this about the article's HP&DPS being sufficient to explain a generalist unit's power, not this specific case where huge damage type bonuses and penalties are involved...

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

#190

Post by BlueTemplar » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

lumost wrote: post #188

BlueTemplar wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 hours isn't much. Also new players might still lose with 80% of the map because they might not know how to scale their economy properly, or, in RTSes, just lack the speed to execute that.

Considering a “long game” is in the 80 hour range of play time, 10 hours for startup can be somewhat excessive. It’s true that new players may think they are in control when they are really not - but it’s easier to understand when the other side had larger/more units. There is a reason why new players in RTS games tend to overbuild defenses - they’re default goal is to play for and secure the map.

If only - defenses tend to be overbuilt in the main base, and expansion forgotten until they run out of resources...