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Milo and POTUS posted:A grunt is like a 200g investment and losing them prematurely just feels devastating How the gently caress did people deal before shops and Salves?
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Dec 7, 2020 14:46
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Milo and POTUS posted:I think they weren't even going to have base building because they said such and such percent of the time spent is "players building their bases". Turns out people really like building their bases. I honestly want to see the opposite universe wc3 just for a bit Originally units (not just heroes) were going to have inventories and level up and there'd be neutral towns and poo poo.
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Dec 7, 2020 14:51
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Red Alert 2? I wanna say? fiddled around with units leveling up. It was certainly another incentive to keep them alive longer.
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Dec 7, 2020 14:53
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That mechanic is commonly called unit veterancy, I'm not sure RA2 was the first but its quite common now in more tactically oriented RTS games.
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Dec 7, 2020 15:00
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Tubgoat posted:Especially when it's to bullshit like melee kiting. Tower creeping, turtling and mass casters lol
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Dec 7, 2020 15:06
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Tubgoat posted:Especially when it's to bullshit like melee kiting. It was definitely worst for orcs but they also had the best late game healing in totems. Early on they basically just harassed with BM and turtled. Make sure your opponent couldn't leave their base unattended, while you picked off their units as they were trying to creep. NE were the most broken because of moon wells. It was basically suicide to attack a NE without an overwhelming force which you probably wouldn't have since it was almost always 'mass hunts' coming at you. Undead were pretty good because you could send wounded ghouls back to farm lumber, or cannibalize, or get vampiric aura, or just main the death knight and try to clear merchants so you could get mana potions. Humans used militia a lot. Someone that mains the paladin is either really good or really bad. Back then exp feeding wasn't as thought about so you'd see a lot of humans use Archmage with water elementals. Similar to orc, human might just turtle up and let the Archmage harass with blizzard. I played so much during that period even though it was just a year between vanilla and Frozen Throne, in hindsight it feels like way more. Mata posted:That mechanic is commonly called unit veterancy, I'm not sure RA2 was the first but its quite common now in more tactically oriented RTS games. WW2 RTS Company of Heroes had an interesting thing where each of the four factions had a different implementation of it. The Americans had the straight forward, gain exp and the unit levels up getting generally better at everything. The British didn't get exp but you'd buy officers that gave the bonus like an aura with higher level officers granting a higher level bonus. The Wehrmacht didn't gain exp but had purchasable training that would give the bonus to all units of the type. The Panzer Elite was sort of like a combination of the Americans and the Wehrmacht because your individual units gain exp then you'd choose a perk when you leveled up and that perk would apply to all the units of that type from then on. Most games since then seem to use the "American" style of veterancy but I remember that was a cool thing about that game and for a game that had four factions with basically the same kind of units they did a good job making the factions play and feel differently. Which I found kind of impressive given that with a game like Warcraft you can make units completely different from one another and with a world war 2 game you're looking at the same kinds of units for each faction.
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Dec 7, 2020 15:40
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Mata posted:That mechanic is commonly called unit veterancy, I'm not sure RA2 was the first but its quite common now in more tactically oriented RTS games. It wasn't even the first Command & Conquer title to have it (Tiberian Sun). Out of the top of my head I think Warzone 2100 was another RTS around that time and had units that gained experience and leveled up. Turn based games of course had it forever, even ones with generic anonymous units you could buy more of.
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Dec 7, 2020 15:50
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Levelling up in RA2 was mental though. 1 Elite Rhino could level a base in no time at all or just lay waste to enemy armour. In Tib Sun the veterancy was still good but more nuanced. I remember that killing off your own Grunts (or other low health units) was a thing all through WC3 to deny the enemy heroes exp. Last hitting before last hitting was a MOBA mainstay. Although in WC3 you could run your near death units into creeps because enemy heroes only got exp from a certain radius around them rather than map wide.
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Dec 7, 2020 16:07
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Flayer posted:I remember that killing off your own Grunts (or other low health units) was a thing all through WC3 to deny the enemy heroes exp.   Never forget.
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Dec 7, 2020 17:14
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PaybackJack posted:WW2 RTS Company of Heroes had an interesting thing where each of the four factions had a different implementation of it. The Americans had the straight forward, gain exp and the unit levels up getting generally better at everything. The British didn't get exp but you'd buy officers that gave the bonus like an aura with higher level officers granting a higher level bonus. The Wehrmacht didn't gain exp but had purchasable training that would give the bonus to all units of the type. The Panzer Elite was sort of like a combination of the Americans and the Wehrmacht because your individual units gain exp then you'd choose a perk when you leveled up and that perk would apply to all the units of that type from then on.  You're correct that the Panzer Elite had a combination of American and Whermacht styles, but you're wrong in the details about it. Units gained experience and leveled up to three times, choosing an Offensive or Defensive bonus at each level, and those bonuses only applied to that squad.You might be thinking of the numerous upgrades that could be purchased for the Panzer Grenadiers, which were the PE's only infantry unit and therefore had to be able to scale from being builder units that were okay-ish combatants into late-game powerhouses.
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Dec 7, 2020 18:53
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Did they ditch all that in coh2? I've watch some pro matches of that because the commentator is really good. It's pretty entertaining stuff but I can't stop from playing age2 long enough to give it a real go
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Dec 7, 2020 19:08
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Milo and POTUS posted:Did they ditch all that in coh2? I've watch some pro matches of that because the commentator is really good. It's pretty entertaining stuff but I can't stop from playing age2 long enough to give it a real go Yep. All squads have American-style Veterancy now, and the only deviation is the Oberkommando West who get 5 levels of Veterancy instead of the standard 3. They also ditched COH's doctrine system that came with a skill tree in favor of modular commanders with linear unlocks so they could sell new doctrines as microtransactions. I really don't like COH2. Kith fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 19:22
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The COH2 comp stomp community seems much stronger than the PVP. The game is extremely grindy even after a patch a couple years back to make it less so.
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Dec 7, 2020 19:29
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My favorite thing about COH2 was the violent backlash from the entire community about War Spoils system and Relic just plowing ahead with it anyways, which ultimately wound up breaking their scenario map DLC's loadout functionality (which never got fixed because not enough people bought those mission packs for Relic to care). My other favorite thing about COH2 was the developers saying over and over that the American faction was not supposed to have heavy tanks available under any circumstances because that's just how the faction was designed, so they would never, ever add the Pershing. anyway, 
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Dec 7, 2020 19:53
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Kith posted:My favorite thing about COH2 was the violent backlash from the entire community about War Spoils system and Relic just plowing ahead with it anyways, which ultimately wound up breaking their scenario map DLC's loadout functionality (which never got fixed because not enough people bought those mission packs for Relic to care). Gotta grind those purps, no matter the game. It's funny how one game's colour-based rarity scheme has become this universal truth.
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Dec 7, 2020 19:55
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Flayer posted:Levelling up in RA2 was mental though. 1 Elite Rhino could level a base in no time at all or just lay waste to enemy armour. In Tib Sun the veterancy was still good but more nuanced. I liked it in C&C Generals. If a GLA technical -a pickup truck with a machine gun in the bed- reached max rank it's gone got upgraded to some sort of rocket launcher that tore through tanks and buildings.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:24
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Pigbuster posted:I think the Naga subrace had swimming units, but it's annoyingly difficult to confirm any WC3-specific information. Yeah, they had a bunch you could use in the Blood Elf campaign. And it was cool because you could use them to use a more limited army, but open up different paths and approaches, and hit the AI weak spots.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:33
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Kith posted:My favorite thing about COH2 was the violent backlash from the entire community about War Spoils system and Relic just plowing ahead with it anyways, which ultimately wound up breaking their scenario map DLC's loadout functionality (which never got fixed because not enough people bought those mission packs for Relic to care). If it helps in my experience the Pershing is the worst heavy tank, which generally fits in with the American COH2 theme of "worst tanks" Generally the entire thing was meant as cancerous American World War II mythology writ large. Russians are depicted as a Zerg faction who fight the Battle of Stalingrad wherever they go. Germans have wunderwaffen tanks (some of which like the elefant were almost barely built at all and demonstrably garbage IRL), and can become uber-experienced because Rommel. Charitably, it's very pop history. The war spoils thing reeks of a SEGA decision, who are really aggressive with trashy microtransactions throughout their games. The general thing about war spoils is that 99.9% of them are totally useless and roughly 10% of the commanders are worth taking unless you want to completely gently caress around in PVE. You can set the flame tanks to attack ground from behind cover and cook everything coming across a choke (including allies who are not paying attention) but I wouldn't call them good as much as funny.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:35
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Kith posted:
Ah well I was pretty close. I always played as the Americans because using the Howitzer brought back those good GDI Ion Cannon memories. Also blowing up bridges in that game was extremely fun. Wish more games had destructible terrain elements like that. I'm glad that War3 designed it's power around the heroes, and their ultimates never felt like autowins but some very strong skills that could still be played around.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:37
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Sodomy Hussein posted:If it helps in my experience the Pershing is the worst heavy tank, which generally fits in with the American COH2 theme of "worst tanks" Oh sure, it's just that the developers swore up and down for more than a year that the Pershing would never get added. And then it did anyways, and the community proceeded to throw the devs' words back in their faces en masse for years afterwards, which is extremely funny to me. Sodomy Hussein posted:Generally the entire thing was meant as cancerous American World War II mythology writ large. Russians are depicted as a Zerg faction who fight the Battle of Stalingrad wherever they go. Germans have wunderwaffen tanks (some of which like the elefant were almost barely built at all and demonstrably garbage IRL), and can become uber-experienced because Rommel. Charitably, it's very pop history. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if it was a SEGA decision. As far as I'm aware, SEGA is also behind DOW3's Total Fuckup status because everyone expected Storm of Vengeance to be a Warhammer 40k MOBA instead of an extremely lovely mobile game that was a reskin of the developer's previous game, so they took that as "everyone wants a Warhammer 40k MOBA, so Dawn of War 3 must have MOBA mechanics" and wound up ruining the whole drat thing. Kith fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 21:01
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FoolyCharged posted:Frozen throne added a small smattering of mercenary ones, but the base game only had transports. Pre-Frozen Throne WC3 had absolutely no functional Naval Units. There were campaign boats that were purely cosmetic or "blow up this thing" targets. It was the expansion that added any naval units; the naga and other swimming units, and the introduction of boats; each race has a transport boat, a frigate, and a battleship that were all statistically identical.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:31
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You couldn't buy those combat ships anywhere in the campaign, could you?
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Dec 7, 2020 22:32
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THE BAR posted:You couldn't buy those combat ships anywhere in the campaign, could you? While we're talking about RTS naval units (I too loved warcraft 2 and its giant sea turtles armed with torpedoes), I'm going to throw out this little article on the topic I found a few years back that asks where they all went off to, both because I think it's interesting and because I secretly always hope someone will explain how it's wildly wrong because boy howdy I'd like to see more of them show up again. (edit: if nothing else, one thing he doesn't bring up that I think could be interesting is that water as a terrain often has almost no variation within itself - adding currents or reefs or other stuff like that as potential terrain tools could make it usable as more than just 'empty land, but blue') Drakyn fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 23:14
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As cool as the war2 ships were I think I'd rather see more ground units than naval ones TBQH. Water stuff is just going to feel tacked on and irrelevant unless every map is an island map. There's more interesting movement mechanics to be had than water-based units (which is basically just a separate map, like the wayward article says). Cliffwalking in SC2 is cooler than that. In Wc3 that might be a unit that can walk thru trees or something. Ghouls did have forestwalking for a patch or two, which was more about walking through units than trees, but could still have made for an interesting mechanic if they hadn't patched it out. Mata fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 01:12
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Mata posted:As cool as the war2 ships were I think I'd rather see more ground units than naval ones TBQH. Water stuff is just going to feel tacked on and irrelevant unless every map is an island map. I wasn't on the design team and won't speak for them but I can say that designing and balancing units that are only usable on island maps, as well as including incentives/expectations to create more island maps, is a really rough space to be when people expect some sort of balance/fun factor in multiplayer. WC2 got away with it in a large part because people had no idea how to play competitive RTS games. Nowadays island maps are almost universally hated outside of the novelty factor and requiring a separate economy to even traverse would be... pretty impossible these days. It also simply doesn't work when you make races asymmetric - you cannot balance around the early game in this type of RTS when island maps are commonly in the mix. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 02:44
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It didn't include an entire new resource system, but Supreme Commander did a fine job of balancing naval units that weren't available on all maps.
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Dec 8, 2020 03:41
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THE BAR posted:It's funny how one game's colour-based rarity scheme has become this universal truth. Borderlands was a potential offramp but they had better things to do than confuse players fresh off of end-game raids. Edit: Not for WarCraft, but a new RTS that was heavily water-/island-based from the getgo and whose factions are designed around it could be pretty badass.
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Dec 8, 2020 04:11
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The algorithm randomly decided to put this video on my feed tonight and I very much enjoyed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtKYYcvWw0
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Dec 8, 2020 05:16
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I Love You! posted:I wasn't on the design team and won't speak for them Were you on some other Warcraft 3 team?
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Dec 8, 2020 05:30
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SirSamVimes posted:It didn't include an entire new resource system, but Supreme Commander did a fine job of balancing naval units that weren't available on all maps. Supreme Commander is the gold standard for naval combat integration in an RTS. Red Alert 3 had the naval basebuilding gold standard, mind.
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Dec 8, 2020 09:22
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I've watched a few water matches of total annihilation. I like water maps on RA2 even if I know they're terribly balanced. I also adore Age2 water maps especially hybrid maps but a lot of people hate them and I hate those that do 
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Dec 8, 2020 11:04
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Olpainless posted:Supreme Commander is the gold standard for naval combat integration in an RTS. Supreme Commander is the gold standard for a great many things in RTS. Its naval combat does deserve special mention though, watching one of those gigantic battleships firing is a thing of beauty.
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Dec 8, 2020 11:08
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I Love You! posted:It also simply doesn't work when you make races asymmetric - you cannot balance around the early game in this type of RTS when island maps are commonly in the mix. I agree it's going to be gimmicky if its like Blizz RTS where at most 10% of maps are island based, but if all maps were island maps I think it could work. Tubgoat posted:Edit: Not for WarCraft, but a new RTS that was heavily water-/island-based from the getgo and whose factions are designed around it could be pretty badass. https://www.ardentseas.com/media/ But if it's entirely water-based then that's only aesthetically different from being entirely land-based. The interesting part is where they intersect Mata fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 11:15
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What is the purpose of the food system? Yeah it penalizes having a huge army, but why is that not a good thing? I was thinking: was It one of those reverse brain things, like the rested XP system in Blizzard, where it’s actually designed such that you’d be at medium or low upkeep unless you lose your army, which gives you an economic boost to rebuild? So players staying juuuust below the break points wasn’t intended? It just seems weird and dumb that ideally you DON’T have armies on the field in this video game about having armies fight.
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Dec 8, 2020 11:23
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SirSamVimes posted:Supreme Commander is the gold standard for a great many things in RTS. It does amaze me that both Supcom2 and Planetary Annihilation managed to be honestly much worse games And nothing beats the joy of watching a bunch of Summits shell an opposing base Delicious
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Dec 8, 2020 11:23
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jokes posted:What is the purpose of the food system? Yeah it penalizes having a huge army, but why is that not a good thing? I read an interview with Metzen or whoever, who talked about this being a controversial change introduced late into the game's development, but I really think it makes the game work a lot better. It does add a much-needed comeback mechanic to the game, but also adds economic asymmetry. If one player chooses to stay at 50 that opens a timing for you to go 50+ and attack. Likewise, staying at 50 is both an opportunity and a risk. This kind of trading roles of who is the attacker and who is the defender is difficult to get right in an RTS, but this particular implementation ties in very well with the other systems (teching, scouting, expanding, creeping, etc). There are ofcourse some obvious issues with a "unit tax" game mechanic but I'm glad they were brave enough to go through with it. Playing without upkeep makes the optimal strategy to build your army as big as you can, creep, expand, but you are never incentivized to attack outside of some specific unit/upgrade timings.
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Dec 8, 2020 11:49
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Mata posted:But if it's entirely water-based then that's only aesthetically different from being entirely land-based. The interesting part is where they intersect
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Dec 8, 2020 13:16
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Does he mean the upkeep system? I don't have much of an opinion on it tbh. I'm not much a midgame or late game player so I've usually won or lost by the time it becomes relevant lol. At one point people would pull their workers off gold at higher upkeeps since they'd be getting less per 10 which honestly seemed kind of back asswards to me but I guess I can see a sort of logic? As for food itself I very much appreciate that attacking the supply is a viable strategy. The macro and eco management takes a backseat in the game in favor of creeping and combat compared to other near contemporary games. Unlike say sc or aoe2 where workers are both extremely plentiful, important and vulnerable, workers in wc3 feel comparatively beefy and protected with wisps in a mine on one extreme and acolytes on gold on the other. With good base building they can be fairly safe so if you want to chip away at their macro sometimes going after their supply is the way to go. I know levelling Beastmaster to 3 so the hawk could attack and going after orc burrows with the magic attack was a thing for a while
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Dec 8, 2020 13:18
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Upkeep sucks. I always assumed it was put in because they wanted people to have fewer poo poo on the map because the game was hard on medium range systems at the time.Drakyn posted:While we're talking about RTS naval units (I too loved warcraft 2 and its giant sea turtles armed with torpedoes), I'm going to throw out this little article on the topic I found a few years back that asks where they all went off to, both because I think it's interesting and because I secretly always hope someone will explain how it's wildly wrong because boy howdy I'd like to see more of them show up again. No mention of Rise of Nations (the GOAT) turning ground units into little transport boats once they hit the water after you've built a shipyard so you don't have to load/unload transport vessels. I like island maps or maps with lots of water. I play/played Vikings in AoE2.
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Dec 8, 2020 15:09
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I misremembered, it wasn't an interview with Metzen, it was Rob Pardo on the Designer notes podcast. They talk a little about upkeep at 1h44m. https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/rob-pardo-part-1
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Dec 8, 2020 15:20
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