Aside from what they already have planned, I want a map thumbnail that lets you set player starting position when setting up the game. Almost every other RTS I can think of has this. At very least, 'team-based' or 'Player-vs-AI' map settings, to arrange players as desired.
There's nothing I enjoy more than MoO2 idolatry. Remember, all the broken AI and hopelessly unbalanced custom races and non-existent diplomacy are parts of the BEST GAME EVER! :) While Sins is in no way a '4X' game (a vague genre that's pretty useless beyond 'you conquer cities/planets and research tech), the diplo metagame is definately the meat of the appeal in multi. Like Defcon, the lying and cheating add a lot of depth. Being slow by RTS standards isn't enough to be 'deep' (alth
That's the way of patching, though, it's not intrinsically bad. The game is very new and by a small team: it's not surprising that it's going to get good and bad changes until it's somewhere a little better all over. SD has an excellent record in this regard, so I'm pretty optimistic. I'm actually quite curious to hear what people think of when they talk about balance changes that would help 'elite' (ie, evil and bad) MP players but hurt casual SP play. I can't think of any - the wor
[quote]Right you are - theory crafting is fine for discussion when all the variables are taken into account. Testing it between two good players of equal skill is still the best way to conclude anything though.[/quote] I've recently been playing several games like this: testing ideas against various common tactics you see in MP. In particular, Advent don't seem as bad as the numbers alone suggest due to the unit synergy, but it's always informative to try several approaches (which isn
I dunno, while that 'frig swarm beats LRMs' idea is pretty broken, it's pretty sad when people will just leave the game when they see an LRM blob. They're not impossible to handle (but Disciples aren't a winrar counter), but from a certain perspective anything that keeps people in the game and trying new things is good.
I love this. 'Elitists' are bad and should be ignored even when they explain things in detail, but 'SP and MP balance being different is just a fact logic'. What is a double standard of proof? Some of the worst balance changes are made simply because the AI sucks. From a certain perspective, they're killing MP (even LAN or friendly casual games) just because the SP AI sucks. This is backwards and should not be encouraged. Sorcereress, what do you consider changes that woul
In a related question, has anyone worked out how 'surrendering' works for the AI? I've seen AI surrender quite early (ie, as soon as I pop their homeworld, but when they have many other systems), and others hold on to the bitter end (ie, make me destroy their last asteroid). Has anyone ever had the last AI in the game surrender to give you the overall win in a single-player game?
I hear improving unit balance somehow negatively affects casual play in a way nobody can ever describe, but this argument from emotion is far more valid than any thread containing actual numbers or replays. ;)
Why is it that any time anyone mentions facts about balance, people starting replying with posts using words like 'competitive', 'casual', and 'mod'? Either you think the game is or is not balanced: if it is, go away. If it isn't, then you agree in some extent with the OP. If you agree, saying 'hurr hurr mod' is *admitting failure*. It's basically saying 'the devs can't balance this, you do it', which is pretty offensive. As I'm sure has been said eight million times in the other th
The idea that doing it manually 'isn't that hard' is pretty offensive. Clicking a target is saying 'kill that guy': are we to believe the commanders of these ships are so cripplingly retarded they make no effort to intercept? This is particularly amusing against AI, where a few ships can lead the AI fleet on a merry chase, largely negating them. That said, moving and targeting being separate would be pretty boss. I wouldn't mind a 'tactical UI' to use in combat, to reverse-designate
I'll try it in a 4-way tonight and let you know how it goes. I'm very interested in the market changes - good work. :)
But that's the issue people apparently have with players who pay attention: they win. This should seem obvious (and I certainly don't resent my losses) as 'casual' players don't really care what they're doing, and competitive players do, and are thus more effective. Honestly, saying 'someone better than me defeated me and that isn't what the game is about' is childish. *ALL* RTSs have this phenomenon, it's why I mostly play 'friendly' games with people I know rather than random games.
Bugger, I can't edit after someone posts. :) ZJBDragon has a damn good point about the dangers of balancing. I touched on it earlier, but his examples of other games are right on. Every unit SHOULDN'T be able to do everything: each faction SHOULD have a preferred method to fight, because their units aren't universally capable. If you lose because you do something that doesn't work, that isn't necessarily a balance issue at all, particularly with factions like Advent that require a di
[quote]Use the limitations of enemy units and unique abilities at your disposal to your advantage and there's no way a blob of spam units could ever be successful. Sins is half RTS and half Chess.[/quote] I've been out of the thread but I had to quote this. It's ironic that people would call OTHERS 'elitist' (even terrible players like myself) but not this guy. 'Half RTS and half chess'? No, sorry buddy, it's an RTS. All RTSs have chess-like attributes, and they're all massively dif
The attitude that balance issues either don't exist or aren't a problem for single player/casual is simply wrong. Even in friendly games, I could use unit spam to win whenever I wanted, just like a competitive player would: I had to consciously not do this because it's not how I want to play. The statement 'if you think it's unbalanced, well, screw you' is so ignorant it beggers description. Again, just because you don't -notice- balance issues doesn't mean they don't exist. Balancin
[quote]I swear these people must be the same people complaining over at World in Conflict's forum. I see very similar words and writing style being used.Thinking42Man is talking about "competitive play and casual play" and goes on and on about it...... There's another dude over at WiC forums that keeps on jabbering about the same stuff.[/quote] I *love* the WiC forum, but I bet the devs hate it. So much whinging, and it leads to things like v1.006, where they nerfed HAA and heavy cho
Honestly, some toggleable 'target priority' abilities to control this would be great. I'd love to tell my strikecraft what I want from them in a few clicks instead of micro: even simple things like 'fighters concentrate on frigates/fighters/trade' and 'bombers concentrate on caps/cruisers/stuctures' would reduce the amount of clicking required significantly. This would be slightly better than a single priority list, as it'd allow one-click adjustment of priorities.
[quote]Pnakotus, Frogboy isn't saying that he doesn't care about game balance. He never said that. You just somehow assumed that since he disagreed with you on another point.[/quote] Or maybe, just maybe, it's that (as I said already) I missed the post he made 20s before mine (ie, while I was composing my original message). Frankly people like you bother me. You're full of backhanded insults like the above, but talk down to others who 'bicker' and 'name-call'. Style over su
[quote]Sorcereress, it's not 'elite multiplayer issues'. I was merely quoting Frogboy himself, when he mentioned, in his reply #5, « elite level multiplayer issues ». My tiny contribution was simply to offer, as support, that I agreed with his statement on the relative lack of importance of those type of elitist issues.[/quote] That's great, but they're NOT minor or elitist, because anyone can look at a thread about TEC builds and learn the cheese. The issues identified by the tiny pro
While I'm looking forward to some mods myself, saying 'wait for mods to get balance' is an admission of failure. The fact that people complain about different things is just an example of the signal-noise ratio you get on forums, and the reason why it's good IC and SD don't listen to everyone. The real problems can be seen and demonstrated in play pretty easily (so long as you're not playing 'friendly' games).
[quote]Thanks, Frogboy. Having returned to CoH and DoW after being away for a while and seeing what has happened to those games due to catering to hardcore MPers vice SP or even more casual MPers, has been discouraging. N[/quote] Oh yeah, DoW is a good modern example of what happens when devs listen to forum whinging too much. NERF EVERYTHING LOL! While I think Brad's traditional SP-focus is misplaced in a straight RTS like Sins, it's probably better than trying to satisfy everyone
Nobody is suggesting that it should: simply that players like that look at the stats and optimise more than friendly games or single player, and they will find the problems first. That's important for multiplayer, simply because once found, they're easily communicated, and now the small flaws in the unit balance mean 80% of all games play the same way, x faction is never used, y unit is never used, etc. Like I said, I'd never noticed most of the balance issues because I have no inter
[quote]Actually a lot of my friends ahve been getting tons of minidumps since 1.03. I haven't, though.[/quote] Many of my friends have too, and the 'disable bloom' fix has worked for them. Give it a try - they never had crashes pre v1.03, so I'm not sure what changed.
The black market fix is 100% necessary. I'd rather something more complex (like starting at x value, allowing it to rise, but only allowing it to drop very slowly, and to tiered values to simulate the market 'testing' various other prices, in some way linked to overall volumes), but it should NEVER drop back to the ridiculous 300 price, EVER, because the black market guys can name their price and it makes no sense that they'd offer such ridiculous prices (or that 1 crystal would sell for less t
It's kinda funny that he just comes out and says he doesn't care about issues that hound every RTS ever, namely unit balance and multiplayer success. Sure, Stardock makes SP games, and that's fine. RTS's live and die by multiplayer popularity, which is generally based on unit balance and 'competitiveness'. Ignoring these issues (even worse, actively working AGAINST them) mean the game will never reach the high levels of popularity that it might do if they were addressed, because it's otherwis
