Warzone 2100 Forums

-------------> Part 2 of 3......

themousemaster wrote:
But I'll take a hack at #2.

What makes a game fun is to make sure what is fun about it does not become stale.

-- Sounds circular but I understand and agree. Both (initial Fun followed by replay value) pose the great challenge of making somethin from a blank slate which is what Pumpkin folk began to do somewhere around 1996. As with anything that is created whole cloth and is intended for public consumption you have to go for it, make your best choices at the time and then commit to action, over and over, relentlessly otherwise you will never produce anything.

-- As the historian Will Durant once said: "Where I to await perfection my work never even begin." With his wife Ariel as collaborator, Will committed to producing the muti-volume Story of Civilization over the course of 50 years.

-- Also, no matter how much you put into your countless decisions along the way of creating an RTS (all the brainstorming, research, strategizing, discussion, etc.) there are no guarantees it will all hang together really well in the end. The project could turn out a total boondoggle. You have to live with that possibility throughout the entire process. Audacity, persistence, fortitude - most, frankly, donot possess those attributes, many are even clueless what it really takes to make something as complex as an RTS from the ground up.

***PLEASE NOTE***: the following post will NOT pay attention, AT ALL, storylines OR graphics. any game, in any genre, can have be good or bad in these aspects, and it's what separates the 9.0 games from the 5.5 ones. But given 4 games of equal-caliber in these regards... say, an Action, an Adventure, an RPG, and an RTS, you will grab the one whose gameplay most suits your personal taste. And that's what I'm going to post about.


--- Diablo2's "continuous" fun is in finding that "next piece of sweet gear". It's still popular today because random chance means that you may never see that piece of armor, or you may see 3 of them tomorrow. Basically, it's the video game world's equivalent of Video Poker, and just as addictive as gambling (to the people who like that sort of thing anyway). A Diablo2 contemporary, Dungeon Siege 2, has more (and better) voice acting, a larger story, better effects, more options... and yet, isn't nearly as popular, because there is no emphasis on "phat lewt acquisition".

--- Most RPG's "continuous" fun comes from people enjoying watching their "personas" number keep getting bigger (no lewd references in that statement at all...). RPG fans, after all, enjoying watching their avatar grow stronger, that's what makes the genre what it is. Single-player variants do it by just having the cap be so high as to take forever to get there, and MMOs generally do it be continuously adding in more stuff to do whenever 25% of the playerbase has totally exhausted, and 75% has at least seen, everything that there is at a point in time.

-- I agree with those genre fun game play mechanic characterizations.

--- RTS games do it by 2 major methods: for the VS group of people, it's by having such a balanced setup of distribution as to make competitive matches a pseudo-sport; for the single-player/Skirmish type of people, it's by having the gameplay be so unique as to allow the exact same objective to be accomplished by any number of methods. Note that some games strive to do both at once, but usually have to end up prioritizing one for the other, as the more "unique" options a player has available to him, the more difficult it is to competitively balance them.

-- There is truth throughout that but at the same time there do exist strategy games that accomplish all of it and have proven timeless in their popularity and relevance as vehicles of fun. The challenge has been taking that TB strategy watershed and transferring it to real time. IMO, it's yet to be done and WZ doesn't come close in its present state. But at the same time I believe WZ has a clear latent potential of moving much closer to that ideal and that potential is not by accident. It was Pumpkin's design intent for continuous evolution of WZ game play. This last is what has captivated me about WZ more than anything else. When Pumpkin was forced to stop development on WZ it was very much an unfinished game. As far as MP game play it remains unfinished to this day though there have been great efforts over the years to deal with it.

So, on to Warzone2100.

WZ's following isn't here because NEXUS is just such a bad villian; it's because, even to this day, the ability to "make your own units" is such a unique concept that it isn't much seen in other games, and that aspect is what keeps WZ2100 in a positive light in the eyes of its fans.

-- Yes and no, from my perspective. Unit Design is rare in the genre but Pumpkin's implementation in WZ is not optimal and is subverted by sweeping imbalances - specifically, the arms race imperative which will never be solved by stat tweaking or moving stuff around the tech tree which has been the strats to date - those merely change the flavor of the arms race / imbalance and will thus always yield failure.

That said, WZ probably steers towards the "single player/Skirmish" style of RTS entertainment. Against the singleplayer opponents and the stock skirmish AI (and to a lesser degree, some of the more advanced ones), you can use any number of different strats to emerge victorious. I know if I fight the same fight 5 times, and win it 5 different ways, I just enjoyed myself 5 times over. But for cut-throat multiplayer, the imbalance of the weapons is huge, and that would turn off the competitive-first crowd. Go to any Starcraft or Red Alert3 board, and see if the predominant thread isn't about "X is better than Y, nerf/buff it!". SC and RA3 are games designed for the clicks-per-second competitors, so that's who it attracts, and is "most popular" by.

-- In the case of Starcraft players make big bucks in pro competitions. The side betting is also a huge source of interest. In other words sport and associated gambling has been driving SCs popularity for over a decade.

WZ2100 balance history: Rocket weapons were the bomb. Then the minipod became ridiculous. Now the HC is king of all. (note that I'm not opinionizing the rebalance mods; I haven't tried them).

-- I'll quote myself: ...."imbalances - specifically the arms race imperative which will never be solved by stat tweaking or moving stuff around
the tech tree which has been the strats to date - those merely change the flavor of the arms race / imbalance and will thus always yield failure."

In this space, I wish to ask anyone actually paying attention to this thread: if you were told that this was your last day to play WZ2100, and you were only allowed to play it in one of them 3 following methods, which would you choose? (please don't make whole posts dedicated to an answer if you can avoid it, but if you want to weigh in, add your answer to a post otherwise discussing the topic )

A) Campaign
B) Skirmish. With or without human allies, your choice, but your opponents will be AI-volution CPUs.
C) no CPUs, Multiplayer.

I'd venture to say that C) is going to get the short end of the stick on this one. Obviously, you can enjoy all 3 aspects of the game, but which is the one that makes you go "yeah, that's what WZ2100 does so well!". And don't take the above to mean that I think SC or RA3 are bad; I liked them just fine. But when I think "what is an RTS to me?", LoM, LotRealm2, WZ2100, and AoE are what pops to my mind.

And just to weigh in, I'd pick B).

-- I pick (B) but with the original iteration of Aivolution which implemented Tank Transport Drops and elevation accuracy boons when shooting down at the enemy (which placed a premium on gaining and holding high ground) - both very sweet and absent in the current iteration.

So, long answer short, for the RTS genre, what makes a game "not boring" to a player who prefers the Strategy part to the reaction-time part, is the aspect that you can do many different things with a variety of controllable objects, and arrive at the same victorious result. The more options, the longer the game's lifespan.

-- IMHO, "reaction time" is rote manual dexterity not agile, creative, thought process and I'd like to minimize the former to little significance and create a variety of opportunities to excecise the latter which would translate to a vast set of winning ways.

-- L8r, Moro

-- EDIT: I'll return to answer your last post themousemaster after a good nights sleep.

Moro_Nick wrote: -- EDIT: I'll return to answer your last post themousemaster after a good nights sleep.

Speaking of needing a night's sleep, I just re-read my own post. It's a good thing I still know what I meant by some of it, cause if I was just reading it now, I'd confuse myself out a window.

Let me clarify my most confusing paragraph:

Don't misunderstand my reaming in the above comments; games with player-driven storylines are a good idea. In fact, FPS-RPG Morrowind is one of my favorite games of all time (along with the TBS-RTS Lords of Magic title you guys have been seeing me repeatedly mention in this thread, and the classic-RPG Fallout1 & 2... 3, not so much). But I know (some of) what it took to make that(those) game(s). That type of development process will not become an industry norm do to simple economics: using that design, games will start becoming very few, and very far between. Other people will then just make similar-but-lower-tier stuff to sell in the interim, and it WILL sell, due to lack of alternatives. And it will turn a higher profit-per-unit due to it's development. That's how a capitalist society operates, after all...

Ok, what this was supposed to mean:

A) FPS-RPG Morrowind showed that some dev companies can indeed spend the time and capital to make a game with HUGE content, in which you can solve many things different ways, and arrive at different storyline results.
B) TBS-RTS Lords of Magic is one of my favorite games of all time, along with Morrowind. But it isn't actually part of my rationale for the paragraph.
C) Fallout 3 is also a great game. However, it's "player can change the outcome" factor is no where near 1's or 2's... which were other examples of games where the devs took the time to write multiple storyline branches all the way through.
D) Fallout 3 is a prime example of what happens to games these days. While it's still more open-ended than many games from 2008, its still far less open-ended than F1 and F2 were, and are likely to ever see again, due to the shift in market forces. As proven by F3's notable success. Because that's how capitalism works.

---------------->Part 3 of 3:

-- Sorry... sleep a lot on the weekends - my way of catching up from burning the candle at both ends during the week...

Interesting article. Like all works, however, there are parts that I must object to.

-- QUOTE: A game designer can borrow inspiration from another medium but not techniques or values. For example, being inspired by the pace in a movie is far from learning how to pace a game from studying pace in a movie.

Pure false.

A) Movies are fast-paces; even long-trilogies (say, Lord of the Rings) are going to total in length of less than 10 hours (maybe the expanded DVD trilogy with all the deleted scenes and whatnot will be longer, but you get the idea).

B) Video games need to draw gamers in for periods much longer than 10 hours for them to be commercially successful.

However, A) does not mutually exclude B). You can make a very-fast-paced video game, and have it be good. You just have to know when to do it.

A fast paced RPG will be a disaster... classic-RPGs are the prototype of "slow". But, say... an FPS? If my game of Doom ISN'T paced at an alarming rate, then the game developers screwed up (or I've already cleared the area and am just exploring it). And, of course, I'm leaving out a game like FZero... a racing game is kind of an unfair example here, not that corollaries between it and The Fast and the Furious cannot be drawn.

Another example would be the new Left 4 Dead. In any mode above "easy", the way to "survive" this horror-movie-esque game is to keep moving as fast as possible. It's replay-ability comes from it's multiplayer. But it's pacing is certainly identical to that of any horror movie with guns.

-- Reading a story, watching a movie and playing a game have one thing in common - they are all entertainment constructs.

-- Reading a story is a collaboration between author and reader - the authors dramatic fiction craft stimulates the readers imagination to create a a mind movie where often the reader assumes the role of a protagonist..

-- With a movie, people watch a fixed construct, absorbing the movie creator's vision if it suits 'em.

-- With a game the player can be engaged as in the 2 preceeding statements with the addition of decision making and acting upon the construct within the rules embedded by the games creators..

-- The craft-set involved in creating each one of these entertainment constructs is different. Yes there is some artistry that can be held in common but you have to respect each mediums tools as uniquely suited and not interchangeable (though you can adapt - like writing "cinematic" story prose)..

-- For me none of the preceding is theory but rather derived from my practice. At the least I have a good feel for what we are talking about from hands-on experience. Course a person can have a good feel from appreciating a creative work's nuts and bolts while not having done it - but it's still quite a different position to speak from. Rare too from what I've seen. Mostly folks just say I like or don't like and that's as far as they can go... Which is my way saying your engagement in this thread is both bold and thought provoking.. It's also inspired me to clarify and articulate my own thinking. Strange as it may sound, this act of public communication is like a brain elixir and I don't take it for granted.

QUOTE: "Game development is turning into a circus, costs are skyrocketing, users get bored faster than ever before, and the development of truly new games — new ways of having fun — has all but stopped." Mr. Yamauchi, President of Nintendo...

I agree with this quote, but sadly, I don't think it applies to this document. I postulate this instead: users aren't getting bored faster; instead, the base of users that actually *play* video games has expanded well beyond just the "nerd subculture" of the 90s. But the new base has a much lower ability / attention span average than it used to be... so to actually tap into the "largest part" of the current video game market, games have to be suitably simple in their execution.

Nintendo, to their credit, did come up with a new method of "fun", mind you. The touchpad, 2 screen Nintendo DS and the motion-sensitive Wii are sweet additions to the Video Game industry. Props to them for that.

-- I agree with both statements - yours and Mr Yamauchi's. I do not see them as mutually exclusive.

Now let me hit this quote, which I feel is quite possibly the biggest problem with the bulk of this read:

-- QUOTE: "They were unanimous in preferring the games to television. They were also unanimous about the reason: active control. ... In a fine game, the player alters the outcome with every move."

Within the span of 2 paragraphs, he made a quote that shines light on the state of the industry, and then states that one of the main reasons for such a state is actually a good thing.

For any game to have a non-linear (AKA player-driven) storyline, you need to devote a large number of writers to develop (at the very least the framework for) multiple story paths, and the other resources necessary to make the game world for said number of possible states. This rivals that of Graphics development and the hiring of big name actors for the reason why video game costs are going nuts.

So which is it? Should games strive to be as player-malleable as possible, or should they take less than 5 years and 50 million dollars to create?

-- Again, I think these goals are not mutually exclusive.

-- When it comes to story in games there has arisen over the course of twenty years a particular set of craft tools called Interactive Fiction that differs from writing a story to be read or a cinematic shooting script.

-- Also, we must give the Indie Game Industry its due. It stands in contrast to the BIG developers in many ways - financially and philosophically. If you look at Amazon's top 25 bestselling video games you may be shocked at the number of Indie Games out-selling BIG developer titles.

I also find it ironic that he touts the virtues of Chess, Kungfu Chess, ChuChu Rocket, Bust-a-Grove, Bomberman, Pacman just before this, when said games are hardly ones where a varying storyline is their primary source of fun .

Also note: I'm sure someone is thinking right now "having an impact on the outcome can just mean whether the hero succeeds or fails". This is also false in any game that has a save feature. Unless your skill is so low as to never win; eventually, you will. And the storyline will be there to show you your win. The Hero will succeed.

-- That is true. However, just like watching a movie many times or reading a book many times wherein you know the outcome, you are still enjoying the experience every time you relive it. It becomes more HOW you win a game than merely winning.

-- QUOTE: "The more I study the smarter Aristotle gets. In a fine game, the more the player studies the deeper the game gets... When the game ceases to teach the player a new lesson, the game stops being fun."

I think he is overestimating the "average game buyer" these days. The people with the money in their pockets want instant gratification, not a cerebral experience. They can, will, and do, run to the nearest strat guide or cheat sheet at the first opportunity, just to "win at the game".

-- I think both these expectations of a game can be achieved in a single game.

-- QUOTE: "He learns that self-evaluation and teamwork trump individual excellence."

See above. Some people will form "guilds" in an MMO to maximize their "in-game" potential, but most (I.E. the market developers target) just pick the guy with the biggest damage, read a guide on what to put on him, and go stomp stuff. If they can't, they cancel their subscription. WoW is terribly easy compared to any other MMO, and it's subscriber base is huge compared to all other MMOs combined. I don't think that coincidence.

Or, how about Diablo2 vs. Dungeon siege 2. DS2 has more story, better voice acting, longer play times, and is just as simple to actually play. Why is D2 so much more popular today? Because people can get bots that PLAY THE GAME FOR THEM, giving them maxed-out characters that they can use to... well, trivialize it's actual content. Again, maximum gratification, minimum playing.

-- I see your points. I've enjoyed playing the games you mentioned but not into their on line incarnations. I'd rather do a stint in "Second Life" to be honest.

-- QUOTE: "A fine game gives insight into the human condition, if you believe: The world resembles a game, and all of us are players—our moves finite, our consequences irreversible."

The majority of game buyers don't want this. They want to have it all their way. Go to ANY developer-sponsored forum board and search for the phrase "we don't want work/life, we want a game". Even if the underlying premises of games and life (and for that matter, the rest of the universe) all have some conjoining equation, you have to understand: today's target demographic doesn't consider anything besides continuous winning "fun".

Any crack dealer will tell you: addiction beats quality.

-- I think that the big attraction of entertainments is to live vicariously for a spell within the world created in a story book, movie, game, etc... In the game world 2 hugely successful examples of that would be "The SIMS" and "GTA" in all their incarnations. (BTW, "The SIMS" is the top dog in sales for the whole history of vid-comp games..)

Sorry if this whole post sounds bile-filled. But I'm not a big fan of rosy-eyed dissertations who assume that just because they put a lot of emotion behind their arguments, that makes them more valid that ones based on statistics. Wippersnapper's posts are actually going for definitions and explanations, so he's all good (even if I disagree with some of his links); but Kennerly's post is just an academic exercise in "they way it should be", which stops having any real effect once you leave a college philosophy class. We should live in a pure communism as well, as it is the most equitable and fair. But we know how those turn out.

-- I agree with your general assessment. Often aesthetic generalizations present a limited POV that frankly excludes a lot of "exception to the rule" details. The history of fine art over the last 40,000 years (I'm going all the way back to the Cro Magnon cave paintings) attests to that.

-- I also learn much from doing post mortems on failures.

EDITOR'S NOTE:

A post was made before I posted this one, so I will address it as well.

-- QUOTE: "Yes, generally speaking, there are as many nuances of "Fun" as there are human beings on the planet Earth. Still Whipper's contention is that there is a subset of humanity that has a love for RTS gaming and that based on the 25 year history of RTS (the first RTS was released in 1983) all the RTS's have commonality as do the folks who find them fun. What I was pointing out was that at every stage of creating an RTS, even before you write your first line of code, you have to ask yourself "Is this gonna be fun to play within the context of everything else conceived so far and also with what is yet to be created ?" The ideal outcome is that most of the game play mechanics that you create-code will be fun for a majority of RTS gamers and that your mechnics are so clever that "fun replay value" will assure longevity and a robust mod community that are inspired to add to the cannon new twists of fun not even thought of by the original developers. --

I agree with 90% of this (the part about letting a fan base add to canon is a sure-fire way to turn a work into insanity... leave the canon to the devs, if they like a fan idea, they'll throw it in themselves ). But that's not the majority of what the linked article is saying. The linked article claims to be saying what I've quoted from you, but it's just being used as a thin rationale for him to then put forth his personal opinions as to just how cerebral a game has to be for it to be "fun", which i disagree with heartily enough to make a long post about.

-- The connection between cerebral-fun fits strategy games best I would say. In strategy board games a good example would be executing a Queens gambit and winning the chess match - incredibly exhilarating fun. In an RTS if you could engage in asymmetric tactics wherein your force strength was inferior to your enemy's but you still had a chance to win - that would be loads of fun for me.

-- I shall return to your last post l8r.

- Regards, Moro

themousemaster wrote:
Let me clarify my most confusing paragraph:

- QUOTE: "Don't misunderstand my reaming in the above comments; games with player-driven storylines are a good idea. In fact, FPS-RPG Morrowind is one of my favorite games of all time (along with the TBS-RTS Lords of Magic title you guys have been seeing me repeatedly mention in this thread, and the classic-RPG Fallout1 & 2... 3, not so much). But I know (some of) what it took to make that(those) game(s). That type of development process will not become an industry norm do to simple economics: using that design, games will start becoming very few, and very far between. Other people will then just make similar-but-lower-tier stuff to sell in the interim, and it WILL sell, due to lack of alternatives. And it will turn a higher profit-per-unit due to it's development. That's how a capitalist society operates, after all..." -

Ok, what this was supposed to mean:

A) FPS-RPG Morrowind showed that some dev companies can indeed spend the time and capital to make a game with HUGE content, in which you can solve many things different ways, and arrive at different storyline results
.
B) TBS-RTS Lords of Magic is one of my favorite games of all time, along with Morrowind. But it isn't actually part of my rationale for the paragraph.

C) Fallout 3 is also a great game. However, it's "player can change the outcome" factor is no where near 1's or 2's... which were other examples of games where the devs took the time to write multiple storyline branches all the way through.

D) Fallout 3 is a prime example of what happens to games these days. While it's still more open-ended than many games from 2008, its still far less open-ended than F1 and F2 were, and are likely to ever see again, due to the shift in market forces. As proven by F3's notable success. Because that's how capitalism works.

-- I love Morrowind for the same reasons.

-- I like Fallout 3 too but agree it is not as expansive. But the Mod Tools for F3 are awesome and the community is already generating top tier new content.

-- Check these F3 sites:

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/

http://www.nma-fallout.com/

-- The reason I believe F3 is not as expansive as say Morrowind is that Bethesda is capitalizing on what Valve discovered not long after the release of the first Half Life - there's a lot of talented fans out there that can do pro quality work and if they like your game enough and if you give them good MOD tools they will keep the game's popularity going while you work on your expansion packs for sale within the first year of initial release. Sweet for all concerned it would seem.

Regards, Moro ...

To save post length, I'll avoid quotes


I agree with the modding part. That said, one other thing Morrowind had was a list of "endorsed mods", that weren't part of Vanilla Morrowind, but that they endorsed heartily, so they had to do no work, and the game got better.

The problem between Morrowind and F3 in this area is the Voice Acting.

Unfortunately, I doubt that a random modder can secure Ron Perlman (or any of the other cast) to do any more voice-acting for their mods. So any of the established characters can not have any more dialogs added to them, lest they suddenly do it in sign language.

Sure, you can make "new" characters, butt aht gets back into the problem I have with "Fanon". People are less likely to make good, well-blaanced storyline and gameplay as they are to slide in some mod package that lets them spout personal beliefs, or sometimes themselves as an "Amazing Avatar", AKA Mary Sue/Marty Stu.

Which wouldn't be so bad, if they were to "endorse" the best of the mods. But they can't, due to the voice talent not agreeing to it (even if said talent isn't part of the mod). Contracts and all, you know; if they expand the game, they'd have to pay out more $$$ (unless the voice talent had horrible contracts, but I'll assume that isn't the case. Even if it is, it won't be for long in the gaming community).







Also, you indicate in your post that RTS players like the cerebral experience of the game, so saying that a game that requires a cerebral experience to be fun is a fine argument. I'll agree to that part; but again, the link you posted doesn't really make that distinction, instead making a blanket statement on the way things "should be" in games. If that article had narrowed it's focus down to the Strategy genre specifically, I probably would have had far less odds with it.

I played a lot of WoW, and now quite a bit of WAR. There are indeed a LOT of people who are simply uninterested in having to use their brains while playing a game, even in genres where intelligence is a good idea.

.
-- Good idea to contract these pups some.

-- As much as I have enjoyed RPGs I've never had a desire to work on one. Your point on voice acting is well taken as a great
challenge for the MOD community. Bad voice-acting has ruined many an otherwise decent game even when the developer had a budget
for pro talent.

-- I have dealt with voice acting (still do) in my RTS cut-scene work and CGI movie shorts. What I cannot do my self (like female voices) I
enlist buds in the local theater community. I've done this when I lived in N. California and now in Colorado. While the voice acting won't win any
awards, it's at least decent..

-- Like Ron Perlman since he was in "Beauty and Beast"... glad he's had much success with "Hellboy 1 & 2"....and his talent no doubt enhances
the play experience in a singular way.


------------------------->On the Cerebral & the Visceral in RTS Design<-----------------------

-- The folks that prefer the visceral over the cerebral by a wide margin usually are not fans of RTS. I will also say that fans of RTS who do
like cerebral.engagement very much want visceral experience in tactical roll-outs and epic clashes - the heat of battle experience. The ideal combination of cerebral and visceral experience is what I have come to understand as an instance of "FLOW"..... and just HOW to design game
play mechanics that promote "FLOW" is one of the great challenges as I see it in RTS design which I'm also all into trying to make happen.

-- "Flow" or in the "Zone" consciousness...enhances complex performance in a way that is the embodiment of excellence. Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's pioneering scientific work on the "Flow" state (first published in 1975's "Beyond Boredom and Anxiety" and 160+ books and scientific papers since) is currently informing game design & you can check out this fine site on the topic which has a bunch of reference articles and research papers /.pdfs: Flow In Games One thing I'm still processing is the value of AI for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in GPMs.................As for the Prof and his "FLOW" work there are close to 200,000 links on the web to choose from if your interested...

-- Alas, in reviewing what I have spoken to, I feel I have talked myself out on this topic and thus it is time to bow out & continue focus instead on the challenges of making a clearer vision a playful happening.

- Adios,, Moro.
.

.

Hmmm. I may try to write a summary post that re-states (attempting to integrate seamlessly) the use of tools from..........

..........> DELETED 11 SENTENCES <.........

......Anyway,, we'll see how it goes over the next few days.

Down the road at the project site (code name S.O.W.) I'll also share in-game screen caps, GPM GUIs, 3D game models, original game music, and script / code..

----> EDIT: What I said I was going to do in my next post... (what I deleted above.. maybe you'll recall), I'm still doing but on the suggestion of a trusted bud in the biz, I am turning it into an article for a Game Developer E-Zine. which sounds way more appropriate anyway. I will of course still follow through on the last statement of sharing stuff at the project site in the foreseeable future.

L8r, whipper

.

.

-- Thought I was done. Yet another instance of that wise Bond movie title - "Never Say Never"...

-- Yes and no, from my perspective. Unit Design is rare in the genre but Pumpkin's implementation in WZ is not optimal and is subverted by sweeping imbalances - specifically, the arms race imperative which will never be solved by stat tweaking or moving stuff around the tech tree which has been the strats to date - those merely change the flavor of the arms race / imbalance and will thus always yield failure.

-- When I wrote that I was commenting on Warzone's Unit Design Feature uniqueness. In quoting myself I have bolded a part of the statement that has stuck in my head. I was gonna create a dedicated thread but decided this thread was more appropriate going forward with examining that proposition as an RTS that does NOT achieve a satisfactory balance is doomed for the scrap heap no matter how stellar everything else..

-- .Most game developers keep their balancing methodology top secret. Blizzard never stops working on balancing their games, including their perennial best sellers from Star Craft to WOW.

-- So before us are 3 questions:

-- (1.) Is this a valid assessment ?:

.....the arms race imperative which will never be solved by stat tweaking or moving stuff around the tech tree which has been the strats to date - those merely change the flavor of the arms race / imbalance and will thus always yield failure.

:

-- (2.) If YES, what is the alternative ?

-- (3.) If NO, why is the current strategy clearly on the road to success ?

-- If you can think of more to ask, don't hesitate to state...

-- I will stop here, for now, but will close this post with 2 references - one on the "arms race imperative" from the vantage of RL history and one on high-tech middle-ware game balancing:

-- Was the Nuclear Arms Race Deterministic?

-- The +7 Balance Engine™ Dynamic Game Balancing

.

.
------->DOUBLE POSTED... how I don't know... sorry... not granted the prerogative to delete my own mistaken posts here except in this half-arse way.

.

-- Some more questions came to the fore with a Socratic flavor:

-- (4.) What exactly do we mean by game balance ?

-- (5.) Why is it sought after like the Crusaders questing for the Holy Grail ?

-- (6.) Why has RPS (rock, paper, scissors) been the predominant fallback option for most RTS throughout the genres history?

-- (7.) Can an RTS exist successfully without balance being forefront and center and just how would that work ?

.

Moro_Nick wrote:.

-- (1.) Is this a valid assessment ?:

.....the arms race imperative which will never be solved by stat tweaking or moving stuff around the tech tree which has been the strats to date - those merely change the flavor of the arms race / imbalance and will thus always yield failure.

-- (2.) If YES, what is the alternative ?

-- (3.) If NO, why is the current strategy clearly on the road to success ?

Moro_Nick wrote:.

-- (4.) What exactly do we mean by game balance ?

-- (5.) Why is it sought after like the Crusaders questing for the Holy Grail ?

-- (6.) Why has RPS (rock, paper, scissors) been the predominant fallback option for most RTS throughout the genres history?

-- (7.) Can an RTS exist successfully without balance being forefront and center and just how would that work ?

Oh, why not.

1) I think what that statement means and what it implies are divergent. At face value, it's true, as every RTS is an Arms Race, as I'm Racing to get my Arms in your Base and Flatten It, while Capitalizing random Words for Effect.

However, it makes it sound like the objective is to tech to a certain thing, and then use that thing to stomp the opponent, and that certain thing is at time X in the "teching" race, and whoever gets there first wins.

Whereas "teching" (and to a lesser degree, "turtling") do follow a strat of getting some late-game technology, the strat of "rushing" plays the opposite game, getting some earlygame tech, and then mass-producing it to stomp your opponent before he gets off the ground. At which point, one person is in an arms race, and the other is racing his arms to your base.

I know that sounded like a pun, but it's serious .


2) N/A

3) Warzone seems like it is going for a rock-paper-scissors approach to this. Of the 4 major strats (rusher, expander, turtler, techer), a rusher beats an expander, an expander beats a techer, a techer beats a turtler, and a turtler beats a rusher, with the matchups of turtler vs expander and rusher vs techer being interesting sites to behold. I think that's a "recipe for success", but that's just my opinion.



4) ask 100 people, get 100 answers. My answer is that of the above #3 response; as long as every strat has a counter, and every counter has a strat it can derail, it is balanced.

5) my guess is because the most openly vocal, and certainly the loudest, of the people talking about a game are the ones playing it competitively. Balance is necessary for competition to actually be... well, competitive. And if only 1 strat is a viable method of winning (say, 1.0.X's Rockets-or-Bust mentality), then it's not an RTS game, its Action Tic-Tac-Toe, with your host for today, DJ Clicks-Per-Minute.

6) see above. If any strategy doesn't have a counter (other than itself), or some counter-strategy doesn't have at least 1 working strategy it counters, then it is worthless. The easiest way to do that is by hard-defining them as such. Please note the difference between the RPS of the 4 above "strategies" I mentioned, and the RPS of certain weapons vs certain bodies present in WZ, such as MGs vs Cyborgs. I'm referring to the former, as the latter flows into the former's "higher strategy" decisions.

7) A Strategy game of any type (RTT, RTS, TBS, RTGS) has to have some "type" of balance, otherwise you end up in the situation I desrcibe in 5), whereas only 1 method to victory is viable. What constitutes each form of "balance" can vary, however.


4a + 7a) I would like to enunciate that WZ has, technically, the best "overall balance" of any RTS out there, simply because all players have access to all of the technologies, and it's their call how they want to develop them. This does NOT mean that each "player mentality" strategy is balanced to each other, though.



Moro, have you ever played Lords of Magic? Its a hybrid TBS-RTS game (TBS overworld control, RTS battles), which leads to a multi-front definition of "balance". One side might be worse off in battles, but they may be able to field 2x as many armies as the other guy for the same resources. Would that be "balanced"? What if some guy played the late-game faction? Would he be "balanced" earlygame because he *can* get better late, if he survives that far?


The reason I'm nitpicking this here is because this whole thread has gone well off of RTS in general, and is speaking on game theory as a whole. If the field of this thread is narrowed down to "WZ2100 style only", then some of these questions are unnecessary.



And for the record, as I stated somewhere else in this thread (maybe around page 2342? ), I find LoM pretty well balanced. Earth and Chaos could use a buff here, Life and Death a nerf there, but all and all a well-rounded experience.

.

- I'm still trying to get my hands on LoM.

- I'm gonna process your thinking over night. Most posts I can process in seconds - yours are much more challenging.

- To be clear & honest, themousemaster, I'm getting into this RTS balancing because outta everything else I'm coming at from a blank slate creation
this task feels the most daunting and un-nerving to me. I'm assured by my partner, Grim, that he has it covered with his unique variant of RPS. Both
of us have been big fans of the Virtua Fighter series since it's first incarnation and consider its balance implementation of RPS masterful.
While I only ever played casually, Grim had a world ranking as a VF player and was at one time the best player on the planet. He has also
spent the better part of a decade designing his unique variant of RPS (specifically for RTS) and it's details in our design doc is literally book length.
Still... I want a better handle than I have now which is why I'm trying to think out loud here to a deeper and wider perspective..

- I was set in motion down this road by a comment made by Chris Taylor (creator of Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander) and I will include that in my next post.

- Regards, Moro.
.
EDIT: Got "Lords of Magic" (& with a manual too). It is indeed all you make of it. Great game.

- (LoM is in no way shape or form designed with an optimal-practical, MP in mind... However, that does not detract from its outstanding accomplishments. What would have served it better for an MP option is what Battlefront has offered in it's Combat Mission series of hybrid strategy games for the last 10 years - e-mail multi-play.... In this case Hybrid means TBS and RTS in one game)

- That said let me be clear about the main thrust of my focus here - fresh, endless,RTS MP replay value that is the result of a broad array of winning opportunities than a very narrow set predicated on predictable lines of tech research and a particular unit assemblage for mass, swarming deployments....
....
- If it seems otherwise,,I am at fault for not being completely unambiguous - i am predominantly interested in applied RTS design theory. Not general game theory, other genre theory or theory without immediate application - though being versed in those areas is of interest and value to me....esp. as the RTS we're working on has distinct elements of FPS, RPG and Adventure.


.

....

.
-- I wanted to first share the Chris Taylor comments that prompted me to dig deeper and question conventional wisdom..

TG: Does Supreme Commander follow the traditional "rock, paper, scissors" school of strategy combat?

Chris Taylor: We definitely don't follow that model, because it doesn't fit well with a full-on combat simulation. Instead, the game units are balanced by considering firepower, turret traversal speeds, unit speed - including acceleration, max speed, and turning rates - and reload times, to name a few. The rock-paper-scissors system is a holdover from pen-and-paper war gaming, and although it was a great system to adopt in early computer games, we now have enough processing power to do it in a way that is much more similar to real life.

...... Source Publication Page

Forget Rock-Paper-Scissors:

GS: The early screenshots show some pretty crazy battles, with huge, robotic spider-like units tearing up lots of smaller units. The difference in scale between large and small units is impressive, but how's combat going to work in practice? For example, we've heard you don't like rock-papers-scissors-style balancing.

CT: Heh, indeed I'm not a fan of rock-paper-scissors, because that was invented for paper games before computers could accurately simulate the battles. Now that we have these superpowerful PCs, we can make the leap, and do it in a really cool, fun way. Players don't have to understand how it all works to use the units effectively, because the system is natural and works much more intuitively than a board game abstraction. When sending 50 tanks to take on a giant experimental spider bot, the player will quickly figure out what works and what doesn't--for instance, don't send them all right up the center if breaking them up and attacking from all sides would be much more effective.

GS: The naval combat in the game is supposed to be a lot more realistic than the naval combat in other real-time strategy games, even though you're still dealing with sci-fi units. How is the system going to work?

CT: If you look at the last hundred years and the evolution of naval combat, you'll find that the battleship is no longer effective; it's been displaced by the aircraft carrier and other specialty ships. We like the romance and majesty of those big powerful ships, and have kept them in the design of Supreme Commander. This does tend to give the game a lot more connection with World War II, at least in the naval department, but not in the overall game. Ships work just the way you'd expect them to in an RTS game, but the biggest difference is the size: They are much more realistic, and can project power much further than players have experienced before. It's a serious threat to have a battleship parked in the waters near your base, with a nine-gun array that can decimate your position in minutes.

.............. Publication Source Page

-- Next post I'll start to engage the 7 questions orbiting RTS game balance and themousemaster's shared insights.

.

-------------------> Gonna try and speak to themousemaster's points without quoting. <---------------------


-- "Death and taxes, the only sure things."

-- Games, game worlds, gotta turn that maxim on its head.

-- And it begins with -

-- Fair Play... a Level Playing Field......... not always so in RL but in our RTS game rules and play options we absolutely must feel this exists.

-- If all start the game with these conditions then it should come down to differences in decision making amidst a vast array of choices that are potential winning strats.

-- Choices.... a key concept.

-- Fast rush or slower turtle ? In WZ there is no real choice if you want to win in MP. The game clearly favors rush and that is sad since half RTS players like to turtle. And if enjoying base-building is frowned on... well just remove it from the game, simple. But as long as base-building is a fun feature in an RTS, this disparity has to be addressed. Till it is, WZ balance will be horrible - not exemplary.

-- My issues with balancing WZ is not so much the weapons but the balance between tank rushers and turtlers. The playing field should be even between these two types of players and it is not. Balancing the weapons is not going to solve this issue. Balancing between weapons and defenses will. Most fail at re-balancing, because they are fixing the wrong things. If say weapon A is perfectly balanced with everything in the game but defense B you don't change weapon A to balance defense B.

-- The design your own unit thing in WZ is useless since only 2-3 combinations are worth a damn. Most combinations look like hell and are useless. The tech tree is also useless since only certain weapons can/will be used to win a game. What good is 1000 weapons if only 3 can assure a win or if a game only lasts long enough to open 7 of them. 90% of the game content in WZ is useless in MP.

- Game balance utilizing RPS technique is certainly a way to get at this, a good beginning to a solution that has more components..

- What is an RPS example in an RTS ? Let me quote Grim Moroe:

....If the developer drives the player to a single unit combination then that is what I would call a bad game design, not necessarily a game imbalance.

....Anyways a good game developer would never have a propulsion that has no penalties but make all the other propulsions have penalties.

How do you balance each propulsion....well I have an example:

rock: tracks

1) can not travel across water
2) can travel up a steep incline in terrain
3) can travel across sharp hazardous terrain
4) can operate normally on very windy days

paper: hover

1) can travel across water
2) can not travel up a steep incline in terrain
3) can travel across sharp hazardous terrain
4) can not operate normally on very windy days

scissors: wheeled

1) can not travel across water
2) can travel a steep incline in terrain
3) can not travel across sharp hazardous terrain
4) can operate normally on very windy days

The list could go on forever....

I think that any game can be balanced pretty easy if it is broken down to its base and you start there. For instance if you work on WZ's entire tech tree at one time your screwed. If you break it down to its lowest form and balance that first then build off the balanced stuff it would not be extremely hard just very time consuming.

I don't think RPS is the be all end all solution and I don't think anyone else does either but it is the perfect solution for a great start. Most people I have talked to say RPS is to simple to be effective, and I could not agree in any way shape or form. When dealing with game balance, simple is not only a good way to deal with the problem, but the only way to deal with the problem.

-- Shall return with more detailed propositions directed at making possible winning asymmetric conflicts within
a balanced RTS - sounds like a paradox, but it isn't.

.Regards, Moro

-- Shall return with more detailed propositions directed at making possible winning asymmetric conflicts within
a balanced RTS - sounds like a paradox, but it isn't.

-- Sorry... haven't been able to focus on this like I want to because I'm dealing with another preoccupation - melding 2 distinct
art styles in a CGI cut scene I'm working on.

-- Making harmonious different art styles is a challenge that will be faced, sooner or later, in the new WZ GFX work.

-- I will get back into making asymmetric engagement opportunities a part of RTS GPMs because of 2 main reasons:
it's deep fun and, to my knowledge, it's yet to be achieved as a core RTS game play mechanic (& for me that's like throwing some
Jalapeno peppers into the salsa mix - fir it up baby....)

-- In the meanwhile.... differing artistic styles cohabiting within an RTS harmoniously - and not a glaring distraction to the gamer...

-- Here, let me give an illustration... after all, a pic speaks a thousand words...

-- The first pic is a 3D model of a young white oak tree by my team mate that is an in-game asset and will of course come out as
a particular style as I shoot Machinma (game engine rendered movies..)

-- The second pic is a still shot from my CGI cut scene work (NOT rendered by the game engine), .. obviously a very different style...

-- So my preoccupation of late has been to bring these 2 different art styles together in a single cut scene where the viewer says -
"Cool !"... instead of, "WTF is that !!!"...

-- This is definitely something that comes up when more than one person is doing art for an RTS.