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ToRFracTaL · Sat, 8th-Dec-2012, 10:38 PM

Hmmmm... Great ideas you have there

Mixing some mechanics of DoTA and throwing in some SC2 mechanics.

*Tip : Think of a "general" name, which would help you continue generating ideas. Like for lets say Blizzard chose the name "Starcraft", which has the theme of sci-fi etc.

My tip may be useful or not, you decide.

I hope I get to see this RTS of yours out soon! GL !

ROOT`iaguz · Sun, 9th-Dec-2012, 1:22 AM

Another game that is similar to many small battles but no "oops I win" is Company of Heroes (also the Dawn of War games too I guess).

Most fights in CoH ended with one player retreating his units so it was very easy to retain units assuming you were good. Losing a fight only resulted in territory loss so whilst you would definitely fall behind for losing a fight it was generally not crippling unless one player was significantly better then the other.

The other thing was that the bases had these turrets which made them incredibly hard to attack, focusing players to concentrate on winning the map and not just slipping in to kill weakened squads and end the game early.

That's basically how you can ensure an RTS or an RTS-esque (basically dota and probably other mobas) doesn't become about silly all ins, there has to be an artificial limit to how successful a move can possibly be. In DotA, if I kill enemy heroes, it's ok I probably can't push down their tower. The tower lets a team that is behind in lane presence to still remain competitive (generally). If Starcraft was a moba it wouldn't have any lane turrets, you'd just have to win your lane or ******* die automatically.

The other way is to implement an anti-snowballing mechanism. Not only do you strike the right balance between how much advantage a move can net you and how much it disadvantages the opponent, but you can also implement anti snowballing measures. In Company of Heroes this was done through the Manpower resource. Manpower is a lot like Minerals in Starcraft, pretty much every unit costs it and you can never have enough of it. However, manpower was not harvested like Starcraft, both sides started with a flat rate of 270mp/min and each captured point would only give you 3mp/min. Units would also require an upkeep cost that would decrease the rate of MP gain, so a player who was ahead would theoretically have more units and therefore less of a manpower advantage (this isn't strictly true since 3 factions had reasonable upkeep, only USA got ranched by upkeep demands, pretty badly too, but it's a good idea in theory!). This means that whilst you could fall behind in manpower by losing soldiers, it was very difficult to cement a manpower lead. It was very easy for the behind player to start getting into reasonable fights and bridge the gap.

In DotA anti snowballing is achieved through higher level players being worth more XP and gold and their subsequent rewards being worth less. Admittedly this is perhaps not a very effective measure for Dota but games are games. The better player will usually win and it can oftentimes appear like a snowball effect because they will consistently outplay their opponent and are being rewarded for it.

ROOT`iaguz · Sun, 9th-Dec-2012, 1:32 AM

Also, there's nothing inherently wrong with movement or ability inhibiting skills. People whine about Fungal or Forcefield or whatever but it's fine. You can have these in your game. No-one complained about ensnare or Stasis or lockdown or dark swarm or ******* whatever and if they did they're stupid. What's important is that they don't become the strongest thing about a matchup and that they become the reason player X wins or loses. That's what the issue with fungal and FF is in SC2. A Protoss executing a 2 or 3 base sentry immortal timing is relying entirely on proper forcefield placement to win. That's it. his build is figured out and his units mostly do their own thing, just smash that F key. This leads to shitty PvZ gameplay.

There was roughly 10,000 reasons you might win or loss a PvT in Broodwar but you can't say "bad stasis micro" was the one reason, but you can in SC2 PvZ because of how sentry timing focused it's become. Ditto with Vortex, it's the only reason why Protoss's were sometimes winning lategame. The only ******* thing they could do. If that's where you're at it means you've made a bad game.

Concussive shells are a moderately successful micro inhibiting ability. Only ******* morons complain about conc shells because no-one loses to the ******* things anymore. It's just a small nifty part of being Terran, your marauders can snag things, have a care when moving around them. Most abilities in Starcraft are about zoning and positioning anyway, trying to get a terran ghost/bio army into a Protoss base is a delicate tug of war between snipes and storm placements and shells are just part of that. A deployed tank has a 13 range radius that says "stay the **** out". Shells are like that except less about instant death and only range 6. I said only moderate because they are a passive ability and passive abilities can be kinda boring sometimes but oh well thems the breaks.

The most exciting kind of units in an RTS are units like the marine and zergling. Fast, plentiful, excellent damage but incredibly fragile if mishandled. Casters certainly have a place but it's to synergise with or support CORE UNITS, not replace them because the core units are so shit.

ROOT`iaguz · Sun, 9th-Dec-2012, 1:53 AM

It's also worth keeping in mind that if you want an RTS that focuses on a lot of action occuring at different points then there has to be a reasonable limit on how much attention and actions has to be given to each section. Imagine if Dota was a 1v1 game where you had to handle all 3 lanes by yourself with only pure micro skills. Clearly this is overwhelming (or you picked meepo), each dota hero requires a players full attention to be played to it's fullest. Now obviously an RTS won't be full of EXP gaining heroes with 4 abilities + items but you get what I mean. Starcraft has simple functioning units so it can open this sort of thing up. There's not a lot of skill required in getting 8 marines and a medivac to do damage. There's tremendous skill in managing a push, macroing and sending out these dropships because I know it will work because each dropship will take care of business without me having to pay much attention to them.

This is actually kind of the deal in Broodwar too. In broodwar you don't look at fights for very long because you're so busy looking at your base and physically clicking all those goddamn gateways to make the next wave of units or looking at your rally point to send the next batch of Dragoons out. Obviously there was an amount of control required in handling your armies but you didn't have to pay too much attention to them on as much a level as Dota heroes demand.

IF YOU'RE ACTUALLY MAKING THIS GAME, I'd say the most important thing to focus on would initially be how the units handle and control. The best thing about Starcraft 2 is this, the units all path and behave consistently and intuitively. The engine has so few bugs or other weird business going on, apart from the occasional mega clump as they get funneled by chokes or whatnot. Nothing annoys me more in Company of Heroes then moving a squad into green cover then watching the units roll and cartwheel away from it because some fuckwit in Relic's programming thought it would make the game more immersive to have your units do silly dipshit things like that. UNITS SHOULD DO WHAT I ******* TELL THEM TO DO. The shouldn't trip over each other like Broodwar dragoons, they should move as a focused group like Starcraft 2 Stalkers.

Meatex · Sun, 9th-Dec-2012, 8:49 AM

Absolutely agree with your point on units doing what they are told though i'm not a programmer and unless I learn the SC2 editor I expect pathing in my prototype to be horrid ^^;

Quote:

Casters certainly have a place but it's to synergise with or support CORE UNITS, not replace them because the core units are so shit.

I love this point and its exactly what I have envisioned with my idea where the focus is on the core units and the game winning units while the titans disrupt enemy units, support your units or harass. Basically i'm thinking a middle ground between WC3 and SC2.
Unlike WC3 its not all about the heroes where you have very little macro mechanics and often not a huge need to take multiple bases
The titans can turn the tide of an otherwise equal battle but not like a bio ball versus storm kinda of way. As an example two mid game armies of say 60 supply or core units meet. One army has a support or disruptor while the other just has core units. Given equal micro the army with the support will win with the support titan and a few units left alive
I think this could lead to interesting situations where because raiders are strong against support titans player could choose to risk his raider in order to take out enemy support and deny the credit he would get for the kills or should he just use the raider to harass workers to gain parity in amount of kill credit

You raise a good point about DoW and CoH though I only played DoW and back then I was rush to highest level tank and just mass them but I do want to have a player that is outplaying his opponent to have a strong advantage but at the same time I want aggressive openings to be defendable without dying outright just because you chose to go for a support opening. Rather the support along with denying can be used to mitigate the benefit to the opponent and you end up relatively even due to the aggressive opening sacrificing econ.
I liked how DoW actively encouraged you to get out on the map asap because thats where the resources were

Also very very good point on micro vs macro time needed
Thank you for input, making me want to go play DoW now haha

I should note that this game, unless I win lotto or planets otherwise align, won't be made into a full fledged game as I would need to form a studio and get coders and artists involved etc But I will work on a prototype which might get people interested in the idea which may lead to opportunities but yeah ^^;;

**Dox** · Mon, 10th-Dec-2012, 7:55 AM

@Meatex: I think you're undermining a lot of player skill just because of the units/compositions that are winning games. It still takes great macro to reach and maintain that position.

@iaguz: Amazing posts!

Meatex · Mon, 10th-Dec-2012, 7:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dox

@Meatex: I think you're undermining a lot of player skill just because of the units/compositions that are winning games. It still takes great macro to reach and maintain that position.

@iaguz: Amazing posts!

Not saying it doesn't require skill and it seems like hots is going to have the skill cap increased as well
And I wasn't saying SC2 is too easy and should be more like broodwar or anything like that
What I was saying is that I want to work on an RTS with a different direction
I have aspects of SC2 I don't like which I mentioned but being too easy isn't one of them

Still hoping others will throw in ideas or what have you ^^;

Honeybadger · Mon, 10th-Dec-2012, 11:32 PM

Meatex, i'm like 90% sure Warcraft 3 is already a game.
If you transfer the new currency into something called "experience" and not need to go back to base to gain it this write up looks eerily familiar

Meatex · Tue, 11th-Dec-2012, 7:34 AM

Lol honeybadger
thats just like saying Planetside 2 is the same as CoD if you take out vehicles and make the map smaller