Asymmetrical balance is easier with an odd number of teams, but its not impossible with just two. I still say the best way is to have hard counters.
ur dumb lololol No but really, rock paper scissors is a boring game, IMO empires would be just as boring
Hard counters wouldn't make Empires boring, but it would make it more understandable and make all research paths viable. Edit: Also SC has some pretty strong counters and its still a fun and interesting game. In fact, the 'rock, paper, scissors' game play you pan as boring is the cornerstone of many fun RTS games. It seems silly not to use some that is standard and been shown to be widely successful in Empires.
Yes, but you don't play as a zergling* in starcraft, do you? The problem is, while hardcounters may be a wonderful (and arguably, easy) solution from an RTS perspective, there are only two people in the RTS perspective at any given time in a game of empires, and meanwhile you've got the other 31 people getting wtfpwned because the guy in the enemy monster truck made a decision somewhere along the line that resulted in the efforts of your team being effectively negated. This would not only make empires boring, it would also make it fucking frustrating and turn a lot of people off the game. *I've never played starcraft, I merely know zerglings exist and they are some kind of cannon fodder unit
I used the RTS example because its most common in RTS's and Empires is part RTS (so its relevant). However, its also used in FPS games. TF2 is the first one that comes to mind (e.g. pyro beats spy beats engineer/turret). Also, the problem your referring too already exists in Empires and can be mitigated with other changes (recycling vehicle carcasses, refunding research cost/time to apply to new research, an upkeep system, and many more than have been suggested over the years). I'm not saying that a hard counter system would be perfect, but I don't see any asymmetrical balance system, which most people seem to prefer, working without it.
TF2 has no hardcounters most classes in TF2 are the same just for people with different taste of gameplay.
how the fuck does "recycling vehicle carcasses" or any of your ideas help imbalance or make sense at all for a game with the pacing like empires? all of these ideas when implemented are shitty ideas that lead to terrible metagame choices in practice. (WARCRAFT 3 UPKEEP LOL) also, starcraft hard counters are rare, we've been over this, i don't feel like making another big long winded post about it but you haven't addressed the arguments there so I wouldn't expect your statement to hold up here. the current "5 branches, no trunk" tree system is the problem, you never see anything remotely like it in RTS games, and it should be eliminated.
Isn't rock paper scissors basically based on luck? I agree with pickled to not make the game that way.
No, but it would require Empires to implement some better methods of getting intel (like make sabotage of the radar show the enemies current research or allow the grens 'armor detection' also show the enemy tanks weapons/engines). Starcraft hard counters aren't 'rare', but essential to its gameplay. Now they also have a wide variety of much weaker counters that make it fun and interesting, but it took Blizzard years of testing and millions of dollars to get that right. We need something that is intuitive, easy to balance, and robust to new features. Also, the ideas I've suggested are based on the idea that under a hard counter system for Empires, you balance research based on 'time a team has the advantage'. For example, lets say the enemy has researched DU, but you researched absorbant armor. The enemy has a temporary advantage for a given period of time until you get a better armor or a better chassis that can hold more plates. If we made DU the hard counter to absorbant, we would balance based on how long Team A (the enemy) should have an advantage over Team B (you). We can do this in practice by what I suggested. However, other ideas might be: Allow teams to spend tickets to research faster Have team areas of focus that improve various aspects of gameplay (such as a 'research' focus that increases research speed) Allowing you to 'recycle' research (like you would recycle a building) and apply the cost and research time to a new research tree I think this is also more suited to what people most like about Empires, i.e. the back and forth between both sides where even if your losing there is still a chance to make a comeback. IMO at any given team, one side should have the clear advantage (and be winning) while still leaving several good ways for the losing side to make a comeback (upkeep and dead vehicle recycle are more relevant here than when discussing hard counters, but the two are related in my view).
This is an assertion. Evidence comes next. Here, I'll give you some blank lines to write on: __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ EVERYTHING is a soft counter in starcraft. Dragoons beat vultures? Not with enough spider mines. M&M beats hydra/ling? Not with good surround. massed T3 air beats everything? Not with good spellcaster control. The soft counters are what makes it fun, not some rock paper scissors system. Nobody would play or watch starcraft if everyone knew who would win as soon as each player's tech of choice was evident. ROFL @ your typo. The problem with this, as I've said, is that it leads to retarded metagame decisions. Spending tickets to research faster? WTF? Recycling research? How is that even possible? Do you "unlearn" the stuff you've already researched? Upkeep? So you're saying you'll give a resource advantage to a commander who consciously keeps his tanks under a certain threshold? All of it is nonsense. You're trying to find bandaid solutions for a foundational problem.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/StarCraft/Counters I get the impression that we have slightly different definitions of 'hard' and 'soft' counters. For example, the corsair is a hard counter to other air units IMO, but it also has softer counters to ground units. The general idea is that every unit has a unit its really good against and one thats really good against it. I don't think hard and soft counters are mutually exclusive, but that we should focus on developing a solid hard counter system first and foremost and then make soft counters later. You got me How do buildings just appear out of thin air? Realism has never been a big concern in Empires. Also, these suggestions are just examples to illustrate my point, not a guiding document to Empires gameplay. I think the foundational problems are that Empires has a too high learning curve, early game imbalances decide matches long before they actually end, and 'balanced' matches are more likely to be boring stalemates than actually fun. I'm primarily making suggestions that would fix these problems in a more step-by-step rather than revolutionary manner, since the community doesn't seem to like big changes at once.
Tf2 has no hard counters at all. Fpses based off of hard counters become unplayable because it would be more of a game of "find the person that is weak against you and run away from the person that is stronger than you lol". Even retarded games like pokemon, the ultimate rock, paper, scissors game doesn't have hard counters. Anyways, in tf2, for example, no one "hard counters" the scout. It can be said that the pyro does, but since 2 shots kills a pyro faster than a pyro can flame a scout to death, the pyro doesn't actually counter the scout, only noob scouts, which makes it a soft counter. Same thing goes with engineers and scouts, a good scout can take out the engineer while circle strafeing the turret, and then the turret becomes dead meat shortly afterwards. There is no such thing as hard counters in any decent fps game.
First of all, that website gives absolutely terrible advice. zealot counter to dragoon? LOL. a single dragoon can kill infinite zealots if controlled properly. Zealots become obsolete very quickly in PvP matchups, their only role being mainly as a damage sponge for large dragoon v. dragoon fights. This website is much better: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Hard_Counters_and_Soft_Counters This couldn't be farther from the truth. There's a "counter triangle" in relation to air units for starcraft that resembles "rock paper scissors" and it goes as thus: cap ship/scourge > corsair/valk > muta/wraith/scout > cap ships/scourge... But if you stopped there with your analysis, you would be deceiving yourself. Take the corsair, for instance. According to the counter triangle, corsairs beat mutalisks. How about if the zerg player has even numbers but manages to split his mutas up? There's no way for a protoss player to micro this battle, he can't control where his corsairs splash, but the zerg player has a lot of power to maximize his units' potential if he gets a good surround on the corsairs. Even in a situation where the corsair is supposed to be a hard counter, he's not. Look the other direction at the scourge and corsair. In small numbers, scourges CLEARLY dominate corsairs. The only thing a sair can do is run to a friendly cannon to hope that the scourge gets killed before he hits the sair. As soon as corsairs reach the magic number of 5, though, they can 2-hit scourges and can easily deal with large numbers of them. UNLESS, once again, the zerg player distracts or catches the corsairs while they are moving and does a split. Starcraft doesn't have hard counters. That's really all there is to it. It's not about realism and it never was. It's about retarded metagame decisions. When you add all these little caveats and exemptions and rules and regulations, people start to manipulate them. Complex gameplay develops from a simple template... if the template is too complicated the gameplay becomes absolutely ridiculous. I don't agree with your foundational problems in the first place, but even so, drastic change isn't that big of a deal if cosmetically, the game appears very similar to the old version to the average player. As long as tanks are still tanks and do tank-like things with tank-like weapons, etc. the average player isn't going to have any problems with big changes.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Hard_Counters_and_Soft_Counters underscores why I don't like the soft counter system: it greatly increases the complexity and imbalance due to skill differences. The system of 'if BE goes X, then NF should go Y' is much clearer and intuitive than 'if BE goes X, then NF should go Y, unless of Z'. Soft counters have and can be fun, but I don't seeing us having the time or resources for being able to make such a system. The more likely outcome IMO is a mix of soft to useless counters that leaves large sections of the research either a waste of time or counterproductive, i.e. the current system. That being said, if you can development a soft counter system that does satisfy these objectives and is well liked by the community, then I will support it. I am not entirely opposed to soft counters (as you've pointed out there are many in SC, which I find to be a fun and balanced RTS), but I just don't see it as being feasible or desirable in Empires.
tl;dr its simple really if you do not have all of the following: -a lot of devs and testers -dedicaded devs and testers - at least a semi-decent budget do not even attemp to make anything but a symetrical balance empires has none ..
Personally I've never played Starcraft but from what I hear it is a very balanced game and that's what kept it alive for so long. Aside that, let's get back on topic shall we? I do believe that it is great to have asymmetric balance but the question is how do you accomplish such a thing? Many will say there is to many points to consider in balance so they will not even begin. We can agree on one thing, however, that Empires needs to have balance which leads us to the question, Is Empires balanced as of now? Personally I don't think that question is even answerable considering the fact that there is a rather large amount of events that can take place in a common game of Empires that would lead to the downfall of a team. Perhaps the reason that RTS games achieve such great balance is that units controlled must do what you say and in this hybrid called Empires that's not true. We are ordering human players that may not operate to the best of their abilities and may just plain not follow orders and... wall fort.
StarCraft is almost entirely soft counter. Why? Because my macro will beat your micro biatches! But seriously, vehement hate for pure hard counters. They not make balance, they make guessing game. Luckily, most FPS games have an intrinsic amount of skill, making hard counters hard. TF2 is the closest to a popular game w/ hard counters, and as pointed out they aren't pure hard counters, more like a +25% bonus. So, how do we get good soft counters into an asymmetrical game of Empires? Devs need more time, more testing, and a better idea of good game balance. Not happening.
No, not really, as asymmetric balance is almost certainly synonymous with very poor balance, also why bother with asymmetry when you can simply give all sides the same things, nothing says you need to cut down on the number of things you make, but I do wonder why anybody would make several interesting styles but prevent people from choosing freely between them at any time if it wasn't for balance reasons. It's like making 30 guns but only giving a player access to 3 in any given situation, and as anybody who has played a game that does that knows, you find yourself wishing you could use the other ones because they probably include your favourites and you may want the variety of free choice. I concur, mostly if you come across the wrong class, demos always beat engies, snipers always beat heavies, heavies always beat scouts unless the scout is very good and in the exact right kind of environment, pyros almost always beat spies or at least they can by just flaming everything in sight. The only ones that are not part of this class counter system are the soldier, medic, and pyro, pyros can sometimes beat snipers due to the flaregun or staying out of the way with their speed and against most other classes they rely on ambush which works on most classes in most enclosed spaces, more of an environment hard counter than a class hard counter. Medics enhance other classes so they are less of a counter and more of a force multiplier. Soldiers work kinda anywhere, basically a general use unit with no strengths or weaknesses. Engies are sort of halfway between pyros and medics as their sentries work best as ambush units and also when the enemy has to focus on other soldiers, so an unexpected location as with a pyro combined with teammates to distract as with a medic are best. They are however hard countered by demomen as they can outdo any sentry tanking and their bouncing grenades can avoid sentry counterfire. Snipers work in long range areas but hard counter heavies, and also other snipers oddly, snipers in most games tend to be their own hard counter, hence the proliferation of 'sniper wars', they are not an area based hard counter though because most faster classes can make it through a sniper infested area. Spies are weird, almost an engy hard counter but an aware engineer can usually beat them, spies vs engies are more like an instagib match, if either one puts a foot wrong they lose, otherwise they work on everything about the same really except pyros, which are their hard counter.
