What Is UPKEEP And Why It's A GOOD Mechanic | WC3 | Grubby
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure to speak with Timb Campbell and Kevin Dong from Frost Giant Studio, about their upcoming RTS game StormGate! In this great conversation, we briefly discussed mechanics aimed at controling army unit size, and notably, the one Warcraft 3 uses, Upkeep!
Let's go a bit more in depth regarding this game economy mechanic, and I'll explain why I think it's a good game system!
What Is UPKEEP And Why It's A GOOD Mechanic (Live on 15-June-2022)
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00:00 Intro
01:47 What is Upkeep
06:38 Countering Racial Imbalances
10:46 2007 Meta
14:52 The "Sky Timing"
18:59 Efficient Use of Gold
22:18 Starcraft 2 Comparison
26:23 Upkeep Delay and Players' Role
#Grubby #WC3 #Warcraft3 - เกม
Biggest thing I like about Upkeep is that it keeps down the snowball effect and allows for some counter play. Also having to make conscious decision to go for a bigger army at the right time ads a good layer of strategy to each game.
Also there are other things to do with money rather than getting more units. Towers, research, items.
wc3 is a deathball worse than a snowball
when I first started playing WC3, I did not care much at all for the upkeep system. I did not like it. Also, I didn't really understand its purpose at the time. Now I agree with the idea behind upkeep. It creates more interesting mid and late game. Lots of discussion is taking place over on r/FrostGiant and r/Stormgate about potentially using upkeep or supply limits. Looking back at games lik C&C, which had neither supply limits nor upkeep, the competitive scenes for those games was much less than SC2 or WC3. There should be costs to building big armies or having big investment units - it should not be unlimited. Most C&C games would end up being whoever can mass the most tanks the quickest.
I think upkeep is integral to Warcraft 3 being as amazing as it is but I wouldn't be opposed to not having it in a new RTS as long as there are still some mechanics that reward not just massing army constantly.
Wow... I am the casualest of casuals but this explanation had me hooked. Never knew the strategizing went so deep!
One of the coolest dynamics Upkeep causes that you implied but didn't really detailed is kiting. In the most epic games - your uploads as well - the greates moments are when the underdog player with 50 food somehow manages to kite the 70 food enemy through a map (Northern Isles is a prime example) and by the time they get to the underdog's base, they need to hold out a bit, prep up and then push the other back. However, now it can happen that the other player becomes the underdog by losing units down to 50, and they need to kite back to theri base, preferably as slow as possible.
This temporal disadvantage and advantage that upkeep introduces is unique to Warcraft 3 and it enables the coolest back and forth fights ever.
So true
I enjoy the upkeep mechanic a lot because it adds strategic value, rather than amassing as many units as possible.
Exactly. Upkeep system can obviously be done badly as any mechanic in a game, but if done well, its a resource you should be using. Its not any different to using your health in cardgames as a resource
"Rather than amassing As many units as possible " Me right now looking at to StarCraft 2. 👀👀👀.
I feel like upkeep was made just so the engine wouldn't get overwhelmed by all the 3d models
he's not talking about food limit here, it would be the same, be there upkeep or not.
@@Egorator no he's talking about upkeep which doesn't matter as much in terms of 3d models for 1v1s but big team battles with anything above 70 food per race is too much for rhe engine.
@@renano95 well footmen frenzy or other crazy custom games shows that engine handle a lots of units easily. It's 100food cap it's important upkeep doesn't matter coz players could turtle and save to 100 food army.
I love the upkeep mechanic and that's the main reason why I vastly prefer WC3 over SC and AoE. Not only makes the game more interesting with a layer of complexity and emphasis on micro, but also makes it a better viewing experience IMO
As a child playing WC3, Upkeep was complicated. It was the most apparent and (at the time) bewildering mechanic for me. I tended to ignore it and simply accept my gold losses. I never thought of playing around it until I was much older and reading build orders (and watching Grubby).
I'll be honest, when I was a kid, I had no idea what upkeep was and I didn't even know why I was getting 7 gold, 4 gold etc.
I only understood the mechanic about a year ago lol.
Fair enough... lol! I guess you didn't study the wc3 patch notes during school class like I did xD
I did not know English back then haha
I think upkeep adds depth to the game, regardless of why it was first implemented, its part of what makes WC3 a great RTS
Complexities like upkeep are the kind of things that give life to games. It makes it exciting and different. There are certainly things that a new RTS can do to make the game more "modern" but some things definitely fall into the "if it ain't broke" category.
generally I like the concept of anti-snowball-mechanics. keeps games interesting.
It does seem like in Sc2 there is never a reason to pool your resources unless you are already maxed, whereas in warcraft 3 upkeep makes pooling resources a question and it opens up risk and reward if you chose to or not depending on the the information you have.
I wonder people who say that actually play SC2. You make this type of decisions all the time in SC2, you just make them quicker, so you don't "feel" like you are pooling your resources. However that strategy is used all the time, especially with GAS.
There's reasons to not spend in some instances, but usually on a much smaller and quicker scale, and the ability to actually spend your money is a big thing in SC2. You have to know/feel how much production you should build to keep a constant supply of units with the amount of income you have. It's a big differentiator between good and bad players whether they're able to macro well, spend their money quickly and well on the correct things at the correct times and not sit on it too much and wasting too much time. It applies a pressure on the player to be fast.
The main cases where you do want to pool some resource is - expansions, you gotta keep 400 which is not a small sum, warp-ins for protoss, you want to have enough to get a full round off especially when using a warp prism, or when unlocking new units with zerg, like lurkers or broodlords, you want to have enough money to upgrade enough hydras into lurkers the moment the lurker den finishes or corrupters into broodlords in the same situation. Terrans don't really have this as much though. They really need to constantly build units without stop else they fall behind.
I agree, Upkeep puts some aspects of an RTS into focus which I like a lot. Great talk
First of let's remember that you're speaking on a player's perspective, which means you have to obey the laws of the game and find your way around it if you want to beat the other player, this refer to all the math around timing windows and upkeep. But as a developer, I could simply change the rules of the game at any times however I want to redirect your way of playing. This refer to the SC2 PvP situation. There will always be a "boring meta" happens in any competitive e-sport games at any times, but as developers you can directly change the meta anyway you want via various way, you don't need a fix mechanic (upkeep as we're talking about) to keep the game interesting.
Now let's talk about Upkeep specifically. You're talking about Upkeep as a good mechanic because it created variants in term of strategies (calculating, timing. how a 1 base can fight a 2 base etc...) instead of it just become a linear timing game with a certain fixed paths. But you forget that Upkeep DOES NOT DO ALL THIS BY ITSELF. It's the combination with other aspects of the game that allowed such to happen. In WC3 you have heroes with abilities, camps, items, shops, Mercenaries...Neutral objectives that you could take. So if you're a 1 base with a no upkeep army vs a 2 base with an upkeep army, theoretically you should lose because you have a smaller army but you don't because you can make up for it by taking the neutral objectives while your opponent focusing on building up. So the 2 bases may have some more income and bigger army but you have items, higher level heroes...as you said in the video. You can try to get a more efficient low upkeep army and out maneuver your opponent who's busying teching up to 2 bases AND defend them. But this ONLY possible because there are other neutral objectives on the map for you to "trade". Now if you compare it to SC2 where there's literally nothing else on the map beside minerals and gases, Upkeep wouldn't make sense because there's nothing else to trade and there's no reason to be a 1 base no upkeep. You literally can't harass your opponent in their base because the way the maps work, the main and the natural is perfectly safe and has only one way in you can't do anything if your opponent just sit inside their base it's when you start expanding to the 3rd, the 4th and so on is where the opportunity for harassment show. On the other hand however you yourself can't sit your ass on 1 or 2 base either because then you can't do anything with your "smaller but more efficient army" even if that means you get 100% income. You have nothing else to out maneuver your opponent for.
So to sum up. Upkeep alone doesn't make a game more interesting and less linear. It does that IF the rest of the game is also built around the system.
So is there a downside to Upkeep? For starter having Upkeep means you're more likely to stay at the "sweet spot" for as long as possible instead of doing something like rushing Battle Cruiser and catch your opponent by surprise. You talk about the game of chicken where the risk added to the strategy and decision but what if player don't wanna risk? Especially on high stake tournaments? The safe way with no "cheese" would always be preferred. The situation you exampled of the Sky timing meta was born of imbalance, where the Human has the one build path that is the best and the Orc - which is on the weaker side when it comes to expanding - have to figure out a way to throw a wrench into the Human's perfect plan and make them think twice. But that doesn't mean the Human ALWAYS have to take that risk and go for MK fast expand, if they're not confident they could always revert back to playing the standard game. Also the whole situation could be resolved just by the creator "re-balances" the races or making tweaks on the map. We also have map pools for the same reason.
This is why we don't just slap Upkeep on any RTS so to speak. Upkeep by itself wouldn't work any wonders unless there are other indicators in place. Upkeep may make a player think about their army composition but it's not THE ONLY WAY to make people think. It's something to keep in the playbook when you design a game but there's nothing set in stone when designing video games.
I can listen to Grubby talking about wc3 all day long
I agree with you and have to say you made an excellent case
Thnx for directly/indirectly answering my question I had posted on one of your recent videos! Thnx Grubby loved it!
Brilliantly said. Hope the Stormgate developers can see this and consider upkeep's implications for creating action tension, even if they don't decide to implement upkeep exactly.
Great video. Never realized, that this is having such impact on the game. Would love to see more materials like this!
Man, Grubby thanks for making vid about upkeep. This thing is always was interesting for me and kinda the thing that makes me struggle 'cuz Im really more "campaign player"
Yes! Constraints are a good thing! I'm a big advocate of limited unit selection in RTSs myself. I've made the case for how broodwar's 12 unit selection has a lot of positive effects on how an rts is played/balanced.
agreed, some of these "limitations" the devs talked about actually have great effect on player choices/style. sadly sc2 didnt take after bw and war3 in this way.
I always thought the upkeep system was to limit army size, and to serve as a come back mechanic. If you lose your entire army to the enemy, you will have more income than them. But looking at most games, people will mostly resign when losing a teamfight, where the opponent is left with upkeep and you are not, due to the difference in army size.
Perhaps upkeep could be reimagined. All production (unit training, construction, upgrading) could slow down as your unit count increases. Makes it easier to restablish your army quickly, after losing a teamfight. A move you can keep up with, so long you have gold to pay for it.
Yeah, in 4X games like Planetfall, if you lose your starter army, you get a free spawn of like 5 units. You're obv still doing really badly, but the game isn't over, you can continue on. What you're describing feels similar and I agree that it serves such a purpose in WC3 as well
Love vids that talk about game mechanics like this.
20:00 I belive it would have been simpler to explain what you mean, by using mining time, instead of going for the mildly confusing "effective gold cost" as it actually remains 350 all throughout the game. What actually change is how fast you can get that 350 or how fast you can replenish thta sum if you already spent it.
Great eplanation anyway, I didn't like upkeep when I started wc3 either, but over the years, I started to view it as a come back mechanism as well as something to make FFA absolutely interesting (without it the game could be maxed out camping all day) and grow fond of it. Though I kinda understand why starcraft ppl don't really like the idea as it suggest smaller fights less fronts (army splittings) and more passive gameplay, even if that is not necessary what happens.
So many great points and so clearly spoken as always Grubby. Personally if I was building a blizzard style rts, I would include an upkeep system, but change how it is displayed/informed the player, thus not incurring a negative stigma.
Great showing of player experience and feedback.
8:09 "if the upkeep didn't exist... getting a second base would have no downside....
The downside would be that the investment needs time to pay back and until then the opponent who got no second base should have more troops since he spent the extra resources on troops rather than on a second base.
and we see this play out all the time in broodwar and sc2
SURLY XD
Ty for economics class that was very informative and entertaining
I read a few comments here. And I have to agree that I did not like it when I was a child, but through the eyes of a gamer, it is one of the smartest implementations of WC3. This mechanism is so powerful in making the game tense and interesting
Well said!
i rarely comments on your vid, but honestly upkeep is the best mechanic on wc3. makes you consider carefully what you train and build. else it will be aight ill just make anything crap i can , train anything i can, then expand and make another random units and repeat
Grubby made some good points about upkeep and some interesting strategic choices that it allows. I do think it would be better if it was more incremental as some said, since going just 1 food over the thresholds tanks your gold income massively. And not only does it slow the rate, but it also cuts the total potential gold in each goldmine since each worker trip still takes the full 10 gold out. Another issue is that units and heroes cost food, but towers do not.
More tutorials like this! I would like race openings and strats in general in 4v4
I like the idea of Upkeep for all the reasons you stated, even though I wouldn't want it in every RTS. But one thing I do wish was different would be for Upkeep to be more fine-grained: Instead of going to 30% tax at 51 Food through 80 Food, have it be incremental -- 1% tax for each 1 Food over 50, or if the game engine can't handle the fractional Gold, at least 10% tax for each 10 Food over 50. That way, you still get the same mechanic, but you aren't so severely hosed for needing to make 1 special unit for an emergency response.
To be honest, I have never been the biggest fan of Upkeep for one reason; I never understood the subtle dynamics of how it worked. This fantastic video really gave me a refreshed look on the system and gave me a lot of new appreciation for it. But, it also reinforced my viewpoint. I, as a casual player, could study the many interactions of upkeep for a life time and never fully grasp each little detail on how it interacts with the game play. This is great for a competitive high skill cap game dedicated to professional players, but I would rather not spend the few hours of free time I have to play videogames in the books studying rather than just playing. For Frost Giant, one of their main goals for Stormgate is approachability, so I believe Monk's thoughts on upkeep as they pertain to Stormgate are correct.
Thanks for the great content as always! Cheers!
Fantastic
Makes me love wc3 even more. Gotta love something made perfectly that it lasts the ages
I think there's clever ways to play with upkeep as an idea without scrapping it entirely. Maybe remove or raise the upper limit, to allow even larger armies but ones which might actively -cost- money to keep alive. Or some kind of system which impacts a very large army's abilities negatively when it grows beyond a certain size. Could heroes have some sort of "command" resource or other statistical ability to improve the units around them (e.g. supporting an army above a certain size requires a certain number of heroes to be alive, and losing one would block your ability to train or cause some units to flip to neutral)
Regardless I think it's instrumental to the whole idea of RTS as I enjoy it, since it really puts a limit on the ability to win by camping macro and mindlessly pumping out a huge army
I generally agree with Beastyqt's opinion of upkeep. It feels bad because to the average player, it feels like they're getting punished for macroing. The effect is especially pronounced given that the upkeep warnings trigger at certain arbitrary population sizes.
If upkeep were to be implemented, I'd prefer it to be a gradual diminishing return (similar to how Frost Giant are describing their workers) rather than seeing a 30% decrease at a random population size. It still feels bad that your incentivized to keep your army as small as possible but maybe you're right and that encourages skirmishes.
I think the core idea is useful, but the current implementation could be worked on to make it 'feel' better to players, and to not punish noobs as much for sitting on 51. I think a diminishing return isn't a bad way to do it. Perhaps it could be tied with expansion to new zones?
Back when I used to play WC3, my guess was that the upkeep mechanic was meant to "punish", so to speak, to players doing way too well with their resources, with the objective of pushing players to keep similar army size, and so, the game outcome would depend more on the skill. Like some sort of counterbalance: more income - smaller army vs. lower income - bigger army.
Upkeep always annoyed me, specially because I was a Age of Empires player way before a WC3 player, but I think I can understand its apparent purpose.
You're prob one of many who felt that way tbh, from what I gather
Like the RoC mode on W3C it'd be cool to see you play some matches in a hypothetical no upkeep mode and see this in full action.
I'm just imagining orc and night elf players falling off so hard on the ladder if upkeep didn't exist. Why wouldn't humans and undead just fast expo into another expo up to 3 bases and tower up? Wait until the wyrms/gryphs and lvl 5 heros are ready, then just attack move across the map. As a night elf main for 12 straight years the thought of it is terrifying.
Whispers Chimaera's... With a flock of hippo 's!
I never noticed that upkeep affects all gold income, not just mining!
Me too, I just discovered that after 20 years lmao
I always saw upkeep the same way many grand strategy games have "force limits" that make you pay more for your army if its too large for your country's economy to support. Perhaps in the same vein, rather than keep the upkeep threshhold at 50 supply, you could increase that threshold by building structures that expand your force limit, effectively still costing the player a gold investment but giving them the feeling of an expanded capacity in return, as well as a new target for the enemy to attack, and more territory you have to claim to place those buildings.
Ah and one more thing, upkeep keeps the unit count somewhat lower which direct attention to micro the already exisiting army better, while no upkeep direct towards less micro but more macro, as the unit count and food ratio is more important. Still, there could be other mechanics to replace the role of upkeep. (so no upkeep for stormgate would not be a dealbreaker byitself)
Yeah it's a pretty well thought-out mechanic, but I don't disagree with the devs that it has a certain bad impact that isn't very well explained by the game itself. Better tutorials would go a long way of explaining this
IIRC in the prologue campaign with Thrall all the game says is "your army has become so large it now needs a portion of your income to sustain itself" which is very meh
It's a lot easier to understand a no-upkeep system though. As a noob learning sc2 I could start with the crystal clear goal that more stuff is better. I could understand the gist of playing either as a timing attacker or a macro player from day one, and build more complexity from there.
Maybe I'm bias though as a zerg player, because zerg has a less linear economy and so the "more is better" starting point is inherently more interesting thing to think about. Also i just loved the theme of trying to be an organism that slowly consumed the map, and an upkeep system frustrates that fantasy.
The problem is, as a casual player upkeep always felt far too punishing, even if it makes for interesting strategic choices at the higher levels, the fact that it literally deletes resources creates a really big sense of fear in players of missing out on resources or running out entirely. I know I had that when I was younger and I know others do to.
The way I see upkeep, it can work if the resource that it affects doesn't run out. So for example if you introduced upkeep to SC2, the game wouldn't work anymore, but in a game like say, Dawn of War, where requisition points are earned by controlling points on the map, you could add a reduction on your income based on your army size and it wouldn't feel as bad, since the points never run out and if you need more you can capture more points. Same with power which you can just build additional generators and it'd act like a secondary supply system.
Essentially there would never be a situation where you maxed out, lost your army 5 minutes later and then you cannot remax because your gold mine ran out and you only got 40% of what that gold mine was worth and you have no way of getting more money. You'd never feel like you should intentionally stop mining in order to preserve your gold mine.
It would also work if the resource it affects is very niche. Instead of like gold or lumber if there was like a 3rd resource that is only used for certain specific units, it wouldn't be as bad, since you could still max out on a normal army even without that resource, you're not missing out on as much as a casual player. That could also work as a more natural limiter on unique units. By which I mean things like the Mothership in SC2, where it's not really a hero, but you can only build 1. Instead of an arbitrary limit of 1, you could add a cost to it that prohibits you from massing them because your rate of acquiring that resource gets lower and lower the higher your supply.
Lastly and this is important - WARCRAFT 3 UPKEEP IS TOO ARBITRARY AND SUDDEN! - There's a stupidly high difference between 50 supply and 51. Or 70 supply and 71. 30% income is a LOT to suddenly get charged because you're 1 peasant over the line. It's silly, it makes no sense and it feels HORRIBLE as a player. You feel incentivized to just kill your own unit off because you're wasting money.
Like, if the upkeep was dispersed to 5% upkeep every 10 supply it'd at least feel smoother, but that would also dampen all the cool strategic balance that players do with it.
So honestly, I have to say, the warcraft 3 upkeep system is not a good idea.
Didn't know upkeep reduced Transmute too. Damn!
One thing I've thought about and maybe you talk about this in the video(haven't seen whole thing yet sorry) is the idea of upkeep in the form of increasing build time on fighting units as you get higher and higher supply. I feel like this would keep players more aggressive while also making it so that players can't instantly reinforce their army as they're pushing into the enemy base and thus increases defenders advantage in a way that isn't just making it more difficult to kill the defending players units/ buildings and would create a bit of that kiting/back and forth scenario another comment mentioned. i feel it would also not completely remove turtle play styles as despite the fact that i hate playing against turtle players i wouldnt enjoy removing the option. Tho i haven't really thought about this idea in depth so there's prolly some major issues I'm not thinking of.
I like upkeep. The reason is simple, you get to make an army with variety.
(One thing that I don't like in RTS is that you could just spam one single unit and win, makes you wonder whats the other units are for.)
_They dont necessarily have to implement an upkeep system, but maybe a system like it. Like producing the same type of unit over time, your resources slowly decreases. That way, you are being punished for unecessrily spamming a unit multiple of times. It can also have a cap where once you make more than X number of units, thats where the requirement of resources to make one will get more expensive._
Hey Grubby, what is your opinion on the WC3 day/night cycle? I think it's an interesting mechanic, with night causing mobs to sleep and reducing field of view, but I feel like this feature interacts significantly only with night elves, and not the other 3
Grubby do be mining out the gems of game design from Warcraft 3 from such a unique and highly-experienced POV. If you presented this video in a more traditional "video game video essay" format, I think you might be able to farm more views.
love upkeep, trade-offs in decision-making. not simply strictly better to have a larger army.
I think upkeep works well in WC3 but it won't work in every game.
You can develop your hero/buy items while not increasing supply. In a game with no levelling or items... you're mainly banking money which isn't interesting (sure you can invest in tech/infrastructure, but most of your money goes into units).
And upkeep isn't the only way of achieving the benefits. Grubby says in a mirror matchup upkeep lets one player risk holding at 50 supply for longer -> interesting attacker/defender roles. The same can be achieved by just the decision to invest in eco vs army. E.g. defender expands/builds workers while the attacker builds only army units. This is most obvious in ZvZ where the zerg has to decide whether they can risk making an extra round of drones or if they need lots of lings.
Investing in eco feels more interesting to me than just banking money on low supply. I could imagine upkeep actually leading to more turtlefests because neither player wants to try building enough army for an attack.
Lastly, it can feel bad not just from "I'm growing but I'm losing income?!", also moments like you want to build a 4 supply unit but you're at 48 supply... should you murder your own unit first?
I'm very pro-upkeep.
But I wish it was more upkeep, and less income tax.
Like it would be a cost that would be subtracted from your total value, to make it not too good to sit on a large supply, and not mine(But I guess only FFA suffers from that.)
the warcraft course
I had no idea what up Keep was for the longest time. I thought high up was good and it ment you were doing well if you hit it lol
1:24, wrong that would have been correct IF the map had infinite gold then it would be a story of high income vs low income, but you are actually depleting the gold while getting a little from it when on high upkeep and this has nothing to do with psychology.
Warcraft needs a worthy successor with all it’s core mechanics preserved and a skilled marketing team to bring it to a larger audience. Less amount of units means more emphasize on micro and that’s what warcraft 3 is all about. Starcraft guys finding upkeep “punishing”? I find constantly having to make workers all game punishing. It’s just a matter of preference.
I like the upkeep system of Warcraft 3. I guess that’s all I have to say on the matter.
I didn't know creeps gave less gold when you have low and high upkeep.
I really like upkeep as a mechanic, and if they make another WC game I think they should keep the mechanic.
However, regardless of how it theoretically, how it works in reality is that it DOES limit playstyles and timing, and introduces arbitrary balance issues between races and matchups. I think the big reason why expansion rhythm is so boring and homogenous compared to basically any other RTS is almost entirely due to upkeep.
Why not make it work per unit of population instead of arbitrary breakpoints that punish you 30% for going 1 pop too high?
I wonder what game play effects that will produce
WHEN DO WE GET OUR MONEY, DANIEL??
I am not a pro by any means but one of the things that I have learned over 18 years of Warcraft 3 (Watching and playing) is that Upkeep is great for both Noobs and Good players. In "No skill match ups" Upkeep stops people or punishes people who want to go all in with big armies if the other person is not so good with the game (less resources), while it allows players in pro match ups to get more from their races and their unique interactions.
Orcs are a great example, Orc units tend to be tough, high cost and you tend to try to take issue when one unit dies compare to Human, that's why when playing Orc, if you are capable of holding your army under 50 food you can use the gold difference to get more items for your heroes, this means that Orc heroes is most times the focus of Orc gameplay but... Orc players can go through rush strats or even early exp if they want to.
If no upkeep or heroes the game would feel really empty, that's why games like StarCraft 2 to me were never enjoyable, they were fun PvE experiences (Campaign) but as a PvP game it was never an experience that felt fun since the game was mainly a macro fest instead of high skill matches with some RNG added to spice things up.
Hey grubby, i love your idea to word the upkeep system to be more "beginner friendly" or basically make them feels less punishing by changing the wording into
No upkeep = resource bonus income
Low upkeep = small resource bonus income
High upkeep = no resource bonus income
Which mean the dev could reimagine the upkeep system as some kind of comeback mechanic or even "booster" to make the early economy grow faster without nessecarily broke the game economy at the end game
Also making the player had decision to make their supply smaller to get bonus income seems like a good idea, but i got a question like "wouldnt this make the hyper fast multi expansion strats less worth it?", which might make the player to choose play at smaller base instead of expanding and territory control?
But this argument could be render useless, if the dev make the upkeep system "less severe" than war3, and treat it more as a bonus income comeback mechanic for the player with smaller supply
Which mean, if the "baseline income" (or the no bonus/high upkeep) is still good enough to make the multi expansion strat works without having some kind of big big "diminishing return" for opening up so many expo/bases, then i do really like this idea of "reimagining" upkeep system into stormgate tho (cuz it feels really fits to the overall 200 supply cap and the feels of lowering the lethality/over-snowballing of lot RTS game, cuz catching up the enemy economy after some big devastating lose at a huge scale battle is something very rare in RTS game)
Like they could change it instead of war3 style upkeep (which is 100%, 70%, 40%), they could make it as 150%, 125%, 100% or something like that, and idk how many upkeep lvl for each supply, maybe they will get 150% bonus income from 0-100 supply and then from there it start degrading into no bonus, or they could make it 0-80, but i really like this idea so much grubby, especially if people at stormgate able to "reimagine" this system to the game, love your content and explanation
I think the upkeep system is great in 1v1, but in other formats it doesn't work as well.
does upkeep change prices too....?
I confused
no upkeep just affects income
@@neonmarblerust
hmm hmm
After watching many of your videos, why is WC3 matches much more figured out (to a few specific builds in each matchup) than SC2, even though it has this "superior" upkeep system? (Im a noob in both games, and Im not trying to take a poke at either)
Wc3 smaller scale armies, therefore have to be more picky? I remember in sc2 you can randomly do an 8 zealot or 8 stalker warp-in even though you’re on carriers generally. I’d never do a random 2 grunts at any point in the game
I disagree with you on this, Grubby. You make a good point that a well-balanced RTS with an upkeep mechanic can have a lot of nuance and interesting decision-making; however, a well-balanced RTS with just about any mechanic can lead to a lot of nuance.
Take the weird pathing issues from Starcraft 1: it led to micro being a form of skill expression when trying to quickly get groups of Goliaths or Dragoons across narrow corridors, because just telling them once to move across the corridor will lead to them getting stuck. The pathing issues also made it so there was a unique logic and micro to dodging reaver shots with clumps of workers, and made it so if a couple of early zealots got into your SCV mineral line, you could clump your SCVs all together on a mineral patch then tell them to spread out, which forced the zealots to stop attacking and move around awkwardly until they stopped being on top of another unit, while your marines killed them from range.
There really was a lot of skill and nuance in SC1 due to the game's weird pathing. Does that mean that it's a good thing to introduce bad pathing that makes it so your Dragoons and Goliaths often get stuck on terrain? Starcraft 1 had a lot of these issues, and it was an excellent game. The question is: Was it an excellent game because of these issues, or despite them? That's a harder question to answer.
Likewise, Warcraft 3 is a great game, and it has upkeep. I think you may be biased in favor of the upkeep mechanic, Grubby, because it personally benefitted you- one of your greatest strengths in Warcraft 3 is your deep knowledge of the game, knowing the ins and outs of the game systems, their implications, and how to work with them in order to gain an edge. This burden of knowledge tends to benefit more experienced players, to the detriment of newer players.
I think your strongest argument in favor of upkeep, is that it reduces the advantage of expanding, as you typically want to go into Low Upkeep if you're in two bases which makes it so your income is only 40% greater to that of a 1-base opponent who is in No Upkeep. That said, it may work out this way in Stormgate as well- they said they wanted to introduce diminishing returns for mining the equivalent of Starcraft Minerals, so maybe having 20 workers spread over 2 bases will give you 40% more income than an opponent who has 20 workers in one base.
Overall, I think upkeep worked well in Warcraft 3 because Warcraft 3 is heavily centered around heroes. If your level 3 Blademaster has to try and survive against 8 Riflemen focus firing him, you can play around that. If he has to survive against the focus fire of 20 Riflemen, then the Blademaster will die almost immediately- as army sizes get huge, many heroes lose a lot of relevance, like how Farseer is a boss early on when you only have 5 headhunters, but he's not very useful in max army battles. Upkeep makes army sizes lower in Warcraft 3, which in turn helps keep heroes very relevant. Keeping army sizes low is a good idea in a hero-focused RTS, and you could do it with an upkeep system like Warcraft 3, with a very low max population cap like Dawn of War, or in some other way.
Some of the benefits you claim Upkeep has also seem misplaced. Yes, keeping players active on the map instead of turtling is fun and exciting and a good thing- but I think Upkeep largely does the opposite of that. It encourages turtling by building a lot of towers which don't cost population; playing the fast expand into towering up into massing Gryphons strategy was a lot less exciting for the human player. The reason this kind of strategy isn't so widespread in Warcraft 3, is because hero experience and creep camps encourage you to go out into the map- once creep camps run out, turtling can become the optimal strategy in Warcraft 3.
There are other downsides to upkeep. Being in Low Upkeep feels bad to me in Warcraft 3, and being in High Upkeep feels awful, like the game is punishing me for making units. Upkeep is also bad for strategic diversity; with it, you want to build a lot of units early on until you reach the No Upkeep unit cap, then you want to tech up, maybe tower up, buy upgrades and buy items to continue gaining power without adding any more population. That's pretty standard and there's not a lot of room for variety, save for just breaking upkeep early for a powerful attack. The other Blizzard RTS games have varied strategies that can be highly competitive- you can focus on teching up to attack an opponent early with something like Battlecruisers that they'll struggle to defend against, you can rush your opponent down, you can fast expand, you can go for a timing attack... Warcraft 3 doesn't have this type of strategic diversity, which places the game's focus very heavily on micromanagement and execution. Overall, I think the Upkeep system works well enough in Warcraft 3, but I would only consider adding it to another RTS game if it that game was also focused on Hero units.
Stormgate devs really called out upkeep, and i have to say as a casual i totally agreed with them in that interview. I absolutely felt like i was playing wrong when i'd hit upkeep. especially with the green, yellow, red system that is analogous to the traffic lights in America. green is good, keep going. yellow is a warning, prepare to stop or finish what you are doing quickly to get through the intersection before red. red is stop! danger! no one likes red lights in America. so we are psychologically conditioned to those colors (and the ominous warning bells in wc3 didn't help either) to avoid anything but green. If i had grown up in other parts of the world i have no doubt that this conditioning would not exist.
This feels kind of cart before the horse. Other countries use red/amber/green traffic lights, too, and they use them because the colours have those associated feelings near-universally.
@@Furetchen in that case it would be near-universally received the same way. wc3 was also made in America by Americans so they no doubt had this psychology in mind as they designed the upkeep system. perhaps it was not intentional that casuals like myself would be so upkeep adverse though. as Grubby explains it here, the pros find the system to be both intuitive and valuable. as a casual i found it imposing and limiting or stifling. at best it was an all-in condition. if i had any upkeep, especially high, it was coming down to me winning in the next few minutes or surrender.
I’m pretty sure green is good because forests, grass, etc. And red is bad/danger because fire, blood, rage
I absolutely do not like the upkeep mechanics, do not shackle the player. Give them options, some more optimal, others less. Dont get in the way of your players.
I find the only good reason to have upkeep is to nudge players behavior into using less computational resources.
The implementation was always a mystery, it affects aspects of the game that only now I know because the game itself doesn't explain it.
If there is one mechanic I would have removed from WC3 is upkeep as it doesn't feel like punishment, it IS punishment for using more memory and CPU.
Upkeep only removes the option of a macro win in RTS. You can already outmicro to win in other RTS. One base winning against an established two base income consistently in competitive WC3 is just insane.
Ok but counter argument here, and i think this will change your mind for sure
More units=cooler armies=cooler game
PUM i won the argument
I think you're lost in the sauce here form your love of wc3 and the intense details of it. Upkeep feels horrible to the vast majority of players and is unintuitive.
Upkeep is a bad idea. It’s not fun and it feels bad.
upkeep is not good