What Makes RTS Games Fun - Why Balance Matters
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ย. 2024
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Fairness I think would be a big part of it. “Additional units wouldn’t be fun if they weren’t balanced.” This is so TRUE in a lot of mods that expand on the game. In Dawn of War Ultimate Apocalypse for example Serphims for the Sisters of Battle that can 1v2 basically any other units in the game. The player based has been much happier since a fan made patch fixed the over powered weapon stat issue. So fair competition makes the RTS fun.
And I also agree with the point that UTILITY is key in RTS games. Mental Omega is a long running fan modification for the classic Red Alert 2 command and conquer. Mental Omega has a balancing problem for the Allies faction where one unit is just ok at one job and pretty much fail at everything else. The prime example of this would be the Rocketeer. The Rocketeer used to be this fantastic unit in Vanilla Red Alert 2 that everyone would fear. However in Mental Omega, people rarely use them because their utility have been brought down significantly with the introduction of many other units. Rocketeers used to be a multi role harasser unit that is absolutely deadly when en mass. In MO, their damage and utility has been reduced to pretty much a scout unit and a cannon fodder unit. This change makes the Allies much less fun to play.
In vanilla RA2, it is fun to spam Tesla Tanks as Soviet and win.
could you have a look at the "One Vision" mod for Kanes Wrath? The mod is very similar to Mental Omega or Ultimate Apocalypse in what it wants to achieve, but tries to avoid exactly the problemes you mentioned.
I'd love some input, as I am the mod designer.
Just to emphasize and point it out: “Additional units wouldn’t be fun if they weren’t balanced.”
This also means a unit's role. The example of the Rocketeer is one thing, but imagine if the Allies also got a tier-2/3 version of the Rocketeer that was stronger, did more damage and had a temporary speedboost. Even if the Rocketeer would be the vanilla version, you'd trade it in every time when you get (rush) to that tier for this enhanced variant because its basically the same unit but better in every way. Or, the opposite, take out the Rocketeer for the allies and have it replaced with the RA3 Vindicator to exist alongside the Harrier. Depending on which of those planes would turn out the better one, you'd only ever build that plane because the RA3 Vindicator and RA2 Harrier are basically the same unit again.
Its also why I toroughly HATE RA3's Allies because that is one epically screwed up devision of unit roles within one faction.
The only exception that traditionally gets away with a heavy overlap like that is the earlygame battle tanks versus the tier3 heavy tanks.
I dont think anyone with a sane mind would say balance is not important.
I however do draw a line between "General Balance" which is to say the workings of individual units within a faction and their role and those compared to units from another faction. And "Competition Balance" where units or entire factions are tweaked for execution capabiities only to be performed by the 1% of the entire playerbase.
I usually use the C&C versus SC2 balance style, Typically units in CnC cant be controlled as perfectly as SC2 on a preverbially microsecond interval, that is because this is inherent to the behavior of the game itself. CnC units are typically more sluggish and slow to "turn and face" something whch prevents the microsecond rescue of a unit from death because you managed to pull it back just outside the radius of something it effects. And when you deal with such behavior-style of gameplay (CnC), you cant finetune and balance like its done in SC2. Imagine unleashing a Psionic Storm on a troop of Marines that behaved like CnC troopers, the High Templar would strike gold everytime.
In that way (And I'm saying this both from the perspective of a once very high ranking SC2 player as well as modder and scenariomaker for said game: SC2 is balanced for the professional scene, not the average scene, its heavily emphasizing APM. It is also what generates the larger 'skill gap' as it were.
With CnC, that game is much more friendly even for 'new players' because inherent unit behavior does help you in the APM department, rather you require strategic skill to actually come out on top.
One last thing, specifically because of CnC/SC2, Even though one should strive for a certain style of balance, it isn't per se a bad thing (particulairly in camapigns) to insert some doom machine or wild and crazy units for fun. Think of the Shogun Executioner in RA3, no player with half a brain cell could possibly have that unit die on them, still its fun to have a mission where you simply smack your enemy with an epic asswhooping. Or take the Warzone 2100 artillery type weapons: I've had some of the best fun using Hellstorms to continuously pound enemies from afar that dared crossing my line of sight. Balance therefore also must adhere to some form of tone that is set in a mission, or set of missions.
Which is also what forms the basis to my "general balance" and "competition balance" styles.
They themselves are a 'balancing act' and sometimes need to play with different rules. The fact that SC2 chose to separate their campaign units and ladder-units becomes a requirement in itself if you want to optimize both aspects of a game.
Hey! A suggestion: the sense of scaling and scope and its influence on why RTS games are fun. In the sense of game design but also the combination with story telling. It is a lot of fun when you get a sense of significance by feeling/being involved in a larger conflict, or fielding many units, being able to zoom in and 'be there' with your units (CoH does that very well); OR zoom out and see the larger picture (Supreme commander was one of the first with strategic zoom). A case of poor sense of scope for me: BFME1. You had a large castle and large maps, in a story that involved large armies clashing but as a player are limited to maybe 50 units. The story was amazing, but the game did not seem suited.
The unit cap there was probably only limited like that for engine and/or performance reasons.
Yeah probably. But it is still silly to fight the battle of helms deep with only a handful of units. EA did a good job on advertising that game, the trailers showed way more units ;P Guess 'immersion' sums up my suggestion better.
I think you talk about balance in a way that might not be the most helpful.
As this (1) video points out, balance is not absolute. The main goal for a video game is fun gameplay, but that can work at cross purposes of balance, because balance aims to make every strategy as viable as every other strategy. Completely, no exceptions. Thing is if every strategy were just as viable as every other, it really wouldn't matter what strategy a player chose, as they'd all have the same chance of winning. Interesting gameplay is about finding imbalances, ways to squeeze out a little more efficiency from your units or buildings than the opponent.
And I think that is something that needs to be kept in mind. Balance, after a certain point has a cost to it, either in time or money, or, more subtly, gameplay. You say that balance is like creating a deductive argument, and I agree. To a point having multiple arguments that can compete with one another is good. But what if every argument was on near equal footing?
Then the debate would be incredibly dull as just about any argument could win. There would be little exploitation of the nuances of each argument against each other, because the arguments would be near the equivalent of a die roll. Just pick one, as all of them are about even to win. Players can come up with all sorts of premises for strategies, but some of them are going to have to be better than others, else the game becomes little more than a die roll.
I think you make good videos on rts design and i think you have good ideas, such as praising strategic differences in base defenses and counter defense strategies. However, I think you overlook that balance can come at a cost in game design. I suppose that's the nature of the beast; balance can get really subjective fast.
(1) th-cam.com/video/K3n-Sy2Ko4I/w-d-xo.html
balance is paramount because lets take age of empires as an example: French have strong cav and English have strong archers. With no balance I as French would optimally use cav and you as English would optimally use archers and you are naturally countered in this match up. But because the game is balanced English have the opportunity to break meta and build spears even though their spearline is vanilla and would otherwise never be used. This forces me as French to move into my vulnerable weak side which is archers and the point here is it keeps the tug of war flowing and the army compositions constantly changing.
@@chrisnewtownnsw So making sure the meta changes is "balance." But wouldn't that require certain strategies to be somewhat better than others? After all, if cavalry and archers are equal, there's no real reason to change... unless spearman are better against cavalry. But isn't that making spearmen imbalanced against cav? Unless a unit can get a more than 50/50 win rate against certain comps. And how do you determine what is acceptable difference in win rate anyway? Seems like a lot of it would be subjective. Not to mention balancing for skill- what counts as skill? Should certain skills be prioritized over others? Should "highly skilled" players always beat new ones? There's a ton of factors that go into this and a lot of it is subjective.
@@mattmorehouse9685 btw it's hilarious that you replied so smoothly after a 5 year gap since your original comment. Spear archer and horse is the Rock Paper Scissors. Its important for French to have a stronger scissors but not crazy strong. Maybe 10% stronger than vanilla scissors. This would mean that French can default to their strength but not be absolutely dependant on it every time otherwise creativity gets thrown out the window as you only use scissors all the time. For me I think skill should be less about micromanagement and more about using clever counter macro decisions. Correct unit composition. Correct economy strength. Should I forgo early military strength so my eco can thrive and produce a stronger late game army instead. Things of this nature.
Quite on point man. I remember reading your article on this! Balance is important on all levels. Also another point I wanted your opinion on Is what you think of Ranked balancing?
For example A in League of legends. A champion like Darius is pretty useless and never used in MLG or Challenger. However Riot still applies nerfs on it. This is because in a tier like Silver it is actually OP since an average skill of Silver player placed into Darius would make him perform like a Platinum player despite having silver skills only. Therefore he is Nerf to balance the Silver Tier properly.
Do you think it's a good choice to balance each Tier separately like the example above? Or do you think Champions like Darius that are only for lower skilled players to learn them and improve should not exist? I mainly say this because something like that does not really exist in RTS games. You for example don't have any noob factions/strats which are easy to learn yet still threatening in hand of inexperienced players.
Also I did not know you designed ashes escalation man. Holy shit that is amazing, great job man.
I'd argue it does exist in RTS. Rushing isn't a particularly difficult strategy to pull off, yet it counters other new players almost ubiquitously in every game.
I am not the one you directed this question to but I want to give my two thoughts, regardless. It's possible for characters like Darius to exist for inexperienced or low level players. I played a MOBA called Paragons for a short while. There was this one character I would pick every time even though it wasn't at that skill level. Because I found her to a lot more fun than the others. She was called Seraph or something. I think when it comes to MOBA's, it's important to design mechanics around each character so each of them feel unique.
I would prefer to throw away all protection so I can wreck face. For this reason, I prefer to play as a Reaver warrior if I'm playing DA. It's what drew me Seraph. She was a glass cannon and required focus and attention to avoid attacks. And lots of kiting, as a result.
Now I'm talking about myself. I would think it's more important to design characters to suit your players play style than low skill/effort characters. Those are no fun. Speaking for myself.
Oh I wasn't the lead designer from the start, only since about a year and a few months ago! Thanks for the comment though.
I would say you shouldn't have to choose which tier you want to balance things around, and that if something is overpowered in silver but weak in high level, then that is just bad design. This happens with RTS like Dark Templars that are OP in Bronze/Silver but balanced in Diamond, or Snipers in Coh2 that are too weak for most players but then broken as hell in high level play.
Everything should have similar floors and ceilings of accessibility and skill so that you don't end up with different game modes, map sizes,map types and skill levels only gearing towards a limited amount of content. That's a challenge from a design perspective, but should be what you're aiming for. Riot have done a decent job at this in League where they have taken some really old noob champions that were incredibly easy to play mechanically and made them more challenging, such as Ryze and Xin Zhao.
That being said, having something that is easy to learn and be effective with as a new player is a good thing as long as there are (similarily easy to execute) counters and more effective ways to play.
As long as that is given, the meta will take care of the problem if some such strategy becomes dominant.
@@GeneralsGentlemen Honestly, I think you're overplaying you hand in search for "always balanced and fair". If you'd draw that logic towards its natural conclusion you could not have cloaked units in a game because some inexperienced player may never have built a Missile Turret. Or have the ability to build an aircraft within the first 10 minutes because it entirely possible to not built anti-air if you try to quickly expand with a second base. While I agree that SC2 is balanced more towards professional high-level multiplayer, its impossible to achieve where you're trying to go. Thats not 'bad design' but pitching the extremes against eachother. Also, every RTS will have a socalled "unit threshold" Having 'X'-amount of said unit will eventually spiral out of control and have no counter.
The Void Ray is probably the best known example, but I'd also give CnC Rocket Soldiers a run for their money.
4:49 Hm that's strange to hear from an Ashes of Singularity lead dev. Because that game feels to me like too much content with too little utility. So many units but each one just has one specific role.
But other than that it's a great analysis.
Try review balance on wargame red dragon pls
If a gamer is all self interest, and no duty, and service than how do you place your team member in a state of balance?
If all you do is live with a crew that live's for their EGO how does a better man recover from this serious flaw?
How do we create synergy from the EGO radicalist's, and men of duty, and the desire to help?
If they call you leader does this change your role with them?
Is it just words?
What if they call you Poncho instead?
A leader with out a real education.
Does that save the crew from insatiable demise of smart men?