CriTTeR
21 Mar 2008, 19:43
Here is a few things that i believe should be in any good rts game. the genre is constantly evolving, but this game seems to be missing quite a few things in order to be constantly exciting. during the first few games i was excited because it was something new, but as soon as i played more i noticed some nagging things with the way the gameplay was going. people were either massing weak units and kicking ass, or the defense being unproportional to what it should be, or balance being completely thrown off due to one player having an extra of almost 100% of his health, as well as other buffs to his army, maps being way too large for solo or 2v2 play
Items in the grid should not be as good as they are now. theres no reason why a new player should face someone that has a hero with double their health at all times. its very hard to win when the balance is THIS imbalanced. if there were items that we could gather during each game, or buy from an item shop, it would balance the game out as both user would have access to similar items, and it would be their choice to get them or not. the items would only last that match.
Game is too slow because it seems that all maps are made for 3v3 gameplay. this makes solo and 2v2 too slow. maps should be specifically made for game modes to provide a fast turnaround. if someone attacks you blindly head on and loses their whole army, that should be a good advantage for you to hit them right back. however due to the size of the maps, the guy that just lost a fight and all his units can usually muster up 1/2 his army back up by the timeyou reach his door step coupled with his towers, it wont really seem like you had made any advantag during that fight at all..
War3 has battles that last anywhere between 10 seconds all the way to 5 minutes. minutes, meaning you are excited the whole time you fight the battle because you are trying to keep your army alive as long as possible. sometimes its clear who is winning due to the players skill over another, or the strategy being better based against another user, but sometimes it gets tight when player skill is equal and both armies are balanced well enough for a tough fight. you end up having no idea if u are winning or not. obviously people with better micro will pull units out and move them back in to do damage but far enough not to get hit. if both players do this then fights last longer and the outcome isnt as clear. this is exciting because there’s lots of push and pull. this is another reason why the attacks or the players health needs to be rebalanced. units need to live longer so we can micro them out better without losing units within a single focus fire by our army. ( especially if theres an area of effect skill in the area being used or towers near by )
The commanders skills are way too powerful and once he’s dead you can’t win a battle. The High Priest’s Freeze lasts way too long and to heal for full hp on any unit makes any unit with 1000+ hp impossible to kill. The Human’s lord has a confuse which makes all units in the radius attack him and since it makes his 50%+ armour, he’s like a tank and has heal on top of that, the confuse makes sure that the enemy can’t run away and should last for no longer than 2-3 seconds, 8 is too long. it should be a distraction for 2-3 seconds not allowing the user to take control for that alloted time, and make those units follow that hero caster for as long as the player doesn’t take control of their units again. this would solve the cheese of that skill and make sure at the same time that players with skill would take control of their units as soon as their confuse is off to aim at the apropriate units. if the player doesnt take control of his units then its his own fault that he lost the fight. The Cults Master also has a Confuse spell which lots of people are complaining about ( although I haven’t played cult that much so i don’t really know much about them.
The 3 skills each race can use are way too spammable and cost too little. Especially the Air Assault, when you get about 5-6 bases setup, you can use the Assault as soon as it’s ready again because you have so much gold so fast. a bigger cooldown still would be better, and also make the air strikes focus more on buildings instead of mostly attacking the enemys army. if the user activates an air strike during a battle, and on top of that uses the photon blast, and confuse with the long ass effect, its hard to win. because the person being confused cant run or micro their units for the entire duration of the fight. ( i say entire duration because after being spammed with area of effect skills and your units, theres no way the enemy could live through it ( also considering how weak the units are in this game )) Also, you should be able to control the units that you summon so you can actually micro them and you shouldn’t be able too summon too many of them ( 4 at most ) since whoever uses them has a huge advantage unless its a mirror of course.
skills in RTS games should be moderate, and things that aid you to win, not provide you with tools to allow you to do too much damage, or let you see way too much, or skills that have a duration that lasts almost 10 seconds, which doesnt allow the user to take control and leaves them so vulnerable that they cant win no matter what they do. for example in warcraft, setting up a new base is a decision that the user makes and it has its consequences as well. having too many bases uses up your food, which in turn allows you to have a smaller army as a result. so while you have more income to do things, you cant build as big an army and risk a higher chance of defeat during battle. without this risk the game becomes a race for bases, out mining the enemy and spamming units, and ultimate skills until you win. ( again, if i get more mines than the enemy does, i can usually cast an air strike as soon as one is over because i have enough gold to do so.
Human’s base is too powerful and as soon as you have the main / turrets you can kill a whole army with just those turrets and base. In WarCraft 3, if you have a full army and you are against 4 towers, those towers will weaken units and might kill 1 or 2, but since you have of 24 units, you have way more than enough to kill the towers. The fact that there is no long range siege units to kill turrets makes things harder since it seems like there is no counter for turrets. in rts games there should be a counter for everything. one person spams towers in any regular rts, and uses up most of his income on that, then its obvious that you should get siege units that counter those towers. if the enemys army is there as well, then good luck trying to fight off the towers and the enemys army. Even after you beat the enemy in a fight away from his base, you will still lack the health on your units to do any damage to his base, because because those towers will murder you. Towers could have lots of health, thats ok, but if they do less damage then the enemy has to fight them longer, and they have the option to because their whole army isnt being destroyed by the towers, and it also allows the other player to rebuild units to fight off the attacker and keep the fight going longer. I read somewhere where the developer wants to add scaling of the buildings health based on the amount of players that are playing. That is a bad solution to this problem. Scaling the map is about the only thing that should be done depending on the number of players playing at that moment. warcraft, C&C, starcraft, and all other rts games dont have an issue with this area and dont resort to scaling of building health. the reason they can do this is because they have other buildings that the enemy could attack to break the users economy, or put them at a disadvantage and break the user down through a few attacks. its obvious that if there is only one building that the user has to take care of in worldshift that games with 3 players will resort in focus firing toward that building. its because theres nothing else to attack.. If there were research buildings, or item shops, or even a user made ( destroyable ) wall/blockade, then this wouldnt be an issue as the enemy would have to focus on that first.
The Human’s base sensor upgrade has a distance that is insanely huge. Once you have 2-3 bases in the middle of the map you see where your opponent is at all times, which is an unfair advantage and lacks any surprise on the guy that has the advantage. in my opinion it would be better to have items that can be placed on a spot to reveal a medium sized area around it, or extra buildings that act as unit detectors. This way you only see smaller sections of the map, which gives you some advantage, but not to the point that you control the entire map and leave the enemy with no way to come back, surprise you, and possibly win. another solution would be to have dedicated scout units which could be made invisible for a certain amount of time. this would allow the user to scout the enemys base without getting killed, and checking out what the enemy is doing with their army, but it would allow them to do so without making it too cheap. so there would have to be a higher cooldown for the invisibility. surprise is what makes these types of games exciting, so by removing this out of the equation due to the huge radius reveal, removes a lot of the fun from this game, due to lack of surprise.
There ABSOLUTELY HAS TO BE REPLAYS!! If this game enters the pro gaming scene, then there HAS to be replays. New players get to see how the pros play and get to see strategies and what types of units to get against certain strategies. If Map Hack does enter this game ( which it has in WarCraft 3, although a patch is comming to stop it ) you can save a replay and send it to report them and get them banned.
Items in the grid should not be as good as they are now. theres no reason why a new player should face someone that has a hero with double their health at all times. its very hard to win when the balance is THIS imbalanced. if there were items that we could gather during each game, or buy from an item shop, it would balance the game out as both user would have access to similar items, and it would be their choice to get them or not. the items would only last that match.
Game is too slow because it seems that all maps are made for 3v3 gameplay. this makes solo and 2v2 too slow. maps should be specifically made for game modes to provide a fast turnaround. if someone attacks you blindly head on and loses their whole army, that should be a good advantage for you to hit them right back. however due to the size of the maps, the guy that just lost a fight and all his units can usually muster up 1/2 his army back up by the timeyou reach his door step coupled with his towers, it wont really seem like you had made any advantag during that fight at all..
War3 has battles that last anywhere between 10 seconds all the way to 5 minutes. minutes, meaning you are excited the whole time you fight the battle because you are trying to keep your army alive as long as possible. sometimes its clear who is winning due to the players skill over another, or the strategy being better based against another user, but sometimes it gets tight when player skill is equal and both armies are balanced well enough for a tough fight. you end up having no idea if u are winning or not. obviously people with better micro will pull units out and move them back in to do damage but far enough not to get hit. if both players do this then fights last longer and the outcome isnt as clear. this is exciting because there’s lots of push and pull. this is another reason why the attacks or the players health needs to be rebalanced. units need to live longer so we can micro them out better without losing units within a single focus fire by our army. ( especially if theres an area of effect skill in the area being used or towers near by )
The commanders skills are way too powerful and once he’s dead you can’t win a battle. The High Priest’s Freeze lasts way too long and to heal for full hp on any unit makes any unit with 1000+ hp impossible to kill. The Human’s lord has a confuse which makes all units in the radius attack him and since it makes his 50%+ armour, he’s like a tank and has heal on top of that, the confuse makes sure that the enemy can’t run away and should last for no longer than 2-3 seconds, 8 is too long. it should be a distraction for 2-3 seconds not allowing the user to take control for that alloted time, and make those units follow that hero caster for as long as the player doesn’t take control of their units again. this would solve the cheese of that skill and make sure at the same time that players with skill would take control of their units as soon as their confuse is off to aim at the apropriate units. if the player doesnt take control of his units then its his own fault that he lost the fight. The Cults Master also has a Confuse spell which lots of people are complaining about ( although I haven’t played cult that much so i don’t really know much about them.
The 3 skills each race can use are way too spammable and cost too little. Especially the Air Assault, when you get about 5-6 bases setup, you can use the Assault as soon as it’s ready again because you have so much gold so fast. a bigger cooldown still would be better, and also make the air strikes focus more on buildings instead of mostly attacking the enemys army. if the user activates an air strike during a battle, and on top of that uses the photon blast, and confuse with the long ass effect, its hard to win. because the person being confused cant run or micro their units for the entire duration of the fight. ( i say entire duration because after being spammed with area of effect skills and your units, theres no way the enemy could live through it ( also considering how weak the units are in this game )) Also, you should be able to control the units that you summon so you can actually micro them and you shouldn’t be able too summon too many of them ( 4 at most ) since whoever uses them has a huge advantage unless its a mirror of course.
skills in RTS games should be moderate, and things that aid you to win, not provide you with tools to allow you to do too much damage, or let you see way too much, or skills that have a duration that lasts almost 10 seconds, which doesnt allow the user to take control and leaves them so vulnerable that they cant win no matter what they do. for example in warcraft, setting up a new base is a decision that the user makes and it has its consequences as well. having too many bases uses up your food, which in turn allows you to have a smaller army as a result. so while you have more income to do things, you cant build as big an army and risk a higher chance of defeat during battle. without this risk the game becomes a race for bases, out mining the enemy and spamming units, and ultimate skills until you win. ( again, if i get more mines than the enemy does, i can usually cast an air strike as soon as one is over because i have enough gold to do so.
Human’s base is too powerful and as soon as you have the main / turrets you can kill a whole army with just those turrets and base. In WarCraft 3, if you have a full army and you are against 4 towers, those towers will weaken units and might kill 1 or 2, but since you have of 24 units, you have way more than enough to kill the towers. The fact that there is no long range siege units to kill turrets makes things harder since it seems like there is no counter for turrets. in rts games there should be a counter for everything. one person spams towers in any regular rts, and uses up most of his income on that, then its obvious that you should get siege units that counter those towers. if the enemys army is there as well, then good luck trying to fight off the towers and the enemys army. Even after you beat the enemy in a fight away from his base, you will still lack the health on your units to do any damage to his base, because because those towers will murder you. Towers could have lots of health, thats ok, but if they do less damage then the enemy has to fight them longer, and they have the option to because their whole army isnt being destroyed by the towers, and it also allows the other player to rebuild units to fight off the attacker and keep the fight going longer. I read somewhere where the developer wants to add scaling of the buildings health based on the amount of players that are playing. That is a bad solution to this problem. Scaling the map is about the only thing that should be done depending on the number of players playing at that moment. warcraft, C&C, starcraft, and all other rts games dont have an issue with this area and dont resort to scaling of building health. the reason they can do this is because they have other buildings that the enemy could attack to break the users economy, or put them at a disadvantage and break the user down through a few attacks. its obvious that if there is only one building that the user has to take care of in worldshift that games with 3 players will resort in focus firing toward that building. its because theres nothing else to attack.. If there were research buildings, or item shops, or even a user made ( destroyable ) wall/blockade, then this wouldnt be an issue as the enemy would have to focus on that first.
The Human’s base sensor upgrade has a distance that is insanely huge. Once you have 2-3 bases in the middle of the map you see where your opponent is at all times, which is an unfair advantage and lacks any surprise on the guy that has the advantage. in my opinion it would be better to have items that can be placed on a spot to reveal a medium sized area around it, or extra buildings that act as unit detectors. This way you only see smaller sections of the map, which gives you some advantage, but not to the point that you control the entire map and leave the enemy with no way to come back, surprise you, and possibly win. another solution would be to have dedicated scout units which could be made invisible for a certain amount of time. this would allow the user to scout the enemys base without getting killed, and checking out what the enemy is doing with their army, but it would allow them to do so without making it too cheap. so there would have to be a higher cooldown for the invisibility. surprise is what makes these types of games exciting, so by removing this out of the equation due to the huge radius reveal, removes a lot of the fun from this game, due to lack of surprise.
There ABSOLUTELY HAS TO BE REPLAYS!! If this game enters the pro gaming scene, then there HAS to be replays. New players get to see how the pros play and get to see strategies and what types of units to get against certain strategies. If Map Hack does enter this game ( which it has in WarCraft 3, although a patch is comming to stop it ) you can save a replay and send it to report them and get them banned.