>New game comes out.
>Everybody's new to the game, flood of exploration and emergent gameplay.
>After some time, "meta" is established. Certain strategies and techniques dominate.
>After more time, meta ossifies. Emphasis changes from exploration to memorizing esoteric quirks in the game mechanics. New players get dunked by tryhard veterans who spent 100x hours scouring forums and FAQs. Playerbase begins to shrink and evaporates over time.
How do we break this pattern?
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modest randomization of unit, building, etc. stats every time a new game starts
Global modifiers that apply to all (applicable) units/buildings would be easier to explain and understand. Random unit stats would leave people checking each unit every game to find the one which got good rolls.
Have a pool of 20 different modifiers, pick 5 per game, and you should be set to practically never duplicate the exact same game conditions.
This except the randomisation isn't to stats. Instead the game should be designed around the idea that tactics beat tactics. Units simply determine what tactics are possible, in conjunction with factors such as the terrain, resources and player decisions. Making units hard-counter each other is nearly always bad.
Paradox games have *never* reached any such 'level'. They are 'games' where instead of playing the warlord, you're playing the warlord's secretary. Even when PDX had a promising game in Stellaris, they ruined it by making it more like their other products and stripping it of identity. They don't know anything and need to fricking collapse.
None of what you're saying about Paradox games really relates to the topic at hand.
>Units simply determine what tactics are possible, in conjunction with factors such as the terrain, resources and player decisions. Making units hard-counter each other is nearly always bad.
Ok, but how does this allow you to have a combat system without stats and local/global minima in army compositions and strategies that everyone will converge to in order to maximize victory chances for minimum effort?
by not playing competitive multiplayer and instead just playing to have fun
By not having rock paper scissors type shit. MoW is probably the best example of just trying your best to represent shit realistically and as a result offer the Most Effective Tactic Available is different each match as all tactics are viable in a vacuum.
I've played a good amount of multiplayer MoW and its various sequels. Players don't think of it as having an "established meta" because it doesn't really have a big enough player base and a discussive space and ecosystem to create one. In any case you're clearly confusing meta for the made up and useless backronym of "Most Effective Tactic Available". I can assure you there are indeed good tactics and bad tactics in MoW, it's just that the community is too small to enable a discussion of what it is. We don't even have a real established league to prove who the best players are. Without that I'm sure anyone can happily claim "all tactics are viable" lmao.
This, Brood War hasn't had a balance patch since 2001 and new build orders are still being created and used competitively.
Well, Starcraft 2 made do by constantly releasing balance patches to constantly shift the meta and create the sense of a dynamically shifting meta. I'm not really a fan of that since it's clearly an artificial attempt to dictate what should be a natural result of player base discovery.
slaves will always be slaves.
if your game doesn't have esoteric quirks it probably isn't deep enough to be fun. anyway you basically have two options: the first is write a balancing algorithm to dynamically shift and cycle values inside the game on a monthly or quarterly basis to destroy the existing meta completely or to set an end date beyond which you will terminate access to the online portion of the game after two or three years, preventing the cesspit from forming. don't pretend you will personally balance things forever, because you know you won't.
It's not even really true. All of this requires combined arms. An unsupported tank can get assblasted by infantry, and in order to counter AA the US developed the wild weasel doctrine.
thats called a bad game
>How do we break this pattern?
"We" don't have to do anything, the majority of RTS players always have and always will gravitate towards the strategies that ensure they win the game.
The impetus is on game devs to make games where the "best" way to play the game is still immersive and fun. A Cold War game should reward you for playing according to your respective side's doctrine, a sci-fi or fantasy game should reward players for adhering to their faction's "theme," turn-based tactic games should manage risk and reward without forcing you to cheese them.
The biggest issue with this is that it's pretty clear that modern devs don't actually play their own games. There are very few RTS games I would consider near perfect, but at least there was some understanding of how their own projects worked in the 2000s. Modern devs are either content to release unfinished trash or are utterly incapable of balancing their own games. In my experience a game is either balanced at launch (and typically "ruined" by a DLC later down the line) or never properly balanced at all.
Multiplayer generally sucks now because everyone online is a obnoxious prick who will rage/dc if you start winning. There is almost no sense of community outside of forums. As for beating the meta, just use a counter strategy. Meta is bum rushing tanks? Then get a bunch of anti tank units
Rapidly make new games.
It's a made up pattern. Starcraft Brood War's meta is still evolving even though it hasn't had a balance patch in like 20 years.
BW's balance stasis is a complete meme, play a tournament on the maps the game shipped with and you'll see how "balanced" the game really is
Adopt SC1's balance style where hard counters are rare and infrequent and usually exist to counter-balance something that'd otherwise get nerfed into oblivion or removed entirely.
Classic example, Zerg would have zero problem abusing their numbers advantage against Terran's early game, even if the terran player had the self awareness to utilize choke points, because you just get more zerglings than they can have marines. So firebats exist. They deal AOE damage and they don't struggle dealing with zerglings in the slightest. Because the alternative would be to nerf zerglings either into not existing, or being a complete joke. And it's not like Firebats are overpowered- they have two critical flaws, one in that they're bad in numbers, and they deal concussive damage, meaning they deal half-damage to medium sized units and quarter damage to large targets.
But most of the time the difference between good and bad units is just how the player handles them.
Man, it's a shame Blizzard didn't ship Starcraft with a map making tool. Absolute shame.
>Yes? It would be a problem if it wasn't the case.
RTS's have two problems. The first is that the depth they afford players usually means that the difference between an experienced player and a newbie is night and day, and your typical match takes over 10 minutes. It's not fun to play a game you have no chance of winning but are still expected to play it out. Figuring out how to get players to actually get good without the kind of hand holding that a strict ELO rating system ends up producing is difficult.
you can't explore the same rock a second time
only a massive autist would actually try
any normal child picks up the rock and plays with it
like throwing it at someone or whatever
scrub mentality on embarrassing display itt
mocking people who put more than 40 hours into our game until they qq
Anon, that's the fate of all FOTM games regardless of genre. You either stick with one for a while that you get gud enough to keep up with the other eight guys on the planet who still play it, or ditch it and pick up the latest thing to play as noob among noobs.
It can't be helped that games are so disposable. Having the kind of longevity AoE2 has (where you get to play against plenty of LELs if you're not gud), is just not meant to be for most of them.
Don't make RTS.
A game needs to be so good and expansive that a meta can't develop – Paradox games kind of almost reach this level, but the only one to really get there while having a relatively large playerbase (as far as I know) is the Dominions series.
>After some time, "meta" is established. Certain strategies and techniques dominate.
Meta can change on its own, but if it doesn't - reshuffle the balance once in a while.
>New players get dunked by tryhard veterans who spent 100x hours scouring forums and FAQs.
Yes? It would be a problem if it wasn't the case.
OP literally has never played a single multiplayer game in his entire life.
True depth, but people dont actually like it like they think they do.
>New game comes out
This is the main problem. Stop making new games and the problem will solve itself. Nobody ever says that more multiplayer games are needed. Everyone says that enough is enough and that the old stuff is still the best. New games fail to catch on every time.
The already slim playerbase needs to consolidate so that more players play fewer games. That way the scene gets less stale and players of all levels of skill get to find the right match.
Stop releasing new games.
i dont understand
isnt this true to life strategizing?
isnt this warfare strategy all along?
isnt this just the prince, art of war, how to win friends and influence people, pick up artist ?
>prince
The frick does the Prince has to do with strategy?
It's a manual for low level monarchy written by a republican.
In real life, you can equip your scissors with anti-radiation missiles and use them to beat rock.
Its unavoidable. Look at chess as an example.
>Game was originally 4 players
>People start using two armies because its probably harder to find 4 people than two
>For a thousand years the second king becomes an "advisor"
>Europeans change it to queen and make it op to make the game dynamic
>Game has become so stale again half end in draws and meme openers are used just to throw off meta
>Chess needs another row/ column to invalidate all the old theory and make it interesting again.
That's foolish because Chaturanga was only an inspiration to a vastly different game that the Persians made called Shatranji. Chess as we know it was originally exactly like Shatranji, in fact Chess is just the European name for the same game. As for Chaturanga, it is debated as to whether the Indians were inspired by the Chinese version called Xiangqi, or if the Chinese were inspired by Chaturanga. Xiangqi is closer to Chess, as it's a 2 player game, the main changes are an additional piece and a vastly different board
I use to be addicted to a game where everyone was so overpowered they basically had their own niches. Units could be balanced off eachother, but most of the time they were all centered around their strategic impact on the game as a whole. Counters existed but out-maneuvering the enemy mattered way more, and a lot of stuff in the game didn't have counters but just played completely differently. One might be good at large scale battles, one might be good at taking objectives, one might be good at causing a ton of chaos but not ending the game, one might be good at wiping out units that are isolated, etc.
I'd say what game it is but I know it'd cause a ton of seething. Just know it's do-able, you just can't balance the units on their unit-to-unit interaction. There needs to be a variety of unit niches not just them slapping eachother for more damage in a fight.
What game?
I guess it was DotA / Dota 2
Clearly not an RTS, that's for sure.
Do what SF did.
That's really just an issue with smurfing.
>people get better at the game as they play
>eventually, obvious and easy to implement strategies and optimizations in gameplans dwindle and run out
>non-functional strategic choices are weeded out, versatile and/or powerufl ones are discovered and move to the forefront
>after the baseline is established, skill improvement on the higher end shifts to more minute tactical nuances and mechanical skill
this is where an anon jumps in
>anon is clueless, starts throwing shit at the wall without having an understanding of what's important yet
>the info is already out there, but anon doesn't even try to figure out the fundamental strategic framework of the game
>predictably, fails repeatedly
>instead of trying to compensate through learning what others already have put out there, assigns blame onto nuances and mechanical skill that are pretty much irrelevant at his (low) skill level
>complains that games are designed wrongly, refuses to play on
>proceeds to make faux-authoritative claims on why RTS isn't more popular
you fricking casuals can't even comprehend why you're wrong because your point of reference for understanding the RTS genre is at the level of utter ineptitude
>"b-but i played some command and conquer and uhhh warcraft and red alert and so many more games in single player though i'm a real RTS understander btw total annihilation is epic and uhhh dune was different to modern games and it was great haha!"
this is like a kid starting to learn physics, failing at understanding newton's laws of motion, and then screeching that relativistic mechanics and quantum phenomena are somehow "not real physics" and "too obtuse", and that's the reason why there's so few scientists around, physics needs to be done without all that bullshit, and we need to make skill at predicting which way an apple will fall from a tree more important for high-level physics
literally, unironically, git gud at a single popular RTS game, and then talk
The fundamental flaw with basically every PVP 'strategy game' is that strategizing is eliminated from gameplay extremely quickly. After the first month or two of its life being good at an RTS requires no strategic thought or skill on your part. You only memorize the metagamed 'best choice' to make when interacting with every mechanic. The only thing left to get good at is grinding the mechanical skills to execute faster than your opponent and abuse whatever bugs exist in the game.
And no, playing rock/paper/scissors by deciding whether or not to rush, turtle, or boom at the start of the game is not strategizing.
if you accept meta strategies as gospel, you're a moron
you're also a moron if you challenge meta strategies with examining the reasoning behind what makes them dominant
as an example, do you understand why the general consensus is that 6 vills on sheep is the way to go in dark age in AoE2? if you do, you should be able to tell me a circumstance or goal that could bring someone to break this convention and put 5, or 7 on sheep instead. what about how many you put on wood? why would you put 2, 3, or 4 on wood in early dark age? when would you build or not build farms in early feudal age? if your scout discovers that the opponent has 4 on gold in late dark age, what does it mean and how should you react?
if you want to try telling me these are not part of strategy, your personal definition of strategy is so vague it's basically meaningless
if your way of thinking about "meta" is "6 on sheep is meta so i put 6 on sheep" and never examine the factors that go into the decision, you're not strategizing, you're willfully ignoring strategy instead of internalizing it, and there's no wonder you think RTS runs out of strategy potential quickly
then again, you'd know all of this if you were any good at the games, you bloody casual
>you're also a moron if you challenge meta strategies with examining
i meant "challenge without examining", obv
99% of the time when people say strategising is dead, what they actually mean is 'I can't win with whatever plan I have'. They somehow always fail to realise that meta IS the result of people experimenting and strategising.
This nebulous idea of 'superior strategy should trump all' is just the RTS version of the ever-ubiquitous scrub mentality, followed up by inane statements about APM or cheese. In fighting games, it's 'the fight should be honourable'. It's all so tiresome.
>7 on sheep
WHO TOLD YOU?!
shhhhhhhh
Wow dude micro analyzing vill counts on resources is so strategic and big picture. I'm fascinated by the idea of spending time reasoning about whether or not 6 (mathematically proven to be the best choice) or 7 (makes you worse off in every possible measure) on sheep is better. In one of the most brutally optimized RTS games ever made I love to waste my time thinking about and testing tactics that are doomed because there is one viable option in every circumstance, all of which have already been enumerated by the community, and not doing it is suicide.
I unironically love RTS like AoE2 and SC but i want a game where I get to big picture and come up with a meta on my own. My snide remarks about AOE2's meta aside, I think DE is amazing because they rebalance things and it forces there to he novelty in what was a rigid meta for years and years. I think an RTS should try something like Path of Exile where there's a side league with a bunch of changes and gimmicks changes every few months so the meta gets invalidated frequently and the community gets to go through that early game period where nobody knows wtf is going on and strategies are more interesting and varied.
Yes, chess is solved. There is an optimal move in all situations and Stockfish can tell me what it is. Magnus quit standard tournaments and plays blitz now for this reason. Monopoly is also solved.
Low Elo?
The fight should not be honorable, that's the point of strategy. The game that
is talking about did it. Why can't ours?
>I'm fascinated by the idea of spending time reasoning about whether or not 6 (mathematically proven to be the best choice) or 7 (makes you worse off in every possible measure) on sheep is better.
Just stop posting. I currently use a 7-sheep build on Arabia that's about to become even more powerful next patch due to my civ's properties. If you understood the game, you wouldn't think these are absolute.
If anything, dark age is all about food and food alone. Even with 2 on wood you can manage to get the 2 structures you need.
Low elo hands wrote that post.
Maybe your favorite YouTuber will make a video where he casts one of your games and shows you eek out a win against another shitter despite how trash you are. I'm sure it'll get lots of upvotes on reddit too.
If you were any good you wouldn't slow yourself down for literally no benefit. If you have idle TC time or need to force drop you're bad.
You'll lose more food than you'll save from decay to vills bumping lmao.
What? You'll get early double bit with the extra food? You could have just had one more on wood moron.
You'll have a buffer to keep a vil queued on your TC? Do you not use hotkeys or something LOL... You're banking food to age up? Banked food is wasted food, you need to get wood online so you can transition to boar which has significantly higher gather time dude. You don't want to get housed or not be able to drop your feudal buildings do you??
Resource banking, buffering, and queuing early is the easiest way to detect bad age player. This game is about efficiency, if you're storing you're wasting.
I'm guessing you're following a 7sheep China guide from some YouTuber with a PogChamp face in the thumbnail and big yellow text saying "THE META IS OVER???". Uninstall AoE2 and play something more your speed. K thx bai.
>7 sheep, therefore meme build with idle tc, constant vill bumping, resource banking, and a YT build
Mother of frick, how are you even alive? The only explanation is that you just suck at math. I'm not even going to tell you why I put 7 on sheep or what civ the build is for. Suffer, moron.
You can't even reply to my post correctly. Maybe you accidentally made 7 vils in your last game and you're experiencing cognitive dissonance so you need to defend its viability instead of admitting it's a mistake? IDK but I don't really want to know why you're making a shit decision, I just know it doesn't matter cause our Elos are so far apart we'll never play against each other.
Maybe play something different for a while, this strategy game might be more your speed B^)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1142710
I'm not that guy and I don't play Aoe2 but i'm interested in all and every "off-meta" build and strategy, can you in general terms describe the advantages of one extra villager on sheep harvesting over having that guy do something else? I can share other off-meta builds from completely different games in return
It's basically just having more villager-seconds allocated to food instead of another resource.
i get that, but what does that give you meta-wise? does more food resource translate into a more efficient/unexpected army or something?
Anon, toy around with standard build orders. If there's something you want to do differently, and you need more food to do it, you change your dark age build so you can afford it by whatever time you need. If you want to add an additional scout or M@A or something, at the cost of wood, you can go 7 sheep.
lmao, you can say this about every game. Chess, soccer, monopoly.
That's a (You) problem, try to be less moronic.
just make sure that there is no meta, or that the rock paper scissors is actually rock paper scissors scientist snake well airplane cavalry [and a bunch of other things so the list is too long to list] see also Dominions 5
>just make sure that there is no meta
this is literally impossible unless the game is omega-dead
Give actual strategy to the game beyond "kill all the enemies" and "capture point".
Block enemy camps so they can't farm
Destroy enemy wards so they can't see
Put deep wards in the enemy jungle so you can know their movements when making risky plays
Stack camps so your units can outfarm the enemy
Split push to divert the enemies attention and farm while you try to get to the lategame
All of these have downsides btw.
>Block enemy camps so they can't farm
Block enemy camps means you're using up limited wards that you might need to see invisible units, deward or just see the map. The enemy will also know a ward is there and try to destroy it.
>Destroy enemy wards so they can't see
Destroying an enemy ward means either wasting resources trying to find them or guessing where one is based on the enemies reactions. You can also bait the enemy team if you know where their vision is.
>Put deep wards in the enemy jungle so you can know their movements when making risky plays
Putting deep wards isn't always the best move because sometimes the enemy has your shit pushed in and no one is playing on that side of the map, it'll only benefit people farming there because it's the only place the enemy isn't
>Stack camps so your units can outfarm the enemy
You need a unit that can clear stacks and if the enemy team sees the stacks they'll rush it to steal it.
>Split push to divert the enemies attention and farm while you try to get to the lategame
Numerous factors play into how viable this is. If the enemy team is deathballing to end the game it's probably not a good idea. If the enemy is turtling it's not a good idea.
Sounds hard, unless you think up something dubious, most objectives are easier simply by killing the enemy, or the objectives are just fulfilled on the path to killing the enemy.
This is true for all competitive events, including irl sports like athletics or motorsports. If you want to have a competitive edge you have to study the top competitors and not just imitate - you have to become them. You have to learn their techniques, their training routines, their diet. You need to know all the tricks, exploits, loopholes and everything not forbidden by the rules that can help you inside out. Some consider cheating if they know they won't get caught. In the end, the best competitors are mostly identical to one another and they want to win because it would be a shame to lose after all that effort. Sometimes an actual prodigy crushes the opponents and that's when everyone works overtime to dissect and copy his style, and soon enough everyone is in on the secret.
If this isn't you, then you shouldn't bother. Stick to games that are casual, cooperative, creative, social or relaxational.
if you lock a bunch of people up in an arena and have them fight to the death with each person getting one of each item then everyone is gonna throw their rock at the paper people
>homosexual makes a thread
>It's full of shit and dick-sucking
>Everyone tells him to frick off, but he keeps coming back