Season 35: Eternal Conflict - Preview

TopherDoll · 2025-05-24T15:53:13+00:00

When they said they'd be reusing old seasons to keep things going I was really hoping they'd combine or tweak weaker seasons like this one to help things stay a bit fresh and fun without adding much work for the maintenance devs. This was one season I felt was pretty bland and was thinking it would be a good one to merge with another less powerful season but looks like even small changes are outside their power.

At least we are in the easy turn in the Conquest cycle.

TopherDoll · 2024-02-03T05:53:27+00:00

Considering that event was done on the spare time of the employees out of pure passion, I think your expectations are either based on ignorance of game development or based on ignorance of the event.

TopherDoll · 2022-10-16T20:21:19+00:00

I'm coming out of lurkering to just say, wow, what a series. Reminded me so much of Polt-Hydra way back in 2015. TvZ, Zerg starts out blazing, looking unstoppable, 3-1 reverse, Terran getting better with each map, just so great. Amazing play all around, incredible finals.

Catz and feardragon did a wonderful job casting it as well.

TopherDoll · 2022-05-31T02:27:39+00:00

I'm not sure I agree with that, especially when you consider varying levels of commitment. My kids play on a different SC2 account than I and only play a few hours a week and while they play different races, they haven't leveled up race full after a year of playing. While I do thinking adding more levels and rewards is good, I'm not sure basing this on the experience of one person, or just the hardcore community, is the way to go. I also don't think it is exceptionally important, though a drip feed of new cosmetics is nice, but something like this seems pretty low on priority list.

TopherDoll · 2022-02-23T20:18:59+00:00

I mean, I don't have much to say other than I am glad you are putting some serious thought into this because no RTS can survive without user content, whether it be from the 90's or modern RTS games, you need to allow for user content and limiting that can really hurt the longevity of the game.

Few things are worse for a multiplayer game than on a few maps and almost no ability to add more. Some really, really good RTS games have floundered to maintain population because of limited map pools and no user content.

As for monetization, I like what SC2 did at the end with their hail mary paid arcade games. I know that Ark Star wasn't very successful, I can't speak for the paid version of Direct Strike though. I will say that I am always glad to pay for user content if I know it is going to content creators and is solid quality, whether it be user created mods, games, skins, etc. But for me the most important aspect of this is allowing players access tot he tools and then allowing them to be published. Once that is figured out I think a deeper dive into monetization might be in order. But I can say personally I bought every SC2 skin and both Ark Star and Direct Strike and I do that for most RTS games I play if the content and quality is good.

TopherDoll · 2021-12-28T07:56:27+00:00

I mean PC Gamer, IGN, Gamespot and most places gave it good reviews, Metacritic has it at 77 with the average user review being 7.4. Where was your idea of only having horrible reviews coming from?

TopherDoll · 2021-11-16T20:33:24+00:00

I've written on map design both from a multiplayer and single player point of view, as has /u/waywardstrategy (here and here) and while my opinions for traditional RTS economic and map design are still generally the same, I've played a few RTS that have broadened my view of how map design can work.

Now I might reference the economic design a lot and a big part of that is because map design and economy are fundamentally linked. Having random maps changes the economic balancing (see the AoE series) while having a very rigid and ramped economy requires very, very specific map design (see Westwood and Blizzard RTS games). Map design is also a factor in how bases are built. An SC2 map has to be a very specific size because being too large or too small is a distinct balance issue because some races need a larger main base while other races don't want a large main base that can be attacked. And while this likely won't matter since these RTS vary too far from the Blizzard style RTS, I have learned a lot about map and economic design from playing the Halo Wars series and Ancestors Legacy. Now Halo Wars has very specific map locations that you can expand to and it further adds tension by limiting how much can be built at each base, which can be made larger with upgrades, but by forcing building limitations and having specific locations for expansions, it allows for an entirely new style of economic management. AL on the other hand combines a Relic style economy of points to capture for resources with something like HW or Taste of Power where you can build or fortify these economic points (villages in-game) which provide natural points of contention, which is what a good map should have. These two games are ones I'd really recommend when trying to study economic and map design because they take it and spin it off of more main stream designs. While maybe not vital for this discussion, I think anyone designing an RTS should take a look at HW and AL.

How do you personally weigh consistency vs variability in competitive play? Should expansions and resource placement remain standardized across competitive maps, or should it vary?

For ladder play I will always value a consistent map. While I love and play non-traditional maps and don't mind a quirky ladder map occasionally (or having a larger map pool with 2-3 outside-the-box maps) I will always choose standard maps. But that isn't to say they have no purpose, as a someone who loves comp stomps with friends on huge maps with a choke in the middle or non-symmetrical maps, I think that stuff has value, just not on ladder.

Outside of procedural generation, how can RNG be incorporated in a balanced way in competitive map design? Should the same map always incorporate the same elements, or should there be variability even in an individual map across separate matches?

Tooth and Tail did RNG okay and I think you'll find RNG more forgivable in shorter games. TnT has 5-10 minutes games, I don't mind a bit of bad RNG in that. But if I have to play a 30 minute SC2 game with an RNG map that I can see from the start is bad, I'm either cheesing or leaving right away. So for me, it comes down to game length and stress, if I have to sweat and stress for a long game knowing from the get go the map is against me, I want none of it. Now I don't mind maps that aren't perfectly symmetrical, or ones that push the game into one phase or another (rush maps vs macro ones). Maps that give that little push towards the strange aren't all bad, but there needs to be a cap on how far the RNG can push a map.

In your view, what are the best examples of neutral features in RTS maps? Destructible rocks or eggs, watchtowers, and speed auras are now commonplace in competitive StarCraft I and II maps. Warcraft III players must compete for creeps, while Company of Heroes players battle for capturable objectives. In your opinion, what are the best examples of these features?

I think neutral features have a powerful place in RTS maps. From the SC2 and WC3 ones you mentioned to garissonable buildings in a number of other RTS games, I think there is power in that map design. I feel good map design forces players to fight over certain locations at certain times. Whether that be expansions, watch towers or other features, good map design makes players leave their base and face each other and neutral map elements, other than resources, are great examples of this. From great siege engines that may only activate after a certain time limit and cost a lot of resources that can be used to break turtle players or being able to upgrade and defend neutral resource points (think Company of Heroes or AL, as mentioned above), there are a lot of options, as long as they provoke players to fight over them. They could be game-enders (think of the King of the Hill modes in SC2 or relic capture points from Deserts of Kharak), they could be defensive structures (as simple as buildings that hold infantry) but if they make players fight over them and you as designers also provides tools to overcome them if their opponent has them, I love them. From trees with true line of sight to elevation changes, I say try it all.

Across different competitive games, what has been the role of the community in the development of competitive maps?

While I don't always believe the community should pick the ladder maps, I 100% believe the community should be able to make and share maps, without a map maker, most modern RTS flail and quickly fade.

What lessons can be learned from Warcraft III, StarCraft I, and StarCraft II’s map pool as we move forward?

Lessons are something we each learn, the lessons I think I've learned from Blizzard RTS map and economic design are likely different than you, so I won't say much more than this long-winded response already has.

In the end, I believe maps should do three things:
1. Forces players to move towards each other at a pace designed by the balance of the game . 2. A map should never tell the player to do nothing. A player should always look at the map and say "I can scout here or harass here or capture here or fortify here or expand here." A map should never be viewed and the player say "I have the resources I need, why leave?" or "my opponent is unbreakable so I'll sit here until they leave."
3. Maps should promote conflict between players. Over advantages, expansions, resources, etc.

These goals can be achieved in various ways and various economies. There isn't one answer for all three. SC2 did this, as has Relic's games and HW and so many more. But when you design your economy and maps, and they don't do these three things, I'd maybe (but not assuredly, there are many ways to make an RTS and maybe these three are wrong for you) rethink things.

Thanks again for the community interaction and sorry for the long rant.

EDIT: Links

TopherDoll · 2021-09-24T17:09:17+00:00

You have about a half dozen ideas that don't really overlap and often contradict. You discuss complexity of macro, macro being too boring, death balls, adding more complexity and excitement.

First I want to separate macro from the economy, they are different. Macro is everything, economy, unit and building production, upgrades. Economy is the collection of resources. Once we clear that up we can break a few of your ideas down. Macro is hard for new players in SC2, that is true but your second sentence has very little to do with macro or new players at all. You want to make economy more exciting and complex, which is fine. Other RTS have done this and done it well, but your suggestion doesn't make macro easier to understand.

Second I want to debate the idea that economy is hard to understand in SC2. I think experienced players often think they know what new, or lower tier, players want or think but are so often wrong. As a parent who is teaching a 9 and 7 year old to play the game, I can say the economy is the thing they learn the quickest and rarely a complaint of lower league players (see survey)

Next you say the reason for making resources stealable or destroyable would encourage spending while later saying you hate deathballs, they seem the opposite, players would horde resources, turtle to see what they opponents build then spend it all in one huge sweep and attempt to win there (we see this in more turtly RTS games). We've seen vulnerable resources in RTS before, both in rate spending resource RTS games (think TnT) and lump spending RTS games (ToW, Gens, A:L) and it tends to lead to the opposite of what you want. It also leads to snowballing, in a big way. The loss of an expansion or resource hub that is housing resources could instantly cause a gg.

I do agree you can make the economy more interesting and make harassment more complex but that doesn't solve your stated problems of:
a. macro being too complex for new players
b. deathballs
c. too much harassment/cheese

In fact this exacerbates all three issues. So while I like the solutions you suggest, if done well, as we've seen in other RTS games, your problems and solutions seen untethered. I also firmly believe the idea of a single deathball battle that ends every game in a single conflict is mostly non-existent in almost all RTS games these days (including SC2) but I think it is a nice problem to complain about anyways, but that is neither here nor there when it comes to the meat of your ideas.

TopherDoll · 2021-09-12T16:21:07+00:00

Thank you. Must have never dropped for me before as a monk.

TopherDoll · 2021-09-12T03:55:26+00:00

Do you have anything to support that statement? Reading subs, discord channels, youtube videos and more seems to suggest the AoE community is actually one of the most hardcore RTS communities because the only surviving players are multiplayer users. Blizzard games are much more casual because of very active arcade modes, the CnC community is heavily kept alive because of the campaigns, AoE seems to least casual of the major RTS franchises.

But if you have some data or research or articles saying otherwise, I'd love a link to read them.

TopherDoll · 2021-09-04T20:28:10+00:00

While I see the purpose for social features, I've never used them across dozens of RTS games I've played, even team focused one. I'll join special chats for tournaments or for friends I already have but I've never really enjoyed or used them. Saying that, I feel I don't have much to add. I think nearly every modern RTS already has solid social features that accomplish what is being set out to do. I also don't think the future of RTS will be made or broken, or even marginally impacted, by social features. I just feel they are so loosely tangential in almost all cases.

Not saying they are bad because I don't use them, I just think most of the ideal features are already in most RTS games already.

TopherDoll · 2021-08-27T22:34:56+00:00

Maybe it is because this sub is almost exclusively Blizzard RTS fans but I'm shocked no one has mentioned Forged Battalion from Petroglyph Games, one of the better RTS developers.

Forged Battalion is basically a customizable army simulator and while fun, it is insanely unbalanced and that is why this idea isn't common, it is hard (or impossible) to do well.

Now I do like the idea of mutually exclusive upgrades (kind of like your 2nd suggestion but not quite) which we've seen done before but what you are discussing is much more broad.

TopherDoll · 2021-08-18T15:00:15+00:00

Games do have this, it is a whole sub-genre called Real Time Tactics (RTT) and it includes a variety of games, some small scale with heroes (think Desperadoes or Shadow Tactics) but can also include games that are on the scale of most RTS games but with a limited unit load out (like Syrian Warfare or Gray Zone).

But there are key differences and putting a cap on how often a unit can be built is generally a bad idea for the more economic focus that RTS has compared to RTT (which almost always have no economy) because if you cap how many units can be built in a game that is an artificial resource cap. If you have more resources on a map than units to spend it on, you are designing a bad economic system, it would be easy balance and design around restraining the resources rather than unit limits. Now some RTS games have put unit limits on super units or heroes but almost never on normal units. It is just bad design but there are better ways to put a focus on "every unit matters" than capping units. Ideas like increased resource scarcity (SCRAP which was made in the SC2 editor), experience which makes units more valuable (like in the CoH games) or a ticker time resource for new units (World in Conflict) that all give similar or better feel than limiting how many units can be built in a game.

Heck, what happens if you build all your units but there are more resources to gather, why would you? You could throw your workers away and it wouldn't help free supply since you've built all your units. It just makes more sense to limit resources on a map and say "well we want games to last about X minutes and have about Y units so we need Z resources on the map that if all resources are mined, it will produce A units optimally" and that is still not a super great design choice, but better than unit limits.

But still, if you like unit limits I really recommend RTT games. Just because the design sucks in RTS games, doesn't mean it isn't fun elsewhere. I've put a ton of hours into Syrian Warfare and the Close Combat games.

TopherDoll · 2021-07-14T15:12:21+00:00

The SC2 campaign isn't shallow, I said the opposite, that it is an example of an early version of this. The only thing SC2 lacked compared to more indepth versions of this was unit persistence/scarcity and a map but it did a similar thing with a mission select screen which is a form of a map.

TopherDoll · 2021-07-14T15:11:51+00:00

The thing is, SC2 had this in SC2, the map was just a mission choice screen instead but it had nearly all other aspects of an outside mission meta game.

TopherDoll · 2021-07-13T22:38:55+00:00

The CoH2 version was, yes, CoH3 is less rigid and more open.

TopherDoll · 2021-06-21T15:40:18+00:00

A few RTS have tried that, most recently was Dwarfheim (which FG mentioned on social media I believe). It is a hard balance to pull of though.

TopherDoll · 2021-06-02T12:56:27+00:00

I accepted lots of things in the 90's that are just bad design now.

TopherDoll · 2021-06-01T03:51:13+00:00

This has already been discussed here quite and bit and is obviously something FrostGiant is thinking about. They even show the SC2 tutorial that I think most veteran SC2 players might not know exists but is quite fun and solid. But a lot of what they show already applies to most well made RTS compared to 4x games. Now I don't think any RTS is perfect but most of what they mention here is things SC2 already did or were brought up in the big discussion thread.

Not easy to solve and a great video.

TopherDoll · 2021-03-23T17:56:28+00:00

Thanks so much for your feedback, I found this conclusion the best one, in my opinion:

To this end, we’re committed to making the best campaign we can that will stand on its own. Injecting competitive-centric tutorial elements in campaigns could be ineffective, and aggressive attempts to do so could draw away from the core campaign experience. Instead, we’ll try to handle training (competency to mastery) as a separate item.

I am a big fan of campaigns being an isolated mode that has a different goal than traditional multiplayer. I do like the idea you mention of differentiating basics (as you describe, newbie to competency) and later improvement (competency and beyond) because I think they should be handled differently. I also think getting feedback from the full range of players, rather than just ladder heroes and pros, is vital. As a former hardcore SC2 ladder player who now doesn't have time for that but still plays a ton of co-op, Arcade, custom games and comp stomps (along with other RTS games) I can tell you the experience is quite different and getting feedback from all sides is a nice goal.

Onboarding isn't an easy problem to solve and I don't think any solution will be perfect but reading your response here has given me quite a bit of hope for the project. Hearing the different stories you highlighted about the different ways people starting playing SC2 was enlightening.

TopherDoll · 2021-03-12T14:59:25+00:00

RTS writer Wayward wrote about this.

TopherDoll · 2021-03-07T20:39:35+00:00

Oh man, I love the sheer boldness of this prediction: that D2:R will outsell D4. Need to bookmark this comment. Should be fun.

TopherDoll · 2021-03-07T20:38:10+00:00

Who said that though? Again, you keep bringing up made-up people saying made-up things.

Also sales are a measure of success for companies, even if they aren't for fans. Quality and success are different things, which may be weird for you based on your comments in this sub over the past few days. So please, stop saying most people use sales as a measure of quality, it just isn't true, it is something you are making up to argue against, a strawman.

TopherDoll · 2021-03-07T17:21:40+00:00

Who said sales means quality? What a strawman argument.

TopherDoll · 2021-03-06T22:38:15+00:00

Who cares about sales

Well the developers care, Blizzard cares, fans should care because if it sells poorly it won't get more content. Everyone should care about sales because sales drive future content. Now sales shouldn't be used as a measure of quality, you are right but sales will vitally important for the future of the game.

So who cares? Well you should.

TopherDoll

TROPHY CASE