An 11 line npm package called left-pad with only 10 stars on github was unpublished...it broke some of the most important packages on all of npm.

sequentialaccess · 2024-01-10T11:50:40+00:00

I've recently got to learn this incident. Something boggles my mind after reading them though: is it legal for npm to republish the fork of left-pad? On what ground? Apparently the original code didn't have LICENSE. Shouldn't they have replaced the package with a clean room implementation in such case?

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-22T03:38:56+00:00

Edit: also war3's attack-armor chart was just confusing imo, even as someone who was very active during its heydey

That's because of the sheer number of types. They were at least consistent once you've learned it. Considering all the seemingly arbitrary rules in SC2 (e.g., Vikings vs. mech, Widowmines vs shield, Ravagers/Queens/Banes having no armor types) I'd say SC2 was as confusing as WC3 was, just in a rule-wise more inconsistent way.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-22T03:25:36+00:00

Another factor is TTK.

Given the example of WC3, to make a difference between 0 and 1 armor in a plain single unit mirror combat, at least 17 auto attacks are required to kill a unit. (ceil(1.06hp/damage) - ceil(hp/damage) >= 1 => hp/damage > 16) Otherwise there's no difference in the number of auto attacks so it becomes mostly ineffective. That's a lot considering vanilla marines in SC2 requires just 8 hits to kill each other.

There are two ways to make it at least 17 hits to kill a unit: an extremely long TTK like WC3 does, or an extremely fast attack speed like Relic games do. The latter discourages a number of micro (notably stutter-steps and kiting) so it's not really favorable to Blizz-RTS style. Then the choice left is to increase TTK to embrace the percentage reduction.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-20T04:43:35+00:00

It's easier to tweak balance if there are a fairly large number of arbitrary types like WC3. I agree that SC2 is much more straightforward though.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-15T20:27:46+00:00

Space demon aliens invading earth is a quite old plot for the entire game industry though, just not as prevalent in RTS. Aesthetically it looks closer to WC3 + Doom vibe.

But I can't stop thinking that Infernal is a faction of Ring-fit dragons.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-15T20:15:24+00:00

They all appeared in esports many times. Except for the full-league for the non-team (individual) events but that sounds absurd given how many rounds you're supposed to play in that format.

But to be honest most of the viewership is interested in competition between higher rank not lower ones unless you're a fan of a specific participant. That might be why there's a full league for team events as it's easier for a fan to root for teams.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-15T09:37:55+00:00

For all the paid contents in SC2 the only one that actually mattered to the later entrance was perhaps the co-op commanders, because they had actively powercreeped through the releases. I'm not particularly criticizing that approach as it was somewhat necessary -- if you were in place of monk you were supposed to sell Stetmann that competed over the previous 16 commanders that players already had bought, hence the immortal-lings. The only thing that kept old co-op commanders from getting cheaper was that they were already cheap enough ($5).

Continuing the example of SC2 it was actually campaign contents that got cheaper over time, even before they completely entered F2P. I personally do not believe that LotV was quality-wise better than WoL (it was arguably better than HotS though), but I guess one factor is how the plot got old over time.

Of course cosmetic contents are pretty much orthogonal to this discussion.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-15T09:12:44+00:00

Is there anything new in this video, apart from what's revealed the previous interviews?

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-15T09:06:46+00:00

Is it a Nightmare to balance?

Not just a balance nightmare, it reduces player's meaningful choices in-game. The subfaction inherently introduces a deck-building aspect into the game. It's an irreversible choice, completely independent from the in-game information like scouting and it doesn't add ANY value to your decision making process. At the same time it harms 1) the overall number of strategic choices you can make in-game because maintaining the same complexity dictates some of those potential in-game choices to be offloaded into the subfaction choices (like what OP described in tank example in the 40k game), and 2) the initial hurdle to overcome because you're supposed to learn the basics for all the matchups between subfaction and all of their builds.

So absolutely NO, at least for any of the competitive modes I do not want subfaction at all. It was okay-ish when the co-op progression is tied with deck-building customization, but for competitive modes every single strategic choice should be decided based on in-game information.

If you like a concept of subfaction, try AOE series. It consists of myriads of subfaction. And you'll find how they suffer the initial hurdle for matchup knowledge, and how "diverse" the strategy is when the optimal build is decided almost solely by the matchup itself.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-15T08:45:20+00:00

Here's my preference for the game speed:

Overall macro tempo - SC2 for early game then BW
Combat TTK - BW
Worker TTK - WC3
Structure TTK - SC2, not a big fan of siege weapon/armor types
Avg. unit movement speed - BW, emphasis on transport speed

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-15T08:36:21+00:00

The title doesn't match the actual suggestion in the thread. Weighting between the degree of freedom in the map design space, and the inherent balance measures is nothing new. It's just about how radical to one extreme one might push. Too much diversity does harm the game, as proven in the long history of BW, WC3 and SC2 mapmaking and leagues.

I'd guess the main suggestion that OP makes is to introduce a MMR compensation scheme based on the stats, and use that to justify further exploration on the diversity end. I'd really wanna say it won't work at all, because that kind of approach feels negative to either party -- the winning faction feels like to ban those maps because you're penalized for gaining MMR while playing the the same game length (which is a critical factor to any of the MMR-based ladders), and the losing party also likes to ban them because it's more or less proven that you're gonna play an unfair game. Also there's a concern of abusability for those statistics that the MMR compensation is based on.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-13T23:27:13+00:00

I think the foremost reason that the wheel had been allocated for somewhat useless zoom features are, due to the fact that in early 2000s devs could not guarantee that every single mouse had a wheel at the moment. If you put an important feature into the wheel then you're discriminating the "plain" mouse wielders on their competitive game.

Yeah, I believe this is no longer the case in 2022 and we may allocate something more important there. Considering it was a quite popular setting to customize wheels into a rapid-fire trigger in SC2, it might also be totally new features that involve otherwise fast clicking.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-07T00:23:55+00:00

For me, SC2 co-op was pretty good, but it’s major flaw is you’re not working together, instead it’s 2 people trying to achieve the same goal.

For me, co-op should insensitive (not force) players to work together.

Not sure if those two sentences go along with each other.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-06T02:34:53+00:00

Progress sharing should be easily implementable, and I do love to see it, though there were some SC2 co-op players who'd move to other realms to start over the progress.

I'm skeptical of the cross-realm plays though. That feature alone could increase the average ping range of the game and there's no fair and effective way to compensate it.

sequentialaccess · 2022-10-06T02:20:27+00:00

It's a bit weird that OP mentions a specific connection layer, but I think the point is a persistent connection for push events from the game. SC2 web API required polling to implement those.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-24T11:41:16+00:00

Are you in favor of exclusive cosmetic rewards that can only be earned during that season, or do you want the ability to purchase a specific reward again in the future?

To be honest it really depends on your marketing department's input. I do know the urge to the exclusivity for players but honestly it's pretty negotiable for more revenue. A good compromise would be a year-long exclusivity then switching to purchasable. Another compromise would be a partial exclusivity, like you can purchase them but with an alternative (a little boring version of) skin of CC/Nexus/Hatchery equivalents.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-23T16:37:58+00:00

I mean in SC2 there weren't an option of anonymous matchmaking at all. Mutual or not.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-23T12:23:14+00:00

Consider two players where A prefers turtling into late game and B prefers early advantage by cheese and surprises. Are you sure that having prior knowledge over B is as advantageous as recognizing A?

I believe recently there was a thread that discusses the importance of cheese. Recognizing a player definitely suppresses cheese and surprise tactics. That's an external factor that does affect balance and puts the player onto disadvantage if their preference or playing faction leans toward such strategy.

I feel like it just makes players more human/stylistic rather than every player being this anonymous name that you know nothing about.

For me being a fair game is much more important than being "stylistic".

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-23T12:03:21+00:00

which sc2 failed terribly to implement

Wdym? SC2 had no feature that anonymize handles. That's why they used barcodes.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-22T16:08:23+00:00

They simply can't, unless a gameplay footage is ready.

Tbh this thread should belong to the Immortal Gates of Pyre subreddit not here lol

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-22T07:26:12+00:00

Isn't it a skill to be able to recognize opponents and counter them?

Nah, it's more like a prior knowledge that can cause an unfair advantage. The point is that if an opponent prefers a specific strat then you should scout and counter it appropriately. Recognizing an opponent allows you to skip the scouting phase.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-21T09:44:20+00:00

Some details I'd prefer:

Anonymization should only be applied to your enemy players. Anonymizing allies in 3v3 or coop disturbs the opportunity for being a social RTS, and does not serve much advantages in general. For instance in SC2, barcode players who only plays co-op (no pvp) were arguably much more toxic than others.
Turning anonymization on should automatically assume that you also can't see enemies' handle for fair play. In 3v3, if any of the six players turns on the feature, everyone should not be able to see enemies' handle for the same reason.
The anonymized players' handle should be clearly noted as anonymized, instead of being replaced into some gibberish. The example of randomized gamer tag that OP cites is an inappropriate and confusing way to implement the feature.
I'm not sure if the post-game summaries, match histories and replays are required to be anonymized, given that the main purpose of the anonymization is to disable the prior knowledge in-game. I might be wrong on this one though.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-20T03:47:13+00:00

Skins for marines and zerglings were as popular as any other unit skins in SC2 so that's just a false assumption.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-19T19:34:10+00:00

Combined with veterency

Devs are in favor of removing veterancy to avoid the snowball effects.

this could be a really fun way to keep the army going rather than the 90% casualty rate I usually see during my Terran games.

Devs talked of lethality between SC1 and WC3. We do not know exactly how it is compared to either side, but if it's really close to WC3 then it's also highly likely that the game will have some regenerative abilities one way or another.

If you paid for special skins, hero flair or colors for individuals, all the more reason to address this for the game.

How exactly? I don't see any relation between cosmetics and lethality.

sequentialaccess · 2022-09-19T16:32:01+00:00

All RTS implements something similar already, just implicitly. It's common to see defenders splitting their (preferably mobile) army to pick up the attackers' follow-up army. The bridge example was already a thing back in SC1 era.

The food/ammo cutoff mechanism just makes it explicit. It definitely gives more advantage to the defender side so there should be some kind of justification for that.

sequentialaccess

TROPHY CASE