I play RTS game mostly for the story lines, I love learning about the world and units backgrounds I don’t care that much about the competitive aspect so I don’t mind the slight unbalance. I think the planes crashing in Company Of Heroes are hilarious and motivate me to follow the PvP matches (It is a whole different story if that happens to me tho). So I have to say a little unbalance does not hurt anyone and as you mentioned the developers fix it with weakness and resources requirements (the RNG is excluded of course)

Having played RTS's since the start of the genre, I think a bit factor that doesn't often get discussed is franchise legacy and how that should impact design. If you go back and play a lot of the older Command and Conquer titles, it is pretty obvious that while multiplayer was on their minds, high level competitive/e-sport style play just wasn't. The most formative years of that franchise took place before e-sports was even really a thing. There were a lot of developers tackling the RTS genre back then but all of them were more concerned with finding a specific identity than anything else. Command and Conquer played a certain way. WarCraft played a certain way. There were a few major RTS series that all had distinct identities and a lot of that came from the setting and the style of the units. Fast forward to the e-sport/high-level competitive explosion of StarCraft and suddenly a lot of those old franchises started getting pushed away from their own unique identities in favor of really just existing to compete with StarCraft for e-sport visibility. This is how you go from Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun to Command and Conquer 3. This is how you go from Dawn of War 1 to Dawn of War 2. This is how you go from Napoleon: Total War to Shogun 2. Suddenly every RTS (or something similar to a RTS) had to give up its own identity because publishers/developers wanted a piece of the e-sport pie and a certain very vocal, very loud, very visible subset of RTS players refused to acknowledge that some RTS games don't really need to be suitable for high-level competitive/e-sport style play. That last part is a big one. It is easy to place all the blame on publishers and developers looking for the nearly free advertising and built-in market you get from e-sports but in reality, it is the e-sport/high-level competitive only players that really encouraged the forced death march of a lot of legendary franchises up the e-sport hill where they inevitably die. Whenever a new RTS comes out that isn't directly targeting e-sports/streaming/high-level competitive PvP play, it immediately gets shouted down from the vocal competitive subset. Sometimes that means potential franchises die. Sometimes it means that a potentially unique franchise just turns into another generic competitive title and not much else. Gamers talk a big game about wanting new experiences and games that are "unique" Sadly. This seems to only be a thing until an RTS is made that isn't explicitly serving only the StarCraft 1/2 crowd above all other priorities.

Great video gentlemen and especially happy to see some of my beloved Rise of Nations in there. Balance is important, but quite far down the priority list for me. In BFME1 Mordor was considered the worst faction, so I enjoyed playing as them because a victory with them was all the sweeter. I like the idea of "relative realism", everything has natural strengths and weaknesses, even made up creatures. Go with what makes sense and is intuitive over what is balanced, players will adapt and learn more easily which is important in making an RTS sticky for new players. Just my two pence, what you said sounded much better ;) Look forward to future videos, more Rise of Nations would get my vote!

Very interesting and well-thought essay (as usually), thx a lot! On the other hand I somewhat lack the explanation how does RTS game "balance" differ from preferred "fairness". Is "balance" meant like strickly mirroring all factions´ units (so just giving them different skins)? Then really fairness is much better because it provides more interesting gameplay (I guess even up to the point some factions can be somewhat stronger during early or late game, but especially relatively weaker/stronger on different maps). Note about "overcomplicated" armor types in Warcraft 3: Cannot the main reason for such a complicated system be just the importance of heroes in this game? Logically piercing units should not give 100% dmg to heroes because ranged piercing units are good in focusing heroes. But ranged piercing units should not be generally useless so developers compensated with some bonuses elsewhere and such a complicated system emerged... I recall in Warhammer 40k Dawn of War I. Soulstorm which also has Commander (=heroic) units similarly complicated system of armor types exist - in my opinion this makes this game very "knowledge based".

@dj_koen1265

Жыл бұрын

Balance is usually considered when optimal play grants even winrate between factions Whereas fairness is how it feelsto interact with the game or certain elements or strategies within it Fairness and balance are different Something can be balanced yet feel unfair Or something can be unbalanced without feeling unfair (although this is more rare) And depends on the skill level of players as well Of a strategy is really overbearing at high levels but is not an issue at lower levels it is usually perceived as fair by most players while still being imbalanced at the top But other way around if something is balanced at high level play But overbearing in lower leagues (when something is easy to execute but hard to defend for example) Then it can technically be balanced while also feeling very unfair Both are important in a game

@dj_koen1265

Жыл бұрын

That said there is more to balance than considering fairness You also have to consider diversity of options Because when a game is fair and balanced but with very limited options it might be preferred to be a slightly less balanced but to have more options But too many options can also detract Its all a tradeoff that you have to make More options make it harder to balance usually as well But there is no point in balance if there are no interesting options/choices

An excellent essay, very well put together!

Thanks a lot for this videos. I'll probably never make a RTS myself, but love hearing about your thoughts. Balance is the kind of things where everyone has an opinion on, but also seems to be very hard to get right

my top 5 rts : 5. 7kingdoms q. 4. wc3 og. 3. red alert 2 2. zero hour 1. aoe 2 og. and de. i think Aoe 2 age of kings is by far the best rts ever made :D

Hi, could you perhaps make a video on RTS level (map) design? Especially on how the maps should be designed to faciliate or encourage certain tactics/strategy and gameplay.

@dj_koen1265

Жыл бұрын

That is really game specific

the most fun i had in an RTS was with mowas2. (men of war assault squad 2). not only the mods on this game are fantastic (seriously go and check w40k and starwars mod of it.) but it gives an incredible amount of gameplay freedom. i think the best design is to have imbalance in balance. mowas2 is a good example of that.

One of reasons I love company of heroes is its all ground units with no air units I found air units in rts always ruin the scale and realism and make the game harder to balance in games like sc2 and wc3

@GeneralsGentlemen

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah interesting point.

@EnvoyOfFabulousness

3 жыл бұрын

Air units in Sc2 were one of my primary annoyances with the games design. Air units in SC1 were very intentionally designed to be mostly powerful versus other air units unless in high number, or unless they were the more expensive end game air units (carriers and BCs). Wraiths and Scouts are trash at hitting ground units, but excellent vs air. Mutalisks are very strong against workers in Higher numbers but not quite so good against anything that could really hit back. In Starcraft 2, you had stupid shit like Void Rays that had to be balanced a thousand times because the design of the unit is just bad. And I always hated the idea of units like Banshees were just one or two sneaking behind your mineral line could melt your workers in seconds. Frustrating, obnoxious units with little counter play.

@GeneralsGentlemen

3 жыл бұрын

@@EnvoyOfFabulousness Yeah I agree. The Liberator, Banshee and Void Rays are all pretty obnoxious units. Vikings and Phoenix are a lot more interesting and less impactful in small numbers.

@cdgncgn

2 жыл бұрын

@@GeneralsGentlemen I consider Viking to be the mecha-T-something from Ra3 copied / misnamed. Liberator is just that concept of a lockdown unit having an overwatch vs ground or air. And revealing said lcokdown area so things like antibuilding role being taken out though no reason for it ? Makes zero sense. I will try to make a bigger post, hopefully it doesnt just vanish.

@razorback9999able

Жыл бұрын

Air units ignore terrain and have high mobility. That what's makes them powerful. Enough said.

Great video. It's indeed something we have to look for when designing our game. Thank you for your insightful view on the RTS mechanics.

whenever a good game gets utterly butchered (WC3R aside) it tends to get blamed on an ideal of balance instead of the clumsiness of developers in pursuing it. this has led a lot of people to unfortunately resent balance because theyve only noticed its seemingly ruinous effect i think tiberium wars with its gradual homogenization and exacerbation of latent imbalances might have been a good game to illustrate this, but at least you showed plainly how it clearly demonstrates the in-universe justification of why infantry resist anti-vehicle weapons (a common complaint during DB's golden era of C&C) i also felt like you danced a bit around defining the difference between being fair and feeling fair, and interfactional balance rather than intrafactional, but perhaps you judged your audience can sort it out for themselves and allowed the concepts to blend so in the essay to make it all flow well i might question a bunch of other stuff but like you said, its mostly semantics keeping us from agreeing on the minor bits

@GeneralsGentlemen

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that blaming 'balance' or 'esports' on a games failure is foolish and usually very inaccurate. What do you mean by Tiberium War's "gradual homogenization and exacerbation of latent imbalances"?

@GeneralsGentlemen

3 жыл бұрын

One thing that I didn't mention was how players can put up with awful balance if the game is great, such as C&C: Zero Hour.

@JunkyardMech

3 жыл бұрын

@@GeneralsGentlemen id have to get on a pc and scan through the changelogs to make this point properly but after that first year of competing and closely following the game's updates i was left with the impression that black and bender had no faith in their initial balance paradigms and instead retooled everything for a slower, vaguely generals-like game with c&c's death looming i got into BW and eventually LoL where i saw riot devs begin to exert and sing the graces of a deliberate strangehold on the meta and it always brought me back to the fun getting patched out of tiberium wars and how the game had become lopsided around what were previously comparatively minor faction distinctions but eventually became all that mattered as they received additional relevance and more interesting differences were patched out entirely not that the game was better with mastermind-mothership or support power spam or anything, just that there were always more elegant and conservative ways around such problems than what we got. listening to blacks postmortem statements i dont believe the devs had as much to work with as anyone expected them to have

@JunkyardMech

3 жыл бұрын

@@GeneralsGentlemen Gen/ZH remains my favorite game of all time, but i still think its ready to have chunks of its complexity reclaimed to serve gameplay (and more respectfully than in 1.06)

Showing starcraft broodwar when going over unused abilities and units as a problem with balance hurt. Though starcraft 1 has some units and abilities that could be removed and change nothing- I do like how fun and crazy many of the units where in 1 than in 2. All the spell casters are wacky strong in 1, something I don’t feel in 2.

Goal of game design is a create 1:2 a player can make it 1:1 with skill.

Does anyone use their Display Drawing Tablet to play RTS? I heard is possible, but I don't see videos on it.

Is a video on coh3 alpha coming?

I still think the OG company heroes had a better commander/doctrine system. But thats me. Overall i think i agree, Fairness is more important than balance, but usually say balance in place of fairness cause you want a healthy mix of things to make it balanced via fairness if that makes sense. And definately glad you make note that not everyone is looking for the exact same thing in strategy games.

Favorite: Warlords Battlecry series, its unbalanced but fun as hell!

Quant's Rule: Buffs strengths, nerf weaknesses!

Do you still have twitch I can't find your channel?

@GeneralsGentlemen

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, though we hardly stream anymore: www.twitch.tv/generalsgentlemen

What I don't like is playing a unit's strength and it not being able to do it's one job.

"obnoxious attack planes" You mean "skill planes", tyvm

I haven't played many RTS games, but Starcraft 2 is a pretty good example of overbalancing: Liberators magically can't attack buildings What the hell was done to infestor's spells Marines with rifles annihilating tanks and giant mechs Flying buldings unable to land on 1 zergling I know stuff like this is necessary for game to be balanced for Ultra Competitive setting Blizzard was (before they abandoned the game) going for, I just wish there was a "Slightly more realistic" mode with lots of Hardcountering and explosive mechanics

Right from the start, the definitions are not consistent. You mentioned Psi Storm as an example of fair, because the high templar is slow (and it costs energy as well). I consider it to be balance. The ability is balanced by its cost and people can easily counter it. In fact in many other instances, you show Starcraft as an example of being too committed to balance, thus ruining the fun (according to some people). At any rate, the distinction is not made clear, and since they are also the main concepts being discussed, I don't feel like I got much out of the essay.

The definition you gave to "fairness" is EXACTLY what balance is, at the end of the day balance is important period.

@dj_koen1265

2 жыл бұрын

No what that section signified is the importance in distinguishing between statistical winrates and perceived fairness And that sometimes statistical balance doesn’t mean something is well designed

To answer the question of "Is Balance Overrated" will have to question "for whom"? Even in unbalanced games, there will be a hard core of players that accept even ridiculous and non-intuitive imbalances as part of the meta. Arguably, they still have fun or would stop playing, but is that also correct for players at large? RTS games already have issues with being readable for new players. Imbalances make this worse because it confers an implicit layer of "things you must (not) do" which have not arisen from design, but due to the way that the meta has shaped out to be. Balance is more than just content management, it is intrinsically linked to the game's essential design. At it's core, imbalance often comes down to being a set of broken promises about the premise of the game. It's fine to have some meta-warping units that break the rules, but it gets toxic if there are too many. You end up in an untangibile mess of ill-designed interactions where every incremental improvement likely leads to an incremental deterioration of the game. I also find the example of Starcraft 2 as an elegant stomach difficult to stomach. It's arguably one of the best balanced RTS game at the moment, but it also took Blizzard about 10 years to arrive at a game where you don't have a couple combos which aren't ridiculously overpowered and have little coutnerplay. No other company would have bothered with that and you can't simply take that as a reference. Starcraft's armor system also has many hidden variables which you must look up at third party websites. What's worse is that SC2's countering system does not preserve linearity. Due to how armor works, a 20% increase in damage will not result in a 20% increase in damage taken. The extend of this absurdity can be seen in AoE 2 where the system works because there are even more hidden variables. In a damage type/armor system you will always know which unit counters what as long as you know the corresponding categories. This does not only result in readability, but also preserves linearity. If a unit gets a 20% damage buff, it will be exactly 20% better. This frees up headspace to think about strategy instead of numerics. And while the comic style of Starcraft let's the game get away with a lot of sillyness, it also comes at the deterament of readability. For a big part you must know which unit counters what and there are few intuitive counters, as there are in let's say CnC 3. In principle, CnC 3 has an intuitive countering system that is very badly implemented. Mods like One Vision show that the basic system gives you a lot of premise and it can still be combined with a keyword based system similar to SC2 (e.g. Deals 150% damage against aircraft). In CnC3 this is ill explained, but at least Warcraft 3 is transparent about its countering system. Yes, Piercing is not intuitive, but so what? There are only 6 damage types you must know. In Starcraft, everything comes down to a case-by-case basis that might even change strongly depending on what upgrades you purchased.

@GeneralsGentlemen

3 жыл бұрын

Yes you're right, I should have also mentioned AOE2 being extremely convoluted with all kinds of hidden bonuses and multipliers which is extremely unintuitive and confusing.

@ImaginaryNumb3r

3 жыл бұрын

@@GeneralsGentlemen glad I could point out something useful! Do you know the channel "Spirit of the Law"? It's the go-to math channel for AoE 2 interactions. Particularly the video "The Most Complex Calculation in AoE2? Cataphracts vs Sicilian Halberdiers " gets this point across. Also, have you ever played Battleforge (aka Skylords Reborn)? The game has the most basic and intuitive counter system I know and the difficulties come from the combos and synergies that you can use. I'm a designer on the team and it would be interesting to see your thoughts on the game.

@cdgncgn

2 жыл бұрын

TFT counters made a lot more sense compared to WC 3, srchers countered both footmen and knights. And some other total mess of illogical counters.

Look Men of war assault squard 2, and gates of hell.

CoH 1 is very imbalanced compared to CoH2 but I still like it more because factions are much more diverse and the game is more fun because of it

Is balance overrated? Red Alert 2. /Video Kidding 😛

Balance destroys a dynamic feel and discourages asymmetrical appeal.

I feel like this is a lot of canned talk without any real substance But its an interesting glossary of topics regardless

"Balance" kills every RTS game. Imagine playing Chess and all pieces can move the same like any other. Game mechanics need to have an identity, to work properly.

@Mkoivuka

3 жыл бұрын

In Chess both players have identical pieces, with the only variable being who goes first. That seems rather balanced. Chess is the epitome of balance - a videogame corollary might be for instance if in CoH2, every faction had identical units. That would be quite balanced (and I agree rather boring), but your Chess analogy argues the case.

@Slyzor1

3 жыл бұрын

@@Mkoivuka Chess is definitely not the epitome of balance because it is an advantage to play first. I would say Go is more balanced in that way because player who goes second gets bonus points in return

@adept7497

3 жыл бұрын

@@Mkoivuka My point was like, imagine all pieces were peasents, for example

@Mkoivuka

3 жыл бұрын

@@adept7497 I don't get your point at all. There's "symmetrical balance", where each player has access to an identical unit roster and identical mechanics, like in Chess. "Asymmetrical balance" like StarCraft 2, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Iron Harvest, where each faction has access to different mechanics and units rosters. And then whatever this thing you call "balance", where every unit, for some reason, has to be identical. I'm not sure why you're making that assumption but at worst its a strawman argument against those who would advocate for changes in a game due to "balance".

@Mkoivuka

3 жыл бұрын

@@Slyzor1 Chess is symmetrically balanced. Neither player has access to any mechanics or units that the other player doesn't. Things like who goes first are on the order of color. When Red plays vs Blue, Red wins 55% of the time and Blue 45%. In Chess, White has a 52-56% win rate vs Black, and so on. While you /claim/ that Go is inherently more balanced, the same color bias exists there. Black apparently wins more than White (human v human), while AlphaGo playing itself has a better win rate as White vs Black. This is actually a classical example of equity vs equality. Is a game "fair" if you win 50% of the time and no more, no less? That in aggregate different factions / colors have identical win rates? Or is a game "fair" if both players have the same tools? Chess and Go are horrible examples in general for gameplay, given that RTS games in this context are real-time and therefore do not have turns.