In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games

It’s true that new players may think they are in control when they are really not - but it’s easier to understand when the other side had larger/more units.

There is a reason why new players in RTS games tend to overbuild defenses - they’re default goal is to play for and secure the map.

The fix is to run 'd3d_windowscursor' in the game console.

See https://forum.faforever.com/topic/779/nvidia-driver-performa...

There is also a mod available through FaF that runs this automatically for you at the start of each game.

Well, surely the long-range artillery and shields have something to do with that ! ;)

The opposite to "the enemy's gate is down"

I can understand how this might be confusing. Like a mirror track in Mario Kart, it would make the map feel totally different.

I also haven't seen definitive sources about consultations with top players. I've heard about bouncing ideas off pros in the distant past, but not with any regularity, and not recently.

"Better balanced continuously with time" is pretty subjective..

I think the perspective issue is there. But its not the entire 5%

Also people cannot SRK/DP on reaction to all attacks or the game would be completely broken so saying '2nd to attack wins' is a bit odd since it's only in the situation where both players use an invincible move.

In StarCraft 2 if your opponent builds one unit there's another unit that hard counters it but you rarely bring just one kind of unit into battle last the very early game. Early zerglings are countered by marines are countered by hellions are countered by roaches are countered by marauders are countered by flying mutalisks are countered by marines again...etc etc.

If you bring marines and marauders and some hellons with healing medivacs it becomes about numbers and engagement positions. Sometimes you have no chance of winning but you have a chance of getting an economical trade that will put you in a better position in the future - without the trade the next fight your opponent might have too many units for you to win.

I guess it depends on what game you're playing but in RTS there's the fight you're in, the economy, production,upgrades, as well as the overall balance of the current game that all can change the way the game is going.

That's not really true. A typical player can watch the replay of their losing match and see the proximate cause of the failure ("my army got blown up"), but looking at the game analytically to find the ultimate cause is/was much more difficult. The art of doing so was a regular feature of the Day[9] daily videos.

That complexity is part of what makes strategy games (real time or otherwise) compelling: seemingly simple choices or optimizations compound into a much larger advantage later on. However, those small-scale advantages are rarely highlighted by the game itself as important, and optimization usually asks a lot of the players.

Also arranged teams have a very strong advantage over random teams, you can really punch above your weight if your teammates understand how to support you.

Used to play DotA (as in, the custom WC3 map) and LoL. I downloaded Pokemon Unite last week. Instantly understood pretty much everything except the individual feel and tactics of each character.

This community was completely destroyed by SC2, multiplayer really only appealed to serious competitive players. It sucked unless you only wanted to grind ladder. That community kept the game as a whole alive and acted as a gateway.

I was in the same camp when I only played RTS games, but after my friend got me into dota I have to admit there's a lot of depth there that I wasn't aware of.

Also the win conditions are much more obvious in RTS games, just after I switched I had no idea that pulling, stacking, wave cutting, denying was important. Also the vision battle is more involved in MOBAs.

One day maybe there'll be games with just one move... just to dumb games down to the lowest common denominator and not leave anyone out.

Just as a specific example. If you take two teams of equal MMR and one had all the character counters so they "should" win. If the team with the better characters doesn't know how to pull the safelane, they will just straight up lose. Full stop. They will get gold starved and unless the other team throws (which is very common lol) they should lose.

Also, losing like this in dota is anti-fun. Its really not a good time for like anybody, the winner of the loser. Its just one team dumpstering another and it happens at all levels.

I see someone's played Supreme Commander. I love the game but it's the archetypal example of what you're talking about: winning depends on detailed knowledge of dozens of different units across four factions and simultaneous maximally-efficient economy building. Building a tutorial for it is impossible. It's only playable by the sort of people who will read wikis and watch videos and lose and lose and lose until they have some idea what's going on.

This causes the other problem with RTSes: the (small, dedicated) community has been running for fifteen years and is incredibly unfriendly to new players. Having less than ~150 hours playtime is often grounds for being kicked from games, which doesn't help expand the playerbase.

Unfortunately, RTSes simplified enough to avoid these problems aren't nearly as fun. The genre just works better as a community passion project than a commercial enterprise.

If you win, you can feel really good because you had a 17/2 K/D. If you lose, you can blame your teammates. You can also play with your friends. With starcaft even though team matches are supported, they are unpopular, and there’s no easy way to look at the stats for the game and feel like a badass if you win.

Ofc it’s not always that clear cut and there is a lot in between these examples. But in my experience, RTS and maybe strategy in general, can be really hard to understand what went wrong, even on a basic level.

MOBAs are, imho somewhere on between. High skillcap both in regards or game knowledge and strategy, but also in agility, but also somewhat readable. Sure, you might wonder why your gorillas punch did way less damage than their gorilla, but a look at the KDA or their gear might already give you a hint.

So I guess with the overall growth of the gaming market and games becoming more and more expensive, the small community that actually enjoys RTS isn’t really „worth“ that money.

To OP's point, you don't have to know the entire 100 hero roster and all of their abilities to have fun, just the general things they can do "Oh I just got stunned by that ability, might want to dodge next time"...

Obviously to be good you need to know them all, but not to get started and have fun at lower levels of play.

I do play some AoE3 still since they released the DE for that one and I will say there’s been one players running around pulling off victories that shatter the meta, and ofc the establishment players have referred to that as “toxic”.

Definitely managing my expectations due to what I've seen graphically regarding the micro/non-intuitive unit design as well as potential balancing issues due to the vastly divergent civ play styles/age-up mechanics (e.g. Mongol nomad movement & the dynasty system).

Found an SQL Injection too, reported it and got a license for Supreme Commander 2 as a bounty. That game was way worse than the original, too simplified but I guess it was the logical path as people complained about SupCom's difficulty/complexity.

AoE2 does so many things wrong by 'modern game' standards. The graphics are 2D. Pick any two civs, they're 80% identical. New, goofier mechanics (Flemish Revolution) are disliked by the players (although still used). It's still an incredible game.

I've tried some mods, but Star wars Interregnum seems to crash for me after a while. I think it's a known issue on Linux: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/265#issuecomm...

These mods seem nice, but I am not so much into these other universes, and the base game is pretty solid already. I might try them again at some point for more variety, notably Sins of the Prophets.

Insofar as there are barriers to entry to the game at lower leagues, the challenge is more the mental challenge of keeping track of a bunch of different variables and keeping up with the multi-tasking. It's not nearly as execution dependent, at that level, as most fighting games or even a Soulsborne. It's a mental acuity and habit-formation challenge rather than a dexterity one. Better players will have more actions per minute (assuming they're not spamming), but it will be because they're making decisions more quickly, not because they have concert pianist fingers. I got up to Gold league playing mostly with a trackpad. I know someone who got to Diamond on a trackpad as well.

There's lots of problems with SC2's design, but they mostly center around a poor onboarding experience, doing a bad job of communicating the ripple effects of early decisions, a surfeit of high-lethality units that settle battles or games in a second, and the availability of multiple "cheese" strategies for each faction that are much much easier to execute than they are to defend against. But those are all addressable within the broader framework of a Blizzard-style RTS with better unit design, UI/UX, and tutorial or single player game modes.

In video games that's true. But aircraft carriers can have sonar-equipped helicopters take out submarines.

Aircraft carriers are also faster than submarines, so in practice, I'm not sure if submarines can practically chase down an aircraft carrier and actually disable them.

Honestly, I'm willing to bet that most of those Destroyers in a Carrier-strike group are there to shoot down cruise missiles (which are probably a modern, hard counter to Carriers. Cruise missiles are very expensive, but Carriers are even more expensive).

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"Hard Counters" exist in the real world, and they're far simpler than you think.

A tank is the "Hard Counter" to small arms fire and even small-autocannon (30mm or less) fire. Modern tanks are immune to such weaponry. No matter how many AK-47s you send towards a tank, they will all die.

You need to switch out your infantry loadout: you need to start sending RPGs / Missiles / IEDs if you want your infantry to have a chance vs tanks.

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Historically, an A10 or Helicopter was the "Hard Counter" to a tank. Tank guns have extreme difficulty aiming that high (tanks are designed to take out ground targets), and a tank's 130mm cannons are powerful: but A10 / Helicopters will dodge most of those shots due to the low-rate of fire.

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The concept of "Hard Counters" leads to the modern battlefield concept of "Combined Arms". You should never send a platoon of tanks by themselves to face an enemy (they'd just die against their helicopters). You instead, combine different arms together to form one group: send a tank with infantry + AA guns, so that you can face all sorts of different enemies as a team.

With "combined arms", you negate your weaknesses somewhat.