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I think game was better when coms were weak

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2 years ago
Just my 2c, but it seems to me like Commanders changing from weak/fragile units that started with a peashooter into buff tanky riots from the get go has damaged gameplay.

Firstly, in the most common format of ZK (the 16v16 unfortunately) it proliferates tough tanky riots everywhere from game start, essentially making raiding and early attacks pointless. This leads to.. stagnation and porc.

Secondly, it has made the com-lotus-push almost mandatory. In the past there was a dilemna between using commander to expand, and hiding commander at home where he won't get ganked. Now we get lotus forests, and in teamgames two opposing waves of tanky compushes that meet, can't overpower eachother directly with their starting units, so instead throw up to opposing lines of defences leading to.. stagnation and porc.

Thirdly, it has made raiders much less effective and defending way easier. This along with other changes over the years (cheaper terraform, superfluid raiders..) is causing artillery to be meta even in 1v1. This seems insane to me, maybe because at one stage in ZK both artillery and porc were peripheral options at best, and the game was very fluid.

Lastly, I really liked the old dynamic of commanders being weak things that players hunted. Now they are strong things the whole dynamic of vulnerability/dives/protecting/sniping is really dampened.
+6 / -1

2 years ago
quote:
USrank[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng Firstly, in the most common format of ZK (the 16v16 unfortunately) it proliferates tough tanky riots everywhere from game start, essentially making raiding and early attacks pointless. This leads to.. stagnation and porc.


The problem of lobsterpots is that, if a game is balanced for 1v1 on 8x8 map (say), then at 16v16 you'd need an *128*x8 map to have the same length ratio of front to player attention. I think 128x8 would be too much, but IMO the typical lobster maps have a far too narrow front. As you say, the comm / defence density then makes many kinds of play impossible.

I think some 3:1 and 4:1 ratio maps - with the spawn points on the long side - would really help to mix up the kind of play that happens in lobsterpots.
+0 / -0
2 years ago
quote:
Thirdly, it has made raiders much less effective and defending way easier.

No, that was done in this update https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/29727
+0 / -0
quote:
I think some 3:1 and 4:1 ratio maps - with the spawn points on the long side - would really help to mix up the kind of play that happens in lobsterpots.

At least one such map does exist - Valiant Saltscape. It does not appear to be popular.

The 16v16 players do not want to play things that look like a 1v1 game and will resent such a game being forced upon them, no matter what you or I might think represents a healthy metagame.
+4 / -0
quote:
AUrankAdminAquanim The 16v16 players do not want to play things that look like a 1v1 game and will resent such a game being forced upon them, no matter what you or I might think represents a healthy metagame.


I recognize the truth in this but perhaps there is scope to shift things in this direction a little. Variety is the spice of life you know? Also note putting 10v10 players on a 24x8 map would still be very different to 1v1, having roughly 3x the player density of 1v1 on an 8x8.

Another possibly mad idea: what about taking a large map, say 20x20, and having striped start locations ie:

11111111
xxxxxxxx
22222222
xxxxxxxx
11111111
xxxxxxxx
22222222

That avoids the UI issues of a very elongated map, and scaredy cats can hide on the edge start locations leaving the brave to go mid.

Edit: Might work better on a slightly elongated map to give a bit more space between stripes e.g. 24x16 with the stripes running with the short axis.
+0 / -0
Branching lane maps (most corner starts) with an expanding front, and flat-ish things like CCR are quite accepted though.

I think hoping for a raider phase experience in teams larger than 3v3 is a mistake. Y'all may have forgotten about how planes shut the raids down, but at least ROrankSigero remembers.
+2 / -0
quote:
EErankAdminAnarchid Branching lane maps (most corner starts)


Edited: If I understand this correctly, it's substantially different to the striping I suggested, as it just establishes a diagonal front rather than 3 linear ones.

Also striping would likely make it harder for planes to shut down raiding, as they couldn't act with impunity from a single location without passing over defences.
+0 / -0
quote:
Edited: If I understand this correctly, it's substantially different to the striping I suggested, as it just establishes a diagonal front rather than 3 linear ones.

In many different ways. I wouldn't call it "just a diagonal front"; it's an expanding front. The further you go from start, the bigger it becomes.

quote:
Also striping would likely make it harder for planes to shut down raiding, as they couldn't act with impunity from a single location without passing over defences.

Swift just goes fwoosh.
+2 / -0
quote:
EErankAdminAnarchid In many different ways. I wouldn't call it "just a diagonal front"; it's an expanding front. The further you go from start, the bigger it becomes.


Yeah OK I see that, but it's a bit misleading because if there is even mex distribution, this just starts as a tiny front then expands to the length of one axis of the map, or diagonal (sure it can be wobbly, this applies to any front though). If the mexes are in channels creating intersecting fingers, then I can see how it has a similar effect to what I describe, but see below. If this even pans out in practise - I'd suspect only to a limited degree due to the risk that expanding into a finger means - and you think it makes for good gameplay, why wouldn't the striping proposal be worth trying?

However striping is quite different in other ways because:

1) You can put desirable mexes into the places you want people to expand, rather than the spawn points / fingers.
2) The mex distribution can be made to ensure that deploying into the inner stripes is advantageous to the team, forcing that to occur.
3) It occurs from the start of the game, not gradually over the course of play.

quote:
EErankAdminAnarchid Swift just goes fwoosh.


Swift doesn't have permanent fwoosh. Also your enemy can also have Swifts. Also GA options in dense games are very strong. I don't think that air would be able to act oppressively on striped 24x16 map with 10v10 teams.
+0 / -0
quote:
why wouldn't the striping proposal be worth trying

Feel free to!

quote:
Swift doesn't have permanent fwoosh. Also your enemy can also have Swifts. Also GA options in dense games are very strong. I don't think that air would be able to act oppressively on striped 24x16 map with 10v10 teams.

All of this does not matter in defensive scenarios where Swifts simply intercept any raider that goes into your territory.

If you are going to be smashing against the enemy front, you should really be getting assaults and arty instead.
+0 / -0

2 years ago
quote:
EErankAdminAnarchid All of this does not matter in defensive scenarios where Swifts simply intercept any raider that goes into your territory.


So you're saying that raiding can't work in any game with large player counts because Swifts will exist? Maybe that is true... I guess we'd have to see.
+0 / -0


2 years ago
quote:
So you're saying that raiding can't work in any game with large player counts because Swifts will exist? Maybe that is true... I guess we'd have to see.

Yes, assuming that the air player does the interceptions reliably, and their team in turn relies on that.
+0 / -0


2 years ago
Interesting OP. The weaker you make the commander, the more about localized BP he becomes, like a glorified constructor. Back in 1v1 com sniping as an artform was getting too refined and causing ridiculous swingy-ness. When the commander dying impacts resources less, this can help to fix the problem if you can still win tactically/positionally.

I guess if commander was to get weaker again, I'd want to see his income be moved back to "magic" income and sniping strats made a little more counterable (more d-gun options of a defensive nature or something).
+0 / -0

2 years ago
I used to like being able to rush a Felon at the start, run ahead with it and one-shot lone enemy commanders.

Now I morph a commander and rush to kill Felons.

It's all cyclical... make commanders weak again and people will complain about getting scythed. Make tanky commanders and people complain about not being able to scythe them.

I think commanders are in a sweet spot right now. Let's be honest they are still metal-for-metal, a waste of resources, yet crap players like me keep morphing them up. Sometimes my tanky boi gets popped like a zit and I see it cost like 10k metal. I could have had a Paladin for that.
+6 / -0
quote:
Yes, assuming that the air player does the interceptions reliably, and their team in turn relies on that.

maybe more precisely:
as soon as the air-player has enough swifts to do meaningful damage. and riots have not already filled the gaps.
+0 / -0
I remember complaining about strong coms making early game less interesting.
I also remember complaining on how Superfluid update made raiding feel wrong.
I remember making a rant about Swifts making raiders useless at raiding in teamgames.
I remember making a thread about superweapons being badly balanced.

I haven't changed my mind about ANY of these opinions. It's been forever since I have voiced these opinions as well. I have also seen the vast majority of well considered balancing opinions get ignored. Remember Detriment? The biggest, very iconic, very likely too get built by a noob unit. It was so bad. It had to make some really bad impressions for new players for what the game has to offer. It took half a decade of complaining and an external developer to submit a patch.

+0 / -1
[Spoiler]
+2 / -0
I'm waiting for evidence/demonstration to back up the OP. Dig up and compare games from years ago. Trawl the balance patches and make a mod to approximate old versions, then test them. Otherwise I'm sort of left with the impression of rose-tinted glasses.

16v16 has always been relatively porcy. As far as I can tell such games have become more army-focused in recent years, not less. I've watched fairly recent games on LLTA complex that are almost all army on the flatlands, and this is traditionally a very porcy map. Basically, the claim that ZK is getting porcier and more focused on arty wars does not line up with what I'm seeing. Even the meta on Zed involves a bunch of push and pull fighting with non-artillery in the middle. Point to replays etc.., as I don't see everything. I really want someone to gather some data on this.

In terms of 1v1, maybe people are getting better at the game. Tankier comms came about in part due to a perceived near-mandatory Raven switch into comm snipe meta. On the topic of skill, I'm not sure there actually was a dilemma between using the com to expand and sitting it at home to assist. In terms of comm pushing, I'm happy that a comm on a front does not automatically beat a front without an opposing comm. Beyond that I'm not so sure that keeping your comm at home has to be super viable. I'm also a little unsure as to the extent that large useful Lotus forests exist, and once the magnitude of the problem is known I expect to be able to address it with subtle tweaks. Arguing that they come from tanky comms seems to be trying to prove to much to me.

Is artillery more the 1v1 meta than it was in earlier years? I think the clearest trend in 1v1 is the trend towards smaller maps, partially pushed by the community and partially because more factories are viable, which tends to require maps smaller than CCR. I think map size is pushing 1v1 trends more than comms. Gather some people for games on CCR or Hourglass and see if artillery makes an appearance.

(This is probably the least important point, but it is the most verifiable: terraform has steadily become more expensive over the years. It is not cheaper.)

quote:
I haven't changed my mind about ANY of these opinions. It's been forever since I have voiced these opinions as well. I have also seen the vast majority of well considered balancing opinions get ignored. Remember Detriment? The biggest, very iconic, very likely too get built by a noob unit. It was so bad. It had to make some really bad impressions for new players for what the game has to offer. It took half a decade of complaining and an external developer to submit a patch.

You write this in an accusatory way, yet this is actually just a clear example of the relative usefulness of complaints and work. Complaints are feedback, but they don't translate into actual output. A decade of complaints doesn't generate any more output. It is only when someone picked up the task of translating the feedback into an implementation, doing the bulk of the work, which was then further discussed and refined, did anything actually happen. It doesn't matter whether this someone is me, which requires free time, or anyone else who is interested in the task.

Balance opinions are something like 10% of the work, maybe less. Even something as simple as tweaking a number would ideally be tested in multiplier, and has to be tested locally. The change needs to be considered in the context of everything else and followed up to see if things are better or worse off. A lot of the work is in reconciling all the conflicting opinions and trying to find the common thread between them. There tend to be opinions and arguments on both sides, which sets a limit on their usefulness. It is also often better to change subtle something behind a problem than to tackle the more overt symptoms head-on.

Go further than opinions and arguments. Post replays so others can directly see what you're talking about. Collate data. Implement the results of your argument in a testable form. This at least makes the proposal specific.

So back to the OP:
  • Find examples.
  • Check the trends.
  • Mod weaker commanders and run a bunch of test games.

quote:
I remember making a rant about Swifts making raiders useless at raiding in teamgames.
I remember making a thread about superweapons being badly balanced.

These two haven't had much said about them so I'll comment here. I don't remember everything everyone has said, but I broadly agree with the direction of these two points. Solving Swifts or Superweapons involves a lot more work than pointing out some problems. Nothing happens until anyone does anything.

I would be surprised if superfluid didn't feel wrong for any long time players. The best data I have on it is a noticeable uptick in 1v1 games that has mostly been sustained since then (although there have been confounders). It was difficult to weigh the familiarity of vets against the grief new players were feeling when their units would lose mirror matches with 0% attrition.
+8 / -0
2 years ago
I think that's a lot of time wasted on pondering causes and potential effects when you can just push a patch for a week and try it out live, instead of having people try and herd cats to do game tests.
+0 / -2
quote:
Another possibly mad idea: what about taking a large map, say 20x20, and having striped start locations ie:

11111111
xxxxxxxx
22222222
xxxxxxxx
11111111
xxxxxxxx
22222222

This seems like it would result in a lot of very, very short and onesided games. Skulduggery used to have start boxes along these lines (maybe still does, I'm not sure) and games were basically determined by which of the two mid groups got rushed down faster.
+0 / -0
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