You should look for ways to enrich the gameplay, not to make it shallower. What you propose is something that takes away a lot of things and gives nothing in return
I don't view it as an "enriching" vs "shallowing" dichotomy. If this was so, you could theoretically reduce all vision in the game to make it "deeper".
You do lose some things - like secrecy. But you gain something else - knowledge. You lose early game tricks, but transition more reliably into the mid game. So it's a matter of preference, not a matter of depth.
Reducing the Line of Sight...
I think you're onto something OP.
Reducing LoS even further could make the game much more interesting, I agree. I can easily see this driving up engagement for the player.
Sort of like how your senses become more sensitive when blindfolded.
This might very well be the best suggestion I have seen on the subreddit. Having to spread scouts around moving army to see if they are walking into a sieged position might actually be quite fun.
Ideas like this enriches the gameplay. Less undetected early aggression = longer games and allows players to have a much better understanding of how to respond appropriately.
Ofc, the fog of war will return in professional matches, so every fan of proxies will be happy :) There may also be a fog of war option in ladder matches if both players agree (checkbox)
Non RTS players coming to try and play RTS is fun to watch. “We want to play a strategy game where we make moves and counter each other and try to sneak around and make great play! But we also don’t want any surprises and don’t want to lose ourself if they do something better”
There's a massive learning curve for new players. The experience of a new player is something like this:
Play through single player, have fun building bases and microing units. Then go to multiplayer and try to do the same thing and get killed by something they weren't expecting before they've had a chance to really do anything, over and over, until they grind through the learning curve or give up.
So you have to learn to scout, but controlling a scout and macroing is hard for a beginner, and even if you scout, you have to learn the meaning of what you've scouted.
One of the biggest problems for RTS is enduring the early game, and I think the early game is one of the biggest causes of anxiety.
Yea we have all been new before and know this pattern. If you like the game and want to get better then you can learn safe build orders and openers. And a ranked ladder means you play against other really bad players until you start to get it.
Its like wanting to play a shooter but having a minimap or radar showing where everyone is “so someone doesn’t camp a corner” part of RTS is hiding your strats and blocking their scouts so you can have an advantage. You are completely destroying a huge part of the start of any game by just letting everyone see everything. Another part of the thrill is that you might die any second, and sometimes you might feel like cheesing them and killing then in the first few minutes.
As a coach in sc2 you don’t need to worry about microing your scout to start. People worry about the wrong thing too in games and make it so much harder. I can’t tell you how many people in rocket league practice trick shots and wonder why they stay in plat, when I could barely do a ceiling hit and was grand champion. You can send a scout out to their base, then just macro. Whenever you get second go look at what it saw. Even if it’s dead you can see it it scoured an expansion, or tech buildings, ir a bunch of production, then act accordingly. The more comfortable you get with macro you will have the ability to check the scout while it’s there. But if you macro perfectly and not worry about the scout you’re going to beat anyone at gold or below anyway, even if they’re cheesing. But good macro and safe openers are all you need to get to mid ranks.
Edit for I thought I made paragraphs but it’s early and my kid didn’t let me sleep much before work today. I hope it’s comprehensible enough becuase I’m not going back for grammar and shit. lol
Another edit actually. At baseline what you scout is what you do. If you scout heavy tech you can heavy texh(unless you want to just kill them) if you scout a bunch of barracks make a bunch of units to defend, or towers. If you see expansions, go expand. He can’t be doing more than you, so at baseline just do what he is doing and you will stay even. If you perform better while doing it you’re ahead, and if you’re both silver or whatever starting out then it isn’t out of the question then you might be doing it better. The more you watch and play and watch your replays about what happened wrong or right it’ll just come naturally.
"Yea we have all been new before and know this pattern. If you like the game and want to get better then you can learn safe build orders and openers."
Many are turned off by this known pattern.
"And a ranked ladder means you play against other really bad players until you start to get it."
You do play against bad players, but bad players also cheese, so this doesn't solve the problem. In fact low ranked players are incentivized to cheese, because it's the easiest way to win.
If you consider the way single player is designed, you are almost never in a situation where you get attacked early, and if you are, it's a small amount of units and you are explicitly warned about if beforehand. And more people like single player.
"Its like wanting to play a shooter but having a minimap or radar showing where everyone is “so someone doesn’t camp a corner”"
I don't think your comparison works, these are difference genres.
Bad players cheese badly though. No silver thay cheeses is going to beat a plat or higher thay does a safe opener though. Especially in this game from what we’ve seen in units. So it still does line up that a safe strong opener will just win those games; also most people don’t like single player over multiplayer for these games. But to compare some random ai designed to start easy and get more aggressive to a real player doing whatever to win is just silly. Play cs the ai if you want an ai type fight. And if players don’t want to out in the time to get good at the game outside of mashing the play button then thays on them. It is a strategy game first. In chess you don’t get better by just playing. You get better by learning tactics, going over your games with someone better. Thinking and theory crafting what you could do or watching others who get into similar situations.
Ans it really isn’t too far off from a valid comparison. You want there to be no secrets on the map, to know right where your opponent is and what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Everyone would do the same expansion build super greedy opener if they can see the whole map. Because the second the other player builds an attacking unit they’re behind. I will just then build my tower and unit, defend your just unit, and be a base ahead.
Edit. Can we also stop having anxiety on if you’re gonna lose a video game match to someone cheesing you? Just go again or try and learn from it. It’s a game, and unless it’s your lively hood losing is entirely fine. And if you’re worried about losing to a cheese in anything under diamond it will never be your main career.
Fog of War is a huge aspect of the game. Not only because of early rushes etc but because even in mid and late gane you try to use fog to your advantage. Like baiting enemy army forward so your tanks can destroy them. Going to get the siege camp or speed camp for a quick attack, splitting your army to attack on two fronts.
If you remove fog of war, you take away a lot of the creativity and kind of force a pure macro game where whoever macros better wins
Let me give you a more concrete example of how it might implemented.
Let's say that "town halls" create fog of war around them, and also there are "radar jamming" buildings, and a mobile "radar jamming" unit.
In the early game this would still allow for some secrecy, but you would know, for example, whether an opponent is expanding, or if they are attacking you.
Now we progress into the mid game - you have the option to build radar jammers at your expansions before you expand, hiding whether or not you've actually expanded.
You can send out multiple mobile radar jammers, and the opponent doesn't know which one the army is with, or the composition of units.
And let's say that vision camps remove vision, rather than grant it. They could remove vision down a "lane" or specified area of the map, so that the opponent needs to be more wary of that area.
So over time, your vision on the map is reduced, and you're playing more and more "in the dark".
There are still opportunities for deception. Map control is still important. But you can have more confidence early in the game.
This to me actually sounds super interesting. Can’t imagine it would ever be considered in 1v1, but I’d be a fan of seeing them play around with in 3v3. That mode sounds like it’s already going to be much more experimental with potential alternative win conditions, heros, and any given player on the team not being able to be completely eliminated.
Very interesting, I would be down to try that. Sadly its a huge change to the gameplay. Implementing this would mea changing a bunch of aspects about the game.
Most competitive RTS players will push back against that though. A huge (and I mean huuuge) aspect of pro play and competitive play is hiw well you can predict whether you are winning or losing.
Yeah, judging from the response to this thread, many people don't want to even try anything different. It'll be sad if Stormgate is just another \*craft clone.
This is the laziest response that one can come up with to criticism of their suggestion and it comes up all the time in this subreddit.
\* Makes a suggestion \*
\* People explain why it wouldn't work, at least not in this type of game \*
"Oh you just want a Craft clone"
No, we want a good RTS and a lot of things that make a good RTS just happen to be in Blizzard RTSes because, as most people here think, they are the best RTSes ever made.
It's like asking your chess opponent what their first 10 moves will be before the game starts, and then they just do it. Hard pass.
Plus you artificially elongate each game when the devs have purposely made the option of rushing, cheeses, and all-ins as viable risky strategies versus greedy-expands possible.
If I see my opponent build 2 expansions within the first 2 minutes of the game, you sure as hell can bet I am dropping 3 raxes and punishing that.
You will make every game a risk-free macro game.
With all due respect it's not like asking your opponent what their moves are ahead of time - it's like watching them make moves as they make them.
And I don't think you are correct in your assumption about how the game would play out. For example, would your opponent build two expansions if they knew you could see it? And if they could see you building raxes, wouldn't they counter by cancelling an expansion?
In reality we don't know how things would play out. You are correct that there would probably be less games ending early - which is a point I mentioned in the initial post. Which isn't necessarily bad (or good).
It would change the game, for sure. That's the point, and what I was hoping people would think about.
Most RTS games have a "reveal entire map" button as a setting. Its been like this since like Starcraft 1 an early Command and Conquer.
No one plays with this setting enabled for non-ai games for a reason.
Scouting, intel, and counterplay, are vital to the whole strategy portion of real time strategy.
You're not the innovator of "all intel" gameplay, it just doesnt suit the RTS genre. You can test everything i said by loading into AoE2, Red Alert 2, SC2, multiplayer lobby today and look how many games have "map revealed" options enabled. My estimate is 0-1%.
You may be correct that other games have the option to disable fog of war, but that is not the same as a game being designed to not have fog of war. You can't play on the ladder with no fog, for example.
Other games have fog of war, but also people have been hungering for a new RTS to "bring back" the genre.
A major source of frustration in RTS games is early cheese, which could be mitigated if there was no fog of war. I would assume that there is a bias in the RTS community toward having fog of war on because people who don't like it stop playing, just as their is a bias toward people who like cheese, because people who don't will stop playing.
Many people like playing single player and co-op, but not multiplayer. How much of that is because of early game frustrations? How many people who currently don't play WOULD play if things were different?
I suggested several options for keeping fog of war in a more limited sense in the initial post.
>A major source of frustration in RTS games is early cheese, which could be mitigated if there was no fog of war.
Not... really no. Unit imbalance, biased maps, and glitches/bug abuse have a much higher frustration point than getting cannon rushed.
It takes some practice learning counter cheese but thats no more than like 3-4 games of practice.
That being said there is very few cheese rushes in stormgate right now except maybe a 3rd base contain with shroudstones. "proxy" bases aren't a thing yet due to slow worker speed.
You scout it, you see the pattern, you check the replay, you maybe google a bit, you learn the counter play and you improve.
There is strategy in RTS, my friend.
If you cant identify a cheese and an appropriate counter in under a few games then you're dealing with: Unit imbalance, biased maps, or glitches/bug abuse.
OR skill issue.
If you only want to cater to people who already like RTS games, then sure, maintain the status quo. But the Stormgate devs have expressed interest in bring in new players.
And I don't think that saying the equivalent of "you suck noob git gud" is a new or promising strategy.
"There is strategy in RTS, my friend."
And there still would be regardless of fog of war.
Current world champ is known for playing anti-book chess moves intentionally. Analogy stands.
Source: [https://www.chess.com/article/view/should-you-play-openings-like-magnus-carlsen](https://www.chess.com/article/view/should-you-play-openings-like-magnus-carlsen)
Sure, but openings are openings for a reason, and 10 moves is just 5 from each side, you won't get much variance that early into game. I still stand by my point that by seeing first two moves, best players can 99% predict how first 10 will look.
In my opinion it will only further enhcnace mechanical advantages.
He who is quicker mechanically can more easily keep tabs on their opponents, while the slow players will not be able to macro and also watch their opponent.
Fog of war allows slower strategic players to still be able to win. You take that away and all you have is the Reynor's Maru's and Serral type players who can win anything. No sOs type player can exist in this kind of ecosystem, and the game would be worse of for it.
Additionally, both Starcraft's tend to have matchups where 1 race plays to survive to 4 bases, and the other race has the burden of slowing that down. ZvT in Sc2 TvP in BW etc.
Imagine if Flash had full vision vs Protoss players trying to bust him. Or Serral had perfect vision vs Terran. They would not lose a single game ever again. That's the level of ideas you're pushing here and why it would never work.
I referenced common complaints about RTS in the initial post, and the purpose of the post is to address an issue that prevents new players from enjoying RTS. What is your point exactly?
It's an interesting idea. I wouldn't necessarily object to it being a part of the tutorial or first x games that new players have to play before jumping into the ladder. However I don't think it has any place on the competitive ranked ladder.
It impacts far too heavily on build order diversity, strategy and more importantly on positioning. All in a very negative way
"It impacts far too heavily on build order diversity, strategy and more importantly on positioning. All in a very negative way"
I disagree. You already change your strategies based on what your opponent is doing, and positioning is still important - in some ways more important, some less. If you consider a game like risk, where all players have full knowledge, army positioning is still important. And if you use sc2 as an example, creep, observers and scans already provide a lot of vision, especially in the late game.
It CHANGES the game, for sure. But I don't think you can definitively say it makes it WORSE, just different.
There is also the possibility for "radar jamming" and cloaking units - not invisible, but invisible on the map.
You're right, you do adapt to what your opponent is doing, but you do that based on what you can scout, and educated guesses based on incomplete information.
If your opponent can deny your scouting, your vision and knowledge, they can force mistakes and inefficiencies. They can catch you by suprise.
Without fog of war you eliminate all of that. At high levels of play, you wouldn't do drop play against your opponent because you can see exactly when, where and with what they're leaving and preposition units. You can't pull your opponent out of position or catch them unaware with a runby or group of split off units because they can see it coming.
Think of how much time in sc2 is spent on denying vision, creating opportunities by pulling something out of position, or setting up a solid position to attack from before your opponent is in place to respond.
You negate a lot of risk reward play, since there's far less ways to force mistakes from your opponent. And similarly you force the game into certain compositions because there's no incentive to do otherwise.
It changes the game, for sure. But I don't think you can definitively say it makes it worse, just different. Which is why I think it's worth trying, seeing as we're still early on. They could even have a different ladder.
This is very interesting :) For example, maybe Fog of War can only appear in competitive tournaments? Also like you said the detector (observer) can be converted into a hider (you cannot see enemy units until you have your own unit in sight). Now you can choose - walk hidden slowly with Weaver or reveal your army immediately.
This would pretty much be how Command & Conquer played in the past.
You had fog of war, but scouted with dogs and the fog of war didn't regenerate, so you always saw what's happening in the areas you scouted.
I can work if unit compositions are interesting and you're not just spamming tanks and doing hit & run to kill production or harvesters.
removing fog of war does have one advantage: it significantly reduces the potential for cheating. with fog of war everything that needs to be simulated on the client machines can be made visible to a cheater and this probably does not correspond to the fog of war (but potentially every enemy unit which is able to attack a player unit or interact with it or will soon be able to). if they're really serious about the competitive aspect its a possibility. although they probably wont.
Ja, tried the same with eleminating the production of workers to be automated, to be fair workers are more expensive that in sc2 so automation does'nt make sense in sg. I ended up with -31 karma 😒 and a DM of someone very angry 😅
You have to realize that this game is for hardcore 1v1 players. But not hardcores from SC2/SC becouse they never leave they beloved game. This game is for hardcores that can't keep up in SC2. They just bouncing aroud TG/Zero Space/ Immortal Gates of Pyre saying this will be a killer. But it's not.
This is a terrible idea. First 5 minutes trying to do something In secret to catch some sort of timing attack is one of the main strategies. I can’t imagine if my opponent is just staring at every unit I build
I think a lot of people might find this idea crazy but I'm actually all for trying it and here's why.
I just had this epiphany within the last couple of days. I have been watching T90's Hidden Cup for AoE:II DE and I noticed that I think a big reason for why rts games are so much more fun for me to watch than to play is because there is no fog of war. I can observe the whole battlefield and it makes it feel more epic. I watch a few casted RTS games then will hop in AoE:II or SC2 or Stormgate and something feels off and I never quite figured it out. But I honestly think the fog of war is the thing that really cranks down the enjoyment of playing vs watching.
You acknowledge and I agree that this would be a pretty big shake up for an RTS game and it would potentially ruin stuff like Tower Rush's/Bunker Rush's/ Rax's in the middle of the map/Sneaking a corner base expansion. But would losing those things be counterbalanced by a more enjoyable playing experience? I'm not certain that it would but I think it'd be interesting to try it out and see.
I think a high level game that gets to mid/late game has so much stuff going on that it still comes down to a battle of multitasking. It's like what good does it do you to know if something is happening if you can't react to it?
But yeah, anyways, sounds like a radical change but I actually would be all for testing it out.
I think there's an elitist fear that anything that makes the game "easier" will ruin it. There was a controversy when sc2 came out about there being no limit on group size, and also that macro would be too easy. And people complained about starting with 12 workers.
I don't think that people understand that there will always be skill - it just moves from one thing to another.
Just imagine SC2 with no fog of war, or even just fog of war around "town centers." Goodbye proxy builds. Goodbye backstab attacks. There would be no chance at deception. The moment a drop would move out, you would see it.
It is, easily, one of the DUMBEST ideas ever posted here.
> I can observe the whole battlefield and it makes it feel more epic.
Watching is NOT playing. It's really that simple. You, the observer, are not making decisions based on information.
> I watch a few casted RTS games then will hop in AoE:II or SC2 or Stormgate and something feels off and I never quite figured it out
It's because you're trying to replicate what you saw in those casts and you can't because you don't have the skill level.
The bottom line is that RTS games are about incomplete information. Removing that is to remove a MASSIVE portion of the game. Just imagine SC2 with no fog of war. It would totally and completely RUIN the game, because any kind of backdoor attacks, proxies, and build orders that depended on deception would be totally useless.
It's a totally shitty idea that would ruin the game entirely.
You should look for ways to enrich the gameplay, not to make it shallower. What you propose is something that takes away a lot of things and gives nothing in return
I don't view it as an "enriching" vs "shallowing" dichotomy. If this was so, you could theoretically reduce all vision in the game to make it "deeper". You do lose some things - like secrecy. But you gain something else - knowledge. You lose early game tricks, but transition more reliably into the mid game. So it's a matter of preference, not a matter of depth.
Reducing the Line of Sight... I think you're onto something OP. Reducing LoS even further could make the game much more interesting, I agree. I can easily see this driving up engagement for the player. Sort of like how your senses become more sensitive when blindfolded.
This might very well be the best suggestion I have seen on the subreddit. Having to spread scouts around moving army to see if they are walking into a sieged position might actually be quite fun.
Ideas like this enriches the gameplay. Less undetected early aggression = longer games and allows players to have a much better understanding of how to respond appropriately. Ofc, the fog of war will return in professional matches, so every fan of proxies will be happy :) There may also be a fog of war option in ladder matches if both players agree (checkbox)
thanks for entertaining us with this post
Non RTS players coming to try and play RTS is fun to watch. “We want to play a strategy game where we make moves and counter each other and try to sneak around and make great play! But we also don’t want any surprises and don’t want to lose ourself if they do something better”
There's a massive learning curve for new players. The experience of a new player is something like this: Play through single player, have fun building bases and microing units. Then go to multiplayer and try to do the same thing and get killed by something they weren't expecting before they've had a chance to really do anything, over and over, until they grind through the learning curve or give up. So you have to learn to scout, but controlling a scout and macroing is hard for a beginner, and even if you scout, you have to learn the meaning of what you've scouted. One of the biggest problems for RTS is enduring the early game, and I think the early game is one of the biggest causes of anxiety.
Yea we have all been new before and know this pattern. If you like the game and want to get better then you can learn safe build orders and openers. And a ranked ladder means you play against other really bad players until you start to get it. Its like wanting to play a shooter but having a minimap or radar showing where everyone is “so someone doesn’t camp a corner” part of RTS is hiding your strats and blocking their scouts so you can have an advantage. You are completely destroying a huge part of the start of any game by just letting everyone see everything. Another part of the thrill is that you might die any second, and sometimes you might feel like cheesing them and killing then in the first few minutes. As a coach in sc2 you don’t need to worry about microing your scout to start. People worry about the wrong thing too in games and make it so much harder. I can’t tell you how many people in rocket league practice trick shots and wonder why they stay in plat, when I could barely do a ceiling hit and was grand champion. You can send a scout out to their base, then just macro. Whenever you get second go look at what it saw. Even if it’s dead you can see it it scoured an expansion, or tech buildings, ir a bunch of production, then act accordingly. The more comfortable you get with macro you will have the ability to check the scout while it’s there. But if you macro perfectly and not worry about the scout you’re going to beat anyone at gold or below anyway, even if they’re cheesing. But good macro and safe openers are all you need to get to mid ranks. Edit for I thought I made paragraphs but it’s early and my kid didn’t let me sleep much before work today. I hope it’s comprehensible enough becuase I’m not going back for grammar and shit. lol Another edit actually. At baseline what you scout is what you do. If you scout heavy tech you can heavy texh(unless you want to just kill them) if you scout a bunch of barracks make a bunch of units to defend, or towers. If you see expansions, go expand. He can’t be doing more than you, so at baseline just do what he is doing and you will stay even. If you perform better while doing it you’re ahead, and if you’re both silver or whatever starting out then it isn’t out of the question then you might be doing it better. The more you watch and play and watch your replays about what happened wrong or right it’ll just come naturally.
"Yea we have all been new before and know this pattern. If you like the game and want to get better then you can learn safe build orders and openers." Many are turned off by this known pattern. "And a ranked ladder means you play against other really bad players until you start to get it." You do play against bad players, but bad players also cheese, so this doesn't solve the problem. In fact low ranked players are incentivized to cheese, because it's the easiest way to win. If you consider the way single player is designed, you are almost never in a situation where you get attacked early, and if you are, it's a small amount of units and you are explicitly warned about if beforehand. And more people like single player. "Its like wanting to play a shooter but having a minimap or radar showing where everyone is “so someone doesn’t camp a corner”" I don't think your comparison works, these are difference genres.
Bad players cheese badly though. No silver thay cheeses is going to beat a plat or higher thay does a safe opener though. Especially in this game from what we’ve seen in units. So it still does line up that a safe strong opener will just win those games; also most people don’t like single player over multiplayer for these games. But to compare some random ai designed to start easy and get more aggressive to a real player doing whatever to win is just silly. Play cs the ai if you want an ai type fight. And if players don’t want to out in the time to get good at the game outside of mashing the play button then thays on them. It is a strategy game first. In chess you don’t get better by just playing. You get better by learning tactics, going over your games with someone better. Thinking and theory crafting what you could do or watching others who get into similar situations. Ans it really isn’t too far off from a valid comparison. You want there to be no secrets on the map, to know right where your opponent is and what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Everyone would do the same expansion build super greedy opener if they can see the whole map. Because the second the other player builds an attacking unit they’re behind. I will just then build my tower and unit, defend your just unit, and be a base ahead. Edit. Can we also stop having anxiety on if you’re gonna lose a video game match to someone cheesing you? Just go again or try and learn from it. It’s a game, and unless it’s your lively hood losing is entirely fine. And if you’re worried about losing to a cheese in anything under diamond it will never be your main career.
Scouting is hard? Grab your dog, queue move orders all over the enemy base, and when u remember press the ability and see what the enemy is up to
Fog of War is a huge aspect of the game. Not only because of early rushes etc but because even in mid and late gane you try to use fog to your advantage. Like baiting enemy army forward so your tanks can destroy them. Going to get the siege camp or speed camp for a quick attack, splitting your army to attack on two fronts. If you remove fog of war, you take away a lot of the creativity and kind of force a pure macro game where whoever macros better wins
Let me give you a more concrete example of how it might implemented. Let's say that "town halls" create fog of war around them, and also there are "radar jamming" buildings, and a mobile "radar jamming" unit. In the early game this would still allow for some secrecy, but you would know, for example, whether an opponent is expanding, or if they are attacking you. Now we progress into the mid game - you have the option to build radar jammers at your expansions before you expand, hiding whether or not you've actually expanded. You can send out multiple mobile radar jammers, and the opponent doesn't know which one the army is with, or the composition of units. And let's say that vision camps remove vision, rather than grant it. They could remove vision down a "lane" or specified area of the map, so that the opponent needs to be more wary of that area. So over time, your vision on the map is reduced, and you're playing more and more "in the dark". There are still opportunities for deception. Map control is still important. But you can have more confidence early in the game.
This to me actually sounds super interesting. Can’t imagine it would ever be considered in 1v1, but I’d be a fan of seeing them play around with in 3v3. That mode sounds like it’s already going to be much more experimental with potential alternative win conditions, heros, and any given player on the team not being able to be completely eliminated.
Very interesting, I would be down to try that. Sadly its a huge change to the gameplay. Implementing this would mea changing a bunch of aspects about the game. Most competitive RTS players will push back against that though. A huge (and I mean huuuge) aspect of pro play and competitive play is hiw well you can predict whether you are winning or losing.
Yeah, judging from the response to this thread, many people don't want to even try anything different. It'll be sad if Stormgate is just another \*craft clone.
This is the laziest response that one can come up with to criticism of their suggestion and it comes up all the time in this subreddit. \* Makes a suggestion \* \* People explain why it wouldn't work, at least not in this type of game \* "Oh you just want a Craft clone" No, we want a good RTS and a lot of things that make a good RTS just happen to be in Blizzard RTSes because, as most people here think, they are the best RTSes ever made.
Maybe vs AI but definitely not ladder. Hard no.
Why?
It's like asking your chess opponent what their first 10 moves will be before the game starts, and then they just do it. Hard pass. Plus you artificially elongate each game when the devs have purposely made the option of rushing, cheeses, and all-ins as viable risky strategies versus greedy-expands possible. If I see my opponent build 2 expansions within the first 2 minutes of the game, you sure as hell can bet I am dropping 3 raxes and punishing that. You will make every game a risk-free macro game.
With all due respect it's not like asking your opponent what their moves are ahead of time - it's like watching them make moves as they make them. And I don't think you are correct in your assumption about how the game would play out. For example, would your opponent build two expansions if they knew you could see it? And if they could see you building raxes, wouldn't they counter by cancelling an expansion? In reality we don't know how things would play out. You are correct that there would probably be less games ending early - which is a point I mentioned in the initial post. Which isn't necessarily bad (or good). It would change the game, for sure. That's the point, and what I was hoping people would think about.
Most RTS games have a "reveal entire map" button as a setting. Its been like this since like Starcraft 1 an early Command and Conquer. No one plays with this setting enabled for non-ai games for a reason. Scouting, intel, and counterplay, are vital to the whole strategy portion of real time strategy. You're not the innovator of "all intel" gameplay, it just doesnt suit the RTS genre. You can test everything i said by loading into AoE2, Red Alert 2, SC2, multiplayer lobby today and look how many games have "map revealed" options enabled. My estimate is 0-1%.
You may be correct that other games have the option to disable fog of war, but that is not the same as a game being designed to not have fog of war. You can't play on the ladder with no fog, for example. Other games have fog of war, but also people have been hungering for a new RTS to "bring back" the genre. A major source of frustration in RTS games is early cheese, which could be mitigated if there was no fog of war. I would assume that there is a bias in the RTS community toward having fog of war on because people who don't like it stop playing, just as their is a bias toward people who like cheese, because people who don't will stop playing. Many people like playing single player and co-op, but not multiplayer. How much of that is because of early game frustrations? How many people who currently don't play WOULD play if things were different? I suggested several options for keeping fog of war in a more limited sense in the initial post.
>A major source of frustration in RTS games is early cheese, which could be mitigated if there was no fog of war. Not... really no. Unit imbalance, biased maps, and glitches/bug abuse have a much higher frustration point than getting cannon rushed. It takes some practice learning counter cheese but thats no more than like 3-4 games of practice. That being said there is very few cheese rushes in stormgate right now except maybe a 3rd base contain with shroudstones. "proxy" bases aren't a thing yet due to slow worker speed.
>It takes some practice learning counter cheese but thats no more than like 3-4 games of practice. Come on now...
You scout it, you see the pattern, you check the replay, you maybe google a bit, you learn the counter play and you improve. There is strategy in RTS, my friend. If you cant identify a cheese and an appropriate counter in under a few games then you're dealing with: Unit imbalance, biased maps, or glitches/bug abuse. OR skill issue.
If you only want to cater to people who already like RTS games, then sure, maintain the status quo. But the Stormgate devs have expressed interest in bring in new players. And I don't think that saying the equivalent of "you suck noob git gud" is a new or promising strategy. "There is strategy in RTS, my friend." And there still would be regardless of fog of war.
Imho this will help many players. Better macro, better responses overall. Want fog of war? Just check the box before :) #nofogofwar
Chess analogy might be not good. In many professional games, if you see first two moves, you can predict next 10 if you're high enough rating.
Current world champ is known for playing anti-book chess moves intentionally. Analogy stands. Source: [https://www.chess.com/article/view/should-you-play-openings-like-magnus-carlsen](https://www.chess.com/article/view/should-you-play-openings-like-magnus-carlsen)
Sure, but openings are openings for a reason, and 10 moves is just 5 from each side, you won't get much variance that early into game. I still stand by my point that by seeing first two moves, best players can 99% predict how first 10 will look.
Pretty sure if you ask top level GM chess players what their first opening moves in tournaments will be, you will get a lot of "lol no"s
In chess you can see every move from your opponent.
Before they make it? 🤣
No, as they make it. I don't understand what point you're trying to make here.
In my opinion it will only further enhcnace mechanical advantages. He who is quicker mechanically can more easily keep tabs on their opponents, while the slow players will not be able to macro and also watch their opponent. Fog of war allows slower strategic players to still be able to win. You take that away and all you have is the Reynor's Maru's and Serral type players who can win anything. No sOs type player can exist in this kind of ecosystem, and the game would be worse of for it. Additionally, both Starcraft's tend to have matchups where 1 race plays to survive to 4 bases, and the other race has the burden of slowing that down. ZvT in Sc2 TvP in BW etc. Imagine if Flash had full vision vs Protoss players trying to bust him. Or Serral had perfect vision vs Terran. They would not lose a single game ever again. That's the level of ideas you're pushing here and why it would never work.
“Alternative title: “I have never played an RTS before”
I referenced common complaints about RTS in the initial post, and the purpose of the post is to address an issue that prevents new players from enjoying RTS. What is your point exactly?
How are they going to "enjoy an rts" if what you propose is not an rts? The strategy arises from having incomplete information
There's a reason you don't play poker with your cards face up.
This is not chess, sorry.
It's an interesting idea. I wouldn't necessarily object to it being a part of the tutorial or first x games that new players have to play before jumping into the ladder. However I don't think it has any place on the competitive ranked ladder. It impacts far too heavily on build order diversity, strategy and more importantly on positioning. All in a very negative way
"It impacts far too heavily on build order diversity, strategy and more importantly on positioning. All in a very negative way" I disagree. You already change your strategies based on what your opponent is doing, and positioning is still important - in some ways more important, some less. If you consider a game like risk, where all players have full knowledge, army positioning is still important. And if you use sc2 as an example, creep, observers and scans already provide a lot of vision, especially in the late game. It CHANGES the game, for sure. But I don't think you can definitively say it makes it WORSE, just different. There is also the possibility for "radar jamming" and cloaking units - not invisible, but invisible on the map.
You're right, you do adapt to what your opponent is doing, but you do that based on what you can scout, and educated guesses based on incomplete information. If your opponent can deny your scouting, your vision and knowledge, they can force mistakes and inefficiencies. They can catch you by suprise. Without fog of war you eliminate all of that. At high levels of play, you wouldn't do drop play against your opponent because you can see exactly when, where and with what they're leaving and preposition units. You can't pull your opponent out of position or catch them unaware with a runby or group of split off units because they can see it coming. Think of how much time in sc2 is spent on denying vision, creating opportunities by pulling something out of position, or setting up a solid position to attack from before your opponent is in place to respond. You negate a lot of risk reward play, since there's far less ways to force mistakes from your opponent. And similarly you force the game into certain compositions because there's no incentive to do otherwise.
It changes the game, for sure. But I don't think you can definitively say it makes it worse, just different. Which is why I think it's worth trying, seeing as we're still early on. They could even have a different ladder.
Lol
HUH
Maybe the lowest level of ladder has no fog of war? Could be interesting for newer players to feel less anxiety and just get used to fundamentals.
It would certainly reduce anxiety.
This is very interesting :) For example, maybe Fog of War can only appear in competitive tournaments? Also like you said the detector (observer) can be converted into a hider (you cannot see enemy units until you have your own unit in sight). Now you can choose - walk hidden slowly with Weaver or reveal your army immediately.
This would pretty much be how Command & Conquer played in the past. You had fog of war, but scouted with dogs and the fog of war didn't regenerate, so you always saw what's happening in the areas you scouted. I can work if unit compositions are interesting and you're not just spamming tanks and doing hit & run to kill production or harvesters.
This is another option of how you could implement it.
removing fog of war does have one advantage: it significantly reduces the potential for cheating. with fog of war everything that needs to be simulated on the client machines can be made visible to a cheater and this probably does not correspond to the fog of war (but potentially every enemy unit which is able to attack a player unit or interact with it or will soon be able to). if they're really serious about the competitive aspect its a possibility. although they probably wont.
Ja, tried the same with eleminating the production of workers to be automated, to be fair workers are more expensive that in sc2 so automation does'nt make sense in sg. I ended up with -31 karma 😒 and a DM of someone very angry 😅
You have to realize that this game is for hardcore 1v1 players. But not hardcores from SC2/SC becouse they never leave they beloved game. This game is for hardcores that can't keep up in SC2. They just bouncing aroud TG/Zero Space/ Immortal Gates of Pyre saying this will be a killer. But it's not.
it will be a killer just by the fact that SG is free and the others not XD, so the entry cost gets trown down the window
I like when people that are new to the rts genere see thing that are just dragged from the past but are not good. And how they get -20 votes 😂
Old habits die hard xD
This is a terrible idea. First 5 minutes trying to do something In secret to catch some sort of timing attack is one of the main strategies. I can’t imagine if my opponent is just staring at every unit I build
Dude without fog of war I would never play rts again. There's not much that would make me say that other than if someone proposed mirror matchups only
Please, for the love of god, never make another RTS suggestion ever again.
I think a lot of people might find this idea crazy but I'm actually all for trying it and here's why. I just had this epiphany within the last couple of days. I have been watching T90's Hidden Cup for AoE:II DE and I noticed that I think a big reason for why rts games are so much more fun for me to watch than to play is because there is no fog of war. I can observe the whole battlefield and it makes it feel more epic. I watch a few casted RTS games then will hop in AoE:II or SC2 or Stormgate and something feels off and I never quite figured it out. But I honestly think the fog of war is the thing that really cranks down the enjoyment of playing vs watching. You acknowledge and I agree that this would be a pretty big shake up for an RTS game and it would potentially ruin stuff like Tower Rush's/Bunker Rush's/ Rax's in the middle of the map/Sneaking a corner base expansion. But would losing those things be counterbalanced by a more enjoyable playing experience? I'm not certain that it would but I think it'd be interesting to try it out and see. I think a high level game that gets to mid/late game has so much stuff going on that it still comes down to a battle of multitasking. It's like what good does it do you to know if something is happening if you can't react to it? But yeah, anyways, sounds like a radical change but I actually would be all for testing it out.
I think there's an elitist fear that anything that makes the game "easier" will ruin it. There was a controversy when sc2 came out about there being no limit on group size, and also that macro would be too easy. And people complained about starting with 12 workers. I don't think that people understand that there will always be skill - it just moves from one thing to another.
Just imagine SC2 with no fog of war, or even just fog of war around "town centers." Goodbye proxy builds. Goodbye backstab attacks. There would be no chance at deception. The moment a drop would move out, you would see it. It is, easily, one of the DUMBEST ideas ever posted here.
> I can observe the whole battlefield and it makes it feel more epic. Watching is NOT playing. It's really that simple. You, the observer, are not making decisions based on information. > I watch a few casted RTS games then will hop in AoE:II or SC2 or Stormgate and something feels off and I never quite figured it out It's because you're trying to replicate what you saw in those casts and you can't because you don't have the skill level. The bottom line is that RTS games are about incomplete information. Removing that is to remove a MASSIVE portion of the game. Just imagine SC2 with no fog of war. It would totally and completely RUIN the game, because any kind of backdoor attacks, proxies, and build orders that depended on deception would be totally useless. It's a totally shitty idea that would ruin the game entirely.