Should Supreme Commander be competitive or just 'Plain Stupid'?
This entire thread is what I've been thinking recently about Supcom so I'm going to let it pour out and worry about it making sense later
Anyway
The thing that many people have been complaining about recently to do with SupCom2 is competitive play.
Lets be frank. The game isn't really that competitive a game. Its more a LOL I HAVE A FIRE BREATHING CYBER-DRAGON type of game
Now is there anything wrong with this?
Hell no!!!
So this is the awkward cross-roads that Supreme Commander finds itself at
If it follows down competitive play it faces StarCraft, Command and Conquer and the like
However if Supreme Commander follows down the, as SteveB put it, plain stupid route, then it has less opposition.
This however raises more issues than it solves
Does the game now focus solely on a game that can only be described as 'casual' (*shudder) or focus on a tight gameplay or Both.
The perfect answer is that it is both.
Lets use a number scale here.
1- Game start
10 - Super nuke frenzy
The early game is extremely well balanced and easily develops in good competitive fights that can be won well before the game even reaches 6 or 7 where major units and heavy weapons come in to play
Yet the game can easily go on well past 6 or 7 where crazy stuff like Cyber dinosaurs and Spider bots and massive walkers roam instead of tanks.
The 1-5 early/mid game statisfies the hardcore and the 6+ stage pleases the noobs, the casuals and everyone really because no-one can say that blowing up someones base with a nuke isn't satisfying.
So how does this cause problems?
Because, bluntly, I don't think GPG could create such a well-built game yet.
As a company I have great respect for GPG. They make bold moves, great games and I love their art style (random but its true).
However they aren't Blizzard and that in a way makes me sad, because if GPG were Blizzard Supreme Commander 2 would have rocked this world instead of causing arguments over where SC2 or Sc2 is better etc.
So what do we want Supreme Commander to be?
Well first off what is Supreme Commander?
The idea of Supreme Commander really is that wherever your commander goes, bases spring up and battles rage. Think of C&C4 but if it didn't suck.
So with this in mind the Commander should be key.
It needs to become more Gundam like in the idea that you can 'pimp your ride'. The commander needs to be something that is, bluntly, ******* awesome. Variations of the commander, from everything from plain SupCom1 UEF commander to an even more evil looking Supcom2 Cybran commander.
An army painter would be nice but variations of the commander seem a necessary step
The game needs to revolve around the commander.
Next Supreme Commander is scale.
What use is the awesome zoom feature if you can't zoom out and see the world?
First off the World Domination map becomes a standard map.
Why? Because its cool as hell.
The game needs massive units that look awesome, nukes etc.
Why? Because they are cool as hell.
It needs Game-Enders that are virtually unstoppable. I'm meaning Seraphim mega nuke game enders. Game-Enders that once up, hail the end of your opponent.
Why? BECAUSE IT WOULD BE AWESOME
We want Supreme Commander to be Awesome
So what should Supreme Commander do next?
It plays to its strength
It needs to be cool as hell.
In SupCom2 mini-exps were added. This was both good and bad.
Experimentals should mean something. They should mean that something about to go down.
You don't need to throw in mini-exps to make the game cooler, I mean the Cybran Loyalists are one of my favourite units in the game, and they are one of the weakest too!
So you want to have cool short fights with friends on small maps, and massive battles that rage across planets (just a suggestion, probably least serious one here) that you talk about the whole of next week.
The biggest hurdle here is probably Research.
Research as it is means that if you spend your RP badly you lose. End of. Game over.
Research like this can be both good and bad. But it should be more like, you invest in aggressive tech, you get faster raiders and stealth units.
You invest in turtle tech, you can sit and make master bases.
You invest in special tech, your units gain extra powers or you can call on orbital cannons or build missile systems.
You invest in siege tech your units become more effective at destroying buildings.
Unlocking units is ok if its not game changing.
Currently if I unlock a Megalith in SupCom2 and build 3 of them I can almost win any land battle against my opponents if they to don't unlock a mini-exp.
Unlocking things like AA on tanks, a sheild generator, MML or super raider assault bot is cool, but usually not game-changing.
Unlocking a ML, is.
Unlocking Mass Conversion, is.
Mass conversion is a good idea. But should be something you can put in if you want a 20 minute no rush game. It shouldn't become a core game mechanic. It should be something you add if you want want a 'Plain Stupid' game.
So what the **** are you trying to say _Golgoth_?
I guess I'm trying to say Supreme Commander 3 needs to be a game not aimed at Xbox console-tards or casuals.
Sure the late game can be advertised to casuals, but casuals won't mod a game, won't support it, won't point out balance tweaks (unless they want something to rage over) and won't join tournaments or publicise the game.
SupCom3 needs to be what the gamers want.
A game with fun skirmishes.
A game with epic fights.
A game with wild variations in maps.
A game with stupidly powerful units.
A game with awesome game modes like Phantom and King of the Hill.
A game that you would recommend for more than one reason.
So in conclusion.
Supreme Commander needs to focus on a competitive early game and make it easy to mod in balance changes etc. until they can fix things themselves.
Then the game needs to cater to those who just want some **** and giggles which we all do. Supreme Commander was dumbed down, but to much. However it still has the potential to be able to do be both competitive and crazy type fun.
I just hope that GPG have the balls to try again.
Now I'm going to end it here because my massive ramble has left even me confused, good day.|||You expect me to read... THAT much text... when it's in such a low-contrast color? Ugh.|||Domenic|||Not easier to read, I have to highlight the text to be able to read it comfortably.
And no, I didn't get past the first couple of lines, just commenting on the color.|||tl;dr
But the thing about stupid and chaotic is that it's hard to make it, the best part of the stupid and crazy MP stuff is that it isn't planned, it just happens.
Competative requires work to make work well, crazy just sort of happens regardless of what you do.
I'd rather time/money be spent on the competative.|||Domenic|||Bitch, bitch, bitch.
On topic, I agree for the most part except about the commander. I like weaker coms.|||I read the OP and man... this guy is an idiot. Too many over-generalizations, not enough examples, he's not even familiar with terminology. It's called "emergent design" or "emergent properties". You can't just making something that way magically. It's a complicated process.
Similarly, you can just make something "awesome". Telling GPG that supcom 3 needs to be "awesome" is flatly retarded and useless. Listing a bunch of gameplay elements as both "good and bad" is also stupid.
Quote:|||I mostly agree with FunkOff. I will add, however, that "minor experimentals" possess the following traits:
1). They hit the field often than experimentals did in vanilla SupCom and FA. This is, arguably, a good thing -- though professional play may be about Moar Tanks, it's nice to have some variety, and mini-experimentals represent a situational alternative to Moar Tanks.
2). Mini-experimentals can represent a kind of "all-in" strategy: fast-teching to AC-1000s and hoping for a commander snipe can leave your land forces stretched thin; but bulking up on land can make you vulnerable to land experimentals, etc.
3). They represent research point investment alternatives: rather than using your RP to simply improve your Tanks, you can sink some points in an experimental and see what happens.
Though I wouldn't mind seeing ACU customization options, army painters, and wild-and-crazy maps in SupCom3, I think there are more pressing concerns. Assuming that we will continue with the research system as it is currently implemented, and assuming the role-based distinction between units will also remain the same (no more than one fighter, no more than one bomber, etc.), the major priorities are as follows:
1). DPS:cost, health:cost, range:cost, and speed:cost balance all the way up the tech tree. No one unit should be any more efficient than any other unit unless it is also more expensive.
2). "Useless" or "mandatory" upgrades should be culled from the tech tree: point sinks that prevent you from getting to units you want. Conversely, "basic" upgrades should be available near the beginning of the tree. Tech trees should be streamlined to allow players to choose strats based on preference and playstyle.
3). Commanders should be balanced in terms of capabilities: range, DPS, health, abilities, etc. Though commanders can have a percentage-based or ability-based advantage in certain areas, no one commander should be gimped.
4). Major holes in faction arsenals should be fixed. Sticking two factions with fighter-bombers and one faction with a pure fighter is, quite simply, a gross oversight -- particularly when said faction's ground forces are so ****ing strong. And I say this even though I LIKE the UEF.
5). Issues preventing unit effectiveness should be addressed, such as mobile AA's singular inability to deal with large numbers of bombers (due to lack of range) or mobile shields hiding out at the BACK of an army, or the Kraken not being able to path to its target because its tentacles are obstructing its turn rate. If anything, Supreme Commander has been and should be about the interface taking a micromanagement burden off your shoulders so that you, the commander, can do what you do best: fight the war. You shouldn't have to finesse your units to get them to do what they're supposed to do.
Though I wouldn't mind [streaming-out] resources in Supreme Commander 3 (they're currently [streaming-in] but you pay up front for units), that is by no means necessary. I think, given the simplicity of the SupCom2 environment, [streaming-out] resources wouldn't be too far beyond the grasp of the casual gamer.|||This is what happens when I decide to throw my thoughts out there after 6 hours of study revision and just randomly because I happened to be on the forum at the time
I doubt it will make much sense I just want people to think about this more and make their own views.
If people don't want to read it because its in green, then their opinion isn't worth anything|||TLWCDR|||I believe that people like supcom very many different reasons. Some people are mainly into heavy competitive gaming. Some people only do skirmishes and turtle the hell out of it. Some people only rush nukes and build just enough defence to reach that goal.
The thing connecting them, is that they all have a lot of fun doing it. I agree with the topicstarter that supreme commander needs to be AWESOME, because that was the first reason I started with supcom in the first place.
When I played my first games, supcom was still 'one of those RTS multiplayer' games people were playing on a LAN party. However, supcom was different. As soon as I builded my first base and some units, and I even managed to destroy some other base, some unknown mega-shells were flying on my troops from high in the sky. I didn't quite understand what was going on, but I thought it was AWESOME. When a buddy of my first builded a fatboy, I thought "it must be useless to build such an expensive mobile _factory_". Untill it started shooting: then I thought it was AWESOME. And the next months, I discovered a lot of AWESOME things in supcom. Forged alliance was even better.
Comparing supcom2 was of course difficult, because now I was not new to the franchise. But for some reason I liked the game, but didn't thought it was AWESOME. 2 weeks ago I learned why..
I installed the SCALE mod and the high textures mod from the modforum, and I really had some fun hours playing the game again. But when I switched back to the vanilla version, I realized that the vanilla scaling is NOT AWESOME.
Supcom was AWESOME because it was fukking big, huge, bold and epic. And supcom2 vanilla is not. So please let supcom3 be AWESOME again.|||Domenic|||_Golgoth_|||b00m4156|||Tl;dr. I'll only reply to the damn title.
Anyway, this game is surprisingly competitive in 1v1, however it really falls apart in the 3v3 and 4v4 department. Still you can quite well see the skill difference in every single game out there, so I think we got a compromise between retarded & competitive. Works out perfectly for me really, but people like Neph & Word always whine about cybran being UP which is bullshit of course.|||Who gives a flying fcuk what colour it is, as long as its not black I dont really care.
Also, the OP should just have said he wants an FA 2. Would have saved a lot of typing.|||slinki|||It's really a sad misconception that competitive players only want to experience the first few minutes of a game. We love evenly matched games that go on for a long time, because they are often the true testers of skill where both players butt heads at every single crossroads and come out even- always looking for that one tiny edge to come out on top.
The problem is that not that we don't want to experience the end game, but that 'newbies' don't seem to want to experience conflict in the early game.|||_PINK|||_PINK|||You don't even play ranked/competitive games Golgoth! You can't just blanket supcom2 sucks as a competitive game.
Your extreme comments about mass conversion also net you little weight. Basically don't slate things you don't really understand
|||From what I can tell, the gist is that the only "competitive" game is the one designed to my personal specifications, contrary opinions and preferences be damned. Narcissism ho!|||I did say I typed it all in Green because last time I gave a massive post on the assault bots in this game with well-thought argument etc.
What happened?
Everyone quoted it for 'lack of greeness' and nobody actually commented on the content
Mainly the thread has achieved its goal
Discussion
And shut your face word just because I don't play all the time anymore doesn't mean I don't know how to 1v1
|||_PINK
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