What does "balanced" mean?

Post here any idea about current FA Balance.
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby monty » 09 Feb 2012, 11:08

i agree with pip. just because of poor sales or lack popularity, doesnt mean the game is not good. i know many good games out there, but few people are actually aware of their existence, which leads to poor sales.
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby uberge3k » 09 Feb 2012, 14:34

stimpack88 wrote:Given the fact that supcom did not do well sales wise we can safely say that it has issues, FA was a financial failure and those who absolutely adore supcom are looking at it with rose colored glasses. How can you dispute what I've said, that most sides are clones of all the other sides minus a few units here and there?

Everyone here forgets how badly supcom has done financially - because it wasn't as good as it could have been. Supcom 1 was extremely half-baked on release. Even FA didn't fix it by adding a totally redundant faction (seraphim) which supcom DID NOT NEED at all. They couldn't even grasp what needed fixing and what was broken in supcom 1 for crying out loud. The failure of FA is all the proof we need that supcom's design is fundamentally flawed. There are lots of good ideas in supcom poorly executed.

Err... What?

So your argument's premise is that "FA was a financial disaster" (which is unsubstantiated), directly caused by being "not as good as it could have been" (which could be said of any game ever released, even overlooking the obvious logical fallacy of correlation != causation), which in your highly subjective opinion is due to "totally redundant factions" (which is wholly inaccurate)?

stimpack88 wrote:The failure of FA is all the proof we need that supcom's design is fundamentally flawed.

How many games have an entirely community-supported alternative client 5 years after their release, with thousands of members participating in the community? Furthermore, how does your logic explain the fact that many fantastic games have bombed commercially?
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby stimpack88 » 09 Feb 2012, 20:55

You should have a look at THQ's stock price. They sold the supreme commander IP to square for a reason. THQ has been losing money hand over fist because of the underperformance of games like supcom, that's why they cut the IP loose and focused on stuff like saints row.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATHQI

THQ dumped money into supcom 1 hoping it would sell, it was not successful enough for them to even consider a sequel. That in of itself speaks volumes about how badly it did and to quality of the game overall.
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby Kryo » 09 Feb 2012, 21:25

yeah sure.... youre argumentation is just assuming and guessing. you better stop posting and go play a game you like better.
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby Ze_PilOt » 09 Feb 2012, 22:18

It was so under-saled that THQ gave more money to GPG to do an addon.
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby AdmiralZeech » 10 Feb 2012, 09:13

stimpack88 wrote:You should have a look at THQ's stock price. They sold the supreme commander IP to square for a reason. THQ has been losing money hand over fist because of the underperformance of games like supcom, that's why they cut the IP loose and focused on stuff like saints row.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATHQI

THQ dumped money into supcom 1 hoping it would sell, it was not successful enough for them to even consider a sequel. That in of itself speaks volumes about how badly it did and to quality of the game overall.


You infer that, because THQ has been unprofitable, that SupCom was unprofitable. This is ignoring the fact that SupCom is only a tiny part of THQ's overall business. Even if SupCom was a minor success, it wouldn't have made much difference to THQ. (besides, I heard THQ's problems was because they focused too much on family-oriented shovelware and licensed titles which went down when the Wii & DS markets fell.)

The facts stand that FA was made, and the property was considered valuable enough for S-E to buy. This doesnt suggest that SupCom was a financial disaster.

Anyways your arguments are mostly driven by opinion and assumptions rather than logic and fact. I think we've conclusively rebutted you so I'll try not to waste any more time posting on this issue :P
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby Ze_PilOt » 10 Feb 2012, 09:16

Yes, let's close this discussion. Nobody will change his mind.
But one thing is sure : if you don't like FA, here is really not the place to be.
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby stimpack88 » 10 Feb 2012, 13:31

It's not about not liking FA, it's about you people being too close to the game. Supcom could have been greater then starcraft but that potential was cut short by bad game design.

From the mouth of chris taylor himself
Our goal from the beginning was to have all the units of the UEF, Cybran and Aeon clearly differentiated, have them move differently, have different-looking weapons, and feel like they had different philosophical fighting styles. That was the hardest thing of all to do, and in the end we sort of fell back to tanks and artillery - but at least we tried.


http://www.computerandvideogames.com/18 ... commander/

They did not meet this goal at all, they spent a lot of resources on art when they just managed to clone all the sides. That speaks volumes about how they missed their own design goals.

This is proof that taylor and co had no idea what they were doing and just slapped stuff together in a half baked manner because they had no theory behind how to do unit differentiation. Then supcom 2 hit and was a huge abortion in terms of design as they consolified the game even though they got a second chance to do the game right and they blew it again, proving they still didn't know wtf they were doing.

It's not about hating the game, it's about mourning wasted potential that is lost on most of the gamers that frequent this board because they just aren't passionate enough about games to even have an inkling of a clue of what was wrong with supcom and why it wasn't as fun as it should have been. The low player turnout online was because something was inherently not too fun about the basic design.

I wanted supcom 1 to be more fun then it ended up being and FA didn't fix that, all it added was a completely redundant faction (sera) when they should have spent those resources differentiating the factions (as was their intended design goal).
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby Ze_PilOt » 10 Feb 2012, 14:04

And how that system is bad ?

Faction diversity is one thing, and hardly a must-have. Look at civilization, ruse, total war serie, ....

On the contrary, supcom offers some features that you don't see in any other game.

I prefer to have dynamic projectile calculation than having different kind of pew pew effects.

So, faction diversity is already here (hovering and one role unit aeons, stealth and speedy cybrans, defensive UEF,....).

I think that your problem is that they play the same.
Do you really think that it will help adding different game mechanics (resources gathering, making unit,..) by faction ?
The game is already hard enough to learn, and even more to master (I don't think there is a single player mastering it -never crashing his eco or waste a single energy point at some point, ...) to add that layer. I think Taylor was clever not going that way.

Also, one of the key point of FA is the "easy to use" interface.
All is done for the player to not have to think about making engies, put them on crystal and going back and forth between the frontline and his base, and only concentrate on his strategy and tactics.

Adding a differentiation in factions will remove that feeling.

It's what I hate about starcraft actually. The faction don't look and play the same, that's true.
But the strategies are the same, and overall, the game mechanics are not that different between factions. But you have to learn how to play every faction just because it's not the same shortcuts and order loops.
This is for me, for a strategy game, a really bad design. But it's good for an action game (and that's what starcraft really is, in my point of view).
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Re: What does "balanced" mean?

Postby uberge3k » 10 Feb 2012, 14:31

Ze_PilOt already summed it up, but I do take great offense at this comment:

stimpack88 wrote:It's not about hating the game, it's about mourning wasted potential that is lost on most of the gamers that frequent this board because they just aren't passionate enough about games to even have an inkling of a clue of what was wrong with supcom and why it wasn't as fun as it should have been.

I'm a game developer as my day job. So are several other members of this community, some of which you've probably already been talking (and disagreeing) with. So I think we have a better-than-average understanding of game mechanics and how they fit together to create fun - or maybe we're just being paid to work on those things because of a strange series of accounting errors or something.

You seem quite sure of yourself, so it begs the question: what are your qualifications?
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