Hi everyone,
What would you prefer?
RTS.
I want to appeal to the newer generations while not alienating the gerne fans.
The focus is empire building. Expanding your empire while sustaining what you already have.
Different faction types with no advantages and disadvantages and each faction type has their own unique units
Always.
Though wouldn't each unique unit sort of build towards some natural advantages/disadvantages?
(Case in point, in Starcraft, the Zergs have the advantage of mobility and map control through the cheap zerglings whereas the Protoss have the power of concentration of forces (Zealots) and the Terrans have the advantage of range in most encounters (Marines, Siege Tanks, etc.)
Factions can be there for two reasons. Either story forces you to have them, or they exist to give the game more content.
If youre not forced to have factions, I wouldnt have them. If you want to give players a big "A, B, or C?" decision, just do it at the beginning of the match based on for example what type of factory the player builds as the first production building, or a similar big choice that you cant really undo or youll be weakened.
Importantly, doing it ingame allows for more possibilities. Ingame, you can easily combine many decisions to give a ton of permutations (do I start with two tank factories, or one tank and one robot factory, or one plane factory and then save the remaining resources for later etc.). With factions, you can have only so many (=very few) options until it gets messy, AND its probably a lot more work for factions anyways, because you want them to look different and so on.
In that sense, choice of faction is no different from any other gameplay decision, except its usually costly for you to implement and balance, and offers very little extra depth to the game in comparison to adding some other game mechanics that offer far more options for far less cost.
Basically, if you COULD make factions be a decision of which is the first building you start with, do so. This gives you the freedom to make the system more interesting. If you choose your faction from a list at start of match, its very difficult to expand on the system. If you keep it ingame, you could lets say change faction midgame. Or belong to 4 factions at the same time at endgame. Treat it as not being different from other game mechanics.
Option #2 Different faction types with advantages and disadvantages with same units. Just my preference .
What would you prefer?
What would you prefer as game designer ?
As player it is more interesting to have different factions, but on the other hand it is an absolute balancing hell. And balancing is frustrating for the game designer and the player as well. And even, in a perfect world, if you have a balanced game, many player would feel cheated by virtual inbalance nevertheless.
If you take a look at the oldest competive games in the world, sport matches or chess, then you don't have any faction dependent advantages/disadvantages, it just boils down to player skill and training. The same could be said about MOBAs, no faction dependent advantages, yet you have a high degree of variance through different champions.
So, I don't prefer any of your options, because I believe, that you can create an interesting game from each of them.
What would you prefer?What would you prefer as game designer ?
As player it is more interesting to have different factions, but on the other hand it is an absolute balancing hell. And balancing is frustrating for the game designer and the player as well. And even, in a perfect world, if you have a balanced game, many player would feel cheated by virtual inbalance nevertheless.
If you take a look at the oldest competive games in the world, sport matches or chess, then you don't have any faction dependent advantages/disadvantages, it just boils down to player skill and training. The same could be said about MOBAs, no faction dependent advantages, yet you have a high degree of variance through different champions.
So, I don't prefer any of your options, because I believe, that you can create an interesting game from each of them.
My current design is that all the players have the same units. This is what I prefer since I don't like to make decisions about factions and what advantages there are to each. When I play those sorts of games I just go with whatever looks cool and use what units I get to win the game. I just like to get into the game and start conquering without too much thought and rely on strategy. So that's what I'm going with.
