New Content? Cool Story Bro.

[CombatEX]

One of the reasons I generally prefer small and/or indie developers is since they tend to be more responsive to their players. As such, I agree that I would certainly like Adam and Alex to voice their plans, but so far they've already been quite good about this (thank you OML!). I don't expect them to share every little bit of info with us, but if they are willing to, I agree with your sentiment that this would make a great number of people happy. At the same time though, one of the worst things a dev can do is make false promises so perhaps OML simply doesn't know at this point when a good ETA is on these improvements and as such doesn't want to make a promise they may fall short on. That being said, it would still be nice if OML could reiterate their intentions of addressing FTA. They have mentioned they would keep an eye on it in the past, but it would be nice to see that they acknowledge and plan to fix it now that it has become blatantly obvious that it is an issue.

However, as for your idea that these improvements would make more people happy than a new team, I'm not sure. For many players (myself included), I'd rather see these improvements like FTA balancing and to a lesser extent, confirmation. However, I imagine many (and especially less competitive players) would prefer a new team. If a game is completely unplayable, nearly everyone will want the gameplay fixes. However, when a game is definitely playable, it is questionable how many players would rather see additional content versus further gameplay improvements. Again, I'm with you in that I prefer gameplay improvements, but I'm just not sure your certainty that players in general share our opinion is warranted.

[aaronINdayton]

Maybe they'll have a FTA fix with the new team expansion.

[stevewastaken]

(09-24-2012 07:56 PM)Harti Wrote:  Just imagine you're playing on a big map. You'll be using 2 wits to step on your respective bonus spaces. You got 1 wit left. You can either move a predeployed unit or deploy a Runner that does... nothing.

That isn't the only option though. For example, P1 could use a spawned runner to take one of the bonus spaces (I believe all maps with 2 bonus this is possible). So he still gets the bonus, plus vision to see what P2 does with his turn. This is substantially better than what P2 starts with currently.

Quote:Both options induce the situation that Player 2 can do "the original P1 opening" without fear.

3wit P1 having small options to prevent P2 openings is pretty solid, considering P2 is also starting with only 5 (not the 7 he gets next turn). So if P2 tries to rush, (or at least take a big early aggressive move) not only is there an inherent defender's advantage, but P1 will get his 7 wit turn before P2, which he can use to cancel out that early 5 wit aggression.

If P2 doesn't take early aggression, P1 starts with 2 less wits but gets them before P2, then both get 7 wits, but again P1 gets it first. Therefore the wit deficit (or bonus depending on how you think about it) for P1 achieves it's desired balance.

Quote:P1 will have 7 wits and a Runner to respond to P2's opening which is actually quite a good deal. However, limiting P1's actions on the first turn feels wrong and usually makes openings too predictable.

I don't know what you mean by "inherently wrong." Shouldn't openings be at least a little predictable? Look at SC2 for example. You start with workers and a base, and for a good couple of minutes, you are pretty predictable. You can attempt to cut corners and rush, but this is super risky and only works if your opponent plays greedy and tries to skimp on defenses.

Likewise people can still find ways to cut corners from the 3wit P1 position to challenge popular P2 strategies. Maybe not to the extent you can in SC2, but SC2 is far more complex, and doesn't have to deal with the issue of FTA.

Quote:The 'better' solution (not my idea), as presented in another thread, is simply giving P2 8 (or maybe 7) starting wits. Because that's more or less the same situation as theorycrafted above.

I see the balance value, I just don't love the idea of starting the game with a burst of wits. It presents the opposite issue of "starting predictable". It starts with a huge number of powerful opening options. That sounds great in theory, but eventually with enough play, people will discover which works best, and use exclusively that. Because the fewer turns into the game you are, the more cookie-cutter the strategy you can use is (without much variation or possible counters). Forcing the game to start slow (with 3 wits) is preferable in my mind, because this leads the game to push through more turns. And over a longer span of time, play will be ultimately less predictable (even if turn 1 is more predictable).

That being said, I'd rather see openings with a balanced burst of wits than an outright uncontested FTA.

CombatEX Wrote:One of the reasons I generally prefer small and/or indie developers is since they tend to be more responsive to their players.

I agree they tend to be more responsive in the forum, especially in providing direct replies which is really nice. Unfortunately, when it comes to making actual changes to the game, (in my experience) they get just as stubborn about neglecting major problems just because the desired fix isn't 100% perfect (even though nearly all the community agrees it would be an enormous improvement.)

arronINdayton Wrote:Maybe they'll have a FTA fix with the new team expansion.

If so I wish they would say it so I can join everyone else in getting excited about this new content.

[garcia1000]

What if you made P1 start with 3 wits instead of 5, and then forced him to skip his first turn?

[Harti]

(09-25-2012 04:07 PM)garcia1000 Wrote:  What if you made P1 start with 3 wits instead of 5, and then forced him to skip his first turn?

Wouldn't that make P1 P2 then, starting with 8 wits?

@steve:
Yeah I'm totally with your point that we don't want an instable evolution of openings with a heap of starting wits. However, the game isn't supposed to be 100% calculable. Which is why they invented fog of war. I guess they're rather into spicing up the game for low-level players who like to spawn the occasional first turn Scrambler or so than to limit the options for P1. Limiting the options would scare lots of people off from creating new games because they don't think as far as you and I did just now.
They only think "Whoa I can't even do anything there", and suddenly Outwitters will die because of active game shortage.

Of course, this is a little exaggerated but it sounds somewhat possible, no?