Indeed no to games need the same mechanics for retreat. But i fear this may happen with such abilities. What i have seen in in esports rts games retreat is mass teleport as a abilitie for 1 maybe 2 units/heroes.
In both cases of wc3 and sc2 this is a "mass" teleport? Wc3 is ages ago for me and havent played sc2. In coh and dow2 its per inf squad ofc, for dow3 they said this retreat is basicly wrong cuz the kill/wipe was deserved and robs players of a deserved wipe or kill.
To me this is an indication that coh as it is designed wont do well in esports, they changed dow 3 really drasticly in their attempt to appeal the esports crowd.
SC2 is not designed around retreat as units don't have "veterancy". Same deal with AOE2. Economy/teching plays a much bigger factor.
In SC2, Protoss are the race which have generally the few/expensive units with a high survivability if played well, therefore it kinda makes sense for them to have this 2 abilities (the nitty gritty TBF is solving meta problems). I forgot but Terrans have an "escape" ability which lets them teleport anywhere on the map on a long cd and that can be used both offensively and defensively.
WC3: i've already said that 2 races can buy an item which let's them retreat "on demand" single units from the front. The game is designed and focus around heroes and compared to COH, outside of multiple heroes using abilities, there's not much "burst damage", specially early game, so units can retreat normally with a right click back to base.
The success of an e-sport game is entirely depended on how easy is to organize a tournament and how many people are willing to watch it and support it. It doesn't care if the game has retreat mechanics or not. RNG or not. Poker is a thing. Hearthstone/Magic are a thing. WC3/AOE2 has RNG and they are still kings, even if they are "small" compared to others, they remain relevant after decades. People play competitevely Super Smash Brothers for eons even if the game lead designers call it a "party game" riddle with random items drops and effects and Nintendo have been trying to kill the "e-sport" side for years.
Obviously people have different opinions about what is too much or not RNG but i think Sanders simplify it well in something that i agree with (i don't mind point blank misses that much compared to say Whiteflash).
I think ideally RNG would be split three ways:
- regular RNG like accuracy. Same as now. This is what makes the series truly stand out;
- irregular RNG like main gun critical or plane crashes. These should be available in automatch, but they should be less impactful. For example MGC could give an accuracy penalty rather than completely destroying the gun, or plane crashes could be hardcapped to never kill entire squads;
- Esports mode that removes all irregular RNG for tournaments.
Basically this. Just for clarification i think that having main gun destroy is fine as long as it's gated behind other proper triggers which can be player influenced. And we have crits in the game (which are not used) which can affect offensive performance without completely killing it.
To make it simple, why does vehicles do not get immobilized after hitting 25% instead of engine dmg? Because the penalty is too severe for something which can be outside of the players realm, both the one on the receiving end and the one dealing it. Same thing principle should be applied to the gun.