Focusing feedback as a community is difficult.
Having dissenting voices is healthy, though.
It's the way of certain dissenters which contributes to a lack of good feedback and suggestions.
Explaining and justifying changes from the very roots of design is what we should all aim at.
What this represents can be daunting, but with principle centered feedback we can hone our suggestions, remove fanboyism, emotional responses, politics etc., and make our reasoning neutron star solid.
We already have a systematic approach for reporting bugs, for example, what we need is a systematic approach to design in general.
Principles of Design:
- Gameplay depth, and
- the removal of all unnecessary complexity, therefore
- low skill floor, and high skill ceiling (easy to learn, hard to master).
- The simplest and easiest solutions where they don't contradict any of the other principles.
- Dampening of game-deciding RNG.
- Reduction of frustrating elements.
- Player-first design, when opposed to spectator-first or spectacle-centered design.
- Effective information communication between player and game (UI, descriptions, sound cues, intuitiveness in mechanics).
- Optimization to increase hardware accessibility.
- Balance focused on emphasizing player-developed meta.
- Opportunity cost, marginal utility, and comparative advantage as foundational considerations in design.
Specifics relating to the above:
- Casuals are players too, but...
- Numbers in the UI.
- Abandoned Vehicle.
- Scattering into the rear or front.
- Side armor and angling.
- Differing reverse gears.
- The effect of terrain on direct fire AoE.
- Better pathing.
- More flexibility and comparative advantage.
- Remember opportunity cost.
- The margin.
- Resource sinks and ending the game.
- It doesn't have to be too useful.
- Usefulness of indirect fire without unreactable squad wipes.
- Flames for everyone! Faction Diversity.
- Reading the signs.
- Custom hotkeys.
- Another look at veterancy.
- Maybe it's not OP...
Justifications
- Casuals are players too, but...:
At one point, Relic ignored a segment of the community's feedback on the pretense of the feedback from their business analytics team and the 4v4 AI compstomper (of which I am one).
Something, fortunately, seems to have changed. Or, at least, their PR strategy has changed.
The fundamental problem with 'catering to the casual' is the sad implication that people can't shift between categories. Pro, casual, hardcore, enthusiast, team game player, solo player, strategist, tactician, noob, scrub. Each of these has different perspectives and different knowledge. Choosing the ones who do not have the most accurate and holistic knowledge of the game to focus balance and design around is foolhardy. Their grasp of the game may expand, and they may revile the state of the game they once loved. There can be no cogent expressions on balance or design from a casual, for they have not grasped the answers that will change their meta right in front of them.
But, and here's the method of transformation, if they're not expanding their knowledge of the game they either A: don't care, or B: are blocked by a lack of intuitive design and lack of effective communication between the game and the player.
It is the developer who fails in the latter regard. This is the origin of good design mentality.
- Numbers in the UI:
The central contributing factor to lack of expansion in player development is
that which is not seen. An easy one to pick on is the fact that people have to put in an
inordinate amount of effort to find out
what should be plainly stated right in the UI and descriptions.
Put the numbers in the UI. Link them directly to the files so that the developers in the future won't have to go in and change them one by one to match the stats. Make an in-game encyclopedia like Civilization 5. Put time and effort into describing the internal mechanics in as concise, intuitive, and, most importantly, accurate a fashion as possible. The people it might confuse and don't care will start to ignore it, and the people who want to improve will be benefited by it greatly.
- Abandoned Vehicle:
This crit cannot be left in the hands of RNG, due to the degree of its ability to decide games, but can still have an important place in the game as immersive and depth adding. Put the interaction in the hands of the player directly. After a certain threshold on each vehicle / vehicles in general, handheld flame weapons should be able to cause an abandoned state, whether through auto-attacking for a certain time or a munitions-based ability. Every faction should be given basic access to a handheld flamethrower on their engineer class.
If there isn't a way to put something this significant directly in the hands of the player with clear communication as to how the interaction works, then it shouldn't be done at all.
- Scattering into the rear or front:
Positioning is a skill that, in its mastery, ought to be rewarded. The existence of only rear and front armor poses a binary existence that, while rewarding positioning on both sides, can result in unfortunate instances of RNG which don't feel deserved, especially given what we know of armor in real life.
The key here is that we want to reward positioning on both sides of the engagement. Which armor is hit should depend solely on where each thing is in relation to each other. For example, if an AT gun is in the front hemisphere of a tank's facing it, if it hits, should always go against front armor, and likewise for being in the rear hemisphere with rear armor. This likely requires the creation of a completely new system to calculate relative positions. However, it also seems possible to put horizontal scatter to zero when ballistics weapons are firing on armor. This also opens up an odd interaction in the way of attacking ground to increase the chance.
- Side armor and angling:
When combined with the above solution to form quadrants of armor, this alleviates some of the incongruity between how one'd expect armor to act in real life and the game. It can also create depth in positioning and knowledge and add an extra variable to tune for balancing and flavor between tanks.
Also, if the solutions presented in 'scattering into the rear or front' aren't possible, this and linear armor angling could be additions to the scatter based system which would mostly alleviate the aforementioned problem.
- Differing reverse gears:
Another minor change like side armor above, it'd reflect realism more in tank tactical function and presents another balancing variable or layer of depth. But, these both border on needless complexity for the sake of intuition, seemingly opposed principles, so handle with care--these are the weakest suggestions of the bunch.
- The effect of terrain on direct fire AoE:
Small arms don't interact with terrain at all. This is understandable; we don't want squads halting to attempt shooting through a hill. Even then, small arms don't have AoE, and often hit far wide when they do miss their target.
Ballistics-based anti-infantry direct-fire AoE weapons are the only weapons in the game that are affected by terrain in any meaningful and frustrating way. Their scatter is large enough to paint an oval for their cone of fire along the ground that changes with terrain elevations and shot blockers. This creates inordinate complexity and exception for a very small increase in positional depth, and makes balancing said weapons difficult, and the use of said weapons inconsistent and frustrating. This is even so for the receiver, as they face a much increased chance of getting wiped / damaged on retreat from something like IS-2 with its massive scatter and AoE or flak vehicle like an Ostwind near a shotblocker.
The solution is to make said direct fire weapon's scatter impact circular against the terrain and independent from it rather than ovular, and subject to it.
How this would happen is a mystery, though.
- Better pathing:
This is likely the most straightforward suggestion here in terms of justification.
Reducing frustration by having troops and vehicles act as one would expect is always a boon.
A solution to squads deciding to go really far around stuff due to the presence of a mobile path blocker like a tank is to have them ignore tanks for pathing on retreat and phase through them like normal.
- More flexibility and comparative advantage:
Flexibility and roundness in units generally creates depth so long as each unit still has its
comparative advantage. Perfect example, Grenadier G43 vs LMG-42 upgrades. It's a choice between two mutually-exclusive upgrades (one better at close range and mobility, the other on defense and long range) that enhances a mainline infantry flexibility, thus adds depth. Furthermore, the G43 on Grenadiers isn't effective enough to invalidate the mid/close range role of the Panzergrenadier. Pgrens still have a comparative advantage. Move G43 upgrade to default. Can help to put us on the path to diversifying commanders in a more satisfactory way. Enhances the role of opportunity cost in builds. Explain in the upgrade texts what they're better at, and keep them updated with the meta. On the Panzergrenadier, there's the mutually exclusive sidegrade (role change) of becoming an anti-tank squad. This is another sublime example of strategic flexibility.
More things like this would be nice, but aren't necessary to create depth, as we'll see below.
- Remember opportunity cost:
Not everything has to have flexibility to create depth, lest needless complexity be introduced. What keeps things choices and thus interesting rather than braindead is often times simply opportunity cost. If I spend munitions on the LMG-42, then I won't be able to spend said munitions on spamming another few rifle grenades or my CAS anti-tank strafe.
- The margin:
Marginal utility, is another cornerstone of human action that should be kept in mind.
This can be seen as the counterpart of opportunity cost and comparative advantage. If a unit, by its design, has absolute advantage and little opportunity cost, the last way of keeping depth is to make it useful only on the margin. Good example is mainline infantry in the early game and heavy tanks in the late game. Heavy tank callins already have a hard margin of one at a time, but all things that take up popcap have a soft margin of reducing manpower income.
- Resource sinks and ending the game:
Victory Point doesn't have
much of a problem with ending the game in an acceptable time frame. Sometimes it gets overlong for most players, especially casuals, to keep them interested. This is where we first see spectator and player interests come head to head, for a game that's down to the wire is certainly most interesting for spectators, perhaps less so for the nerve-wracked players.
Resource sinks represent a usually spectator-friendly way to hasten a game towards its end while not majorly upsetting the outcome. A good resource sink is something useful only on the margin, with a high opportunity cost, and with almost no comparative advantage. The comparative advantage it carries has to be geared towards hastening the game to its end in some way, yet still be friendly to depth, and can be friendly to spectators. A good example is, if a USF player ends up floating tons of munitions and without a commander with artillery, he can use the Major's barrage ability. Granted, his ability is trash and we don't see it because it's
too high in cost, both in munitions and requiring the Major to vet up for it to be more useful.
- Usefulness of indirect fire without unreactable squad wipes:
Relic's done a good job of this recently. AoE profiles that encouraged wiping have been reduced, unit clumping has gone down and depth increased by "to cover or not to cover?". But, there's more to be done, especially where it feels like some indirect fire units never hit anything, and are a waste of resources. I propose balancing centered around rate-of-fire vs scatter, and AoE vs squad size.
- Flames for everyone! Faction Diversity:
- Reading the signs:
- Custom hotkeys:
Come on, guys. This is basic functionality that ought to be in the game. We shouldn't
have to use third party programs. Props to the people who take matters into their own hands with AutoHotKey tho.
- Another look at veterancy:
Most would agree that the performance gap between vet 0 and vet 2 might be overly large on a few units (such as PanzerGrenadier). They could benefit from having some of the passive bonuses (cooldown, received accuracy etc.) on vet 1 rather than only a marginally useful ability. Furthermore, interesting mechanics have been introduced with the new units / armies like automatic hatch grenade throwing. More of these passive / active effects could be designed to enhance spectacle and flexibility, as well as buff units in a qualitative and unique manner rather than straight up quantitative ways.
- It doesn't have to be too useful:
Such things as the Soviet tank vet 1 capture ability aren't all that useful. Nevertheless, it is marginally and situationally useful in its niche and not so incredibly rare to see. All that matters is that a thing has its niche in the meta. Not all things have to be front-and-center.
- Maybe it's not OP / UP...:
Maybe everything else sucks / is too powerful. This isn't so much a specific suggestion as it is a caution against emotional reactions. If some design or interaction is interesting or otherwise good, but generally too powerful or too weak, the correct response
may be to balance around it rather than remove it.
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The hard road is often the most fruitful.
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My inspirations for this thread: Marcus, CieZ, Romeo, some huge posts on Teamliquid criticizing Blizzard's choices with SC2, discussions on designing community mods like Project M and Starbow and how they relate to the game / series they came out of. Discussions on things like Third Strike, CS 1.6, Marvel v Capcom 2, Modern Warfare 2 vs their successors.
I'll attempt to integrate your posts into the Original Post. Let's do our best to make this game as best as it can be!
Integrated: Post #4, 5.
Please discuss the worthiness of these things based on the principles, or criticize the principles themselves.
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cblanco ★ 
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VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
