Mastery Exploit

There is an easy trick to increase maximum mastery points in StarCraft II Co-op from 90 to 180. I will explain how to do it using a map I created, and explore its cause and consequences.

How to do this?

1. Load "Maguro's Max Mastery Map" on arcade
2. Quit the map after it starts
3. Change masteries to your liking
4. This works only for one game. After a game you will need to load the map again and set your masteries.

    Use at your own risk!

Full 180 mastery points for Kerrigan

What happens?

Basic commander data is stored in Liberty mod instead of the Co-op mod. This is so there are data to be shown in UI without loading the full Co-op mod. However, this can be overridden when you load any map that has a mod with custom commanderdata.xml. A simple map overriding the data won't work, but a mod will stick for one game before it's overridden by the Co-op mod.

For the most part this will affect only visual elements in menus, however, there is no limit for the maximum mastery points spent.

Masteries are applied correctly in-game (my overlay & interface)

What Can it potentially do?

1. What works in-game:
• Increasing maximum mastery points to spend (available on this map)
• Default player color visible in-game to ally only
2. Menu visuals only:
• Unit roster change
• Upgrade change
• Prestige change
• Unlocking commanders
• Max points per mastery are limited in-game for most (all?) masteries
• And more...
3. I'm unsure these affect the game:
• Swapping masteries

Liberators for Kerrigan (visual change affecting only menus)

Guardian Shell for Kerrigan (visual change affecting only menus)

Thank you for reading. I can't say whether this will be fixed or if it's safe to use, but it's an interesting bug for sure. I do hope this will get fixed, as it's very easy for any map maker to intentionally or unintentionally break things in menus. It doesn't require any trick – only changing things that are also used in menus.

Transmission 02 - Player onboarding and lowering the skill floor

In the previous post I wrote about settings, scale, heroes, social aspect, shareability. This post will focus on lowering the skill floor and player onboarding. Together with player socialization I see these as the most important areas where a new RTS can improve.

This is a good opportunity to organize my thoughts. Following ideas might or might not fit a particular RTS game, but perhaps some will be useful or shape further discussions.

Onboarding & skill floor

RTS games are typically hard to get into and have a steep learning curve. There are a lot of things to learn and master before players can "play the real game", "engage in the core experience" or however you want to call that. In first-person-shooters you move and click enemies, in MOBAs you start with a single unit and gradually unlock abilities. That's a lot easier than making sense of UI and learning how basic economy, tech tree, production, and unit control works.

Even advanced players might not truly engage with the core experience until higher ranks. In StarCraft games macro-mechanics are so important that improving them might be your best way to advance to the next league instead of actively scouting, learning proper responses or controlling your army better.

Even the basic base management is hard in Brood War

This has led many games to oversimplify either micro or macro mechanics or both. However, I think that with good design it's possible to make a good game for a wide variety of players. Solutions will have to come from all angles – UI, UX, game design, art & sound design. It's important to consider players of skill levels when making any change. What exactly are players doing, and how engaging is the core gameplay loop? If we automate something, does the game become shallow or less engaging for them? Does the change reduce skill ceiling where we don't want it to?

80–20%

This concept was mentioned on the Pylon Show. It refers to the idea that an army should be somewhat effective even without too much micro involved (80% effectiveness). The actual numbers might be a nod to pareto principle, but they are not important. In some cases additional effort expended will lead to smaller improvements (95–5), and sometimes to much larger ones (50–50). The core idea is to lower the skill floor of controlling an army.

An example that was mentioned is Nova in StarCraft II Co-op. She has a solid army that does "ok" when simply a-moved. This is not uncommon in Co-op. The great part is how much more it can do if you control it properly – siege Liberators and tanks, use Raven's abilities, lay mines, micro Nova, EMP with Ghosts, place defensive drones and use airstrikes. This broad range of options provides tactical choices and rewards micro. A new player might be satisfied with simply a-moving and using an airstrike, more advanced players will try to do as many things and as good as they can.

Nova's wide variety of units

Another good part is that many abilities can be "pre-cast". What I mean is that a players can siege Tanks and Liberators, place Auto-Turrets, Defensive Drones, and lay Spider Mines in anticipation of the engagement. This lets slower players to engage with these abilities even if they couldn't use them when the combat begins.

Autocast

One of the approaches mentioned was a more common use of autocast on abilities. The idea is that slower players will leave them on autocast, while faster players might disable autocast and/or use them manually and more effectively. Results are:

• Lower skill floor
• Fights on lower levels look more like those on top levels
• Players encounter autocasted abilities more at lower skill levels

There are some potential disadvantages as well:

• Autocasted ability is significantly less rewarding than manually casted.
• Too many autocasted abilities might result in unnecessary visual clutter.
• If the autocast is too smart, the player won't engage in decision-making where and when to use the ability until the player can outperform autocast and overcome the opportunity cost of spending actions somewhere else.

★ ★ ★

I've looked for some good examples in StarCraft II Co-op. Ambusher's Blink might be the best one. Ambushers autocast blink to escape enemy fire, but players are encouraged to use Blink more aggressively as it provides significant DPS boost. This works very well because the manual cast is used differently than the autocast (defensive vs offensive usage).

Avatar of Essence's Devolution Wave is not as good example. It's an autocasted area-of-effect debuff. Manually casting it has exactly the same use, but you can affect more enemies if you use it at the right time. I would guess that more than 99% of playerbase has never casted it manually. Vorazuns's Corsairs, Zeratul's Shieldguards and Abrogators are in a similar position. Their abilities have the same use whether autocasted or not, and are mostly not rewarding enough to use them manually.

Swarm Host-like units are a better example. They do spawn Locust-like units automatically, but with manual cast you can send them to hit targets outside their autocast range, or you can spawn them in anticipation of the enemy attack. This option to pre-cast and different manual use case are what makes this interesting and rewarding, even if most players will not actually use it.

Ambusher's Blink can be used both defensively and offensively

I think autocast on abilities work particularly well when the use case for manual casting is sufficiently different from the autocasted ability – as is it with Ambushers and Swarm Hosts-like units. Warcraft 3 has good examples as well, namely Sorceress' Slow and Dryad's Abolish Magic. With these abilities you are not trying to compete with autocast AI, instead you might use them when the autocast wouldn't trigger at all (e.g., against summons or when chasing the enemy), or target the high-priority units first.

Disabling and enabling autocast to preserve energy is a skill in itself. However, if players are encouraged to change the autocast state too often, it can quickly become a chore.

★ ★ ★

Two more thoughts about autocast:

Using abilities in fights is engaging, and players should be encouraged to do it manually. It might be a good idea to first look at macro mechanics to lower the load on new players, then try to improve the user experience when controlling armies. For example having all abilities in one command card for Tychus does reduce the mechanical barrier to using active abilities. Only after that it might make sense to look at how many autocasted abilities are actually needed.

There was an idea that autocasted abilities would have different statistics. This seems highly unintuitive and inelegant. I don't want to see a fight where some Psionic Storms deal 80 damage and others 50 damage. It's better to make the autocast AI less good – doesn't react immediately, stacks unstackable effects a bit, requires certain game state, doesn't hit the most targets with one spell or the most important targets, etc.

Simple unit control

This returns back to the 80–20 principle, but instead of increasing effectiveness through manually casting abilities, the effectiveness can be increased incrementally with focus on simple control based around moving and attacking. My thinking here is that you can more naturally improve your army control if it's based around simple concepts like moving, attacking or target firing.

This has few advantages:

• Effectiveness is improved more incrementally.
• Resulting battles are easier to parse – fewer effects, no knowledge of abilities required.

More focus is put on kiting, and army positioning – arcs and surrounds. Brood War did a good job by distinguishing units and interaction based on movement alone. Vultures or Mutalisks can shine with just movement micro. Warcraft 3 also heavily focuses on army movement and positioning.

Unit positioning is extremely important in Warcraft 3

These simple unit controls could include positional units like Lurkers, Siege Tanks, Liberators or heavy machine guns or cannons in Company of Heroes with their limited firing arc and setup time. All these can be very interesting and scale well with player skill.

Macro mechanics

The 80–20 concept could be the most useful with macro mechanics (economy, basebuilding and production). Most of new players will want only very few tech and economy decisions before going to play with the army. But I think that for experienced and competitive players there should be enough room to improve macro through high APM and multitasking.

In the previous post I mentioned that it's hard for me to return to competitive 1v1 due to not being satisfied with my mechanics. I believe applying this 80–20 concept could help with that. It wouldn't be helpful to just new players but also to anyone returning to the game.

★ ★ ★

How to do this correctly is a very difficult problem and will require a lot of prototyping and testing. StarCraft II's Chronoboost, MULE and Larva Inject work, but they can feel a bit forced. They do provide some room for decisions, and the inject raises skill ceiling as well.

Few other examples how to introduce some optional complexity to macro: adjacency bonuses in Supreme Commander, more efficient manual reseeding of farms in Age of Empires, transferring workers, overbuilding workers before transferring them to an expansion, collecting scattered resources or wrecks from previous battles, creep spread, switching add-ons in StarCraft II, updating resource drop-off points, workers returning to work, and more.

In Supreme Commander adjacency bonuses reduce operating cost

It would help casual players a lot if repeating tasks were reduced, and macro was limited only to important decisions. There is nothing worse than watching a casual player making 20 Pylons without using the shift key. This could include limited auto-queues for workers, auto-hotkey for some production, etc. Repeating tasks can be reintroduced for more serious players, and as a player progresses through ranks these tasks would become more important. This is of course more easily said than done.

More things to help


Now for some other things that might help with lowering the skill floor and onboarding. They might or might not fit into a particular game.

• Already mentioned ghost mode would be great. However, it should not become a crutch for overly complex buildorders.
• Hotkeys for select all army / all units onscreen / all army units not in control groups.
• Global build UI similar to found in C&C games or Spellforce.
• Shared ability command card similar to what Tychus have (no need to switch between units when using different abilities).
• Easier default commanders in Co-op compared to StarCraft II where default commanders are not very casual friendly – especially Raynor.
• Better after game feedback. In RTS games it's often difficult to see what you did wrong. It would be even more difficult to find this algorithmically, but perhaps some machine learning model could manage it decently.
• Reducing the number of cheeses and rushes in lower leagues. Possible options could include a different take on stealth than in StarCraft games, free scout like in Age of Empire games, or something like Orc Burrow mechanic in Warcraft 3. It wouldn't completely prevent aggression, but the damage would be limited to not mining. Something like that could keep early aggression viable but not game ending unless one player messes up.
• Good and engaging tutorials. They could be combined with a challenge providing bonus experience, other rewards and even leaderboards. They could focus on a variety of skills from basics to those aimed at the competitive mode.

Closing

I mentioned a lot of things, but I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas that could improve the experience for new and returning players. It's a difficult problem and solutions will have to touch and affect many aspects of the game. Thank you for reading. For discussion check this thread on r/FrostGiant.

Transmission 01 - Setting, scale, heroes, socialization

PREAMBLE

Real-time strategy has always been my favorite genre. I do some modding in StarCraft II and occasionally write about game design. In the last few years I have been playing StarCraft II's Co-op. I think I contributed at least a little bit to making this game mode better through a series of ten posts looking at bugs, and by providing feedback to now u/Frost_monk. I'm happy that I could do my small part. I have a lot to say about Co-op, but more on that in another post.

Let's start with some subjective feedback about RTS. Then I will comment on setting, scale, heroes, socialization and shareability.

Few things I like in RTS

• Action with crisp and responsive controls
• Basebuilding (~StarCraft, Stronghold, C&C3)
• Rewarding multitasking that leads to the flow state

And more... Many things have been already mentioned, and others we take for granted and don't realize how much work was put into them to make the game feel just right.

Few things I dislike in SC2

This is again completely subjective, and I will focus on two things that are keeping me from competitive 1v1 despite reaching masters several times. First, 1v1 can feel lonely. That's it.

Second, returning to competitive 1v1 feels hard after weeks or months. I can't enjoy games until I'm somewhat satisfied with my mechanics. Only then I can play "actual" game where games aren't decided solely by macro slipping or forgetting to scout.

It feels better in team and Co-op games. There is more freedom for strategic thinking, scouting is either easier or not required at all, and it doesn't feel like the game's outcome is on a knife's edge.

MMR adjustment compensates for lower skill after longer time of not playing. However, I often found it being too aggressive with lowering my MMR. When I finally decide to come back to 1v1, I would get several games when I stomp my enemy, which is not fun for either side.

SETTING

Let's move on to the visual style, and more precisely to light vs dark theme. Lighter theme is more welcoming, and it's easier to spend more time in a game with it. Including some nature and cute things helps as well, even if they are not the main focus.

It's also important how relatable the environment and characters are. A setting too distant to anything in player's experience will be hard to connect to. This can be a problem for sci-fi settings. And that's why StarCraft is basically Terran version of wild-west with Protoss wizards and Zerg swarmy monsters. It makes it more relatable, you can connect to characters and their stories easier.

Titan Quest – Grim Dawn

One of the best things about Titan Quest was that it takes you through ancient mythological Greece, Egypt, China and Underworld. These environments are very diverse and colorful. It's almost worth playing just to see how they are portrayed in the game.

Grim Dawn is Titan Quest's successor built on the same engine. I imagine it improved a lot since I last played it, but as its name suggests, the environments were very grim, dark and also blander. Another downside is the lack of wide variety of popular mythological enemies like Minotaurs. You already know these monsters from stories, and it makes them more relatable. These two things made Grim Dawn a harder sell, despite it being a better game in other aspects.

Supreme Commander – Ashes of the Singularity

Supreme Commander has a lot of colorful and beautiful environments that contrast with the crushing war that is being waged between factions. Lush nature and crumbling cities emphasize the scale of armies. Ashes of the Singularity's environments are less interesting, and lacking features that would highlight the scale of your forces. This again makes Ashes of the Singularity a harder sell.

Neuroslicers

Neuroslicers is an interesting strategy game with a good visual design. However, its post-cyberpunk setting isn't very welcoming. This isn't an issue for a small game trying to distinguish itself from competition. But I think there are both short and long term downsides to it.

Taur

Taur is an action tower-defense game. I'm including it here because of its simple, clean and colorful visual design. It's an example of a light visual style done right.

★ ★ ★

How does StarCraft stand? It's rather dark, lacking portrayed nature and cute things. I already mentioned its setting, which is closer to wild-west and fantasy which makes it more relatable. WarCraft 3 is more welcoming with colorful nature, medieval villages, castles and various cute animals.

I would prefer to start with a lighter, more colorful theme that has some nature and possibly cute things in it. From there you can always add darker parts to the universe. And the contrast will make those darker parts even more impactful. Also, you can always write dark stories no matter what setting or visual style is used.

SCALE

WarCraft 3 low unit scale makes sense for how strongly it's focused on heroes. Supreme Commander's scale is great for strategic and macro focus it has, but it doesn't fit the style of action with crisp unit control that is present in games like StarCraft 2 and WarCraft 3.

I would prefer something in the middle. StarCraft 2 seems like a good target for unit numbers, but that might be just my bias. Brood War could be even a better target. It can go as high as StarCraft 2 in unit numbers, but due to its economy scaling and army control limitations you will typically see fewer units.

Supreme Commander

Heroes

There are a lot of ways to add heroes into the game. And there has been a lot of discussion about whether to add them or not – providing good arguments on both sides.

Heroes do fit in Co-op and Campaigns, no questions there. I'm leaning against heroes in competitive modes, but there are some good arguments for them, and what would be the best way of adding them is an interesting design problem.

Few reasons for heroes:

• Players can more easily connect to them
• Heroes can encourage action on the map
• They are a good vector for adding more content to the game (new heroes & skins)

Selling a skin for a hero makes a lot more sense than for a Zergling. More focus is on heroes, and a skin on a hero won't affect the game clarity as much as on other units. Adding a new hero doesn't bloat the game the same way as adding more units would to already working factions.

★ ★ ★

It could be interesting to see only some factions having heroes. But that might prove to be too restrictive to hero design.

Significantly weaker heroes compared to WarCraft 3 could be interesting as well, especially if heroes worked better outside the main army. This would discourage death-balling and encourage splitting forces. Weaker hero units could have additional effects similar to choosing a faction, however, that it would be better if it's tied to the choice of a hero and not the unit itself.

Some important questions for hero design:

• Do you have them from early game (WarCraft 3) or later (Supreme Commander)?
• Is there a limited number of heroes?
• Do they gain experience and get stronger?
• What is their relative strength compared to the army?
• Do they respawn?
• Are there items for them?

Social aspect

The socialization between players is very important whether it's for growing the community or engaging already preset players. There is room to improve compared to StarCraft II, but it's a difficult problem for a game with likely strong focus on competitive 1v1. Which is where player socialization is the weakest.

Few ideas that could be looked at. Some are already present in StarCraft II.

• Better ingame chat channels. Brood War and WarCraft 3 put the chat to the forefront.
• Somehow improve clans and make them more meaningful. Anyone has good ideas? Specific clan page, clan wars and clan ranking. Shared progression towards some goodies?
• Better support for team games (balance, design, maps, supporting creators and tournaments).
• Reduce barriers for sharing and getting into the game
• Easy to share game/lobby/map/profile/party/spectating links. The game starts if you click the link and redirects you.
• Easy to share after-game stats.
• Web based front-end for ingame chat, searching arcade, joining lobbies, and more.
• In both cases the goal is to reduce the time between deciding playing a game and being in a game.
• A side effect is that custom games could be much easier to get into. You wouldn't need to open the game, search and join lobbies. One click in the web-based front or on a link a friend sent you, and it will put you into a lobby and/or party.
• Promote discord, subreddit and other communities.
• Promote content creators, arcade maps and tournaments anywhere possible. Rotate who is promoted.
• In-game spectating.
  
  There has already been some talk about this and Ryan gave some responses. I want to list a few options where it could be useful. I don't think Discord or Twitch streaming are quite there to make this redundant. Discord isn't so great for this, and Twitch isn't trivial to set up. Either requires good internet connection on both ends.
• Spectate friend's ladder game. This could be good for socializing and learning. The vision would be limited to your friend, and ideally no or minimal delay added.
• Spectating selected or random player in a chosen league and matchup. This would be good for learning, and socializing if more spectators are there. Spectators have full vision and can chat with each other. There is a delay added to prevent abuse.
• The same thing but for clan wars and tournaments.

On the ladder a player should have an option to disable spectating of his vision. Players should be able to easily share a link to spectate gameplay of a player or a spectator.

If lock-step architecture is used, this spectating would have to be different from StarCraft II's spectating to add delay and prevent observers to cause any lag for players. The server might have to stream data to spectators separately.

I think it has a potential to improve socialization, but it's hard to gauge how much. For big tournaments and streamers Twitch and YouTube will be preferable, but this could be good on smaller scale – for few friends or on the level of clan wars and smaller tournaments.

• I would love to hear more ideas to improve socialization.

★ ★ ★

The last thing I want to mention is designing score screens to be more shareable. For example, I made my post-game score screens knowing that players will want to share them. My overlay app for Co-op has even its own screenshot button. This is a small thing, but it counts.

Custom map score screen – everything in one screenshot

Post game stats from my overlay for StarCraft II Co-op (GitHub)

Closing

I'm excited about Frost Giant's RTS. But we are in early stages, and it's a long way to get there. Perhaps something I wrote can help or shape further discussions.

Unit Design

Intro

The goal of this post is to look at few unit designs and unit mechanics that aren't working perfectly and learn from them. This is not meant to be a critique. We can learn a lot from StarCraft II, whether it is from its successes or failures. The ability to directly compare to Brood War, which shares a lot of characteristics, is very valuable as well.

StarCraft II isn't perfect. There is design baggage carrier over from Brood War, and not all new things worked out perfectly. That said, StarCraft II development team did a lot of great work to improve things since Wings of Liberty was released, leading to arguably the best game state StarCraft II has ever been in.

Force Fields, while originally very problematic, are in a good state today. Death-balling has been greatly reduced compared to Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm due to economy changes and good unit design. Similar thing has been done to the strength of air unit compositions. The economy model received improvements in Legacy of the Void, even if it's still in some ways inferior compared to certain double harvest models and Brood War economy model.

I'm including these units not because their design is bad altogether. I'm including them because despite some parts of their design aren't good, these units work surprisingly well in other aspects, and often lead to good interactions and fun game dynamics. This contrast makes them more interesting. I'm mentioning only units I found particularly interesting.

Widow Mine

Widow Mines are great when micro is involved. Splitting, target firing, target switching, Stalker Blink micro, Mutalisk micro, all those are fun to execute as a player or watch as a viewer. I would even say the randomness tied to Widow Mines is good for spectating. "4M vs Muta-Ling-Bling" is one of the best parts of StarCraft II.

However, especially in TvZ you often see the most impactful damage to be done when neither player is paying attention or microing with or against Widow Mines. Nobody wants a potentially game deciding thing to be a random Widow Mine that one player didn't see and the other forgot about. This is likely even more frustrating for casual players that will not micro and forget detection.

Another thing is that the most execution burden falls on the defending player. That's not inherently a bad thing, and it's good that there are counterplay options. But if the execution is mostly on the defending player, the mechanic will feel more punishing and kills by Widow Mines will seem more undeserved. Note that I'm not saying they are undeserved, only that it will seem more that way.

If the execution is more on the player using a unit, the result will feel more deserved. However, there still should be some counterplay through skill on the defending side. It's all about the right balance. In this case execution a bit too focused on the defending player, and randomness a bit too high.

Nukes

From today's perspective and general recognition of the importance of accessibility in games, adding a game mechanic that is based around looking for a red dot somewhere on the map would sound a bit crazy. But seeing it as a legacy mechanic from Brood War makes it at least understandable. If you aimed to make nukes more mainstream, you would have to make changes this mechanic.

It's even worse if we consider color blindness, which affects roughly 8% of men. As you can see the red dot is significantly less visible, and that's placed against a dark background. Putting the dot directly on the Nexus would make it close to invisible. StarCraft II has built-in color-blind mode, but its effect is very limited.

Images simulated here

Cloak and burrow mechanic are in a similar situation. Units should be either visible or not. Whether you will spot a cloaked or burrowed unit is too reliant on your vision and game settings. Neither of them should be a deciding factor in a competitive setting.

Swarm host

People often complain about "free units", but difficulties with Swarm Hosts will apply to any unit that can deal almost guaranteed damage while being safe. If you as player are taking damage and can't do anything about it, it will always feel frustrating even if the game is balanced.

Moreover, the balancing itself will be more difficult with units like these as a situation can snowball very quickly. With Swarm Hosts often the first two waves are the most important.

~ ~ ~

From the historical perspective the Swarm Host redesign patch was quite interesting. It came very late to Hearth of the Swarm when Legacy of the Void beta has already started. Previously Swarm Hosts served as a core unit that enabled Zerg to fight Terran and Protoss lategame armies. And while many players didn't enjoy games with Swarm Hosts, game balance was decided by individual maps.

The patch changed this core unit into a harass unit with a high supply cost. They do fit into Legacy of the Void now, but at that time this change left a gaping hole in the design of Zerg race. However, one could argue that given the already running beta of Legacy of the Void, and how close the release was, making such change was reasonable, and the meta didn't have a time to reach a degenerate state.

Battlecruiser

Battlecruiser might be the most interesting unit to look at. There are design issues with the unit and its abilities. However, it's also arguably the most interesting capital ship in StarCraft II and the closest to its Brood War counterpart. Let's first look at the abilities.

Tactical Jump 71s cooldown / 4s casting time

The main issue with Tactical Jump was the lack of counterplay. Fortunately, this was significantly improved after Battlecruisers had become more used, and the casting time was increased. Before that a professional player should have never lost a Battlecruiser on the opponents side of the map with Tactical Jump off cooldown.

Other than this delay, only Infestors with Neural Parasite or Fungal Growth can help to stop Battlecruisers from escaping. I wouldn't consider this ability a big issue anymore, but it's tied with high front-loaded damage of Yamato Cannon, which puts this closer to the Swarm Host issue where the damage is guaranteed and comes with a minimal risk.

~ ~ ~

Yamato Cannon 71s cooldown / 240 damage / 2s casting time / 10 initial casting range

This ability has again very limited counterplay and doesn't have high skill ceiling. In MOBAs we see a lot of skill shots as they provide much better opportunity on both sides to show off skill. Guaranteed damage and minimal risk isn't it. However, this is again understandable as design baggage carrier over from Brood War, and an intention to preserve this iconic ability.

~ ~ ~

So why do Battlecruisers still work well in StarCraft II? There are few reasons for it. Even if there are issues with those abilities, they still have higher skill ceiling and provide options for decision-making than for example Carriers. Those abilities also enable Battlecruisers to be effective early and in few numbers, and not just as a part of death-balls.

This is closer to Brood War, where for example in TvZ few Battlecruisers are used to put the Zerg off balance. The Zerg player has to balance anti-air and anti-ground more, and is likely to take worse fights because of that. This is similar to early game Battlecruisers in StarCraft II's TvZ which again test the Zerg player in balancing proper response against both air and ground threats.

Queen

I'm including the Queen here mainly to show the contrast between local design issues and global ones. With Battlecruisers the local design of its abilities has issues, but the unit fits well into the global game design.

Here we have a Queen, a unit which many players will argue is too well-rounded for defense. However, it's not due to any design of the Queen, instead the unit was slowly forced into this role over the years by the lack of other Zerg units that could come early enough and defend against enemy threats. So the problem is not directly with Queens, and solutions would have to come from looking at other Zerg units and tech progression.

Carrier

There is nothing inherently bad about Carrier's design but nothing great either. The unit had difficult time finding its place in the grand scheme of things despite it being such iconic Protoss unit.

This is partly because of lacking micro potential compared to Brood War's Carrier, partly because of Protoss tendency to death-ball in StarCraft II, and partly because of lacking interactions it had with Brood War's Goliath.

As with Battlecruisers, Carriers in Brood War forced the opponent in PvT to carefully balance its anti-air and anti-ground. Plus their main counter being a ground unit added more depth to the game as they had to take advantage of terrain. StarCraft II moved a lot of anti-air to air units (Vikings, Corruptors, Void Rays, Tempest, Battlecruisers, Liberators) and this dance between air and ground units is less common. And so Carriers in StarCraft II were left in a position with fewer interesting interactions, and a place that's more difficult to balance.

Conclusion

StarCraft II isn't perfect, and we should learn from it.

• Widow Mines show the effect of execution on how the result is perceived.
• Nukes remind us that accessibility shouldn't be overlooked.
• Swarm Hosts present the difficulties of units with close to guaranteed damage and minimal risk.
• Battlecruisers highlight the importance of counterplay, and that despite local design issues the unit can still work well.
• Queen is an example of how global design can affect one unit.
• Carrier is a unit seeking its place after having lost its interesting interaction.

Upkeep

In the recently remastered WarCraft III (WC3) we can find the upkeep mechanic. It's often perceived negatively. In this post I'll try to explore it as game-design element, see how it affects various game dynamics, and whether it could be in theory replaced by other mechanics.

How it works

• If your supply is high, you gain only a certain fraction from the collected primary resource (gold)
• 0–50 supply: 10 gold per worker trip
• 51–80 supply: 7 gold per worker trip
• 81–100 supply: 4 gold per worker trip
• Gold mines always lose 10 gold per worker trip even if you are getting less gold
• Gold from other sources is reduced as well (despite it not being indicated)

FRAMEWORK

I'll be looking at this through MDA framework. To simplify what this framework is about: mechanics are for example rules of the game and something game-designers can change directly. Dynamics are how games play out. And aesthetics are emotional responses evoked in players. The causal chain will usually look like this:

Mechanics (M) → Dynamics (D) → Aesthetics (A)

Rules lead to gameplay, and the gameplay evokes some feelings in players. However, in the case of upkeep and in the next example, there is also a direct effect of mechanics on aesthetics, which makes this an interesting problem to explore.

Mechanics → Aesthetics

Experience in World of Warcraft

In World of Warcraft (WoW), the experience gain for players was originally halved after some time. This was received very poorly in user testing. Eventually, the system was changed to include "rest experience" instead, which provided limited bonus experience, and was seen much better by players.

"From a purely numerical standpoint, it didn't really affect how fast you were leveling, but it had a huge psychological effect on how people thought about the system,"

"As a game designer it was a great learning experience for me and I made it actually one of the game design values of the studio: Make it a bonus. Whenever you're trying to prevent players from doing something in your game, ask the question 'Is there a way to create a bonus to do the opposite behavior?'"

– Rob Pardo
Game designer on both WoW and WC3

This example shows that there can exist distinct mechanics that lead to the same dynamics while also having vastly different outcomes on aesthetics.

M₁ → D₀ → A₀   |   M₁ → A₁

M₂ → D₀ → A₀   |   M₂ → A₂

In this case A₀ is base reaction on having diminishing returns on gameplay length; A₁ is a negative reception of perceived experience loss; and A₂ a positive reception of perceived experience gain. This is a result of irrational workings of human mind – namely loss aversion and framing that can make humans perceive numerically identical situations in very different ways.

Unfortunately for WC3, the quote is regarding WoW development which came few years after WC3 development and the upkeep mechanic was already in place. WC3 was released in 2002 and WoW in 2004.

Approach

The situation with upkeep is similar to that with the experience in World of Warcraft. There is some dynamic that we want, but the mechanic itself has a direct negative impact on aesthetics (A₁). In WoW the solution was as simple as reversing the mechanic, which led to an identical dynamic but with a positive direct effect on aesthetics (A₂).

In theory, you could do something similar in the case of upkeep – giving players more resources if they have fewer units. However, that wouldn't make sense for most RTS games. Instead, I'll try to go over all dynamics that the upkeep affects, and see if there are other mechanics that can replace it in each situation.

To keep this simple I will stay close to WC3 design and fantasy when considering options, even if the design space for all RTS games is bigger than that.

Issues with upkeep:

• It feels punishing due to loss aversion.
  
• Arbitrary cutoffs (50, 80, 5, 7) are unintuitive and immersion breaking. At one moment you have full income, and suddenly you are losing 30% of it.
• The same can be said about not having to "pay your army" as long as you are not mining anything. This also sends mixed signals to players and encourages them to stop workers from mining gold.
• Numbers from selling items are not correctly shown when they are reduced by upkeep.

Upkeep's effects following game dynamics:

1. Snowballing
2. Expanding
3. Soft cap
4. Past and future cost
5. Depth
6. Economic tension

With each dynamic I'll look at how the upkeep mechanic affects it and go over some possible mechanics that could have a similar effect ingame.

1. Effect on snowballing

Upkeep reduces snowballing – it serves as a negative feedback loop. A player with lower supply will have easier time to catch up. For example a player on one base gets additional 180 gold each minute with no upkeep compared to being on low upkeep. That can result in around one additional unit every minute as long as the player is on one upkeep tier lower.

~ ~ ~

This might be the best argument for upkeep as there is not a simple and fitting mechanic with the exactly same result. I have written about feedback loops in StarCraft II, and in WC3 you could introduce new or empower already existing negative feedback loops to step in upkeep's role:

• Bonus experience / bounty when having fewer units
• Various forms of defender's advantage
• Worse scaling with unit numbers, e.g.:
• Melee units don't scale well with numbers
• Offensive area-of-effect abilities scale with enemy numbers
• Farms – investment into increasing supply makes it easier to catch up and harder to gain supply advantage. For example in StarCraft II rebuilding a lost Zealot costs 100 minerals, but building a new one with the supply cost added is 125 minerals.
• Mechanical difficulty of controlling armies in itself makes bigger armies less effective. This is especially pronounced in Brood War with its strict unit and structure selection limit, no smart cast and non-optimal pathing.
• Other options that wouldn't easily fit WC3:
• Partial refund for lost units. This might fit Undead but not all factions.
• Other buffs gained from losing units.
• Changing unit cost depending on the number of currently living or lost units.

High-skill ceiling and diverse unit roles can to some degree work in a similar way by letting fewer units be still effective – it's not just a game of numbers and doesn't necessary snowball because of having few units more.

2. Effect on Expanding

Upkeep disincentives expanding as with more workers you are likely to reach higher upkeep tiers faster. However, that doesn't mean expanding is never a good choice, with an additional base and 5 more workers, the player gets +40% gold income even when on one upkeep tier higher. Further expanding on three and more bases is heavily discouraged.

~ ~ ~

Tweaking expansion investment cost, safety, and return rate plus additional supply cap tweaks could lead to the same dynamics here. Although expanding isn't as important and common as in other RTS games like StarCraft I & II.

The fact that 10 gold is lost from the Gold mines per worker trip no matter what means the main gold mine will mine out at the same time for both players. This will be around 19 minutes in normal games. Upkeep has no effect on this. From what I found average length of solo game is around 15.8 minutes, but still a decent number of games will go over 19 minute mark.

Distribution of games by their lengths [minutes] (source)

3. SOFT CAP

Upkeep serves as a soft supply cap by providing diminishing returns on army resource investment. This adds strategic decisions to the game, something that would be not there with just lower supply cap. There is a choice how far will you push this soft cap. It can sharpen timings and strategies. Fixed supply limit cannot be pushed.

~ ~ ~

• Optional global or unit upgrades can provide the same diminishing returns on resource investments.
• More temporary power-ups or upgrades that cost resources can help to sharpen timings and strategies as well. Purchasable scrolls and other consumables work in this way.

4. Past and future cost

One difference between upkeep and the previous examples is where the cost lies. If you bought a unit, item or a consumable the cost is in the past, and now it's time to make use of it. In case of upkeep the cost starts to take effect when you step over an upkeep threshold and lasts until a battle.

That cost in future mining is sharpening your current offensive timing. It will add a bit more strength to your push, but the long term play will suffer for it. This is similar to not expanding behind your push in StarCraft II, but upkeep enables to have something like that despite both players being on one base.

~ ~ ~

Possible replacements with a similar effect:

• Pulling workers to bigger push
• More options for mid and long-term progression – upgrades and tech
• More ways how to invest into the economy – expansions, workers, mining upgrades
• Some sacrifice mechanic for workers or resources to gain a temporary power bonus. That's equivalent to worker pulling only the implementation is different.

5. Depth

Depth isn't a game dynamic, but you could say it's a property of game dynamics. Upkeep definitely adds some depth to the game, and managing upkeep is a skill and a strategic play on its own.

~ ~ ~

But it's not a question whether to have depth or not, it's where and how you add depth to a game. In the case of upkeep, I would argue that its cost in aesthetics is too high. If you want to just add depth to the economic part of the game you will likely find better options than upkeep.

6. Economic tension

The reason given by Rob Pardo on Designer Notes (~1h:44m).

"When upkeep wasn't in there, then all you really had to control the players was a population cap. But what would happen... what was always happening in playtests is people would get up to their pop cap, and you know they would have a big army, and then they would just stockpile the gold, they would have a ton of gold. And then what would happen is, we would end up in combat with each other, and if it did end up not resolving the war, you know, both of us could basically instantly rebuild our army. There was just no economic tension."

– Rob Pardo
Game designer on both WoW and WC3

~ ~ ~

I was surprised this was the argument he gave. In my opinion the anti-snowballing argument (1) is a more compelling one. What he is describing is a lategame crisis which many RTS games have to deal with, and have done so in many ways. WC3 also has some unique options to force player being active on the map – namely commander experience, loot, and control neutral shops and other points of interest.

In my view focusing on having a healthy and long mid-game is always better than coming up with bandaid solutions for lategame. Economy should be important, engagement should happen often, units should be lost. Players shouldn't often max-out while stockpiling enough resource to max-out again. If the mid-game is still too short, then look at the economy and tech progression. Force players to be active on the map through rewards (XP, loot, points of interest) and economy (expanding, collecting). I won't go into details here, as this is the core of the game, what motivates players, what is the structure of goals ingame. This will be different between games.

Now let's say the game's early and mid-game are working great, and 70-80% games end there. And they should end there. If you characterize lategame as having enough money to reach your desired unit composition while also having enough resources to rebuild it "instantly", then that's inherently less interesting state than such where you have to think where you invest your resources. Thus staying in "mid-game" is better, and you should have only a smaller fraction of games in this type of lategame to spice up the diversity of games. This is something to consider when thinking about changes targeting lategame.

Again, early and mid-game are good, what about lategame? There are various options to deal with the issue of quick remaxing and lacking tension.

• Remaxing takes time, especially for better units. In the meantime you might lose your expansions, strategic positions or even the game.
• Units reliant on energy/mana take time to reach their full strength and can be crucial for lategame.
• Remaxing takes a lot of resources – especially for good units. Consumables might be limited or costly, the same for units purchased from neutral shops.
• Restricted economy and more options for other resource sinks – static, consumables, etc.
• In all previous examples asymmetric faction design can add even more tension. Zerg in StarCraft might remax more quickly, but its expansions are also less defended, Zerg probably lost more and traded less efficiently whole game. This introduces more timings with tension where players have advantages over each other.
• Games like C&C3 sidesteps lategame issues due to how the economy scales – reaching maximum economy quickly and from there the income decreases.

~ ~ ~

Overall in this particular argument the upkeep is a bandaid solution for lategame. In my opinion a broader look at game design of all stages of the game (early, mid and lategame) would be better.

Company of heroes

This post is mostly about WC3, but I have to mention Company of Heroes as it's another game with upkeep. Its implementation is different and works rather well. That's partly because the economy system is very different compared to games like WarCraft or StarCraft.

To simplify:

• In Company of Heroes resources are generated constantly and automatically
• Every unit costs some resources to deploy, and then reduces the main resource income (manpower) by a small amount.

In this case the income isn't decreased by arbitrary percents at arbitrary breakpoints, instead each unit reduces the income by a fixed amount. It's more intuitive and usually doesn't send mixed signals to players.

Overall this implementation works a lot better when it to comes to the effect on aesthetics. The effect on game dynamics would be hard to compare as they are were different games.

my take on upkeep

I wanted to look at it because it's a very interesting design problem. Upkeep has some things going for it, and its effect on certain game dynamics is very positive. That said, I don't think using upkeep in WC3's implementation was a good choice then, and it would be even worse decision today. And yet other implementations of upkeep as seen in Company of Heroes can work quite well.

There isn't a good full replacement for its anti-snowball effect, where you can get few more units if you are behind on army supply. However other games managed to lean on other negative feedback loops. Other games might not be as hero-centric, but hero focus can both dampen or empower snowballing depending on its implementation.

Other than snowballing, there are mechanics that can be used instead of upkeep to accomplish similar results. Either one of them might or might not fit a particular game well.

~ ~ ~

Thank you for reading this post. It has been a bit more difficult to write this one. I didn't want to sound overly negative, and I hope it's been interesting even if you do not share the same opinion as me.

Links to check out

• https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/rob-pardo-part-1
  (WarCraft III's upkeep mentioned at 1h:44m)
• Grubby's video on upkeep (some nice arguments for it)
• https://www.usgamer.net/articles/how-world-of-warcraft-was-made-the-inside-story
• https://warcraft3.info/articles/177/battlenet-statistics-part-1-how-many-active-players-are-there-in-2018
• https://warcraft3.info/articles/238/new-to-warcraft-upkeep-taxes
• https://waywardstrategy.com/2020/07/06/anti-snowball-design/
• https://www.maguro.one/2019/01/feedback-loops-in-starcraft

Bug Hunt X

This is the 10th bug hunt with 10 more bugs from StarCraft II Co-op. Previous bug hunts are here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9. I would like to thank everyone who either messaged me about bugs or reported them on the official bug report forum. Today's list is:

• Vega & Emergency Recall
• Plasma blast
• Brutal+ vs Weekly mutation
• Volatile Infested vs Force Fields
• Tychus outlaw purchase
• Zagara Roach Achievement
• Just Die! vs Toxic Nests
• Flame Troopers
• Mengsk's Hologram
• Temple vs Mutators
  

Vega & Emergency Recall

Vega's Dominate in combination with Vorazun's Emergency Recall will cause Vega to take damage when a dominated invisible or burrowed unit triggers its Emergency Recall.

In certain circumstances the dominated unit won't teleport back and will be immune to any further damage.

When a unit triggers the Emergency Recall, its life is reduced to one and it's teleported to one of player's main structures (Nexus, Command Center, Hatchery, etc.). However, if there isn't a good point for teleport, the unit will be effectively immune to normal damage.

Dominated invulnerable Dark Templar squad

How to take advantage of this?

First you need a Vorazun on your team for Emergency Recall passive ability. Failing to teleport can happen randomly if your main base is close to an unpathable location (e.g., locks on Malwarfare). It's possible that with other commanders you can find a perfect spot to trigger this consistently, but Tychus has a better way.

Lift your Command Center (CC), and move it to a location close to the battle and with enough unpathable space around it. You can replace the CC afterwards and happily mine resources. This CC needs to be the closest to battle. Also, not every CC will be a target for respawn, so it's better to take your main and replace it.

Some Command Centers will have the respawn behavior (red) depending on when they were built

Why does Vega take damage?

The effect sets the life of "caster" to one. Typically the "caster" of Emergency Recall behavior is the main unit that is dying. However, Vega's Dominate ability applies this behavior to the dominated unit – making Vega count as caster as well.

Other notes

This invulnerability doesn't help against Propagators.

Emergency Recall has built in functionality to remove all dot, slow and stun behaviors. This doesn't work on Black Death mutator because the Black Death behavior isn't classified as "Damage Over Time" (dot) despite it being exactly that.

Plasma Blast

Hybrid Dominator can kill units inside Medivac pickup with its Plasma Blast.

It can feel bad if you try to dodge the attack with Medivac – only to find out that they will kill your outlaws anyway. This can happen in any situation where a unit would otherwise survive thanks to being invulnerable or hidden (Guardian Shell, transports, etc.).

Why is it happening?

It seems that the damage effect first deals full damage to the targeted unit without any regards for the targeted unit being hidden or invulnerable. Only after that it does splash damage excluding the targeted unit and filtering invulnerable units.

Solutions?

A solution I like the most is targeting the location of the targeted unit, instead of the unit itself. And then deal splash damage at that point without excluding the targeted unit. Another option is for example adding checks to the missile, but that would destroy the missile early. This way it hits the ground under the Medivac as expected. Adding a separate search effect is yet another option.

Visualized damage with Tychus in the Medivac

Brutal+ vs Weekly mutation

You can play any weekly mutation with just Brutal+ mutators and still get all experience and bounties.

Ready button for mutation is disabled if you select one of Brutal+ difficulties. However, if you first select Brutal+ in normal mission tab and then switch to the mutation tab, you can play weekly mutation with its mutators replaced by a random combination of from the selected Brutal+ difficulty.

First select Brutal+ in mission tab

You will still get all bonus experience and bounties. It's shame this was left in the game, as it devalues the challenge of weekly mutations, especially if we have a mutation as difficult as this week. It can also happen by accident, and can be annoying.

Switch to the mutation tab and play with Brutal+ mutators

Volatile Infested vs Force Fields

Amon's Volatile Infested (InfestedExploder) don't collide with Force Fields.

These Volatile Infested are used on Dead of Night and Miner Evacuation.

Nothing can stop us!

Comparison of collisions between Stukov's Volatile Infested and Amon's

Tychus outlaw purchase

Sometimes you can lock yourself out of outlaws if you queue outlaw purchase and cancel it.

This is an easy mistake to make. If an outlaw dies and is reviving, you can queue purchase of another outlaw. If you change your mind and cancel that action, there is a chance your maximum number of outlaws will be reduced. You will be stuck with fewer outlaws for the rest of the game.

It will be just three outlaws this game

It's possibly a result of fixing a previous bug when you could generate charges similarly by queuing and canceling. (https://www.maguro.one/2019/10/bug-hunt-8.html#UnlockingOutlaws)

Zagara Roach Achievement

Roach Rampage counts only kills done by the initial drop pods, and not Roach ranged or melee weapons.

(Roach Rampage = Kill 100 enemy units using Zagara's Infested Drop in a single mission on Hard difficulty)

The achievement is made to count both drop-pod impact damage (ZagaraVoidCoopMassRoachDropCP) and Roach ranged attack (AcidSalivaLM). However, the Zagara's Roach weapons are actually switched to her special variant (using ZagaraAcidSalivaLM). And Roach melee attacks aren't counted either.

Weapons are swapped

Just Die! vs Toxic Nests

Protoss warping units can be killed by Toxic Nests before Just Die! mutator takes effect.

The mutator needs to apply the behavior through triggers first, but Toxic Nests kill the units so fast, that from the trigger point of view, the units are spawned already dead.

Toxic Nests bypassing Just Die! mutator

A fix could be to add a split second invulnerability during units warping in, so the mutator has a chance to take effect. Zerg and Terran waves don't have this issue since they are created invulnerable and hidden in drop pods.

Flame Troopers

When Flame Troopers kill an enemy unit, they draw aggro in wide area. This is the most striking when playing against Mag-nificent mutator.

For some reason using a marker on the "CPO-7 Salamander Flamethrower" weapon causes this issue. When a unit is killed by this weapon, all enemies in a decent-sized area will draw aggro – even Magnetic Mines that normally trigger only on units in 5 radius.

Fire fire fire!

Mengsk's Hologram

Mengsk's hologram on Imperial Witness sometimes does its own thing.

Helmsman, signal the fleet, and take us out of orbit.

Temple vs Mutators

Temple in Temple of the Past mission can often take damage from mutators in a way you cannot prevent.

Mutators are typically made to not damage mission objectives directly, because you cannot do much about that. This is not the case for some mutators and the Temple – which makes certain combinations (close to) impossible.

Bad start

Mutators dealing direct damage to the temple:

• Mag-nificent
• Orbital Strike (only if your units are close)
• Splash from Nuke from Missile Command (only if your structures are close)

Mutators NOT dealing damage to the temple:

• Going Nuclear
• Minesweeper
• Lava Burst
• Blizzard
• Purifier Beam

Mutators providing vision to Amon's Laser Drill:

• Minesweeper
• Mag-nificent
• Going Nuclear
• Temporal Field (direct hit on temple)

Mutators NOT providing vision: Twister, Blizzard, Lava Burst, Time Warp, Purifier Beam

So the main issues are with Mag-nificent mutator that can significantly reduce Temple starting life, and Laser Drill in combination with Minesweeper, Mag-nificent or Going Nuclear.

Final Notes

This concludes the tenth edition of bug hunt. Previous posts can be found here: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9. As always, if you encounter any bugs yourself, report them on the official bug report forum.