Generals 2

so jealous on meth/agm for going to LA seems like i gotta put up my own cnc fanpage now!

OT: really pumped for gen 2 :-O =) gonna play it a ton, no matter how good its gonna be

AGM, Generals 1 had a hardcounter system. I gave you many examples. Here is one more:

Snipers do hard counter infantry, but deal no damage to light or armored vehicles or buildings. Such a unit is not existent in soft counter games like Starcraft.

You argue that it is a soft counter system because we all used Gats/Quads and humvees and because they were effective against eachother. But that was not because they are soft counters, it was because their weapon type is effective vs their own armor type. For example tanks are also effective vs other tanks, because their weapon is the counter against their own armor type. In that way C&C is special because here scissors have rock weapons, to speak metaphorically. But there are also other units which are only effective vs other unit types, like rocket soldiers (rocks with rock weapons ). Their weapon is only effective vs vehicles armor and structures, not vs inf, and at the same time tankshells are not effective vs inf aswell (because tanks (scissors) have rock weapons and no paper weapon to counter the rock-type), what makes rocket infantry hard counters to tanks. That was also the reason why we all did not only spam Quads/Gats/Humvees, but had to mix them with rocket soldiers. Tanks were not built much because they were just too slow (could be kited) and because rocket inf had a far greater range, making the hard counter more effective than the skill based counter (crushing the rockets). This was a design flaw of Generals, but shouldn't be credited to the hard counter system.

Where I speak of this, crushing infantry with tanks is a skill based counter only common in games with hard counters. So in fact you could counter the hard counter unit of tanks (rocket soldiers) with the skill based counter of crushing inf, which is desireable, is it not? It just has to be designed in a way that both counters are balanced to eachother. In Generals 1 the hard counter was way more effective than the skill based counter, whereas in C&C3 the skill based counter was too strong (thats why tankmasses just rolled over inf, because inf countered tanks not hard enough to prevent this (I know with some inf upgrades inf could be spammed aswell)).
But if the game has soft counters, there is no reason for crushing inf, because they die by tankshots anyway. This means that one skill based counter falls apart with a soft counter system, and thats why your statement that soft counters grant more skill based differentiation is not true in my eyes. Just look at Generals 2: Because tankshells are softcounters they kill every rocket squad in 2 shots (was not possible in previous C&C games), there is no incentive to crush inf. And there is no incentive to even build rocket inf as counters to tanks, because they were not cost effective (which a hard counter shoul be). You needed 3 rocket squads to kill one tank, but the 3 rocket squads cost more credits than a tank... (yes I know that tanks also cost some oil, but that is not crucial as you mostly have enough oil anyway due to the dumb SC2 like ressource placement). To make crushing a viable and fun skill based counter they have to get rid of the soft countering or else tanks are even more OP vs inf -> everyone spams only tanks.

Artilleries like nuke cannons or SCUDs are also hard counters, but could be skill countered by dodging their ballistic shots. And btw, C&C3 was such a spamfest because there was no such AoE hard counter to counter tank/inf masses.

This post has been edited by freezy: Dec 21 2012, 20:58 PM

As long as Meth and AGM like the direction of where the developers want to take the game I'm very satisfied.

For Generals 2 to be as good as, or even better, than Generals 1, units really need to have those special attributes which made them that interesting to play and use, but as far as I can see from the comments, that part is not even coded yet, most of the units are still unpolished and in early stages.

What did Bioware say, do they plan to organize another summit of this kind next year?

Bioware has nothing to do anymore with Generals.

As for Victory games, they probably plan more summits.

Yea they are no longer associated.

being an active gens player, I can feel confident to say that ccg and zh had a mix of both hard and soft counters.

So they renamed Victory Games to Bioware Victory, and then they renamed it back again to Victory Games?

OK I have to ask now, my PC is like four years old. Do I have to upgrade?

I am going to guess yes

Pretty much. I have no idea what to make of it and to my knowledge we were all so distracted with the game itself we never bothered to ask

its good to see that the best RA3 player on the planet is still around GR

Dammit... I only got like 40 bucks on me right now. lmao.

Okay, a random question about the game itself.

Umm...

Okay, from the top of my head I'll just ask stuff.

Okay, here we go.

Hold on your panties!


1: How is the building capture feature going to look like? Do we has Engineers or Capture the Flag upgrade like in Generals?

2: If we get everything in Squads now, does this mean the Angry Mob is obsolete and not in the game?

3: Do we get any easter eggs, like damaged old units from earlier games?

4: Is the Skirmish AI good/smart, or is it dumb dumb?

5: Do we has Crawlers? lolololol, no seriously... we don't have Crawlers I hope?

6: Do we see the comeback of Super Weapons again? SCUD Launcher, Nuke? Or are we going to see something different and original to the gameplay?

7: Do we have Commandos/Hero units back?

8: Do we finally get a APM counter in the stats? Every cool RTS game has a APM counter thingy?

9: Do I has a chance in the Pay thing, to what I do get? Or is it just new skins, taunts or other fun stuff we can buy? Like, only cosmetic stuff that have absolutely no impact in the balance?

10: Finally... do we get Mod SDK, Worldbuilder or anything for the modding community?

11: Is Methuselah going to be starring in the future campaign mode as the good guy?

PS: I have a fever...

I asked JVC about it. Bioware was never really involved in the project, the EA execs forced Victory games into the Bioware thingy (pure marketing decision). So it was just that VG had to report to Bioware about what they are doing and Bioware had to approve it. Now since Bioware is gone nothing really has changed. In their office they never had Bioware logos on stuff anyway.


1. not yet known, probably gen1 system.
2. the Mob is still in. Squads work different now, it's not the C&C3 way where many units are forced into one unit, but its now one unit that pretends to be multiple units.
3. old units as buildable units are in, eastereggs unknown
4. Not yet known, but they plan it to be smart.
5. yes we have crawlers!! ...not
6. Super weapons are in, 2 old ones, one is new.
7. yes
8. not yet known, as they look carefully what MOBA games are doing online I bet so.
9. not yet known
10. probably not. Only if DICE itself develops those tools, but there is no clear answer if they in fact do it.
11. yes.

btw its not a 'design' flaw, but an 'execution/implementation/balance' flaw

a design flaw would be.... not having tanks in the game at all

an execution flaw is when tanks are not strong enough to compensate for the mobility of anti-inf vehicles and lethality of rocket inf
----------------------
about soft/hard counters, heres my definitions-

Soft counter:
X beats Y, but only if you
a) match Y almost EQUALLY with X cost-to-cost.
AND/OR
b) micro X well-enough.

.... otherwise Y can win

Hard counter:
X beats Y, even if you spend only $500 on X to beat $1000 worth of Y.
micro not really important; doesnt matter how much X or Y is micro'd, X still wins by a good margin.


so some people argue soft counters are plain better because they are inherently more micro-oriented...

BUT they forget hard counters FORCE you to have multiple unit types, which again introduces micro ANYWAY

if you have units A+B vs units X+Y,
and A>X, A<Y, B<X, B>Y (all hardcounters)

you need to MICRO to ensure A beats X and B beats Y, while ensuring A and B take minimal damage from their counters (Y and X respectively)


so whats the impact of soft and hard counters?
soft counter ==> introduces micro by virtue of using only a few unit types and micro'ing them to beat anything thrown at them

hard counter ==> introduces micro by virtue of forcing use of MANY unit types, and micro'ing them according to their strengths/weaknesses
------------

the RISK with hard counters is if you dont perfectly balance the interactions, one set of combinations becomes VERY dominant.

Eg Gatt+TH in generals....
Problem: Tanks beat Gatts, but die WAY too easily to rockets

Pred+upgraded Rocketmen in cnc3...
Problem: Rifles/APCs beat Rockets (actually APCs even fail utterly vs Rockets cost-to-cost... lol), but WAY too slowly compared to how fast they die themselves



the RISK with soft counters is you potentially reduce incentive to build anything other than X.

eg Rockvees in ZH
Problem: They own all when micro'd. Period. Not much reason to build anything else.

This post has been edited by cnc315d34d: Dec 22 2012, 07:13 AM

The one thing that I noticed that I really liked was the minimalist UI, I'm much more of a fan of the UI at the bottom of the screen rather than the side bar type UI. Meth or AGM, care to give thoughts on how it felt?

I highly doubt the UI is anywhere near complete at this stage; I assume it will end up quite different. Also FYI, Generals originally had the command bar along the bottom of the screen.

booo no mcv

What are you supposed to sell now?

ehm... command center?
selling cc is the norm in generals anyway

UI felt and looked good and there was much talk on the subject most of which I can't share else I'd have to kill you (or they'd not invite me ever again )



Nothing hopefully!