A quick update and more BFG: Armada!

At least they got the aesthetics right.

Just to let you folks know, that I've been playing BFG: Armada a ton in the last month or so.  I've become a pretty solid player of all the factions, and I've been giving a lot of balance-related feedback.  Of course, there's always going to be some haters out there, but I want to take a brief moment to post on top-down feedback.

First, let me direct you to the topic at hand.  You don't need to read the entire thing, but I'll post my response below here:

Imperator5 wrote:
I do not think top to down balancing is a good idea actually, even if I agree with Hero about pulsars.

Games have to appeal to more than one segment of the population. If new players are not presented with a game they can play without reading up for weeks on elite forums and watching replays, they will just not play it at all.

My response:
This is exactly the kind of mentality that I completely, and utterly disagree with. Let me educate you why, in all sincerity.

It's not about a game's appeal man, it's about what your actual focus is. Balance, when done correctly, is done precisely and target specific gameplay-related issues.

The casual playerbase will not and does not notice balance when it is done correctly. There is simply too many other things they care about, because MP is not their primary focus and the reason they purchased the game. They care about playing the game for its aesthetics, the sound, the lore, the SP experience, the building the empire, the fun of just gaming with friends, and the immersion of being in gigantic space ships in the 40K universe with Tac Cog on. These are your painters, your hobbyists, your casual once a month playgroupers, and your campaign-driven 40K leaguers. These are the majority of your playerbase, but they are not focused on the delicacies of how multiplayer PvP plays out. This is not why they purchased the game, nor is that their reason to continue playing the game.

The competitive playerbase is the group that cares about the things that the casual player does not. They care about the balance, the numbers, the how much DPS is this ship doing vs. that ship, the viable strategies, the tactics, all the skills and abilities and how all these things equate to one thing: How they can justify the effort they are putting in the game, and if they are being rewarded for their efforts. They focus on the intricacies of gameplay, in a multiplayer environment, in player vs. player, because they are competitive in nature and focus on this very narrow and niche gaming perspective. When balance goes awry and when player unrewarded efforts and frustrations become painfully apparent, they leave the game, and the online community suffers. Their reason to play is no longer being rewarded.

The one thing that most people think, such as GW for example, and where amateur and indie companies fail, is that they think the two camps bleed and fight against each other. This is a very common fallacy. The competitive player simply does not focus on the same things the casual player focuses on, and it is not why they purchased the game, nor do they share the same reasons for playing the game. So other successful gaming companies started thinking from this exact perspective (EA, Ensemble, Relic, Blizzard..etc), and why they went to great lengths to consul with the best players of their games to collect feedback and balance suggestions from these players, to address their game to provide a better online, PvP, multiplayer experience. They understand the value of concurrency, that it wasn't just their goal to sell you the game, but to keep you there so you can continue to Twitch (like I am now), and to provide not only brand/company loyalty, but as a form of free marketing for their future products.

Simply put, it NEVER hurts to balance the game from the top-down. The two main crowds are not effected by either change! If the Pulsars all of a sudden turn into blue rainbows like from DoW vs. the purple-lavender ones we have now, do you think the competitive player will really care? Likewise, if the Pulsar damage was increased by 5s cooldown and their damage was reduced by 5 per, do you think the casual player will even notice?

Therefore, top-down balance is exactly what you need to make the best game possible. That is, of course, if you even care about the online aspect at all. If you didn't care, you wouldn't waste the development resources to make all these features in the first place. If you have already built a community around the fans and the immersion of giant 40K spaceships, that is great. But please Tindalos, do not fall in the camp that neglects the competitive player because it will, destroy your other playerbase.

+++

As you can see here, this is the same kind of attitude I have with GW, and why things like the Skull Cannon, Wraithknight and other ridiculous crap gets added to the game.  I don't think GW can tell the difference between what kind of feedback is given.  Oh well, at least I get to play BFG on a computer finally!

If you guys haven't caught me yet, you can see me playing on my Twitch channel.  They just added the Eldar to the game and they're freaking bonkers.  Not what I wanted to see personally, but the devs are hopefully going to work out the kinks.  Since I started the stream, I'm up to 400 followers now!

Been playing a ton of BFG lately

Beta is nice and all, but where the F are my Eldar?!

What can I say?  I've played over 30 hours of the game already and the beta came out last Thursday.  I won't write out a full review, but let's just say that I think the game is absolutely fantastic, minus the fact that I crash 9/10 times when trying to play multiplayer.  Yes, it's really that bad, the multiplayer in the game is extremely unstable.  Solo skirmish however, is completely fine.  This leads me to believe that there's something dreadfully wrong with the netcode.  Whatever it is, they better figure this shit out quick because the game comes out in 2 weeks.

The only downside with the game for me right now is that when ships die in multiplayer, they go under cooldown, meaning you can't use them again.  It's something like 2 games for a destroyed ship and 1 day for a heavily damaged one.  Then afterwards, another turn where you don't get crew exp, and sometimes your ship even gets lost in the warp so it can be delayed up to 3 games.  I think this mechanic is dreadfully stupid for multiplayer, but a very cool and fluffy mechanic for single-player.

Check out some of my gameplay videoes here.  I updated my Twitch channel is it's all Eldared out:
https://www.twitch.tv/lkhero

And of course, some cool highlights:
Let the galaxy burn!
One battleship vs. 3 cruisers
Exploring the AI and teaching how to play

Make sure to follow me on Twitch!  This is probably the only game I'll be playing for quite some time.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada gameplay analysis

Super excited to play this game!

Check this out guys, here's the latest gameplay on Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.  I must have watched the video a hundred times, but I only did it because I'm really interested in seeing how this company is going to translate this vaulted table-top into a computer game.  Oh, one more minor video here, but you have to squint really hard to see anything.  Just listen in for the most part.

Here's a brief analysis from what I can see from a gameplay perspective:

• It looks like some special orders translates seemingly into RTS.  For example, it looks like All Ahead Full! is just a boost to speed at the expense of firing weapons maybe.  Or maybe it's just a minor decrease to weapons such as +25% speed for -25% rate of fire.  Likewise, Brace for Impact! might be a +25% damage reduction for -25% damage.
• The stats of the ship look pretty straight forward when translated onto an RTS platform.  Shields just look like a raw value that acts like an overheal, so its essentially extra health until shields go down.  Once shields go down, the damage is then applied to the ship's hull, which acts as health points.  When this value reaches 0, the ship explodes.  We're unsure if there's going to be different factors in play here when the ship explodes.  Does it have a chance to Warp Drive Implosion when the ship goes down?   We don't know.
• To expand on this a little further, it looks like there is going to be battle damage when damage is being applied to the ship.  The designers themselves said that there are going to be ways to damage weapon components and that immediately reminds me of Homeworld.  If players are able to disable a ship's engines to make them slower or completely crippled, then that can add huge dimensions to gameplay because of all the things you can do to an enemy ship.  You can clearly see chunks of the ship flying off as it takes heavy damage, but I'm unsure if these pieces continue to do damage to other ships that bump into them.
• Speaking of bumping into stuff, I don't think I see any Blast marker mechanics from the gameplay videoes so far.  Blast might have a side-effect to show that a ship is taking damage in general and that it moves slower once in combat, but that's all just guess work right now.
• From what I've seen from the combat system, it seems like most of the attacks are hitting the enemy ship when they're being fired with the exception of a few things like Torpedoes.  I think this means that they're making the torps fire like skillshots from a MOBA, and having them go on cooldown after being fired, which makes a fair amount of sense.  The big thing here to note is that if most of the attacks are hitting, but not all of them, then that means there's a hit modifier right?  If that's the case, then that makes Eldar Holo-fields really easy to do.  Attacks will simply miss more against ships utilizing Holo-fields, which is both consistent with the fluff and translates easily into the engine.  Whether or not this is actually good for gameplay is another issue.  If something like hit chance is in the game, what about criticals?  What if the RNG gods are cruel and you lose a Void Stalker based on bad RNG?  Surely that's bound to happen to everyone once in a while, but as long as its done tastefully and not consistently frustrating then it's OK.
• Right now, we are unsure how the damage formula for the ships are.  I'm assuming that ship weapons systems are doing set damage values every X amount of seconds (multiplied by hit chance) vs. Y amount of health using Z% of damage reduction due to armor.  This means that the damage system is a very easy to understand DPS vs. damage reduction formula being used with Torpedoes every 60 seconds or until the Reload Order is being used or something.
• Speaking of Orders, I'm not sure if there's going to be all the Orders in BFG, but there will be some well-known ones.  I think I saw All Ahead Full and Brace for Impact, but I don't know if any others exist.  From what I can see from the UI, it looks like every ship, or at least the important capital ships will have special abilities that maybe the captain will do.  For example, you might be able to select certain abilties on your captain as he levels up, and he will be able to apply that to any ship that he rides in.
• Going off of that, it seems that you will be able to upgrade various parts of the ship as you progress in the game.  The designers specifically mentioned that you will be able upgrade nearly everything, from the weapons to the officers, to the engines, you know it.  I'm curious to see if this is only going to be a single-player mechanic, or is it going to be in multiplayer as well where you can purchase more worthwhile upgrades, but it will add a cost to your ship.
• Before we go any further on this, I just wanted to say that no information has been released about how fighters/bombers are going to work.  Right now, we can only assume that there will be turret/defense interactions and fighters/bombers will be treated as mini units that can be launched from their carriers from a special action.  Once they unload, or fight, or what have you, they might need to reload back at their carriers before a Reload action is called so they can be sent out again.  This is all guesswork, but that's what I would do in an RTS game so why not?
• This leads me to my last part of this brief analysis, and that's the cost association with the ships.  Since I only really care about multiplayer, it looks like you'll be able to set a game up with a certain amount of points kind of like Total War, and then buy ships as long as you have enough points.  After that, you start the game, deploy in a line, setup whatever formation you want and go to town.  Makes sense, and looks really straight forward.

Needless to say, I'm really excited about the game.  Just by looking at this brief gameplay video, it looks like the developers over there know what they're doing.  I feel a little better now.

BFG: Working on something big

40K lore and spaceships.. so good!

Hey guys, not much from me in the last couple of days and I can explain.  You probably know that I've been doing a lot of WHFB with my Skaven and Vampire Counts, but you probably don't know that I'm working on something on the side as well.  I've decided to bring back a game that I hold most dear but haven't gotten around to playing for quite some time.  That game is Battlefleet Gothic and I'm proud to say that I'm working on a houserules package for it.

What does this mean exactly?  It means that I'm doing a re-write.  Not a re-write in the sense that it's going to be a completely different game, but a re-write for this prehistoric game that will make it fresh, fast, modern, and exciting to play.  For now, I'm simply calling it BFG2.0.

Let me tell you right now what my design goals are with this pet-project of mine:

• Modernize the old ruleset to match the current 40K system
• Improve game speed and fluidity by cutting dated design
• Introduce alternating player turns for more interactive gameplay
• Utilize visual gaming aids to better track board status
• Increase design space for future additions and game balance

No randomized leadership, no goofy random movement, no gunnery chart (gasp!), just simple, easy to understand rules that will maintain the strategic depth that is BFG.  Add in a few new things like Admiral Traits and a few balance alterations and you have yourself a pretty solid game.  Currently, I'm working on the Chaos fleet and I would like to get at least 4 factions in the game before I go public.  Right now I have Imperial, Chaos, Eldar and Orks (matching the upcoming video game).

I am definitely looking for playtesters for those of you who are interested!  Just drop me an E-mail and when I'm ready for the next phase, I'll let you guys know.