Do you think Sanctuary will replace FAF?

Not very comparable since FPS games are much simpler mechanics wise, and I haven't played Halo. Regardless, in all these games they spend time teaching you how all the mechanics work. It's been a long time since I played FA singleplayer, but when I did I certainly didn't come out of the experience understanding what reclaim was, what stalling mass/e really does, what buildpower is, how the flux economy even works, and I didn't even know you could upgrade mexes. There's never even anytime where your opponent is playing with the same rules as you. They don't use reclaim and mexes to make their units, they just spawn out of nothing, so you never even properly interact with the mechanics of the game. Not understanding what;s going on is not core to the singleplayer experience, it hinders it. You have more fun when learning new things and understanding what's going on.

It is clear to me that you could create a campaign where you start out by learning how to collect mass, through mass extractors, and converting it into tanks. Shown that there's a simple ratio of factories to pgens or mexes to pgens. Once you are competent at that you get sent out to the field where you are instructed to secure the mass deposits before the enemy, so that you can produce more units and defeat them. You can introduce reclaim in a similar way. You can be instructed to raid their engineers before they build the mexes and get the reclaim. You can be instructed to drop areas with transports to get them faster. You can encounter an enemy that has a T2 factory and be instructed that once your opponent has T2 tech you should probably get it too.

You can do all of these things while still having a storyline, and still having scripted events and units spawning out of nowhere as well. It is how every decent game operates these days. You get a trickle of mechanics over time and instructions how to use them, mixed in with scripted events where using those mechanics is necessary, and mixed in with a storyline, and mixed in with scripted events and whatever. It's literally what game design is.

That stuff isn't fun though. People get into the game cuz of the big cool stuff, not learning how to make it in sub 15 minutes.

Your campaign would have a lower attrition rate for people getting into pvp while drastically lowering the amount of people that care to even get into the game.

I strongly doubt they will produce something at the level of sup-com. I love how ambitious they are but I don't think they can outdo Gas powered games with hundreds of ppl with actual game design experience.

they also send mixed messages. sometimes I hear it's an endi game... then they announce features that will be groundbreaking . they might be better than supcom in some aspects but they wont be better overall

If people are buying the bigbrain flux economy strategy game I'm sure they can make it through a few introductory missions explaining how the mechanics work. Learning and mastering things is what fun is. If you make an achievement to make 50 tanks in 5 minutes people will sit around as long as it takes trying to get the achievement, gamers are smoothbrain achievment hunters. And if they don't want to strategize and learn shit then why are they buying the game? If you actually know how to manage the economy you get to the big, fun units much faster. I remember leaving the game running for hours building a mavor on T1 mexes because I didn't know how to do anything.

If you really want to make a game for big explosion fans you can have a secondary mode that puts you into the action in a more tactical, rather than strategic way. And you can have the sandbox modes and whatever. If these people are not interested in learning mechanics, then they are ultimately just in the wrong place. They should go play some simpler game or watch a Michael Bay movie. They are not my intended audience and if they are just going to leave after the singleplayer experience they do not contribute to keeping the game and community alive.

I didn't buy the game because of the flux economy nor was that even remotely a selling point for me in 2008. I bought the game because it had a sick 6 legged robot attacking a giant base and advertised itself as a real strategic game where you managed a whole war not just a small tactical battle.

None of the marketing for the game emphasized the economy because that doesn't sell anything. Even paradox games don't advertise the spreadsheet management they are.

anyone thinking Sanctuary is ever gonna top SCFA is smoking straight crack and needs to be put in an insane asylum.
FAF is making strides with a 2008 game in performance thats not been seen anywhere else but LOUD & now FAF due to the fact that we have good cooperation now unlike before where sprouto and jip share their experience and it improves both Communities and Overhauls.

FAF is going to have a fast non laggy game and tbh it already does, Jip is just adding more and more capability now.
So now i wonder who wants to play Sanctuary when it looks like Supcom 2 wannabe with IMHO Disgusting Pathfinding that doesnt look natural at all.

RE to Cyborg
FAF unit upgrading system is good enough. You don't want to have many upgradable units or upgrade choices as it makes the game unclear. Having multiple ACU's and multiple experimentals on each tech level, that you customize and lock-in before the game starts would be cool though. Adding a small deck building aspect to the game and increasing variety. It's probably theoretically possible on FAF.
Damage models or armor or whatever would also have to be used very sparingly. When you are dealing with hundreds of units at a time they need to behave consistently, doing consistent damage and having consistent HP.

1. Well I mean refer to Heroes of Alliance, Cyborg, It does an armor system in a MOD and does it well not to include a bunch of other systems that diversify the game even more.
2. Upgrade system is fully capable of being applied to units just like factories and such. It's not hard, same with enhancements the game could be a lot more diverse if Balance Team wanted to go absolute wild and get spicy like we did in LOUD.

If you want the game to be more interesting in terms of balance and gameplay. It's literally limitless.
So idk what you are talking when you say bad upgrade system and such.

Everybody should instantly disregard anyone who thinks they have solved the secret issue that makes casual gamers mostly uninterested in highly complicated real time strategy games. The truth is the average gamer is frankly not smart or patient enough to appreciate the genre. It’s not about tutorials or accessible mechanics.

I'd also like to know who found the vanilla campaigns to be extremely fun and exciting. You aren't getting any big fancy units until late in the campaign, and most of the missions are just having you do some arbitrary tasks like transporting civilian trucks or killing an arty base with little or no guidance. You sit around for hours inefficiently building up some units and defending against waves of scripted gunships. I'd think a campaign where you are actually taught to contest resources and have back and forth interactions would be more interesting rather than less.

@zeldafanboy said in Do you think Sanctuary will replace FAF?:

The truth is the average gamer is frankly not smart or patient enough to appreciate the genre. It’s not about tutorials or accessible mechanics.

The people on FAF aren't smarter or more patient than the average person, as much as you might like to think we are. Writing off the problem as unsolvable and blaming it on everyone else being stupid isn't a recipe for success and progress in the genre. Everyone is capable of learning to play and learning to appreciate the genre if given the proper opportunity and resources.

Yeah I'm inclined to agree this thread has run its course