First, Hello. This is my first post on this site after several months of simply lurking to see what the community is like. To assist, let me explain briefly about my backround. I am a high school student who has as interest in the subject of game design who mods WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne for fun. The design I am about to explain is one of those mods, which from summary might seem to be a pretty good design, but ultimately fails. Here is a summary of the game (My "marketing" info): Summary: Advanced Battle is s highly strategic game where players compete against each other in small conflicts to capture control points and win battles. In terms of genre, the map tends to be similar to World in Conflict, though as I understand, it has its differences. Objectives: To win, you have to set the enemy score to zero. To score, you have to control local cities and towns. And finally, to control the local cities and towns, you must invade the area with allied forces. There are seven properties to control, and seven units to invade them with. Infantry, Rocket Troopers, Scouts, Missiles, Flak Raiders, Battle Copters, and Tanks, all prove a vital role in assaulting enemy positions and defending your own. The game is comprised of fast action gameplay and tactical decisions, but ultimately requires players to get things where they need to be, when they need to be there. Additional information can be found here: http://www.jx3.net/TDG/wiki/index.php/Advanced_Battle The problem is that it gets completitive really quite quickly due to the utter lack of skill involved (Think Rock Paper Scissors - The Board Game). When playing with a more intelligent crowd it plays fairly, but I think the expierience would ultimately even with intelligence, would get boring. I have tried to find articles to assist, but many only further advise me of my problems without any real or effective solutions. So, I leave you with my question: What can I do to remedy the situation and improve the replay factor? I wish to keep skill down to a minimum and strategy higher, similar to the work of chess, but I simply am up for anything really. --I'll try to get screenshots up tommorow to assist.

High School Student wrote:
>Seeking advice on a poor design concept
>The problem is that it gets completitive [sic] really quite quickly due to the utter lack of skill involved (Think Rock Paper Scissors

That's all we need to know. The problem is that the game doesn't have the proper skill/chance ratio. (I'm not quite sure what you mean by "completitive" though, heh. Either it completes too quickly, or it's not competitive due to total randomness...?)

>I wish to keep skill down to a minimum and strategy higher, similar to the work of chess

What?? What's the difference between "skill" and "strategy" exactly? (Why are you differentiating between those two, rather than "strategy" and "chance"?)

>I'll try to get screenshots up tommorow [sic] to assist.

We really don't need any of that. This is all about general concepts that you have to utilize, not details that we have to analyze for you. What you have to do is add in the element of strategy - or, if you have that, the element of randomness (chance). How can you fix the design so that the players have to plan, to think, to take advantage of whatever special abilities are inherent in certain moves or locations or randomly picked cards? There are LOTS of ways you can add strategy into the mix. IMO, you'll learn game design most effectively if you experiment and try stuff on your own rather than get answers handed to you on a silver platter. My opinion, anyway.

Sorry, i'm going to have to plug my doc again:

see here

It addresses some ways that you can add more strategic depth to the game by focusing on the core mechanics. It talks about your skill/strategy problem (probably better referred to as "number of rules" and "strategic depth"; skill and strategy are very similar). It also talks about simple ways to add strategy or remove tedium and unnecessary luck elements.

It sounds like the outcome is determined for the most part as soon as the players choose their characters. If that is the case I think you need more quick counters, more reliance on player skill, and less reliance on the rock paper scissors match up.

You may also need to rework the pace in which your game plays. A game like this could be too quick and not allow the player to respond and adapt to the environment and the choices the enemy has made.