There’s a very “we’re selling business software” feel to this webpage, which makes me wonder what it would be like for business software to be marketed like a video game.
I used to play the original TA a lot and BAR is very well done. Much harder than the original though - I had no trouble with TA campaigns but I have not even made it halfway with BAR before hitting skill wall. Not a teen anymore so it’s hard to motivate myself to try and push through. :)
The game is very mature and well thought RTS. The user experience and performance is beyond anything on the market now. It beats all well known AAA studios attempts at it by far.
It's still actively developed and very free to play.
Great game, technically impressive, but the community can be quite mean and toxic. I played for around a year after having played other TA Spring RTS for a few years prior, and if you don’t follow the exact meta of the month (whatever that might be) in terms of build order and things, people can get really aggro and your team can vote to kick you and take your units.
Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is broken instead of playing the game out and letting the back eco players try and recover it.
The drafting for picking map spots is done in order of seniority, and the good players take all the low stress spots which leaves the newer players to take the more difficult spots. This feeds into a loop where the senior players get aggro at the new players for letting the front break down, but simultaneously they won’t take it themselves even though it’s the more important position.
I stopped playing because I felt like I had a lot of negative interactions in every 2nd or 3rd game. The front player blames the back player, the back player blames the front player, everyone flames the weakest player.
I used to enjoy TA back in the annihilated.com days. Does this not have stand alone offline story/skirmish modes? Does online with random people not work any more?
I've played beyond all reason for a little bit, although I'm not very good at it. I've managed to avoid toxic lobbies by searching for terms like co-op or noob.
BAR is a deep and challenging game. It's also a team game. If your plan is to jump right into PvP you're going to be deadweight hanging around your team's neck and will rightly be criticized for it. You will never experience toxicity in 1v1 games, and only the normal amount of toxicity for online team games if you can pull your weight. Also, the community rarely surrenders early so OP clearly didn't play that many games and let 1 or 2 lobbies distort their perception of the game. Just remember, if you can't beat the AI, you don't belong in PvP games yet. Take your time, learn patience, walk before you run.
This is by design as it’s built by seniors unwilling to let go of their lawn. It’s a brilliant game, built by jerks. If they truly cared, it would be random spawn somewhere within a polygon of territory.
Pretty much the only case I've seen where a person is kicked out is either griefing (deliberately playing bad) or refuse to listen to advice.
If you don't know basics there's plenty of opportunities to learn outside of a real match (spectator, bots, special lobbies, etc.) Learning basics during 8v8 match is just extremely disrespectful: you're wasting time of 15 people. I think you missed that part.
And JFYI generally high-level lobbies (20+ is) have less drama. So it's mostly beginners having drama between themselves
Playing RTS since long time, TA to SupCom to FaF, I need to say that I totally understand your condition, especially considering my own experience and evolution on BAR.
I've seen lot of new or learning players being disoriented from the start, trolled and attacked during games, even kickbanned because of their sub-optimal playing after being FORCED to play front because of rating and placing/slot login in BAR.
While personally having a strong RTS background and even very specific to TA and FaF (basically BAR) I had to went through the same high toxicity problems.
The solution has been to don't give up, self learn through pain and few friends tips all the gaming micro details expected by other players and hidden in pro player knowledge.
IMHO this happened mainly and simply due to the lack of a well structured and established learning path for new players, that instead of opening a lobby list and joining the heat to get instantly rammed by toxicity should have the possibility to obtain basic game positioning, build and control knowledge in an more appropriate and structured way, in game info guidance on start -> tutorial?
Regarding the point of the poor newbie have to go as front player and holding while the pros stay in the back, is still kinda normal since the back positions, as especially the tech ones, are more fundamental later in the game, meaning that having a newbie there would be much worse game wise. and dont forget this is valid only for skill draft mode, there are othe draft modes too, even if the skill one is used "99%" of the time.
I find totally off topic and even offensive talking about needing to have had hard skin to go through this toxicity, or referencing completely different game types and generalizing on community and human interaction problems.
Again, a new player should have an "onboarding" path easily available and providing necessary basic logic to be able to start decently. And based on long and wide experience this seems to be mainly a BAR problem!
While I always heavily appreciate the effort behind such types of games/communities and respect it a lot (due to having done similarly in other game cases) I keep playing, learning and evolving with BAR because I miss TA and FaF BUT I often receive stress and leave after a series of bad toxic matches with "bad back taste" and this is sad for any game and community, abd should be reduced as much as possibly.
Sadly I also need to underline that I've personally seen unprofessional and sometimes also abusive or corrupt moderation from staff members, including abusive lobbies or manipulation behind player bans. Hence asking for player reports here doesn't seem decent neither, and a more legit and rock solid moderation could also help in compensating this type of issues.
And the last sad cherry (being an OSS enthusiast) is about having heard about strange forks and attribution from past work that leads now to publishers and money being involved, sad feeling but details would be needed before confirming any judgement.
I play it, I like it (because of TA and SupremeCommander Forged Alliance) but still (with all due respect for all the members behind and their effort) I often leave with a bitter or fishy back taste leftover by a generally hostile setup and community.
if a games competitive scene consists of a small old boys club tier rules do yourself a favor and don’t bother. bar was very much this when i tried it last year. i also got kicked at the start of several games for no apparent obvious reason as a new player lol. very unwelcoming community
Theres been some drama with this game where a few of the core admins have claimed ownership and sold out to a publisher. They are taking the free open source game and selling it on steam with a free demo. In addition to the toxic community, its made the whole thing a bit radioactive. Curious to see how it all plays out.
I know this is kind of silly, but even though TA's game mechanics are obviously great, I really liked its ambience and story. The sort of a melancholic vibe of a slow-moving neverending war.
BAR in contrast is a bit of a PvP clickfest, which I don't enjoy. I wonder if there's a game mode or another Spring mod that would give me a more authentic feel? Single-player or perhaps PvE.
I play Zero-K (a related open source game) a few times a month. I really enjoy their 'cold take' blog series discussing game mechanics and the history of TA derivatives. https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes
I played a ton of ZK back in 2016-21, it's the most polished game of its kind imo. The cold takes series is excellent, rts balance is such a hard problem and it makes for interesting systems analysis.
The cold takes themselves are a fantastic proof of the care and attention the devs put into this game, as well as the depths of their design philosophy.
Interesting, tried this game just 2 weeks ago and beat one of the pve modes with a friend just yesterday.
Joined some 8v8 for noobs and some were very friendly but they also wanted to kick me for not knowing the game. After all they let me stay but I stuck to pve or vs bots with friends now
I grew up playing Total Annihilation in the 90s because my cousin worked for Cavedog and got us a CD for free. It is still one of my favorite games to this day.
So many great memories with that game, countless hours playing with my brothers, getting up early to play before school, asking my parents for extra chores to earn more computer time.
Games aren't the same anymore.
I still have the original game and expansion packs. Highly recommend playing it.
I really enjoyed TA back in the day. And I still remember the fantastic music background which dynamically changed if you went into battle. Starcraft was released after and it looked so ancient compared to TA in my view. But all my friends played SC at the time so it took over.
I once reported a bug to Cavedog and stated I didn't have Internet access out in the country to download a patch. They were kind and sent me the patch with the fix via floppy in the mail!
TA is my most favorite game of all time. I bought it on Steam and got all the modern Escalation mods. I will spin it up every 6 months or so and play a new game just for fun, I just with the AI were more challenging.
As someone who loved Supreme Commander, I really wanted to like BAR, but I found it felt like death by a thousand cuts. I last played more than a year ago, so things might be different, but the QoL felt really lacking.
There are so many qol things in bar that I would love to see in faf. Area mex build, for example. Sticky unit grouping, draw unit formation is essential. Reclaim/repair area. Unit and command queue jumping. That said there are a few faf ones I would like to see in bar too.
SupCom was my first RTS and I have fond memories of turtling on massive maps that would crash after hour 4.
Planetary Annihilation scratches the itch and reminds me that I am very bad at strategy games whenever I think I might be smart. It's probably the most fair game I've played that I am completely awful at.
BAR is amazing but there's a hurdle for new players.
If you download it, don't join the first lobby you see.
My advice is to watch some videos on youtube, play some games solo, then look for new player lobbies or create your own and set restrictions on it.
It only takes one player on the enemy team who regularly plays the game and you'll get stream rolled.
Or you'll join a game of regular players, can't hold your lane and everyone will get frustrated when their base is blown up from your lane not holding.
61 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 40.9 ms ] threadIt's still actively developed and very free to play.
Here's a cast of 40 vs 40 players by a former Star Craft 2 pro player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1a5dkjUq3o
Thank you very much.
[ eye rolling emoji ]
https://www.faforever.com/
Also, one particularly aggravating part of the community is that it’s considered courtesy to surrender once the front line is broken instead of playing the game out and letting the back eco players try and recover it.
The drafting for picking map spots is done in order of seniority, and the good players take all the low stress spots which leaves the newer players to take the more difficult spots. This feeds into a loop where the senior players get aggro at the new players for letting the front break down, but simultaneously they won’t take it themselves even though it’s the more important position.
I stopped playing because I felt like I had a lot of negative interactions in every 2nd or 3rd game. The front player blames the back player, the back player blames the front player, everyone flames the weakest player.
Pretty much the only case I've seen where a person is kicked out is either griefing (deliberately playing bad) or refuse to listen to advice.
If you don't know basics there's plenty of opportunities to learn outside of a real match (spectator, bots, special lobbies, etc.) Learning basics during 8v8 match is just extremely disrespectful: you're wasting time of 15 people. I think you missed that part.
And JFYI generally high-level lobbies (20+ is) have less drama. So it's mostly beginners having drama between themselves
I've seen lot of new or learning players being disoriented from the start, trolled and attacked during games, even kickbanned because of their sub-optimal playing after being FORCED to play front because of rating and placing/slot login in BAR.
While personally having a strong RTS background and even very specific to TA and FaF (basically BAR) I had to went through the same high toxicity problems.
The solution has been to don't give up, self learn through pain and few friends tips all the gaming micro details expected by other players and hidden in pro player knowledge.
IMHO this happened mainly and simply due to the lack of a well structured and established learning path for new players, that instead of opening a lobby list and joining the heat to get instantly rammed by toxicity should have the possibility to obtain basic game positioning, build and control knowledge in an more appropriate and structured way, in game info guidance on start -> tutorial?
Regarding the point of the poor newbie have to go as front player and holding while the pros stay in the back, is still kinda normal since the back positions, as especially the tech ones, are more fundamental later in the game, meaning that having a newbie there would be much worse game wise. and dont forget this is valid only for skill draft mode, there are othe draft modes too, even if the skill one is used "99%" of the time.
I find totally off topic and even offensive talking about needing to have had hard skin to go through this toxicity, or referencing completely different game types and generalizing on community and human interaction problems. Again, a new player should have an "onboarding" path easily available and providing necessary basic logic to be able to start decently. And based on long and wide experience this seems to be mainly a BAR problem!
While I always heavily appreciate the effort behind such types of games/communities and respect it a lot (due to having done similarly in other game cases) I keep playing, learning and evolving with BAR because I miss TA and FaF BUT I often receive stress and leave after a series of bad toxic matches with "bad back taste" and this is sad for any game and community, abd should be reduced as much as possibly.
Sadly I also need to underline that I've personally seen unprofessional and sometimes also abusive or corrupt moderation from staff members, including abusive lobbies or manipulation behind player bans. Hence asking for player reports here doesn't seem decent neither, and a more legit and rock solid moderation could also help in compensating this type of issues.
And the last sad cherry (being an OSS enthusiast) is about having heard about strange forks and attribution from past work that leads now to publishers and money being involved, sad feeling but details would be needed before confirming any judgement.
I play it, I like it (because of TA and SupremeCommander Forged Alliance) but still (with all due respect for all the members behind and their effort) I often leave with a bitter or fishy back taste leftover by a generally hostile setup and community.
The frontline & surrender thing seems a bit more reasonable though. Chances of eco players turning around a broken front are basically nil
BAR in contrast is a bit of a PvP clickfest, which I don't enjoy. I wonder if there's a game mode or another Spring mod that would give me a more authentic feel? Single-player or perhaps PvE.
Joined some 8v8 for noobs and some were very friendly but they also wanted to kick me for not knowing the game. After all they let me stay but I stuck to pve or vs bots with friends now
I grew up playing Total Annihilation in the 90s because my cousin worked for Cavedog and got us a CD for free. It is still one of my favorite games to this day.
So many great memories with that game, countless hours playing with my brothers, getting up early to play before school, asking my parents for extra chores to earn more computer time.
Games aren't the same anymore.
I still have the original game and expansion packs. Highly recommend playing it.
Planetary Annihilation scratches the itch and reminds me that I am very bad at strategy games whenever I think I might be smart. It's probably the most fair game I've played that I am completely awful at.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5F36yViPz7w
I would like to play it but the comments about the community make it so that I never want to touch PVP with a 10ft pole.
Beyond All Reason – open-source RTS game built on top of the Recoil RTS Engine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42826983 - Jan 2025 (4 comments)
Beyond All Reason – An Open Source RTS Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40431216 - May 2024 (2 comments)
Beyond All Reason – Development - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39012392 - Jan 2024 (1 comment)
Beyond All Reason: Open-source RTS reimagining Total Annihilation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28201265 - Aug 2021 (101 comments)
If you download it, don't join the first lobby you see.
My advice is to watch some videos on youtube, play some games solo, then look for new player lobbies or create your own and set restrictions on it.
It only takes one player on the enemy team who regularly plays the game and you'll get stream rolled.
Or you'll join a game of regular players, can't hold your lane and everyone will get frustrated when their base is blown up from your lane not holding.