Iron Harvest devs expose their ideas to mitigate the skill gap frustration for the multiplayer mode of their RTS

There's a (successful) kickstarter campaign going on for the RTS Iron Harvest and the developpers just published their goals for the multiplayer mode, notably their ideas to mitigate the frustration and the issues that usually come from the RTS competitive modes. You can read the entire post and the full bullet point list here but I wanted to highlight some points to hear your thoughts on the matter. Personally, I find their vision interesting, exciting but also very ambitious...This is a short selection of their intentions :Anti-snowballing: If you are behind in a game, you should have several options and a little assistance to get back on track. If you are winning, it should get harder and harder to keep the lead and close the deal. In any case, a small mistake early on should not seal you fate.Keeping the player pool (potential opponents) as big as possible: We will prevent fragmentation of our online community, in order to keep match making wait times as short as possible. To help with that, there will be a handicap system, where better players will have additional tasks in a match and/or weaker players will get some bonuses.One of our goals is to keep matches exciting for as long as possible. If you make a mistake or are behind, it won’t be a death sentence. Players won’t leave matches if they think they still have a chance and even if you are ahead, you have to stay vigilant. [In the full post they go more in details about some mechanics that could prevent predictability]Whenever a unit dies in a multiplayer match, you‘ll get back some of the resource cost of this unit. The amount of the "refund" depends on your and your opponents‘ skill levels (handicap system), as well as on the match phase. At the beginning of a match you might get 100% back, so a lost unit "only" means lost time. Later on, you might get 50% back and at some point 0% (to ramp up the pressure and to make sure games won’t take forever).Before a match, players can spend a certain amount of points to spawn units. Based on their handicap, better players get to spend fewer points. Therefore, they are at a disadvantage and have to fight harder. Maybe there will even be an option not to spend some of these points and get more XP out of the match.Our goal is to make multiplayer matches fun and worthwhile for each player. If you are a really good player, occasionally, you might not have enough competitors. However, instead of slaying newbies and getting nothing out of it (XP-wise), you can play a handicap match and make it harder for you (in exchange for XP). At the same time, weaker players can play against better players regularly and learn from them.*[Not the same post but repeated many times through the campaign] Players need enough time to assess a situation, explore all possibilities, come up with a plan and execute that plan. Tactics have to be more important than clicks per seconds. via /r/Games https://ift.tt/2IgTFec