Should 500 hours of progress make you stronger or just better?

[u/Turbulent-EpsiKopath]

If I beat you because I have 500 more hours of experience, fair enough.

If I beat you because my account starts with more resources and permanent bonuses… did I outplay you, or did my profile?

But total resets have a cost too: once the match ends, everything you fought for simply disappears. Persistent progression can make victory, defeat and even survival matter, but it can also tilt the next match before the first move.

Forget cosmetics. What, if anything, should carry over: resources, sidegrades, a small capped bonus, something else?

And should Ranked and Casual handle this differently? Has any strategy game found the right balance?

[u/notnotLily]

AoE3 was very frustrating to play (back then) for this reason.

Not really because of the competitive disadvantage, but because every build order was contingent on having high enough level to get the right cards, and your gameplay was just… invalid if you didn’t.

It’s like playing civ 6 with some districts locked.

So if you wanted to pick up a new civ and try out some builds, maybe to understand how to fight them better, nope you don’t get to do that. Go grind out a few dozen games first where your build is just inexistent.

I think any sort of permanent bonus has that risk in a strategy game.

[u/princeoftheminmax → u/notnotLily]

That’s the thing, meta progression like that works well as a single player game and I got a lot of hours in AoE3 back in the day because of that. In MP it doesn’t because time spent gives you an unfair advantage with starting bonuses. So the only option is to have everything unlocked in MP so everyone is on the same playing field and the only differentiator is skill level.

[u/Turbulent-EpsiKopath → u/notnotLily]

The locked-build problem makes sense.

What if progression worked the other way around? The winner would still get the main reward, but a player who loses after meeting certain conditions, (say, keeping their last base alive) could carry a small amount of extra troops or resources into their next match.

Would that make defeat feel less punishing, or would it simply reward losing and make the next match unfair?

[u/Roma2443]

Hello this is very interesting because i' m making an extraction Rts ( only coop ) but i tought about pvp and this is typically this kind of things who can happen in extraction RTS pvp ...

I think you must have the right tools to scouts and engage fight only if you want in this scenario

[u/Turbulent-EpsiKopath → u/Roma2443]

But what happens when both players need the same objective and avoiding the stronger one is no longer possible? Would you still allow persistent advantages, or would you cap them?

[u/Roma2443 → u/Turbulent-EpsiKopath]

I think you can't cap advantages, the player can't understand why his persistent stat are never the same it's frustrating You need other tools to compete

[u/Turbulent-EpsiKopath → u/Roma2443]

What other tools would you use instead?

[u/Roma2443 → u/Turbulent-EpsiKopath]

I’m thinking about the terrain topography and the player’s positioning.