I see people talking briefly and dismissively about Supreme Commander 1 & 2. This is fair to a point, SupCom 1 had a broken economy system that made turtling far too viable, and the less said about SupCom 2 the better.
However there is a third option: Forged Alliance. It was released as a (standalone) expansion to SupCom 1 so it probably passed a lot of people by, also when it came out the system requirements were insane. It rebalanced and improved upon SupCom 1 immeasurably, and it is the single best game I have ever played. It's focussed on large-scale rather than micro, so it might be a bit different to what you're used to with StarCraft, but it is a very varied game, very fast-paced and with a huge amount of depth.
There's a community-run client, lobby and matchmaking system that you can download free over at http://www.faforever.com. There is built-in support for leagues, several featured mods built in as standard, and there are regular tournaments for the more competitive among you!
The community has been growing at an ever-expanding rate recently due to the high quality and ease of use of the client, and new players are always welcome.
[/QUOTE] You also clearly don't understand that the requirement of apm adds strategy. Apm is a resource that you must spend wisely. And just like you can destroy workers to manipulate how an opponent can use his minerals, you can manipulate how someone can use his apm. Some things take more apm to deal with than to perform, like defiler drops. Therefor, an added bonus to defiler dropping is that it gives you an advantage in the resource of apm. You have to spend your apm wisely, since you have a limited amount of it.
I've played many RTS games. StarCraft is far from my first, but out of all the games I have played, StarCraft is by far the most strategically magnificent. That's why I play it. Good mechanics can be cool, but the main reason I like StarCraft is the strategy. And I've tried Supreme Commander. Mechanics aside, I still like StarCraft more. It's more intellectually stimulating.
The problems it makes you solve are more interesting. The multitude of ways that you can solve those problems in are more interesting. It allows for more creativity and self expression. One major reason for this is that the races are not only more different from each other, but also more interesting and complex, than the races in Supreme Commander.
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Supcom FA is very APM intensive, there really is no limit to how much apm you could make useful, because it gets so large so fast. To challange your belief that starcraft BW is by far the most strategically magnificent and presents the most interesting and complex problems I will let you watch the following video of a 1v1 supcom FA game.
To comeback to the main topic of this thread. Any attempt to make a new RTS, will be robbing itself if it disregards what has been achieved in Supcom FA, they way most RTS players disregard it, because they have been blinded by their love for SCBW.
Would be an awesome idea to make a game to be a true successor of bw by the teamliquid members! I'm pretty sure that the required talents to make the game are already registered to teamliquid, just lack of motivation. I would sign up for testing for sure..
On October 26 2012 17:29 nfteamDexy wrote: Would be an awesome idea to make a game to be a true successor of bw by the teamliquid members! I'm pretty sure that the required talents to make the game are already registered to teamliquid, just lack of motivation. I would sign up for testing for sure..
Glad to see that there is somebody who agrees with me, from my country. 99% of our people are shouting at me for being "ignorant" because I "can't see" that sc2 is skilled, and I'm just frustrating, writing non-sense. We all should to try to make game designers pay attention to real RTS, because IMO it's the most beautiful concept for competitive gaming.
I would slaughter 1000 people just to see a new Age of Empires game. Something going back to the roots of AoE I or II. Such a shame that Ensemble Studios broke up, I was always secretly hoping.
Definitely, I hope there would be another RTS game out there that would get "big". I know AoE II had its' own competitive scene for a bit and I hope another RTS game could be developed that would rival SC2 in terms of production value/quality. (AoE 4 that would go back to the medieval times was pretty much the only thing that could make this happen I think. TT)
On October 22 2012 06:54 fabiano wrote: Things I personally believe that are roots of SC2 problems and that Blizzard will likely NEVER change:
1. Warp-in 2. "Infinite" units binding to a single control group 3. Macro mechanics 4. Force fields, fungal growth and concussive shells 5. The colossus (I mean, it's been 2 years and this unit is still in the game? Probably will remain there forever) 6. Players can max out way too fast 7. No real high ground advantage (their bullshit excuse is "to avoid randomness in the game") 8. The lead designer has no idea what the hell he is doing, as proven when he thought that by mech play we just meant robot marines 9. Individually microing units during big battles doesn't give any signficant advantage because everything happens way too fast to do so
Could SC2 still be good? Definitely. The programmers did an excellent job, you can customize a lot to make the gameplay as you wish.
Will SC2 be good? Probably not because the lead designer is clearly clueless. Make no mistake, his job is really hard and I doubt I would make things better in his place, but that doesn't mean he is excused.
Would I like to see a new RTS like BW? Oh fucking yeah, but seriously which company will want to take a big risk when it is so much safer to create MMO's and FPS's? Nowadays everything is about making fast money, I would guess only indie companies are making games based solely in passion.
We still can play BW, so let's do it!
I was really playing with idea of starting an open-source project for a new RTS. Owners only get paid if some organizations use it to make a tournament and get a profit. Otherwise its free and belongs to everyone. And anyone can change however he wants, but staple version is released from project owners.
And I kinda agree about lead designer. Seriously its seems DB don't understand how we see starcraft, instead he tries to propagate his C&C-like style of RTS. I was roflstomped when I learnt that he was the creator of C&C and Battle for middle earth. They are not terrible games, but they don't have anything in common with starcraft.
As far as good games go, there's already plenty. The classics from late 90's like BW, AoE2, TA and then some... Newer games surely too, I haven't checked each individual game out. You can play these to your hearts content, many still have enough playerbase. And new good games will come out inevitably, maybe for example Planetary Annihilation will be good or if not, something else down the road will be.
But if you want a bigger scene with progamers and all that jazz, you're out of luck. You won't get that just because people who love this type of game think something's good, you need big marketing money to support tournaments and such. It needs to be a wider phenomenon. Kickstarter for a game with mechanics pimped for competitive play won't get that, and even if such a thing was funded there's always risk of not delivering even on the gameplay side.
The most important figure in reviving the genre will be the player. Whatever games people's choose to play, that is the style of games that will be made. Vote with your feet, don't follow the herd if you don't want to be lead of a cliff by lunatics dreaming about money, esports, etc., but not dreaming about the game. Start by listening to TLO
I don't care about a competitive RTS scene, i just wish there would be a new RTS game with as fun a campaign and as entertaining custom games as WC3:ROC/TFT.
EPT
