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hello TL
lately I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the current state of RTS games. A long time ago rts games where the most popular kind of games around but now they are certainly out of the spotlight. In recent years, especially after starcraft 2 (that I still play btw) there have been basically no successful real time stratey games.
I feel that this I because of the stagnation of this genre, after the incredible success of starcraft 1 there have been very few games that deviated from the guide lines that it set. Of course there have been some notable exceptions, such as dawn of war, company of heroes and so on, but those have certainly not been remotely as successful of the greats of the rts genre (C&C, Starcraft, warcraft...).
If you could design innovative features for an RTS game, what would it be?
Personally I would love to have control points to gather resources and more traditional resources gathering methods (mineral patches or whatever) in the same game, I believe it would encourage a much more active gameplay but it would also reward good macro-mechanics.
Another thing that has always intrigued me is to have a game in which thing that happened in orbit directly influenced your ground fighting (sort of 2 maps in one)
what about you?
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deck system:
- more units, but only a small prechosen set can be played in one game
- less races (1-2)
more vertical play:
- air units that go up and down and collide with different heights instead of the "this flies, so it ignores all terrain and can be stacked into each other"
- skyscraper maps ("storm the building")
- vision depends on height; high-flying units see further but may not see small units
less attention for base setup (to make more room for more attention for army management):
- automated production options
- global queuing (like a "build X when you have enough money; then build Y when you have enough money; then...")
- building modus that smartselects closest the worker instead of worker searching + selecting + building setdown
- more easy to set up basebuilding design that don't require screenswitching like how Terran addons or overlord building works
more "basic" unit control options besides moving and attacking (needs testing which are fun):
- infantry may crawl
- vehicles may push other units around or even drive over them
more easy mousecontrol options instead of button pushing on UIs:
- give the scrollwheel a purpose
probably more ideas in my head, that's just a part of what I'm thinking about. I also like what you mention about using more controlpoints on the map, though I don't think it should overlap with the basic resource gathering, for balancing reasons. But surely for other purposes.
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I found a couple of traditional RTS games on the horizon, though they're all fairly low key.
There is Meridian, which seems to be indie-made and takes big inspiration from C&C3.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/15/starcraft-conquer-one-man-rts-meridian-now-on-steam/
There is also Grey Goo, from Petroglyph (makers of Star Wars Empie at War, Universe at War, and the now-defunct End of Nations; has a few Westwood employees though most have left). You can find a few clips of it on youtube, most from PAX. It looks promising, though still very traditional.
There is also Planetary Annihilation, but that is drawing from Total Annihilation, which itself is very different from the C&C/Age of Empires/Warcraft camp.
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yea i read about grey goo and planetary annihilation. they look kinda interesting but nothing radically new ^^
in grey goo there are interesting faction mechanics, especially with the goo faction. I never enjoyed the supreme comander/totoal annihilation games, way too macro-oriented for my liking 
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On May 08 2014 00:40 Big J wrote:
stuff
Tiberian Sun did almost all of these things back in 1999
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On May 08 2014 05:17 Fishgle wrote:Tiberian Sun did almost all of these things back in 1999
I played that game. It surely did not. No clue what you are talking about aside from half dead cyborgs missing their legs and being slower comparing to crawl (though it was just a slow behaviour with no upsides)
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Northern Ireland25964 Posts
Some kind of MMORTS
Preferably in a space/sci-fi setting. I don't know how you would implement it, but the basic idea is that you would play vs both humans players from other factions and also AIs in missions of various kinds corresponding to an overall war effort of gargantuan size and scope.
You could incorporate lots of RTS elements into this too, from the larger-scale to the smaller Real-Time tactical in terms of how it all functions as a game itself
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Northern Ireland22208 Posts
I was really into C&C Generals, it was the best C&C game because it moved away from the stupid limiting construction yard system to a peon building system. It had a simple gated resource system, which placed a lot more emphasis on unit micro. I also met dApollo playing that game.
They were making a free to play C&C Generals-esque game, but that's been cancelled now, and doesn't look like it's coming back 
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I think it depends on how you define success.
CoH imo is pretty big and stayed popular for years which is impressive for modern gaming generation
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if u think RTS is stagnant now, wait until Blizzard moves on.
SC2 will be Blizzard's last RTS title.
The RTS team will be reassigned to designing MOBAs. like they are doing right now.
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sadly .. RTS may not last too long
with majority of the gamers enjoying the MOBA genre more than any gaming genre except FPS and fighting games probably.
Unless there is some miracle and a very passionate indie developers makes a crazy level of quality RTS game. I ain't seeing this lasting a longer. Maybe just a couple more years.
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Northern Ireland25964 Posts
I can't see MOBA's dominance extending much past the current big titles, people like LoL and DOTA, even HoN has already been largely brushed aside
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On May 09 2014 06:04 Wombat_NI wrote:
I can't see MOBA's dominance extending much past the current big titles, people like LoL and DOTA, even HoN has already been largely brushed aside
Agreed. There was that 3D MOBA that never took off. And ofc I will support Heroes of the Storm - I love to see Blizzard games suceed, and even now they don't make bad games - but if it fails, I think that's a sure sign that MOBAs in themselves are not successful, just League and Dota hitting key markets that can't be borrowed from except with a completely new genre.
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I remember I played Halo Wars on Xbox which was (as a broodwar vet) a real eye-opener (in a bad way). But truthfully while it lacked mechanics up the wahzoo, I truly enjoyed the little things that set it apart. I do not like having hero characters in multiplayer, this I can't stress enough, but it was a differentiating factor. I think different gamemodes, possibly one with heroes, would make RTS games appeal to a larger audience. I know people who play search and destroy on call of duty but wont play team deathmatch. I think that applies as I have a few friends that i introduced to Starcraft that loved messing around making an army slowly then maxing out and going base to base destroying the very easy AI. But when they played multiplayer they lost maybe 10-15 games and wouldn't play again.
I got off topic there, what I originally wanted to say was Halo Wars had the human warthogs (humvees with marines mounting guns, grenade launchers, guass cannons) running over the last of a group of Covenant grunts (little piddly troops with plasma pistols) and the marines would say something snappy. I liked that. But again when you play a game where you spawn groups of marines due to the slow nature of RTS on Xbox every little bit counts.
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On May 09 2014 01:41 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
if u think RTS is stagnant now, wait until Blizzard moves on.
SC2 will be Blizzard's last RTS title.
The RTS team will be reassigned to designing MOBAs. like they are doing right now.
No it won't lol. Completely ignoring esports stuff, SC2 sold well and its expansion sold well. Blizzard will make a SC3 eventually.
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There was a game from 2003 called Rise of Nations that had a concept that really impressed me at the time. It was basically a mix of Age of Empires and Civilization.
With 18 civilizations and 8 different ages of world history.
There were also concepts of gaining territory, building wonders and of diplomacy like in civ.
It had 6 different resource types and 200 (!) different units.
This was a monster of a game!
I'm actually really sad that this concept never took off.
It is obviously almost impossible to balance such a game for multiplayer.
But in general I think a StarCraft with some elements from civilization would make it more interesting.
btw, this game was also used in a study to show that playing it increases cognitive skills:
http://phys.org/news148193174.html
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Weird, I was thinking the same thing today. I was googling the top rts games and they're all super old now. Besides sc2, there's not much else. Age of Empires HD came out and there's the Age of Mythology expansion. RTS seems like it's dying, but I've spent probably over 95% of my gaming time on RTS's lifetime.
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EPT
