EPTHi there. I'm an amateur modder and designer, currently working on a mod "Back to Basics" for Starcraft 2.
At the moment, I'm busy fixing bugs, implementing changes, and working on a changelog for my mod. Because of my own incompetence, I never had a changelog I could update.
About a week ago someone asked me for a detailed changelog - I almost had a heart attack.
So now, I'm quite behind as I have to go through every unit, every structure, every upgrade, check for what have been changed, from what it has been changed, put it in the log, and write a short reasoning for a change. It is a rather time-consuming work, and I've spend around 20 hours just doing the changelog. This is how pathetic you can be if you don't keep your work organized
While writing one of the reasoning for the changes, I got a little bit overboard. So I decided to start a blog.
The following piece has no information about the changes I've made so far, however, it may be interesting for some people. So here it is.
I do not know if this will apply to many of other players, but I do remember my first experience with the RTS genre, and looking back on it, the games are training you from the beginning, to do something completely opposite from what are you required to do in a multiplier RTS game.
Let's start with a couple of examples:
My first experience was playing Dune on my friends PSX (Play Station 1) or some other console. Sometimes I was just watching him playing the game, trying to advice him what to do next, or he was advising while I was playing. I remember how some missions were about unending streams of enemy units, and the only sensible way of winning a mission, was to spam turrets and defensive structures everywhere, turtling into some higher level units, and killing the AI base after some 20-30 minutes with a simple (or brutally hard to do, as it was a console) a-move.
Age of Empires II? Same experience. You start with some units, one Town Hall, some workers, while the AI has all the infrastructure and production, sending units to your location in waves. The goal was either holding on or destroying your opponent. 80% of the missions, game after game.
Even if you knew back then what rushing was, there is no way that some infantry could take down workers shooting arrows from inside a Town Hall. Tech into higher age, get upgrades, defend, turtle, tech some more, get cavalry+siege, and attack. That's how you won the campaign.
SC1 and SCBW? One or two base (rarely), some workers, AI has a lot of buildings, some army here and there, static defenses etc. Sends units in waves. Defend, turtle, tech, attack.
Spiced by some occasional hero levels with Raynor or Kerrigan or Fenix.
Empire Earth? Same god damn thing, only worsened by the unforgiving hard counter system. Tech to ultimate composition of high tech units and have them killed by lower tech counter. Although some hero missions where fun, controlling historic characters and all. But the principle is the same.
Earth 2150? A stuff of nightmares for a person like me, min maxer at heart. After every mission, I tried to save all of my units, and transport them into the new mission for a better head start, and tried to level up as high as possible some veteran units. 20+ minutes in between missions spent only on transporting units, just to avoid the “you start with one worker, kill enemy base” syndrome.
C&C? Start in a corner of a map, battle through 3 /4, the rest of the map, full of AI units, and finish objectives.
Original War, Real War, Stronghold and also other RTS games that I have played, and all of them have similar gameplay - turtle, defend, tech, defend, tech, build army, attack, win.
My point? Almost every single RTS game has campaigns bloated with you starting in defensive position against massive amount of AI units and static defenses, which prevent you from any sort of early game attack. You can't harass since sometimes the computer player will have unlimited resources. You can't do a timing push. Your only choice is defend, turtle, tech, defend some more, then build up an unstoppable army and win the game.
Rarely there is a mission you can finish early by committing to an early or even mid game push. It will lose its momentum after crossing halfway through the map.
Rarely you can utilize an actual strategy to win. AI has usually no other objectives, other then destroying your base – so choice between disrupting AI's objective and finishing yours is most of the time non-existent.
So no, the campaigns do not teach new players how to play the RTS games properly, or rather, what they can and can't get away with when trying the multiplier mode for the first time.
Why don't we have missions, in which AI starts with around same amount of resources, structures and units like the player, so not only turtling is viable?
Why don't we have an AI, that will try to scout us, and respond to out builds, instead of sending pre-planned attack waves?
What about the tutorials in the RTS games? Sometimes they are separated into different sections – unit control, base building, technology, advanced base building, some other controls. Sometimes they are all squeezed into one mission.
Most of the tutorials will show you how to build a basic unit to defend yourself in the early game. That's it.
But when was the last time the tutorial taught you how to perform an early game attack? Exactly.
Why don't we have a bit more interactive tutorials?
Let's say you picked a race to play a tutorial with - Zerg.
The tutorial tells you to expand, and explains that extra expansion will increase your economy, which will increase your production, which will increase your number of attacking units.
Then it will tell you to get some Zerglings, because a small group of Marines is attacking - you see a ping on the map, just like in that WoL map with train, or Co-Op Train map.
You defend, and tutorial tells you to counter attack and get gas for tech.
Bam! Your lings are killed by Hellions popping out of Factory. The game tells you to start a Roach Warren and attack again, or Mutas, or something. And so on and so on.
Maybe even random units, so it's not only Marines and Hellbats, it could be a Stalker and Zealots later, or even Marines followed by a Banshee, and tutorial wants you to build Hydras/Mutas and destroy the Banshee, winning the tutorial, and unlocking some more advanced version.
Why is it, that even big companies do not understand this basic issue, and then push the players to play 1v1 mode, which is something they are absolutely not prepared to do after the basic tutorial and playing the campaign that rewards turtling, NR20 games.
All we see are the NR20 type of gamers in the lowest RTS spectrum of skill. People like to build stuff, people like progression, they like unlocking stuff, like technologies, and they like playing with the stuff, seeing how technologies influence the units. You know, sending a unit to move here or there, attack a friendly unit to see how much the "6" range really is compared to "4". People like to do silly stuff in RTS games.
With age, this silly stuff becomes less common. When I was younger (8-12), this is how me and my friends played games. It was about discovering stuff, having fun, doing silly things, NR20. See which unit counters which unit. Find out stuff for yourself. Finishing the campaign was a bonus, to see who is the best player (now I look back at it, and laugh at myself, but this is how it was in late 90s for me and my friends).
Then you go and play UMS, Arcade, mini-games, have a break from the difficult mechanics of real time strategy games (lol).
But then you get older and want to start competing. If you played RTS games as a kid, you will like playing them as a teenager or an adult. You will want to learn, to improve, to be good at RTS games, no matter how mechanically demanding they are.
But RTS has to be injected into your blood. And this is done by having friends over and playing a game together. It is done by having a game that is welcoming to groups of people, not individuals. A game that can be played during a LAN party.
This is where Starcraft 2 failed:
The focus on 1v1 and pro-scene right from day one.
Horrible Arcade system.
Horrible Chat system
Lack of proper introduction to new players (tutorials, campaign misions)
Limited rewards (we need more skins, portraits, unit voice packs [nostalgia!], advisor voice packs) or ways to spend money on those (me and hundreds/thousands? of other Zerg players would spend 5-8$ on Abathur advisor voice pack, the Queen is so annoying)
Etc.
