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I got a problem. It's not alcohol (yet), it's RTS games. You see, even as a wee kiddie I was playing Real Time Strategy, Dune 2, Warcraft 1, Command and Conquer's and such. I Aged them Empires, I Total them Annihilations, I did all that shit. My red blood cells are the shape of Marines at this point. My problem is that I can't help but buy every RTS game I see on Steam, and the reason this is a problem is that they're all complete shit.
This is partly Starcraft's fault. It's the hardest game in the world and now I've gone a fair ways into mastering it everything else pales in comparison. My first multiplayer RTS loves were games like Dawn of War and Company of Heroes but I can't go back now. They're too simplistic. After you've seen The Wire it's difficult to go back to CSI.
But it's really the fault of developers and what I'd argue is the principle issue with RTS games at the moment. I can sum it up with a single word: mechanics. APM requirements are so low these days, you can almost play with just the mouse. Not to mention the unit control itself tends to be unresponsive or simplistic.
What I've come to realise these past few decades (clearly a slow learner) is that an RTS isn't a game about Strategy in Real Time. It's an action game. A very complicated action game where the player is represented by every unit and structure they control. There's a reason why the most successful and beloved multiplayer RTS games have been designed around a considerable physical requirement. It's exciting to confound your opponent with multiple small forces around the map. It's thrilling to overwhelm them with large well controlled armies. But it also keeps the game challenging. In a game like Starcraft, your strategy is only as good as your ability to execute it, and execution is a strategy in itself.
Mechanics appeal to a hardcore crowd and once you have enough of them the rest can follow. Even something like Dark Souls or DotA, difficult challenging games, managed to connect with a wide audience over time simply because that hardcore crowd draws other people in.
It mystifies me that there is not a single RTS developer on the planet that can look at Starcraft and not think "Let's make something like that, but better". I can understand the reluctance, RTS is difficult enough to get into before you demand players quintuple their APM, but the alternative is boring. A slow paced game about Strategy? Big fucking deal, every game has strategy. Strategy just means you have a plan and contingencies in place if certain things occur. Card and board games are perfectly designed for thinking, RTS is not. That's why Poker, Chess, Magic and Go are great, and why Grey Goo or Ashes of the Singularity can eat my balls.
Starcraft's a wonderful game. Both of them, fucking great, I love 'em. But you can make something better. RTS as a genre has grown stagnant over the years and I pin the blame solely on the best ones having already been made and no-one capable enough to top it, or brave enough to even attempt.
(Outside of Blizzard of course, who basically 'get it')
 
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
are you sure you're not drunk again m8
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Well, looks like now's the time if any. It'll be hard to make a story for SC3 given how SC2 took every aspect of the universe to the max towards the end, and with World of Warcraft continuing to rake in the dough there probably won't be a WC4 anytime soon. And from a business perspective, SC2 is doing well and more moneymaking opportunities are to be had with the Nova campaigns and future episodes. Thus no reason to take away from that with WC4.
So looks like for now, any Blizzard RTS's are off the table.
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What do you think about the more or less turn based games such as EUIV? Which is RTS but plays more like a turn based game.
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It is rarely a mysterious technique which drives us to the top, but rather profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set. -Art of Learning
A major hindrance to RTS hype today and the evolution of its game design moving forward is widespread ignorance about the basic skills involved in the genre. It's clear that army, economy, and technology are important, but people who are not RTS veterans cannot easily intuit what is most important. No matter how great the experiences within the match may be, there is a colossal obstacle for new players learning what to focus on to get better at RTS. People want guides, tutorials, easy-to-access build orders, and memes.
Questions that are not answered within the client but are vital to RTS success:
How does one go about setting up a hotkey layout?
Why is hotkey layout important?
Should I play with default hotkeys, use Grid, TheCore, or just click everything?
How important is worker production? How many workers should I be making?
What are the major differentiating factors of skill across the leagues? (spoiler: it's worker production)
How important is APM? (and why is EPM not shown?)
How do I review my losses in replays?
How do I interpret the score screen information?
Where can I find other players who are interested in working on a matchup in custom games?
What are good streams to learn X race?
Who are the active coaches of X race?
Establishing the first clear step up from the skill floor in StarCraft is a crucial improvement in making the game available to people who want to learn the game within the game, rather than go on a YouTube adventure. There seems to be too much emphasis on how balanced StarCraft is and not enough focus on how well-designed an RTS game StarCraft can be. If we make big design changes, balance will be worse in the short term but make for better player/viewer experiences in the long term. It seems like Legacy of the Void is Blizzard's 'long haul' for the rest of StarCraft 2. With the game dwindling in viewership and active player base, just about everyone in the scene wants to see big changes to shake things up.
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On May 03 2016 00:10 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Well, looks like now's the time if any. It'll be hard to make a story for SC3 given how SC2 took every aspect of the universe to the max towards the end, and with World of Warcraft continuing to rake in the dough there probably won't be a WC4 anytime soon. And from a business perspective, SC2 is doing well and more moneymaking opportunities are to be had with the Nova campaigns and future episodes. Thus no reason to take away from that with WC4.
So looks like for now, any Blizzard RTS's are off the table.
they won't fund an RTS because because there is not enough money to be made. Has nothing to do with any of this story stuff or WoW's existence. Sigaty stated nothing coming from Blizz will compete with SC2-mulitplayer for 10+ years.
Ensemble, EALA, and Blizzard are the 3 major studios that made big budget RTS games. They are all done. Big budget RTS games are a thing of the past.
Halo Wars 2 is coming out this year though!
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On May 03 2016 00:09 lichter wrote:
are you sure you're not drunk again m8
Bruh, you even read the blog? ^^
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In all frankness, and not to be rude, but its bad players/frustrated players who reduce Starcrafts complexity just to mechanics and immediate action. Obviously thats a large component of it, but if your playing the game with little to no strategical understanding (or your opponents are, and they're successful against you) its your own fault. Mechanically and strategically.
That said I can understand the desire for a more purely strategical game.
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On May 03 2016 01:02 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2016 00:10 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Well, looks like now's the time if any. It'll be hard to make a story for SC3 given how SC2 took every aspect of the universe to the max towards the end, and with World of Warcraft continuing to rake in the dough there probably won't be a WC4 anytime soon. And from a business perspective, SC2 is doing well and more moneymaking opportunities are to be had with the Nova campaigns and future episodes. Thus no reason to take away from that with WC4.
So looks like for now, any Blizzard RTS's are off the table. they won't fund an RTS because because there is not enough money to be made. Has nothing to do with any of this story stuff or WoW's existence. Sigaty stated nothing coming from Blizz will compete with SC2-mulitplayer for 10+ years. Ensemble, EALA, and Blizzard are the 3 major studios that made big budget RTS games. They are all done. Big budget RTS games are a thing of the past. Halo Wars 2 is coming out this year though!
Hidden Path made a boatload of money off of AoE2 HD, although admittedly not as much as they made off of CS:GO.
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On May 03 2016 00:39 Yurie wrote:
What do you think about the more or less turn based games such as EUIV? Which is RTS but plays more like a turn based game.
Maybe the future lies in grand strategy.
The issue is that they can't take over from the perspective of competitive gameplay, for two reasons:
- Either they are forced to run continuously, in which games are long and lack all the decision-making usually made during pausetime
- This can change with custom maps, but the current games, expecially Paradox games, are based on real-world scenarios which makes things purposely unbalanced.
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I'm the same as you, but for FPS games. Played UT2004 competitively, and while I was utterly terrible at it, level of skill, awareness and countless hours needed to be put into being good was ridiculous. Most FPS games I play now just can't touch it or come near to my experiences with that game.
Also big-ups for mentioning Total Annihilation, my fave game of all time!
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ugh I did buy every rts game I saw around the Warcraft2/C&C era. God I wasted so much money that time. Didn't help that magazines gave everything a 80%+ ... little did I know that 80% is basically a 0%. Just happy I learned it then and didn't went shopping crazy after Warcraft3 success made everyone crank out rts games.
Its funny how Blizzard releases/announcements seems to trigger stuff like this.
As for Sc3. Blizzard did a pretty good job actually at making that a possibility. Almost everyone is gone from Sc1. Side Characters we don't know alot of rule over the factions now. Some fantasy authors employ this mechanic of resetting their world so they can create new stories.
Now Blizzard can use things like Nova Covert ops, to expand on the characters. And whenever they want to create Sc3 they just send in a really big threat.
But Sc3 is very var in the future, no reason to get your hopes up heh.
Warcraft 4 is also super easy to do despite Wow, throw in a new World with a new Factions, that gets attacked by the burning legion, Alliance and Horde come to help and to recruit new allies. And well they can do whatever to the new faction.
We are still far away from going the Marvel route of alternate dimensions.
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The main problem with the RTS genre is the barrier of entry for companies. Simply put if you want to produce an RTS on the level of Starcraft II, you need to sink millions into the game engine before you can even really get started. So most companies aren't interested in investing that much up front into a genre that isn't the most popular, when you could produce a different game for a much reduced cost.
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I don't agree. Have you ever gone outside and talked to your friends about RTS games?
They're way too fucking casual to ever enjoy them. That's the barrier, there's not a big enough audience for hardcore RTS games like brood war.
People like to think they're playing a skilled game such as league of legends where you can even put the blame on your allies instead of having to come to the realization that you're awful.
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On May 02 2016 23:16 BEARDiaguz wrote:
After you've seen The Wire it's difficult to go back to CSI.
<3
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On May 03 2016 02:33 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2016 01:02 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On May 03 2016 00:10 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Well, looks like now's the time if any. It'll be hard to make a story for SC3 given how SC2 took every aspect of the universe to the max towards the end, and with World of Warcraft continuing to rake in the dough there probably won't be a WC4 anytime soon. And from a business perspective, SC2 is doing well and more moneymaking opportunities are to be had with the Nova campaigns and future episodes. Thus no reason to take away from that with WC4.
So looks like for now, any Blizzard RTS's are off the table. they won't fund an RTS because because there is not enough money to be made. Has nothing to do with any of this story stuff or WoW's existence. Sigaty stated nothing coming from Blizz will compete with SC2-mulitplayer for 10+ years. Ensemble, EALA, and Blizzard are the 3 major studios that made big budget RTS games. They are all done. Big budget RTS games are a thing of the past. Halo Wars 2 is coming out this year though! Hidden Path made a boatload of money off of AoE2 HD, although admittedly not as much as they made off of CS:GO.
boatload? how many billions in a boatload? is that the metric system or somethin' ?
wake me up when the Age of Empires franchise enters the billion dollar revenue club... the franchise is almost 20 years old now.
AoE is a great franchise and so is Halo Wars.. its a cryin' shame Ensemble got shut down... but just because a game is good doesn't mean you'll make the kind of ROI the money men expect... they'd rather make Skylanders and sell stupid plastic figures to 10 year kids who lose them and force their parents to buy them and 2nd 3rd and 4th time.
the SC franchise is great as well.. and its going down too.
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Anyone tried 8bit armies ?
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Now I need to get an Xbox 1 for HW2...
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EPT
