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United States3824 Posts
Hey everyone it's been awhile!
BTW that topic line isn't true it was just to get you to read this.
Anyways, I recently picked up a copy of Sins of a Solar Empire, this space RTS that allows you to zoom into space battles and zoom out to Solar systems and then all of the stars in play. The game sort of plays like a space age Civilization where your planets like you empire a certain amount and you get a percentage of actual income from that planet. So fast expanding leads to individual planets giving out less money. And in case you had your hopes up, there's no 3D movement. Sorry Homeworld fans.
Now don't get me wrong, the game is well made (that's my disclosure in case one of you is pro at it and is going to rip my head off for this.) It's just that I played it for a few hours and all these ships that looked interesting kept showing up and I would be like, "don't know what that does hmm." But the thing is, it didn't really matter that I didn't know what they were. Everything just kinda shot at things.
In comparison, every effing in unit in Starcraft has a specific purpose. Every unit counters somthing else and has a unique look to it. Even a newbie wouldn't have to stare at a medic to tell it was different from a ghost or a firebat. In S.O.S.E. (I made that acronym up) I would stare at a spaceship for a couple seconds and be like "well, still don't know what that does."
So I raise a question or two for all of you. Do some games lend themselves better to mastery of their mechanics? I feel as if I have known the Starcraft units my whole life. Is that because the game is set up that way or because I chose to learn Starcraft better. And second, how well do you learn a game? In a game like S.O.S.E or **cough Soul Caliber cough** where you can be sort of competitive without knowing everything do you go for full mastery of the game or just of your race/player/you can't play as a goomba so it doesn't matter?
Discuss and love each other,
-Clark
  
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Warcraft was alright but not on par with starcraft and then Armies of Exigo was pretty sweet (It was heavily based on Star/Warcraft) but it got dumped by EA. Aside from the blizzard model of RTS tho things seem to suck heavily. There are good and fun RTSs but nothing with the depth and competitive skill of starcraft.
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How strange, I just downloaded the game yesterday! I'll play it and let you know what I think.
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I remember playing that game when it first came out. It was so slow that even comparatively short matches could take multiple hours. I think the first thing game designers need to think about is speed. Everything else pales in comparison, because when you're playing a game that takes 4 hours to finish and you don't even know what the units/tech/planets do... it can get pretty boring.
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I know that feeling... I think almost all multiplayer game developers don't really care about that aspect. They just want the game to look "realistic" and use the latest technologies (which is of course also a disadvantage because of higher hardware requirements).
But in a fast RTS game, you absolutely NEED absolute visual clarity and perfect overview about what's going on, otherwise it simply won't be as good.
SC is 10 years old now and in all this time we've not seen many other games which follow this design philosophy.
Blizzard understands that game "readability" is very important and they also constantly sacrifice realism, high-end graphics, consistency or other things just in order to achieve this high playability. If it's a fast-paced competitive multiplayer game, it must be simple and free from as much (graphical) clutter as possible. In single player or turn-based games this of course doesn't have much relevance. But in multiplayer it's the single most important thing IMHO.
But not many seem to understand this.
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The only RTSes I played besides starcraft are command and conquer 2,3,4 and 5, age of empires II age of conquerers and Ground Control.
Command & Conquer.
I had fun playing them, but only singleplayer. What annoyed me about C&C multiplayer were the superweapons (in most of the games I turtled and built like 20 Nukes) and the fact that some of the units counter other units too good. Sometimes I attacked an enemy. During my attack he builds 1 to 3 counter units and mows down my army in 2 seconds. I also find C&C way to unclear most of the time (bad mini map. units too small)
Age of Empires II
Just the other way round. Loved playing it with my friends but the campaigns suck. I mean they put some effort in historical details but thats all. On the other hand we had a competition going: Who could defeat more "hardest" Cpus on an arabian Random Map. High score is 3  . The most fun thing though was, as already mentioned, to play 3on3 on a self made map (map editor is really easy to use). Every sunday the same: Britons, Teutons, Byzantines vs Persians, Turks and Chinese. (Later Koreans) Ah good old times. But it will never reach Starcraft. It's too slow and imho you dont have much space for strategical variety. Most of the games we built up 30 mins and met somewhere .
Ground Control I:
Loved this game. 3D game. No buildings. You get reinforcments now and then. It's the only game i've never been beaten. Maybe because I played only 5 games on a small lan with my friends. Campaign was awesome too. But I didn't play it for about 6 years. Cant remember anything else. 
Of course you cant compare it with Starcraft. The lack of buildings means a lack of variety. Even though before every game/mission you could chose every unit you'd get during the game/mission. (slow, big guns, heavy armor or fast/flying ,light armor, small guns.)
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^^ Command & Conquer 4 and 5????
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My counter strike buddy that I'm just getting to learn starcraft now nearly shit himself when he finally got his head around the fact that every unit in starcraft is completely different.
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On July 15 2008 04:05 thoraxe wrote:
^^ Command & Conquer 4 and 5????
red alert I and II, generals, tiberium sun.
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Sudden Strike Forever had fantastic team multiplayer. No resources except ammo, reinforcements came once per set of flag points held. Granted, it had too much of a random factor to ever be an E-sport, and the faction balance was poor (Germany>Russia>America>>>>Britain and Japan), but it was damned near as fun as BW.
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I love AoK! AoE 3 kinda sucks,
I like the random maps that Age of Empires II had and taht you could make your own random map scripts. And AI files. But it's a different game than Starcraft, it's more macro based than SC is.
Wikipedia used to have categories for Macro-based RTSes and Micro-based RTSes, but then some guy editted it out.
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Q: What kind of strategy game is Sins of a Solar Empire?
A: It is a real-time strategy game that is designed to combine the depth of a turn-based game. It focuses on letting players build a strategy instead of how fast they can click on things.
From their FAQ lol. Its an attack on starcraft!
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United States3824 Posts
which one of you hit me with a 1/5 rating and didn't leave a comment on how to improve? that was kinda rude
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The macro in AOE2 would be really interesting if every game didn't devolve into feudal rushes on land maps.
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Yeah, true. But if you play island maps, it turns into turtling until Imperial and amassing paladins and trebs.
I thought there was a rock paper scissors thing in AoK, with turtling > rushing > booming > turtling.
Though I guess it's like a rush in SC, like a two gate or a 9 pool, except since SC is more micro based, people can defend those and the game can progress, while in AoK, the micro is kinda lacking.
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I loved AoE2. It was a great game. I still play it today and own my friends 1v2 with gothic early manowar rush. However, it wasn't really balanced. I also remember just watching units fight (which was more satisfying in AoE2 than in SC).
Another RTS that I enjoyed was Empire Earth Original (not conquerors!!). It was OK, but kind of bland. I played it for campaigns.
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i play company of heroes its pretty fun.
i used to play red alert aftermath its one of the best rts in the old days. using tanya to kill buildings,, and heavy tanks macro and micro rushes to kill enemy base . strategic pushes and tesla coil pushes. and occasionally sea warfare with the stealth submarine
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On July 15 2008 05:42 cgrinker wrote:
which one of you hit me with a 1/5 rating and didn't leave a comment on how to improve? that was kinda rude
welcome to blogging on teamliquid
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United States3824 Posts
I was going to bag on COH but i couldn't remember the name. Most Imba game ever. The first patch came out in a week
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I've started playing SOASE, and though I suck, I do have some comments to make.
The game is annoyingly slow. Your ships take forever to turn around, micro is nerve-racking and sometimes counterproductive. The macro aspect of the game is interesting, but quite linear. What I mean is that expanding very quickly doesn't give you a huge immediate advantage. In fact, the speed at which you expand is severely limited by upgrades you need to get and the presence of "creeps" around new planets. The common theme is SLOWNESS.
One surprise is the terrain, space. It is flat. There are no positional advantages to do with that. However, building lay-out can help out a bit.
Why should you play this game? It is a pleasant social experience. It can get exciting at times. But don't expect to use more than 60 APM. I kind of wish they would make everything go 2 times faster. All that said, I'll probably play it for a bit longer, then do something else to waste my life.
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On July 18 2008 14:29 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Civ IV is very good.
Civilizations aren't RTS :p
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EPT
