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On July 30 2017 05:10 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
there is a lack of good RTS coming out, possibly most developpers have limited understanding of the genre
SC2 is not declining merely because the genre is declining, seriously you can't just ignore all of its flaws :/
It's not ignoring flaws to note that the genre is inherently niche, which is a major factor in the games longevity. It's probably a miracle that the game has lasted so long.
Especially when people consider that the games that people compare SC2 to in regards to their super popularity, are HUGE. Dota has 12 million players a MONTH. League had 11 million a month back in 2011. Counterstrike has sold 31 million copies.
If we take a look at SC2. Even at its prime. It sold around 3m in the first few months iicr and took 2 years for it to sell 6 million copies. And the vast majority of those people are only going to play for the campaign and quit.
SC2 never stood a freaking chance. It's too niche.
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Among other issues it's Blizzard's fault that they attempted to create a game with no features sucking money off people. They never had will to incorporate skins or anything in the engine since they wrongly assumed that people care more about the gameplay than flashiness and all, until they were begged for it. Global Offensive seemingly never took off before Valve added skins and let scams/gambling go rampant, this impressive bold number of 31 million copies is not accurate regarding active player numbers. It has quite less players than DOTA 2.
https://steamdb.info/app/730/graphs/
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Unforuntately with that, SC2 is a victim of using an old business model, as that giant micro transaction wave took out a bit before and after SC2 was released. It took them forever to break down the game's engine so it could even do that kind stuff.
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On July 30 2017 12:38 lestye wrote:
Unforuntately with that, SC2 is a victim of using an old business model, as that giant micro transaction wave took out a bit before and after SC2 was released. It took them forever to break down the game's engine so it could even do that kind stuff.
I agree, maybe the game wouldn't be at the very top at the moment among League and the rest, but if you could play dress-up in SC2 from the start it would definitely keep many more people in.
Some left SC2 because of the problems it had, some don't like the design, but I believe majority was not satisfied that it's only a game. Nowadays no developer would dare to make a multiplayer game where you can't change your character's pants color. For real money ofc. And today it seems to be more of a customer requirement than product of company's greed.
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On July 30 2017 08:32 Ancestral wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 06:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On July 30 2017 05:25 Foxxan wrote:On July 30 2017 05:10 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
there is a lack of good RTS coming out, possibly most developpers have limited understanding of the genre
SC2 is not declining merely because the genre is declining, seriously you can't just ignore all of its flaws :/ Jimmy raynors logic is perfect. Its not the quality that matters, its the name of the genre. No one in the world is no longer eating icecream, so its the declining of icecream that is the cause and not because icecream is full of virus. See this list right here, look how few developers are making icecream? See? Very few. The icecream they make still has virus but thats not the issue, its the decline of the icecream that is causing it. no, people are bored of the genre's basic mechanics. so they label every RTS game as lousy and claim no one knows how to make RTS games any longer... even though.. the longer you do something the better you get at it. a genre's games get better as the genre matures. similarly look at dot-eating-maze games. one of the worst game in the dot-eating-maze-games ever made comes out in 1980 and it breaks records everywhere. it impacts mainstream culture the way almost no game has before or since. time passes...people slowing get bored of the basic mechanics of the genre. much better dot-eating-maze games come out and they can't make a fraction of what the original record breaker made or have any cultural impact whatsoever. you can say this same scenario with Space Invaders and hte gallery shooter genre. games got better as the genre got older. interest waned even though the games got better. same shit with RTS... different decade. there is a lot more to a game's success than the quality of the game. Fortunately, ATVI is 1000X better at monetizing the RTS genre than any one else... so we still get some pretty good support from Blizzard even though the entire genre is way way beyond is "best before" date. FPSs are as old as Rob Halford is gay and are still huge. Dune II and Wolfenstein 3D were both released in 1992, and were, if not the first, the genre-defining titles.
The FPS genre can be played with a team like in Overwatch. So developers of FPS games have been able to harness improving technology and make it part of the genre. Harnessing improving technology and incorporating it into an existing game type staves off boredom. However, this is not always possible in every genre otherwise we'd all be playing variants of Pong, Space War, and Night Driver.
technology is constantly improving. it kills some genres and others live on. Gallery Shooters and Dot Eating Maze games were way bigger than RTS ever was. Side-scrolling brawlers.. now dead. etc If better tech can kill them .... RTS is easy.
improving technology wiped out the RTS genre years ago. the Starcraft franchise is the last man standing being held together by a company with an unmatched williness to support their games forever.
Over the next 10 years SCR and LotV support will be used to convert the SC customer base to Starcraft games that do not require a PC.
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PC gaming is the biggest it has been in years. And, RTSs, as I've repeated many times in this thread, can be played in teams.
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On July 30 2017 15:11 Ancestral wrote:
PC gaming is the biggest it has been in years. And, RTSs, as I've repeated many times in this thread, can be played in teams.
PC gaming is the biggest has been in years, but RTS has not seen that growth. An RTS is lucky if it breaks a million, let alone beating the hits of 20 years ago, which aren't even that high compared to the blockbusters of today.
And just because it "can" be played in teams, doesn't mean its as fun as FPS/MOBAs/RPGs for the casual audience.
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sc2 has 20% of the micro and 20% of the macro sc:bw has.
sc2 is all about BO's and timings.
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On July 30 2017 15:46 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 15:11 Ancestral wrote:
PC gaming is the biggest it has been in years. And, RTSs, as I've repeated many times in this thread, can be played in teams. PC gaming is the biggest has been in years, but RTS has not seen that growth. An RTS is lucky if it breaks a million, let alone beating the hits of 20 years ago, which aren't even that high compared to the blockbusters of today. And just because it "can" be played in teams, doesn't mean its as fun as FPS/MOBAs/RPGs for the casual audience.
Custom games are. The problem is that it's a hard sell to casual outsiders.
"You should totally buy this game that contains a sandbox mode that contains other games made by other users!"
"...What?"
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On July 30 2017 02:29 Jae Zedong wrote:
Well I think Starcraft and Warcraft are profoundly different, but whatever.
Here is a list of how many RTS games have been released per year over the last 25 years, courtesy of Wikipedia:
I made this graph ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MuY4ggG.png)
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On July 30 2017 16:58 Jae Zedong wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 15:46 lestye wrote:On July 30 2017 15:11 Ancestral wrote:
PC gaming is the biggest it has been in years. And, RTSs, as I've repeated many times in this thread, can be played in teams. PC gaming is the biggest has been in years, but RTS has not seen that growth. An RTS is lucky if it breaks a million, let alone beating the hits of 20 years ago, which aren't even that high compared to the blockbusters of today. And just because it "can" be played in teams, doesn't mean its as fun as FPS/MOBAs/RPGs for the casual audience. Custom games are. The problem is that it's a hard sell to casual outsiders. "You should totally buy this game that contains a sandbox mode that contains other games made by other users!" "...What?"
Ultimately thats a problem for the genre. "yeah, the most appealing mode is the part where they take everything away that makes it part of the genre".
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On July 30 2017 17:03 neptunusfisk wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 02:29 Jae Zedong wrote:
Well I think Starcraft and Warcraft are profoundly different, but whatever.
Here is a list of how many RTS games have been released per year over the last 25 years, courtesy of Wikipedia:
I made this graph
Cool. Clear decline after WoL. Maybe because of market saturation, at least initially.
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What is the popularity of the customs even good for? Why is it even desirable? It has minimal effect on the sustainability of the scene for the actual game. If people don't care for the real SC, the popularity of completely different gamea that happen to run on the same software won't do anything about it.
That's honestly one thing I never got, people complaining about bad support for UMS games in SC2 and linking that to the declining popularity of the game itself.
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On July 30 2017 17:15 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 16:58 Jae Zedong wrote:On July 30 2017 15:46 lestye wrote:On July 30 2017 15:11 Ancestral wrote:
PC gaming is the biggest it has been in years. And, RTSs, as I've repeated many times in this thread, can be played in teams. PC gaming is the biggest has been in years, but RTS has not seen that growth. An RTS is lucky if it breaks a million, let alone beating the hits of 20 years ago, which aren't even that high compared to the blockbusters of today. And just because it "can" be played in teams, doesn't mean its as fun as FPS/MOBAs/RPGs for the casual audience. Custom games are. The problem is that it's a hard sell to casual outsiders. "You should totally buy this game that contains a sandbox mode that contains other games made by other users!" "...What?" Ultimately thats a problem for the genre. "yeah, the most appealing mode is the part where they take everything away that makes it part of the genre".
For sure. It is pretty remarkable how such a decidedly unfun (from a casual point of view) game like SC2 managed to draw and retain casuals for a pretty long time. Every other office in 2010 had in-house SC2 tournaments.
Nostalgia and marketing should probably not be underrated in this equation.
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On July 30 2017 17:21 opisska wrote:
What is the popularity of the customs even good for? Why is it even desirable? It has minimal effect on the sustainability of the scene for the actual game. If people don't care for the real SC, the popularity of completely different gamea that happen to run on the same software won't do anything about it.
That's honestly one thing I never got, people complaining about bad support for UMS games in SC2 and linking that to the declining popularity of the game itself.
It gets people in the door. WC3 had a healthy scene until SC2 release, and in part because people actually logged into battle.net to play customs
Having bought and installed the game to play Dota, they may or may not choose to play something casual like 4v4 RT. That's called having an install base.
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On July 30 2017 02:55 Sr18 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 29 2017 19:21 KungKras wrote:On July 29 2017 09:49 iopq wrote:On July 29 2017 08:39 -NegativeZero- wrote:On July 29 2017 07:34 Foxxan wrote:On July 29 2017 06:14 L_Master wrote:On July 29 2017 04:29 Foxxan wrote:On July 29 2017 03:14 L_Master wrote:On July 28 2017 23:51 Foxxan wrote:On July 28 2017 23:28 Ancestral wrote:
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What do you mean by the RTS "concept" is old? It's less old than fighting games or FPSs, which are still plenty active as far as development, casual play, and ESPORTS. The thinking in rts games are old, there are no modern thinking made in rts games. The old "concept" is: High buildtime without any interraction with your opponent. Meaning, you build supply, units, gets your economy bigger, can take litteral several minutes this alone. No real micro involved in this period, or real tough decisions or tactics. Big emphasize of hardcounters. Very outdated. Yes some old concepts can still be good but there are several that doesnt fit in a modern rts game. From curiosity, let's run with this. What would you see in a game if you were designing one. Obviously, the RTS genre itself is still enjoyed by many, so I don't think it quite makes the concept of RTS outdated...but what you seem to be suggesting is some fundamental to changes to how RTS plays. In your updated version of RTS, can you give some sort of conceptual idea of how game flow/unit interactions/etc would operate? That is a hard thing to do. Deponding on what kind of RTS design it is. Not sure i understand your question either? My word knowledge is rather bad. Yes i want to change how RTS games are played. Not sure how to describe it, without getting a headache. And i usually am vague with my explanations, if i was to try and really make people understand it would take a while. Not something i really wanna do. Still i dont quite understand what kind of answer you would have liked. You talk about how the RTS concept is old and designers don't understand the format. To me, this means that you have some ideas of what designers should do differently. I was just curious what your thoughts are. Right now, it feels sort of like if I was learning to play an instrument and you said "you're playing is bad", this may be true; but it's not very useful for understanding. You haven't said why it's bad/what should be better. Right now the only thing I know is "Foxxan thinks RTS design concept is old", but don't really have any idea what that means, or what could/should be different. I understand what you mean now. Hmm. Make marines/marauders, move to protoss. Terran has big advantage now. Protoss makes zealots/sentries. Now protoss has adantage and terran cant fight. Terran moves home. Protoss move to terran natural. Terran gets stim. Protoss cant fight, needs to go home. Another scenario bio+medivacs vs zealots/stalkers/sentires. Protoss has no chance, cant fight. Protoss adds colossus, now terran has no chance. Terran adds vikings. Terran has a chance now. Terran does alot of hit and run in combat. Against storm, also splits. Protoss uses blink stalkers to snipe vikings and uses spells. So what we have here in a conrete way is a cat and mouse type of gameplay. At the same time there is not much micro involved for protoss here. The tactics in combat.. Are bland. Vikings shoot colossus, stalkers shoot vikings. Bio kite and do its insane damage. This whole deathball vs deathball doesnt have much finesse or color. Bad stuff: cat and mouse gameplay and one sided micro I would change this drastically. For example, instead of viking hardcountering colossus, they should instead add some sort of tactic used in combat. Perhaps transform to the ground and get to the backfront of protoss armee. While being able to be microed as well. This shouldnt work in sc2, but if we use our imagination how an rts could look like. My point is, units should add some sort of tactic to the race instead of having the "outdated" hardcounter formula. It aint interesting or fun. So in sc2, you make a few stalkers move outside zerg natural and pokes a bit, then moves home. Protoss uses walls against zerglings and roaches. Nothing Really Happens here. You play with yourself pretty much, in an rts game. Thats very wrong. What could be happening then? Well first off, units shouldnt hardcounter each other especially so early in the game. The strengt of each armee and production needs to be more equal. With that said, if protoss wants to poke outside zerg with stalkers? Then do it. When the zerglings gets speed? It shouldnt force protoss to be the mouse here. Protoss could stay. Now here, there are so many possibilites to do here, even when its this early in the game. I mean designwise. And not to be arrogant but i dont really want to talk about my personal ideas much. The zerglings vs stalkers in this scenario should have micro value added. How? Many ways. Just to try and give a picture of what i mean even though the example might not work in practice before beeing tested. Zerglings slightly slower than stalkers with the speedupgrade. Instead they get the burrow ability from roaches. Zerglings press burrow->Now you need to decide where you want to go or else you unburrow immediately. Where you decide to go, the enemy sees this and the zerglings pop up there, toss can dance around this. No cooldown. There are like one million ways of designing an rts game. i mean, isn't this kind of how a lot of BW matches work? TvZ in particular - specific units and upgrades give each side distinct advantages at different points in the game. terran has the early advantage with marine/medic until zerg gets mutas out, giving them the advantage., until terran gets marine range, then zerg responds with lurkers, then terran counters them with tanks, then zerg gets defilers, then terran starts massing up science vessels... bw has early game unit counters too, remember that early game protoss roflstomps terran so hard they have to turtle in their base and wait for tanks to do anything. strict unit counters are important to rts games, regardless of whether they require heavy micro or not - they're part of what forces tactical decision making, and they also help boost the defender's advantage if you have time to scout and respond to an incoming attack. without proper unit counters in place you end up with zvz, aka (arguably) the worst matchup in both bw and sc2. you just smash armies into each other to see which is bigger (see sc2 roach vs roach), or who can micro better (see bw muta vs muta). at least the 2nd one is kind of fun to watch, but the actual strategy element is lacking. There's a point in TvZ where Terran gets +1 and range, but lurkers are not out yet - but Zerg wants to get a third. This is where Zerg has to use muta micro to prevent Terran from attacking too quickly. Maybe the Zerg doesn't succeed, but cancels the third and builds it in another corner - while sending hydras there (in cross map scenarios). That's kind of a "draw" where Zerg gets a later third, but Terran can't deny it or do damage in the main either. Or maybe Terran straight up kills the third which is a victory since Zerg doesn't cancel. Sometimes Terran tries to kill it, but muta/ling finally pics the Terran force apart. That's a Zerg victory. It's VERY micro intensive - it's all about picking off units that don't move in formation. In SC2, the Terran army would just walk into the third and kill it. This is because there are no banelings in BW - muta/ling is strictly inferior to the Terran army if there's formation movement and stutter stepping. Muta stacking works weird in SC2 as well. This is exactly right, When people say "power spikes" they don't see the differences between the games. In BW, since the counters are soft, it means that one side has to micro more intensively for a while but can still win a fight. But in SC2 it means that if you engage the enemy now then you die, GG. I mean lurkers are supposed to counter M&Ms but the SK Terran build exists, and that consists of nothing but M&Ms + vessels vs lurkers. There is virutallly no situation in SC2 where you can micro a unit versus the unit that counters it. And there is virtually no situation where you can come out on top if you engage at the wrong timing. I think the difference is because Dustin Browder might have designed SC2 like he designed Red Alert 2. One side just steamrolls the other depending on the timing. Actually, during the development of sc2 there were many people arguing that bw was better than wc3. It was about as prevalent as sc2 vs bw discussions are now. One of the most used arguments back then was that the hard counter system of bw was more enjoyable than the soft counters of wc3. I don't remember people arguing that bw actually had soft counters. It was a given that bw had hard counters, wc3 had soft counters and the discussion was about which was better. Blizzard may have even referenced these discussions during the development of sc2, my memory is not clear on that.
Yeah I remember this. The thing about WC3 was the opposite, that everything was too tanky. There were fewer units, so they had to live longer. And that it had no macro. I don't remember describing SC as having hard counters in comparison but I wouldn't rule it out.
The pendulum really swung too far in the other direction in SC2 though, because the hard counters started taking away micro from the game.
I mean the rule of thumb should be that battles should be intense, the players should feel like they are in control of what's happening, and units should stand a fighting chance even if you build some of them wrong. With good micro of course.
On July 30 2017 04:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 04:29 Hannibaal wrote:
SC2 is dead because it's not such a good game. The only reason it did not die before is because there are not many alternatives, SC2 has not had competition in its genre and so did not lose players before. that's because RTS games don't provide ROI so Ensemble, EALA, Westwood etc all get shutdown. the counter to this i sometimes hear is.. "everyone sucks at making RTS games". i think people are bored of RTS games the same way they got bored of Gallery Shooters and Dot-Eating-Maze games. SO they're just blaming the games.
Everyone DOES suck at making RTS games. Games like BW and AoE2 and especially WC3 remained crazy popular even when the genre declined. I've no idea if it has to do with the jump to 3D graphics or with EA draining the blood of Westwood and Ensemble making AoE3 then being closed.
I never stopped loving RTS games. Somehow it really rubs me the wrong way to be told that I've gotten bored of the basic gameplay when I still play and love the old games, and when I would buy and play a new one to death if a good one came out. I've been hungry for a new good RTS for a long time.
No game with the caliber and casual appeal of WC3 was released since WC3 and you know it.
On July 30 2017 06:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 05:25 Foxxan wrote:On July 30 2017 05:10 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
there is a lack of good RTS coming out, possibly most developpers have limited understanding of the genre
SC2 is not declining merely because the genre is declining, seriously you can't just ignore all of its flaws :/ Jimmy raynors logic is perfect. Its not the quality that matters, its the name of the genre. No one in the world is no longer eating icecream, so its the declining of icecream that is the cause and not because icecream is full of virus. See this list right here, look how few developers are making icecream? See? Very few. The icecream they make still has virus but thats not the issue, its the decline of the icecream that is causing it. no, people are bored of the genre's basic mechanics. so they label every RTS game as lousy and claim no one knows how to make RTS games any longer... even though.. the longer you do something the better you get at it. a genre's games get better as the genre matures. similarly look at dot-eating-maze games. one of the worst game in the dot-eating-maze-games ever made comes out in 1980 and it breaks records everywhere. it impacts mainstream culture the way almost no game has before or since. time passes...people slowing get bored of the basic mechanics of the genre. much better dot-eating-maze games come out and they can't make a fraction of what the original record breaker made or have any cultural impact whatsoever. you can say this same scenario with Space Invaders and hte gallery shooter genre. games got better as the genre got older. interest waned even though the games got better. same shit with RTS... different decade. there is a lot more to a game's success than the quality of the game. Fortunately, ATVI is 1000X better at monetizing the RTS genre than any one else... so we still get some pretty good support from Blizzard even though the entire genre is way way beyond is "best before" date.
If people got better at making RTS games I'm sure you can point to a fantasy RTS game in a classical fantasy setting with heroes and a cool story mode and balanced gameplay that is strictly better than Warcraft 3. Is Battle for Middle Earth by EA supposed to fit this? Haha.
Or a Sci-fi strategy game with more balanced, fun and intense gameplay than SCBW.
Or a game that does what Total Anihilation did and improves upon it.
Because I'd love to play them.
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ooops, was supposed to edit my prevoius post.
[delete please]
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because sc2 named itself after the greatest of all Starcraft Broodwar
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On July 30 2017 18:42 KungKras wrote:I never stopped loving RTS games. Somehow it really rubs me the wrong way to be told that I've gotten bored of the basic gameplay when I still play and love the old games, and when I would buy and play a new one to death if a good one came out.
Please try to look past your own narcissism. This isn't about you or even people on this forum.
You think you're some kind of special snowflake who enjoys RTSes while posting on TL.net? We all do. This is about the bigger picture.
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On July 30 2017 19:34 Jae Zedong wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2017 18:42 KungKras wrote:I never stopped loving RTS games. Somehow it really rubs me the wrong way to be told that I've gotten bored of the basic gameplay when I still play and love the old games, and when I would buy and play a new one to death if a good one came out. Please try to look past your own narcissism. This isn't about you or even people on this forum. You think you're some kind of special snowflake who enjoys RTSes while posting on TL.net? We all do. This is about the bigger picture.
I was making an agrument, although I should probably have emphasized it more.
The big games of the genre like Warcraft 3 continued to be popular among players during this "decline".
And I just can't find any games to point to that came out after the really good games in the genre that can be pointed to as improvement over the classics. I mean if the industry became progressively better at making RTS games, there should be lots of games out to point to as being better than the greats.
Some people like SC2 more than Warcraft 3 or SCBW but that's it. Nobody other than Blizzard even tried to make a new WC3 for example.
I also don't know what I said that could have implied that I thought I was the only one on the TL, the biggest RTS fansite, who likes RTS games.
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EPT
