EPTGuardians of Atlas - Page 27
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Development ended, game appears to be dead. https://forums.artillery.com/discussion/911/end-of-development -Jinro | ||
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TokO
Norway577 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9384 Posts
On August 24 2016 21:57 KeksX wrote: I always wondered what you could do with a game that was combining the two - have an RTS commander that takes care of base building and creeps, and players that have small armies/heroes to control. Little bit like the savage series. When I first heard about Atlas, this was what I was hoping for. But as some posts here indicate, these type of games have a big audience as well. They just never attract them for some reason. Or at least not for a long time. I don't understand what you mean. Does slow-motion RTS games have a large playerbases or do they not? Because as I see it, Starcraft is still the most popular RTS and it has the most responsive and fast unit movement out of any RTS..... And yet it seems that whenever a new RTS tries to challenge Starcraft, they take away the best part about the game. Not a surprise to me that they failed. Hence why you also saw me "predicting" the fail of Grey Goo in the TL thread like 6 months before its release. If I had to guess, the succes of Atlas depends on whether a large enough playerbase will enjoy the micro-interactions. If they are fun and there is solid room to get better --> Atlas can and probably will suceed. If not.... well it will probably fail. To summarize my brief "formula" for a succesful RTS: 1. Low learning curve (both in terms of knowledge requirements and mechanics) 2. Generally fast and responsive units with a high micro skill cap. If these conditions are met, its not the end of the world if its 3v3 and not 1v1, but I obviously prefer 1v1 since I don't have to rely on random teammates and I am fully in control of my own strategies. The ability to watch some pro games, be inspired by strategies/builds and then try to use them in your own games is amazing and 1v1 games does that so much better than teamgames. But unfortunately, not a single game developer has met both of those conditions and I don't believe the RTS genre will ever get big before someone does. | ||
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zeo
Serbia6284 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9384 Posts
On August 24 2016 22:16 zeo wrote: Maybe a game has to have a good single player campaign to reel in the casuals first. Lots of people bought SC and WC3 and never touched the online components. And I thought CS:GO, Dota and LOL disproved that need. And if the casuals don't enjoy the multiplayergame, then they won't play it. So the important part is to make the multiplayer experience enjoyable for new as well as very competitive minded players. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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zeo
Serbia6284 Posts
On August 24 2016 22:17 Hider wrote: And I thought CS:GO, Dota and LOL disproved that need. And if the casuals don't enjoy the multiplayergame, then they won't play it. So the important part is to make the multiplayer experience enjoyable for new as well as very competitive minded players. Counter strike was built on the popularity of Half Life, and DOTA was built on WC3's player base. They all had built in playerbases (from massively popular single-player games). | ||
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Endymion
United States3701 Posts
However, when you lower the mechanical demands of BW for whatever reason, be it for more attention from new players or because you want a bigger emphasis on "micro," the game takes a large hit to the strategic aspect of the game because players no longer have to allocate apm/attention, leading to asymptote to a single play style... when you haven an eAPM of 300 and you need to allocate between 200 macro apm demands and 200 micro apm demands, each player will make a meaningful decision between the two and have different distributions.. macro players may go 200-100, micro players may go 100-200, noobs may go 300-0 and end up wasting apm, etc. however, in a game like sc2 where you can play perfectly with an eAPM of 200, (100 macro/100micro demands), that meaningful decision no longer exists and all players become effectively the same. that scarcity of attention/apm is what makes meaningful decisions in BW so awesome to watch and fun to play for different players, both between micro/macro players as well as gosus/chobos. plansix, back to that podcast's comment. if we were to look at BW and say "if we add more stuff to do (like in the current meta a lot of players are manually targeting mineral patches with drones sub 18 supply to squeeze out an extra drone for a standard 3 hatch muta opener), will the game become more difficult?" Well, if the decisions that are provided offer meaningful substitutions to current actions, then it would only stand to flesh out bw more as far as i know... would the apm requirements go up?? i dont know, because i think we're pretty much at the maximum apm for pros as is.. however, it would be an interesting discussion to have; a discussion which has been bricked by people saying bw mechanics are archaic and only there to force people out of the genre | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
In the case of RTS games, they talk about how all RTS games function from this cookie cutter mode. You will start with a small number of units. Normally 1-6 builders and a base. There will be limited resources and you make buildings to build units. There will be a tech tree and limited vision. Every single game starts with this open, empty map and the players are required to fill it with purpose. Some have base building, others don’t. The victory conditions are normally beat on your opponent until they give up and surrender. And that sort of game design is limiting. If all games start the same, they have the same limitations. No one considers the idea of starting with 1/3 of the map. Or a prebuilt base across that 1/3. Was if the economy in each map was built in, but 4 times as complex as the standard RTS, with trains, respawning AI workers and limited control? What if you had a set number of a type of units, like flying units for transport or air strikes? Its that RTS games are limited because get pigeon hole them into chasing BW and C&C, rather than making new things. | ||
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Atimo
France38 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On August 24 2016 21:54 Hider wrote: Never agreed with you more. Whenever I come back to Starcraft after a hiatus and just wants to have a bit of fun it frustrates me so much whenever I go up against this new all-in and I die to it because my build-order wasn't 100% refined. I also despise the fact that everyone who is new and want to learn how to play Starcraft gets adviced to follow a youtube-series where they only are allowed to focus on macro and build marines. One of the main advantages of MOBA's relative to RTS is that they made it alot easier to learn by doing rather than to use tutorials outside of the core game to get better. Yes! Actually, I used to think that there should be a build order helper embedded into the game, inspired by the dota2 user guides as well, but whenever I would suggest this publicly people would mock me. >.> And whenever new players are seeking to improve they are told to do rote macro builds instead of learning how to apply strategic thinking. The former is mindless, while the latter teaches you the tools to improve on your own and lets you take control of your own game experience. But because everyone was so obsessed with macro!ladder-ranking!esports!cheese! the whole notion of Starcraft as a strategy game became obscured. And Blizzard's design for SC2 enables this sort of reductionist thinking. This became very clear to me when I started playing Warcraft 3 again last year and I found that I could actually make in-game adjustments to my play to increase my chance of victory, which is something that is incredibly difficult to do in Starcraft 2 where so much of the game is purely on auto-pilot, where the word strategy is a synonym for build order loss, and where the entry level mechanics you need to have to play the game on a basic level are too intimidating. So yeah, new players should be learning about scouting and reacting to their opponents, that should be the number one skill that everyone learns, yet if you look at Apollo and Day[9]'s tutorial videos it's mostly about finetuning macro. And you have projects like JaKaTaK's Staircase methods where you're like practicing mechanics against the computer. I'm reminded of this sort of thinking whenever I'm practicing piano and I think back in horror to my attempts at developing my playing ability by doing finger exercises and scale runs which were supposed to improve dexterity. Apparently those are not well respected at all and you're supposed to improve just by constantly playing instructive and mildly challenging pieces with musical value. | ||
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Endymion
United States3701 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
And that sort of game design is limiting. If all games start the same, they have the same limitations. No one considers the idea of starting with 1/3 of the map. Or a prebuilt base across that 1/3. Was if the economy in each map was built in, but 4 times as complex as the standard RTS, with trains, respawning AI workers and limited control? Starcraft 2 could have innovated there. There could be maps with lava slowly enveloping the map and new areas emerging. Interactions with abandoned bases or mercenary gangs. Trains with resources could give incentives to leave your base in FFA games (a game mode that Blizz completely neglected). Technology that can be captured and developed from research areas on the map. etc. But there's a reason none of those things exist, because they interfere with competitive play; rather you're more likely to see them in single-player, and in fact some of these concepts are derived from SC2 single-player. But can you think of any mechanic from one of the campaign maps which had enough promise to be the basis of a new sub-genre of RTS? I haven't played the LotV campaign, but my opinion on the HotS one was that Blizzard seemed to do everything in its power to diverge maps from traditional RTS gameplay and it made it seem like they were constantly trying to distract the player from the fact they had no faith in the core SC2 zerg gameplay. For how much these campaigns are lauded as exemplary and full of ideas, I don't think I could say there was any basis for even a successful arcade game in almost any one of them. | ||
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Yurie
11836 Posts
On August 24 2016 22:58 Plansix wrote: And that sort of game design is limiting. If all games start the same, they have the same limitations. No one considers the idea of starting with 1/3 of the map. Or a prebuilt base across that 1/3. Was if the economy in each map was built in, but 4 times as complex as the standard RTS, with trains, respawning AI workers and limited control? What if you had a set number of a type of units, like flying units for transport or air strikes? I know AOE 2, Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander had options where you could start with a partial base to skip the early game. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
And then they got bought by Riot. But the concept was sound and I played the shit out of that beta. The very definition of easy to get into, hard to master. | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey397 Posts
I think for a new game to be successful, it has to be either significantly better or it has to be different in a significant way compared to the established games in that genre. | ||
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Yurie
11836 Posts
On August 24 2016 23:30 _Spartak_ wrote: The thing with improving on SC formula is it is very hard to do so. Even if a company comes along and makes a game that is close to SC2 in style but is slightly better, it is unlikely for that game to build a community. Because not many people will leave a very polished game with an established community after spending hundreds of hours on that game just so that they can play a slightly better game. This is why it is almost impossible for new MOBAs to challenge DotA 2 or LoL. The players of those games won't leave those games to play a similar game that is only slightly better. If a sequel comes along, sure but a brand new game will face problems. I think for a new game to be successful, it has to be either significantly better or it has to be different in a significant way compared to the established games in that genre. Could you mention some game that is better than Dota 2? I have tried Smite, LoL, HoN, HotS and a few others and found them worse in many ways. Most of them fall on the economical model, especially LoLs was just pure evil. | ||
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_Spartak_
Turkey397 Posts
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zeo
Serbia6284 Posts
On August 24 2016 23:01 Atimo wrote: Nobody is chasing BW guys, if the game was released today, nobody will buy it (even if it's the best RTS ever). Thats what they said about dota 2, nobody wanted the steep learning curve and difficulty of WC3 dota and 'look how popular LoL is now!!!'. And dota basically blew everything out of the water while being a 1:1 clone with a UI facelift. Counterstrike is the same thing, same formula (yeah I know its not 1.6). All Blizzard had to do was make BW in their SC2 engine and make another RTS which could be more casual, where they could experiment more/add things like heroes ect. They already had the winning formula for multiplayer, but went the route of making an 'ultra competitive game!!!!!!' and turning off the casuals. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
Remake brood war in a free to play format Remove a bunch of the busted UI non-sense from the original Let you save hot keys, Add a huge market for hats And change the game every 6 months or so with a huge patch that keeps it fresh for players. Then it will be totally viable like Dota 2. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
Obviously some things you have to know (like walling in, building queens and injecting, etc) but overall the burden of knowledge isn't nearly as extreme as you guys mention here. About base building: I don't quite understand why you think it's so important to the rts experience tbh. At the end of the day base building is a mechanic to get access to new units and tech. Is building the actual base fun on its own? You could argue that it might look good if the graphics are nice, etc but from a gameplay perspective i don't see it tbh. About Atlas being 3vs3 instead of 1vs1. I absolutely agree that there are pros and cons to both sides. Being able to play the game and have less pressure on yourself is something people seem to enjoy these days (even when they then rage at others for losing) it's obviously also more fun to be able to play with friends, etc On the other hand everybody who played teamgames before also knows the feeling when he plays well and random teammates fuck it up for you. Overall i still think that the team mode is in general a safer way of designing the game because i feel the pros outvalue the cons here. | ||
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