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On February 22 2017 02:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 22 2017 01:45 Logo wrote:On February 22 2017 00:51 Plansix wrote:On February 21 2017 18:23 -Archangel- wrote:On February 21 2017 04:21 Plansix wrote:
I am always sorry I respond to any of your posts, you are correct about that. I've grown to like Jimmy. He is our forum perfectionist. He is just looking for that one perfect RTS that he can play until end of time  The dream for us all. RTS is in a weird space. A friend and I were discussing them recently and there is so much focus on buildings, economy and units, but rich map design is neglected. It is an afterthought. But when I think of great board games and a well designed, nuanced board is like 50% of the game. At least DoW 3 looks fun. Games like Atlas had their heart in the right place, but everything fell sort of flat. Including that terrible map. It's a tough thing to get right. Explicit map features (like cover zones) hurt more than help a lot of the time I think. They restrict the strategic space to be focused around specific areas with specific interactions. This can often create flow-charty gameplay in how you handle what would ideally be a dynamic situation. If you compare something like DotA's trees or RTS highground/ramps they give way more mileage on how they strategically alter the game without prescribing specific solutions or narrowly focus the battlefield important to key areas. And they're mechanically less complex to boot! And that's sort of a big problem with the RTS genre in general, people have tended towards easy to explain mechanics over strategically deep mechanics. But even dota’s map isn’t that complicated system wise. It has trees you can destroy and high ground. And towers. It is the LOS system, limited flying vision, and billion little places to hide that make that map interesting. That map isn’t about complex systems, but the creators spending hours thoughtfully designing it. Even the DoW and CoH maps don’t have that level of thoughtful gameplay design. SC2 doesn’t even. BW did, but that is only because it was the only aspect the community could dig into. It is an overlooked aspect of the game, even in discussions about design. Everyone focuses on units, control, abilities, but never why they fight over a section of a map.
Right, but my point is that the problem is when people think about the map they focus on adding systematic complexity to it (i.e. cover systems) rather than developing the actual strategic value of the map. So right now people thinking *more* about the map as a valuable part of the gameflow will often make the maps worse as a result.
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That is the root problem of all RTS design. They are prone to system creep, rather than simple design systems. And then they try to make up for the sort of bland map design by having way to many maps, rather than a few focused maps of high quality. And they don’t refine those high quality maps.
It really bothers me because so many games would be better if they just added in simple features to map. Block flying vision, limit flying movement. Add in more complex LOS systems so you can craft environments to have specific features.
But then I play games like Ashes of the Singularity, which might as well be played on a flat plain with walls. So many of the maps in Warhammer total war are flat, featureless plains and I cannot understand why any army would ever decide “this is the place to fight”. The entire RTS genre is obsessed with units, could give two shits about the board we control them on.
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I think it really depends though. If you go for an rts where unit control is secondary (not existent) you need depth to be found in the strategic side. You get that through map features like high ground, water, cover mechanisms, etc
If you have a game like starcraft where unit interactions are highly dependant on the control any added "depth" through the things mentioned is rather annoying because it's in the way of direct control. (though you can argue that some features are still nice to have, highground worked very well in bw)
What i meant when i said that the map in guardians of atlas was mediocre was more it's structure and not so much the fetures on it. I think towers to have more defenders advantage is fine, i think neutral creeps to farm/for economy are fine. I didn't like the design of the map though. Not enough space, way too much like a moba map considerign that you have an army which needs more room, etc
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The greatest feat the game pulled off was creating the most boring RTS map possible. Maybe ever. Dull as bricks and no real reason to fight over anything beyond "it gives me money to buy things".
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On February 21 2017 18:23 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2017 04:21 Plansix wrote:
I am always sorry I respond to any of your posts, you are correct about that. I've grown to like Jimmy. He is our forum perfectionist. He is just looking for that one perfect RTS that he can play until end of time
I don't see how he's a perfectionist, I find it much more frustrating to deal with him.
He obviously follows game development, so in theory you can have a good conversation with him. But right when the conversation starts to go well, he derails topics in a nearly troll-like fashion in to arguments about market profitability and makes excuses for game developers he's a fan of, while pointing out flaws in developers he's not a fan of, with the goal of backing up his argument about profitability.
Which is all irrelevant, because in modern day game design, there's ways to solve the profitability issue, as long as you truly have solid game design. Sure, some big name producers may not get behind a game. But Crowdfunding has revived so many series that would have never made it. You just need the design to be SOLID. Even SC2 does not have solid design these days. And no matter how many big-name developers you try to say are godlike and have shown skills in the past (like I'm sure most of you have seen Jimmy praise Browder) this does not mean you can make lightning strike twice and make a great game again.
Just look at pretty much the entire Blizzard North team, and how many failures they have had. You see mention of Brevik all the time too, well look how Hellgate London went. Look how Marvel Heroes went the first 2 years (sure it has improved, but it had a very weak start). They have not came close to achieving what they did in the Blizzard North days.
Becuase it's not just about the lead developer, the ex Blizzard North experiences have shown us time and time again, it's about the synergy of the entire team, rather than just a big name developer. Developers have hits and misses, and very few people in the industry have ever made a hit after switching to a new development team.
In Atlas's case, market profitability was not the issue. There was a lot of interest, and the game drew in pretty big numbers of players. The problem was the design. Because of some aspects being poorly designed, Ppayers did not stay (even confirmed by ex-Artillery).
If the game were in a better state, the game had all the potential to be profitable. I would go as far as to say if the open beta began in the state the game was in before TW3, it would have been better off than it was.
In pre-alpha, there was very few players in daily testing. So few that player base tended to be so low that you were lucky to get a game in that was not on a testing event day (wednesday or sunday). But before TW3, there was enough that on the off days there was usually 2 games going at a time, and the testing event days had quite a few going.
It seemed somewhat healthy, and in my whole career of Atlas, I can honestly say this was the only time that I actually looked forward to the testing days and could not wait to get back in game and play.
After the TW3 patch, and pre alpha patches, the media quality was way up (sounds got implemented , graphics, etc), but the player base went down. Even after inviting thousands of new players. It was back to "not enough people to play a game during the week".
I wholeheartedly think that's the time where Artillery fell off track. Which just happened to be shortly before Day9 left the team. So I'm assuming some internal conflict may have resulted, the game got dragged in multiple directions, and lost it's vision.
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EPT
