Battle Aces/David Kim RTS Megathread - Page 20

On April 21 2024 10:00 KingzTig wrote:

Yeah that's my point. I was just being sarcastic that some here think sc2 was a failure and caused the decline in RTS.

On April 21 2024 17:02 qwerty4w wrote:

Does it has anything to do with my point? Blizzard started making Warcraft 3 shortly after vanilla StarCraft, and StarCraft 2 shortly after Frozen Throne. The same didn't happen after SC2, it didn't prove their RTS dev team is worthy of keeping. It's likely far less profitable than their TCG, FPS, MMORPG and looter ARPG. SC2 being the last well-funded and well-marketed RTS for a long time (Relic RTSs after DOW2 are all very half-baked at release) because business people don't think RTS is worthy of investment anymore, including Blizzard themselves.

On April 21 2024 17:24 KingzTig wrote:

Yes because unless you have a saviour complex and hoping sc2 is the one, it shouldn't be seen as anything but a success. It is still one of the most successful RTS game ever released.

Doesn't mean it can recapture all the players that have gone to MOBA nor it can create a market that ain't there.

Going back to my point, I can safely say anyone thinking sc2 is a failure can have no meaningful contribution.
By all matrix it is the last great RTS and even indie or AA studios dont even try to compete pretty much says it all. The genre is profitable, it's just sc2 and 1 or 2 others already captured majority % of the market.

On April 21 2024 17:49 Comedy wrote:


It was commercially a succes. But how can it be a true succes if it's predecessor has better gameplay?

Do you people have no memory of how shitty the game release was? How bad b.net 2.0 was? Everything about sc2 was pretty damn bad if you compare it to sc1 and wc3. It took years and years before people could create meaningful communities around the game and then discord took over lol, there was just nothing in place with bnet 2.0 It was a ladder matchmaking simulator with 0 social functions.

The gameplay, of course it's arguable and pretty subjective.. But even nowadays sc1 , a 25 year old game with almost zero post-development, creates better games. Go watch Snow vs Soulkey and compare it to shitty sc2 a moving + spellcasting. And people worked on this game for 10+ years after release and there were 2 major expansion packs and massive support for the game.

On April 21 2024 14:59 Crimthand wrote:
As for singleplayer RTS vs multiplayer RTS, I am not saying one would be more popular than the other. But so far, all RTS games have been made to be single player games, with a multiplayer mode tucked on. No game was designed from the ground to be multiplayer only. At least no game I am aware of. I am sure there could be some niche indie game that did.
Of course less people are going to play the multiplayer mode if multiplayer is just a secondary game mode that is just spun off from the single player game mode.

But we have these devs talking about how it is their ambition to make a multiplayer 1vs1 RTS game. But then they just copy a single player RTS game, like SC BW, and strip away a bunch of stuff they call 'mundane', add QoL that reduce mass clicking because 'mass clicking isn't fun' and 'to free up more time for strategy'. While also adding no new innovations to gameplay. And then they say it is the next iteration of RTS.

To David Kim's credit though, he is literally the first person to at least talk about thinking about how game design affects multiplayer game states. And therefore strategy and decision making. This seems like the most basic idea, but I have never heard anyone in the SC2 development talk about this. And no one either for Stormgate.

On April 21 2024 18:36 ETisME wrote:

I don't think it is necessary to have a complete different design for multiplayer focused RTS.

On April 21 2024 18:54 Crimthand wrote:


Of course it isn't necessary. You could copy SC BW as much as possible. Which by chance got a very good formula.
But why not use the knowledge learned in 25 years of SC BW RTS about what makes 1vs1 multiplayer RTS fun to play or watch? Why not re-evaluate core gameplay design features that were decided upon for lore/setting/immersion reasons, and ask yourself if they are actually the best choice for getting the best 1vs1 RTS possible.

You could also just test it out. Make a simple RTS. And change some core elements about it, trying to find the best choice for 1vs1 play.

For example, is having 2 resources the best choice? With one being used more often, and each race having a few buildings and 1 unit which only uses resource A? Is that really the best? Is it better to have just 1 resource? Or should you have 2 resources that are not tiered, but work in parallel? Should there be transmutation between different resources? Or not at all. All these things were originally picked in C&C and WC & SC for lore reasons. Not even for single player gameplay reasons. How these choices would affect multiplayer was not even thought about.

I don't see Stormgate devs come out and say this "Hey, we have 150 combined years of RTS experience on our dev team. At the start, we had a brainstorm session about resource systems. And we specifically picked a system to give rich gameplay, multiple strategies. This is our system, so since we explained it, you can now appreciate how it can be superior to SC BW.
But also mathematically validated this model to be superior with our game theory expert. We even put out a research paper on it. And we proved to ourselves by just playing our games internally that indeed this resource system is more fun. This is our competitive advantage and why our game will be the a quantum leap for RTS. And we also plan to apply this same design philosophy to other elements of the game.

On April 21 2024 18:05 KingzTig wrote:

Except everywhere outside Korea, sc2 has a larger playerbase and viewership.
Gameplay itself isn't the end all be all, quite a few of fps are better than COD, FF14 is better than WOW. Winning spirit (RIP) Is better than FIFA. SF alpha 3 is generally regarded as the best game in the franchise.

So no, I disagree with pretty much everything you say and not relevant at this point. BW couldn't even stood up against WC3 at most SEA pub in just less than a year.

It didn't even capture most of what audience lost to MOBA or SC2 dying scene. AOE2 actually captured quite a bit of players when AOE4 struggled at the beginning.

On April 21 2024 19:20 Comedy wrote:


Aoe2 got an epic remake and a proper remaster. BW still has more players than aoe2 btw. But yeah, it's because of Korea.

BW got a graphic update, but unfortunately that's about it. Everything else is pretty much worse than the original and unfortunately if you aren't korean, the quality of experience is a lot lower because of the peer 2 peer networking resulting in lag games for most of the world.

It's unfair to compare aoe2, which got one of the best remasters of all time, to bw. Back in the day, BW had a far larger playerbase than aoe2. Even though SC2 isn't technically as good gameplay wise, it has a massive scene of esports, players, casters, orgs, and at this point 12+ years history.

The problem here really is, is that sc2 wasn't bad enough. It wasn't good enough to demolish BW and make fans of BW no longer long for that game, but it also wasn't bad enough that a new generation would turn away from it and go play a 25 year old game instead with bad infrastructure and a tough learning curve. Aoe2 never had that problem. Aoe2 is kinda like BW if SC2 never came out. It had 20 years to organically grow and then got a two remasters, first a 2013 HD remake and then the 2019 full remaster which is amazing, aoe4 wasn't a thing till 2021 and then the entire scene had established itself already. BW got it's rugged pulled from under it brutally by the whole blizzard/kespa thing and then sc2 was artificially kept afloat and pumped up massively by millions of dollars and investments and 3 expansion packs. But when all said and done, it cant live up to the legacy of starcraft and it still isn't better than BW after all that time, money, effort, and development pumped into it.

On April 21 2024 19:13 ETisME wrote:

these already exists.
AOE has multiple resources type, tradable and resources nodes are all over the map, and have multiple winning conditions.

On April 21 2024 19:36 Crimthand wrote:


You literally aren't even reading. Why even respond? AoE were completely lore-based single player games. Who learned nothing from SC BW or competitive 1vs1. AoE is literally the opposite of what I am talking about. Just stop!

On April 21 2024 19:39 ETisME wrote:

i won't disagree, I don't understand why we need to be concerned about whether the resources are tied to lore or not. Like what's your concerned about it.
why we should care if the engine in f-zero is lore accurate or not.

On April 21 2024 19:30 KingzTig wrote:

BW didn't just have organic growth, BW had a multiple years long scene with very few competitions. (If any)

AOE2 scene lasted because how good it is, there's only been ever one serious contender, Empire Earth.

BW would have never caught on if it was released today, let alone SC1. Especially if it weren't released by blizzard.

Hard cap unit selection on a massive battlefield that have 200 unit max supply all over the map, no worker/unit queue, poor pathing, terrible unbalanced maps, terrible unit AI etc. (Don't tell me you want to fix Goliath ai)

Meanwhile classic AOE2 would have done just as fine, because it was an extremely refined game in every area.

And again since we are talking about future of RTS, I don't see why we need to constantly be stuck at BW being the best game to follow, when it wouldn't have succeeded today (even in Korea)

On April 21 2024 19:51 Crimthand wrote:


What?! How can you just not get this. You are designing a game. You either design a game based on what makes sense inside your lore. Or you design a game based on what gives the best gameplay. I know you don't care. You are an idiot. That's well established now. You either add resources based on: "Ok to build buildings, we need wood, and stone. Wood grows in forests all over the place. Stone in quarries with are further away and more rare. And a house needs more wood than stone. And to build units, we need food. We can collect food from berry bushes, or from schools of fishes in that river, or from hunting game."

Great! You have a game. But the way your game plays in 1vs1 is decided completely randomly. If your game is fun to play or not in 1vs1 multiplayer is completely random. You have no vision of how an RTS should play or why it is fun You just haphazardly stitch together what appears to make sense.

In contrast, you can decide this. "Ok, we need a basic resource. And resources need to be collected by a worker unit. Then, we need two other types of resources. One is collected further away by the same worker unit. And one should be collected by a specialized worker unit. This because it gives strategies and emergent gameplay. Ok, now we decide on what lore to add to this. Resource 1 is energy. And it is collected from magma pools. You either can collect the rough magma at a slow rate, or build a building on top of it, and collect it at a faster rate because now you can use 3 workers on 1 patch instead of 2.
Then, we need to collect metal ores. These are always at points outside the base of the player. Because that gives strategy. Then the last resource is some form of crystal. And it is so hard, you need a special worker for it.

OK, let's playtest this basic setup and see if that makes sense for giving exciting rich 1vs1 play. Oh, turns out it doesn't. We need to put the iron ore closer to the base. And the crystal ore can be futher away, but let's have that one collect in bursts, rather than steady income. Yes, that works. Now the game is more fun. Ok, great. Now let's apply the same thinking to the basic units."

On April 21 2024 19:51 Comedy wrote:


You dont understand one game, and seem to be a big fan of aoe2. I dont know much about aoe2, but likely more than you know about BW, and I will say it's a great game. I'll drop the discussion from here, I said what I wanted to say.

On April 21 2024 19:30 KingzTig wrote:

...

BW would have never caught on if it was released today, let alone SC1. Especially if it weren't released by blizzard.

Hard cap unit selection on a massive battlefield that have 200 unit max supply all over the map, no worker/unit queue, poor pathing, terrible unbalanced maps, terrible unit AI etc. (Don't tell me you want to fix Goliath ai)

Meanwhile classic AOE2 would have done just as fine, because it was an extremely refined game in every area.

...

On April 21 2024 21:30 ggrrg wrote:


Your complaints about classic sc1 are mostly valid, but you are looking at classic AOE2 through rose-tinted glasses. The game had some serious issues back in the day (and still does to some extent).
Stuff like farms felt like a chore - you had to manually remake them every time they expired. In a game where you would have anywhere from 15 to 60 farms in the mid to late-game, there were a whole lot of clicks required. (even more so for civs that were missing some farm upgrades). Age of kings introduced the (15?) farm queue in the mill. The auto-seed option was introduced waaay later (definitive edition I believe).
Then you had some annoying stuff like attack move not being a feature in classic AOE2. I don't even remember how many expansions later it was added to the game...
But the down right infuriating things about classic AOE2 are hands down pathing and unit AI. Melee units in a clump will basically not engage enemy units if left alone. Out of 10 aggroed units 2 will engage the nearest enemy target while the remaining ones will run around getting slaughtered while trying to reach a unreachable unit. The problem only gets worse the more melee units you have in your clump. And the issue will regularly re-appear in an engagement because after killing a unit, your melee unit is not unlikely to start running around in circles because it decided to target a unit that it cannot reach instead of the closest reachable enemy. This targeting problem is still present in the current iteration of AOE2... I assume that hardcore AOE2 players are used to it and have some techniques to mitigate the issue, but for somebody who is used to 1a2a3a in BW and have all units actually attack, the AOE2 ai feels horrible. Oh, and pathing in AOE2 has its own set of extremely frustrating issues. The regrouping that AOE2 always does when you try to move more than a single unit is absolutely horrible. Telling your units to move forward and seeing them move backwards instead so they can regroup, would make anyone want to pull their hair out. Depending on how your units are spread, you may get to see some unit move what feels like half a screen in the wrong direction before starting to move in the correct one. And even when your units are already in a clump, they will regroup backwards every time you give them a move order... and even when you don't give them further orders, they will randomly regroup backwards while walking forward...
AOE2 is a great game but complaing about starcraft pathing and ai while calling AOE2 "extremely refined" is not only biased but simply outrageous.