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On April 28 2024 06:36 prion_ wrote:
People say improvement in an RTS is mostly drilling rote skills like not getting supply blocked, constantly producing, following a build order etc. This is true (to an extent)*. However, it's also true for pretty much all competitive games, including popular genres. Improvement in League, CS, Dota, Rocket League, Valorant etc. is 80-90% mechanics. So it doesn't seem to be a very good explanation for why RTS games aren't popular anymore.
*It's true to the degree that the most efficient way to improve is by practicing mechanics. But in reality there are many ways to improve, and improving as efficiently as possible isn't the way everyone plays games.
It's too difficult to have fun in RTS.
Fps genre have a huge playerbase by nature, there ought to be one that is fun for your playstyle.
And it's mechanics sort of get transferred through different ones.
MOBA is difficult but it's a social driven game. A lot of the players tend to stay with just one MOBA and stuck with it.
RTS on the other hand have so many elements in it.
I am teaching my partner to play and even if she can do macro well enough now, she still can't beat very hard AI consistently.
It's easy to forget just how many ways you can lose to. forgot to siege the tanks, not engaging correctly, getting harassed by cloak and needing to scan, missing attack/expand timings.
Imo it also goes against your nature instinct to ignore the army at times to do macro, and extremely frustrating to lose them all when you have been building it up for so long and doing the upgrades.
The lack of new triple A RTS is the same reason as why we don't have new Moba. Too difficult to move existing playerbase and the gamble on capturing a big new playerbase is difficult. I would still hope an indie game to come over and build up a whole new RTS playerbase organically.
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@KingzTig have you played much WC3? For me it was a wholly different experience and definitely one I would have stuck to longer if any of my friends were in to it. Way longer time to kill and way more difference in relative unit power avoids a lot of the issues that sound like SC2 issues to me - forgetting to siege tanks and insta-losing, missing macro rounds etc... Wc3 is far from perfect, but it did address those starcraft-ish issues. It strikes me a decent balance between feeling like you have a lot of opportunities for skill expression, but aren't brutally punished if you -don't- do that.
This is by way of saying I agree with the sentiment "It's too difficult to have fun in RTS" but I think part of that statement defines "RTS" as scbw/sc2, which is the pinnacle of hardcore RTS as we know it. It's definitely not difficult to have fun in more casual variants of RTS games!
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On April 28 2024 12:55 Fleetfeet wrote:
@KingzTig have you played much WC3? For me it was a wholly different experience and definitely one I would have stuck to longer if any of my friends were in to it. Way longer time to kill and way more difference in relative unit power avoids a lot of the issues that sound like SC2 issues to me - forgetting to siege tanks and insta-losing, missing macro rounds etc... Wc3 is far from perfect, but it did address those starcraft-ish issues. It strikes me a decent balance between feeling like you have a lot of opportunities for skill expression, but aren't brutally punished if you -don't- do that.
This is by way of saying I agree with the sentiment "It's too difficult to have fun in RTS" but I think part of that statement defines "RTS" as scbw/sc2, which is the pinnacle of hardcore RTS as we know it. It's definitely not difficult to have fun in more casual variants of RTS games!
I definitely did for a long time and moved onto godsworn for the wc3 fix.
I even gave my partner a try, but she just finds being able to build massive army and massive damage is a big plus.
Guess it's just the pain we gotta learn to love
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Oh damn Godsworn looks real nice, though I keep anything tagged EARLY ACCESS at arm's reach until it actually proves it'll be a full product one day. I'll have to keep an eye on it and check it out one day.
And yeah you're probably right, we just need to embrace the pain.
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I'm a little excited about this, hopefully they pull it off but I hope the art style is not yet another cartoony one.
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Seems they are gathering people this week for anoter round of testing etc, Artosis said on monday he would be off for a few days this week for a trip down to California.
Assume it will be regarding this but thats my speculation
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On May 02 2024 02:19 Kreuger wrote:
Seems they are gathering people this week for anoter round of testing etc, Artosis said on monday he would be off for a few days this week for a trip down to California.
Assume it will be regarding this but thats my speculation
I think he said in the ASL cast of the finals that he is on a family trip.
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On May 02 2024 04:10 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2024 02:19 Kreuger wrote:
Seems they are gathering people this week for anoter round of testing etc, Artosis said on monday he would be off for a few days this week for a trip down to California.
Assume it will be regarding this but thats my speculation I think he said in the ASL cast of the finals that he is on a family trip.
Hmm, pretty sure he in the stream from monday said he would be traveling to Cali with Tastless
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2132294772?t=0h38m28s
Says it here
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On May 02 2024 04:30 Kreuger wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2024 04:10 Miragee wrote:On May 02 2024 02:19 Kreuger wrote:
Seems they are gathering people this week for anoter round of testing etc, Artosis said on monday he would be off for a few days this week for a trip down to California.
Assume it will be regarding this but thats my speculation I think he said in the ASL cast of the finals that he is on a family trip. Hmm, pretty sure he in the stream from monday said he would be traveling to Cali with Tastless https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2132294772?t=0h38m28sSays it here
Fair enough. 
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While exciting, David Kim thoroughly demonstrated his inability to properly balance and design a game with sc2. Not exactly a selling point.
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On May 03 2024 18:38 Sabu113 wrote:
While exciting, David Kim thoroughly demonstrated his inability to properly balance and design a game with sc2. Not exactly a selling point. It's only the most popular and successful RTS in history for 14 years by a large margin, what a disappointment indeed.
If they care about the game being popular and successful - this is actually a great selling point.
Or do you mean SC2 was so successful despite David Kim being bad at this job?
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The war hound should have warned everyone off let alone the monstrosities of the brood lord and swarm host. He has utterly no talent. The whole sc2 design team failed to realize that constraints make interesting decisions. It was obvious but disputed at the time. Now we can look with clarity at how miserably imbalanced sc2 was.
David Kim is such a perfect failing upwards story. Total incompetent fraud.
Wonderful pve campaigns though.
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Let's hope he learned from his mistakes in trying to balance SC2 because it was a shitstorm of a Zerg/Terran alternating for most broken race for years with a blip of Protoss sprinkled inn every now and then before whatever the protoss did would be nerfed into the ground
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On May 11 2024 20:54 Drahkn wrote:
Let's hope he learned from his mistakes in trying to balance SC2 because it was a shitstorm of a Zerg/Terran alternating for most broken race for years with a blip of Protoss sprinkled inn every now and then before whatever the protoss did would be nerfed into the ground Yes, poor Protoss - they only won the most money in 2013-2014-2015 and second most in 2018-2022 with Terran being the least successful.
Before 2023 last year when terrans won the most money was in 2011 - while having worst results out of three races in 2012-2016 and 2018-2022, i.e. basically 11 years in a row being the worst, with one exception in 2017.
So much for one of the "most broken race for years".
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I just recently watched Tasteless comment on the announcement trailer. He didn't seem to have anything negative to say about it, and in another related video he offered a rather prescient "the rising tide floats all ships". Always a good reminder - even if this particular RTS isn't for me, every new game helps the genre.
Now for the fireworks:
I am super fucking disappointed with how often and strongly they seemed to emphasize:
- That "tedious", boring or redundant mechanical actions should be removed (auto inject in LOTV beta and stacking injects, anyone?)
- That you start making "meaningful decisions" from the very first minute (12 worker start in LOTV destroying SC2's early game, anyone?)
They brought up mules/inject/chrono boost as particular examples of things they regretted doing in SC2. I feel the exact opposite - I think those mechanics really _helped_ SC2 - mechanics are flavor, and we need more of them!
I keep hoping, perhaps in vain, that a studio will develop an RTS that heads _towards_ Brood War rather than away from it. But so far this _sounds_ like it ain't it.
One plus is that they emphasized "really large armies", which is a sign that they might be joining Stormgate in pushing towards 300+ supply cap being the default. It only took 25 years!
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On May 13 2024 16:23 Qwyn wrote:
They brought up mules/inject/chrono boost as particular examples of things they regretted doing in SC2. I feel the exact opposite - I think those mechanics really _helped_ SC2 - mechanics are flavor, and we need more of them!
I keep hoping, perhaps in vain, that a studio will develop an RTS that heads _towards_ Brood War rather than away from it. But so far this _sounds_ like it ain't it.
I do not think some studio will ever use BW as ispiration for future RTS. Currently a multiplayer game has to be SIMPLE to have success, or at least has to give the feeling of being simple. MOBAS are the golden standard in this. They are not inherently simple, but any new player can play it and have the feeling that he is doing plays by hitting a lucky ultimate or by multi killing enemies. In RTS, the fun (multi pronged battles, micro intensive battles) comes if you have the mechanics, instead is just a blob vs blob and that is not really rewarding. The majority of players, that todays comes from "easier" games, won't start playing RTS to fight the interface.
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Northern Ireland26802 Posts
On May 13 2024 16:23 Qwyn wrote:
I just recently watched Tasteless comment on the announcement trailer. He didn't seem to have anything negative to say about it, and in another related video he offered a rather prescient "the rising tide floats all ships". Always a good reminder - even if this particular RTS isn't for me, every new game helps the genre.
Now for the fireworks:
I am super fucking disappointed with how often and strongly they seemed to emphasize:
- That "tedious", boring or redundant mechanical actions should be removed (auto inject in LOTV beta and stacking injects, anyone?)
- That you start making "meaningful decisions" from the very first minute (12 worker start in LOTV destroying SC2's early game, anyone?)
They brought up mules/inject/chrono boost as particular examples of things they regretted doing in SC2. I feel the exact opposite - I think those mechanics really _helped_ SC2 - mechanics are flavor, and we need more of them!
I keep hoping, perhaps in vain, that a studio will develop an RTS that heads _towards_ Brood War rather than away from it. But so far this _sounds_ like it ain't it.
One plus is that they emphasized "really large armies", which is a sign that they might be joining Stormgate in pushing towards 300+ supply cap being the default. It only took 25 years!
I think the issue with those mechanics was they’re often just busywork that it’s always good to do
There is a mule/scan trade off, but it’s almost never a bad thing to inject, or to spread more creep when you can.
Conceptually I think chrono is by far the most interesting, but it’s one that doesn’t scale as well as they had to somewhat neuter it to not break the early game.
I like the idea of being able to boost all of eco/army/tech and how that dovetails to actual decision-making, but I think there was a flawed implementation where the most intriguing mechanic ended up being the least potent, outside of early/mid-game
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On May 13 2024 16:23 Qwyn wrote:
I just recently watched Tasteless comment on the announcement trailer. He didn't seem to have anything negative to say about it, and in another related video he offered a rather prescient "the rising tide floats all ships". Always a good reminder - even if this particular RTS isn't for me, every new game helps the genre.
Now for the fireworks:
I am super fucking disappointed with how often and strongly they seemed to emphasize:
- That "tedious", boring or redundant mechanical actions should be removed (auto inject in LOTV beta and stacking injects, anyone?)
- That you start making "meaningful decisions" from the very first minute (12 worker start in LOTV destroying SC2's early game, anyone?)
They brought up mules/inject/chrono boost as particular examples of things they regretted doing in SC2. I feel the exact opposite - I think those mechanics really _helped_ SC2 - mechanics are flavor, and we need more of them!
I keep hoping, perhaps in vain, that a studio will develop an RTS that heads _towards_ Brood War rather than away from it. But so far this _sounds_ like it ain't it.
One plus is that they emphasized "really large armies", which is a sign that they might be joining Stormgate in pushing towards 300+ supply cap being the default. It only took 25 years!
Has Tasteless really ever anything negative to say about a new thing?
Regarding the rest of the post: How do you come to the conclusion that mules/inject/chrono and more of those mechanics would be something a team aiming to create a Broodwar-like experience would go for? Broodwar was never designed to be a game with as many unnecessary, repetitive clicks as possible. Those mechanics from SC2 are the epitomy of unnecessary, repetitive extra clicks. It's a bit ironic, but if you think about it, Frostgiant actually did what you are asking for and added more of those mechanics into Stormgate. What do you think of those (honest question)?
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On May 03 2024 18:43 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 03 2024 18:38 Sabu113 wrote:
While exciting, David Kim thoroughly demonstrated his inability to properly balance and design a game with sc2. Not exactly a selling point. It's only the most popular and successful RTS in history for 14 years by a large margin, what a disappointment indeed. If they care about the game being popular and successful - this is actually a great selling point. Or do you mean SC2 was so successful despite David Kim being bad at this job?
Not to nitpick but according to this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games BW vastly outsold sc2 and is still popular and played 25 yrs in. Note most estimate for number of bw copies sold are around 10mil and before remastered. So it may be more.
I met David Kim a few times at wwi and blizzcon and he was pretty nice and seemed to have decent ideas. Ofc sc2 was a trainwreck but i wouldn't put all the blame on him, i wasn't convinxed by DB at all and some design choices clearly wrecked the balance that minor tweaks wouldn't be able to fix too.
Also you other post on P earnings vs balance is stupid, seeing how sos basically single handedly won so much money.
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Honestly if the mechanics are simplified it makes faster players faster and just raises the skill floor, it's fine. I wish the discussion was over what will the maps look like, unit design, and lethality. Personally my biggest gripe about these starcraft inspired RTS games are that they adopt the SC2 map meta of only 2 player maps which is incredibly stale. I hope for a starcraft inspired RTS to be capable of having 4 player maps again. SC2 maps are the most boring thing around, and they have to be injected with a gimmick to make them somewhat exciting.
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EPT
