On April 10 2024 02:35 JimmyJRaynor wrote: it is getting easier and easier to make games. So making an RTS requires a smaller and smaller team. It ain't 1995 guys. The tools for making games these days are off-the-charts incredible.
I don't understand this complaint at all. Frost Giant's entire deal is making the next generation RTS, and that isn't cheap. If you disagree with that goal and would rather they make their little indie game with an existing engine and p2p matchmaking then fair enough, but then there would be complaints they didn't innovate enough or advance the genre.
A reminder of their goals: - Brand new engine made specifically for RTS, that can easily handle giant unit counts - 4 supported gamemodes, 1v1, 3v3, 3vE, campaign, all with their own dev teams - The best RTS editor to date, with support for community customs and map creation - Next gen RTS network that uses rollback to allow for global matchmaking - Esports and tournament integration all within the client - Live replays streamed in game, support for thousands of observers to join games at any point
None of the other upcoming games are doing any of this, obviously Gates of Pyre and Zerospace don't need Stormgate's budget.
You can make a good RTS with existing engines, or even in the sc2 editor if you really wanted to, but you couldn't make "The RTS of the future". It's insane to think you could do all of this without spending tens of millions.
Is the goal too ambitious though? would it have been better with a more narrow focus? Do one thing well at the time before moving onto next project?
On the note of the RTS of the future. I don't think gamemodes matter, I don't think esport integration really matters. I don't think live replays matter. I think you need a great engine and really well thought out and executed game design. They did the first part well but imo failed on the latter .
Gamemodes definitely matter
With sc2, the most popular gamemodes are campaign and coop, they're also the most profitable. 1v1 falls far behind despite the online community being all about it. If FG want to make the money needed to support competitive play, they need to sell a good campaign and tap into the coop market.
I agree that good game design and a good engine/editor are the most important aspects, but realistically the engine/network are what takes the longest to develop anyway. Everything else that will separate Stormgate form other RTS all feed out of that.
If you believe the future of RTS is a great campaign or co-op, then nail those things first. However, do you think that's enough to capture a larger audience?
My vision for the future of RTs is a game that captures a notable percentage of the MOBA playerbase. To accomplish that, however, the genre needs to be reinvented. But first we need to figure out why people play MOBA's. For some it is being with friends, but a lot of other people it is the competitive experience. Teamfighting and outplaying opponents. Is it possible to get a comparable type of satisfaction with a similar learning curve in an RTS game? I believe so, but Stormgate is not the game to deliver on that.
I would be very surprised if anyone who is not an RTS vet gets excited/interested by watching the gameplay or even had a positive experience playing the beta. Much larger changes needed and constant feedback from average MOBA players are required in an iterative process.
And if you can't succeed in that in capturing a broader audience then there is no "hope" for the future of the RTS genre. Or at least it will never make sense to invest $30M+ in an RTs game.
I don't think broader audience comes to play in it. People don't adhere to genre constructs as much as you'd want to believe, and people are going to care first and foremost that it's good and fun, and somewhere further down the line whether or not it's an RTS
Yes, I am not completely sure how that conflicts with my view? (it's actually kinda my point).
The reason a game like Sc2 generally is not fun for new players is due to the massive complexity of learning the game and constant stress-level while playing the game.
The genre itself has a lot of potential though. But you need to figure out how to make it fun.
I get that campaign + co-op is currently functioning as the "entry-point", but I don't think it really succeeds in getting a high percentage of the players to keep playing after that. A campaign is a fundamentally different experience from multiplayer and effectively functions as different games. A good campaign can make money but it cannot by itself attract and sustain a large player audience.
Perhaps you could argue that campaign functions as entry-point into co-op and co-op then functions as entry-point into the competitive 1v1/3v3 modes. But then you end up with a way too ambitious project and most likely neither will turn out that well.
I belive a 100% focus on RTS 1v1 can work as the entry-point (combined with a tutorial ofc), but not with the mindset rts-game devs currently have.
They need to get rid of the whole "it was that way in the 90s-mindset therefore we can't change it" and be willing to reinvent multiple parts of the genre. There are lots of ways to make the learning-barrier significantly easier than what Stormgate is doing. The most obvious exampel of Stormgate being stuck in the 90s is that you still need to learn how to wall-in. How on earth they think this is fun mechanic in today's age is beyond me. But the problem goes that much deeper than that.
Further, I also belive that to attract potential new players you need to show awesome gameplay that players find interesting. Nothing about Stormgate is gonna look interesting to non-RTS players.
I agree that we don't wholly disagree, but I do think we have different values and desire for the end-state, where most people stay and play the game. You see it as campaign -> co-op -> 1v1, where one leads into the next, and 1v1 is the ultimate unshakeable golden standard. I think THAT is the 'being stuck in the 90s' mindset you're talking about, and you contradict yourself there. 1v1 is shit. We don't see it outside of memes and braggarts in modern gaming because it isn't as fun as dicking around with your friends. It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game,[b{ I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
[/b] Ya big meanie ye
Honestly I don’t know how nobody’s made it work. Especially after the Doom reboot brought those more old-school stylings with a few modern stylings to a new generation and did super well
Loads of cool guns and mechanics, fast paced, skills to flex for days with, not super constricted by having to make maps a certain way… I could go on but won’t
I actually think on paper cracking a modern arena shooter that’s successful is way, way easier to make work than making a spiritual successor to SC/WC3, or alternatively trying to make the next big RTs that’s deviating and innovating a lot. Just don’t make it a fucking 1v1 focused game for one.
I think the sad part of Epic canning a new UT was actually I felt their rough model and blueprint could 100% have worked, but canned it. On the flipside Quake Champions actually came to market and in many ways was a solid core game, but IMO had an awful model to attract anyone outside of arena shooter diehards (and even they were annoyed with the few different things they did try)
Based on my market research, which is extensive and involves solely my soon to be 11 year-old Minibat he’s actually enjoyed UT games an a bit of Quake a lot, says he thinks it’d be cool if there was a game like it that was popular and he could play with his buddies.
On April 11 2024 06:01 Fleetfeet wrote: It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game, I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
I honestely believe that "1v1 games aren't as fun is" is a false statement. In competitive team games you won't feel (solely) responsible for your losses and I think that's one main factor why these games you mention are generally more popular. The other one is that it's fun to play with friends, almost regardless of how good the game actually is. What I mean is that technically a 1v1 game can be more fun but it's being overridden by people drawing so much enjoyment from interacting with friends.
For your second statement: Dusk came out some time ago and it's a great game. Not an arena shooter but the gameplay feels like one. It's smooth and responsive as fuck, super fun. They could as well add an arena mode with that engine to boot. And I'm not even an Arena Shooter fan. The only Arena Shooter I played more than a couple of hours was UT 2004.
On April 11 2024 06:01 Fleetfeet wrote: It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game, I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
I honestely believe that "1v1 games aren't as fun is" is a false statement. In competitive team games you won't feel (solely) responsible for your losses and I think that's one main factor why these games you mention are generally more popular. The other one is that it's fun to play with friends, almost regardless of how good the game actually is. What I mean is that technically a 1v1 game can be more fun but it's being overridden by people drawing so much enjoyment from interacting with friends.
For your second statement: Dusk came out some time ago and it's a great game. Not an arena shooter but the gameplay feels like one. It's smooth and responsive as fuck, super fun. They could as well add an arena mode with that engine to boot. And I'm not even an Arena Shooter fan. The only Arena Shooter I played more than a couple of hours was UT 2004.
1v1 games can work. Fifa is popular as 1v1, Heartstone did well as 1v1. TfT as 1vx also popular.
Most FPS games and MOBA's do not work well as 1v1 because they are fundamentally different in 1v1 vs XvX. RTS games on the other hand are not fundamentally different type of games when you go from 1v1 to teamgame. You can still get strategic depth, multitasking and fights all over the map in a 1v1 as you can in 3v3. Whereas in MOBA's you need multiple players.
I would say 1v1 is very flawed in Sc2, but so is 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. There is an excessive amount of knowledge, stress, and unnecessary mechanical requirements before you can really "play the game". But Sc2 can also be amazing, but you need to get past those "flaws".
I think it is possible to further increase the good parts/highs of Sc2 while noticeable reducing the "flaws" of it. And that's my primary criticism of Stormgate because it isn't really doing either.
Watched Nony's thoughts together with Artosis and I share a lot of his thoughts. He seems to be concerned around "how do you acquire back the MOBA players".
Around 36 minutes Nony talks about what MOBA players "needs".
One of the things RTS needs to learn from MOBA's is making it easy to cast spells and how proper micro-interactions around it. A next-gen RTS absolutely needs it be possible to cast abilities without having to specifically select the unit. Managing several control groups at once is a nightmare in Starcraft just so you can cast abilities (or having to tab to select).
Make it easy to cast abilities and reward counter-play in a fun and engaging way.
There's two types of innovation, one that delivers what the people in the genre have always wanted, one that delivers something even the players didn't know they wanted.
I would have given SG the benefit of the doubts before that public beta. But after the beta? I just don't see the energy or the hype around it, at no point have I seen anyone on any subreddit talking much about the game (other than its own sub), just do a search if you don't believe me.
The fancy new tech talk about it being next gen always reminds me of star citizens, except despite all the monetarisation schemes, had a huge passionate crowd willing to pay because there is an audience for the "next gen" features and is a pretty large one.
Gate of pyre (also I had no idea the Dev is from starbow till today) imo has the most innovative approach to the genre so far, that along with zerospace are way beyond what stormgate is experimenting with the formula
On April 11 2024 18:57 KingzTig wrote: There's two types of innovation, one that delivers what the people in the genre have always wanted, one that delivers something even the players didn't know they wanted.
I would have given SG the benefit of the doubts before that public beta. I just don't see the energy or the hype around it, at no point have I seen anyone on any subreddit talking much about the game (other than its own sub), just do a search if you don't believe me.
The fancy new tech talk about it being next gen always reminds me of star citizens, except despite all the monetarisation schemes, had a huge passionate crowd willing to pay because there is an audience for the "next gen" features and is a pretty large one.
Aye indeed, I think people forget now, and it wasn’t as visible because well, ye olde internet days but a lot of folks really weren’t enthused about what Blizz were showcasing with WC3. While it didn’t win everyone around, they still knocked it out of the park.
I said at the time that I was baffled by Frost Giant’s choice to initially showcase the game quite as early as they did. I think I’ve been subsequently proven somewhat correct here as there’s been a marked
1. Those of us interested in something iterative to get that fix of something slightly new. Well it’s missing a bunch of components, a whole race. Me personally I had a brief look, decided against pre-ordering to get on beta. 2. Those of us intrigued to see what they’re planning in terms of the other modes (which iirc are actually just as big a planned component), the 3v3+heroes and whatnot, don’t get to see anything. 3. Those intrigued by the supposed capabilities of the engine also don’t get to see any of what it’s capable of, or at least advertised to be capable of.
I will say that I was cautiously optimistic before, cautiously optimistic after. The responsiveness and unit control does look very good, and that’s forever been what has stopped me really delving into non-Blizz RTS games beyond a more casual consumption.
Maybe it’s a call they were forced into if some of the purported funding problems are as bad as some report, but I’ve seen very, very few go into hype mode based on that play test phase. Plenty go from positive/neutral into neutral/negative respectively, folks like myself with a ‘wait and see’ policy maintain it. Plus folks who were always hyped remaining so, but I’ve seen little in the way of a movement in a positive direction
On April 11 2024 06:01 Fleetfeet wrote: It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game, I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
I honestely believe that "1v1 games aren't as fun is" is a false statement. In competitive team games you won't feel (solely) responsible for your losses and I think that's one main factor why these games you mention are generally more popular. The other one is that it's fun to play with friends, almost regardless of how good the game actually is. What I mean is that technically a 1v1 game can be more fun but it's being overridden by people drawing so much enjoyment from interacting with friends.
For your second statement: Dusk came out some time ago and it's a great game. Not an arena shooter but the gameplay feels like one. It's smooth and responsive as fuck, super fun. They could as well add an arena mode with that engine to boot. And I'm not even an Arena Shooter fan. The only Arena Shooter I played more than a couple of hours was UT 2004.
1v1 games can work. Fifa is popular as 1v1, Heartstone did well as 1v1. TfT as 1vx also popular.
Most FPS games and MOBA's do not work well as 1v1 because they are fundamentally different in 1v1 vs XvX. RTS games on the other hand are not fundamentally different type of games when you go from 1v1 to teamgame. You can still get strategic depth, multitasking and fights all over the map in a 1v1 as you can in 3v3. Whereas in MOBA's you need multiple players.
I would say 1v1 is very flawed in Sc2, but so is 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. There is an excessive amount of knowledge, stress, and unnecessary mechanical requirements before you can really "play the game". But Sc2 can also be amazing, but you need to get past those "flaws".
I think it is possible to further increase the good parts/highs of Sc2 while noticeable reducing the "flaws" of it. And that's my primary criticism of Stormgate because it isn't really doing either.
DotA has 124 Heroes, X amount of game modes, X amount of items, complicated hero bans, stress with your teammates, 50+ minutes games. And it doesnt matter. Its just so easy to ignore all that and "blindly" lane your hero. Just /ignore your teammates and you are good to go
Great point. You don't need to know everything in MOBA's. The punishment of "not knowing" is much less (although I would argue Dota is the most unforgiven about of any MOBA). In RTS I think it's a problem that if you don't know the exact timing of a certain build order you simply lose. And if you have to remember all these things while playing a very mechanically intensive game.
The future of RTS games has lots of depth but it's more forgiving and you can learn it in a more intuitive way and have fun with that. I want players to be able to have fun moving out with your map, fighting a few battles, trying out their own made up strategies while while experiencing "real interactive micro" despite being beginners/casuals with <60 APM. In contrast, in Sc2 this requires 100s hours of practice with memorization before this phase of the game opens up.
Gate of pyre (also I had no idea the Dev is from starbow till today) imo has the most innovative approach to the genre so far, that along with zerospace are way beyond what stormgate is experimenting with the formula
Where do you think Gates of Pyre is innovating?
Because the problem I have with both of those is that even though I can see that Zerospace is trying a few more things than Stormgate it still doesn't look particularly amazing. Do you think you could make a highlight clips of a few minutes, send that to non RTS gamers and they would be really interested to try it out? And if they try it out, would a large percentage of them keep playing?
In contrast I remember sending the famous Zed vs Zed Faker vs Ryu outplay from 2023 to multiple Sc2 players who thought it looked awesome and which caused them to try out LOL.
For Sc2, I think moments like Infestor burrow --> unborrow fungal is some of the closest we get to that. Or perhaps by psi storm drops, Nuke etc. Or even Marine splitting, multiple drops (although slighltly more complex). There are ways in which you can sell the "highlights of Sc2" to MOBA players. (the bigger problem Sc2 has as previously mentioned is that you can't even attempt to those things as a beginner)
On April 11 2024 06:01 Fleetfeet wrote: It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game, I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
I honestely believe that "1v1 games aren't as fun is" is a false statement. In competitive team games you won't feel (solely) responsible for your losses and I think that's one main factor why these games you mention are generally more popular. The other one is that it's fun to play with friends, almost regardless of how good the game actually is. What I mean is that technically a 1v1 game can be more fun but it's being overridden by people drawing so much enjoyment from interacting with friends.
For your second statement: Dusk came out some time ago and it's a great game. Not an arena shooter but the gameplay feels like one. It's smooth and responsive as fuck, super fun. They could as well add an arena mode with that engine to boot. And I'm not even an Arena Shooter fan. The only Arena Shooter I played more than a couple of hours was UT 2004.
1v1 games can work. Fifa is popular as 1v1, Heartstone did well as 1v1. TfT as 1vx also popular.
Most FPS games and MOBA's do not work well as 1v1 because they are fundamentally different in 1v1 vs XvX. RTS games on the other hand are not fundamentally different type of games when you go from 1v1 to teamgame. You can still get strategic depth, multitasking and fights all over the map in a 1v1 as you can in 3v3. Whereas in MOBA's you need multiple players.
I would say 1v1 is very flawed in Sc2, but so is 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. There is an excessive amount of knowledge, stress, and unnecessary mechanical requirements before you can really "play the game". But Sc2 can also be amazing, but you need to get past those "flaws".
I think it is possible to further increase the good parts/highs of Sc2 while noticeable reducing the "flaws" of it. And that's my primary criticism of Stormgate because it isn't really doing either.
DotA has 124 Heroes, X amount of game modes, X amount of items, complicated hero bans, stress with your teammates, 50+ minutes games. And it doesnt matter. Its just so easy to ignore all that and "blindly" lane your hero. Just /ignore your teammates and you are good to go
Great point. You don't need to know everything in MOBA's. The punishment of "not knowing" is much less (although I would argue Dota is the most unforgiven about of any MOBA). In RTS I think it's a problem that if you don't know the exact timing of a certain build order you simply lose. And if you have to remember all these things while playing a very mechanically intensive game.
The future of RTS games has lots of depth but it's more forgiving and you can learn it in a more intuitive way and have fun with that. I want players to be able to have fun moving out with your map, fighting a few battles, trying out their own made up strategies while while experiencing "real interactive micro" despite being beginners/casuals with <60 APM. In contrast, in Sc2 this requires 100s hours of practice with memorization before this phase of the game opens up.
This is bullcrap. When you are pitted against someone equally as bad/ slow/ unknowing, nothing like that matters.
It's all about the "I was so good but my team so bad" attitude that makes Mobas so popular. If you win, you obviosuly carried the team despite it beeing bad. If you lose, the team was uncarriable. It's the basic dynamic of pretty much all currently competitive games with the exception of battle royales. It happens in CS2, DotA, LoL, OW
On April 11 2024 06:01 Fleetfeet wrote: It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game, I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
I honestely believe that "1v1 games aren't as fun is" is a false statement. In competitive team games you won't feel (solely) responsible for your losses and I think that's one main factor why these games you mention are generally more popular. The other one is that it's fun to play with friends, almost regardless of how good the game actually is. What I mean is that technically a 1v1 game can be more fun but it's being overridden by people drawing so much enjoyment from interacting with friends.
For your second statement: Dusk came out some time ago and it's a great game. Not an arena shooter but the gameplay feels like one. It's smooth and responsive as fuck, super fun. They could as well add an arena mode with that engine to boot. And I'm not even an Arena Shooter fan. The only Arena Shooter I played more than a couple of hours was UT 2004.
1v1 games can work. Fifa is popular as 1v1, Heartstone did well as 1v1. TfT as 1vx also popular.
Most FPS games and MOBA's do not work well as 1v1 because they are fundamentally different in 1v1 vs XvX. RTS games on the other hand are not fundamentally different type of games when you go from 1v1 to teamgame. You can still get strategic depth, multitasking and fights all over the map in a 1v1 as you can in 3v3. Whereas in MOBA's you need multiple players.
I would say 1v1 is very flawed in Sc2, but so is 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. There is an excessive amount of knowledge, stress, and unnecessary mechanical requirements before you can really "play the game". But Sc2 can also be amazing, but you need to get past those "flaws".
I think it is possible to further increase the good parts/highs of Sc2 while noticeable reducing the "flaws" of it. And that's my primary criticism of Stormgate because it isn't really doing either.
DotA has 124 Heroes, X amount of game modes, X amount of items, complicated hero bans, stress with your teammates, 50+ minutes games. And it doesnt matter. Its just so easy to ignore all that and "blindly" lane your hero. Just /ignore your teammates and you are good to go
Great point. You don't need to know everything in MOBA's. The punishment of "not knowing" is much less (although I would argue Dota is the most unforgiven about of any MOBA). In RTS I think it's a problem that if you don't know the exact timing of a certain build order you simply lose. And if you have to remember all these things while playing a very mechanically intensive game.
The future of RTS games has lots of depth but it's more forgiving and you can learn it in a more intuitive way and have fun with that. I want players to be able to have fun moving out with your map, fighting a few battles, trying out their own made up strategies while while experiencing "real interactive micro" despite being beginners/casuals with <60 APM. In contrast, in Sc2 this requires 100s hours of practice with memorization before this phase of the game opens up.
This is bullcrap. When you are pitted against someone equally as bad/ slow/ unknowing, nothing like that matters.
You are not following me here. It doens't matter now, but it should matter - that' the problem. What matters for beginners in Sc2 a learning a simple build order and memorizing it or learning to build units every X seconds. If the future of RTS is to survive we need to get rid of that and make the initial experience completely different and much closer to that of playing a MOBA.
It's all about the "I was so good but my team so bad" attitude that makes Mobas so popular. If you win, you obviosuly carried the team despite it beeing bad. If you lose, the team was uncarriable. It's the basic dynamic of pretty much all currently competitive games with the exception of battle royales. It happens in CS2, DotA, LoL, OW
Correlation != causation. People complain when they lose. In 1v1's its about balance.Are you seriously attempting to make the claim that the only or primary reason MOBA's are more popular than RTS is because you can blame your teammates?
I argue it anything it's despite of that and RTS genre has more potential than MOBA's because they don't need to be 1v1 to work. Being dependent on random teammates is an incredibly frustrating experience.
On April 11 2024 06:01 Fleetfeet wrote: It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game, I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
I honestely believe that "1v1 games aren't as fun is" is a false statement. In competitive team games you won't feel (solely) responsible for your losses and I think that's one main factor why these games you mention are generally more popular. The other one is that it's fun to play with friends, almost regardless of how good the game actually is. What I mean is that technically a 1v1 game can be more fun but it's being overridden by people drawing so much enjoyment from interacting with friends.
For your second statement: Dusk came out some time ago and it's a great game. Not an arena shooter but the gameplay feels like one. It's smooth and responsive as fuck, super fun. They could as well add an arena mode with that engine to boot. And I'm not even an Arena Shooter fan. The only Arena Shooter I played more than a couple of hours was UT 2004.
1v1 games can work. Fifa is popular as 1v1, Heartstone did well as 1v1. TfT as 1vx also popular.
Most FPS games and MOBA's do not work well as 1v1 because they are fundamentally different in 1v1 vs XvX. RTS games on the other hand are not fundamentally different type of games when you go from 1v1 to teamgame. You can still get strategic depth, multitasking and fights all over the map in a 1v1 as you can in 3v3. Whereas in MOBA's you need multiple players.
I would say 1v1 is very flawed in Sc2, but so is 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. There is an excessive amount of knowledge, stress, and unnecessary mechanical requirements before you can really "play the game". But Sc2 can also be amazing, but you need to get past those "flaws".
I think it is possible to further increase the good parts/highs of Sc2 while noticeable reducing the "flaws" of it. And that's my primary criticism of Stormgate because it isn't really doing either.
DotA has 124 Heroes, X amount of game modes, X amount of items, complicated hero bans, stress with your teammates, 50+ minutes games. And it doesnt matter. Its just so easy to ignore all that and "blindly" lane your hero. Just /ignore your teammates and you are good to go
Great point. You don't need to know everything in MOBA's. The punishment of "not knowing" is much less (although I would argue Dota is the most unforgiven about of any MOBA). In RTS I think it's a problem that if you don't know the exact timing of a certain build order you simply lose. And if you have to remember all these things while playing a very mechanically intensive game.
The future of RTS games has lots of depth but it's more forgiving and you can learn it in a more intuitive way and have fun with that. I want players to be able to have fun moving out with your map, fighting a few battles, trying out their own made up strategies while while experiencing "real interactive micro" despite being beginners/casuals with <60 APM. In contrast, in Sc2 this requires 100s hours of practice with memorization before this phase of the game opens up.
This is bullcrap. When you are pitted against someone equally as bad/ slow/ unknowing, nothing like that matters.
You are not following me here. It doens't matter now, but it should matter - that' the problem. What matters for beginners in Sc2 a learning a simple build order and memorizing it or learning to build units every X seconds. If the future of RTS is to survive we need to get rid of that and make the initial experience completely different and much closer to that of playing a MOBA.
It's all about the "I was so good but my team so bad" attitude that makes Mobas so popular. If you win, you obviosuly carried the team despite it beeing bad. If you lose, the team was uncarriable. It's the basic dynamic of pretty much all currently competitive games with the exception of battle royales. It happens in CS2, DotA, LoL, OW
Correlation != causation. People complain when they lose. In 1v1's its about balance.Are you seriously attempting to make the claim that the only or primary reason MOBA's are more popular than RTS is because you can blame your teammates?
I argue it anything it's despite of that and RTS genre has more potential than MOBA's because they don't need to be 1v1 to work. Being dependent on random teammates is an incredibly frustrating experience.
No I make the claim that people are more drawn to team games than 1v1 games because of that. Doesn't matter the gerne or game. Team games are mostly less stressful to play and more entertaining to watch. And since you can play with buddies the learning curves are more fun, you can experiment and learn together I agree with you that SC2 / BW are probably the most stressful games there are and making them less so would probably reach a wider audience in general. I mean I myself can play max. 2 hours of SC2 in a session but can easily play a whole day of MOBA or CS2. Dunno, maybe the answer is make it somewhat turnbased so there is a little downtime between moves/ lives to rethink strategy or whatever? Make it more strategical and less APM taxing.
EDIT: Maybe every minute of gameplay is followed by a 10 sec phase of invulnerability which can be used to set up the next minute and pick up slack you forgot in the last minute
Mobas already have suggested skill and item build guides, it's not such a stretch to include such a guide in an RTS. It doesn't have to be so prescriptive as to require you hit all the timings or do an exact build order, but it could provide branching paths like "expand" vs. "fight" and list the buildings and units you need to build to accomplish one or the other. There could be pointers like "you've scouted your opponent is not building a second base, consider building defensive structures". Or "you've scouted your opponent building air units, consider building this anti air unit or these anti air defenses". Additional systems to support sharing custom build orders and branching decision trees tailored to specific maps or spawn locations could be interesting as well. There's a ton of learning tools possible.
On April 11 2024 06:01 Fleetfeet wrote: It isn't because Dota, Valorant, autochess, csgo, fortnite, etcetcetc don't support 1v1, it's because none of those are designed from the ground up as 1v1 games, because 1v1 games aren't as fun.
That said, again the endpoint JUST needs to be a good game. Having 1v1 be the main focus of the game doesn't preclude it from being a good game, I just think it's shooting yourself in the foot a bit, like trying to make a good game that's also an arena shooter in 2024 (sorry WombaT :D)
I honestely believe that "1v1 games aren't as fun is" is a false statement. In competitive team games you won't feel (solely) responsible for your losses and I think that's one main factor why these games you mention are generally more popular. The other one is that it's fun to play with friends, almost regardless of how good the game actually is. What I mean is that technically a 1v1 game can be more fun but it's being overridden by people drawing so much enjoyment from interacting with friends.
For your second statement: Dusk came out some time ago and it's a great game. Not an arena shooter but the gameplay feels like one. It's smooth and responsive as fuck, super fun. They could as well add an arena mode with that engine to boot. And I'm not even an Arena Shooter fan. The only Arena Shooter I played more than a couple of hours was UT 2004.
1v1 games can work. Fifa is popular as 1v1, Heartstone did well as 1v1. TfT as 1vx also popular.
Most FPS games and MOBA's do not work well as 1v1 because they are fundamentally different in 1v1 vs XvX. RTS games on the other hand are not fundamentally different type of games when you go from 1v1 to teamgame. You can still get strategic depth, multitasking and fights all over the map in a 1v1 as you can in 3v3. Whereas in MOBA's you need multiple players.
I would say 1v1 is very flawed in Sc2, but so is 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. There is an excessive amount of knowledge, stress, and unnecessary mechanical requirements before you can really "play the game". But Sc2 can also be amazing, but you need to get past those "flaws".
I think it is possible to further increase the good parts/highs of Sc2 while noticeable reducing the "flaws" of it. And that's my primary criticism of Stormgate because it isn't really doing either.
DotA has 124 Heroes, X amount of game modes, X amount of items, complicated hero bans, stress with your teammates, 50+ minutes games. And it doesnt matter. Its just so easy to ignore all that and "blindly" lane your hero. Just /ignore your teammates and you are good to go
Great point. You don't need to know everything in MOBA's. The punishment of "not knowing" is much less (although I would argue Dota is the most unforgiven about of any MOBA). In RTS I think it's a problem that if you don't know the exact timing of a certain build order you simply lose. And if you have to remember all these things while playing a very mechanically intensive game.
The future of RTS games has lots of depth but it's more forgiving and you can learn it in a more intuitive way and have fun with that. I want players to be able to have fun moving out with your map, fighting a few battles, trying out their own made up strategies while while experiencing "real interactive micro" despite being beginners/casuals with <60 APM. In contrast, in Sc2 this requires 100s hours of practice with memorization before this phase of the game opens up.
This is bullcrap. When you are pitted against someone equally as bad/ slow/ unknowing, nothing like that matters.
You are not following me here. It doens't matter now, but it should matter - that' the problem. What matters for beginners in Sc2 a learning a simple build order and memorizing it or learning to build units every X seconds. If the future of RTS is to survive we need to get rid of that and make the initial experience completely different and much closer to that of playing a MOBA.
It's all about the "I was so good but my team so bad" attitude that makes Mobas so popular. If you win, you obviosuly carried the team despite it beeing bad. If you lose, the team was uncarriable. It's the basic dynamic of pretty much all currently competitive games with the exception of battle royales. It happens in CS2, DotA, LoL, OW
Correlation != causation. People complain when they lose. In 1v1's its about balance.Are you seriously attempting to make the claim that the only or primary reason MOBA's are more popular than RTS is because you can blame your teammates?
I argue it anything it's despite of that and RTS genre has more potential than MOBA's because they don't need to be 1v1 to work. Being dependent on random teammates is an incredibly frustrating experience.
No I make the claim that people are more drawn to team games than 1v1 games because of that. Doesn't matter the gerne or game. Team games are mostly less stressful to play and more entertaining to watch. And since you can play with buddies the learning curves are more fun, you can experiment and learn together I agree with you that SC2 / BW are probably the most stressful games there are and making them less so would probably reach a wider audience in general. I mean I myself can play max. 2 hours of SC2 in a session but can easily play a whole day of MOBA or CS2. Dunno, maybe the answer is make it somewhat turnbased so there is a little downtime between moves/ lives to rethink strategy or whatever? Make it more strategical and less APM taxing.
EDIT: Maybe every minute of gameplay is followed by a 10 sec phase of invulnerability which can be used to set up the next minute and pick up slack you forgot in the last minute
I find "downtime" to be a fascinating natural outcome of Moba systems. A big contributing difference between Moba and RTS is in Moba the static defenses guarding the win condition are formidable and have many layers. There's a sense of security near those defenses for most of the game. RTS's start you off with only workers and a base. This fundamentally puts immediate pressure on the player to construct their own defenses (army or static defense) in time to intercept enemy aggression. The benefit is any army made for defense can in turn be used to attack. It could be an interesting RTS concept where relatively powerful non-player controlled static defenses initially provide cover to players. Additionally, other resources scattered around the map would create objectives encouraging skirmishes without leading too quickly into overwhelming kill pressure. RTS's also typically have depleting resources. This is not true in a Moba, in fact you gain resources at a base rate every second. Instead of harvesting and depleting resources you are always gaining. These gains become permanent in the form of items. This also contributes to a more relaxed gamefeel. Also, harvestable resources refresh around the map on a timer, so a player is only gated by their ability to do damage and survive damage to harvest those resources. I'm not sure how that concept could be applied to RTS but I feel it's an interesting idea. There are likely many more ideas in other genres that could help make RTS feel less like competing to kill an opponent over depleting resources and instead feel like a steady acceleration towards action-packed battles.
A big reason MOBAs are more popular is that social game play is a far more fun way to play video games.
THe most extreme version of social game play is going to a PC Bang or an Arcade with your real life work makes or real life friends.
Does any one in here prefer laddering a 1v1 RTS game for hours alone in their room versus going to a PC Bang? At a PC Bang you can order a nice meal , talk with real people in the real world about the RTS game (whether its Brood War, WC3, or SC2).
PC Bangs are 100X more fun than laddering alone in your room. PC Bangs playing a team game while you yell and scream at your real life team mates is 10,000X more fun.
My most fun SC2 moments were 2v2s in a PC Bang with 3 other real life people. 1v1 Laddering alone is decent fun in my room is OK decent fun. Its nothing compared to yelling and screaming at a PC Bang.
On April 11 2024 21:25 Hider wrote:Correlation != causation. People complain when they lose. In 1v1's its about balance.Are you seriously attempting to make the claim that the only or primary reason MOBA's are more popular than RTS is because you can blame your teammates?
I would claim it is one of the biggest reasons yeah.
psychology matters, a TON. And the ability to deflect blame is an absolutely enormous boost in play-ability and enjoyment for MOBA's compared to 1v1 RTS.
If you want to draw in MOBA players design a RTS that from the ground up is build around co-op. All other things being equal I would expect a 5v5 RTS to perform much better then a 1v1 RTS purely based on the ability to shift blame away from yourself.
(also remember that the audience you have here, and in other places online, are absolutely not representative of the common player. Getting Gud and taking ownership of your own abilities and failings is not a thing for the majority of players, if they get confronted with a wall of their own limitations they quit and look for something else.
There is really just one prominent reason why team based gameplay has risen over 1v1 and that's that the design of team based games require less skill to get a good feeling out of them and so it is just open to a much larger playerbase. Don't get me wrong the skill ceiling is just as high as 1v1, but 1v1 games seem to always be designed to require a lot more skill to get going while team games have a much easier to reach floor. It's not just about being able to lean on your team to sometimes carry you but as some posters above mentioned mechanics in team games are often designed so that some things are taken care of for you while for some reason in 1v1 games the devs have always decided to have the player take care of everything(Not claiming this is a bad thing either, some people like to just have more to do).
Nony: "this is not a next gen RTS". Nony: "if this game survives". NOny:"have you heard about their financial situation" Nony baited Artosis many times and Artosis never bit. ROFLMAO. Very entertaining talk.
On April 11 2024 23:54 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Nony: "this is not a next gen RTS". Nony: "if this game survives". NOny:"have you heard about their financial situation" Nony baited Artosis many times and Artosis never bit. ROFLMAO. Very entertaining talk.
Misrepresenting the conversation again by cherry-picking quotes out of context. This time it is a 1.5 hours of a video, so it is more likely that people won't watch it. Again, smart. Maybe not as smart since NonY frequents these forums. Here is one of the first things NonY said:
If you want to make another RTS that's like StarCraft or like StarCraft 2 really cause we have gone pretty far away from Brood War but in the lineage of Brood War but similar to StarCraft 2, I think they have achieved that and I don't think that is easy to do so like they're starting from a really good spot.
EPT
