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Northern Ireland26703 Posts
On August 19 2024 04:38 Gorsameth wrote:
SC was a fluke for sure. That shit wasn't planned and just happened to work out that way
which is not to take away their brilliant work, they made an amazing game. But the success it ended up having and the longevity of it was pure chance.
Not just with SC, I think it’s a general problem when people try to replicate certain successes.
Sometimes lightning strikes neatly into that bottle. It does happen, good luck trying to recreate those conditions.
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On August 19 2024 04:38 Gorsameth wrote:
SC was a fluke for sure. That shit wasn't planned and just happened to work out that way
which is not to take away their brilliant work, they made an amazing game. But the success it ended up having and the longevity of it was pure chance.
no, it was what you get for being first. it was the first diverse race 3 race RTS.
Pacman is one of the worst dot eating maze games ever made. it was first and it was different. it made a cool $1 Billion in less than 1 year and blew away Star Wars.
Contrast this with a very derivative Stormgate and the community's response to it.
On August 19 2024 04:38 Gorsameth wrote:But the success it ended up having and the longevity of it was pure chance.
no, it was earned by Blizzard continuing to support it in ways no other RTS studio supported their games. it was not even close.
Where is the World Builder//Map Maker for RA2? RA2 sold millions.
it'll be interesting to see how long Stormgate is supported. Morten is already doing interviews talking about how they've got lots more coming and the finances to make it happen.
After SC1 Blizzard went on to make WC3 and WoW. None of this was a fluke. Not WoW, not WC2, not WC3, none of it... Blizzard was flat out the best.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
After SC1 Blizzard went on to make WC3 and WoW. None of this was a fluke. Not WoW, not WC2, not WC3, none of it... Blizzard was flat out the best.
Diablo 2 as well, and even SC2 although that was at the end of the golden era (dev 2004-2010).
They picked a genre and built the best game over and over again, and not by slim margins.
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I think fun changed over time too with RTS, with how much people know how to play this genre, and the customers changed too. I think the landscape really changed a lot.
Personally I dropped out of high school trying to brood war professionally when I was not even that good.
For me it was a place I found I can make some original, I enjoyed the mental part of the game, I really enjoyed multi-fronted attack or such, and what was seriously enjoyable was how to counter different units. Brood war had this unique part is that there are just some units giving the right amount be it lurker or siege tank, you can lock down part of the map, and there were lots of strategic depth to it. Games were not as figured out back then, it was just something so cool!
But overtime I hated the game in the highest level, it's a competition of performance and well you can press the key to the fine detail like playing a piano or guitar. This aspect I didn't like it so much. And I think a lot of us has been around for a long time are just analyzing into this really quickly, we are not the norm I suppose, but all the kids and others are in the MOBA genre to get their RTS itch scratched.
I wouldn't say stormgate is a bad RTS, I think it's a failed product in this form/time for the audience it is trying to reach.
I don't feel any WOW factor from the game, but all I felt was trauma of something imbalance.
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Northern Ireland26703 Posts
On August 19 2024 16:25 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote:
I think fun changed over time too with RTS, with how much people know how to play this genre, and the customers changed too. I think the landscape really changed a lot.
Personally I dropped out of high school trying to brood war professionally when I was not even that good.
For me it was a place I found I can make some original, I enjoyed the mental part of the game, I really enjoyed multi-fronted attack or such, and what was seriously enjoyable was how to counter different units. Brood war had this unique part is that there are just some units giving the right amount be it lurker or siege tank, you can lock down part of the map, and there were lots of strategic depth to it. Games were not as figured out back then, it was just something so cool!
But overtime I hated the game in the highest level, it's a competition of performance and well you can press the key to the fine detail like playing a piano or guitar. This aspect I didn't like it so much. And I think a lot of us has been around for a long time are just analyzing into this really quickly, we are not the norm I suppose, but all the kids and others are in the MOBA genre to get their RTS itch scratched.
I wouldn't say stormgate is a bad RTS, I think it's a failed product in this form/time for the audience it is trying to reach.
I don't feel any WOW factor from the game, but all I felt was trauma of something imbalance.
A perhaps heretical opinion but perhaps Brood War effectively ruined those aspects of the experience for RTS games that came after.
It became so fleshed out, laid the groundwork for how RTS games were meant to be properly played. Plus it was the game that ushered in the era of 200-300 APM+ mechanical madness.
That’s not a genie you can put back in the bottle, and it’s something basically every game since has struggled with. Some like SC2 somewhat embraced it and rolled with it, others have tried to dial down the mechanical element in various ways.
I love BW, it’s one of my favourite games ever, but it’s basically forever changed RTS into being a genre of execution being more important than strategy or tactical play.
You could give a complete newbie to RTS a whole bunch of time, give them access to the game in the very first phase and have them put in the hours over months. Chances are, even a decent SC2 diamond player, certainly a decent masters one could come in the early access period, learn a few basics and be beating the newbie almost out of the gate.
There’s always small (or sometimes big) innovations to be found in the genre for sure, but players with a lot of competitive RTS history usually have at least the basic skeleton figured out in weeks these days.
That kind of fun discovery phase does still exist, but it’s way, way shorter, or it requires one to kinda isolate themselves from reading what other players have figured out.
And I think it’s especially pronounced with something like Stormgate, because it’s effectively a homage to StarCraft and Warcraft, played by a lot of really good players of both. It does have cool ideas that are somewhat novel that I do like, but because the core is so similar to what came before it, that ‘discovery phase’ is shortened yet again.
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So you get 2 options to develop: a hardcore (potential Esport) RTS and a casual RTS. There is no middle ground. I mean, there can be, but that's very difficult to execute. You basically need a lightning in a bottle (mechanics, artwork, animation, visibility, balance, campaign, etc. need to be just right) to tap into both playerbases and have them be satisfied.
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I would argue that Overwatch has crazy good overall design. Audio and visual feedback and the attention to detail is awesome in that game.
Also things like no camping (which used to be a problem in old FPS games), good game length, time to kill (besides Widownaker!) makes everything feel good. The worst part of the game to me is the toxicity over voice chat 
It came out in 2016.
I wish Celestial had some form of tier 2 splash, or maybe I'm just missing an option there.
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On August 19 2024 17:01 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 16:25 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote:
I think fun changed over time too with RTS, with how much people know how to play this genre, and the customers changed too. I think the landscape really changed a lot.
Personally I dropped out of high school trying to brood war professionally when I was not even that good.
For me it was a place I found I can make some original, I enjoyed the mental part of the game, I really enjoyed multi-fronted attack or such, and what was seriously enjoyable was how to counter different units. Brood war had this unique part is that there are just some units giving the right amount be it lurker or siege tank, you can lock down part of the map, and there were lots of strategic depth to it. Games were not as figured out back then, it was just something so cool!
But overtime I hated the game in the highest level, it's a competition of performance and well you can press the key to the fine detail like playing a piano or guitar. This aspect I didn't like it so much. And I think a lot of us has been around for a long time are just analyzing into this really quickly, we are not the norm I suppose, but all the kids and others are in the MOBA genre to get their RTS itch scratched.
I wouldn't say stormgate is a bad RTS, I think it's a failed product in this form/time for the audience it is trying to reach.
I don't feel any WOW factor from the game, but all I felt was trauma of something imbalance. A perhaps heretical opinion but perhaps Brood War effectively ruined those aspects of the experience for RTS games that came after. It became so fleshed out, laid the groundwork for how RTS games were meant to be properly played. Plus it was the game that ushered in the era of 200-300 APM+ mechanical madness. That’s not a genie you can put back in the bottle, and it’s something basically every game since has struggled with. Some like SC2 somewhat embraced it and rolled with it, others have tried to dial down the mechanical element in various ways. I love BW, it’s one of my favourite games ever, but it’s basically forever changed RTS into being a genre of execution being more important than strategy or tactical play. You could give a complete newbie to RTS a whole bunch of time, give them access to the game in the very first phase and have them put in the hours over months. Chances are, even a decent SC2 diamond player, certainly a decent masters one could come in the early access period, learn a few basics and be beating the newbie almost out of the gate. There’s always small (or sometimes big) innovations to be found in the genre for sure, but players with a lot of competitive RTS history usually have at least the basic skeleton figured out in weeks these days. That kind of fun discovery phase does still exist, but it’s way, way shorter, or it requires one to kinda isolate themselves from reading what other players have figured out. And I think it’s especially pronounced with something like Stormgate, because it’s effectively a homage to StarCraft and Warcraft, played by a lot of really good players of both. It does have cool ideas that are somewhat novel that I do like, but because the core is so similar to what came before it, that ‘discovery phase’ is shortened yet again.
Heresy detected!
Jokes aside though you could argue this is the case for most genres. If you ve played CS/quake/ut at a high level since the late 1990s (to get a fair comparison to bw playing folks) and a new FPS drops out, you are very likely gonna absolutely smash any noob even if you know very little about the game.
Same for any sport game (fifa, every year), or even the funky nintendo games like mario kart.
Now the differences are for the FPS/moba etc you play in teams so it levels the field somewhat, in that vein i think SG s original idea of a 3v3 as core mode was a good solution. They flunked it (so far) but the concept was sound.
Overwatch with the range of roles and abilities, TF style, also contributed to a better experience for new-ish comers before they removed the fun with fixed roles and then with ow2. The objectives and various maps also somewhat prevented too deep camping 100% of the time as even when you re camping hard defending, you still gotta attack the next round. And there are anti camping abilities. Early overwatch to me was super fun, and i m usually terrible at FPS, but i could go healer and tank and play it effectively as a sort of fast RPG.
Fifa they basically put a pay and grind wall each year.
Nintendo has all their funky "help you if you re struggling" mechanics which also help go around the issues: blue shells and whatever. Those are also not esports of course but popular enough and different enough to warrant a mention.
But most of all the main issue with SG is despite some neat ideas, they were either ditched or poorly implemented, and artwise the game is just bland. But well apparently Tim Morten said they have enough money and a vision to fix a ton of things. I dont take it too much at face value but I guess we ll see
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Northern Ireland26703 Posts
On August 19 2024 22:33 WGT-Baal wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 17:01 WombaT wrote:On August 19 2024 16:25 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote:
I think fun changed over time too with RTS, with how much people know how to play this genre, and the customers changed too. I think the landscape really changed a lot.
Personally I dropped out of high school trying to brood war professionally when I was not even that good.
For me it was a place I found I can make some original, I enjoyed the mental part of the game, I really enjoyed multi-fronted attack or such, and what was seriously enjoyable was how to counter different units. Brood war had this unique part is that there are just some units giving the right amount be it lurker or siege tank, you can lock down part of the map, and there were lots of strategic depth to it. Games were not as figured out back then, it was just something so cool!
But overtime I hated the game in the highest level, it's a competition of performance and well you can press the key to the fine detail like playing a piano or guitar. This aspect I didn't like it so much. And I think a lot of us has been around for a long time are just analyzing into this really quickly, we are not the norm I suppose, but all the kids and others are in the MOBA genre to get their RTS itch scratched.
I wouldn't say stormgate is a bad RTS, I think it's a failed product in this form/time for the audience it is trying to reach.
I don't feel any WOW factor from the game, but all I felt was trauma of something imbalance. A perhaps heretical opinion but perhaps Brood War effectively ruined those aspects of the experience for RTS games that came after. It became so fleshed out, laid the groundwork for how RTS games were meant to be properly played. Plus it was the game that ushered in the era of 200-300 APM+ mechanical madness. That’s not a genie you can put back in the bottle, and it’s something basically every game since has struggled with. Some like SC2 somewhat embraced it and rolled with it, others have tried to dial down the mechanical element in various ways. I love BW, it’s one of my favourite games ever, but it’s basically forever changed RTS into being a genre of execution being more important than strategy or tactical play. You could give a complete newbie to RTS a whole bunch of time, give them access to the game in the very first phase and have them put in the hours over months. Chances are, even a decent SC2 diamond player, certainly a decent masters one could come in the early access period, learn a few basics and be beating the newbie almost out of the gate. There’s always small (or sometimes big) innovations to be found in the genre for sure, but players with a lot of competitive RTS history usually have at least the basic skeleton figured out in weeks these days. That kind of fun discovery phase does still exist, but it’s way, way shorter, or it requires one to kinda isolate themselves from reading what other players have figured out. And I think it’s especially pronounced with something like Stormgate, because it’s effectively a homage to StarCraft and Warcraft, played by a lot of really good players of both. It does have cool ideas that are somewhat novel that I do like, but because the core is so similar to what came before it, that ‘discovery phase’ is shortened yet again. Heresy detected! Jokes aside though you could argue this is the case for most genres. If you ve played CS/quake/ut at a high level since the late 1990s (to get a fair comparison to bw playing folks) and a new FPS drops out, you are very likely gonna absolutely smash any noob even if you know very little about the game. Same for any sport game (fifa, every year), or even the funky nintendo games like mario kart. Now the differences are for the FPS/moba etc you play in teams so it levels the field somewhat, in that vein i think SG s original idea of a 3v3 as core mode was a good solution. They flunked it (so far) but the concept was sound. Overwatch with the range of roles and abilities, TF style, also contributed to a better experience for new-ish comers before they removed the fun with fixed roles and then with ow2. The objectives and various maps also somewhat prevented too deep camping 100% of the time as even when you re camping hard defending, you still gotta attack the next round. And there are anti camping abilities. Early overwatch to me was super fun, and i m usually terrible at FPS, but i could go healer and tank and play it effectively as a sort of fast RPG. Fifa they basically put a pay and grind wall each year. Nintendo has all their funky "help you if you re struggling" mechanics which also help go around the issues: blue shells and whatever. Those are also not esports of course but popular enough and different enough to warrant a mention. But most of all the main issue with SG is despite some neat ideas, they were either ditched or poorly implemented, and artwise the game is just bland. But well apparently Tim Morten said they have enough money and a vision to fix a ton of things. I dont take it too much at face value but I guess we ll see
Aye but few quite like RTS games. If I play a shooter, other mechanics aside I’m expecting shooting to be the main thing, or a racing game getting around a course fastest is the name of that game. Some people will be better at it than me, it’s to be expected.
With RTS well, hey I might suck at first but that’s going to be about coming up with cool strategies and outsmarting my opponents right?
Except it isn’t really. That element is still there of course. But you can have a fine strategic brain and still end up stomped by people with a much worse grasp of that, but who micro or macro better. There’s a reason SC2 had a cottage industry of tutors who frequently used the ‘just build marines, keep your money low and don’t look at your army for more than like a second’ as part of their method, it does work. And I think BW being the phenomenon that it was is kinda to blame for this.
I do broadly agree though, good post indeed!
Veterans being too good definitely did for a revival of the arena shooter in Quake Champions, and if there’s a genre that isn’t RTS I’d love to see a new killer app, it’s that. But part of that problem was that they built the game around hardcore competitive modes. If the game had a ton of modes and lobbies that were more like the old 90s/00s ones, you can still suck and have a good time.
The Unreal Tournament revival could have done it, I’m 100% convinced on this. The envisioned model seemed sound to me, even the pre-alpha build played well. Alas Epic decided to just run with maximising Fortnite returns, totally understandably
In my limited play testing, kids actually think arena shooters are cool as fuck. I introduced kiddo to them and we played some on LAN and he asked ‘cool this game is old though what games are like this now?’ and I had to say basically none. He convinced a friend to play some Quake 1/2 on Gamepass and they enjoyed it too.
There’s a lot to like, and I find it genuinely confusing that nobody’s made an arena shooter really work in this epoch. At this stage genuinely I think Epic doing a game within a game approach (which they’ve done before) and just doing UT within Fortnite is probably the best shot going.
Cool weapons, you can hold 9/10 of them simultaneously? A lot of player freedom mechanically. Being able to build extremely varied maps around certain weapons so there’s a lot of variety? Having a large general FPS population already?
There’s almost zero reasons you can’t make an arena FPS work today
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I can only speak to Quake Live, but for that game, saying that "shooting is the main thing" is like saying that moving units is the main thing in BW. I don't think it's wise to reduce the game in such a manner. And in the racing game example, yeah duh, "getting around the course fastest" is your entire win condition. But in arena shooters, shooting in the sense of aiming is not your win condition. Having more frags at the end of the time limit is, and it's misrepresenting the game to say that this is only about hitting well.
In QL's competitive history (talking about 1v1), the players who dominated the most were generally speaking not the best aimers. At the same time you cannot get to the top without having solid aim, just like you can't compete seriously as a BW zerg if your muta micro is subpar. But like with BW's army-control/positioning, the best players in QL are able to engineer encounters and situations so advantageous to them that it doesn't matter that some opponent may theoretically have a higher LG percentage than they do (while maintaining a strong item rotation).
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You can develop some sort of high game sense, or strategic excellence if you are the top 0.003% of the player base.
And those are equally fun from game to game. There are timing attack in Dota2, CS, Apex Legend(Battle Royale)
There are scouting, information gathering, then abusing your race/character/weapon/ability advantage.
I had far more fun playing dota2 and Apex Legend in recent year than any "RTS" game, because it fills the thirst of skill expression better. And there's a team aspect, being much older than the general gaming population. I enjoy being a "IGL/Leader" to get bunch of hot headed young kid to work with each other, it increases my win percentage.
In some game I thought I would never be good at such as FPS, I spent 3 month last year in Apex Legend and reached top 0.003% on the ranking doing solo queue, I quit when the lobby was filled with pro 3stack and hackers, while I am put with some random gold players that matchmaking decides to give me.
Given my mental state, how it change over time with my bi-polar mental health issue, I've also been clinically depressed sometime in my life, I had been that player that is hard stuck in silver/bronze in league of legend over 2000 games played. But it was fun for me, it was just something I did to waste time on, since life was so painful.
So where am I going with all these seemingly random information about different games?
The fun factor, Apex Legend for example on release, the player base quickly got really high. I earned 2k USD by buying EA stock on release cause I realized how fun it was, I was literally playing it with friends 24/7 for a whole week besides eating and sleeping. And I sold the stock when hacks were running rampant.
Why was RTS so much fun back then?
It was social by default, it was the coolest game people were playing in the PC bangs in China when I was kid. We were like elementary school kids 5th grade at the time, there would be 8 of us goes to a PC bang after school to play on "big game hunter" and we would all turtle to get like a carrier army or something after 1 hour, it was fun, we would be arguing on who's on who's team and stuff, and kid you not, none of us built more workers than how many mineral patch was available, we didn't expand. It wasn't the 1vs1 that draw in the most player base, it was only later when I was older I was running around in the city - Chengdu, China. To find people to play 1vs1 with, literally I would walk in a PC bang, stand behind people and see who might be a good player and I'd challenge them on LAN. I imagine similar what the Korean had experienced around that time 1998~2000ish era.
This was the most fun strategy game out there, it was the most dynamic one. I mean even Red Alert 95 was so much fun in the PC bangs.
At that time, it was just bunch of noobs sitting there building big army waiting for a big battle that no one really know what will to expect.
Later my family moved to the US, I was so hooked to brood war, it was my way to interact with people/friends in China. And not learning English as I was being lazy. But figuring out brood war strategy was fun, there were strategy websites that had articles on how to do certain strategy, there were physical magazines that were giving out strategy.
Fast forward to today, my niece is 16~17 now, she is playing Valorant roughly 9 hours a week, I offered her to get coached by my friend who is a semi-pro in Apex Legend on how to get better at aim, she didn't take the offer, because to them it is a social thing with friend too.
Some of my most memorable gaming moment was with noob IRL friend that plays 5 stack league of legends, or we had this weekly 10 man in house Lan Dota2 in the US during college, there were people with their girl friend, we were running around everyone had fun.
I don't get it with today's RTS developer, strictly speaking you don't need a "Ranked" mode to have a good RTS game, I think ranked is TOXIC in some sense, not everyone is suited to being a winner, not everything in life is worth winning. We all have to devote our time in the area that we care the most about.
Conclusion, I feel like game's biggest draw for me as a kid was to express my personality, to express my creativity. Games now is a bit complicated, depending on what time I am playing the game on, I use it as a diagnostic tool about my personality, my interpersonal skill, how I can become a better communicator, leader. Or I am just fooling around in something, it's a really advanced toy that is suitable for wide range of people/age. To wrap up my rant, I think RTS 1vs1 is a thing in the past, it actually has hard limit on how much you can express your skill and such, the game's complexity is not as high as Dota2 / Apex Legend, and it lacks the social draw and fun factor someone can have with Valorant/CS I suppose. Personally I feel like "Esport/Future RTS" slogan has failed, it was a vague definition of what product they are trying to come up, it is literally trying to take hype investor money in some sense. It is lost on the initial design on where the fun is, and this shows in the product.
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In some way, I wonder if we, ourselves can articulate what we are looking for.
It's like drinking beer, getting drunk, and you may never get the same feeling as the first time you experience that ever.
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Dropping to 1.1k concurrent players.
Wouldn't be long until they drop to pre EA player numbers imo
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On August 20 2024 01:22 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 22:33 WGT-Baal wrote:On August 19 2024 17:01 WombaT wrote:On August 19 2024 16:25 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote:
I think fun changed over time too with RTS, with how much people know how to play this genre, and the customers changed too. I think the landscape really changed a lot.
Personally I dropped out of high school trying to brood war professionally when I was not even that good.
For me it was a place I found I can make some original, I enjoyed the mental part of the game, I really enjoyed multi-fronted attack or such, and what was seriously enjoyable was how to counter different units. Brood war had this unique part is that there are just some units giving the right amount be it lurker or siege tank, you can lock down part of the map, and there were lots of strategic depth to it. Games were not as figured out back then, it was just something so cool!
But overtime I hated the game in the highest level, it's a competition of performance and well you can press the key to the fine detail like playing a piano or guitar. This aspect I didn't like it so much. And I think a lot of us has been around for a long time are just analyzing into this really quickly, we are not the norm I suppose, but all the kids and others are in the MOBA genre to get their RTS itch scratched.
I wouldn't say stormgate is a bad RTS, I think it's a failed product in this form/time for the audience it is trying to reach.
I don't feel any WOW factor from the game, but all I felt was trauma of something imbalance. A perhaps heretical opinion but perhaps Brood War effectively ruined those aspects of the experience for RTS games that came after. It became so fleshed out, laid the groundwork for how RTS games were meant to be properly played. Plus it was the game that ushered in the era of 200-300 APM+ mechanical madness. That’s not a genie you can put back in the bottle, and it’s something basically every game since has struggled with. Some like SC2 somewhat embraced it and rolled with it, others have tried to dial down the mechanical element in various ways. I love BW, it’s one of my favourite games ever, but it’s basically forever changed RTS into being a genre of execution being more important than strategy or tactical play. You could give a complete newbie to RTS a whole bunch of time, give them access to the game in the very first phase and have them put in the hours over months. Chances are, even a decent SC2 diamond player, certainly a decent masters one could come in the early access period, learn a few basics and be beating the newbie almost out of the gate. There’s always small (or sometimes big) innovations to be found in the genre for sure, but players with a lot of competitive RTS history usually have at least the basic skeleton figured out in weeks these days. That kind of fun discovery phase does still exist, but it’s way, way shorter, or it requires one to kinda isolate themselves from reading what other players have figured out. And I think it’s especially pronounced with something like Stormgate, because it’s effectively a homage to StarCraft and Warcraft, played by a lot of really good players of both. It does have cool ideas that are somewhat novel that I do like, but because the core is so similar to what came before it, that ‘discovery phase’ is shortened yet again. Heresy detected! Jokes aside though you could argue this is the case for most genres. If you ve played CS/quake/ut at a high level since the late 1990s (to get a fair comparison to bw playing folks) and a new FPS drops out, you are very likely gonna absolutely smash any noob even if you know very little about the game. Same for any sport game (fifa, every year), or even the funky nintendo games like mario kart. Now the differences are for the FPS/moba etc you play in teams so it levels the field somewhat, in that vein i think SG s original idea of a 3v3 as core mode was a good solution. They flunked it (so far) but the concept was sound. Overwatch with the range of roles and abilities, TF style, also contributed to a better experience for new-ish comers before they removed the fun with fixed roles and then with ow2. The objectives and various maps also somewhat prevented too deep camping 100% of the time as even when you re camping hard defending, you still gotta attack the next round. And there are anti camping abilities. Early overwatch to me was super fun, and i m usually terrible at FPS, but i could go healer and tank and play it effectively as a sort of fast RPG. Fifa they basically put a pay and grind wall each year. Nintendo has all their funky "help you if you re struggling" mechanics which also help go around the issues: blue shells and whatever. Those are also not esports of course but popular enough and different enough to warrant a mention. But most of all the main issue with SG is despite some neat ideas, they were either ditched or poorly implemented, and artwise the game is just bland. But well apparently Tim Morten said they have enough money and a vision to fix a ton of things. I dont take it too much at face value but I guess we ll see Aye but few quite like RTS games. If I play a shooter, other mechanics aside I’m expecting shooting to be the main thing, or a racing game getting around a course fastest is the name of that game. Some people will be better at it than me, it’s to be expected. With RTS well, hey I might suck at first but that’s going to be about coming up with cool strategies and outsmarting my opponents right? Except it isn’t really. That element is still there of course. But you can have a fine strategic brain and still end up stomped by people with a much worse grasp of that, but who micro or macro better. There’s a reason SC2 had a cottage industry of tutors who frequently used the ‘just build marines, keep your money low and don’t look at your army for more than like a second’ as part of their method, it does work. And I think BW being the phenomenon that it was is kinda to blame for this. I do broadly agree though, good post indeed! Veterans being too good definitely did for a revival of the arena shooter in Quake Champions, and if there’s a genre that isn’t RTS I’d love to see a new killer app, it’s that. But part of that problem was that they built the game around hardcore competitive modes. If the game had a ton of modes and lobbies that were more like the old 90s/00s ones, you can still suck and have a good time. The Unreal Tournament revival could have done it, I’m 100% convinced on this. The envisioned model seemed sound to me, even the pre-alpha build played well. Alas Epic decided to just run with maximising Fortnite returns, totally understandably In my limited play testing, kids actually think arena shooters are cool as fuck. I introduced kiddo to them and we played some on LAN and he asked ‘cool this game is old though what games are like this now?’ and I had to say basically none. He convinced a friend to play some Quake 1/2 on Gamepass and they enjoyed it too. There’s a lot to like, and I find it genuinely confusing that nobody’s made an arena shooter really work in this epoch. At this stage genuinely I think Epic doing a game within a game approach (which they’ve done before) and just doing UT within Fortnite is probably the best shot going. Cool weapons, you can hold 9/10 of them simultaneously? A lot of player freedom mechanically. Being able to build extremely varied maps around certain weapons so there’s a lot of variety? Having a large general FPS population already? There’s almost zero reasons you can’t make an arena FPS work today
Unreal tournament was just so much fun, I binge played it as a kid too, like looking at kill count leader board, and just picking up the different weapon and finding ways to abuse them, it was indeed hell lot of fun!
There was this game called archeblade, it was sort of hero/arena shooter from an indie studio, it was really fun. It combined some aspect of fighting game into it. And if you go to the discussion of that game, the official server has been offline/dead for ages, but there are just people begging to have the game online again every year, haha.
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On August 20 2024 14:15 KingzTig wrote:
Dropping to 1.1k concurrent players.
Wouldn't be long until they drop to pre EA player numbers imo
Its a sign but at the same time expected. Pre EA people playing were those invested in or looking for MP right?
Regular people looking for an rts finish the 3 missions in what? An hour or 2? After that, there is nothing for them to do in game. So why keep playing?
Is there any sort of custom map stuff available to play vs the AI? If not, the only people staying are those looking for 1v1.
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On August 20 2024 13:39 PurE)Rabbit-SF wrote:
In some way, I wonder if we, ourselves can articulate what we are looking for.
It's like drinking beer, getting drunk, and you may never get the same feeling as the first time you experience that ever.
it comes with new tech making stuff possible that was not possible before. it happens with every new emerging genre. the buzz of something not possible a few years earlier adds to the excitement.
In 1974 Space Invaders was impossible in an arcade cabinet. In 1978 people went ape-shit over it. The game was $80 USD on the Atari 2600... with inflation we're talking $260 today. Space Invaders made billions. The sprites of the enemies are still used today.
The massive army battles in RTS games of the late 90s were not possible in 1992 on consumer level hardware. People went ape shit over it when it arrived. Whether it was C&C, Starcraft, Age of Empires... people went crazy over it.
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player counts are back below 1000 concurrents :/ currently sitting at 960... i know its late, but i saw this before early access went free to play and people told me to wait for that, now were almost back at the playercount we started at. every day it is trending downwards.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
On August 21 2024 15:21 CicadaSC wrote:
player counts are back below 1000 concurrets :/ currently sitting at 960... i know its late, but i saw this before early access went free to play and people told me to wait for that, now were almost back at the playercount we started at. every day it is trending downwards.
There's not even an acknowledgement let alone ETA for a fix to the co-op games getting stuck so that you have to quit without completing them. It happens constantly, and is a literally gamebreaking issue. A large number of negative reviews cite players quitting because of it. It would be surprising if people did want to keep playing it after the second or third time that they lose 20 minutes of progress to that bug.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2229467965?t=5h15m28s
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Its dead Jim.
It is Artifact all over again. Only missing is mass banning people from the subreddit and doubling down on some hopium like licensing the engine, getting more loans, etc.
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EPT
