Khaldor's thoughts about the future of RTS - Page 12

On February 18 2014 20:33 LaLuSh wrote:
If SC2 had reliable moving-shot micro tricks, I still fear the game pace of SC2 is so fast that there would only be a very narrow window where it would be worth it to utilize this kind of micro. So in that sense I think your argument holds some ground. And the best kind of RTS I think would be one where there were distinct build-up stages where small micro tricks were encouraged, but also fully develoepd stages with huge massive strategic battles.

On February 16 2014 00:04 Big J wrote:
Can't really agree with this. I've played (the old) Dota a lot (back in the days), still I don't really get what is going on in the MOBA battles. Imo to get excited about MOBAs you have to know all the Heroes and spells involved. Like, when I tried to watch LoL, it was just random stuff and effects going off and people randomly dying, since I had no clue what possibilities were there.

In my opinion the main problem of RTS is that it is mechanically and attententionwise too hard. You have to focus on too many places all over the map and you have to grind out all those mechanical training sessions (which is extremely boring). Compared to how easy it is for a player to always stay focused on one screen and control one hero, it is just annoying to have to switch screen, select a worker, tab through a menu and find a place where you want to put down that supply depot. While all you really want to do is run around with your units and have new armies being made. I think for RTS games this has to become a keyfocus if they want to regain popularity amongst players (viewers will follow, since the viewers are 95% recruted from the playerbase): make macromechanics easier or straight out automate parts of them. I know this is an unpopular thought amongst oldschool RTS elitists, but think about what would be if we had even less automatization. Imagine you had to manually mine with your workers (send them to the minerals; send them back home). Of course the skilllevel would improve greatly, but is this fun and does this lead to growth of playerbase? Even elitists would say that this is too much, yet, we draw the line with arbitrary standards that have been created by games in the 1990s like CnC, Warcraft 1-2 and Broodwar. So I ask, is switching screens away from where the battle happens fun? Is spamming keys to build units in the midth of a fight what you want to focus at? Of course, making parts of the game easier may be problematic for competitive play, yet, there are easy ways to make up for that, by making units more potent. Give all units more standard abilities they can do apart from move+attack. E.g. give infantry the ability to run and crawl, and let tanks overrun smaller units if controlled properly. Three dimensional airbattles where you can avoid missiles with loopings and stuff like that! Skilllevel would increase through unit control and tactical usages of their abilities - which is the amazing thing we really like about playing RTS games, not the qeuing of another SCV or the ability to get supply blocked for only 1:15min in a 20min game.

On February 20 2014 05:07 Destructicon wrote:


To be honest, if you look at BW, SC2 and Starbow, you'll quickly come to realize that the fastest speed is really detrimental to RTS games, the faster the game speed the quicker things die and the less reaction time you have to micro, split, focus fire, or really do anything meaningful. It also makes maxed out army fights end in between 5 and 15 seconds sometimes.

So I think what Starbow did was smart when they reduced the attack speed of everything across the board by 40%. However even with that, if deathballing still exists in the game then the effect will only be marginal, since in maxed out fights things are still going to die fast, and armies will still prefer to aggregate together instead of spread out, this leads to my next point.

Yes the pace of the game is also wrong, yes you are right its too easy at times to max and rush to the late game and it feels like you don't have a proper mid game many times. The pace of the game is also tied to economy and to unit design. If you change the economic model to one where the more bases you get the better your economy with a equal number of workers, well that will encourage you to spread out more, but its useless and out of place if units themselves don't function well on their own, and only work in synergy inside a deathball.

Again, there isn't one single change you could apply to SC2 to make it a better game, you need about 3 big ones.

I still think Khaldor touches upon a great point though, I think RTS games could benefit more in general from having units be more micro able, its just that heroes are the most obvious and extreme of those examples, but they aren't the only one. If you watch WoL TvZ you'll notice certain patterns, you can kind of tell how good a game was going for either player not only by the state of his economy, but also by that of his army.

Was the zerg trading efficiently enough that he could mass more mutas? Suddenly the focus was starting to switch to the mutas, how efficient the zerg could be with them, keeping them alive while harassing, doing damage and evading traps.

Then the terran, how was his tank control? Was he positioning his tanks well, was he protecting them properly from muta harass? Was he getting good trades and slowly building up his count?

Yes in some of these situations certain key units, like the tanks and the mutas in this case, became in essence the hero.
BW had a lot more of these interactions though, you had lurkers and tanks, you had science vessels and scourge.

This is why I say SC3 doesn't need hero units, it just needs well designed units that can act as hero units for the purpose of attracting your attention, after that good design and unit interaction is what is supposed to keep you glued to the edge of your seat, watching marines dance back and forth defending tanks, splitting and kiting for their lives against the banes, while tanks try to cull their number as best as possible, all the while droping and still macroing.