EPTThe future of RTS games - Page 19
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Keep "my game is better than yours"-slapfights out of this. If the discussion devolves into simple bashing, this thread will be closed. | ||
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InVerno
258 Posts
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Xiphos
Canada7507 Posts
On May 15 2014 17:02 InVerno wrote: I've saw an hundred of people starting enjoy this game (helped them out with a team), and i saw the same people quitting it after 2years.. this isn't the right samplesize to claim i've the truth in my hands about the "bad things" of this game, but hell no, there're a lot of clichès in this thread.. basically everything involving players "not understanding the deep of this game" or "playing moba cuz now they can shit others" or "because they don't want to challenge" and things like that, imho are just crap. I don't want to explain with a wot this, i'm just saying, players are the clients, blizzard is the producer, if something goes wrong with product, is NEVER a client mistake. And the capslock for never is intended. Bingo. We should expect higher standard from a triple A company instead of giving them excuses. | ||
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Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
On May 15 2014 17:02 InVerno wrote: I've saw an hundred of people starting enjoy this game (helped them out with a team), and i saw the same people quitting it after 2years.. this isn't the right samplesize to claim i've the truth in my hands about the "bad things" of this game, but hell no, there're a lot of clichès in this thread.. basically everything involving players "not understanding the deep of this game" or "playing moba cuz now they can shit others" or "because they don't want to challenge" and things like that, imho are just crap. I don't want to explain with a wot this, i'm just saying, players are the clients, blizzard is the producer, if something goes wrong with product, is NEVER a client mistake. And the capslock for never is intended. Agree with this. Also, the random people giving Blizzard advice on how to monetize games is one of the strangest things i've ever read. Blizzard is famous for 2 things: making extremely polished games and making a shit ton of money out of them. | ||
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urboss
Austria1223 Posts
As many of you have convinced me by now, there are lots of strategic elements in MOBAs. When I say lack of strategic depth, it should read as "lack of strategic depth as compared to StarCraft". The result of units plus buildings leads to a huge decision tree for StarCraft. We have the following problem however: At the SC2 top level most of these strategic possibilities are never explored, since there are so many beaten paths. This leads to the one with the better mechanics being the better gamer. The same is true for chess, where openings have been analysed to death and entire games can end in home preparation. MOBAs don't have this problem, since there are more than 100 heroes each player can choose from, leading to an endless number of possibilities that are impossible to prepare for. We can note that a game is prone to get analysed to death if the starting position is always the same. Chess has found a solution for that, Fischer Random, which works surprisingly well. It basically randomizes the starting position of the pieces. Can we do the same in an RTS? Here are some possibilities: - Randomize the buildings at the start Sometimes you may start without any buildings, other times you may start with 5 cannons and a fleet beacon. The buildings may be placed all over the map so that you will have several places to defend. - Randomize the units at the start Sometimes you may start with 2 SCVs, other times with a full army. Sometimes you may start with a battle cruiser other times you may start with Jimmy Raynor. - Randomize the resources at the start The game will play out very differently if you have 1000 gas / 300 minerals at the start or if you have 700 minerals / 200 gas. You will have to decide on the spot what you are going to build immediately. - Force players to choose "Random" for the race Let Jaedong play Protoss and MC play Zerg. - Randomize the objectives Game A: Defend your engineering bay for 15 min. Game B: Land a nuke on your opponents base Now, I'm aware that the SC2 scene won't ever adapt such changes. The player base has become too rigid for something like that. For a new game in development, these might be things to consider however. It would bring some new excitement into RTS eSports. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On May 15 2014 17:34 urboss wrote: Here are some possibilities: - Randomize the buildings at the start Sometimes you may start without any buildings, other times you may start with 5 cannons and a fleet beacon. The buildings may be placed all over the map so that you will have several places to defend. - Randomize the units at the start Sometimes you may start with 2 SCVs, other times with full army. Sometimes you may start with a battle cruiser other times you may start with Jimmy Raynor. - Randomize the resources at the start The game will play out very differently if you have 1000 gas / 300 minerals at the start or if you have 700 minerals / 200 gas. You will have to decide on the spot what you are going to build immediately. - Force players to choose "Random" for the race Let Jaedong play Protoss and MC play Zerg. - Randomize the objectives Game A: Defend your engineering bay for 15 min. Game B: Land a nuke on your opponents base In SC2 a lot of constellations would plainly be broken. Like anything cloaked or flying at the start can be totally overpowered, even if the opponent gets one unit to counter it, since he would sit with that unit and others at home all the time not to lose. Or vis-verca, your unit gets countered too much. Imo there is a much more elegant solution to this: Players forge their own races from predetermined rules. Of course, as you say, the whole game would have to be built around such a thing from scratch, but same has been done around Starcraft maps and races. E.g. Choose one from each category Basic Infantry: Infantry, Attack Dog, Support Infantry: Medic, Flamethrower, Rocket Trooper Tank: Attack Tank, Siege Tank Light Vehicle: cheetah tank, okto gunner, transporter Artillery: Mortar Trooper, Howitzer Air Support: Heavy Bomber, Top Dog Fighter Special Troops: Commando, Vehicle-X, Dropship Defenses: Flaming Betty, Multifunction Tower, Rocket Station And then this game could introduce more and more units to the categories and monetize this modell similar to how LoL works. So with a free account you get some (somewhat balanced) predetermined constellation of units and then you can unlock/buy more units and every week and you can test 1-2 other units. And like with the MOBAs, it wouldn't matter too much if you had the one or other unit that isn't used too much in proplay, as you could just get a looooot of units that also somewhat overlap in roles (especially in the same categories, what I posted are rather the extremes that you build upon but don't strecht further). And for balance purposes, so that "your deck" doesn't get countered too hard by "his deck" from the beginning, you could do a "choose deck/use deck" before the game actually starts, and then sideboard one unit in and another out, after you have seen his basic constellation. E.g. "Oh, he is using an aggressive infantry build, I guess I should play with a Flamthrower instead of the Rocket Trooper here". | ||
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FFW_Rude
France10201 Posts
Good things : Heroes I will never play a RTS with Heroes. I want to play a RTS, not a RPG. Bad Things : - Lack of strategic depth I hate MOBAs. I really don't like them, but you can't say there is no strategic depths. It's a teamgame, there is strategy, coordination and more. Just like you can't say there is no strategy in CS. Also you can't say "in comparison" since it's not the same kind of game and not the same kind of strategy. Hell, every team sport have strategy, even formula 1 have some. And like all persons that posted here. You describe C&C4 which is the worst RTS i have play in ages (and i play 90% of your RTS list). Look at Point&Click, they kind of died. But they never changed the way it worked and it was really fine. It's bad enough to have action games / RPG with QTE. Maybe what you want is not a RTS but a new type of games that comprise all of the above. Some were good like "ground control" (remember that ?). Again, C&C4 tried to revamp the whole RTS genre and it failed really hard. RTS is about building stuff and kill bases. It would be like an RPG without any talent tree or no dialog (i'm kind of exagerating) | ||
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urboss
Austria1223 Posts
On May 15 2014 18:08 Big J wrote: In SC2 a lot of constellations would plainly be broken. Like anything cloaked or flying at the start can be totally overpowered, even if the opponent gets one unit to counter it, since he would sit with that unit and others at home all the time not to lose. Or vis-verca, your unit gets countered too much. Imo there is a much more elegant solution to this: Players forge their own races from predetermined rules. Of course, as you say, the whole game would have to be built around such a thing from scratch, but same has been done around Starcraft maps and races. E.g. Choose one from each category Basic Infantry: Infantry, Attack Dog, Support Infantry: Medic, Flamethrower, Rocket Trooper Tank: Attack Tank, Siege Tank Light Vehicle: cheetah tank, okto gunner, transporter Artillery: Mortar Trooper, Howitzer Air Support: Heavy Bomber, Top Dog Fighter Special Troops: Commando, Vehicle-X, Dropship Defenses: Flaming Betty, Multifunction Tower, Rocket Station And then this game could introduce more and more units to the categories and monetize this modell similar to how LoL works. So with a free account you get some (somewhat balanced) predetermined constellation of units and then you can unlock/buy more units and every week and you can test 1-2 other units. And like with the MOBAs, it wouldn't matter too much if you had the one or other unit that isn't used too much in proplay, as you could just get a looooot of units that also somewhat overlap in roles (especially in the same categories, what I posted are rather the extremes that you build upon but don't strecht further). And for balance purposes, so that "your deck" doesn't get countered too hard by "his deck" from the beginning, you could do a "choose deck/use deck" before the game actually starts, and then sideboard one unit in and another out, after you have seen his basic constellation. E.g. "Oh, he is using an aggressive infantry build, I guess I should play with a Flamthrower instead of the Rocket Trooper here". I like the idea of forging your own race. It is however going to run into the same problem as Hearthstone with pre-built decks: Everyone's gonna play the exact same deck every time. The other problem is that this is impossible to balance. A game might be won right from the start. To get back to randomizing stuff, it cannot be completely random of course since, as you point out, it would break the game. We would have to define different combinations that work out and then pick from those randomly. | ||
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FFW_Rude
France10201 Posts
But if you want to go int he "build race" like in Master of Orion (or 4X games), you had Earth 21XX and Warzone 2100 and it was really good game (Earth 2150 is the best of them i feel) but it's as urboss said, problems would be you would see exactly the same thing and your "crafting race experience" would be to face everytime the same stuff. | ||
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Xiphos
Canada7507 Posts
On May 15 2014 18:16 urboss wrote: I like the idea of forging your own race. It is however going to run into the same problem as Hearthstone with pre-built decks: Everyone's gonna play the exact same deck every time. The other problem is that this is impossible to balance. A game might be won right from the start. To get back to randomizing stuff, it cannot be completely random of course since, as you point out, it would break the game. We would have to define different combinations that work out and then pick from those randomly. There should be a drawback vs advantage situation where there wouldn't be a cookie cutter build. Every single build you choose should have kink in the armor and it becomes like a puzzle where one player would attempt to find the weakness and then utilizing some of its strength to penetrate through and vice versa. I could totally see this working. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On May 15 2014 18:16 urboss wrote: I like the idea of forging your own race. It is however going to run into the same problem as Hearthstone with pre-built decks: Everyone's gonna play the exact same deck every time. The other problem is that this is impossible to balance. A game might be won right from the start. To get back to randomizing stuff, it cannot be completely random of course since, as you point out, it would break the game. We would have to define different combinations that work out and then pick from those randomly. This is something I hear often when I post that idea. First of, I don't think this has ever been tried with a dedicated balance team behind it. It may require lots of patches early (=a long beta phase) and something like monthly patches later on. But balance problems could also be fixed with addition of a new unit etc. Also, this is right now only 1race. If you keep the game to 1-2races, instead of the 3-4+ races that we usually have in strategy games, it gets a thousand times easier to balance. Like in SC2, there have been only a handful of patches that where really just directed to a unit because it was too good/bad overall. Most other patches were matchupspecific. Also, I think sideboarding 1 unit is an extremely powerful tool to prevent too many completely onesided games. True, it may still not be always balanced, but I think you can get it into a decent corridor. But yeah, deckchoices would of course be part of the strategy then. I don't know exactly how HS tournaments work, but from what I have seen you have different decks that you bring and that you have to go through in a match against another player. I think that could be an interesting way to approach such a game as well. Like, your opening deck may be pretty good against his, but then you would probably face a stronger counterdeck. But that deck also shouldn't be too easy to counter itself, right? So you'd still try to play decks that are somewhat universal. At last, I believe by keeping the metagame in flow with patches and new units, it's going to be very hard to get a strong read on what actually counters what. In WoL it took a loooong time to get to stage in which we somewhat had a clue about all the early game timings, all the midgame compositions and all the ultimate transition paths. The decksystem alone would probably make that very hard to develope too fast. Like, the one time you may be up against an infantry-opponent with a tank transition. The other you may be facing a lot of airplay in the lategame. Or the infantry play may just be strong anyways in the lategame. | ||
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Highways
Australia6103 Posts
On May 14 2014 23:12 Phaenoman wrote: Sc2 is all about mechanics and mindgames... where is the strategy? Not much mechanics tbh. Put everything on one control group and attack move. Sc2 seriously needs BW mechanics and micro for the good of the e-sport. During the BW haydays there was so many highlight vids showing off cool micro and moves. In SC2 there is nothing, because everything is so easy to execute (except for things like marine spilts against banelings). | ||
Destructicon
4713 Posts
On May 15 2014 18:32 Big J wrote: This is something I hear often when I post that idea. First of, I don't think this has ever been tried with a dedicated balance team behind it. It may require lots of patches early (=a long beta phase) and something like monthly patches later on. But balance problems could also be fixed with addition of a new unit etc. Also, this is right now only 1race. If you keep the game to 1-2races, instead of the 3-4+ races that we usually have in strategy games, it gets a thousand times easier to balance. Like in SC2, there have been only a handful of patches that where really just directed to a unit because it was too good/bad overall. Most other patches were matchupspecific. Also, I think sideboarding 1 unit is an extremely powerful tool to prevent too many completely onesided games. True, it may still not be always balanced, but I think you can get it into a decent corridor. But yeah, deckchoices would of course be part of the strategy then. I don't know exactly how HS tournaments work, but from what I have seen you have different decks that you bring and that you have to go through in a match against another player. I think that could be an interesting way to approach such a game as well. Like, your opening deck may be pretty good against his, but then you would probably face a stronger counterdeck. But that deck also shouldn't be too easy to counter itself, right? So you'd still try to play decks that are somewhat universal. At last, I believe by keeping the metagame in flow with patches and new units, it's going to be very hard to get a strong read on what actually counters what. In WoL it took a loooong time to get to stage in which we somewhat had a clue about all the early game timings, all the midgame compositions and all the ultimate transition paths. The decksystem alone would probably make that very hard to develope too fast. Like, the one time you may be up against an infantry-opponent with a tank transition. The other you may be facing a lot of airplay in the lategame. Or the infantry play may just be strong anyways in the lategame. I don't think this can work for RTS games. People would just figure out what the best units are in any given situation and what the best unit combinations are, standardize those and then you'd basically see everyone play the same shit. It took DoTA years to get to the current state it is now with having so many viable heroes and compositions and it still isn't perfect and people are still figuring out stuff all the time until they reach a point of standardization. And DoTA or LoL are only 5 heroes vs 5 heroes interacting at any one time in an RTS you have not only up to 30 different kinds of units but you have many of them and their strengths and weaknesses also change depending on numbers. You also can't keep adding units the same way heroes are added in MoBAs, you run into the critical flaw of having to make each one interesting and appealing enough for people to buy it, which means its going to have to be OP in some way or another compared to the old units, either by doing a specific role really well compared to some old units or fulfilling many different roles more efficiently then some other units. Trying to balance something like that is a fools errant. Also I despise the idea of random starting conditions for RTS games, keep that shit away, we don't need even more RNG. Everyone should start with conditions as close as possible to each other. | ||
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Topdoller
United Kingdom3860 Posts
One thing i detest in SC2 is the massive hard counters in it which kills the game for players learning it. Auto losing games because of defunct units kills re playability eg Hydra v Colossus, and also damage output is simply to fast, so newbies often see their armies evaporate in seconds For an RTS to take off and really dominate it needs:- Interesting units Action from the get-go - Small low damage units to harass on all faction No massive hard counters The ability to micro units to improve their value Macro that's fun and useful Free to play for multi-player SC2 almost made it, but to be honest its simply not “fun” to play its as simply as that | ||
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ShadoWYP
Germany83 Posts
When starcraft 2 got released, there was huge hype about this game. Everyone of my friends bought it, even though they never really played RTS. They played and like 1 or 2 Laddergames, and quit playing cause there was nothing else to do + you feel alone all the time while playing. | ||
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FFW_Rude
France10201 Posts
If it's pay to win, what the point ? I agree to ShadoWYP too. The social aspect of SC2 is still supbar from what was BW. And it's not the game fault but battle.net's fault. Chat channel are crappy and not readable like it was on the old bnet. Hell, even Diablo2 bnet interface was more social than bnet 2.0 is. But that's kind of offtopic. | ||
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ETisME
12387 Posts
On May 15 2014 17:02 InVerno wrote: coming from a business graduate and working in a merchandising company, I can tell you that's not the case at all.I've saw an hundred of people starting enjoy this game (helped them out with a team), and i saw the same people quitting it after 2years.. this isn't the right samplesize to claim i've the truth in my hands about the "bad things" of this game, but hell no, there're a lot of clichès in this thread.. basically everything involving players "not understanding the deep of this game" or "playing moba cuz now they can shit others" or "because they don't want to challenge" and things like that, imho are just crap. I don't want to explain with a wot this, i'm just saying, players are the clients, blizzard is the producer, if something goes wrong with product, is NEVER a client mistake. And the capslock for never is intended. Client can be wrong and quite often is wrong. However the company is to provide a product that can satisfy most clients desire, something that sc2 does well enough. You will always have clients with unrealistic expectations or impossible to please. And what a company do is to take in feedback for reference | ||
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FFW_Rude
France10201 Posts
On May 15 2014 19:38 ETisME wrote: coming from a business graduate and working in a merchandising company, I can tell you that's not the case at all. Client can be wrong and quite often is wrong. However the company is to provide a product that can satisfy most clients desire, something that sc2 does well enough. You will always have clients with unrealistic expectations or impossible to please. And what a company do is to take in feedback for reference You forgot clients that complains all the time, saying your products are shit and that are still buying  We have plenty there | ||
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capu
Finland224 Posts
problems with sc2: - units clump up - hard counters - terrible terrible damage - can't do cool micro moves like in wc3 (path blocking, surrounds..) or not worth it problems with wc3: - expanding too difficult - upkeep mechanic is silly because u are punished for bigger army - macro too simple so basically rts with wc3 unit mechanics and sc2 macro mechanics. =) Heroes.. they could be in it or not, I think they add a lot strategy wise to the maps but are difficult to balance. To people complaining sc2 mechanics too easy: maybe adding the task of harassing & creeping with heroes would add some difficulty while churning out those scvs ^^ | ||
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ETisME
12387 Posts
On May 15 2014 19:43 FFW_Rude wrote: You forgot clients that complains all the time, saying your products are shit and that are still buying We have plenty thereYup haha The level of resemblance is quite amusing, we just gotta learn to live with it. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On May 15 2014 17:02 InVerno wrote: I've saw an hundred of people starting enjoy this game (helped them out with a team), and i saw the same people quitting it after 2years.. this isn't the right samplesize to claim i've the truth in my hands about the "bad things" of this game, but hell no, there're a lot of clichès in this thread.. basically everything involving players "not understanding the deep of this game" or "playing moba cuz now they can shit others" or "because they don't want to challenge" and things like that, imho are just crap. I don't want to explain with a wot this, i'm just saying, players are the clients, blizzard is the producer, if something goes wrong with product, is NEVER a client mistake. And the capslock for never is intended. Didn't you read the balance whine in the Blizzard forums? Is it the producer's mistake that many players consider the game imbalanced while in fact they are just bad? | ||
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