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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. |
On May 16 2014 13:50 Eliezar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 13:42 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 07:39 Laertes wrote:On May 16 2014 03:18 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 02:54 Laertes wrote:On May 15 2014 23:06 ETisME wrote:On May 15 2014 22:22 Laertes wrote:On May 14 2014 23:25 ETisME wrote:On May 14 2014 22:29 Incognoto wrote:
etisme, assuming that someone out of the blue just comes out with a completely new RTS, would you say that this RTS would be a flop? It wouldn't sell and people wouldn't play it for longer than maybe a year? This would be the case because there aren't enough people interested in RTS or because SC2 is just better than this new RTS, so people would just stick to SC2? well I can't really make any statement, a completely new RTS doesn't necessary will flop, but for there to be a whole new RTS, there must exist a market that looks profitable at the very least, won't you say? I guess what you want to argue about is that it can be just that there is no competition for SC2 and so the RTS scene looks dead? But if there is such a high demand for an alternative to SC2, I am not seeing it, despite how much complains there are. The closest is probably starbow, which has probably the most support a Mod can ever hope for (axiom+TB followers and basetradeTV) and even some of the most popular figureheads in SC2 scene streaming and promoting it but still unable to make any breakthrough in terms of viewership (take away axiom/basetrade TV followers) and even the game itself is lacking in players in general. I believe SC2 serves as a game that cater to traditional standard RTS game and it has taken up most of the market there is there already. But there might still be room for other RTS that are extremely innovative, something like CoH or DoW style, but these games are rare and even when one appear, it doesn't mean the popularity of RTS can go back to its prime years. of cause there can be still rooms for other non-SC style RTS like red alert and AoE but both have failed pretty horribly last time and I highly doubt any company will be willing to invest again anytime soon and prefer to re-release in HD remaster instead The problem is the measurement of playerbase/viewership. There are a number of factors that contribute to Starbow's nicheness. *The game is too hard for the average player, Starcraft 2 does this well but because it designs to the lowest common denominator, it means the high end is comparatively worse than Broodwar. *The Starcraft 2 fanboys don't like it on principle. It got spammed on reddit or something atrociously stupid to hate on it for and now the Starcraft 2 fanboys will downvote it without even bothering to click the link or read the thread. It's disgusting and skews how popular starbow could be. *The lines are drawn in the sand. People think its one or the other, but Starbow could be a great game to play alongside SC2. You can watch starbow when its on and it doesn't mean you are abandoning SC2 or anything like that. If we got a major tournament for Starbow with lots of pro players and a huge prize pool it could draw lots of viewership, as long as its the biggest thing going on at the time. Ultimately there are more but these are the few that really impact things. As far as I know, Artosis and tasteless streaming starbow made it to front page of the starcraft reddit, I don't see it being that hated, it just failed to make enough to actually make a switch or even try it out and stay because they like it. How would you explain starbow reddit being pretty empty then? Or even the starbow tl thread is heavily bumped in order to stay in front page. Like I said, the game already received some of the biggest support a mod can ever hope for. Starbow already has its invitational, showmatch and ladder cups. You can't blame the lack of growth for lack of tournament content either. You have innovation and impact who both are in spot light of gsl, how big of an exposure is that. You have basetradetv who can take a few hundreds or thousand viewers even when khaldor is casting. I tend to think people will choose how to spend their time most efficiently for them and that's how it worked for lol and dota. Some would play both and some would play one or another. But it isn't stopping starbow to grow either. It only makes starbow more of a competition to sc2. I don't want to talk about this anymore anyway, it's only a minor example of my point and going to derail the thread. My point was that there seems to be lacking in a demand for an alternative basic old school rts other than sc2 in the market. I fail to see how talking about this is going to derail the thread. To me it seems like you don't want your ideas challenged, but you were the one to bring up starbow so you have to defend your points. That's how it works. The Starbow Reddit is a poor example because it suffers from a vicious cycle: No one goes there so no one bothers to post there so no one goes there so no one bothers to post there. There are a lot of people who are casually interested in Starbow, but the main limiting factor is how much harder Starbow is then SC2. Noobs really see that they are bad and it bothers them, it hurts them inside. After the invitational the ladder had 30 people queueing at any one time with 109 online each night. That number dropped off because ESL had dropped Starbow mid-february and Starbow was already waning before the invitational. ESL dropped Starbow because the hype was dying down and they equated the hype with the apex, confusing raw viewer numbers with persistent viewer numbers. Finally, the starbow showmatches peaked at 30000, and the maximum prize pool was 150$ and there were only a couple of games. Most of the crowd during those showmatches left in the middle of the TvT(Most people assume mirror matches are bad and prefer non-mirrors instead). And of course Franscar was no match for Innovation, we were hoping he would take a game but honestly it is too hopeful to think that these players who are at best going to beat someone like BeastyQT and at worst going to lose to Avilo(this is only a half joke, he sucks at Starbow as well), would beat a korean BW progamer who at the top of his game was one of the best in the world. Starbow in and of itself is just mediocre. The maps were especially annoying. I guess its okay if you want a change and I have some friends that kept playing it religiously and finally stopped. The one thing I think Starbow did that should have made the Koreans notice was that they truly opened the idea up to having an official mod of the Korean pro scene. They don't like something? Just change it... You didn't like starbow, doesn't mean it was "mediocre. I think SC2 is mediocre, what makes your opinion any more valid than mine? Where does Starbow rate on starcraft mods played? Where does StarCraft 2 rate on RTS purchases in video game history? That's when I just say gg no re And for the record, starbow is mostly just a broodwar hipster type thing. The maps (or at least some) were pretty terrible...like vanilla starcraft season 3 terrible. The balance is quite suspect. I found nothing in it that I would prefer over starcraft 2. The maps did remind me of how bad and racially imbalanced maps in broodwar tended to be. I mean...Boxer mostly won his early tournaments on the back of maps where you could abuse terrain vs the other races with quick drop tech play. So more than just an opinion...I definitely feel like the Starbow guys intentionally wanted to re-create some of the worst parts of Broodwar. There were some interesting ideas they put in, but I definitely felt like they were trying to remove the best parts of starcraft 2 and add in the worst parts of Broodwar. Weird concept.
What are these "best parts of sc2" and "worst parts of BW" you speak of?
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I would really like Riot to come up with their own version of wc3.
I feel that the genre is not so much dying as that the games have just gone to shit.
SC2 has way to many damn flaws. I feel that if a company can really hit some great dynamics of RTS down the genre will become popular again.
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This thread is going nowhere if we can't even agree on the premise of the thread.
So let's settle this!
If the majority thinks that the RTS genre is still a strong and viable market, we can happily close this thread.
If not, we can focus on the important, which is how to bring the market back to life again.
Poll: The RTS market is...declining (160) 67% steady (35) 15% dead (29) 12% exploding (8) 3% growing (7) 3% 239 total votes Your vote: The RTS market is... (Vote): declining
(Vote): dead
(Vote): steady
(Vote): growing
(Vote): exploding
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On May 16 2014 09:10 Caihead wrote:
Well I mean, how realistically could you improve a RTS game beyond the current form and keep the skill level barrier to entry the same or lower, I honestly don't see any innovations that could make RTS games easier to attract a bigger audience while keeping or increasing the strategic depth. Everybody's been trying to either take away aspects of the basic formula (resource gathering, base building, army building, army micro) or reduce the number of controllable unit.
The point is that we want to reduce the skill level and make it more accessible for casuals.
StarCraft can stay as it is as an eSports title.
It is the rest of the market that we are concerned about.
I do think that titles like Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes 2 are the right approaches.
They do have their flaws in game design and monetization though.
The publisher of both titles, THQ, went BANKRUPT eventually.
So we never know if a Dawn of War 2 with WC3 units, focus on team play and free-to-play model wouldn't have become a success.
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On May 16 2014 13:50 Eliezar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 13:42 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 07:39 Laertes wrote:On May 16 2014 03:18 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 02:54 Laertes wrote:On May 15 2014 23:06 ETisME wrote:On May 15 2014 22:22 Laertes wrote:On May 14 2014 23:25 ETisME wrote:On May 14 2014 22:29 Incognoto wrote:
etisme, assuming that someone out of the blue just comes out with a completely new RTS, would you say that this RTS would be a flop? It wouldn't sell and people wouldn't play it for longer than maybe a year? This would be the case because there aren't enough people interested in RTS or because SC2 is just better than this new RTS, so people would just stick to SC2? well I can't really make any statement, a completely new RTS doesn't necessary will flop, but for there to be a whole new RTS, there must exist a market that looks profitable at the very least, won't you say? I guess what you want to argue about is that it can be just that there is no competition for SC2 and so the RTS scene looks dead? But if there is such a high demand for an alternative to SC2, I am not seeing it, despite how much complains there are. The closest is probably starbow, which has probably the most support a Mod can ever hope for (axiom+TB followers and basetradeTV) and even some of the most popular figureheads in SC2 scene streaming and promoting it but still unable to make any breakthrough in terms of viewership (take away axiom/basetrade TV followers) and even the game itself is lacking in players in general. I believe SC2 serves as a game that cater to traditional standard RTS game and it has taken up most of the market there is there already. But there might still be room for other RTS that are extremely innovative, something like CoH or DoW style, but these games are rare and even when one appear, it doesn't mean the popularity of RTS can go back to its prime years. of cause there can be still rooms for other non-SC style RTS like red alert and AoE but both have failed pretty horribly last time and I highly doubt any company will be willing to invest again anytime soon and prefer to re-release in HD remaster instead The problem is the measurement of playerbase/viewership. There are a number of factors that contribute to Starbow's nicheness. *The game is too hard for the average player, Starcraft 2 does this well but because it designs to the lowest common denominator, it means the high end is comparatively worse than Broodwar. *The Starcraft 2 fanboys don't like it on principle. It got spammed on reddit or something atrociously stupid to hate on it for and now the Starcraft 2 fanboys will downvote it without even bothering to click the link or read the thread. It's disgusting and skews how popular starbow could be. *The lines are drawn in the sand. People think its one or the other, but Starbow could be a great game to play alongside SC2. You can watch starbow when its on and it doesn't mean you are abandoning SC2 or anything like that. If we got a major tournament for Starbow with lots of pro players and a huge prize pool it could draw lots of viewership, as long as its the biggest thing going on at the time. Ultimately there are more but these are the few that really impact things. As far as I know, Artosis and tasteless streaming starbow made it to front page of the starcraft reddit, I don't see it being that hated, it just failed to make enough to actually make a switch or even try it out and stay because they like it. How would you explain starbow reddit being pretty empty then? Or even the starbow tl thread is heavily bumped in order to stay in front page. Like I said, the game already received some of the biggest support a mod can ever hope for. Starbow already has its invitational, showmatch and ladder cups. You can't blame the lack of growth for lack of tournament content either. You have innovation and impact who both are in spot light of gsl, how big of an exposure is that. You have basetradetv who can take a few hundreds or thousand viewers even when khaldor is casting. I tend to think people will choose how to spend their time most efficiently for them and that's how it worked for lol and dota. Some would play both and some would play one or another. But it isn't stopping starbow to grow either. It only makes starbow more of a competition to sc2. I don't want to talk about this anymore anyway, it's only a minor example of my point and going to derail the thread. My point was that there seems to be lacking in a demand for an alternative basic old school rts other than sc2 in the market. I fail to see how talking about this is going to derail the thread. To me it seems like you don't want your ideas challenged, but you were the one to bring up starbow so you have to defend your points. That's how it works. The Starbow Reddit is a poor example because it suffers from a vicious cycle: No one goes there so no one bothers to post there so no one goes there so no one bothers to post there. There are a lot of people who are casually interested in Starbow, but the main limiting factor is how much harder Starbow is then SC2. Noobs really see that they are bad and it bothers them, it hurts them inside. After the invitational the ladder had 30 people queueing at any one time with 109 online each night. That number dropped off because ESL had dropped Starbow mid-february and Starbow was already waning before the invitational. ESL dropped Starbow because the hype was dying down and they equated the hype with the apex, confusing raw viewer numbers with persistent viewer numbers. Finally, the starbow showmatches peaked at 30000, and the maximum prize pool was 150$ and there were only a couple of games. Most of the crowd during those showmatches left in the middle of the TvT(Most people assume mirror matches are bad and prefer non-mirrors instead). And of course Franscar was no match for Innovation, we were hoping he would take a game but honestly it is too hopeful to think that these players who are at best going to beat someone like BeastyQT and at worst going to lose to Avilo(this is only a half joke, he sucks at Starbow as well), would beat a korean BW progamer who at the top of his game was one of the best in the world. Starbow in and of itself is just mediocre. The maps were especially annoying. I guess its okay if you want a change and I have some friends that kept playing it religiously and finally stopped. The one thing I think Starbow did that should have made the Koreans notice was that they truly opened the idea up to having an official mod of the Korean pro scene. They don't like something? Just change it... You didn't like starbow, doesn't mean it was "mediocre. I think SC2 is mediocre, what makes your opinion any more valid than mine? Where does Starbow rate on starcraft mods played? Where does StarCraft 2 rate on RTS purchases in video game history? That's when I just say gg no re And for the record, starbow is mostly just a broodwar hipster type thing. The maps (or at least some) were pretty terrible...like vanilla starcraft season 3 terrible. The balance is quite suspect. I found nothing in it that I would prefer over starcraft 2. The maps did remind me of how bad and racially imbalanced maps in broodwar tended to be. I mean...Boxer mostly won his early tournaments on the back of maps where you could abuse terrain vs the other races with quick drop tech play. So more than just an opinion...I definitely feel like the Starbow guys intentionally wanted to re-create some of the worst parts of Broodwar. There were some interesting ideas they put in, but I definitely felt like they were trying to remove the best parts of starcraft 2 and add in the worst parts of Broodwar. Weird concept.
The only thing terrible is your post. You kept pointing out things are "terrible", "bad", "worst" without saying what they are.
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On May 16 2014 13:50 Eliezar wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 13:42 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 07:39 Laertes wrote:On May 16 2014 03:18 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 02:54 Laertes wrote:On May 15 2014 23:06 ETisME wrote:On May 15 2014 22:22 Laertes wrote:On May 14 2014 23:25 ETisME wrote:On May 14 2014 22:29 Incognoto wrote:
etisme, assuming that someone out of the blue just comes out with a completely new RTS, would you say that this RTS would be a flop? It wouldn't sell and people wouldn't play it for longer than maybe a year? This would be the case because there aren't enough people interested in RTS or because SC2 is just better than this new RTS, so people would just stick to SC2? well I can't really make any statement, a completely new RTS doesn't necessary will flop, but for there to be a whole new RTS, there must exist a market that looks profitable at the very least, won't you say? I guess what you want to argue about is that it can be just that there is no competition for SC2 and so the RTS scene looks dead? But if there is such a high demand for an alternative to SC2, I am not seeing it, despite how much complains there are. The closest is probably starbow, which has probably the most support a Mod can ever hope for (axiom+TB followers and basetradeTV) and even some of the most popular figureheads in SC2 scene streaming and promoting it but still unable to make any breakthrough in terms of viewership (take away axiom/basetrade TV followers) and even the game itself is lacking in players in general. I believe SC2 serves as a game that cater to traditional standard RTS game and it has taken up most of the market there is there already. But there might still be room for other RTS that are extremely innovative, something like CoH or DoW style, but these games are rare and even when one appear, it doesn't mean the popularity of RTS can go back to its prime years. of cause there can be still rooms for other non-SC style RTS like red alert and AoE but both have failed pretty horribly last time and I highly doubt any company will be willing to invest again anytime soon and prefer to re-release in HD remaster instead The problem is the measurement of playerbase/viewership. There are a number of factors that contribute to Starbow's nicheness. *The game is too hard for the average player, Starcraft 2 does this well but because it designs to the lowest common denominator, it means the high end is comparatively worse than Broodwar. *The Starcraft 2 fanboys don't like it on principle. It got spammed on reddit or something atrociously stupid to hate on it for and now the Starcraft 2 fanboys will downvote it without even bothering to click the link or read the thread. It's disgusting and skews how popular starbow could be. *The lines are drawn in the sand. People think its one or the other, but Starbow could be a great game to play alongside SC2. You can watch starbow when its on and it doesn't mean you are abandoning SC2 or anything like that. If we got a major tournament for Starbow with lots of pro players and a huge prize pool it could draw lots of viewership, as long as its the biggest thing going on at the time. Ultimately there are more but these are the few that really impact things. As far as I know, Artosis and tasteless streaming starbow made it to front page of the starcraft reddit, I don't see it being that hated, it just failed to make enough to actually make a switch or even try it out and stay because they like it. How would you explain starbow reddit being pretty empty then? Or even the starbow tl thread is heavily bumped in order to stay in front page. Like I said, the game already received some of the biggest support a mod can ever hope for. Starbow already has its invitational, showmatch and ladder cups. You can't blame the lack of growth for lack of tournament content either. You have innovation and impact who both are in spot light of gsl, how big of an exposure is that. You have basetradetv who can take a few hundreds or thousand viewers even when khaldor is casting. I tend to think people will choose how to spend their time most efficiently for them and that's how it worked for lol and dota. Some would play both and some would play one or another. But it isn't stopping starbow to grow either. It only makes starbow more of a competition to sc2. I don't want to talk about this anymore anyway, it's only a minor example of my point and going to derail the thread. My point was that there seems to be lacking in a demand for an alternative basic old school rts other than sc2 in the market. I fail to see how talking about this is going to derail the thread. To me it seems like you don't want your ideas challenged, but you were the one to bring up starbow so you have to defend your points. That's how it works. The Starbow Reddit is a poor example because it suffers from a vicious cycle: No one goes there so no one bothers to post there so no one goes there so no one bothers to post there. There are a lot of people who are casually interested in Starbow, but the main limiting factor is how much harder Starbow is then SC2. Noobs really see that they are bad and it bothers them, it hurts them inside. After the invitational the ladder had 30 people queueing at any one time with 109 online each night. That number dropped off because ESL had dropped Starbow mid-february and Starbow was already waning before the invitational. ESL dropped Starbow because the hype was dying down and they equated the hype with the apex, confusing raw viewer numbers with persistent viewer numbers. Finally, the starbow showmatches peaked at 30000, and the maximum prize pool was 150$ and there were only a couple of games. Most of the crowd during those showmatches left in the middle of the TvT(Most people assume mirror matches are bad and prefer non-mirrors instead). And of course Franscar was no match for Innovation, we were hoping he would take a game but honestly it is too hopeful to think that these players who are at best going to beat someone like BeastyQT and at worst going to lose to Avilo(this is only a half joke, he sucks at Starbow as well), would beat a korean BW progamer who at the top of his game was one of the best in the world. Starbow in and of itself is just mediocre. The maps were especially annoying. I guess its okay if you want a change and I have some friends that kept playing it religiously and finally stopped. The one thing I think Starbow did that should have made the Koreans notice was that they truly opened the idea up to having an official mod of the Korean pro scene. They don't like something? Just change it... You didn't like starbow, doesn't mean it was "mediocre. I think SC2 is mediocre, what makes your opinion any more valid than mine? Where does Starbow rate on starcraft mods played? Where does StarCraft 2 rate on RTS purchases in video game history? That's when I just say gg no re And for the record, starbow is mostly just a broodwar hipster type thing. The maps (or at least some) were pretty terrible...like vanilla starcraft season 3 terrible. The balance is quite suspect. I found nothing in it that I would prefer over starcraft 2. The maps did remind me of how bad and racially imbalanced maps in broodwar tended to be. I mean...Boxer mostly won his early tournaments on the back of maps where you could abuse terrain vs the other races with quick drop tech play. So more than just an opinion...I definitely feel like the Starbow guys intentionally wanted to re-create some of the worst parts of Broodwar. There were some interesting ideas they put in, but I definitely felt like they were trying to remove the best parts of starcraft 2 and add in the worst parts of Broodwar. Weird concept.
... I don't even ....
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On May 16 2014 09:10 Caihead wrote:
Well I mean, how realistically could you improve a RTS game beyond the current form and keep the skill level barrier to entry the same or lower, I honestly don't see any innovations that could make RTS games easier to attract a bigger audience while keeping or increasing the strategic depth. Everybody's been trying to either take away aspects of the basic formula (resource gathering, base building, army building, army micro) or reduce the number of controllable unit.
The core issue of excessive clicking and the game feeling like hard work lies in how we select units.
There has never been a discussion about unit selections in this genre that I know of. But do you really believe that rectangular boxing and singular-unit-selection is the best there can be?
Is double-click (or ctrl-click) selecting all of your units on the screen really the best way to mass select?
Is select-builder-navigate-through-menu-place-building-when-you-have-the-resources really the best way to construct a base? (though that is something lots of games are trying to change)
Most of your clicks in Starcraft go into proper unit selection. Don't you think that there is something fundamentally wrong with how we select units, when everybody is trying to circumvent the core ways to select units and buildings (screenswitching + boxing and clicking) with Control Groups?
I believe the way we select is a core issue of RTS games, that makes it feel like hard work instead of just playing. Now, if there was a magic formula to get rid of those excessive amounts of clicks, I believe someone, somewhere would have found it. But, nevertheless, I believe we are still quite a way away from where we could be, if we used a combination of gamedesign and improved tools. If we could only reduce those clicks by lets say 25%, that would help tremendously.
To give examples what could be played around with:
- Single Selection Click selects multiple units around the target. E.g. all units of the same type that are close to the origin of the selection (but not those 5guys that protect your mineral line that are still on the same screen).
- Amount of different Buildings and Units goes along with the size of the menus (to prevent menu in menu)
- More tasks in the Interface, less selection before ordering a task such as building a building or unit
- Find a use for the the mouse scrollwheel
- Buildings that you require frequently (such as supply depots) are designed as units (like overlords) or addons to build with less placement tasks
- Repetitive Tasks that require a lot of attention, selecting or screenswitching are held to a minimum (such as injecting, muling or chronoboosting) and designed in a way that you can use them from your interface
+ Show Spoiler +
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On May 16 2014 16:48 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 09:10 Caihead wrote:
Well I mean, how realistically could you improve a RTS game beyond the current form and keep the skill level barrier to entry the same or lower, I honestly don't see any innovations that could make RTS games easier to attract a bigger audience while keeping or increasing the strategic depth. Everybody's been trying to either take away aspects of the basic formula (resource gathering, base building, army building, army micro) or reduce the number of controllable unit. The core issue of excessive clicking and the game feeling like hard work lies in how we select units. There has never been a discussion about unit selections in this genre that I know of. But do you really believe that rectangular boxing and singular-unit-selection is the best there can be? Is double-click (or ctrl-click) selecting all of your units on the screen really the best way to mass select? Is select-builder-navigate-through-menu-place-building-when-you-have-the-resources really the best way to construct a base? (though that is something lots of games are trying to change) Most of your clicks in Starcraft go into proper unit selection. Don't you think that there is something fundamentally wrong with how we select units, when everybody is trying to circumvent the core ways to select units and buildings (screenswitching + boxing and clicking) with Control Groups? I believe the way we select is a core issue of RTS games, that makes it feel like hard work instead of just playing. Now, if there was a magic formula to get rid of those excessive amounts of clicks, I believe someone, somewhere would have found it. But, nevertheless, I believe we are still quite a way away from where we could be, if we used a combination of gamedesign and improved tools. If we could only reduce those clicks by lets say 25%, that would help tremendously. To give examples what could be played around with: - Single Selection Click selects multiple units around the target. E.g. all units of the same type that are close to the origin of the selection (but not those 5guys that protect your mineral line that are still on the same screen). - Amount of different Buildings and Units goes along with the size of the menus (to prevent menu in menu) - More tasks in the Interface, less selection before ordering a task such as building a building or unit - Find a use for the the mouse scrollwheel - Buildings that you require frequently (such as supply depots) are designed as units (like overlords) or addons to build with less placement tasks - Repetitive Tasks that require a lot of attention, selecting or screenswitching are held to a minimum (such as injecting, muling or chronoboosting) and designed in a way that you can use them from your interface + Show Spoiler +
This is pretty much how C&C did it, and those games were all about having fun with ridiculous units. I agree that this would take away a lot of the tedium of SC2.
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Northern Ireland23772 Posts
Unit selection isn't that bad with Protoss because the units occupy more space and are big, it's a lot more irritating at times with the other races, especially if you're rusty.
That said I like the mechanical aspect of RTS, perhaps it doesn't appeal to your average casual gamer, but has RTS ever really done that? When I was a youngling not everybody played games, not everyone was hardcore to the max but the average gamer was more willing to do things that were 'hard'. Partly due to UIs not being as developed/explored as well.
This isn't just RTS either, the original X-Wing games were closer to flight sims than their modern counterparts for example
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On May 16 2014 17:31 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 16:48 Big J wrote:On May 16 2014 09:10 Caihead wrote:
Well I mean, how realistically could you improve a RTS game beyond the current form and keep the skill level barrier to entry the same or lower, I honestly don't see any innovations that could make RTS games easier to attract a bigger audience while keeping or increasing the strategic depth. Everybody's been trying to either take away aspects of the basic formula (resource gathering, base building, army building, army micro) or reduce the number of controllable unit. The core issue of excessive clicking and the game feeling like hard work lies in how we select units. There has never been a discussion about unit selections in this genre that I know of. But do you really believe that rectangular boxing and singular-unit-selection is the best there can be? Is double-click (or ctrl-click) selecting all of your units on the screen really the best way to mass select? Is select-builder-navigate-through-menu-place-building-when-you-have-the-resources really the best way to construct a base? (though that is something lots of games are trying to change) Most of your clicks in Starcraft go into proper unit selection. Don't you think that there is something fundamentally wrong with how we select units, when everybody is trying to circumvent the core ways to select units and buildings (screenswitching + boxing and clicking) with Control Groups? I believe the way we select is a core issue of RTS games, that makes it feel like hard work instead of just playing. Now, if there was a magic formula to get rid of those excessive amounts of clicks, I believe someone, somewhere would have found it. But, nevertheless, I believe we are still quite a way away from where we could be, if we used a combination of gamedesign and improved tools. If we could only reduce those clicks by lets say 25%, that would help tremendously. To give examples what could be played around with: - Single Selection Click selects multiple units around the target. E.g. all units of the same type that are close to the origin of the selection (but not those 5guys that protect your mineral line that are still on the same screen). - Amount of different Buildings and Units goes along with the size of the menus (to prevent menu in menu) - More tasks in the Interface, less selection before ordering a task such as building a building or unit - Find a use for the the mouse scrollwheel - Buildings that you require frequently (such as supply depots) are designed as units (like overlords) or addons to build with less placement tasks - Repetitive Tasks that require a lot of attention, selecting or screenswitching are held to a minimum (such as injecting, muling or chronoboosting) and designed in a way that you can use them from your interface + Show Spoiler + This is pretty much how C&C did it, and those games were all about having fun with ridiculous units. I agree that this would take away a lot of the tedium of SC2.
one theme the C&C developers kept reminding its audience of was "economy management that does not feel like a chore".
RA3 and C&C3 both had economy models that allowed you to focus much more attention on fighting with your army and pulling off cool micro.
With SC2 its only people at the top of Diamond and higher who have their Starcraft economy management nailed down.
Personally, I get my account into top Diamond and Low Masters.. start to feel like its to much work.... and then get lazy and just play in lower leagues for shits and giggles. For players who have more natural talent than I do they can get into these levels without much effort at all though. So its just my own experience here. Now, if many feel the same way i do.. then Blizzard has got a problem.
With C&C3 I'd say .. 80% of the player base had economy management nailed down
With RA3 its probably 90%.
When i played RA3 at the best level i could get to ... it felt like a lot less "work" than SC2.
And yet economy management was still important, harassing someone's economy was a valid strategy.
On May 16 2014 14:31 XXXSmOke wrote:
I would really like Riot to come up with their own version of wc3.
this illustrates exactly how the RTS genre is in decline.
the world leader RTS maker is pushing to make a MOBA with a game designer who has spent his entire life making RTS games.
Are the world leader MOBA makers running around trying to figure out how to make "the next great RTS" ?
No, they are not.
From 2000 to 2007, that is the period when studios and big time publishers were constantly trying to come up with "the next great RTS".
That time is passed.
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On May 16 2014 14:57 urboss wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 09:10 Caihead wrote:
Well I mean, how realistically could you improve a RTS game beyond the current form and keep the skill level barrier to entry the same or lower, I honestly don't see any innovations that could make RTS games easier to attract a bigger audience while keeping or increasing the strategic depth. Everybody's been trying to either take away aspects of the basic formula (resource gathering, base building, army building, army micro) or reduce the number of controllable unit. The point is that we want to reduce the skill level and make it more accessible for casuals. StarCraft can stay as it is as an eSports title. It is the rest of the market that we are concerned about. I do think that titles like Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes 2 are the right approaches. They do have their flaws in game design and monetization though. The publisher of both titles, THQ, went BANKRUPT eventually. So we never know if a Dawn of War 2 with WC3 units, focus on team play and free-to-play model wouldn't have become a success.
THQ going bankrupt had nothing to do with RTS games. Thy went bankruptcy due to the creating the Udraw, a tablet for the Wi that flopped. The studio that created both those games, Relic, was bought and is still in buisness. They are creating games and likely are working in dawn of war 3.
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On May 16 2014 23:01 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 14:57 urboss wrote:On May 16 2014 09:10 Caihead wrote:
Well I mean, how realistically could you improve a RTS game beyond the current form and keep the skill level barrier to entry the same or lower, I honestly don't see any innovations that could make RTS games easier to attract a bigger audience while keeping or increasing the strategic depth. Everybody's been trying to either take away aspects of the basic formula (resource gathering, base building, army building, army micro) or reduce the number of controllable unit. The point is that we want to reduce the skill level and make it more accessible for casuals. StarCraft can stay as it is as an eSports title. It is the rest of the market that we are concerned about. I do think that titles like Dawn of War 2 or Company of Heroes 2 are the right approaches. They do have their flaws in game design and monetization though. The publisher of both titles, THQ, went BANKRUPT eventually. So we never know if a Dawn of War 2 with WC3 units, focus on team play and free-to-play model wouldn't have become a success. THQ going bankrupt had nothing to do with RTS games. Thy went bankruptcy due to the creating the Udraw, a tablet for the Wi that flopped. The studio that created both those games, Relic, was bought and is still in buisness. They are creating games and likely are working in dawn of war 3.
o they are?
really?
no they are not.
they are waiting for the BC government to extend their "free money for video game makers" law.
legislation expires in 2015.
if it is not extended they will move to Quebec.
quit talking out of your ass.
there is nothing long term being planned for Relic until their issues with the BC government are resolved.
what Relic is doing is short term stuff until it gets sorted out. namely, a $20 expansion for CoH2.
CoH2 started out at $60 and 6 months later it was $14 on Steam.
Relic is another studio that has greatly slowed down its creation of RTS content since 2007.
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You're overall premise is worth discussing but a lot of your points are weak.
a team based RTS with no heroes. Add some secondary objectives and a sort of fort to prevent too much cheesy early wins with a simplified economy with an emphasis on smaller armies with upgradeable skills and you might have something.
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Relic is owned by Sega, who has bee publishing the total war series(I know Rome 2 was a buggy mess, but the other games were good). CoH 2 was a bit of a let doubt they have dropped the dawn of war series. Relic is hiring, so I am feel safe is saying they are working on new things.
And it's pretty funny when Jimmy tells people not to talk out of their ass. I could never be on your level. If I didn't know better, I would swear you worked for these companies.
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so you are waffling back from 'likely dow3' to 'working on new things'... when we all know they are working on that $20 expansion. nice back tracking.
Relic always has "help wanted" ads out all the time. The studio is smaller than it was 5 years ago.
Relic relies on BC government money. period. end of story.
CoH1 has a bigger player base than CoH2.
On May 17 2014 00:06 Plansix wrote:
And it's pretty funny when Jimmy tells people not to talk out of their ass. I could never be on your level. If I didn't know better, I would swear you worked for these companies.
what because i conclude that when a guy gets promoted to VP i infer they are happy with him 
i guess i missed the Seinfeld episode where Elaine promoted the mail room guy.
all i do is look at their actions and not their PR spin.
i watch several video game genres increase their teams in scope and size... building ever bigger projects.. .while RTS studios lay off staff or go out of business completely.
i watch the CoD dev team climb to 3 separate studios... i watch Skylanders make 238487 million of those plastic things...
and then i see Microsoft and EA have a total of 0 RTS studios while Blizzard assigns Browder to a MOBA and keeps LotV off their title page and says ZERO about Starcraft on the investor call.
Why are they saying ZERO about SC... because there is no new content. why is there no new content? because there is not enough profit to justify new content.
When the makers of LoL and Dota2 start rushing out to build the next great RTS lemme know.
But, i do see the #1 RTS maker falling all over themselves to pump out a MOBA.
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Glad to see you are here to tell us what the internal budgets are for these companies, Jimmy. As I said, they are likely working on dawn of war 3, unless it's another, unannounced game, which I couldn't know the name of. The only thing we know for sure is that isn't now home world.
Or company of heroes 2 sunk them, but I don't think that's true since they were bought by Sega.
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i don't need to see their budgets. i see their content creation levels.
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I am pretty much done arguing with. You mostly see what you want and then make grand claims based on that. Like with blizzard. There was no SC2 on the investor call because they are putting out a D3 expansion, WoW expansion and Heathstone. That is a lot if stuff for one year. Development on LotV likely won't happen until heroes is done. It has nothing to do with RTS games, but that they put out hots last year and it's different games this year.
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On May 16 2014 15:27 Xiphias wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2014 13:50 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 13:42 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 07:39 Laertes wrote:On May 16 2014 03:18 Eliezar wrote:On May 16 2014 02:54 Laertes wrote:On May 15 2014 23:06 ETisME wrote:On May 15 2014 22:22 Laertes wrote:On May 14 2014 23:25 ETisME wrote:On May 14 2014 22:29 Incognoto wrote:
etisme, assuming that someone out of the blue just comes out with a completely new RTS, would you say that this RTS would be a flop? It wouldn't sell and people wouldn't play it for longer than maybe a year? This would be the case because there aren't enough people interested in RTS or because SC2 is just better than this new RTS, so people would just stick to SC2? well I can't really make any statement, a completely new RTS doesn't necessary will flop, but for there to be a whole new RTS, there must exist a market that looks profitable at the very least, won't you say? I guess what you want to argue about is that it can be just that there is no competition for SC2 and so the RTS scene looks dead? But if there is such a high demand for an alternative to SC2, I am not seeing it, despite how much complains there are. The closest is probably starbow, which has probably the most support a Mod can ever hope for (axiom+TB followers and basetradeTV) and even some of the most popular figureheads in SC2 scene streaming and promoting it but still unable to make any breakthrough in terms of viewership (take away axiom/basetrade TV followers) and even the game itself is lacking in players in general. I believe SC2 serves as a game that cater to traditional standard RTS game and it has taken up most of the market there is there already. But there might still be room for other RTS that are extremely innovative, something like CoH or DoW style, but these games are rare and even when one appear, it doesn't mean the popularity of RTS can go back to its prime years. of cause there can be still rooms for other non-SC style RTS like red alert and AoE but both have failed pretty horribly last time and I highly doubt any company will be willing to invest again anytime soon and prefer to re-release in HD remaster instead The problem is the measurement of playerbase/viewership. There are a number of factors that contribute to Starbow's nicheness. *The game is too hard for the average player, Starcraft 2 does this well but because it designs to the lowest common denominator, it means the high end is comparatively worse than Broodwar. *The Starcraft 2 fanboys don't like it on principle. It got spammed on reddit or something atrociously stupid to hate on it for and now the Starcraft 2 fanboys will downvote it without even bothering to click the link or read the thread. It's disgusting and skews how popular starbow could be. *The lines are drawn in the sand. People think its one or the other, but Starbow could be a great game to play alongside SC2. You can watch starbow when its on and it doesn't mean you are abandoning SC2 or anything like that. If we got a major tournament for Starbow with lots of pro players and a huge prize pool it could draw lots of viewership, as long as its the biggest thing going on at the time. Ultimately there are more but these are the few that really impact things. As far as I know, Artosis and tasteless streaming starbow made it to front page of the starcraft reddit, I don't see it being that hated, it just failed to make enough to actually make a switch or even try it out and stay because they like it. How would you explain starbow reddit being pretty empty then? Or even the starbow tl thread is heavily bumped in order to stay in front page. Like I said, the game already received some of the biggest support a mod can ever hope for. Starbow already has its invitational, showmatch and ladder cups. You can't blame the lack of growth for lack of tournament content either. You have innovation and impact who both are in spot light of gsl, how big of an exposure is that. You have basetradetv who can take a few hundreds or thousand viewers even when khaldor is casting. I tend to think people will choose how to spend their time most efficiently for them and that's how it worked for lol and dota. Some would play both and some would play one or another. But it isn't stopping starbow to grow either. It only makes starbow more of a competition to sc2. I don't want to talk about this anymore anyway, it's only a minor example of my point and going to derail the thread. My point was that there seems to be lacking in a demand for an alternative basic old school rts other than sc2 in the market. I fail to see how talking about this is going to derail the thread. To me it seems like you don't want your ideas challenged, but you were the one to bring up starbow so you have to defend your points. That's how it works. The Starbow Reddit is a poor example because it suffers from a vicious cycle: No one goes there so no one bothers to post there so no one goes there so no one bothers to post there. There are a lot of people who are casually interested in Starbow, but the main limiting factor is how much harder Starbow is then SC2. Noobs really see that they are bad and it bothers them, it hurts them inside. After the invitational the ladder had 30 people queueing at any one time with 109 online each night. That number dropped off because ESL had dropped Starbow mid-february and Starbow was already waning before the invitational. ESL dropped Starbow because the hype was dying down and they equated the hype with the apex, confusing raw viewer numbers with persistent viewer numbers. Finally, the starbow showmatches peaked at 30000, and the maximum prize pool was 150$ and there were only a couple of games. Most of the crowd during those showmatches left in the middle of the TvT(Most people assume mirror matches are bad and prefer non-mirrors instead). And of course Franscar was no match for Innovation, we were hoping he would take a game but honestly it is too hopeful to think that these players who are at best going to beat someone like BeastyQT and at worst going to lose to Avilo(this is only a half joke, he sucks at Starbow as well), would beat a korean BW progamer who at the top of his game was one of the best in the world. Starbow in and of itself is just mediocre. The maps were especially annoying. I guess its okay if you want a change and I have some friends that kept playing it religiously and finally stopped. The one thing I think Starbow did that should have made the Koreans notice was that they truly opened the idea up to having an official mod of the Korean pro scene. They don't like something? Just change it... You didn't like starbow, doesn't mean it was "mediocre. I think SC2 is mediocre, what makes your opinion any more valid than mine? Where does Starbow rate on starcraft mods played? Where does StarCraft 2 rate on RTS purchases in video game history? That's when I just say gg no re And for the record, starbow is mostly just a broodwar hipster type thing. The maps (or at least some) were pretty terrible...like vanilla starcraft season 3 terrible. The balance is quite suspect. I found nothing in it that I would prefer over starcraft 2. The maps did remind me of how bad and racially imbalanced maps in broodwar tended to be. I mean...Boxer mostly won his early tournaments on the back of maps where you could abuse terrain vs the other races with quick drop tech play. So more than just an opinion...I definitely feel like the Starbow guys intentionally wanted to re-create some of the worst parts of Broodwar. There were some interesting ideas they put in, but I definitely felt like they were trying to remove the best parts of starcraft 2 and add in the worst parts of Broodwar. Weird concept. ... I don't even ....
Not everyone is going to like your product, you did know that right?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WvFiBXA.jpg)
