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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 19 2014 17:20 urboss wrote:
No, you're right discussions are pretty good so far.
StarCraft 2 is the industry standard, but it is based on a concept that hasn't fundamentally changed since 30 years.
The problem is that whenever people post innovative ideas to transform the genre, the (implied) reply often goes like this:
"This looks nothing like the StarCraft I'm used to.
I'm not gonna play that!
And nobody else will play that either!"
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. A lot of people would play a Starcraft 3, Warcraft 4, Age of Mythology 2, etc. Even more would be interested in a new game that has the same sort of style with a new take. The RTS niche hasn't gone anywhere.
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if u've got $50 million laying around you're more than welcome to be the Executive Producer on any of these games.
Frank Pierce is not paying for another AAA level RTS 
D-Day for RTS at Blizzard occurs when they decide whether or not to hire a separate MOBA Team. If they do not hire a MOBA team then expect 1 RTS every 20 years from Blizzard... if any RTS at all.
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On May 20 2014 02:06 frajen86 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 19 2014 17:42 ejozl wrote:
As a spectator sport I really cannot find anything wrong with SC2, it's a much better experience than the MOBA genres IMO, but it can be tough for a casual with ladder anxiety, no flourishing Arcade system and with team games looked down upon. Can you actually prove the Arcade system is not flourishing? Can anyone (other than Blizzard)?
It seems to be doing fine. Zealot hockey is dope as shit, same with starstrikers. That spaceship game was fun too.
The only thing I know for sure is that people on TL think the arcade is dead. It is unclear if it is or not.
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On May 20 2014 02:57 JimmyJRaynor wrote:if u've got $50 million laying around you're more than welcome to be the Executive Producer on any of these games. Frank Pierce is not paying for another AAA level RTS D-Day for RTS at Blizzard occurs when they decide whether or not to hire a separate MOBA Team. If they do not hire a MOBA team then expect 1 RTS every 20 years from Blizzard... if any RTS at all.
MOBA does not mean guarantee success. There have been some that died along the way. With LOL and Dota 2, it will be interesting to see how Blizzards moba will do in the long run.
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i would not even respond to any one declaring any game "dead".
"dead" is meaningless.
NHL '94 hockey has appeared to be "dead" at least 4 times.
how many active players does NHL '94 have to have so it would be declared "alive" by the TL.Net doomsday mob?
Blizzard made a structure around the Arcade that made getting into Zealot Hockey really easy for me.
They deserve credit for that. Blizzard has done a really nice job with BNet2 and the Arcade.
Let's allow the bread to rise.... let it cook a while before we stomp all over it.
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On May 20 2014 03:01 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2014 02:06 frajen86 wrote:On May 19 2014 17:42 ejozl wrote:
As a spectator sport I really cannot find anything wrong with SC2, it's a much better experience than the MOBA genres IMO, but it can be tough for a casual with ladder anxiety, no flourishing Arcade system and with team games looked down upon. Can you actually prove the Arcade system is not flourishing? Can anyone (other than Blizzard)? It seems to be doing fine. Zealot hockey is dope as shit, same with starstrikers. That spaceship game was fun too. The only thing I know for sure is that people on TL think the arcade is dead. It is unclear if it is or not.
Dead or not, the Arcade isn't SC2.
I didn't realize Arcade was doing well though.
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On May 20 2014 02:02 frajen86 wrote:
...
Instead of a poll asking whether people think the RTS genre is declining... maybe you should be asking... do people think the RTS genre needs to be saved?
Given the popularity of these threads, it might be something that bothers people a little.
As you may have guessed, we are not gonna save the RTS genre with these kind of threads.
That is up to the developers who are subject to the laws of the gaming market.
No game development company is gonna say:
"OMG, The RTS genre is dying, let us quickly publish some titles to save it!"
The AAA companies are basically ruminating 20 year old RTS principles.
They are probably not going to experiment a whole lot with new concepts just to keep the RTS genre going, if they have better opportunities at hand.
If the market speaks against publishing AAA RTS titles then that's gonna be it.
After the reset, it's gonna be back to the Indies and startups to get something done.
Mind however that this is not the 90s anymore.
It's a lot harder to cater to the expectations of the Blizzard-fed crowd as a startup nowadays.
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On May 20 2014 03:22 Incognoto wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2014 03:01 Plansix wrote:On May 20 2014 02:06 frajen86 wrote:On May 19 2014 17:42 ejozl wrote:
As a spectator sport I really cannot find anything wrong with SC2, it's a much better experience than the MOBA genres IMO, but it can be tough for a casual with ladder anxiety, no flourishing Arcade system and with team games looked down upon. Can you actually prove the Arcade system is not flourishing? Can anyone (other than Blizzard)? It seems to be doing fine. Zealot hockey is dope as shit, same with starstrikers. That spaceship game was fun too. The only thing I know for sure is that people on TL think the arcade is dead. It is unclear if it is or not. Dead or not, the Arcade isn't SC2. I didn't realize Arcade was doing well though.
Wasn't there someone from Blizz that essentially said that population wise Campaign only > Arcade > Ladder? (This was true in BW as well)
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On May 20 2014 03:24 urboss wrote:
As you may have guessed, we are not gonna save the RTS genre with these kind of threads.
That is up to the developers who are subject to the laws of the gaming market.
I disagree. Off the top of my head, I can think of quite a few mods or user-created content that greatly contributed to a game's success.
AOE3 came out in 2005, it had its online scene growing dying with the death of Ensemble Studios and the game's balance. Top players and modders got together and made a patch that fixed the two most glaring civ imbalances. In the subsequent months they then released an overhaul which balanced all 14 civs in the game. This patch was amazing and it made every civ viable. This overhaul basically allowed the scene to stay alive until the release of SC2. As of today, Aoe3 isn't really dead, it's merely way less active than it used to be. The kicker is that the prominent figures of the creation of the FanPatch were invited by Microsoft to help develop AOEO. Only one of them went afaik and he worked as a play-tester / consultant.
Starbow is another example of a group of dedicated individuals getting together to basically create a new RTS. I like to think of Starbow as SC 3/2.
This goes out of the RTS scene but Il-2, Cliffs of Dover was a flight simulator that was basically abandoned by its creators, 1C. It was a game that was riddled with bugs and very bad performance issue. People from the flight sim community got together and made their own patches which fixed the bugs and performance issues; they've now started modeling aircraft using historical data and are basically finishing what 1C should have done in the first place.
Then you have 0 A.D., which has been mentioned in this thread before. This was in the works for quite a while and it's basically a fully working game built from scratch. It's in alpha at the moment and has bugs and performance issues, but it's shaping up to be an amazing game.
Tl;dr, the community is amazing when it comes to caring for games even if the game devs aren't there to do the work.
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On May 20 2014 03:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2014 03:22 Incognoto wrote:On May 20 2014 03:01 Plansix wrote:On May 20 2014 02:06 frajen86 wrote:On May 19 2014 17:42 ejozl wrote:
As a spectator sport I really cannot find anything wrong with SC2, it's a much better experience than the MOBA genres IMO, but it can be tough for a casual with ladder anxiety, no flourishing Arcade system and with team games looked down upon. Can you actually prove the Arcade system is not flourishing? Can anyone (other than Blizzard)? It seems to be doing fine. Zealot hockey is dope as shit, same with starstrikers. That spaceship game was fun too. The only thing I know for sure is that people on TL think the arcade is dead. It is unclear if it is or not. Dead or not, the Arcade isn't SC2. I didn't realize Arcade was doing well though. Wasn't there someone from Blizz that essentially said that population wise Campaign only > Arcade > Ladder? (This was true in BW as well)
Pretty much true for SC2. If the game is reasonably popular, it's never hard to get a game together. I played starstrikers a month ago and it only took me a little while to find a game. Same with zealot hockey. I have just learned that TL is not the place to find awesome arcade games. Reddit is better for that. Or YouTube.
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On May 20 2014 03:39 Incognoto wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2014 03:24 urboss wrote:
As you may have guessed, we are not gonna save the RTS genre with these kind of threads.
That is up to the developers who are subject to the laws of the gaming market.
I disagree. Off the top of my head, I can think of quite a few mods or user-created content that greatly contributed to a game's success.
Yeah
There was this UMS game for Starcraft called Aeon of Strife which led to a custom map for Warcraft3 called Defense of the Ancients
oh wait, what happened there...
Anyways. These kind of threads might not "save the RTS genre" on TL... but you know what, maybe on an SC2 map editor forum or something like that, people could take the ideas and make a fun game out of them, at least
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I'm gonna admit something I shouldn't on these boards: I'm tired of putting up with games' bullshit.
I've recently tried to go back and play a bunch of older games that I found really fun when I was younger and more willing to put up with bullshit, and I'm not having near as much fun. First example is Dragon Age: Origins and Baldur's Gate. Both I've played recently, both I've quit after the "tutorial" areas (past Ostagar and Friendly Arm Inn respectively) because I was fucking bored stiff. Both of those games take hours and hours of boring grind and killing the same monsters before you're powerful enough and have enough abilities to employ strategy that makes a difference, and that strategy is where all the fun comes from.
I'm no longer willing to sit through hours and hours of bullshit to get to the "fun part". I want the entire game to be the "fun part". How does this apply to RTSs? Every game you do a build order. Unless it's a rush, it's the same goddamned build order for at least the first 1/4 of the game. The build order/macro is not fun, it's work that allows you to get to the fun part: microing and battling units in a strategic manner. Yes, it makes it harder, but it's not fun hard, it's bullshit hard. It's just remembering a hundred tiny little things you have to do while you're playing a better, more fun game. One concept that this forum never gets (and the reason why I'm going to get flamed) is that hard DOES NOT equal good. Difficulty for difficulty's sake, grind for grind's sake, macro for macro's sake isn't fun, it's a chore that you have to do before you can play the fun part.
The reason why DotA, TDs, Footies, etc. were all more popular than the actual WC3 ladder is because they let you skip the bullshit and go to the fun bit: microing units in strategic combat. DotA/LoL/HotS/etc. only allow you to play 1 unit, which isn't as fun as commanding armies in a SC or WC game, but the options that it gives you in that one unit and the fact you're playing with a team gives you fun complexity rather than bullshit complexity.
And I mean there's a reason why LoL is still kicking DotA 2's ass in playercount, it gets rid of the bullshit complexity. Denies, camp stacking, slowass turn speeds and attack animations, etc. are all bullshit complexity that's only there to make the game more mechanically demanding and have a higher learning curve for no tangible benefit.
The way RTSs need to go is to split the difference between LoL and SC2. Dawn of War really, really tried but suffered from failed execution. If Blizzard went and made a DoW style game, where there was minimal to no base building, units were all powerful and had useful activated abilities, and emphasized micro/strategic combat over macro, it'd revitalize the RTS genre.
The more we move away from bullshit complexity (leveling curves, difficulty for the sake of making simple tasks more difficult, etc.) and towards fun complexity (tons of roughly equal strategic options you have to choose from), the more we make the RTS genre better.
Flame away.
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Sounds like you are just frustrated with the style of game though. Some people like chess, some people like checkers, what really makes one "better" than the other?
If "better" means "easier to sell" well then maybe you are on to something
Personally I like the openings of SC2, I play random and my opening build order is the same for protoss and terran. Build 2 workers. After that it changes. For zerg it's not even that. So yeah it's not the same for the first 1/4 because I don't want it to be the same.
p.s. yes I have gone 6 pool into queen b/c it's a game i bought i can do whatever i want lol... creativity in these games is largely limited only by your imagination, if you don't believe me watch some bronze league heroes
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On May 20 2014 09:25 frajen86 wrote:
Sounds like you are just frustrated with the style of game though. Some people like chess, some people like checkers, what really makes one "better" than the other?
If "better" means "easier to sell" well then maybe you are on to something
Personally I like the openings of SC2, I play random and my opening build order is the same for protoss and terran. Build 2 workers. After that it changes. For zerg it's not even that. So yeah it's not the same for the first 1/4 because I don't want it to be the same.
p.s. yes I have gone 6 pool into queen b/c it's a game i bought i can do whatever i want lol... creativity in these games is largely limited only by your imagination, if you don't believe me watch some bronze league heroes
Checkers has been mathematically solved and Chess is close. Any multiplayer videogame involving micro is infinitely more complex. There's no comparison.
As games get better and better at moving complexity away from bullshit and towards fun, RTS games are stuck in the early 2000s with no innovation to the core formula. That's what needs to happen.
EDIT: When I say there's no comparison, it's because what's fun about video games is having a multitude of strategic options to choose from. There aren't a multitude of strategic options in checkers at all, and Chess has been so refined that there's always a strictly better move from a pure gameplay standpoint, the real grandmasters play the opponent rather than the game. Chess is a strictly better game than Checkerswhen it comes to strategy because there are more options and ways to approach things, but it's been pretty well solved.
Despite how stagnant the MOBA or RTS metas seem, there's still thousands of optimizations that can be made and you can always play a little bit better. There's a mechanical skill ceiling that's far beyond what any human can possibly attain, and it's present in LoL. All the rest of the complexities added on in DoTA, SC2, etc. are there for the sake of being complex. Hell, even some of the stuff in LoL is just there for the sake of being complex, but it's harder to find and much rarer (i.e. the way flash interacts with certain spells differently than other movement abilities). For the record, LoL has a ton of major issues, but if the mechanical and strategic skill ceiling in the game is still far beyond what a human could attain, why the fuck do we need to add more complexity to it?
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Northern Ireland25610 Posts
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On May 20 2014 09:46 deth2munkies wrote:
Checkers has been mathematically solved and Chess is close. Any multiplayer videogame involving micro is infinitely more complex. There's no comparison.
As games get better and better at moving complexity away from bullshit and towards fun, RTS games are stuck in the early 2000s with no innovation to the core formula. That's what needs to happen.
I just picked 2 random games (seriously does it matter that chess is mathematically solved? it's not like anyone you meet on the street to play with is going to know those solutions... most of the people I know don't know any optimal strategy in checkers off-hand either)
The comparison is that just because you (seem to) like one over the other, doesn't make it any "better" beyond your own opinion. Your bullshit is someone else's fun...
Couldn't it be possible that some people don't even like to control entire armies at once? That they prefer to just be "1 character"
I'm not even a hardcore gamer. Let me go theorizing for a second... Diablo and WoW - you can personify a singular entity, 1-to-1 relationship, easy to understand and relate to
Maybe it's just a different kind of person (gamer) that enjoys controlling an army, and maybe that kind of person doesn't exist in large enough quantities to constitute mass appeal.
(in this sense, the F2 button "select entire army" in SC2 is like the greatest thing ever lol)
p.s. I like the ideas for innovation, seems like people could make them happen in the editor for everyone to try out!
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I still play sc2, but I agree with some of the points deth2munkies make. Some games take way too much time investment before it becomes fun or strategically interesting. Especially most RPGs. But that isn't the point. Why does an RTS need to create a demanding mechanical game before you can explore the strategies involved? Why is some information hidden, instead of being out there to use. Quite a few RTS does away with base building, but then they usually do the mistake of simplistic unit design, but hidden game mechanics such as DoW2 and World in Conflict, instead of allowing for that freed up mental processing that is now available to the player.
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On May 20 2014 09:53 Wombat_NI wrote:
Does it though, really?
Every other game genre has evolved. Why not? All this nostalgic bullshit (that I, too, engage in from time to time) gives us rose tinted glasses when looking back at old games. Back then, every game had bullshit complexity everywhere, so we just dealt with it (lives systems, 12 unit selection, non-rebindable hotkeys, hidden information, etc.). We played through the pain and it felt amazing when you actually got to the fun part. Now that we have a better knowledge of what makes a good game, we don't HAVE to have the pain, we can go straight to the fun part and still make it just as mentally challenging.
The streamlining of old concepts is what the whole indie game movement is about. You can find dozens and dozens of what are objectively better Mario, Castlevania, Tohou, etc. games where the gameplay has been refined and the fun things from the older games are still there, the bullshit things are gone, and the difficulty is usually the same or higher, just in different places. If you take off your nostalgia goggles and play them back to back, apart from your muscle memory for the old games, the newer games just feel better to play.
The RTS genre is stuck in the past with an old guard of gamers teaching the new ones the ancient ways instead of the new gamers finding new ways to improve. Hopefully with the indie game revolution and the recent trends in the industry, we'll have the next evolution of the RTS soon.
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On May 20 2014 10:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Why does an RTS need to create a demanding mechanical game before you can explore the strategies involved?
The mechanical aspect of the game only exists because you are probably thinking of the game in a competitive sense. To beat another good player you have to be good at mechanics and strategy.
But, you don't actually have to be good at the mechanics to explore the strategy
If you want to completely avoid the "click-fest" then you might as well go to turn-based strategy games, no?
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Northern Ireland25610 Posts
For me I enjoy the mechanical side of the game and think that's part of the genre's charm, and there are great games in the RTS genre from years gone by without say the macro aspect, but with other additions (WC3 and creep patterns being an example), mechanical discrepancies add some strategic flavour too, if it's super difficult to play a certain way, and one player has the chops to perform this and explore a strategy that is only implementable due to his own prowess, I find that cool.
There are things the genre can definitely expand on and look at, I like what I like though, nostalgia isn't fucking part of it. I've seen a gradual decline in fun in the games I play due to dumbing down across the board, be it in game mechanics, in-game hints ruining any kind of feeling of discovery, or storytelling full of ridiculous amounts of exposition dialogue and string swells to denote emotion. I shall have to delve deeper into indie games and find the good stuff, frankly my time is more and more constrained and games are becoming less and less important to me, and to me its due to a decline in the kind of games I like to play.
Likewise you like what you like, that's fine too. Ideally the two can co-exist in sweet harmony.
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EPT
