EPTThe future of RTS games - Page 38
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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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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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urboss
Austria1223 Posts
They all have lots of turn-based elements in them. But maybe you are right and the future of RTS lies in a mix of turn-based and realtime strategy. Let Blizzard lay their hands on turn-based strategy! | ||
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lamprey1
Canada919 Posts
On May 21 2014 00:09 Plansix wrote: If I could have DoW's get out on the map and do shit economy with SC2 tightly controled and refined units, I would play the fuck out of that RTS. I also likes the three capture point and ticket system used i dawn of war. What I didn't like is their floaty units that refused to fire when I told them to. i pretty much like SC2 as is. economy management is a bit too much of a chore. but its ok. the only thing better than SC2 would be Red Alert 2 or RA3, bug and glitch free with server support on par with BNet2. Buit, that is never going to happen so there is no point in me dreaming about it. the theme of "economy management that is not a chore" is a great concept of the C&C Universe. its too bad they rarely executed on that promise once EA got ahold of the franchise. Dustin Browder is one of the best RTS designers on the face of god's green earth with both RA2 and SC2 to his credit. The polemicists populating TL.Net are not 1/1000th the game designer Browder is. and even with one of the best RTS games ever made ( SC2 ) and fucking phenomenal support with the very best server back end ever made in the history of hte genre... the game is still in slow decline. if people think there are a dozen Fortune 500 companies lining up to sink $100 million into the genre in the form of a 5 year development cycle followed up by years of Blizzard-level amazing support... they are dreaming in technicolour. wake up RTS fans and enjoy what Blizz is giving us... and support it with CASH. | ||
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Confuse
2238 Posts
RTS is always going to be not quite as mainstream as other games because, simply put, a majority of people don't want to have all the pressure on themselves, where a game like starcraft shines the most. Dota, sports, call of duty, what these have in common is teamplay is the most important part of it. Starcraft, Chess, Tennis, all still games that are doing okay, what they have in common is the strength of the individual is where they shine. this is my view i guess; im fine the way things are. I welcome experimentation also BUT I know things focusing on individuals won't be as popular as things focusing on team play, at least thats how I see it. | ||
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urboss
Austria1223 Posts
It was released two weeks ago. http://store.steampowered.com/app/266840/ Age of Empires II HD was released last year: http://store.steampowered.com/app/239550/ | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On May 21 2014 01:10 urboss wrote: Btw, did anyone check out the Age of Mythology: Extended Edition? It was released two weeks ago. http://store.steampowered.com/app/266840/ Age of Empires II HD was released last year: http://store.steampowered.com/app/239550/ Replaying AoM as we speak actually lol I burnt a copy of it when I was in high school and I missed it too much to not buy my own copy. | ||
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Nerski
United States1095 Posts
Static defense eats 1 unit cost. Now your static D must be chosen more carefully as it hinders your available army in your 200/200 cap. This would also allow for some mild ability to strengthen static D to a point, but I'm more for weaker static D as a stop gap measure not as primary defense. Greatly increase or give a separate supply for power units (hero esk units) things like colossus, swarm host, broodlords, siege tanks etc. All those otherwise boring to watch and play with units that slowly creep across a map. Essentially what I'm getting at is put a higher value on more mobile easier to screw up with units that are not great at turtle type behavior and less emphasis on big explosive units that are really boring to watch and play with. It wouldn't in all honesty be hard so much as time consuming to re tailer how SCII works to be more dynamic and have choices matter more through out the game. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On May 21 2014 01:57 Nerski wrote: Your ideas don't work, want to spice up RTS as a genre using SCII as a model do the following. Static defense eats 1 unit cost. Now your static D must be chosen more carefully as it hinders your available army in your 200/200 cap. This would also allow for some mild ability to strengthen static D to a point, but I'm more for weaker static D as a stop gap measure not as primary defense. Greatly increase or give a separate supply for power units (hero esk units) things like colossus, swarm host, broodlords, siege tanks etc. All those otherwise boring to watch and play with units that slowly creep across a map. Essentially what I'm getting at is put a higher value on more mobile easier to screw up with units that are not great at turtle type behavior and less emphasis on big explosive units that are really boring to watch and play with. It wouldn't in all honesty be hard so much as time consuming to re tailer how SCII works to be more dynamic and have choices matter more through out the game. I like the idea of limiting factor for power units. Something like Terran (Fuel), Protoss (Energy), Zerg (Nutrients) | ||
Destructicon
4713 Posts
I also agree that you sort of need a something to limit the power of the aoe units from reaching critical mass. Basically in BW the limiting factor on all aoe units, and why they where able to be so strong, was the interface. Even if you had a full maxed terran army consisting of tanks, goliaths and some science vessels mixed in between it still was a nightmare to control properly. You only had 12 units per group, poor pathfinding and overkill. Obviously you can't bring back that sort of interface, but Blizzard's mistake was in not identifying those problems and not trying to add anything in return. Blizzard did realize that macro in SC2 would become too easy and streamlined compared to BW, due to the improved interface, so they added the current macro mechanics like MULE, Larva and Chrono. I think that first of all AOE units need a redesign. They need to have a lot of damage but they need to overkill. While not a complete problem solver in and of itself overkill greatly helps. It means you can make tons of tanks inneficient by running other units in to absorb damage, droping a unit on a tank line suddenly causes more damage since all tanks will fire and damage each other. The player suddenly needs to micro and manage his tanks a lot more carefully. I have tried to think of other clever design directions like overkill to make aoe units weaker, to give them some palpable weaknesses to exploit, but I haven't come up with anything new. I hope someone does though. | ||
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
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bri9and
United States246 Posts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzog_Zwei This was my favorite RTS as a kid in the early 90s.. Herzog Zwei is a Sega Mega Drive-exclusive game by Technosoft, published in 1989 (released in North America in early 1990). It is an early real-time strategy game, predating the genre-popularizing Dune II.[1][2][3] Herzog Zwei is also considered one of the best two-player Genesis games, combining the arcade-style play of Technosoft's own Thunder Force series with a simple, easy-to-grasp level of strategy. Herzog Zwei (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛɐ̯tsok ˈtsvai]) translates from German to "Duke Two". It is the sequel to Herzog, which was available on the Japanese MSX and PC-8801 personal computers. | ||
Falling
Canada11381 Posts
Now I prefer a more simplistic economy management like Starcraft- 2 resources to keep down and I prefer twitch control units. But Stronghold proves there is a crowd that really likes economy management. You could streamline the economy to get to the army action. Many RTS's have done it. SupCom 2 and Battle for Middle Earth are more build it and leave it continually generating resources rather than having workers collect. That works for some people. Personally, I think you lose dynamic resource harassment. The difference between destroying an immovable resource generator and worker pulls to avoid storms and reaver or lurker drops is night and day and I prefer the latter. But it isn't for everyone. But as for the future of RTS's, needing to hurry up the boring early game... well personally I don't find my build order stays the same beyond 8 workers and the first pylon in PvZ, but w/e. But Blizzard tried one method of getting out of the early game- more starting workers and faster resource collection. The faster resource collection I think creates problems to the overall game that LaLuSh has spelled out before. But after playing around with Warcraft 2 multiplayer the other day, I think there is a fairly easy way to speed up the early game. Just have more starting buildings. Warcraft 2 you started off with 1 worker and you had to build your town centre and a farm before you could even make a second worker. That sucks. There is no real decision making and there is a lot of useless waiting until you can finally start worker production. SC, AoE, and every RTS after had a much better solution, which was to start with you central building and a handful of workers. It is conceivable to simply give everyone a free Gateway/ Barracks/ Spawning pool and one extra supply building on top of the Nexus analog. You would probably have to start with a few military units to properly balance out possible rushes. (No defence and auto 6 pool would suck.) Bam. You have your workers, you have a few military units and you have your first military structure built. We're ready to rock. I think that sucks because it forces gate first (I love/hate forge first builds.) And I like the decision of Zerg's, of how long to delay pool over hatches vs the early rush. You kinda pipe the early game into a certain direction... of course that does make it a little more predictable and perhaps easier to balance the early rushes. Plus there is the issue of structure placement at the beginning of the game. But if people actually think the early game is boring, that's one way I can see speeding things along. (I don't, there's so much scouting to do and I am not very good at reading Zerg.) | ||
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TMG26
Portugal2017 Posts
On May 21 2014 05:55 bri9and wrote: You forgot Herzog Zwei! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzog_Zwei This was my favorite RTS as a kid in the early 90s.. Check out AirMech, it's based on that game. It's a very cool game, but i HATE it's F2P model. I wish every f2p game followed DotA2 or PoE F2P model. | ||
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urboss
Austria1223 Posts
a) No resource collection at all b) Very complex ways of resource collection If you think about it, a game like Age of Mythology was amazing when it came to resource collection: - There were 4 types of resources: food, wood, gold and favor - The resources had to be collected all over a the map, there were no concentrated spots - The villagers often had to be widely spread out to gather resources - This often left them vulnerable to attacks - Each race had completely different ways to gather resources, giving each race different strengths and vulnerabilities StarCraft is kind of a middle thing between no resource collection at all and complex resource collection: - There are only 2 kinds of resources - You start out in a protected area with all your resources in one place - This makes the opening phase very predictable - Resources are spread across the map in known patterns - The way resources are placed enables players to keep their structures close together making it harder to harrass and allowing turtling - You can in 99% of the cases predict which expansion are taken by both players I believe it would make for much more interesting games if StarCraft would either adapt the AoM model of resource collection or ditch resource collection completely. | ||
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
7th Legion Total Annihilation Total Annihilation:Kingdoms Warhammer:Dark Omen Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries Age of Empires Age of Empires 2 Starcraft Battle Realms Netstorm:Islands at War Empire Earth Kingdom Under Fire Warrior Kings Command&Conquer Command&Conquer:Red Alert Command&Conquer:Red Alert 2 I'm sure that I'm forgetting some, but they were absolutely everywhere and most of them were worth at least playing through the campaign. I really haven't seen many interesting ones released in recent times. I can only think of Anno and Total Wars and both of those are pretty meh. | ||
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Falling
Canada11381 Posts
StarCraft is kind of a middle thing between no resource collection at all and complex resource collection: - There are only 2 kinds of resources - You start out in a protected area with all your resources in one place - This makes the opening phase very predictable - Resources are spread across the map in known patterns - The way resources are placed enables players to keep their structures close together making it harder to harrass and allowing turtling - You can in 99% of the cases predict which expansion are taken by both players See to me these are all good things. Except for, I would replace 'predictable' with 'scoutable.' Having concentrated resources in particular area is a great advantage for gameplay... if the game is set up for heavy drop play. AoE or AoM didn't have shuttles or dropships with high powered units that could wipe out worker lines so Starcraft style expansions wouldn't be very interesting. But you lose the cool drop harass in Starcraft if workers are spread across the entire map. Protected expo's are good in game that wants to allow tech builds (assuming Blizzard doesn't just give all the techs for free.) Or allows very macro builds with minimal soldiers that have a hope of holding off early pressure. In essence, there are two extremes as you describe. Starcraft is a middle ground. But the economy in AoM matches the gameplay in AoM and the economy of Starcraft matches the gameplay in Starcraft. I don't think AoM economy is superior, but it works for that particular game. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On May 21 2014 08:38 Falling wrote: See to me these are all good things. Except for, I would replace 'predictable' with 'scoutable.' Having concentrated resources in particular area is a great advantage for gameplay... if the game is set up for heavy drop play. AoE or AoM didn't have shuttles or dropships with high powered units that could wipe out worker lines so Starcraft style expansions wouldn't be very interesting. But you lose the cool drop harass in Starcraft if workers are spread across the entire map. Protected expo's are good in game that wants to allow tech builds (assuming Blizzard doesn't just give all the techs for free.) Or allows very macro builds with minimal soldiers that have a hope of holding off early pressure. In essence, there are too extremes as you describe. Starcraft is a middle ground. But the economy in AoM matches the gameplay in AoM and the economy of Starcraft matches the gameplay in Starcraft. I don't think AoM economy is superior, but it works for that particular game. I don't know much about AoM, but you're wrong in all counts when it comes to AoM. AoM had dropships (Rocs) and the forced spread of workers meant that even when a player was turtling, you would still have 3-4 parts of the map you could harass. Instead of medivacs they used cavalry. That's the main difference. I still like SC's version better, but worker lines die very quickly in Age of Mythology. | ||
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urboss
Austria1223 Posts
In addition, the action focuses on many parts of the map, not only on the home bases. | ||
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Falling
Canada11381 Posts
Now granted, I'm mostly thinking of AoE 2 as that is what I mostly played. AoM I played a only a few times. But now that I think about it. If there were speed shuttles and high templars/ reavers... that would be pretty brutal on the stone/gold miners. I actually think economy management is more complicated in Stronghold. AoE and AoM have lots of resources than Starcraft. But you don't have to worry about processing the resources. There are so many possible resource pile ups- Not enough wheat farms, not enough windmills, not enough bakeries. Very hard to smooth out and stream line the resource collection. | ||
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
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