The future of RTS games - Page 46

On May 26 2014 14:36 Xiphos wrote:


They really should make SC2's graphic more clear, can't distinguish anything apart.

On May 26 2014 14:38 Thieving Magpie wrote:


I didn't realize marines and siege tanks looked too alike...

On May 26 2014 14:56 Thrillz wrote:


Hey I can't tell the difference huehuehue. But actually there is some validity to this, SC2 graphics feel cluttered and too much. That's why everyone plays on lower graphics settings (but the ingame/obs that we get to see is generally set to higher graphics setting). Big fights on max graphics, on certain maps, with creep. etc. look like messy blobs. This wasn't a problem with BW because it was 2D and had that "worn out" graphics look. Obviously graphics isn't the reason why SC2 is having such difficulties.

On May 26 2014 15:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:


That's really more to do with how tightly units are packed and how zoomed in the screen is. It has less to do with the graphics and more to do with the presentation.

On May 26 2014 15:37 Big J wrote:


Apart from this kind of fuck
+ Show Spoiler +caused by the obnoxious air behaviour and colossi to share space I don't have any problems in SC2. Compared to Subcom and many other RTS games, or the flashing lights that is the whole Moba genre, I think starcraft does a very clean job.

On May 26 2014 17:21 Thrillz wrote:


Deathball vs Deathball battles- where you don't know the fuck is going on and who's going to win.

On May 26 2014 14:29 Plansix wrote:

Yeah, they should really do a graphics update for BW, that game looks like trash.

On May 26 2014 14:36 Xiphos wrote:


They really should make SC2's graphic more clear, can't distinguish anything apart.

On May 27 2014 06:33 DoubleReed wrote:
Sure, jeeeohn, but basic macro mechanics are different between zerg, terran, and protoss as well. It's not like basic worker units function the same in Starcraft 2. Hell, even making units is completely different from race to race in SC2 with warp gates and larva.

I like Warcraft 3. I think it's fun, and I think the flavor comes through the abilities and heroes. That's cool. But that's why it's Warcraft and not Starcraft. It's why they originally were going to have five races in Warcraft 3 (they planned to have the Demons be playable) but they were always going to keep the original three in Starcraft 2. Blizzard was going for different ideas.

As far as map control, I think this is what they addressed most of all in HotS. Swarm hosts, widow mines, and uhh... something something Protoss were basically all about this idea of locking down specific areas of the map.

On May 26 2014 12:37 Plansix wrote:

Never argue with jimmy. He will take you places you don't want to go and you won't know how you got there.

On May 28 2014 00:42 LaLuSh wrote:
Yea I don't particularly buy the argument that economy management makes any significant difference.

The argument seems to be: the people who play hundreds or thousands of hours of these RTS's don't have to spend 90% of their time improving their macro, but can instead focus 90% on micro -- which happens to be inherently fun, inherently stress-free and thus automatically appeals to casuals?
I just don't buy it.

On May 28 2014 00:42 LaLuSh wrote:
which happens to be inherently fun, inherently stress-free and thus automatically appeals to casuals?

On May 28 2014 00:42 LaLuSh wrote:
Yea I don't particularly buy the argument that economy management makes any significant difference.

The argument seems to be: the people who play hundreds or thousands of hours of these RTS's don't have to spend 90% of their time improving their macro, but can instead focus 90% on micro -- which happens to be inherently fun, inherently stress-free and thus automatically appeals to casuals?

I just don't buy it.

Games like that have existed before. How big a part would you say economy management is in Warcraft 3? Did the people who spent thousands of hours playing such a micro-focused game think it any less intense to focus 90% of their time on improving their micro for any slight competitive advantage?

Traditional RTS games that are designed to be replayable will always suffer from this problem. For a classical RTS to have any sort of long term replayability value, there has to exist a potential for improvement -- whether it be in the sphere of macro or micro management. And wherever there exists a potential for improvement -- the intensity and stressfulness of macro versus micro will naturally be shifted from one sector to the other depending on their relative degrees of importance. Otherwise: what the hell is the point of playing more than ~40 hours of a classical RTS game if there is zero potential for improvement and zero variation in gameplay?

Classical RTS games have more things in similar than a change in economy management could ever hope to buckle or bend. I think you have to find other creative ways of inserting meaning and replayability value to RTS games (whether they are economy or micro focused doesn't matter).

One of the best ways I can think of is to redefine the genre through some massive online co-operative campaign style RTS gaming. That would make the replayability of RTS games partly content driven and partly replayability driven like is the case with many MMORPGs. World of Warcraft would not have retained as many of its customers without constantly pumping out new content. New quests, raids, bosses, all in the style of RTS campaigns -- with the difference that they are online and co-op driven.

You cannot blame the average consumer for finding no compelling reason to continue playing an RTS game after having run through all the traditional "content" of the RTS game. In olden times these average consumers used to have their thirst for content quenched by Use Map Settings and Arcade maps. Not so much anymore.

As long as RTS games are kept being made in the same vein as they always have nothing is going to change. You may argue about fun micro vs boring economy management all you want. Makes no appreciable difference one way or the other.

On May 28 2014 01:13 Big J wrote:



Nope, micro is not inherently fun. But it can be designed to be fun, that's what MOBAs have been succeding in. DotA took simple hero designes and created a world around them that gave them a lot of stuff to do and many, many small interaction possibilities that sum up to a fun experience in unit control.

I can't speak too much for WC3, I only played it supercasually. But I really liked a lot of the principles of it, just what I didn't like was the economy system. The extremely low supply limit with the upkeep and the fact that expansion play is often nonexistent, so it's really just that one location on the map that you can attack.
You could say that this is exactly what Starcraft does and now I claim I don't want that either, but I guess I have played too much RA3 (or CnC in general) to accept that there isn't a middle ground if you design an economy system that is both cheap and very easy to manage, but forces you to spread over the map.

The fun parts for casual players is always the choice and usage of units. The "woaaaa, look what my badass Superwalker just did to your infantry line". But in Starcraft, if you let any silver player play against someone who has only just played for a week, that guy is not even going to get to his Superwalker. The mechanical demands but more so the demands in attention of executing a simple build order is preventing you from going to any point in the game where you can have what you expected to have in the game as a beginner.

So any player that wants to play RTS, but doesn't want to spend hours to be competitive in silver league - even more that does not want to play "the one standard way" but rather wants to build bases and units and eventually watch and command a few battles - is repelled from the way your skill improves in Starcraft. That is by mechanics and build-order grinding. A singleplayer like basebuilding experience at which RTS is horrible as it lacks complexity compared to the extreme depths of round based strategy games or economy simulators. But you still have to play that part over and over again, which is pretty boring if you don't play for the competitivness.
But that's the major group of people that you want to attract with RTS - kind of the original idea of the genre -, every other group of people pales in comparison.