The future of RTS games - Page 58

On June 13 2014 21:56 The_Red_Viper wrote:
Can somebody pls link to the right time where they say this about micro?

Grey Goo is a real-time strategy game (RTS for short) with roots in classic strategy mechanics. Utilizing traditional base building as its core, the game aims to reinvent the modern standard of RTS gaming by placing emphasis on tactics over micro-management. By freeing players from having to issue hundreds of orders in a match, each decision is made more valuable and can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

On June 14 2014 02:39 Cheren wrote:
The essence of casual accessibility in RTS is defender's advantage.

Don't believe me? MOBAs are RTS with defender's advantage turned up to 11. Dota has high ground advantage, towers, and towers on the high ground combining both advantages. LoL has super-powered towers or turrets or whatever.

BW obviously had high ground advantage, and on pretty much every popular BW map the main was elevated to turn that into defender's advantage. WC3 didn't always have elevated mains, but your base and/or workers could always assist you in defense, whether it was militia, burrows, NE buildings, or ghouls. AoE I haven't played much of, but I believe you could send your workers into your main base to turn it into essentially a Planetary Fortress.

Now you might say, but Photon Overcharge and Force Fields suck, and they're defender's advantage! True, but one, FF is also an offensive spell, and two, both are bandaid fixes for one of Protoss' macro mechanics, warp gate, only giving an advantage to an offensive Protoss. This is as opposed to mules and injects which benefit both offensive and defensive players.

Want to make SC2 more casual friendly? Add some sort of high ground advantage that's not vision related (doesn't have to be an RNG miss chance) and remove warp gate. (add another protoss mechanic or buff chrono boost)

On June 13 2014 22:28 Big J wrote:


Well, the term micromanagment originates from managing a firms details and could very well be understood as "how you manage your economy". I'm not familiar how and whether the term is being used outside of starcraft in the RTS world. But knowing the term before starcraft, it did indeed not make too much sense in the beginning that you would call things like the queuing of singular units macromanagment, when it is actually just managing details.
Nevertheless, since Starcraft is the one and only real big RTS games currently, it would make senae to use the same words in the same sense

On June 14 2014 07:36 Thieving Magpie wrote:


By definition, micromanagement is controlling/microing small scale things while macromanagement is controlling/microing large scale things.

In business, macromanagement is when your boss sends your team a memo telling you the release date is ______. Micromanagment is when he fucking calls the individual engineer and tells him how to code.

The same is true in an RTS.

Micromanagement is telling each barracks it needs to make a unit. Macromanagement is when you decide you can afford X barracks on Y expansions.

On June 14 2014 07:52 DoubleReed wrote:


Well generally in Starcraft jargon "micro" refers to unit/army control while "macro" refers to economy/base control. Both of those would be micromanaging in colloquial speak.

A more textbook example of micromanagement is something like the Civilization series, where you can adjust every little thing about your cities. You can tweak and adjust citizens and where people are farming or whatever.

If anything, in Starcraft we don't really talk about "Macromanagement" except maybe when we refer to somebody's overarching strategy. But when a person says "that dude has better macro than me" that's just referring to his economy/base control.

On June 14 2014 08:11 Thieving Magpie wrote:


I never realized this... I always thought "macro better" meant that the overall process and build was efficient and that the only way to macro well was with good enough micro to actually get all the pieces moving.

I never realized people meant how often the clicked buildings...

On June 14 2014 08:11 Thieving Magpie wrote:


I never realized this... I always thought "macro better" meant that the overall process and build was efficient and that the only way to macro well was with good enough micro to actually get all the pieces moving.

I never realized people meant how often the clicked buildings...

On June 14 2014 08:32 DoubleReed wrote:


I hardly think you can refer to base control as "clicking on buildings"...

I mean making your build efficient requires a great deal of timing, speed, and mechanics.

Besides, most people just use hotkeys for buildings. Who clicks on buildings?

On June 14 2014 08:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:


And most people use hotkeys instead of reselecting their army everytime.

I just always thought hitting hotkeys to get pixels on the screen to do what you wanted was micro, and macro was the overall direction all that clicking was heading toward.

A "micro" player, in my mind, was someone who was very good at performing starcraft. A "macro" player was someone who would direct all that micro towards a cohesive goal.

On June 14 2014 10:11 ETisME wrote:
http://www.mweb.co.za/games/ViewNewsArticle/tabid/2549/Article/11329/League-of-Legends-vs-Dota-2-A-comparison-of-titanic-proportions.aspx

what's the peak viewership/concurrent players stats etc for BW?

The moba scene is huge enough to have two of the biggest esport games ever to be successful, still growing in every aspect and consistently.
This is called macro environment.

On June 14 2014 10:40 Xiphos wrote:


Congratz to them!

Now do you have any idea on how to re-establish RTS games as the number 1 professionally played video game?

We should all confluence together to bring out marketing ideas, design ideas, and community involvement idea to compete in this industry.

On June 14 2014 10:59 ETisME wrote:

any reason why we need to re-establish it as number 1 professionally played video game?
Do you see FPS scene all freaking out because they are not number 1 professionally played video game?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-12-this-is-how-big-league-of-legends-is
I don't see the comments people are crying "shit my game is not top game any more and we need to go back to be number 1 again"

You might be somehow convinced that the RTS scene could be as big as MOBA scene or the amount of audience it had X years ago, I would suggest you to reconsider that.
Companies and publisher studies the market size and clearly they aren't as optimistic as you are.

On June 14 2014 11:04 Xiphos wrote:


The market change, it is time to adopt along with it.

As long as you adopt properly to the situation with better/more appropriate selling models, game modes/features, there is no reason why RTS can't be the number 1 professionally played video game anymore.

See this is why we need to improve ourselves, we won't ever improve our believe genre with such defeatist attitude. So the RTS community shouldn't just sit around idly thinking about the dire situation of this moment but rather what could be done in the future to improve the circumstance.

On June 14 2014 11:24 ETisME wrote:

There is a big difference between improving to make RTS a bigger genre again and number 1 professionally played video game.

The biggest reason why RTS can't be a "number 1 professionally played video game" again is because the current MOBA is what the market trend is liking.

Adapting doesn't mean RTS scene will achieve the same success.
Adapting doesn't mean RTS has to sacrifice its identity to grab some markets from MOBA.

Even MOBA has plenty of rooms for adapting and companies are searching for other ways to explore the market segments such as blizzard HOTS.

Instead of having unrealistic expectation and over simplified mindset, we should be focusing on improving the games.
Not to achieve number 1 whatever.
That is some idiotic pride because no one cares if it is "number 1 professionally played video game" if the game is not fun; not enjoyable to watch; low viewership..

Let alone you first even need to show there is still a huge market waiting in the RTS scene for business to explore, after SC2 is taken in consideration.
The unhappy RTS community , such as yourself, is not big enough for the business to dig into for the untapped audience

For there to be even a consideration of what the ideal modern RTS is, there must exist a big enough demand for it.

Otherwise it's just a brunch of people listing out XYZ would make a perfect RTS and how everyone surely will like it and crying out why there is no company developing a new RTS game with all this list, or why the new RTS is not doing as well as it should etc.

On June 14 2014 11:55 Xiphos wrote:


Okay that's a contradictory statement. By improving the game = more fun = more viewership = climbing the ladder.

So yeah that isn't detracting from what was aforementioned in the post.

We should really look for what the MOBA companies did right in terms of managing their professional scene.

For instance, Valve didn't get involved nearly as much as Blizzard did with all their WCSs. Valve only hosted the International, which is now btw sponsored majorly by the fans.

What Valve and Riot did in their game that attracted a huge audience in the first place have ofc something to do with how the game is designed to maximized the "fun factor" and it clearly showed that how the current SC2 scene is organized competitively, it isn't as "social" as what Riot and Valve did and thus handicapping the RTS viewership.

The key is to figure what Valve + Riot did right in their approach in their game and imitate their overall strategies in order to formulate a strong foundation so that military commander simulation games can become the number one professionally played video game again.

It isn't to make the "perfect RTS" game but rather listing up features and ideas learned from Riot and Valve in order to make the "next best thing". So we need to apply the formula from MOBA companies to real time military commander simulation games.

On June 14 2014 12:33 ETisME wrote:

Of cause that sentence is contradicting, because it is meant to show your goal is completely irrelevant.

Why would you aim to be number 1 whatever when the RTS scene is small enough as it is? Isn't the main purpose is to make the game fun and attract players if there is any more players to attract.

Look at all your arguments again, everything is based upon how to make it being a number 1 professionally played video game.
It makes no difference whether it is number 2 or 3 or even 50.
It's about maximizing the RTS market and the RTS market is smaller than the MOBA one currently for certain.

the public forum and public chat are horrible in LoL, you can search about it.
The social factor all comes with the huge player base.

Your post is proving my point exactly.
You are blaming on the RTS viewership/scene on companies decisions and how it makes RTS scene smaller than what it should be.
You are just listing XYZ.
You are already blaming it on other factors.

If this was in FPS genre, BF4 for example which wasn't very liked, people went back to BF3 or another FPS all together, and that is because there is a demand for it.
Or diablo 3 vanilla, people went to torchlight and path of exile.

On June 14 2014 13:15 Xiphos wrote:


Ofc a big factor on the decrease in RTS viewership/scene is attributed on Blizzard's planning process.

Btw, I have never ceased blaming SC2's design department as that should be public knowledge. Just because I didn't delve into it doesn't mean that I don't advocate for it.

However SC2's marketing department, PR manager and Blizzard's "esport team" could definitely improve on game's other aspect to make it more social and promote more team-based game from the beginning instead of strictly focusing on the 1 vs 1 competitive scene. That's a mistake that can be fixed with LotV promotional changes.

You haven't refuted my point on what Valve is doing right to promote their game via compendium, via the observers and both valve + riot providing more incentive so that the players would enjoy flaunting those fluffs to their friends.

Blizzard ain't doing any of that. Its akin to blaming someone that lift more weights than ya because his gym routine is better than ya.

You are acting that listing X, Y, and Z methods/ways of improving real time military commander simulation games' presence in the professional video gaming industry to be the most absolute abhorrent conduct while it should be utterly what we should explore and analyse.

So this should be a combination of "how the game is designed to maximized the "fun factor" (which I've previously mentioned) and company's planning process to elevate the game for long-term spotlight.

On June 14 2014 13:47 ETisME wrote:

Those points about increasing social, bragging skins and items aren't going to boost the RTS by millions of players to the point that it can reach MOBA level.
It's not just Valve that does these right, Riot also has limited edition skins and Season league special rewards as well.

The business model compared to SC2 is vastly different.
Dota and LoL are both earning their profit via sales on these items.
SC2 is not.

You can have a look at HOTS, it certain shows Blizzard is fine with adding skins if there is room for profit.
It's a business decision not to do it and Blizzard as a huge cooperation certainly has done their research before doing and not doing anything.

Did you see a huge increase in ladder numbers after the custom decal patch is up?

Are you going to blame the lack of developer and new RTS games on Blizzard and SC2?

You can always find more X Y Z points to complain about.
the execution, the degree of all the XYZs can all be complained about and you can still go on adding X1Y1Z1 points and argue RTS scene should be bigger.

but at the end, it makes no difference.
Starcraft 2 is still one of the few successful game in the genre in recent decades.