|
Keep "my game is better than yours"-slapfights out of this. If the discussion devolves into simple bashing, this thread will be closed. |
On February 15 2015 04:26 TMG26 wrote:
So i think the reason it "failed" is pretty much what a put above.
But how can a traditional RTS have a F2P model? or a really low price ?
Hang on, I think it's still too early to call Grey Goo a "Failure", especially when you list CS:GO as a popular game. I know CS is 40 euro cheaper than GG, but GG also suffers much more from not being a Valve game and having only 8 maps for skirmish mode. As far as I know it has a robust campaign (that I haven't touched yet), and I think many of us here were initially attracted to Starcraft by its campaign and the implied vast story universe, then learned that Multiplayer Melee maps could be crazy fun.
In terms of appealing to broad audiences, the first step in successful RTS games is a strong campaign that teaches you how one can play the game without being a Training Map with story attached. Grey Goo gets excellent word of mouth from me, so we'll see in a few months if it's still "dead"
|
On February 15 2015 04:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:
RTS isn't the only genre that currently suffers from shit developers or stale ideas.
pure polemics.
RTS developers have done a great job over the last 20 years... including the last few years.
over the last 20 years lots of great RTS games have come and gone.
the genre is exactly where it deserves to be at this point.
the RTS genre is going the way of the dot-eating maze game genre. The platform is being marginalized.
The Arcade declined in popularity and the dot-eating maze game went with it.
The PC is being used less and less by average people. So the potential for finding new customers diminishes as the average parent/child family uses the PC less and less. The RTS game will go along with it.
The hardcore PC gamer market segment , which is stable has already made up their mind what kinds of games they want to play. That nice soft squishy "average PC user" as a source of new business is slowly going away. That guy is spending more and more time on his Samsung Galaxy Note 32.
no need to hate on teh developers of dot eating maze games or RTS games. Both did the best they could in increasingly marginalized platforms... the PC and the Arcade.
Pacman championship edition ain't half bad.
The RTS genre will live on in a reduced niche market format just like the dot eating maze game has.
|
On February 15 2015 04:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2015 04:26 TMG26 wrote:On February 15 2015 03:43 dUTtrOACh wrote:
RTS is still a beloved genre of many gamers, and it is only suffering from a difficulty to port the conecpt onto touch screens and consoles - which, for obvious reasons are platforms that they were never intended for.
I don't think that it needs touch or console. It just needs a good F2P model, or cheap to buy model. Also, having a nice engine and if possible a "brand". Dota2 and CS:GO are nice examples. Dota2 got extremely big after other Mobas were released and did not really achieved anything. (excluding LoL of course, I am talking in a post-LoL world). CS:GO is still growing faster and faster despite the most popular FPS now being console FPS that get released every year. I believe this 2 games flourished because they had a legacy name, one was F2P that had everything playable unlocked from start, the other was selling for 5€ or 3€ on steam sales. Dota2 tried to emulate as much as possible from the wc3 mod. Balance patches are delivered to both almost at the same time. Dota2 keeps the game play familiar to older players, but also introduces new hotkeys and new tools.Alt-clicking stuff is a god-send. CS:GO did not have a good start, but following some input from the pros and commutnity made it become the huge success that it is today. I'll use Grey Goo as an example now. It is an RTS, but it has a few issues: ->45€ release price ->really heavy engine -> no marketing -> no replays -> the brand is pretty much "some of these guys worked in old C&C games" The game is actually pretty good, but that is not really enough to make it popular. It also makes RTS an easier genre to jump in thanks to the macro automations. ->You can auto-produce units as long as you have income for them so you don't have to be constantly queuing stuff. ->Workers are also automatically build. ->hotkeys are something diferent but nice, they work like Smite/Tribes:A chat messages, you can build or tech anything with quert. -> Everything is available through those hotkeys, you dont have to put your factories and command center in control groups to build or upgrade stuff. So i think the reason it "failed" is pretty much what a put above. But how can a traditional RTS have a F2P model? or a really low price ? Would skins work in RTS? I never said I want to see RTS games on touch / console... I said that the difficulty to port the genre to these platforms makes the genre APPEAR to be less popular. Grey Goo isn't even close to the excellence that is SC2. It's an okay little game, but it's nothing special. At its height, it won't be as popular even as SC2. It's... just not good enough. To call it the next great RTS is an insult to other titles that actually are good. Making RTS easier or more accessible in too many ways actually dumbs it down too much for it to retain any kind of die-hard fan-base. Sure, people will play, some will have fun, but if the game is too easy to play it won't last very long, it won't appeal to more skilled players, and if it were to become an eSport it wouldn't hold the same reverence as something like Broodwar, or to a lesser extent, SC2. People don't watch pro sports or the olympics to watch regular people playing an easy game. They want to see exceptional people doing very difficult things and making them look easy. RTS is a very difficult thing to get right. I think Blizzard did okay with SC2, but it's gone downhill in many ways; lack of creativity and overall lack of caring on the part of the developer, to name a few. Legacy of the Void needs to be an exceptionally good expansion to revitalize interest in SC2, but it will probably just be a bunch of half-assed concepts poorly executed and simply balanced to appease the competitive scene. This may very well be the dying cry of the last good RTS for some time, but I don't think SC2 will be the last great RTS game. There may just be a dark age while people try to imitate the other successful RTS games of the past (C&C, AoE, BW, WC, CoH, Total War, etc, etc). The games industry as a whole suffers from a lack of original ideas, because of corporate interests and the watering down of artistic expression by modern culture. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part, I'm not talking out of my ass. Most of the big budget, "game of the year" type titles at the moment are just rehashed classics or safe concepts that latch onto some bandwagon (talking games like Dead Island, Destiny, etc.) RTS isn't the only genre that currently suffers from shit developers or stale ideas.
It is way more exciting watching cool battles in SC than good macro.
Grey Goo is no SC but you are downplaying it a lot. The design makes it so that deathballing is pretty useless, and lots of the focus go into the fights and attacking in multiple fronts, also the teching is actually cool.
Its gameplay has some flaws though.
Turtle is sometimes too easy.
Units do not have active abilities.
Units are too visually similar.
But the game has nice micro interactions even tough there are no actives.
The game is not a masterpiece, but has more than enough things that make it competitive, watchable, and easy learning.
Also, you analogy to the Olympics is not that accurate. Sports are for the most part simple things, and pretty straight forward, where you pretty much only have to do a few things right. Top Athletes just take it to the next level, with their dedication they made their bodies capable of completely outperform the rest of humanity at those task, and perferm those simple tasks flawlessly.
|
On February 15 2015 05:04 hvylobster wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2015 04:26 TMG26 wrote:
So i think the reason it "failed" is pretty much what a put above.
But how can a traditional RTS have a F2P model? or a really low price ?
Hang on, I think it's still too early to call Grey Goo a "Failure", especially when you list CS:GO as a popular game. I know CS is 40 euro cheaper than GG, but GG also suffers much more from not being a Valve game and having only 8 maps for skirmish mode. As far as I know it has a robust campaign (that I haven't touched yet), and I think many of us here were initially attracted to Starcraft by its campaign and the implied vast story universe, then learned that Multiplayer Melee maps could be crazy fun. In terms of appealing to broad audiences, the first step in successful RTS games is a strong campaign that teaches you how one can play the game without being a Training Map with story attached. Grey Goo gets excellent word of mouth from me, so we'll see in a few months if it's still "dead"
I put failure is quotes for a reason. It is not a very popular game. It did not even reach 3k concurrent players. No one can call it a failure or a success because only the publisher/devs knew what the profit numbers were. But now, it is not really even big among RTS
|
On February 15 2015 05:04 hvylobster wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2015 04:26 TMG26 wrote:
So i think the reason it "failed" is pretty much what a put above.
But how can a traditional RTS have a F2P model? or a really low price ?
Hang on, I think it's still too early to call Grey Goo a "Failure", especially when you list CS:GO as a popular game. I know CS is 40 euro cheaper than GG, but GG also suffers much more from not being a Valve game and having only 8 maps for skirmish mode. As far as I know it has a robust campaign (that I haven't touched yet), and I think many of us here were initially attracted to Starcraft by its campaign and the implied vast story universe, then learned that Multiplayer Melee maps could be crazy fun. In terms of appealing to broad audiences, the first step in successful RTS games is a strong campaign that teaches you how one can play the game without being a Training Map with story attached. Grey Goo gets excellent word of mouth from me, so we'll see in a few months if it's still "dead"
CS:GO has a huge brand to it, and is made by the best developer in the world. We have no idea if Grey Goo's developers can afford to keep developing on top of it outside the promised features.
http://steamcharts.com/app/290790#7d
This last week Grey Goo has had 200-600 concurrent players in the last week. There's like 20 people watching it on Twitch right now.
I'm sorry, but it looks like Grey Goo is going to be the type of game that people play the campaign, and quit. It's pretty fucking dead at this point.
|
|
|
Ill be honest with you guys, GreyGoo isn't a type of game I would even touch
|
Looks worse than Grey Goo, and GG was pretty fun!
|
On May 14 2014 05:30 Blargh wrote:
Honestly, SC2 does not have that much strategic depth. Also, the whole laning concept is not fun at all, imo. The only reason I like heroes is because I like SOME heroes. Like Cassiopeia, Ezreal, Lux, other skill-shot ones, etc. But I do not like the hero concept.
If I could ask for anything in an RTS, it would be to have more positional strategy and easy vision. Not knowing what your opponent is doing increases randomness and guessing. Also 1v1. At most, 2v2. Anything above is just annoying because if I am going to be competitive, I am going to be competitive individually, because that's the only thing I can influence.
lol sc2 doesn't have much strategic depth...
|
On May 14 2015 12:10 -Switch- wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2014 05:30 Blargh wrote:
Honestly, SC2 does not have that much strategic depth. Also, the whole laning concept is not fun at all, imo. The only reason I like heroes is because I like SOME heroes. Like Cassiopeia, Ezreal, Lux, other skill-shot ones, etc. But I do not like the hero concept.
If I could ask for anything in an RTS, it would be to have more positional strategy and easy vision. Not knowing what your opponent is doing increases randomness and guessing. Also 1v1. At most, 2v2. Anything above is just annoying because if I am going to be competitive, I am going to be competitive individually, because that's the only thing I can influence. lol sc2 doesn't have much strategic depth...
Lets try not to get this thread derailed haha :-p
|
On May 14 2015 12:10 -Switch- wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2014 05:30 Blargh wrote:
Honestly, SC2 does not have that much strategic depth. Also, the whole laning concept is not fun at all, imo. The only reason I like heroes is because I like SOME heroes. Like Cassiopeia, Ezreal, Lux, other skill-shot ones, etc. But I do not like the hero concept.
If I could ask for anything in an RTS, it would be to have more positional strategy and easy vision. Not knowing what your opponent is doing increases randomness and guessing. Also 1v1. At most, 2v2. Anything above is just annoying because if I am going to be competitive, I am going to be competitive individually, because that's the only thing I can influence. lol sc2 doesn't have much strategic depth...
The problem with sc2 is that even thou there is a lot of strategic depth, it is not nearly as important as mechanics. And this only gets worse in LotV because the TL mentality of "we should only care about pro gamers, and someone with better mechanics should win 100% of games." since that pressured blizzard into making the expansion to what it is.
What i mean is that in LoL if I know what I should be doing and enemy does not, then the lane is pretty much won. All I need is some basic skills to last hit minions somewhat good. In sc2 I could become a professor of strategy, but still lose with zealot immortal to someone who only builds "marauders and medvacs xD" because his mechanics are superior. And im not talking about bronze games where I stack 1000minerals in 8minutes, im talking about dia/low master games where literally top2% mechanics is not enough vs some players, even if the enemy does not use strategy at all with the exception of basic build order.
|
Yeah, mechanics should always matter but right now it's like they are "90%" of what matters to win.A bit too much imo.
I believe the way Grey Goo did the macro is a good step forward and other RTS should follow its example.
|
On February 15 2015 05:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2015 04:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:
RTS isn't the only genre that currently suffers from shit developers or stale ideas. pure polemics. RTS developers have done a great job over the last 20 years... including the last few years. over the last 20 years lots of great RTS games have come and gone. the genre is exactly where it deserves to be at this point. the RTS genre is going the way of the dot-eating maze game genre. The platform is being marginalized. The Arcade declined in popularity and the dot-eating maze game went with it. The PC is being used less and less by average people. So the potential for finding new customers diminishes as the average parent/child family uses the PC less and less. The RTS game will go along with it. The hardcore PC gamer market segment , which is stable has already made up their mind what kinds of games they want to play. That nice soft squishy "average PC user" as a source of new business is slowly going away. That guy is spending more and more time on his Samsung Galaxy Note 32. no need to hate on teh developers of dot eating maze games or RTS games. Both did the best they could in increasingly marginalized platforms... the PC and the Arcade. Pacman championship edition ain't half bad. The RTS genre will live on in a reduced niche market format just like the dot eating maze game has.
The most popular game in existence is a PC game
|
On May 15 2015 00:17 vOdToasT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2015 05:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On February 15 2015 04:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:
RTS isn't the only genre that currently suffers from shit developers or stale ideas. pure polemics. RTS developers have done a great job over the last 20 years... including the last few years. over the last 20 years lots of great RTS games have come and gone. the genre is exactly where it deserves to be at this point. the RTS genre is going the way of the dot-eating maze game genre. The platform is being marginalized. The Arcade declined in popularity and the dot-eating maze game went with it. The PC is being used less and less by average people. So the potential for finding new customers diminishes as the average parent/child family uses the PC less and less. The RTS game will go along with it. The hardcore PC gamer market segment , which is stable has already made up their mind what kinds of games they want to play. That nice soft squishy "average PC user" as a source of new business is slowly going away. That guy is spending more and more time on his Samsung Galaxy Note 32. no need to hate on teh developers of dot eating maze games or RTS games. Both did the best they could in increasingly marginalized platforms... the PC and the Arcade. Pacman championship edition ain't half bad. The RTS genre will live on in a reduced niche market format just like the dot eating maze game has. The most popular game in existence is a PC game
What game are you talking about?
Can it top Angry Birds with more than 2 billion downloads?
|
On May 15 2015 00:40 helpman173 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2015 00:17 vOdToasT wrote:On February 15 2015 05:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On February 15 2015 04:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:
RTS isn't the only genre that currently suffers from shit developers or stale ideas. pure polemics. RTS developers have done a great job over the last 20 years... including the last few years. over the last 20 years lots of great RTS games have come and gone. the genre is exactly where it deserves to be at this point. the RTS genre is going the way of the dot-eating maze game genre. The platform is being marginalized. The Arcade declined in popularity and the dot-eating maze game went with it. The PC is being used less and less by average people. So the potential for finding new customers diminishes as the average parent/child family uses the PC less and less. The RTS game will go along with it. The hardcore PC gamer market segment , which is stable has already made up their mind what kinds of games they want to play. That nice soft squishy "average PC user" as a source of new business is slowly going away. That guy is spending more and more time on his Samsung Galaxy Note 32. no need to hate on teh developers of dot eating maze games or RTS games. Both did the best they could in increasingly marginalized platforms... the PC and the Arcade. Pacman championship edition ain't half bad. The RTS genre will live on in a reduced niche market format just like the dot eating maze game has. The most popular game in existence is a PC game What game are you talking about? Can it top Angry Birds with more than 2 billion downloads?
Oh wow wtf I thought you were exaggerating. They literally have 2 billion downloads...
|
On May 15 2015 00:40 helpman173 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2015 00:17 vOdToasT wrote:On February 15 2015 05:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On February 15 2015 04:49 dUTtrOACh wrote:
RTS isn't the only genre that currently suffers from shit developers or stale ideas. pure polemics. RTS developers have done a great job over the last 20 years... including the last few years. over the last 20 years lots of great RTS games have come and gone. the genre is exactly where it deserves to be at this point. the RTS genre is going the way of the dot-eating maze game genre. The platform is being marginalized. The Arcade declined in popularity and the dot-eating maze game went with it. The PC is being used less and less by average people. So the potential for finding new customers diminishes as the average parent/child family uses the PC less and less. The RTS game will go along with it. The hardcore PC gamer market segment , which is stable has already made up their mind what kinds of games they want to play. That nice soft squishy "average PC user" as a source of new business is slowly going away. That guy is spending more and more time on his Samsung Galaxy Note 32. no need to hate on teh developers of dot eating maze games or RTS games. Both did the best they could in increasingly marginalized platforms... the PC and the Arcade. Pacman championship edition ain't half bad. The RTS genre will live on in a reduced niche market format just like the dot eating maze game has. The most popular game in existence is a PC game What game are you talking about? Can it top Angry Birds with more than 2 billion downloads?
Well to be fair many people have downloaded the game to multiple different devices. Also comparing mobile games to retail games is not really fair. Thats like saying rice is the most popular food, because its eaten more than any other food product, does not really tell the whole story.
|
On May 15 2015 01:07 NasusAndDraven wrote:
Thats like saying rice is the most popular food, because its eaten more than any other food product, does not really tell the whole story.
Bad analogy is bad analogy lol
|
I'm aware that many of these points have been touched upon already, but here are my thoughts.
I'm not a fan of heroes in RTS games, but I think one of the main things that make MOBAs popular is that they stay fresh due to the wide variety of heroes to choose from. The number of choices in these games creates countless possible match-ups to be played. RTS games on the other hand, usually just have the three races and only 6 different match-ups. I think this is a problem. With only the 6 match-ups, the SC2 meta in particular becomes rather stagnant and repetitive fairly quickly. As an SC2 viewer, I started feeling like I didn't need to watch every game anymore and stopped watching with the exceptions of SC2highlights and top level Korean play along with the finals of any big tournament.
There are probably a number of ways to help address this problem, but the most seemingly obvious would be to add more factions to the game. Obviously this is easier said than done. There is a lot of effort required for the creativity in designing a new race with new units and new mechanics along with balancing them with existing races. But if Blizzard, for example, went to the effort to create a new race, race X (for Xel'naga  ), then this would immediately create 4 new match-ups for a total of 10-- which is already a 66% increase for variety in the game.
On the more extreme ends of the spectrum, an RTS game with say 9 races would have 45 match-ups. A game with 12 races would have 72 match-ups. A game with that many match-ups would stay fresh for decades. Because of the greater complexity, it might be necessary for the developers to dumb down parts of the game to make the creation of a new faction easier, or variations of an original faction could be considered new factions (consider the Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour with 3 base factions each with 3 generals with modified units and abilities for a total of 12 factions).
As for balancing for these games with larger numbers of factions, I personally believe that not much actually needs to be done. In a game with 12 factions, it is likely that a player will need to become proficient at more than just one which could make the idea of counter-picking a race into a reality. Look at Super Smash Brothers Melee: it is pretty much universally believed that Fox is the strongest character in the game, but it took them years and years to realize it and even now Fox loses tournaments to other characters because players learn how to adapt and find counters. Many Peach players hate the Jigglypuff match-up. Armada, who is the best Peach player in the world, famously started counter-picking Young Link against HungryBox's Puff and saw great success for a long time until HungryBox finally adapted and finally beat that Young Link with Jigglypuff despite the fact that it was supposed to be a bad match-up. These kinds of counter-plays and adaptations are what I think has kept Melee going well over a decade since its release.
Just some thoughts.
|
On May 15 2015 02:07 halfaspider wrote:I'm aware that many of these points have been touched upon already, but here are my thoughts. I'm not a fan of heroes in RTS games, but I think one of the main things that make MOBAs popular is that they stay fresh due to the wide variety of heroes to choose from. The number of choices in these games creates countless possible match-ups to be played. RTS games on the other hand, usually just have the three races and only 6 different match-ups. I think this is a problem. With only the 6 match-ups, the SC2 meta in particular becomes rather stagnant and repetitive fairly quickly. As an SC2 viewer, I started feeling like I didn't need to watch every game anymore and stopped watching with the exceptions of SC2highlights and top level Korean play along with the finals of any big tournament. There are probably a number of ways to help address this problem, but the most seemingly obvious would be to add more factions to the game. Obviously this is easier said than done. There is a lot of effort required for the creativity in designing a new race with new units and new mechanics along with balancing them with existing races. But if Blizzard, for example, went to the effort to create a new race, race X (for Xel'naga ), then this would immediately create 4 new match-ups for a total of 10-- which is already a 66% increase for variety in the game. On the more extreme ends of the spectrum, an RTS game with say 9 races would have 45 match-ups. A game with 12 races would have 72 match-ups. A game with that many match-ups would stay fresh for decades. Because of the greater complexity, it might be necessary for the developers to dumb down parts of the game to make the creation of a new faction easier, or variations of an original faction could be considered new factions (consider the Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour with 3 base factions each with 3 generals with modified units and abilities for a total of 12 factions). As for balancing for these games with larger numbers of factions, I personally believe that not much actually needs to be done. In a game with 12 factions, it is likely that a player will need to become proficient at more than just one which could make the idea of counter-picking a race into a reality. Look at Super Smash Brothers Melee: it is pretty much universally believed that Fox is the strongest character in the game, but it took them years and years to realize it and even now Fox loses tournaments to other characters because players learn how to adapt and find counters. Many Peach players hate the Jigglypuff match-up. Armada, who is the best Peach player in the world, famously started counter-picking Young Link against HungryBox's Puff and saw great success for a long time until HungryBox finally adapted and finally beat that Young Link with Jigglypuff despite the fact that it was supposed to be a bad match-up. These kinds of counter-plays and adaptations are what I think has kept Melee going well over a decade since its release. Just some thoughts.
Chess has one match up and it's still evolving, despite being 100x older than sc2. I also feel that the more match ups you introduce, the more symmetrical those races end up being. I think it would be pretty far fetched to have 12 races all as distinct as the three we have now. And if the races are on a convergence path, then what's the point in adding them? Lore and aesthetic? I don't think rts suffers from a lack of either, frankly.
The two biggest issues are barrier to entry, both in terms of the skill curve at the lower levels and the business model's massive paywell, and the business model itself, which is designed for games with relatively short life cycles.
I love starcraft and I'll play it for as long as it's supported, but unless a switch is thrown in blizzard about the business model I think there will always be a huge void where a new developer could step in and make an rts that competes in the current climate.
I've got my eyes on Atlas, personally. They've released next to no information but the mission statement from Artillery alone is really, really exciting.
+ Show Spoiler +
Edit: Fixed the link
|
^ In chess you have the same starting position but a lot of different openings, for instance there are over a thousand named opening variants listed. You usually rush through the opening phase of the game and get straight to a seemingly unique position. And people do actually complain a lot if they see the same openings over and over.
I think there should be other ways to have variety outside of having a dozen factions. It works as a model for MOBAs, but a faction is more complicated than a hero and WC3 ended up imbalanced despite the largely symmetrical race design and micro opportunities in the game. An example of what seems to work for Starcraft is the distinction between bio and mech, if those were two completely valid play styles with only a couple of units in common then you'd maintain the number of factions but there would be higher strategic diversity.
My idea for a future RTS game was one with only two factions (easier to balance and imo more sensible from a story perspective, like dire vs radiant), but about three to five viable sub-factions within each faction. That's the sort of model which can be expanded upon more easily as well.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
