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On May 04 2016 03:22 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2016 23:16 BEARDiaguz wrote:
I got a problem. It's not alcohol (yet), it's RTS games. You see, even as a wee kiddie I was playing Real Time Strategy, Dune 2, Warcraft 1, Command and Conquer's and such. I Aged them Empires, I Total them Annihilations, I did all that shit. My red blood cells are the shape of Marines at this point. My problem is that I can't help but buy every RTS game I see on Steam, and the reason this is a problem is that they're all complete shit.
This is partly Starcraft's fault. It's the hardest game in the world and now I've gone a fair ways into mastering it everything else pales in comparison. My first multiplayer RTS loves were games like Dawn of War and Company of Heroes but I can't go back now. They're too simplistic. After you've seen The Wire it's difficult to go back to CSI.
But it's really the fault of developers and what I'd argue is the principle issue with RTS games at the moment. I can sum it up with a single word: mechanics. APM requirements are so low these days, you can almost play with just the mouse. Not to mention the unit control itself tends to be unresponsive or simplistic.
What I've come to realise these past few decades (clearly a slow learner) is that an RTS isn't a game about Strategy in Real Time. It's an action game. A very complicated action game where the player is represented by every unit and structure they control. There's a reason why the most successful and beloved multiplayer RTS games have been designed around a considerable physical requirement. It's exciting to confound your opponent with multiple small forces around the map. It's thrilling to overwhelm them with large well controlled armies. But it also keeps the game challenging. In a game like Starcraft, your strategy is only as good as your ability to execute it, and execution is a strategy in itself.
Mechanics appeal to a hardcore crowd and once you have enough of them the rest can follow. Even something like Dark Souls or DotA, difficult challenging games, managed to connect with a wide audience over time simply because that hardcore crowd draws other people in.
It mystifies me that there is not a single RTS developer on the planet that can look at Starcraft and not think "Let's make something like that, but better". I can understand the reluctance, RTS is difficult enough to get into before you demand players quintuple their APM, but the alternative is boring. A slow paced game about Strategy? Big fucking deal, every game has strategy. Strategy just means you have a plan and contingencies in place if certain things occur. Card and board games are perfectly designed for thinking, RTS is not. That's why Poker, Chess, Magic and Go are great, and why Grey Goo or Ashes of the Singularity can eat my balls.
Starcraft's a wonderful game. Both of them, fucking great, I love 'em. But you can make something better. RTS as a genre has grown stagnant over the years and I pin the blame solely on the best ones having already been made and no-one capable enough to top it, or brave enough to even attempt.
(Outside of Blizzard of course, who basically 'get it') I think you neatly summarise the problem: RTS fans nowadays see RTS games as high-skill action games in which the strategy part takes a backseat to the mechanical requirements. Back in 1997 I used to be a huge AOE fan. I was still a kid, but I managed to reliably defeat the AI on hardest in random maps. Not because I was crazy good mechanically, but because I managed to strategise a way around the AI. The campaign also required strategic thinking, not just clicking stuff at 300 APM. One of the reasons I got totally burned out with SC2 around HOTS was the fact that Blizzard increasingly thought that every single unit needed a spell or special ability, taking away from the simplicity that WOL had. They took it even further in LOTV, which I didn't even bother buying. Nowadays most of my time playing video games is devoted to the Dark Souls series (and Bloodborne) because it is mechanically challenging while at the same time not exhausting me after half an hour of playing (unlike SC2). I also still haven't finished the Witcher 3, which is a masterclass in open-world RPGs, and the open-world RPG Bethesda wished they could make but can't because of how outdated and rigid the Gamebryo engine is in terms of mechanics.
I can certainly understand where you're coming from, although I fully share iaguz's opinion on RTS, and what a good RTS should have. Myself, in SC2 I just enjoy controlling the units because everything feels so smooth and you can go as fast as you can think, basically (maybe faster even). I'm not really in it for the strategy (because let's face it, it's quite rudimentary). And anything with a worse engine would be a drag for me.
So maybe the whole problem is that the audience for hardcore RTS, as small as it already is, is also split in what it wants from a game?
Reading the thread, as a game designer/developer, I certainly wouldn't throw myself into the making of a top-tier RTS right now :D.
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yeah that's a pretty tough thing to do..
For me i'd happily play a starcraft-like game with a much more user friendly interface (like the one of supreme commander) that can take away part of the hassle of spamming buttons.
On another hand, a good game type that worked around difficult inputs is of course fighting games. They are very hard, but the matches are so quick. So at least players aren't stuck 10 or 15 mins in intense mental focus mode to keep up with the game.
And new fighting games aren't that much easier than old ones (ex : blazblue).
Lastly, fighting games have a training mode + little challenges (like masters of starcraft but with more scenarii), another point to make the game more accessible as said NeuroSwarm.
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I do blame the developers.
There are plenty of great strategy games out there, just not in real time.
If someone makes an RTS that has rich strategy i don't mind a slow pace, but they are shallow strategy games with no mechanical requirement, thats frickin boring.
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I'm not sure if it is possible to make a better RTS than Broodwar bro.
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On May 05 2016 14:10 GGzerG wrote:
I'm not sure if it is possible to make a better RTS than Broodwar bro.
Better than Broodwar? Wtf does that even mean?
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On May 05 2016 14:10 GGzerG wrote:
I'm not sure if it is possible to make a better RTS than Broodwar bro.
better for who? For you, probably not, for someone else, most likely yes.
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"I have a subjective opinion and state that it is objective fact." ~OP
If I wanted to read about real RTS design I think I would read Razzia of Blizzsters or Depth of Micro. theDwf and Lalush both put an incredibly amount of thought and energy writing those up, those are excellent reads.
Sorry but to me, this thread says "i like high apm and all other rts are too slow 4 me, i'm a hardcore progamer". There seems to be a lack of actual thinking here and this is just ripping on other games because you don't like them.
A good RTS should be playable and fun at 60 apm but can be taken to 400 APM in high level games. Just because some other RTS don't ramp it up in terms of mechanics doesn't make them shit.
That said, the frustration of not having high end, competitive RTS games akin to LoL, Dota, CS, Rocket League, etc. is understandable. I would agree to that sentiment. I don't agree with "games i don't like are shit".
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I've never been able to fully enjoy a rts game after starcraft 1. The game is just so good that everything else feels like a waste and I could just go back to it instead of learning a new game. I know might have missed some great games because of this, but I will echo what that dude said about the units in the other rts games feeling clunky and slow, and yeah I agree with that and it makes me feel like I don't have fun controlling the individual units as much as I would have in other games. Hell, even in aoe games (which are also very fun) I get annoyed by the fact that there are no "attack-move". I'm picky I guess. I wish I could enjoy more games than I do now 
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France9034 Posts
Nowadays when I want a good RTS (and I imply strategic here, not just fast-clicking game), I often turn to Eugen Systems' games. The Wargame series was pretty good if you want """"strategy"""". It does need a fair amount of APM to be pretty efficient, but overall it's more about knowing the types of units and how to play them in a very complex rock-paper-scissors + control game, with a very very heavy scouting component. I'd reserve it to hardcore wargame fans though, it's by no mean easy to pick up, and favors good positioning and thinking over ultra-fast micro.
Then, if you want a faster paced RTS, I'd take a look at Act Of Aggression, which was kind of an attempt at rebooting that genre of FPS that kinda died with Red Alert 2 (or maybe 3, haven't played it but got negative echoes about it...).
I can't help but feel, when I read you post, that you just want SC economy, with SC control, in a game that is not SC. It's not that there hasn't been good RTS for a while, it's just that you don't like their style. I mean, all the Total Wars, the Dawn of Wars, the Company of Heroes, Planetary Annihilation, etc. These have been good games. Good RTS even I might say. Just not the type you want. And Starcraft has been quite different from these (which are by no mean the same...) and at this point, you might just want SC3.
So yeah, maybe not a lot of good fast-paced, micro-centric RTS. Which is just a sub-genre of the RTS genre.
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On May 06 2016 03:41 Incognoto wrote:
[...]
A good RTS should be playable and fun at 60 apm but can be taken to 400 APM in high level games. Just because some other RTS don't ramp it up in terms of mechanics doesn't make them shit.
[...]
"I have a subjective opinion and state that it is objective fact."?
Don't be too hung up on form, or you'll be called out for it as well. I thought we were past the point of retorting to anything with "it's just, like, your opinion man!". Obviously, if OP says "it's shit", it probably means "I don't like it", not "this game must be some animal's excrement".
For me (so yeah, again, another opinion), the "Real time" part in RTS kinda implies to be pressured by time in the course of the game. You have a limited amount of things you can do in a second, so you have to prioritize. Games that fail to confront gamers with this need for prioritization, and allow them to push their skills to the limit in this aspect, from low to the highest level, make for bland RTS. I wouldn't be as harsh as OP to judge other RTS, I think there are quite a bit of games outside of the Blizzard ones which are good RTS, but for me, no other modern engine compares to SC2's. Which is a shame really, because I wouldn't say it's perfect either :D.
What's unfortunate is that the "Strategy" part of RTS is very difficult to combine effectively with its "Real time" part. SC2 has a frantic pace, which is good, real time stuff, but it lacks strategy, maybe as a result.
And I can't think of a single RTS that is considered highly strategic without overwhelming the player with options (like hundred of different units and techs and ameliorations). When the game's content itself overwhelms you with options, it becomes really hard to make meaningful choices (like, why pick tech 37 instead of tech 121?), let alone making them in a limited time.
Broodwar looks like a beautiful game, as close to an ideal RTS as I can think of, but every time I play it, I can't help but feel like it's just too old. It looks fun "on TV", but not when I play it, because it just lacks too much of what makes a modern game enjoyable. Not being able to rebind hotkeys? Eh. I hope Blizzard is able to conjure some of that BW magic one more time for SC3, but they probably got lucky :D.
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It mystifies me that there is not a single RTS developer on the planet that can look at Starcraft and not think "Let's make something like that, but better".
I feel the same way. It seems to me that every developer think the way to make an RTS game is to have slow-moving and unresponsive units and/or have players control a low number of units.
What makes Sc2 interesting is controlling a large number of relatively responsive units spread out all over the map. Aside from that I think Sc2 has a ton of flaws that could and should be adressed by a different developer. The genre has so much potential!
I wonder how long it will take for developers to realize this though. Atm. it seems that most game-developers are focussed on creating team-games w/ low skill-caps as they (mistakenly) think that will create succesful games. On the other hand, I think that the MOBA-genre got succesful despite of the teamelement, not because of it. Coordinating and relying on random teammates is - for the most part - a terrible experience.
The main problem with the RTS genre is the barrier of entry for companies. Simply put if you want to produce an RTS on the level of Starcraft II, you need to sink millions into the game engine before you can even really get started. So most companies aren't interested in investing that much up front into a genre that isn't the most popular, when you could produce a different game for a much reduced cost.
Then why do they spend time making bad games with slow moving units? It took me 2 seconds to look at Grey Goo and conclude that the game would flop despite relatively large investments.
"I have a subjective opinion and state that it is objective fact." ~OP
With the exception that it is a fact that every single RTS slowmotion game has failed. Maybe its time for a change?
And yes I think it probably is a fact that games that move in slowmotion have a much lower skillcap and cannot be popular as competitive games. And a competitive game is what gives the game sustainibility.
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Although it falls right in line with the "slow strategy games" you decry... I've put over 300 hours into Sins of a Solar Empire. I really enjoy that game because sometimes, I'm just not in the mood (or the mental state, lets be real) to dive into the fierce cognitive competition that is SC2
After a long day's work... the last thing I want to do is try and out think some 15 year old who's entire hobby is nothing but playing SC2. It's one thing to lose, it's another to get your @$$ handed to you.
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Maybe change it from RTS to RTT=Real time Tactic.
To me, the real time stands for "I face the opponent at the same time". You should dance with your opponent, interact with him ALOT of the time in your matches.
From min1 this should be RLY relevant. If we look at sc2, it feels very none-relevant. Just make enough units so you can defend and BAM. No interaction for a long time.
That is the opposite of dancing with your opponent.
Tactic matters more to me than strategy. If somehow a REALLY GOOD RTS which doesnt exist today happens, i am not sure theoratically how to make it strategic enough so its not about "going meta" or "copy" other strategies.
Tactic part is what can last and which can be different from game to game even with the same type of units.
The starcraft games have the macro inside your base like 99%. Sure, it exapnds to your natural and third. But it stays there. And it doesnt have much variation either.
That is one thing that could and should change to. Get rid of "build pylons frequently" and instead have it more of "active macro". You can make relevant structures outside of your opening base and things that really effects things to.
And not simple structures such as "make 5cannons here", more advanced structures which involves the dancing part.
If you want to attack your opponent and you see 5cannons. You cant do anything, if you attack you might evne lose the game.
This is crap.
Instead,
If you want to attack your opponent and you see a "pole" in the ground and you get close to it, it dont damage your enemies.
Instead if increases the movement speed of the opponents units by 5-10% within a close radius.
What this pole do is it makes it possible for him to have his units around his pole to defend this area, or to dance around this pole. Its not suicide doing it nor is it cost ineffective. Deponds on the micro from both sides.
Note your units might have been melee units in this scenario while his units were ranged.
Where do you want this pole? Maybe inbetween your natural base and third. Or maybe on your third while on your natural you put something else up..
Imagine this, you want to tech to tier2 and it goes pretty fast. Now your opponent goes tier 1 and he scouts you, sees you go tier 2.
How should the game progress here? If you in this scenario needs to make "5 cannons" to be safe, and at the same time neglecting everything your opponent can do instead it should be very different.
Instead of those cannons. There could be a larger building. In this game, if you are behind a building and you face a range opponent unit, it can not shoot through it. Meaning, you need to be in Line of sight of each other.
Now its possible to dance around this building with your own units. Imagine if your tier 2 unit has 10range while the opponents tier 1 units has 5range.
If you face them headon the tier1 units win.
But if you dance around here, you have a real chance of surviving and then get ahead with your tier 2.
Now we dance.
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I'm not sure why anyone would say that Starcraft 2 lacks strategy. On the contrary, at a high level, strategy and decision making count in enormous amounts when it comes to the game's outcome.
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I've watched few games of SC2 that have blown me away from the sole strategy on display. Strategy obviously often determines the outcome of the game, but it has a very "obvious" feel to it. It amounts to someone taking a technological or economical risk and the other guy not being aware of it. Players make very little use of space and map features, because maps for various reasons are quite bland, let's face it. Unit compositions are often the same within the same matchup. So yeah, "take risk, make units while defending, attack there, the end".
I was able to reach a decent master level without thinking about strategy at all (not even that "take risks" part). Obviously, that's not high level, but it's still quite abnormal that you don't see "strategy" until the top 2% (maybe top 0.01%? :D) of the ladder...
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You don't see strategy until top 2% of the ladder (outside of a few players who win more off strategy) because they designed the game wrong.
They failed to properly balance one of the most important resources in a game: player attention.
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Starcraft 2 has a ton and ton of flaws on multiple levels. One of those is the lack of viable unit compositions.
But the charm of controlling a large army is what saves it. Imagne a game that fixes some of the leaks of Starcraft while maintaining (or improving upon) its charm.
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The question developers ask themselves is what's the easiest game we can make and generate most money with it?
RTS is not doing the answer. Good RTS has to have many things done right. There's no proper company besides blizzard interested in complex rts games, and I think they are done with it as well. Look at blizzard's last few games. Overwatch is noob friendly and the game is 95% team skill based game, same with hots.
Today's gamers are lazy to invest time in being good at rts games nowadays, when they can spend 30 minutes learning LoL, and its free yay. Just seeing that Grubby is playing heroes of the storm makes me wanna cry.
Then you start to realize that going back to wc3 is not such a bad idea. I can say that I'm still enjoying the game just like I did 10 years ago. Combine that with sc2, and there you go.
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On May 02 2016 23:16 BEARDiaguz wrote:
This is partly Starcraft's fault. It's the hardest game in the world and now I've gone a fair ways into mastering it everything else pales in comparison. My first multiplayer RTS loves were games like Dawn of War and Company of Heroes but I can't go back now. They're too simplistic. After you've seen The Wire it's difficult to go back to CSI.
Starcraft isnt even a particularly great game. Its difficult because there is a giant artificial structure around it that makes a lot of people play it.
Also, I recommend The Americans and Fargo, they're not as good as The Wire, but they're pretty good. FX has been killing it lately.
Mechanics appeal to a hardcore crowd and once you have enough of them the rest can follow. Even something like Dark Souls or DotA, difficult challenging games, managed to connect with a wide audience over time simply because that hardcore crowd draws other people in.
Note: DotA is also not a difficult, challenging game. DotA was literally created by and for people who couldn't handle Warcraft III but liked the hero system. (Ad yes, I know that Aeon of Strife was first a starcraft map.)
It mystifies me that there is not a single RTS developer on the planet that can look at Starcraft and not think "Let's make something like that, but better".
This is a good point. The question that the community should ask itself is why Blizzard itself didn't think this, instead making something like that, but in a new engine that would fix the very quirks and bugs that made Broodwar so competitive.I haven't been playing any games lately, but i'd suggest anything with a higher foodcap than SCII, e.g. Planetary Annihilation, or even SupCom.
(Outside of Blizzard of course, who basically 'get it')
Clearly they get it, hence why Diablo III has been such a revolutionary sequel. And why their last three games have been 1) a free to play card game that was more or less designed to give pro streamers something to do while they look for a match in another game 2) a dumbed down version of Dotalikes (that is, a dumbed down version of a dumbed down minigenre!) whose sole appeal seems to be that the Dominion mode was removed from League of Legends and 3) a free to play shooter that is, if I remember the release date of Team Fortress 2 correctly, only 9 years too late.
You guys all worship Blizzard like they are the kings of video game development, but they haven't had an inspiring idea in decades. I mean, they literally wanted to make a warhammer game with warcraft, and you can still see numerous traces of wh40k in starcraft. They haven't created a new universe since 1998, instead producing about fifty add-ons for World of Warcraft (which I have never played, but as far as I know, half of them have made the game worse), two sequels that did not add anything to old formulas (I mean, there's a reason why all the streams on the right bar here are Brood War again, right?) and a bunch of f2p crap.
Now Iaguz, since you actually have played a bunch of other games (something that most others on this forum seem to not even think about in their ridiculous devotion to Blizzard) - if you like sc2, good on you! I quite like it to. In fact, I still play it every now and then. But that is solely so because I can still queue up a game. If Ground Control 2 still had servers and, say, a community of thirty players, I'd go back to it. And If I had a PC that could handle it, you can bet your ass I'd play something released in 2015 or 2016.
Which is not to say that you are totally incorrect. RTS has been in a malaise. It's because games have become a mainstream form of art, and multiplayer games have as a result turned mostly into ridiculously simplistic games like Dota. (I have an old, ugly Team Dignitas jacket that used to just look like an incredibly trashy jacket. If I wore it now, people would think I'd be into LoL. Sigh.) But look, there's never been a "refined" RTS game, ever. Again, Broodwar was mostly interesting because of its ridiculous mechanical limitations (no auto-mining etc.); without it, Flash wouldn't be as impressive as he is. Red Alert 2 was one of the most hilarious games ever, but true pro games, for all intents and purposes, devolve into fights of tanks and dogs (which is also hilarious, in a way). Warcraft 3 wasn't even good until The Frozen Throne came along, and its basically a slowmo version of RTS games that should have been played in team modes and not in 1vs1 (In fact, a lot of games should have been played in team modes - hey, like Ground Control 2!). Don't expect new games that come out to be perfect. But a few of them do surely surpass Starcraft 2 in all number of ways. Again, Planetary Annihilation comes to mind. Numerous problems notwithstanding, that game is so far ahead of 200-food-limit, 1vs1-only, small-ass-maps Starcraft II just by virtue of actually going somewhere with the genre
Y'all are too focused on this dumb esports shit. Esports fucking suck.
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It's all individual I feel. While most players prefer team games, there is a nice amount of players who prefer to play solo, where you don't have to depend on other 4 players in any way. All you have to care about is to get better and fix your own mistakes. It's all about improving and "blaming" yourself when you loose. Therefore, that's the reason we're missing good esport rts games like wc3 or bw. Anyway, at the end it all comes down to money, sponsors and viewers so we can whine as long as we want, that won't change 
I've seen a lot of players going back to bw/wc3 lately, and I think sc2 will stay strong for years to come. Maybe smaller, but stronger, because there are no alternatives for these type of gamers. Seeing all these newbie-friendly new games leaves you no choice. Gaming is fun because of it's challenge, atleast for me 
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