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What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

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Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#141

Post by klingonopera »

drdeadringer wrote: post #95
b0rsuk wrote: post #72

Am I the only person missing the old C&C style games, before Generals? I'm not saying C&C:Generals was a bad game - it was quite popular - but from design point of view it was a Starcraft clone. They abandoned the old, quirky Dune2/C&C design with low count, remote harvesters, multiple factories which only sped up the rate of production, instantly deployed buildings, instant selling etc. These things had some flaws,…

This may be unpopular, but I enjoyed the entire C&C run right to the very end. This includes the first-person shooter stint along with the "mobile MCV" stint. Kane as a character holds a place in my heart and memory, as does Tiberium. Soundtracks and cut scenes were great too. May I enjoy this block of Memory Lane as much as I am able.

That FPS was C&C: Renegade, and I absolutely enjoyed it too. It had all the cheesy dialogue and cliché elements that kinda gave C&C an 80s action movie flick flair, and I was really disappointed that it wasn't so successful. I think that the multiplayer parts weren't really refined enough to make it a hit... there was too much "base-building-components" for an MP game, I think they should've went with a "Battlefield 1942"-style of gameplay... holy crap, now that would've been awesome! EDIT: They were released around the same time, so there wasn't any blueprint for the BF1942 style of gameplay around at the time. I think making vehicles spawn for everyone and not tying it to your success is part of what made BF1942 so popular in the day.

Of all the RTS games from C&C, RA2 was my favorite. Tiberium Sun was just a stone throw before my time, so when I played it, I was missing all the new elements from RA2. It's no fault of TS, just that I have already been "spoilt" by that time...

Tiberium Wars was also pretty nice, though I only played some LAN skirmishes with friends, never the campaign. But from the looks of things, it was the last "real" RTS in the C&C series. The latest two RTS installments, RA3 and the last Tiberium one, already forgot what it's called, were just trash, IMHO. In the latter, the publisher (EA?) was obviously trying to kill two birds with one stone, i.e. make a game for both PC and mobile markets, and C&C was the guinea pig brought in. Obviously, the publisher had no idea what C&C is about and where its true value lies. That's some pretty bad management, actually, but that publisher is known for treating their consumers like replaceable goods, completely neglecting any artistic value a game might have and the therefore resulting fan-base/community like consumer-behaviour.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#142

Post by eswat »

b0rsuk wrote: post #72

Am I the only person missing the old C&C style games, before Generals? I'm not saying C&C:Generals was a bad game - it was quite popular - but from design point of view it was a Starcraft clone. They abandoned the old, quirky Dune2/C&C design with low count, remote harvesters, multiple factories which only sped up the rate of production, instantly deployed buildings, instant selling etc. These things had some flaws,…

If nothing else I feel C&C has remained popular in the internet zeitgeist. The series is very ”meme-able”, especially Red Alert and Generals due to their quirkiness of geopolitical issues that have always remained hot topics to a western fanbase (Russia, China and the Middle East).

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#143

Post by clord »

I blame the rise of more effective DRM and the removal/demoting of lan play in favor of hosted servers. All of my favorite RTS games were discovered while at a friends house. We’d do a quick copy and have an epic game session, creating a legend game that I’ve bought multiple times since. Studios should allow copying of games for some purposes like local multiplayer, but protect single player and internet content with IAP, so that the game spreads virally, creating a large market and a strong brand.

This was exactly how many of the classics got started, but back then it was in spite of the studios intentions. I think a good rts could still spread that way but now players would welcome the IAP, as long as core mechanics are available and it’s not pay-to-level-up.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#144

Post by SeanBoocock »

b0rsuk wrote: post #72

Am I the only person missing the old C&C style games, before Generals? I'm not saying C&C:Generals was a bad game - it was quite popular - but from design point of view it was a Starcraft clone. They abandoned the old, quirky Dune2/C&C design with low count, remote harvesters, multiple factories which only sped up the rate of production, instantly deployed buildings, instant selling etc. These things had some flaws,…

You might be excited then by Command & Conquer Remastered: https://www.ea.com/news/details-command-and-conquer-remaster.... We're working with the community and regularly updating it on /r/commandandconquer (ie https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/ct1oz8/r...).

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#146

Post by n_ary »

For AOE fans, AOE has a DE in Steam, pretty graphics for large screens and new music, though underlying game remains the same it seems.

AOE-2 has a HD version for large screens, but DE with pretty graphics are coming this November(2019).

Even though I haven't played games for years, coming back to AOE was nostalgic and last Friday I was lost in the game for 5+ hours, still as fun as ever. (:

*DE - Definitive Edition

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#147

Post by klingonopera »

temporaryvector wrote: post #83
isostatic wrote: post #34

Not RTS, but certainly real time, and as old as the hills. Railroad Tycoon The sequels never really did it for me. Transport Tycoon sucked up the hours, but nothing really did it as much as the feel of that first game. Maybe it was the time — the CGA monitor (which couldn’t cope with Civilisation), no mouse of course. I did play it years later and it want the same. I doubt that feeling can be recaptured. It probably…

I think this is a common enough sentiment. Your first games leave more of an impact and that feeling is often not really related to how good the game is. Just like comfort food, they're comfort games. I never player Railroad Tycoon, my first in that genre was Transport Tycoon Deluxe, but I feel pretty much the same way about it, and I'm pretty lucky that OpenTTD exists. Similarly there's a game called Star Reach (als…

Playing TT the first time, was the second time of my life I've ever done an all-nighter. I think I must've been 13 or 14 at the time. I'd only realized how much time had passed when my mom walked into the room at 6AM in the morning.

Then I was lucky to find TTD on some abandonware sites, shortly thereafter, the first TTD-Patch became available, and a few years later OpenTTD development started. I still remember playing it on a Nokia 5530 XM, they had actually ported it to the Symbian OS.

A few years ago, I learned that Chris Sawyer had programmed the entire thing in Assembly. It ran super-smooth on almost anything.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#148

Post by milesvp »

nitwit005 wrote: post #62
dleslie wrote: post #3

IMHO, the core series focused too heavily on maximizing the experience for esports, and that spoiled the genre for the mid-range gamers that were its bread and butter. And still, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation et al were not so long ago. And OpenRA itself has been somewhat of a success. BTW, C&C has a Red Alert reboot coming out before too long. It will be classic in design.

You seen to either get games where the multiplayer scene is non-existent, or hyper competitive like SC2, where you feel a bit brutalized. One reason I think I was drawn to the warcraft/starcraft custom games when I was younger was that it just seemed too much effort (and kind of tedious) to get "good" at the main game. Goofing about with strange maps seemed more attractive.

Fun fact. When Blizzard was working on match making for SC2 they found they’d made it too good. That you’d consistently get matched with someone so close to your level that each game would be completely draining. They found they needed to widen the standard deviation so that some games felt like a cake walk and other times you just got stomped. What I don’t know is how much of the change was due to direct player feedback, and how much of it was simply trying to maximize player session retention.

I suspect I’m quoting a post I read on gamasutra. Very good site for those interested in game industry anecdotes.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#150

Post by jtanderson »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #55
azernik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are indeed retreat options in Total War.

Can you retreat fast enough to avoid the entire fight? If so that falls under "the big fight is unnecessary" If there's a time limit before you can retreat, it all seems rather... artificial, compared to having full control on a single map.

I’d also point out that you can adjust the “speed” of army movement — at least in TW: Warhammer — so that if they’re moving more quickly, like a forced march, they are less likely to spot hidden or sneaking armies. This does leave the mechanic depending on user choice of where to focus, not just ambient fog of war. It at least gives a similar state of mind as in SC where the player says to himself “do I go in with blinders on or do I proceed with more attention to surroundings” with real pros/cons for each.
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