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The Future of RTS

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Re: The Future of RTS

#181

Post by ajuc »

Kinrany wrote: post #111
jtolmar wrote: post #85

Some problems I'd note for any resurgence of the RTS genre: * There hasn't been a huge RTS hit in ages, so large studios aren't going to push large chunks of cash into them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you may disagree with whether large studios should act this way, but that doesn't matter, because the observable fact is they do. * RTS games are still pretty expensive to make well. There hasn't been a breako…

> Streamers rely on their ability to self-commentate, but nobody can play an RTS while talking. For Starcraft 2 there's replay commentary. (I sometimes watch Lowko and WinterStarcraft. It's interesting how just watching pro players can unlock skills you wouldn't consider otherwise.)

There are some players that play while comentating. They don't usually talk a lot, and they are less competetive while comentating, but it's a thing.

For example in Polish sc2 scene there's Indy who usually talks while playing and is semi-proffesional (won some small tournaments but isn't considered tier 1 like Nerchio, MaNa, Elazer).

Re: The Future of RTS

#182

Post by wgerard »

bjterry wrote: post #155
baby wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry but the whole points of RTS is competition. It’s like complaining that we’re talking about tweaks to make chess more competitive.

The single-player campaigns were a major focus for many early RTS. Even Warcraft II many players mostly played the single-player, but that was probably the tipping point due to the success of Battle.net.

Eh, I'd say the campaign of WC3 was a pretty big focus, or at least Blizzard clearly considered it one since it formed the basis for a lot of WoW's storyline.

Re: The Future of RTS

#183

Post by jack_pp »

Kinrany wrote: post #116
Kinrany wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Streamers rely on their ability to self-commentate, but nobody can play an RTS while talking. For Starcraft 2 there's replay commentary. (I sometimes watch Lowko and WinterStarcraft. It's interesting how just watching pro players can unlock skills you wouldn't consider otherwise.)

> Even back in the heyday of RTS, everyone I knew played custom maps rather than the actual RTS. I'm pretty sure that crowd is all in Roblox or modded Minecraft these days. Roblox does have a couple RTS games! They're not very good. Feels like an RTS engine could lead to an explosion and, with cross-pollination with other common mechanics, create a couple new genres.

Haven't WC3 and SC2 been RTS engines themselves? People used them to make DotA and other mini-games, not other RTS games even though they could've.

It just seems to me RTS games are like chess, not easy to get into, not easy to watch / understand unless you pour a lot of time into it. People would rather just play Catan or other not-so-try-hard social games.

I think DotA is the best example of this, it's still try-hard yet somehow it strikes the perfect balance of try-hard but still easy enough that the average player can understand it and follow it.

Re: The Future of RTS

#184

Post by KMnO4 »

Macha wrote: post #150
jbay808 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age of Empires 2 lets you do this as well.

Ah, is this a definitive edition change? I don't remember HD/AoK having this

Actually, I was just playing AoE2 (the original from 1999) last night with my family and discovered this feature.

When joining a multiplayer game, you can choose player number and team. If you choose the same player number and team as someone else, both players have control of the same units.

Re: The Future of RTS

#185

Post by astrobe_ »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #151
astrobe_ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are describing a different Zero-K than I know. In the ZK I know switching to another factory is a late game thing, not something after you get a few builders for you first factory. Also each factory has mid-tier and high-tier units with unique capabilities. Some factories even have low tier units with specific features (e.g. Jumpbot's pyro or Cloakbots cloaking builder). I don't understand at all how you can say…

You're right about mid-tier units in each factory. I guess that functions as a sort of equivalent to building tier-2 factories in TA, although there's max 1-2 of those in each factory. What I'm trying to describe is rather the feeling of being quite lost still after 20 games or so, because I can't remember for the life of me which unit from which factory does what, even less what it works well with, and almost nothin…

Yes, the diversity can be overwhelming. The cloak factory is said to be a solid choice for beginners. From there, you can venture in other flavors of "bot" factories, like shield bots and jump bots. Then you can experiment with the more specialized ones, like spiders, hovers, gunships. And finally there are the very specific ones like the airplanes factory and the ships factory (good skills in those can make a difference in multiplayer games).

Of course it is better to have some knowledge about each of them, so you have a general idea of what to do when facing e.g. spiders.

Zero-K explicitly follows a rock-paper-scissors scheme (mainly raider-riot-skirmisher). Each category has a logo, which helps with selecting a counter-unit [1].

This is precisely the purpose of the campaign, which has been designed as a giant tutorial (without the annoyances of click-there-do-that past the very first mission). It restricts you to a single factory and often only a subset of the units of this factory, as you unlock the units when you complete missions. It is also RPG-y as you can unlock more modules for your commander as well. It is quite well done.

[1] http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Unit_classes

Re: The Future of RTS

#186

Post by izacus »

yskchu wrote: post #26
gamegoblin wrote: post #4

Something that isn't significantly touched on here that most RTSes neglect is physical logistics. That is, actually getting resources from the point of collection to the point of consumption. In most RTSes, once you collect resources they essentially go into a magic resource counter in the cloud. You can collect wood on one side of the map, and instantly create a building with that on the other side of the map. I wou…

Adding another game with good logistics to the list of games: The Wargame series from Eugen (the most recent one being Wargames: Red Dragon) Logistics is a huge part of it, your armies can run out of ammo, or be stranded without fuel - there are dedicated units used for resupply. Supply dumps, supply columns, and their protection, is a big part of the game as well.

The other part that Wargame series does well is unit intelligence and move a bit away from crazy clicking.

You can trust your AT squad to understand that other infrantry needs to be shot at with a gun and that tanks should be engaged with Javelins. This makes the game way more strategic and fun to play than something like Starcraft where you need to babysit moronic units and manually trigger their abilities. In Wargame you can focus more on positioning, information collection and movement instead of having to focus on clickathons to win. By the time shots are fired, the winner is probably already decided.

Re: The Future of RTS

#187

Post by izacus »

baby wrote: post #124
TwoBit wrote: post #88

It's sad to me that this author's only view of RTS is as an esport. If that's how it is then I'll be fine if there's never another RTS, and 95% of the public doesn't care about esports either.

I’m sorry but the whole points of RTS is competition. It’s like complaining that we’re talking about tweaks to make chess more competitive.

Blizzard at some point publicly said that more than 60% of Starcraft 2 players never clicked on the "Multiplayer" button. This is why is has so much resources put into SP campaign with special units, recorded audio and cutscenes.

IMO this is why RTS genre really died out - the studios focused too much on eSport aspect and abandoned most of their paying customer base which wasn't interested in crazy clickathrons. Multiplayer games are very very loud, but they're not the ones paying most of the money.

When smaller studios tried to copy Starcraft 2, they usually cut down on singleplayer content and sales tanked with that.

Re: The Future of RTS

#188

Post by ajuc »

jtolmar wrote: post #85

Some problems I'd note for any resurgence of the RTS genre: * There hasn't been a huge RTS hit in ages, so large studios aren't going to push large chunks of cash into them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you may disagree with whether large studios should act this way, but that doesn't matter, because the observable fact is they do. * RTS games are still pretty expensive to make well. There hasn't been a breako…

In my opinion Starcraft 2 killed RTSes (just like Dota 2 and LOL killed MOBAs).

With multiplayer games people can play the same title forever if it's deep enough. So new games in the same genre have to compete against a game that was made by Blizzard in 2010 and constantly developed ever since.

So what happens is - people check out the new game, and either get bored (it's too similar and worse) or get discouraged (it's too different to bother learning).

The only remaining market for RTS are so called "casuals" that want single player experience. But they don't engage with the game enough to justify years of gameplay development, balancing, innovative mechanics - they mostly want nice cutscenes and good graphics and beliveable dialogs and plot.

And most of them won't even finish the game. They will play for a week and move on. Single player games that don't achieve cult status - are finished on the market after the first month.

So for a new RTS to compete it has to be better than Starcraft 2 in multiplayer and gameplay or at least in storytelling. And that's a VERY hard thing to do for an indie studio. Risk is huge and required investment is enormous.

I've had high hopes for Iron Harvest and it clearly went for the casual/single player market and did pretty well, but not well enough.

Re: The Future of RTS

#189

Post by izacus »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #136

>> Simply put, most RTS games are exhausting. As someone who has achieved a relatively high level of play in numerous popular RTS games, my best coaching advice for the vast majority of players would be to play more and to play faster. In most instances being able to micro, macro, and multi task is the biggest obstacle keeping players from pushing their play to the next level. Many times, I hear players getting frust…

The thing is, making RTS games that are crazy APM clickathons is something that the studio chose to do. There's no rule that you need to make a strategy game that focuses so much on fast clicking - games like Wargame series, original Company of Heroes, Dawn of War and even Age of Empires II have significantly less of a "mad clicking" requirement and focus more on economic and strategy aspects of the game.

It's kinda ironic that "strategy" genre has ended up bogged down in small unit tactics, with units too stupid to actually use correct weapons by themselves. No wonder we all lost interest into the genre.

Re: The Future of RTS

#190

Post by wgerard »

viraptor wrote: post #148
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #136

>> Simply put, most RTS games are exhausting. As someone who has achieved a relatively high level of play in numerous popular RTS games, my best coaching advice for the vast majority of players would be to play more and to play faster. In most instances being able to micro, macro, and multi task is the biggest obstacle keeping players from pushing their play to the next level. Many times, I hear players getting frust…

I agree completely. I'd actually like to pick up a game which can't be min-max'ed to death. If that requires for example introducing some subtle randomness - great! As much as I enjoy some competitive play, I would love to know that the result looks more like log(skill) rather than e^(skill).

It's interesting you say that. I don't know if it's still the case, but Hearthstone used to have a decent amount of random effects (other than just basic card draw RNG). A big complaint at the time was that the randomness felt really awful if you were on the receiving end of an opponent's good luck.

Sometimes it felt like a chess match where you had executed your strategy perfectly, but randomly three of your opponents pawns turned into queens.

I get that you're talking about something more subtle than that (and maybe more akin to just, well, card draw RNG) but it's a delicate balance because it can also feel really bad for players being on the receiving end of randomness.

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