251–260 of 275 posts
Surprising to see no mention of Supreme Commander. This game isn't just alive, its thriving and getting popular(the FAF mod, not the base game). Maybe RTS games are not being actively made but the mods are very much alive.
This article is biased towards Blizzard-style RTS. Not a single C&C game mentioned. Not even RA2 and C&C:Generals, which had very healthy multiplayer scenes. Blizzard RTS games are extremely conservative by design, how are things supposed to get better if you're so conservative? I think a fundamental problem is control method. In Blizzard RTS, you just must click fast. Lack of automation makes it worse. The interface…
I think a huge improvement to RTS in general would be allowing multiple players to command the same army, so that each can be responsible for a small portion of all the different tasks you describe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 opponen…
The best equaliser I've experienced was the handicap in Quake 3. I can have a great balanced match with people both better and worse than me, having lots of fun. Even if without the handicap the matches would end with scores like 30:1. I'm not sure how that would work for RTSes though - handicap on movement speed? amount of gained resources?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
oups indeed I meant micro not macro RTS without macro would make no sense
> RTS without macro would make no sense actually, the game "world in conflict" has no macro - you get free units (in limited quantities), and you micro the set of units to take control of points in the terrain (which leads to more reinforcements/units). Quite an interesting RTS, i would say. It's completely about tactics and micro, no macro at all.
I heard about it but haven't played it. Looks like it was made from the same team as Ground Control, so this would be a tactics game (maybe a bit of a pedantic point to make though .. the 2 genres are closely related) ?
Indeed, it was not what I had in mind but removing the strategic layer would also serve as making these games more focused and hopefully less frantic.
When you start losing players, the match quality goes down, which leads to longer matchmaking searches or unbalanced teams... Either outcome accelerates the process of losing players until the game only exists for the better players. At this point any new players are turned off by the skill level and matchmaking times by the players left.
The last ditch attempt to save the game is making it free to play. This is the only way out of the last problem because you get a lot of new players for a minute... Usually this doesn't work unless you pull a FortNite and completely change the game mode when you go F2P.
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…
The obstacles to indie RTS games aren't art style/production related. If anything, the top-down or isometric-ish view makes that part relatively straightforward. The requirement for online multiplayer (while dealing with hundreds of units) is the bigger obstacle. Especially if they're working with Unity. Pathfinding (in a way that lets large swarms of units move smoothly through narrow choke points) is a non-trivial…
Isometric views take wildly more art assets than side view. Notice how there are far fewer indie overhead adventure games than there are indie platformers. The engines for these are nearly identical, and Zelda is just as much of a cultural touchstone as Mario. I attribute this to these games taking 3x or 5x the art assets.
Needing multiplayer and pathfinding are good points. I don't think RTS multiplayer is particularly hard (the hundreds of units hardly matter if you're doing it right), but the fact that everyone expects the genre to have multiplayer at all is still a significant barrier to entry. Mass pathfinding is definitely a problem - the discussions I've seen online about it are mostly people confidently telling each other to use A*, which really isn't sufficient in an RTS.
I don't think design problems are that important for indie games. If the barrier to entry is low enough, there will be enough games to brute force the design.
This article is biased towards Blizzard-style RTS. Not a single C&C game mentioned. Not even RA2 and C&C:Generals, which had very healthy multiplayer scenes. Blizzard RTS games are extremely conservative by design, how are things supposed to get better if you're so conservative? I think a fundamental problem is control method. In Blizzard RTS, you just must click fast. Lack of automation makes it worse. The interface…
Though I've never served in armed forces, nor participated in armed conflict, I think C&C does a pretty good approximation of being an (overwhelmed) officer in command of a small area conflict, where you do have to give exact orders to everyone for every little thing. I think a huge improvement to RTS in general would be allowing multiple players to command the same army, so that each can be responsible for a small p…
CS:GO is a very accessible first person shooter game suitable for all skill levels. It changes little over years and visuals are far from state of art. But they've figured out the formula for FUN. It's not exactly my cup of tea, but if you can do this for FPS you can probably find a FUN real time strategy formula as well. A formula that's not overly complicated and doesn't feel like juggling balls for 25 minutes. I think Starcraft is not that formula.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Trying to appeal to a very small number of people that are still playing multiplayer SC2 and think of SC2 as the gold standard for RTS is a dead end. SC2 fundamentally failed with their multiplayer design due to their irrational focus on the esports and competitive aspects of multiplayer. The point of multiplayer isn't to allow hardcore fans to find ways to enjoy the game for 10+ years. The point of multiplayer from…
1. competitive (Starcraft, DOTA, LOL, CS:GO, etc.) 2. low skill ceiling (usually thanks to significant randomness - see Hearthstone) 3. no skill-based matchmaking (for example in Warthunder AFAIK matchmaking is based on the vehicles you drive not on how often you win your games) 4. party games (you play with the same people repeatedly - see Among Us)
Option 1 discourages casuals, but makes for games with high engagement. People still play starcraft 1 broodwar and age of empires 2.
Option 2 is best suited for casual/mobile/pay2win market. It can work for the game developer, but I consider it a dark design pattern aimed at extracting the maximum amount of money from addicted people (usually kids).
Option 3 is weird - people don't care about winning games in Warthunder, they only care about killing enough enemies to get virtual money to repair and upgrade their tanks. It's also heavily pay2win because the best vehicles for their matchmaking rating can be only bought with real money. But few people care about winning so I guess that's fine? Also it's not mainly marketed to kids so I'm more ok with it.
Option 4 is the best because anything with friends is fun. But you have to have friends who are into it.
Among Us took of recently after years of barely surviving (probably thanks to the quarantine). But most multiplayer games that do well for years after the release are highly competitive. I don't think that's an accident.
I felt that Company of Heroes was a nice evolution of the genre and minimized the need for incredibly high APM. For those who have not played Company of Heroes it is more about unit positioning and microing those units effectively. It requires a different set of skills than other RTS games. Unfortunately I have not seen this catch on. Relic, the developers of CoH are working on Age of Empires IV and so I hope they wi…