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The Future of RTS

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Re: The Future of RTS

#261

Post by BadInformatics »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #33
the__alchemist wrote: post #28

Age of Empires 2 Definitive edition is thriving. I play regularly with a group of friends, and found out this week that several of my colleagues play it too. DE really is AOE2 in its finest form: Fixed netcode, responsiveness, matchmaking, and continuous patches and balance tweaks. It's a 20-year old game that gets monthly patches, and is active enough to match you to opponent[s] in minutes. Compared to SC2, I miss t…

AoE 2 DE is a lot of fun, but I do wish they'd allow for 16 players. Comp stomps with a group of friends are limited to 4-5 right now, but there's probably no intrinsic reason they couldn't be higher.

> but there's probably no intrinsic reason they couldn't be higher.

The client (from the original version through DE) runs a single-threaded simulation. That is a big barrier to getting more players or even larger maps (it used to be that ludakris size was unplayable before DE/UserPatch optimizations). Given how many players can't even clear the multiplayer performance benchmark without dramatically reducing quality settings, I'm not sure they'll bump up the player cap unless they decide to re-architect a good part of the engine internals.

Re: The Future of RTS

#262

Post by BadInformatics »

chongli wrote: post #232
wgerard wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The competitors to RTSes, games like League of Legends, Fortnite, Rocket League, and Hearthstone... are enjoyable to play across the full spectrum of skill levels. I'm mostly kidding, but I do think it's worth pointing out that most (if not all) of those games have been accused of being extremely unfriendly to new players and generally being miserable experiences until you acquire a baseline level of knowledge. I t…

Team play is definitely something I missed in my comment which is a big part of the picture. There’s a bit more nuance to it though. Solo queuing a team game can be miserable at any skill level simply due to a lack of accountability for team members. Playing with a group of friends, as you pointed out, can be fun at any skill level. For competitive games that are inherently one on one, I don’t think it’s necessarily…

I think StarCraft (2)'s pacing and focus on fast 1v1s is its downfall here. Personally, I find both Chess and Hearthstone very stressful because of how much thinking ahead is required. It's analysis paralysis, amplified and gamified. In an RTS, you're generally not working at that level of strategy and have a much smaller state space to search through at the tactical level.

Re: The Future of RTS

#263

Post by dagw »

gota wrote: post #200
IgorPartola wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t you argue the same thing for Facebook as the ultimate social network that will never be dethroned?

Social networks are supposedly different in that the _new_ users (i.e. teenagers) are actively trying to _not_ share a platform with previous users (i.e. parents and people older than 25 in general)

Is SC2 getting a continuous stream of new users?

Re: The Future of RTS

#264

Post by BadInformatics »

_ofdw wrote: post #42
noxvilleza wrote: post #11

Whilst I certainly have huge respect for HuK, I feel that either his use of the categories in the article as perhaps a bit simplistic. Many of the points he mentions are really intertwined - most importantly balance vs variety: it's very hard to score highly on both. SC2 has 3 very distinct races (he gives it a 8.8 for variety), hence there are just 6 possible matchups. AoE 2 (DE) has 35 (he gives it a 3), making ove…

>AoE 2 (DE) has 35 (he gives it a 3), making over 600 possible 1v1 matchups. The 3 species in Starcraft are quite distinct in many key areas, whereas in Age of Kings and AOE3 (the only ones I've played) the differences between the factions were limited to a handful of units and buildings, but ultimately they all played pretty much the same.

It's still a simplistic view on HuK's part because he completely ignores civ bonuses and the rest of the tech tree!

To elaborate: at lower levels, most civs probably feel or play the same. Macro and micro are in short supply, so economy and tech bonuses don't make much of a difference.

Once one starts playing above mid ELO on the ladder, this changes completely. Eco bonuses can make or break an entire match and dictate the style of play for each civ. For example, the Saracens have a unique playstyle where they exploit resource trading at the market to get aggressive early and still maintain a fast age up time (much, much more important than tech/hatchery levels in SC2). From the tech side, the Incas have a common strategy that involves rushing with static defence and fighting with villagers. Protoss can do this too with a cannon rush, but the Incas strategy is far more viable (and actually scary at mid-high level) because they get armour upgrades on their villagers.

So yes, there are only so many ways to assemble a unique army of military units in AOE 2. That in no way implies that there are only that many meaningful matchups. I respect HuK's RTS prowess as well, but I'm afraid he's missed the boat pretty badly on this one.

Re: The Future of RTS

#265

Post by rvba »

The author:

* gave StarCraft 1 a balance score of 7.4 / 10 while the game is probably the most balanced RTS ever and deserves nothing else than 10 out of 10

* Gave higher scores to games that are irrelevant (Company of Heroes?) and were never relevant, while people still play StarCraft 1 up to this day

... is someone who knows not much about RTS.

The scores there are completely wrong.

StarCraft 1 is a game from 1998 that is still relevant to today and overall the best RTS ever. Nothing else touched it when it comes to balance. Gameplay is debatable, but Id say no other RTS touched it too.

Also the author completely omits the thing that made StarCraft Brood War relevant: the map editor with custom games. Those were and still are revolutionary, since they allowed the players to create their own maps with own rules. Things like Turret Defense, or whole MOBA genere came out from custome StarCraft maps. Thousands such maps were made and played by players - the game gave the relatively easy to use map editor that also provided a relatively easy to use (and primitive) programming language. That added to the game's longetivity.

WarCraft 3 had it too -> the whole DOTA was probably more popular than the game itself.

StarCraft 2 didnt have real custom maps - as Blizzard didnt know what to do: they wanted to monetize them, yet didnt, so effectively they killed this mode with their wrong decisions. If SC2 had a decent ability for custom games from the start, the game would be much more relevant today. The whole paragraph about "ladder anxiety" goes away, if you can play custom games all day. As many player in SC1 did. But couldnt in SC2.

Re: The Future of RTS

#266

Post by BadInformatics »

yoz-y wrote: post #106
Gunax wrote: post #56

There is one thing I've noticed about RTS: every player seems to think they are awful at the game. This seems to be the opposite of most games, where players tend to overestimate their skill. This actually keeps a lot of players from even trying online play. There is something different about RTS... I think in some way they aren't fun. They are really quite stressful to play in ways other games aren't.

RTS matches take comparatively longer with other online games. In a Vs fighting game the match is over under three minutes every time. In an RTS you might be there for 20-40 minutes and lose because of a single mistake. Except when playing on lower tiers and getting rushed and beaten in 5 over and over. I played SC2 for a while, at rather modest level (got to gold). After a few years I tried getting back to it and co…

I would contrast between faster and slower RTS games here. In SC2, everything is on a knife edge and it's common to fall apart after a bad engagement.

This is not a universal truth though. I primarily play AOE 2, where map distances and good static defence mean that an attacker needs momentum to push their advantage after a mistake from the other side if they want any chance to close the game. Hence it's common to see even pro players recover from somewhat horrifying gaffes when their opponent fails to push aggressively enough.

Re: The Future of RTS

#267

Post by BadInformatics »

djhworld wrote: post #128

Growing up I remember playing a lot of AoE and AoE2 with my school friends online, over dialup connections. I was never into any competitive scene, we were all probably very bad at the game but it was fun. The enjoyment came from the building, designing your base, and then the wars to defend or attack your opponents. This was back in the early 2000s, I've never played an RTS game since.

I'm biased because I play it, but AOE2 DE is probably the best the game has been since its original heyday. My friends and I do play ladder, but more often than not we do skirmishes amongst ourselves or AI games.

Worth a try for the nostalgia. I think the eye candy and new civ variety alone can justify it.

Re: The Future of RTS

#268

Post by gamblor956 »

sgillen wrote: post #248
gamblor956 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Zerg Rush is not an emergent behavior; it was part of the fundamental design of the Zerg. Hell, the "Zerg Rush" was part of the cinematics released with the first SC.

It depends what we mean by emergent. It was designed to be this way, but there is no switch in the code that says “if there are this many zerglings, buff their attack”. Instead it’s a consequence of their mechanics (they die quickly but in large numbers can do enough damage fast enough to offset this).

That's still not "emergent," because that is expressly how the unit was designed to function, and how it has been balanced since then.

Emergent would be something like zerglings can burrow, so use them to burrow in the enemies chokehold to prevent them from constructing a chokehold until they can get to the next tech tier and use radar.

Re: The Future of RTS

#269

Post by reitzensteinm »

BadInformatics wrote: post #261
reitzensteinm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AoE 2 DE is a lot of fun, but I do wish they'd allow for 16 players. Comp stomps with a group of friends are limited to 4-5 right now, but there's probably no intrinsic reason they couldn't be higher.

> but there's probably no intrinsic reason they couldn't be higher. The client (from the original version through DE) runs a single-threaded simulation. That is a big barrier to getting more players or even larger maps (it used to be that ludakris size was unplayable before DE/UserPatch optimizations). Given how many players can't even clear the multiplayer performance benchmark without dramatically reducing quality…

The original simulation ran fine on a Pentium 2, and that was a single core that also handled rendering, animation and audio.

Considering a single core can be dedicated to it these days we're approaching two orders of magnitude more performance available.

If it's become a bottleneck it's likely that there is very low hanging fruit to fix it.

Re: The Future of RTS

#270

Post by BadInformatics »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #269
BadInformatics wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there's probably no intrinsic reason they couldn't be higher. The client (from the original version through DE) runs a single-threaded simulation. That is a big barrier to getting more players or even larger maps (it used to be that ludakris size was unplayable before DE/UserPatch optimizations). Given how many players can't even clear the multiplayer performance benchmark without dramatically reducing quality…

The original simulation ran fine on a Pentium 2, and that was a single core that also handled rendering, animation and audio. Considering a single core can be dedicated to it these days we're approaching two orders of magnitude more performance available. If it's become a bottleneck it's likely that there is very low hanging fruit to fix it.

The original version also had a smaller pop cap, less demanding graphics+audio, much smaller maps and less simulation (particles, animated water, fog, etc). Some other engine functionality like pathfinding has also been reworked in the Definitive Edition, so it's far from an apples-apples comparison.

> If it's become a bottleneck it's likely that there is very low hanging fruit to fix it. This was true for the previous "remaster" of AOE2 (HD edition). That had persistent performance issues and was poorly optimized despite maintaining the same graphics style. If you read through a couple of the dev blogs for the DE release, I think it's pretty clear that there's little if any low-hanging fruit left before pretty major architectural improvements are necessary.

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