51–60 of 129 posts
The images of ruins at the end are interesting. Imagine an option that after winning the game you can fast-forward time and watch your glorious civilization decay into ruins and nothingness.
This is a game that came out in 1999! More than 20 years later there have been two remakes, there's still a huge and healthy community and a thriving pro scene. And now someone is using relatively cutting edge image AI to mod the sprites. It's crazy to me how some of these old games have such staying power (Super Smash Bros Melee is another that comes to mind).
The crazy part is that some of the players who dominated the multiplayer scene in 2000 are still playing…and dominating. TheViper regularly streams his matches. Surreal watching them cause I remember playing against him (and losing) 20+ years ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The staying power makes me feel kind of sad, because it represents a lack of vitality... they've cleared the local space, like some sort of planetoid, and newcomers have little chance.
The Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre more or less died in the mid 2000s with Age of Empires II, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft being the ones that left a mark. Since that time: Warcraft 3 died; Starcraft was supplanted by Starcraft 2 and both eventually died outside of the lucrative Korean pro scene. Age of Empires II also died until it saw a resurrection in the pro scene in the early 2010s which has lasted to today. The RT…
SC2 still has a fairly healthy playerbase, and even War3 and BW still have some players.
> Age of Empires II also died until it saw a resurrection in the pro scene in the early 2010s which has lasted to today.
You think AoE2 is alive but SC2 is dead? SC2 has very little support and will eventually be passed by AoE2 for playercount, but I don't think it's there yet. Pretty sure SC2 still has more players.
This is great, can't wait unti this is taken to the next level... (they touch on this at the end of the article) - An RTS without units or buildings by default. - The players enter prompts and creates any unit they can imagine.
This is a game that came out in 1999! More than 20 years later there have been two remakes, there's still a huge and healthy community and a thriving pro scene. And now someone is using relatively cutting edge image AI to mod the sprites. It's crazy to me how some of these old games have such staying power (Super Smash Bros Melee is another that comes to mind).
The staying power makes me feel kind of sad, because it represents a lack of vitality... they've cleared the local space, like some sort of planetoid, and newcomers have little chance.
The newcomers to the RTS scene are largely badly made. Company of Heroes 3 has already dropped below Company of Heroes 2 playercount despite having come out just a few months ago. AoE4 also had plenty of problems (no ranked ladder at launch? it took 6 months), though it being Relic, that's not very surprising. I'm on the r/realtimestrategy subreddit a lot, and basically every RTS that flops, well, there are very good reasons for that that you'll see people mention. It's not just "oh I'm cool with AoE/Starcraft and won't try anything else". There are some quite cool fan games, especially in the Total Annihilation-like space, but of course they don't have as much splash/marketing.
One of the core problems is probably devs streamlining away complexity, especially mechanical complexity or base building. Nearly every RTS dev for the last 15 years seems to beat on this drum of, "We're not gonna be Starcraft! We're gonna be easier for casual players!" and then they fail miserably and you look at the top 3 RTSes: Starcraft 2, Age of Empires 2, Starcraft 1. It's almost like mechanical complexity and base building can be good things!
I think Starcraft 2 had the right of it with the endless co-op mode introduced in the second expansion, that thing was very popular with more casual players (it was the most popular mode in the game at least for a while). While it retained the same core feel and mechanics of the 'regular' game, they had a lot of variety with the different commanders (basically subfactions) that could appeal to different players, including ones that were easier/had less base building. But you could still have a fairly traditional commander if you wanted one, so it was the best of both worlds.
And it's easy to see how the mode could be expanded on too: more army customizability, more variety in missions (instead of nearly every mission being 2 bases, you could vary that number up), unlockables/items/rewards from missions, varying numbers of players on a team instead of exactly 2, raid missions, mini-campaigns or storylines, etc.
Frost Giant is also planning to make 3v3 an actual competitive mode in terms of balance and design for Stormgate, which is...rare. I can't think of a competitive RTS off hand that was balanced around teams rather than 1v1, or in addition to 1v1. That might help too, team games are more social and often more popular.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the best board games are less than twenty years old. Cardboard based entertainment has made huge strides recently. By and large, good boardgames are not so much timeless as 'fairly new' instead. There have been a few good games earlier, but it's really instructive to have a look at the ranked list of boardgames at https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame and check the publication dates.
wow, i had no idea there were so many boardgames.. i looked to see where my old favorite Talisman was and it's ranked #1764! jeez..
This is great, can't wait unti this is taken to the next level... (they touch on this at the end of the article) - An RTS without units or buildings by default. - The players enter prompts and creates any unit they can imagine.
I was wondering about how this could affect gameplay. Like disguising your buildings by looking like other buildings.. That example of all the buildings being made of books. How can I tell the difference between a barracks and an archery range.. or just a patch of empty grass? I used to play a text based MUD that had a high level spell that let you create illusion spells that just output text of your choosing onto ot…
edit - worked with zMUD anyways
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The staying power makes me feel kind of sad, because it represents a lack of vitality... they've cleared the local space, like some sort of planetoid, and newcomers have little chance.
The Real Time Strategy (RTS) genre more or less died in the mid 2000s with Age of Empires II, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft being the ones that left a mark. Since that time: Warcraft 3 died; Starcraft was supplanted by Starcraft 2 and both eventually died outside of the lucrative Korean pro scene. Age of Empires II also died until it saw a resurrection in the pro scene in the early 2010s which has lasted to today. The RT…
Stormgate, Tempest Rising and Sanctuary are ones that RTS fans are looking forward to. A lot of people also like Beyond All Reason (a recent TA-like fan game).
It reminds me of skins in a game like Overwatch – it's the shape that's the most important to make you able to identify a hero in split second, even if it's wearing a skin you have never seen before.
This is a game that came out in 1999! More than 20 years later there have been two remakes, there's still a huge and healthy community and a thriving pro scene. And now someone is using relatively cutting edge image AI to mod the sprites. It's crazy to me how some of these old games have such staying power (Super Smash Bros Melee is another that comes to mind).
The staying power makes me feel kind of sad, because it represents a lack of vitality... they've cleared the local space, like some sort of planetoid, and newcomers have little chance.
But if you search a bit in the RTS section, there are definitely some gems on Steam (e.g. Northgard comes to mind, and currently I'm having a lot of fun with Timberborn, although that's a city builder, not a competitive RTS). Oh, and WARNO, even if it still has a lot of early-access roughness.