The way I read it, if you don’t like RTS games your are an idiot.
I agree with a great number of the complaints about the genre in this thread. I will say that Rise of Nations does an excellent job of addressing nearly all of them.
When I first saw units reach the shore in RoN and turn into seagoing transports automatically with no extra unit required? Pure bliss, I tell you. The folks at Big Huge have got something special in this title.
~MJK
If the biggest change RoN has for us is removing the transport unit, color me depressed. The whole point of transports is to put limits on oversea expansion. If I can just select a hundred units and move them overseas with no additional cost (like 5 or 10 transports taking up population slots) I don’t see much challenge to the thing. It removes a tiny piece of micromanagement and certainly not the most important piece.
I am looking forward to RoN but more because of the border thing to place limits on early elimination. The attrition is a great idea, though Kohan had a bit of this in its supply zone thing.
Troy
[size=2]Edit spelling[/size]
Sounds like we need to form a version of “Crusty Old Fossil Rockers” for RTS players.
I can hold my own against the hyper-speed hardcore RTS players in eveyrthing except Warcraft III, but I far prefer an opponent who’ll do some building and let the battle come after some strategy is possible.
Hmm… How about a “Quarter to Three Sunday Afternoon RTS fest?” We pick a game for the week and play for a couple of hours at 2 pm EST? (Obviously not THIS Sunday, since so many people will be preparing for a certain non-interactive turn-based strategy game to be shown in TV…)
Yeah, I’m excited for this Sunday. You are talking about the Magic: The Gathering Tourney on ESPN2, right?
Dammit Denny, that’s prime baby time. I need to see if I can schedule my girl’s nap to coincide with the Qt3 RTS schedule, however. I would be “down” for that on the AoM tip if others are interested.
Actually, Carter seems to nap from 3 to 5 more often than not, so I’m flexible. :-)
I’m in the camp that dislikes the obsession with micromanagement that so many RTS games fall prey to, so the elimination of things like separate transport units appeals greatly to me.
For the record, the Myth games are far and away my favorites in the genre. Any movement in the Mythian direction is welcome, IMO.
~MJK
Well, Kohan sucked. Simple as that. Stupid story, boring visuals, fairly primitive game system, an AI whose completely random moves were offset only by insane cheating… the weird setting was just the final blow.
A real-time game isn’t automatically good just because it doesn’t play like a Command & Conquer clone. Like most (if not all) Strategy First products, Kohan was an interesting concept study – nothing more.[/quote]
In other words, you never played multiplayer.
That’s right, maybe Kohan was better in MP. Actually, since the silly story and the super-cheating AI wouldn’t matter in MP, it’s nearly impossible that it wouldn’t be better than SP…
Picture the subject as being “Chess – why not?”
Did I offend anyone who doesn’t play chess?
That’s right, maybe Kohan was better in MP. Actually, since the silly story and the super-cheating AI wouldn’t matter in MP, it’s nearly impossible that it wouldn’t be better than SP…[/quote]
I fully agree that the single player was ass. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to get an online game going now; it’s just the same 12 assholes over on Gamespy.
Well since the appeal of games varies to taste i wonder if there could ever could be or ever was a career/gametype comparison done. I know several petrolium engineers and geologists and they all generally prefer games like Starcraft. I wonder if its the same obsessive-complusive behaviors that drive people into certain jobs that determine their game choises? After all RTS games really are about o/c control over every little minutia and detail, which quite obviously appeals to some and is abhorrent to others. Do writers/laywers or political activists prefer RPGs for their imagination and storyline? Anaylists or professionals in extreme careers like the military prefer history or military sim style games?
Gene, since you are here, I want to discuss some current WC3 issues.
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Chimeras are way, WAY too powerful. I mean, fuck. When massed in groups of 4 or more, these are the definition of uber-units. With the corrosive breath, they destroy buildings in the blink of an eye, and their lighting attack can kill all but the strongest anti-air units in a max of two hits. Pretty much the only worthwhile counter is polymorph, or the handful of air-to-air units in the game. That’s one reason in a 3vs3 someone has to mass dryads (see #4), so you have some hope of beating groups of chims.
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Ranged units always win over melee units because they can focus all of their fire on single heavy units, killing them, then moving on the next unit. (Ranged units also get a 50% damage bonus against “large” units, which is kind of a standard Blizzard thing they’ve done for their last few RTS games; it’s part of the rock-paper-scissors balance axis). Even though the total damage is lower than a pure melee unit, it’s much more efficient at taking out single heavy units (including heroes). For this reason, I’d rather have 10 footmen with defend than 5 knights; at least as the # of units increase they can’t focus fire on them all fast enough. I am always encountering armies with very little melee and a shitpod of ranged and magical ranged units.
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I’m beginning to think the Orc witch doctor is too strong as well. I’ve seen entire armies laid to waste by effective use of stasis traps (laid down in advance of combat, and in the middle of combat furballs thereafter) and healing wards (ditto). They also do more damage than Shamans, which makes bloodlust seem… worthless in comparison.
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Dryads. Good lord. Could there be a more unfair unit? Auto magic dispel? Poison/slow ranged attack? The fastest movement speed in the game, so they can run away if under heavy attack? And they’re fairly durable, too, certainly more so than archers/headhunters. I spend a lot of 3vs3 games getting 100% dryads with a few bears to back them up.
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The orc headhunter still sucks for real anti-air tasks; they badly need to up the hitpoints on these guys, a lot.
These are relatively minor quibbles, and I’m sure Blizzard will address them in an upcoming patch. I’m not aware of any hero imbalance issues at this point.
If I’ve learned anything from playing WC3, it’s that the size of your army isn’t as important as its composition and your ability to use it effectively. It is depressing to be forced into battle in games where the other team has built the counter for your units, eg, massed spellcasters vs. auto-dispelling dryads, or massed archers vs. flying units.
What I like most about Warcraft III is the focus on small groups of units. A unit cap is something I started to really, really miss in Total Annihilation, where a lot of the clever unit strategy was buried under mindlessly pumping massive forces of units. In WC3, 16 units + 2 heroes is about as big an army as you can really mass without running into the 90 food limit; this makes it a lot easier to concentrate on using your units effectively.
I wanted to give specific rebuttals to Supertanker’s specific examples. In general, as Bub mentioned, there are some semi-sophisticated calculations going on in the background that are more interesting than they seem. Or they should be, in properly designed RTS games, anyway.
A more specific example. Let’s say a powerful combat unit, an ogre or a hero or something, is coming toward a pair of crossbowmen in Age of Conquering Legends (tm by me). The crossbowmen are going to lose. They may chip a few of the ogre’s hitpoints off before it can kill them, but they have no realistic chance of winning the battle. They won’t get a lucky shot in its eye, they can’t hide from it, they can’t bait it toward one while the other shoots it in the back. The strategic decisions on what to construct and where to place it already determined the outcome of the fight, so the tactics don’t matter.
WC3: It is possible to give units a chance of a critical hit; this applies to a specific Orc hero. Ranged units also get a 50% damage bonus against “large” units. But you’re right in that two archers would have a hard time killing an ogre. You could run one unit away, while the ogre pursues to close, the second unit is chipping away at the ogre. Not really practical except in Myth-like circumstances where those are the ONLY units you get for the entire game. Generally you’d just run away to a more advantageous position.
On the other hand, tactics play a role and allow different outcomes in something purely tactical like Combat Mission. When a powerful unit like a Tiger tank approaches a pair of infantry squads, or a pair of bazooka teams, they have a reasonable chance to fight and kill it if they employ proper tactics. As opposed to our doomed crossbowmen, one bazooka team could draw the Tiger’s attention while the other fires a killing shot into the rear armor. The infantry squads could seek favorable terrain to hide until the Tiger is nearby, then close assault it and immobilize it, causing the crew to break and abandon the vehicle. Drag selecting the bazooka teams and ordering them to attack the Tiger will probably doom them as much as the crossbowmen, but it is not the player’s only alternative.
Ground Control: tanks had a rear facing weakness. It was far easier to blow up tanks by getting units to hit them from the rear.
I think the roshambo aspects of games are unavoidable, but in RTS games they are too simplistic for my tastes. In Red Alert 2, I pick the Koreans and build the super-duper fighter jets. My opponent sees I have the Koreans and builds a pile of AA guns. I lose! Despite the promise of elite pilots in the finest jets, I don’t get to try to avoid the guns by flying high or nape-of-the-earth, I don’t have Wild Weasels along to jam the guns’ radar, I don’t have precision munitions for the first wave to knock out the AA sites. Rock beats scissors, game over, and again the strategy of unit construction rules the day.
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms: it’s possible to have veteran and elite class units (through gaining experience in combat) which will mop the floor with green units. However, you’re talking about facing one unit off against its perfect counter. Not going to be a good matchup in any world, real or otherwise. If you had AA sites, bombers or ground units would take them out before you comitted your valuable fighters.
Resource harvesting is just more strategic emphasis, but also gives me a chore-like feeling. I’m waiting for a house-themed RTS, where I get to select occupants and order them to do the dishes, take out the trash, and mow the law before the Mother-in-Law arrives for the big battle.
I agree that resource harvesting can be a big fucking chore, and this is one area where Age of Mythology gets it completely wrong. However, simplified resource models provide another layer of tactical abstraction: funding and supporting an army. If you could simply click a building 20 times and produce 20 megatanks, the game wouldn’t be very engaging. It should be painful to lose expensive units, particularly when the enemy is using cheaper counter-type units.
In summary, you should not have to sacrifice much of the complexity of a “real” wargame for a real time strategy game. Sure it’s abstracted away somewhat but any game is going to do that, or it will be an unplayable mess.
As for the other general criticisms. One being the time pressure. You either enjoy playing chess with a timed clock, or you don’t. I like being under pressure, because it more accurately simulates the “make good decisions under fire” aspect of gameplay that SHOULD exist in any competent wargame. Sometimes you’ll fuck up, because… war isn’t waged with egg timers on each side. Example. My enemy distracts me with some feint at my expansion, and I commit all my forces without having 5 minutes to ponder the consequences of having zero forces near my main base. Then I get a massive counter at my main base. You have to learn to think on your feet, take your lumps, and learn from your mistakes. Sometimes the next action ISN’T logical. If one of your allies is under heavy attack, you may have to attack the ENEMY base-- because his forces are all committed elsewhere-- to have any hope of winning, rather than blindly rushing to the aid of your ally.
The complaint of repetition confuses me. Let me put this question to you: what game doesn’t have repetition? Tetris, where you place the same 6 blocks over and over? Racing games, where you do endless loops on the same track? Everquest or Diablo, where you fight the same mobs endlessly and pray for a favorable drop? Multiplayer counter-strike, where you’re fighting over the same bottlenecks in the level, game after game?
I guess repetition is in the eye of the beholder. The reality, at least for my multiplayer games, is that 90 percent of the games are unique and interesting. It all depends on the style and choices of the human opponent you’re playing against. Sure, eventually, you’ll see some similar builds and similar use of units, but the higher level metagame never quite plays the same way twice.
This contributes to my “roshambo in a blender” complaints. To create variations in game play from the previous RTS game, the designers will create their own heirarchy of units, and that heirarchy may defy common knowledge. You should have seen the look on my face the first time I watched a single guard dog tear through half-a-dozen of my assualt rifle-armed soldiers in RA2. It’s a dog! They have machine guns!
For the record: I hated that too. But it’s not the genre’s fault, you can lay the blame for that squarely at the feet of Westwood and their fucking psionic dolphin “units”. We’ll see what happens with C&C Generals, but I trust those guys about as far as I can throw their fat, lazy developers.
Total Annihilation is a far better example of a RTS game where units behave like you would expect them to in the real world. Battleships turn really slowly, etc. Ah, if only Chris Taylor would give up his crappy Diablo clones and turn back to RTS games. In related news, Bill Roper mentioned that proper universal building queuing will be in the WC3 expansion; it’s been in TA since 1998.
What’s mostly ruined online gaming for me is that I have much more of a life as a 30something than I did as a 20something. However, most of my online opponents apparently do not have such lives (witness the whole boobs or Nintendo thread: http://www.eat-it-all.com/index.cgi?article=23). The upshot is that they can devote far more of their time to the game than I’m willing to, or would really want to. That can be OK for a low-commitment game like Quake or MechAssault, but when it’s an hour or more of my life (or about the high-end of my average daily gaming time), I just like to win a little more often.
These days, I play against friends with a similar outlook or I play single-player games.
I’m also really tired of tech trees. I’m tired of micromanagement. I’m tired of finite resources. There are games that address any one of these issues, but I don’t think there’s ever been one that managed to hit all 3 at once. Correct me if I’m wrong so I can go play it.
To be fair, I’ve met the occasional online uberopponent who wants a challenge more than he wants to win, and he is therefore willing to handicap things to make the game even. That’s a lot of fun whether I win or lose because now I stand a chance. And the uberopponent can brag that he beat me despite giving me all sorts of cool toys. That’s win-win in my book. In my experience though, it seems like the personality of most uberopponents can’t wrap their heads around this.
So there you go, that’s how I went from a Warcraft II weenie to casual gamer in 6 years.
That can be OK for a low-commitment game like Quake or MechAssault, but when it’s an hour or more of my life (or about the high-end of my average daily gaming time), I just like to win a little more often
The statistics page indicates that 6 of the 8 WC3 game types last, on average, 23 minutes or less. And the other two are kind of oddball game types anyway-- 4vs4 and free for all. FFA is kind of interesting… a much more defensive game. 4vs4, on the other hand, is more like a internet connectivity contest than an actual game… someone is bound to drop.
http://www.battle.net/war3/ladder/reports/last-week/Lordaeron/war3-reports-game-type-usage.shtml
One feature that WC3 has which really helps with early game repetition is the levelling up of your hero and killing the ambient creeps on the map. Getting out and fighting AI groups sure beats the hell out of sitting around waiting for things to build.
witness the whole boobs or Nintendo thread
Heh. That’s a funny thread. I wonder what Dave Long’s answer to Boobs vs. Nintendo would be? Check out this image:
http://users.wpi.edu/~macbeth/new/nintendo.jpg
Features GameCube, Dreamcast and Boobs. Let the extended massive orgasm begin.
Anyone see the ad for RoN in CGW this month?
Quotes from the ad include:
“Think fast. Fight Faster”
“Do it all under the gun with zero margin for error.”
“…only the quick and the brazen survive.”
Err, no thanks.
olaf
I’ll agree that RTSes are “chess with a timed clock”. With 100s of units, which you also have to move on that timed clock.
I guess we should be happy they don’t make us replant farms, or individually move peons back and forth from the mine to the town hall.
That happened to me one time. It’s a long story.
I like RTS’s, though I don’t play them as much as any other type of game for a couple of reasons:
A) The games are never long enough. I’d like a ‘SimCity’ meets ‘Starcraft’ type thing, where you have to support your cities full of civilians, attract new ones, and try to get the old ones to sign up for your army. Just a game that is more than just building a temporary settlement to crank out one more guy than your enemy for 15 minutes.
B) I wanna get down into the action, let ME take a first person view with one of my troops and lead them into battle. Or maybe just give me 20 minutes, and one guy, to sneak into enemy camp and sabatoge their defences and offences. Like ‘Metal Gear’ meets ‘Command and Conquer’. Your guy gets killed, or your time is up, poof you continue with the RTS portion.
- You really can’t spread your troops out or you’ll forget about them. Most of those games need a temporary base that has a better AI, like you could tell it to ‘Amass 15 troops and then attack this area on my mark.’ So I can take my eyes off of some troops without them blindly following one soldier into the middle of the enemy camp, or just stand around while my base gets pounded.
Delta) I agree; the single player wears thin, and multiplay is no fun playing against ‘l33t d00dz’ who can click faster than me and know the best way and never deviate. Kinda a ‘Flintstones’ meet ‘Saving Private Ryan.’