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On The Ascent And Descent Of The RTS
Thanks to GameSpot for their guest 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing the perceived decline of the real-time strategy genre. The author argues: "While there have been unusual bright spots on the RTS gaming scene, the overall look of it is pretty grim. Most games offer very little when it comes to revitalizing the genre, and eventually they even fail in rekindling old interests that faded away when we let go of Command & Conquer and Warcraft." He finishes with a call to arms, citing Command & Conquer: Generals ("[a] dearth of interesting strategies") and Age Of Mythology ("[offering a] rote formula") as examples of this lack of innovation, and urging: "Only you can stop the market from regurgitating the same old titles, and maybe even encourage it to make a few nudges in the right direction."
There's definately been a stagnant few years for RTS's. In the ages of Command & Conquer, Total Annihilation and Age Of Empires, I couldn't get enough, but someone milked the same formula far far FAR too much and killed the key original concepts.
As far as I can see, people became desperate to improve on something that wasn't 'broke' and made worse and worse DEvolutions of a genre which once sailed high.
I'll still never forget the endless playing of C&C and TA.... but its gone stale now... im not sure if they'll ever return to quality of the great games of their hayday, but it'd be nice to think so.
Bring back dodgy sprites and top down views!
Apart from my differing opinion about Generals (which has very good multiplayer, especially with the Zero Hour expansion), I find it hard to trust any article about RTS games that claims that Dune 2 was the first game in the genre.
The author states "But that alone is not the only piece of misinformation regarding the RTS genre" when it is he that is spreading misinformation. Take for example, Hertzog Zwei, a Megadrive (Genesis) RTS that far predates Dune 2.
The entire article seems to be nothing but a badly-constructed collection of ruminations about RTS games. I don't claim this post to be any better constructed than his article, but I can claim that I am not trying to make you think I am important and cool by hinting at things I don't really understand.
Take for example the section marked "The Problem". All he does to establish what he thinks the problem is, is list a group of ancient RTS games, and then complain that they all had a lot in common. Of course they had something in common: they were all members of the same genre. An RTS game without most of the things he lists, "Settle down, collect, build up, expand, destroy" would not be an RTS.
So, there was no real point to that section of the article, unless all he meant to say was "I am bored of the RTS genre." The thing that make this article detestable is the way he then tries to make us think he is clever, and actually has a point. First, he make a parenthetical aside about the old games he lists, hinting that they didn't have all that much of a storyline. Oh, what wit! What intellect! What humour the author commands!
Secondly, he tries to make his idea bigger than they are. For example, the use of the rhetorical question "...need I go on?", when he does, in fact, need to go on, because he has yet to make any point. He instead writes "...need I go on?", hoping that the reader will assume he made an important point.
The rest of this article continues in the same vein. The author comes close to realising the stupidity of what he is writing when he adds, in the section marked 'But still a problem': "but seeing how there are dozens of titles clinging to the same genre".
How is it that the author cannot understand that the non-innovative games that he lists, including Generals and Age of Mythology, are as much members of the RTS genre as the innovative ones he lists, Starcraft and Homeworld?
And again, if one has a flaky and ill-established point, why say there are "dozens" of examples, rather that actually list them?
I, on the other hand, believe that I have made my point, and will forgo listing other examples of the poorness of this article. If you disagree, post a response and I will elaborate.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Total Annihilation from Cavedog took a fairly cool approach to the whole resources thing--making them inexhaustible. It also nicely let you not just put units on hold, but actually slow down production depending on how many you built at the same time.
It didn't fix the problem with harvest-build-attack being sort of rote-ish, but for those of us who like a quick murderous game, it's a nice approach. Even when I got crushed online (always), it at least took my opponents several minutes of gradually rolling carnage through the solid curtain of fire from my defense guns to get through to my base and wipe me out.
The major problem I have with these games is the impression I have that they put too much emphasis on 1v1 combat. There doesn't seem to be enough incentive for everyone to go after everyone; all the online games I've played have resulted in the two strongest players eliminating everyone else, and then going at it for a few minutes. Call me obsessive, but I rather enjoy having either teams or some way for weaker players to survive. But then again, I enjoy the actual battle rather than the resolution of the game.
To be honest, I also think that a lot of the weaknesses in gameplay in FPS, unlike with many-multiplayer battle games like BF1942, is that they are best played among friends.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I like the approach of some of these newer mix-ed mode games, where there is a few "planners" and the rest are foot soldiers (usually FPS-like). I always thought that the WarCraft genre would be cool if it was tag-team and one person could only do the resources/build units/research and another person concentrated on unit movements and battle. (Or maybe a smart AI or pre-programmed profile that handled decisions about what to research or when to build new units)
While it might be the case that there have been plenty of poor RTS games released in the recent past, there have also been a few gems: Rise of Nations, by BigHuge Games, is one that I haven't seen mentioned, and it is quite amazing. Don't be thrown off if you didn't like the AOE games; it's quite different, and completely enjoyable. The whole city-based development adds alot to the genre.
Personally, it peaked with Starcraft for me. I'm just now replaying Brood Wars because I realized I had never finished it, and it's *still* a fun game, albeit a little rote.
My wish for an RTS game is the following: the build, collect, search, destroy algorithm would still hold true, but it could actually be expanded over multiple missions. In other words, when you built that command center in the first mission, it stuck around throughout the game. Resources would be harder to get, so that Carrier would actually MEAN something and you would want to protect it at all cost.
What RTS games come down to is you are playing a very small part in the very big picture, and the author's have a hard time establishing a believable storyline with only showing a single battle. Perhaps entire campaigns, where you zoom in on individual battles, or something would be more interesting.
--trb
TA was a *fantastic* game.
There were a couple of really neat things it did.
It was one of the first games to leave Blizzard-style micromanagement. The interface is designed so that using it isn't one of the challenges of the game (limited group sizes, queues, etc), but to help you as much as possible (flexible AI toggles per group or unit, easy to queue up masses of units and preassign orders, etc).
It was the first I know of to have really neat sea battles. Infantry were cheap -- you could churn out tons -- but each ship was *expensive*, and specialized. The first time I played a sea battle level, I was enthralled.
It had great explosions and fires.
Battles took place over more realistic ranges -- people didn't shoot the equivalent of twenty feet. The biggest guns could lob rounds from seven or more screens away.
There was no limit on resources. A round didn't come to an end because you exhausted your resources -- you used everything possible, just as intelligently as you could.
There were masses of intelligent auto-build and repair abilities.
And a ton of other things.
Cavedog (TA's publisher) could have gone far, but for two factors: Blizzard, it's main competitor, didn't make as good games but had a phenomenal marketing budget that it used well, and TA's sequel, TA:Kingdoms, really sucked compared to TA.
Incidently, the guy that designed the TA system (where you could tell things to follow things that attacked them, or not etc)...I believe his name was "Tim" something...went on to make some medieval game with the same style interface. It wasn't an RTS, though. I can't remember the name. Fantastic to see that one game designer is interested in making a highly usable interface, not one that you have to fight.
May we never see th
Check out Medieval Total War.
This is a great game - you can choose any one of a number of European and Muslim countries, and guide it through the middle ages. When the Muslims send Imams to scout out your country and convert the populace, you can assassinate them. You can also declare crusades, marry off your daughters for political gain, conquer others, and get trade monopolies. A good time.
Also, the original MechCommander is fun. You defeat enemy mechs in combat, and sometimes you can salvage their carcases and rebuild them (get the MadCat!). You can completely customize the weapons on each mech, and can make up your own strike force configurations with no limitations (except weight).
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti