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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."
A few years ago adventure games were in this same 'state'. All you fans out there: be patient. In a few years time the genre will slowly awake from it beauty sleep, just like adventure games are doing at the moment.
-- Cheers!
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!
Name substantial gameplay differences between Red Alert, Warcraft II, KKND, M.A.X, Knights and Merchants [...] they all offer roughly the same gameplay. It may look a bit different, but it boils down to the same formula: Settle down, collect, build up, expand, destroy.
I hate to burst his bubble, but that is what (RT)S is all about. Next, he says that adventures had no substantial progress since "Adventure" because they are still "solve the puzzles and win" and FPS are all about "shoot the enemy dead".
Besides, there are quite a few games that took RTS one step further, the author names three of them. And yet the future looks grim? C'mon, there are bright spots in every genre, and there is the mass of run-of-the-mill games. That hardly counts as a descent of the genre.
Plus, many games cross borders and mix RTS with RPG or RTS with FPS (Battlezone). So there are influences from other generes that bring in fresh ideas.
I just realized my post has many TLAs. Oh well.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
The genre is not descending, it is evolving - though not primarily through the main commercial channels (yet). Just look at the popularity of Natural Selection, a truly innovative approach to real-time strategy: Replacing the dumb computer-controlled units with online gamers.
:-)
This idea seems so good to me that I find it surprising that we haven't seen more games of this type yet. (Or maybe someone have? If so, please shout
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.
The RTS world needs a big hitter to put it back in the charts.
But no innovation?
Bullfrog has looked after us well.
How about Dungeon Keeper & Black and White.
Both are as RTS as they come but did an admirable job of putting the raw mechanics of '5x = 1y' behind the theme.
It was a sad day to learn that Dungeon Keeper 3 put on hold indefinately
I don't think that the Total War series really fits into the RTS genre considering the time spent in the turn based portion of the game.
I've been hankering after some RTS action recently but don't feel like revisiting.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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)
CnC was not the first RTS in the same way that Doom was not the first 3D shooter. They are both the one that many people remember as leading in the genre.
I think he's right about the decline - at least to a certain extent. Here's my quick summary of the Westwood games as I remembered them:
Groundbreaking; excellent story, gameplay and music. Very easy to get into. Liked it lots.
Prequel to CnC, so the story fits in. Gameplay much the same, but different units (including ships and planes) made it interesting. Excellent music. Decent skirmish mode too (which CnC lacked). Liked it lots.
Story continues from CnC, so it fit in (ok, a little stretched, but we'll allow it!). New graphics engine, new units, still interesting. Music didn't kick like the first two. Mild cheesiness, but I still thought it was OK.
Story somewhere between first RA and CnC, but no Kane (some Yuri person instead), so didn't feel quite right. New units, but the cheesiness factor was way up (eg: units all cheer when you complete a mission). Don't remember the music - I was too distracted by all the cheese.
Still annoyed at having been ripped off last time, so didn't bother with this. Smelled like cheese to me anyway.
By now I was into Team Fortress, so I didn't bother. Still annoyed with them too.
Occasionally, I still fire up Red Alert (which runs just fine under wine). It's still fun. It's certainly nostalgic.
The article didn't talk much about Age of Empires, which for me at least, brought some interesting game play - the different types of units and the whole development concept.
I didn't see Total Anihilation mentioned anywhere, which I found odd. That game took the graphics to new hights, and the gameplay too, with much more in the way of ships, subs and planes than Red Alert. Having a commander and nanolathing were interesting. If you were quick, you could have a transport plane pick up the enemy commander at the beginning of a multiplayer game!
OK, so the basic strategies are much the same, but that's the RTS genre. For me, the decline has not been the lack of new stragies. It's been the lack of new story lines and cool music.. and the addition of cheesey units
-- Steve
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 is definitely my all-time favorite RTS. It had great depth of gameplay; there was no one killer strategy. TA has tons of possible strategies and counter-strategies. Intelligence-gathering is key -- you need to know what your opponents are up to so you can counter them.
The game itself had a ton of balancing options, too. Prior to starting you could allow or disallow individual unit types. This could handicap a good player or just give the game a little more variation. Turn off the Advanced Aircraft plants, for example, if you want a grunt war.
The control scheme was great. You could queue orders for any unit, including buildings. You could assign buildings to control groups, so any new units produced there were automatically assigned to a group. I always assign my main production buildings to groups, and give them a perimeter patrol path that emerging units will follow. Then queue up a bunch of units and go off to focus on something else, content that the units will be built and not just stand around looking like a big target.
UberHack was a great mod for the game, too. It added a lot of new features to the game. Best. Mod. Ever. TA with Uberhack became a lunch-hour favorite for better than a year where I was working at the time.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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
Actually, it IS his decision to make, and *drumroll please*, [b]hes made that decision.[/b]
Expect the "spiritual succesor to TA in 2005-2006, after DS2 (Dungeon Siege 2) is released.
Apparently its already started, although its really low-key till DS2 is released.. they're mainly making it almost as a hobby for now.. adding bits here and there at their leisure.
how can you be assured i know what im talking about?
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Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com