Homeworld : Deserts of Kharak

he probably rounded it of (so it might me 33 pounds or something)

@tatsujb sorry but I think you're wrong here.

RTS fans stick around, and the communities are loyal, those two points I'll give you.

However when you see reactions to an RTS game they are almost always negative due to it 'missing' something.

I mean you say the FPS genre get whatever they want- however those games are considerably simpler. RTS on the other hand is one of the single most complicated, in depth and critically *most difficult* things for a developer to take on. Now couple that with the fact that RTS fans won't be satisfied unless *all* the 'expected elements' are in place and you have a recipe to:

A: Cause you a massive headache as a developer, as what the community wants is likely pretty much impossible

B: A fast way to not make any money, as the negative reviews resulting from not meeting all the lofty expectation kill sales.

I mean if we look at PA- Uber have been chastised for not including specific features from TA, SupCom FA, SupCom 2 (some people liked it), Starcraft... I mean if we step back, none of these franchises had everything in the first iteration, yet the players expect *ALL* the major developments from all these games (and more) integrated into PA in it's first run. It took the developers of those other games *years* to get to where they are (case in point, Starcraft 2 is built over a decade of developing both for the original starcraft *AND* the Warcraft series which dates back to the early 90's). Now I admit *knowing about these features* (rather than having to invent them entirely) makes it easier, but they still have to come up with their own new implementation which meshes with all the other elements of the game- and what may have been a simple thing to integrate into one game may well not work in context of another (several cases in PA where this was the case).

Now when you consider *just how many little nitty gritty bits of detail* this genre entails can you not see why a totally new RTS becomes an *almost impossible task*.

I mean *every* RTS I've played has some common complaints themes:
- "The pathfinding sucks"
- "The AI is terrible"
- "The AI is beating me- it's cheating!"
- "I've built a gazzillion units and now it's slowing down on my high end rig- bad developers"
- "I CAN'T build many units due to unit cap, developers obviously can't optimise for performance- bad developers"

Why any development studio would even attempt a new RTS project is beyond me, so yes I think as a whole the communities *one redeeming quality* is (some) loyalty to the few developers still brave enough to attempt it.

No it is £29.99 on steam store, I just checked Wow UK gets a good deal for once. Shame that doesn't make up for the 25% premium we pay on all our hardware.

it's not hate. It's just disappointment.

@cdrkf okay! some very good points!

personally I feel all newly releasing FPSes and Moba face exactly the same scrutiny.

I will agree though that while there are mountains and mountains worth or FPSes and Mobas that fail dismally at even the most basic tasks (such as not clipping or falling through the terrain), overall RTSes are probably harder to make (right).

I personally believe however that this scrutiny is the key to RTSes making it finally back out of the closet where it's been these past years. Your modern average man no longer knows any RTSes if he can even cite Starcraft and starcraft as you may well agree is a bad representant for RTS when you consider all that's out there.

why would an exigence for "better" be of any help rather than a detriment?

well I'll tell you : it makes the game more in line with mr everyman. who in the end is THE MOST tough audience of them all.

And who also brings in the most cash; obviously.

And I honestly don't think RTSes have had it rough critically speaking. Sure they don't get the benefit of utter corruption on the part of the likes of IGN; but they fend actually pretty fairly compared to the rest.

you might say : but PA! well that's a whole story in and of itself and really an edge case; not an example. the critics where always only targeting the company : uber; not the game PA.

I'm honestly very very worried of this new trend of "leave the developers alone!". PA aside it's the editors who call the shots so in that sentence you'd actually replace "developers" with "editors" and the editors would reap all the benefit of that and learn that they get rewarded for forcing tight deadlines; cutting features; drastically diminishing the development budget allthewhile drastically increasing the advertising one.

with RTS's quality decreasing you're looking at a definitive shutdown of the genre with nobody ever deeming it profitable to ever make one again.

We already went through something similar before Uber came out with their kickstarter and started the RTS industry back up. I'm surprised you wouldn't take this more seriously nor expect it to happen again.

I like it, not we responsive as I'd like but a good start, there will be buts, but PA had made me more patient then I would have ever imagined and so I have some patience.

oh and back on the topic of deserts of karrak so far I love the campaign to bits.

DOK is so goddam Mad Max 3 !!! (and that's really a compliment from me) who else noticed? I'm half expecting the LAVs to start getting upgraded with skulls and spikes when they hit coronal honestly! xD

weeeee!

and where the hell is the Drum and flamethrower electric guitar cruiser research?!! my LAVs need a goddamn morale boost!

Haha, well, if it makes you feel better, here in Denmark we pay up to ~150% additional taxes on cars and motorcycles...

That's why we normally go biking to work