(delete this thread)

I regret everything

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

now thats a wall of text ...

Didnt read it all, but many of your points are HIGHLY subjective.

The researchsystem of SupCom2 is good? Oh yeah ... I dont even know what to say.
And thats only one of the many points I disagree with you.

There is no point in discussing so many different aspects of 6 different games.

oh, one last thing: you mention supcom2 fanboys. I have never seen them in groups so far.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

I agree, it is subjective when it comes to what you like better. What isn't subjective is that the tier system tends to make entire sets of units obsolete. There is a reason I attach facts to support my opinions.

EDIT: And SupCom2 fanboys are fewer in numbers because, well, Supreme Commander and FA established the series. Fans of Supreme Commander 2 don't have any reason to feel betrayed by a sequel that they feel didn't live up to their expectations.

The reason I'm discussing so many different aspects of so many games is because I'd love to see this one avoid those silly mistakes.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

I'd like to point out that units would stay just as relevant throughout the game WITHOUT the research system, if anything research made that aspect worse unless you both focused in the same tree, I go land units, and you go air, AA units don't help me kill your base(and flat out suck against gunship swarms due to a lack of AOE AA) and have to try and hold out until the end of my research tree(for UEF) when tanks get AA, only then are we on equal grounds, meanwhile the Vet upgrades and ground attack upgrades for Air units are useful against my land units right away. And don't get me started on things like needed to spend research points to get even just Anti-Nukes, how is that not just plain old ridiculous?

Mike

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

There was much room for improvement in the research system, sure. Nothing was without flaws. Just generally speaking, I felt like it serviced unit relevance more than tier obsolescence. Lack of AOE anti-air weapons seems like more of a unit design issue to me, and I agree that gunships tended to be overkill. As for anti-nukes, they should have been a little earlier in the tree, so people didn't have to go full-on structures to defend themselves early on. Or perhaps ground / naval / air / ACU trees could have had their own means of producing an anti-nuke unit.

This is also not to say the tier system is without benefits when done correctly.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

The Argument of "well it could have been better if ________" is an empty argument because anything can be better, and if you want to compare you have to compare with what is actually present.

For example between SupCom2 Upgrades and FA Tiers I'll choose Tiers every time because it's not variable. In SupCom2 a good portion of the upgrades had no visual indication(stands outs include the Vet upgrades and ACU Overcharge) so it felt like a huge guessing game, is he Vet 2 or 3? does he have Hunker or not? A lot of these you would only know if either an upgrade further long the tree had a visual indication or if it was used, and once it was used it tended to be too late like with ACU OC.

In FA at least with the Tiers they were clear and easy to understand, "Oh **** he has some T2 units, but not too many so if I hurry I can catch up", not to mention the fact that upgrading a Fac would not only take time and cost resources, but it was also easily scoutable.

Sure FA's Tiers could have been less exponential, but that's not hte Fault of the Tier System, just how the units were balanced.

Mike

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

Some interesting points, but...

You're not serious, are you? Let's try to fix this.

What it did great :
- The campaign was well-polished, with great technical mastery backed by an impressive budget.

What it did wrong :
- The campaign scenario was a ridiculous cliché storm and an incoherent mess. Its non-linear structure also breaks most of the attempt at delivering an actually meaningful storyline.
- The aesthetics, while superficially resembling the previous ones, range from bland to ridiculous and awful.


I'll also note that the "button-mashing RPG" side of the Starcraft games can't really be considered a drawback, as it's precisely the gameplay they are trying to produce and that many people like. Like you (it seems), I really dislike those APM-races, but it doesn't mean that it's a bad thing by itself.

(Also, the 2 factions of TA could also be in what they did wrong. 2 factions is the worst choice, 1, 3 or more factions is almost always better, if harder to balance or to make work lore-wise. And if you disagree with that you're wrong. [/subjective])

In SupCom 2, the aesthetics don't work for many people not because units don't look realistic, but because they look like plastic toys. Though we don't have to worry about this happening to PA apparently.

Also, while we could discuss how the research system itself could have been improved in SupCom 2, we should note that it makes it a quite different game. This is why it is probably undesirable for PA to have it, even if the system itself can be interesting for another game (or a mod).

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

You know what your post needs? Focus. You ramble some positives and negatives about every game, but they lack any order or categories to make sense of it. If you want to help make PA a good game you also need some sort of conclusion about what definately should be done and what should be avoided. Right now you just say "This is good and that is bad" without even elaborating more on why this kind of stuff is even relevant. What have changes to the visuals or the storyline of an other game to do with PA? Also, as far as I am concerned, the Starcraft part seems horribly misinformed.

Here's a little hint if you don't want fanboys of competitive games to punch you in the face: Never under any circumstance use the word "button-mashing" to describe their game.
Even if you were talking about a fighting game there are people who would do that to you, but when you are talking about an RTS that's probably the genre where you will find the most people who feel insulted.

You failed. Hard. Some stuff you list comes down to personal preferance, still you put them where you see it instead of having a "neutral" or "debatable" category.
Also to me you seem very biased against RTS-games with a bigger micro focus.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

Micro focus RTS's are just unnecessarily complicated games to make up for their lack of scope and scale. Starcraft for example. Its like being forced to build a house with a finishing nail hammer. Can be done but takes far more effort... I play games to have fun not wrestle with an outdated idea that requires you to do all the work in the game.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

Personally, I really disliked the adjacency system for structures. It didn't really add much to the game IMO. Just another step when placing a building. I much preferred TA's building system, where you just built the darn thing and got it over with.

EDIT: In regards to micro-focused RTS'. They often have features which interfere with the player, forcing them to use micro. Eg: Unit construction in Starcraft. You had to click/type for every unit, instead of just an 'auto-build / multi-build' feature.

RTT' are much more focussed on multitasking than strategy. This is obvious since someone can 'micro' a tiny army, and completely destroy a larger one. Marines, carriers, dragoons, helions, siege tanks, ... etc. The best players aren't the best strategists, they're the best multitaskers. APM is often used to measure how good a player is because it IS what allows them to be good in an RTT.

RTS' should be the opposite (at least for some things). The interface should be a fluid as possible, minimizing the amount of time it takes to do something. Units should not be able to be micro'ed since battles are larger scale engagements, and unit composition and placement should dictate the winner.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

So you're saying that every RTS should be BIG! and anything that requires micro is compensating for failure in that crucial aspect? Let me direct you to Company of Heroes, which, alongside Starcraft II, is considered one of the best modern RTS games. CoH is very small-scale and micro-intensive, and that's what it's designed to be. It still has a very big macro element, but small-scale tactical unit micro is very, very important. If that's not your cup of tea, then okay, but a lot of people like it. I even play a mod for the game that removes all of the macro elements completely and leaves only unit micro, calling units directly onto the field in groups that the player designs before the battle (the only "macro" element to the mod, which takes place outside the game). It makes the game into an RTT (real-time tactics, an RTS subgenre) with an extremely small scale. I guess it's just automatically bad and committing all possible sins against RTS dogma...

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

"Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?', I dream things that could be and ask 'Why not?'" -- George Bernard Shaw

One broken implementation != impossible to make well.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

I'm not saying things couldn't be better, just that don't say its a good thing because it could be better, that goes for everything everywhere.

Mike

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

The thing I have issue with is the implied (and often express) statement that because of that botched implementation, it's not worth taking a look for to do better =/

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

Okay, so you want us to compare 2 hypothetically perfect options? You need to examine the actual execution, not what could have been.

this thread is for talking about what the games did, not what they could have done, because it's the same for all of them, they could do it better.

Mike

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

rcix, I really disliked SupCom2 and I disagree with a lot of your points but I am more astonished by what you missed rather than what you said.

Supcom2: Unit AI - the ai here, especially the pathfinding is easily the best out of any TA-style game.

Supcom2: Complete lack of modding support, use of propriety file formats, basically everything possible to stop modding - That about sums it up...

Starcraft2 (just saying, never had cpu problems with this game)

Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Command & Conquer: Generals, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (and all expansions) - This is more of a "why starcraft" argument than a "why not x". I know when you talk to a random gamer they are more likely to think of Starcraft than anything else when you mention RTS, but when it comes to actually playing RTS games against other humans, most of us don't live in Korea. TA/Supcom are in their own self-defined subgenera of games. If fact, you could think of it as TA on one end of the scale focusing on macro* and Starcraft on the other end as micro focused. Most other RTS games fall in the middle**. I mention C&C and in particular i would focus on Generals, which does away with grid-based bases and unit caps, making it the closest to TA in that sense. I would also consider C&C:General's research tree to be better than SupCom's, if only because it results in reward for attack/defend as opposed to introducing some arbitrary resource which either trickles in or sucks your other resources dry as you try to build more labs - either way detracting for the overall game.


*in multiplayer, any feature that doesnt have significance in how multiplayer is played is not relevant (so perks or strategies used against AI or in the campaign)
**This is only one scale. You could also have one based on economy focus, speed etc. Its just an example, don't argue this sentence as its not the point im making.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

I was referring to the more general case of people hating on sc2 research. If all you have are non-working combustion engines, then of course a horse is gonna look a lot better.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

apologies rcix, for some reason I thought you created this thread.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

I didn't say they were bad, just not my idea of fun on a scale thats acceptable. The only reason SCII is up there is because there is no real other compitition and blizzard is one of the few companies that 'supports' and I say that in quotes their game (Lan support forgone for cash hoarding from tournaments). And the fact that the game completely caters to the super fast clicky clicky practice 18 hours a day to play a game that is unnecessarily complicated. Ta and supcom were brilliant heavy macro but with a unit you pretty much have to micro. All forms of play can be used and if someone so chooses to do the micro in battle there is a huge chance they will get the advantage. But then supcom started to suffer the push of the industry when it started to do things like removing MAD, which changed the gameplay for the worse. COH, while pretty and nice to play for awhile, but once you understood the engine... Roll to hit is UNACCEPTABLE. You can have pretty explosions and nothing does damage if the diceroll isnt right. Instant immersion breaker. Starcraft is pretty much the epitome of a RTT. Very little strategy, mostly tactics and clicking skills all the time... Fun for some, who enjoy the little picture I guess.

Re: What RTS Games Did Right, and What They Did Wrong

ok.... let me say something: NO SKILL TREES!! :x

The main thing why TA and SupCom where successfull: war on a massive scale with no restrictions (other then hardware limits)! We all know what went wrong with TA2 but what went wrong with SupCom2 was steering away from massive battles and the "get the resource first before you can buy a unit" thing.. In a sense SupCom2 became a normal RTS but TA/SupCom players dont want a regular RTS we want TA/SupCom squared! And thats what the guys at Uber understand.. we want more massive, more destruction.. lots.. and lots more!!