I’m curious what people think about the following ideas related to multiplayer RTS.
Static or dynamic placement of resources on maps? Pros/cons? I tend towards static since it lets players build up strategies over time based on the map and removes the “luck” factor as to whether you get a lucky spawn nearby.
Sharing bases as opposed to separate base for each player when playing teams. I don’t see too many games that let you share common bases if you are on the same team, not sure if there is a reason for it outside of wanting to spread the players out but I like the concept of a “home base” where all the players on same side group at.
I have some others but these are the two on my mind lately.
Well, your point 1 may be worth a thread all its own. Luck is a great equalizer, and casual players really like that they can jump in, and maybe even have some slim hope of winning, in games where luck is an important factor. Serious gamers, of course, quickly get bored with games that are dominated by luck. It’s the whole chess vs. Monopoly thing.
The best games, I think, carefully balance both luck and strategy, and it seems to me that random resource placement might do that. Randomness also improves replayability, and offers the reward of discovery (especially if the resources are not immediately obvious, but only revealed through exploration).
As for point 2, I haven’t thought about it much. But off the cuff, what I think would add interesting depth for teams is if each member of the team can somehow specialize. So, let’s say everyone on the team can share buildings, but what buildings you can build, or how well you built them, relates to what you’ve built before. So in this case, good teams would naturally specialize: you build all the combat-related buildings, and I’ll build the research-related ones. We have to work together and cooperate for maximum effectiveness.
I think a good compromise is allowing the randomness to be set on the match start screen ahead of time to accommodate both types of gamers.
I like your idea on sharing the buildings, I hadn’t considered that option. So if I built a tech 1 facility and it opens up some advanced research buildings I can focus on those, while my teammate built a barracks 1 and is working on the military unit production.
definitely static. you can throw some dynamic bonuses around though if you wanna mix it up. The main point of static primary resources is fairness. If its dynamic, there’s a chance that I could generate a significant advantage early in the game by generating more money (or whatever) quicker, and throwing units against the enemy to stall them further.
I like the idea of a shared base… however in my game each player will have their own resources to spend. while there is no need for building construction, you could expand to allow it by letting players contribute funds to having a building built/upgraded.
Just for the sake of argument, you could do random placement of resources, and still make it fair, by simply making sure the map is symmetrical in some way (that includes starting positions for the players).
But of course, this would also mean that as you explore your part of the map, you’re learning about the opposite side of the map too, which is weird and takes away some of the fun.
So, never mind, this was a lousy idea. (Now archived for all eternity.)
I love dynamic resources. doesn’t matter what! I like to think of a challenge. You never know what will happen next or what you can find.
You’re right. i don’t see many games sharing same entities (Building, bases, etc…) but i like the idea, thought it makes a team more vulnerable! Destroy that and the entire team fall! but share base allow the team to evolve faster.
Sure, I agree with you on both points. The random luck of initial resource placement is just a leveler — a good player will still beat a newbie, but sometimes he’ll have to work a little harder at it, and that’s fun for both of them.
Yeah that’s why I was thinking having it as an option makes the most sense. It can default to static but hey if you want random resource spawns just set that in the game lobby.
Fighting games went through a boom in the 90s, where hardcore players demanded more and more complexity, and game developers delivered, with each new game harder to master than the last. The result? Their market shrunk and shrunk. Now fighting games are pretty much a niche genre, which a small (hard) core continues to play, but they’ve become almost irrelevant in the mass market… except for Super Smash Bros, which hardcore gamers disparage as a “kiddie brawler” but which has made more money than all the other fighting games in recent years combined.
So I dunno… maybe this merits its own thread. But I don’t think it should be taken as a given that you should cater to the hardcore players in your game design. That’s a serious choice with potentially big consequences.
But of course, on this particular issue, @tiggus is quite right: it’s easy to have both fixed and random maps, so why not have it both ways?
if you want your rts to be huge, hardcore gamers are the ones you want… of course this is really only desktop gamers… obviously doesnt apply to all genres, but I think rts is one that warrants it. Often rts gamers are looking for a bit of complexity.
It can go either way like you say though. Too hard and it will put off casual gamers which is obviously a bad thing.
You never see random resources in the biggest RTS games. Of course the only big rts that even comes to mind is starcraft.
Yeah… it sounds a lot like the arguments that were made for more-complex fighting games to me. “Fighting games need complex combos to have appeal.” “How do you know?” “Well, look, all the biggest fighting games have complex combos.”
But I’ll admit that the RTS genre might be different. It’s fundamentally a strategy game, which may put off most casual gamers right off the bat. Fighting games naturally lend themselves to more casual button-mashing, though it took Super Smash Bros to buck the standard control schemes and design one that would really have wide appeal (see this essay for more).
On the other hand, I was at a neighborhood gathering a couple months ago, and the kids (ages 9-15 or so) were all clustered around their Nintendo DS’s playing LEGO Battles. So the idea that an RTS is only going to interest serious gamers may not hold up.
I’m no expert in game design but I think the luck factor can be great for competitive players as it forces them to adapt their strategies on the fly. To me that would be true skill and not just reflex from playing the same map for hours on end.
Small amounts of randomness, maybe. But in very competitive games, where the level of skill of top players is very close, even a little luck can decide a game.
Starcraft 2 is a good example of an extremely competitive RTS. Aside from spawn locations on some maps, randomness is kept to a minimum.
I’ll agree that competitive isn’t necessarily needed for a successful RTS though. Pikmin 3 is a wildly fun example of an RTS that casuals play, without even realizing they are playing an RTS. Spawn locations and cherry roulette often decides games, and yet I keep coming back for more. And I’m a very competitive person.
Are there many examples of well designed mobile RTS’s? I’ve played some good turned based ones. Can’t think of many RTS though… Wonder if the design struggles cause of touch, lack of a keyboard/arrow keys, or just the small screen.
I would be curious to know this as well, haven’t really found much. I think you would really have to limit total number of units significantly compared to your traditional RTS though, too much going on for mobile. One way to help with this would be the Planetary Annihilation approach where you host the simulation in the cloud and clients are basically dumb renderers. But that gets expensive for bandwidth and hosting costs.
Pshaw. Mobile phones today are dramatically more powerful than what Warcraft ran on back in the day. Granted, Warcraft’s pathfinding was a bit weak, but otherwise it’s not significantly different from modern offerings except in glitz & glitter.
I do agree that mobile phones are a bit small for it though. I played StarFront on mine, and it was OK, but it was much better on the tablet.
You can get 100+ units moving around without lag on your ipad with Unity? I have tried and failed pretty bad so far. That was with no colliders or physics.