I don’t think people meant to tell you that snowballing to victory is the only way RTS games should be balanced and all else is garbage. It just sounded a bit like you think all those games are terrible and fundamentally broken. That’s simply not the case. I think both approaches - accellerated victory and catchup with open end till the last second - are valid and liked by different people - as this thread already demonstrated.
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Okay.
- How does a game with “comeback mechanics” end?
- How does a game that can turn on a dime provide significant reward for skillful play, without nullifying previous actions? (If I play skillfully 75% of the match, and you only play skillfully 25% of the match, I should be able to overcome reverses because my skillful play put me in a position to be able to absorb more losses.)
I think I disagree with most of your text walls (I couldn’t read them all, forgive me.), but I do identify with some of your pet peeves.
- When giving orders faster than my opponent translates to a significant advantage, I don’t have time to think out a strategy- I don’t get to be smart during the game. By the time I realize I need to try something different, it’s too late for me to switch. If I lose hope of victory, I’m not having fun. If my initial strategy works simply because I clicked faster than the other guy, there is little tension/excitement.
- An RTS gives me a ton of toys that I rarely get to play with- either I do well and don’t need late game gear, or I do poorly and I can’t afford them.
A couple games come to mind with good solutions for this.
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Total War games circumvented some problems by separating the macro economic management from the micro tactical management. Want to play with toys? Play a skirmish with all the toys you want. Want to add in long term economic management? Campaigns give economic context to each battle.
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Total Annihilation uses several mechanics to soften/distribute the effects of some problems (I didn’t say solve, but I think these elements had a positive net effect.)
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Scale- The larger the distances involved, the more deeply the player must think about logistics. Units take significant time to move from one place to another, certain types of unit cannot traverse certain types of terrain, and sometimes moving units more quickly means making them vulnerable for an amount of time.
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Large maps also provide the opportunity for multiple bases- Retreat is only a viable option if you have a place to retreat to.
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If you have to deploy resources across more area than you can secure, you must think about what you choose to defend.
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Recon- It is more difficult to counter what you aren’t aware of. Investing in gaining intel on current conditions, or investing in preventing your opponent from having intel, can give you an edge even if you are out-gunned. Knowing a huge army is on the way gives you the chance to respond to it better than if you didn’t know it was coming.
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Increasing Freedom- As a match progresses, a player is less dependent on the map for resources- Energy structures can be built anywhere, and Energy-to-Mass structures can be built anywhere. Just because your opponent locked you out of resource caches mid game doesn’t mean you are left with nothing.
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I think they are terribly broken. Intriguingly, I think those games were exactly what people wanted in the past. They worked then, they don’t work now, unless you’re still acclimated to the way games used to be.
How can it be that Pac-Man was once a huge success, and now nobody plays Pac-Man? Why is Mario typically found racing a go kart, shooting a water cannon or playing tennis, rather than stomping a goomba head?
Things, tastes, people, times–change. Often things go in cycles or else they swing back and forth like a pendulum.
It’s as simple as boredom, repetition breeds expectation, lack of novelty creates disinterest. How many times can you listen to hotel California before you just want to hear anything else?
There’s been a huge lack of variety in this game genre because overall people aren’t changing the kind of thing that needs to change. They are coming up with new races or bizarre mechanics or bigger heroes or larger unit counts, but no one is changing the fundamental thing that is making these games stagnant . . .
Once you gain an advantage it’s easier to gain more advantage and vice versa.
Keep in mind, this is baby stuff, this is elementary. This is not high level theory.
In sports, when you score, the ball goes to the other team. In board games, you take turns. Fundamental to the success and longevity of any game is the opportunity to try again, or make up for previous mistakes and come back to win it all.
Just get it, fun is from uncertainty, never knowing the outcome, the suspense and discovery of new tactics or looking for an opportunity.
In recent RTS games, we don’t see this.
We see the opposite. Whoever pulls ahead will most likely win, unless they make a huge, rare mistake.
I’m not saying these games don’t require skill or that they aren’t better players who get ahead, I’m just saying that it’s hardly a game in the way that Pokémon or chess are games. I’m not sure what to really call them, but they suck and I wish there were more casual RTS games with similar mechanics but without the hardcore, die hard craziness.
You asked how does a game with come back mechanics end.
I would say when your main structures destroyed.
How often does the ball change sides in a soccer match? In a basketball game? How often are (american) football games decided in the last two minutes? Is there a lack of skill in these games?
As far as economies are concerned, give Off World Trading Company a try. The fact that it uses a bunch of different resources helps to make it more complicated than saying whoever has the biggest stocks and the fastest flows wins.
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Sorry, I should have used the word “match” instead of “game.”
What could be thought of as the “ball” in an RTS? Economic superiority? It’s not clear which player has the advantage and when until all the information is available. A player could have an advantage in one local area of the map, but be weak at another point. He could dominate in one resource category, but not in another. And recognizing that you have an advantage is a whole nother thing than using that advantage effectively.
Sports generally don’t have the comeback problem because they don’t revolve around destroying the other team.
I mean… I guess hockey, but that’s only temporary 
Sports that have these problems are more like boxing matches. Where one fighter is clearly ahead, but the other one won’t give in and the match drags on forever. Boxing also tends to be a bit worse, because both fighters run out of energy over the long match. Kind of the worst of both worlds, which is one of the reasons boxing isn’t so popular these days.
This kind of problem is a long standing issue, there is no clear solution that pleases everyone.
Then why do you keep doing it?
From what I can tell, you’re the one insisting you’re right and everybody else is wrong.
Whereas just about everybody else in this thread is saying, different strokes for different folks. And you’re all like No! People who like it their way are just wrong, and only people who like it my way are right.
Chill out, dude.
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Take your StarCraft blinders off. These games are already out there and available to play. Here is a list of just a few RTS games that do things very differently from StarCraft.
Creeper World 1, 2 & 3
Factorio
Stronghold
Particle Fleet
AI Wars
Bloons TD
Dawn of War
If you can’t find something among that list that scratches your itch, I would suggest that RTS games are not for you at all.
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Well, that is the big difference between you guys and me.
If I can’t find the perfect game to suit my tastes, I don’t just not play games.
And that’s because I can actually make games.
Shots fired. I’m pretty sure some (most? all?) the people in this thread have made games.
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Your opinion is valid, and I respect it. However, I don’t agree with it.
Economy focused design is not the essence of RTS, it is one way of approaching RTS. Economy focus has certain advantages, like pacing, encouraging players to seek new bases. It’s ultimately just a way of pushing the players into conflict.
Take away finite resources and introduce a sustainable resource option, maybe players won’t fight at all.
Hahaha, rts players . . . “if you dont like it then don’t play! Hissss innovation hissss change hisssssss”
gg fam
Feel free to present the perfect RTS game that you have made that overcomes all of the problems and design flaws you have been pointing out.
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Not full-blown RTS.
Frosted is the best but he’s sort of on my side.
hold my beer
sc2 was the best rts so far, that’s my starting point. Then you imitate, tweak, add, etc.
the point of this thread is to figure out what i should do.
If you can build a competitive multiplayer RTS that solves the snowball issues and lets players of different abilities compete in a meaningful way, then I will happily hand over money for it.
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No, we’re not at all saying it’s ok to have a game breaking flaw. We’re saying that something isn’t a “game breaking flaw” just because you happen to not like it.
Your ideas aren’t invalid. You’re just not using them to achieve anything useful, a-la my metaphor of going to the pub and whinging about alcohol. It’s a valid conversation with potentially positive outcomes, but the way you’re going about it just seems like you’re looking for an argument.
If you look at my first post here you’ll see that I lament the lack of other styles of RTS. As far as I’m aware you’re right, the area is dominated by SC2 and its variants, with little major activity in other types of RTS for around a decade*. Rather than wasting energy trying to convince people that SC2 et. al. should change based on the personal taste of one person, why not instead try to find an audience with similar desires from their RTS games, find out what they’re playing, and jump on board?
On this again… even putting aside your direct jabs, you’ve spent the whole conversation telling us that things we like are wrong, flawed and “terribly broken”. I daresay that your points are being given far more respect than you’re giving others’. Being taken seriously works both ways.
- Though * @Kiwasi * raises some great examples.
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Will this approach actually work? Seems like tweaking the StarCraft 2 formula will only ever get you a StarCraft 2 type RTS. I’ve only briefly played StarCraft 2, but it appears to follow the same formula that has existed since Dune 2.
It sounds like you are trying to build a RTS that is a different product for a different audience. So I would strongly suggest not taking your core design from the Dune 2/Comand and Conquer/Age of Empires/StarCraft/Warcraft lineage.
For example Creeper World does without a worker based economy. Resources are collected based solely on the amount of land you control. The game tends to be about maintaining a connected network between all of the land you control.
AI Wars has an interesting way of avoiding the snowball problem. The more territory you take, the more resources and technology the AI has access to. The quickest way to loose a game in AI Wars is to try and take every planet.
Seven Kingdoms had some interesting takes on economy. The map contained less resource locations then players, meaning players had to trade with one another in order to access all resources. This lead to an ebb and flow effect. The game would start with a brief period of war over control of the resource locations. Then it would settle into a fairly peaceful diplomatic period while players traded with each other. Then a resource location would run out and a new one would spawn, which would lead to a short period of vicious fighting over the new resource location.
Arsenal went further down the exposed economy track. Vehicles required refueling at regular intervals. That introduced some interesting tactical considerations, an inferior force could often beat a superior one by targeting their fuel supply lines. There was nothing quite so satisfying (or frustrating) as seeing a large force completely immobilized by a suicide dive bombing run on the fuel trucks.
And so on.
My point is there are a lot of RTS games out there that are not StarCraft. So if you want to make a game that is not StarCraft, I would strongly suggest checking out at least some of these games. Many of them were built specifically to solve the problems present in the traditional RTS game. You owe it to yourself to investigate and understand these solutions.
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Yeah… I don’t think you can find many examples of a game that’s one-upped Blizzard. They don’t make genres, they kill them. If there was anyway to polish up the formulas they already use, then they would have already done it. That’s the reason traditional RTS is dead, with StarCraft being the lone zombie. That’s the reason for the schism in the genre to tactics games, focused only on unit movement, and city builders, focused only on economics. The Dwarf Fortress type games are the closest thing to a reformulated RTS, and I don’t know of one yet that’s tried to add competitive aspects.
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