What is the absolute essence of real time strategy?

I find myself gravitating back toward real time strategy games. Though I prefer small-scale games, there is present in any example of this genre a certain, seemingly unavoidable degree of complexity. In the beginning, the player is presented with few choices, few concerns; later, a multitude of choices and concerns emerge. Typical strategies for overcoming this inherent complexity usually involve finding one successful series of choices and replicating it as precisely as possible, known as "build orders". Which gives rise to another important aspect of these wonderfully unique games.

Real time strategy games involve building. At the very minimum, one builds upon previous decisions with new decisions. Once decisions are committed, they are not so easily reversed or, if reversible, come at a considerable cost either in the form of wasted time or through a mechanism which ensures that refunded resources always come with a loss (e.g., you can remove a barracks and regain 50% of its resource cost, only). What you build next will have differing degrees of usefulness based on what you have previously built.

This complex interaction between building and making decisions creates a quandary. What should you do? Thus emerges the next important aspect of these games, strategy, or rather the importance of having one. Even if you have a bad strategy, it is better than no strategy at all. Even if your strategy is to make only combat units and nothing more, this can lead you to success. In fact, there are several classes of strategy that involve the heavy production of combat units and if done quickly, an entirely new category of "rush" strategies emerge.

Lastly, we consider the real-time aspect, which gives the game that breathless sense of immediacy that few other types of games even come close to. If you take no action, you will lose by default, by virtue of the nature of the game itself. If you are not building, your opponent is. If you are not making choices, they will effectively be made for you. Ultimately your choices will be removed from you until you run out of choices, or until the effectiveness of said choices become null and void.

Building and making choices in a race against the clock, trying to come out ahead with a profitable and efficient series of choices, with plenty of room for experimentation and delayed gratification.

 

Strategy games meet the classical definition of a game given by Sid Meier: 'A series of interesting decisions'. Realtime strategy games add a time pressure element. So 'A series of interesting decisions made within time constraints'.

That's the heart of the RTS. Given a limited amount of resources, and a limited amount of time, what is the best decision to make now?

 

I agree, though "within time constraints" is putting it mildly when you watch how fast some pro players play. There's an element of how well you can execute the macro decisions you made, which is absent in most turn based strategy games. And the cognitive demand on the player is higher, because attention has to be divided between multiple things that happen at the same time.

 

Its almost worth separating RTS games out into two categories. The competitive multiplayer scene and the singleplayer/casual multiplayer scene. There are a lot of differences between the way the two groups play the game.

 

Competing economies.

The player invests resources with the goal of shrinking opponents economies while expanding their own.

When you build something, you invest an amount of resources and time to gain something.
When you destroy anything belonging to an opponent, you deny him future gains with that thing.

 

A targetable economy is a great flaw in RTS design: By doing damage to your opponent's economy, you reduce his ability to recover from said damage. An analogy using a head-to-head racing game with battle elements (like Mario Kart) might go: The player's goal is to progress along the race course while slowing their opponent's progress. If the player who is winning the race were to also benefit from additional power-ups or gain access to speed bonuses, while the player who is losing the race was subject to speed penalty or precluded from using power-ups, the analogy would be complete.

Mario Kart, not being an RTS, doesn't make this mistake. To date, there have been 13 Mario Kart games and innumerable clones, with varying degrees of success. Kart racing games with battle mechanics have remained popular without significant change much longer than many other genres. The serious or "core" RTS genre, though a strange comparison, is by contrast nearly dead (compared to other types of strategy games) and is certainly not mainstream any longer. Part of this is due to this very reason, in my opinion, of advantage breeding advantage and vice-versa.

I'm confident that statistics would support a powerful correlation between the outcome of the first battle of any match with the final outcome of the same match, where the player in the best economic standing goes on to win more often than not.

Players who do not go all-in or base harass, but prefer economy focused games, prefer longer matches, so there are modified ways of playing rts games that make them more fun. But all players must agree on no cheese, no rush, no griefing in order for this to occur. Rare in ranked matchmaking, to be certain.

I posit that allowing the player the ability to target the opponent's economy in any impactful way is bad practice, which will lead to griefing and ultimately, toxicity in the community (or what little remains of it).

My reason is that there is no point in doing anything else, other than aggressively targeting the player's economy, in games where this is possible. Destroying his defensive measures is useless; as it merely buys him time to build his economy even further. In fact, in games where the economy is the focus, there is no point in doing anything other than expanding your economic base while making allowances for the minimal necessary defenses, whilst intermittently taking shots at your opponent's economy and, often, ending the match after the first battle (although the final evidence of this will only come minutes or hours later). This leads to one dominant playing style and myriad useless or "noob" play styles.

It's not easy to conceptualize this further. Economy IS the measure of the player's power, it holds all of their potential and is the source of all their might and prowess. It is the essence by which the player may create all things. The idea is that one may build combat units and structures and wage war against other armies. But, if one may simply kill the other player's economy, bypassing combat units and structures entirely, this results in the most cost-effective scenario possible, only further allowing them to expand their own economy whilst their opponent attempts to rebuild.

Each successive iteration of this process makes the player in the lead exponentially more powerful.

Starcraft 2 had a problem where people did not want to leave their bases, at all. Especially Terran players, because their ground assault units are flimsier and less maneuverable than any other race. The game is economy focused, however, yet even still players were cautious to leave their bases and preferred not to expand onto the completely exposed natural positions until they had significant defensive measures.

Why such fear?

Because in Starcraft 2 units have extremely powerful damage output vs. their hit point pools, which means that in the time it takes for you to scroll across the map, you could lose an entire worker line to a single unit. Even 5-8 units can kill off an entire base's worker line in a couple of seconds. Why would you want to place your stuff where it is not likely--but guaranteed--it is going to be targeted (quite successfully)?

Compare this to LoL or DotA, where your base is highly secure and well-fortified from the beginning of the match onward, until late game, and you will arrive at a better understanding of what is so terrible about economy-targeting in RTS.

Imagine if, in those games, you placed a single character that could sneak by all of the towers and kill the shop vendor, or disable the enemy team's healing platforms or do something that would affect their rate of gold accumulation. What would be the point of any other character?

Attacking an enemy's defenses has limited implications, but attacking the enemy's economy has broad, far-reaching implications and if this economic damage further impairs their ability to rebuild said economy then it's a done deal.

I've thought a lot about this.

What if after each successful hit in a fighting game, your character becomes stronger?
What if after each point you make in a basketball game, your score modifier increases?
What if after each goal in a soccer/hockey game, you gain an additional player?

It's one thing not to give the player behind a comeback mechanic, but to actually kick them in the gonads for every unit they lose is just nonsense, it mirrors absolutely nothing in the natural world and is literally the worst thing I can think of in any game genre.

 

I don't see how that's a "flaw". If players recognise an optimal category of strategies and chooses to ignore it then the downsides to that course of action are their own fault. If someone is in a racing game and refuses to go fast, or in an FPS and refuses to return fire, does it make any sense if they then complain that the game is "flawed"?

Basically, I don't think the design of individual games is the problem. Instead, I see two other problems. First, a lack of variety in today's RTSs. Secondly, arising from that, a mismatch between some players and the game they end up playing, possibly due to a lack of choice.

On that lack of variety, the unfortunate thing here is that there's an over-abundance of games like, say, StarCraft 2 compared to games like, say, World in Conflict (all unit tactics, no base building) or, at the other end of the spectrum, stuff like Caesar IV (almost all about the city/economy). I think the fact that the examples coming to mind there are something like a decade old is indicative of the real issue here - not that everyone is making RTSs "wrong", but that RTSs are being dominated by a particular style that is rightly enough not to everyone's tastes.

 

It might be bad game design, but it is very much like a whole lot of things in real life. Success breeds success. A country that captures territory from a neighboring country (seen abundantly in colonial days) gains economic power and reduces their opponent's economic power. In a hand-to-hand fight, every hit you take reduces your ability to both inflict hits yourself, and to defend yourself against more hits. In business, the bigger you get, the more you can spend on marketing to influence public's thoughts, making your products sell better and your opponents' sell worse.

 

I think you can call it flawed, but first, you need to define the un-flawed ideal. The ideal being a genuinely enjoyable game that is fun to play, easy to pick up but difficult to master. All the stuff we talk about all the time. Failing to go fast in a racing game and failing to return fire in a first-person shooter neither represent bad choices in how to play the game, but rather failure to play the game. I would like to know what those players are doing instead, what their understanding of the game is and why they are choosing to play that way if they are in fact choosing to do it. Also, Overwatch and Team Fortress are both games that have added classes to the FPS mix, and some characters focus is support or healing, bomb-planting, stealth, etc. So even in the context of FPS there are things you can do other than shoot.

In your given examples, you have presented two options--play as intended or don't play as intended (but still, play) and essentially be punished for your "fault". You're forgetting the third, and consequentially most frequently invoked in regards to RTS games as of late, option--don't play at all and go play something fun, instead.

You're right, no individual game is to blame. The overall paradigm of RTS gaming and the ensuing culture that spawned out of the golden era is to blame. The power fantasy of dominating all life (mwahahahaha) by becoming some kind of overlord/God emperor of your golden empire (or whatever ^_^) led to people who were, for all intents are purposes, a-holes dominating the community and culture. Which is pretty dumb, because RTS mechanics are really a lot of fun, y'know, once you divorce it from sperg-lord culture.

[/quote]On that lack of variety, the unfortunate thing here is that there's an over-abundance of games like, say, StarCraft 2 compared to games like, say, World in Conflict (all unit tactics, no base building) or, at the other end of the spectrum, stuff like Caesar IV (almost all about the city/economy). I think the fact that the examples coming to mind there are something like a decade old is indicative of the real issue here - not that everyone is making RTSs "wrong", but that RTSs are being dominated by a particular style that is rightly enough not to everyone's tastes.[/QUOTE]

You say potato, half a dozen to the other. I think people are all making RTS games that play into the power fantasy that many men and young boys hold. I saw a video wherein the cutest game was presented, by a German developer who basically is giving his work away for free, plus taking donations and also I guess selling emojis or something:

http://littlewargame.com/play/

To me it seemed an adorably simple alternative to the "big" RTS's that are, as you said, a decade old and still dominating the scene. You can go ahead and check it out. Its lobby is about as full as Starcraft 2's becomes at low peak usage times.

But upon closer examination, I have found it is exactly the same concept as Warcraft/Starcraft.

And in the videos that I was watching, I heard a guy using the exact same terminology. "You want to drop a rax around ____ gold, don't forget to do get your _____ ASAP" and "2 den strategy" and the game even measures your APM, etc.

I spent a lot of time in the SC2 chat arguing with people about SC2 being a bad game, because it eschews any notion of playing to relax, or just kicking back and casually enjoying the game in favor of hardcore training sessions and playing "to get better", practicing build orders, etc. This, told am I, is what Starcraft 2 is all about and, yada yada yada "if you don't like it don't play."

Then after telling everybody not to play, they get pissed off when everybody stops playing.

You're over here discussing games I have not only never played, but also never even heard of. I'm not sure what RTS might mean to somebody else, especially somebody who was my age in the 90s. BUT I don't think they're relevant to current gaming culture, if they were they would have been cloned or imitated or survived in some way. There's a reason why some things stop being made, like disco music and blacksploitation movies. Tastes, people, culture all change.

I just played a match of littlewargame while I was writing this (yes, I alt-tabbed at times) and it was vs. the CPU and yeah, I beat it, it was pretty easy. And you know what, I like that. I like a game that I can win at. For all the noise made in defense of super-hard and old-fashioned games, by certain people at times, it sure is funny how people continually gravitate toward games that don't make you want to throw your computer out of a window.

I can't imagine why... who would want to have an easy, relaxing time playing a game?

 

Is this a flaw, or is this the core of the design? In most cases RTS games are engine builders. Engine builders give advantages to the player who is closest to winning. If you look out to other games that rely on the engine builder mechanic, you will find similar trends.

Really? Because a lot of life works like that. The richer you are, the easier it is to make money. The more educated you are, the easier it is to obtain more education. The more followers a religion has, the easier it is for them to get more followers. The more scientifically advanced a civilization is, the easier it is for them to get more technology. Exponential functions are found everywhere.

This is not reflected in the tastes of the general public. There are a lot of engine builder games out there.

Really? I've got so many decent RTS games I don't have enough time to play them all. And I play a lot of RTS games. There is an incredible variety of games available. The number becomes even bigger when you consider that many older RTS games are still viable to play today.

If you restricted your comments to the multiplayer competitive RTS scene then I would buy it. Building a competitive RTS that is balanced between players of different skill levels is an almost impossible challenge. RTS games tend to multiply out even the tiniest of differences in skills, to the point that competitive multiplayer is seldom worth it for most players. Most of the time competitive multiplayer RTS games are an exercise in boredom or an exercise in frustration and humiliation.

 

Ah, yes, the materialist perspective... where did I put my matcha green tea and my yin-yang symbol.

*bangs symbolic gong*

If success breeds success, then why do we experience the law of diminishing returns? Because each time we reach our ladle down to grab some chunks of meat floating in the hobo gravy, there are now fewer chunks for us to grab the next time. If success breeds success, then why do people become fearful of "losing their titles" or "falling from power"? Hmm, perhaps more interesting the universe is. Not only this, but we actually can observe that success seems to particularly induce the very conditions within a person that make them complacent. People struggling to survive become lean and tough, while wealthy people are known for their corpulence and learned helplessness. Tortoise and the hare?

A country that captures territory may gain economic power, but they also must bear the burden managing this new territory. Not to mention, they have just incurred considerable cost. Even in computer games, we know that you are never more vulnerable than when you have just expanded your territory. If it were as easy as taking over neighboring territory in order to gain power and reduce your enemies power, I would really like to know how Germany lost WW2. They were way ahead in the match, but somehow things went wrong. Also in life, rather than in theoretical war games, the captured territory is now volatile, the native peoples may not like their new rulers, they may form bands of guerillas and start an unceasing series of civil wars, revolutionary wars, and rebellions. If you don't believe me, I suggest you read any book about actual history. Middle East, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and even the United States. Really, just pick any place that people are and tell me how well the "take over a territory and gain all the power" strategy really is.

And in a hand-to-hand fight, it takes energy to get hit, but it also takes energy to punch. You don't gain energy from having punched someone. There is no "landed hit" bonus in a street fight. I have known two people who broke their hands in several places during a fight. In one case, he won, but ended up in jail. So, you know, again--there are certain governing principles here that are often ignored.

And as far as businesses getting bigger becoming immune to failure, are you kidding me? Have you looked at the state of our international financial situation? Our entire model of 'business' is built on continual growth and increased consumption, and we are running out of things to consume and places to put the crap that we are selling, I mean, I don't want to touch on political stuff. But realistically, there is no business that will not at some point be subject to market forces and product lifecycles.

I think the problem with a lot of people is that they have perspective, but limited perspective. You have to look at the bigger picture. Nothing lasts forever, everything comes at a cost and there is no loss-less exchange you can make in the real world, there is no "it costs you nothing plus it makes you even more money" in real life, it "costs money to make money". These are all well-known, well-established principles that are put into practice every single day.

These are games, mind you. The moment you start to indicate that "well, if you could attack someone's economy, you would" you must pause and consider, in what world can 8-10 workers fund an entire military operation? And in what world would a single archer be able to kill off 50% of your entire economy? So obviously, we're playing with numbers here. We're being silly. We're taking concepts and applying them to artificial rulesets in order to make something that is fun to play but also intriguing.

You say the rule of "success breeds success" is real, I'm telling you it's absolutely demonstrably false and there is nothing in nature that follows the rule of loss-less increase or gain without cost. Not only this, there is nothing that involves reward without risk and nothing that follows the principle of endless perpetual gain or an exponential growth without then proceeding into a bell curve peak and then dropping off the other end.

For strategy games to not reflect this is like Super Mario jumping and then just continuing upward without ever coming down. It's a necessary piece of the puzzle, it's a fundamental law that needs to be embedded into the code of every RTS game. If you get too big, you need to watch yourself. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

I know it's been a while since you were treated to the pseduo-sage ramblings, but consider perhaps over a glass of green tea the idea that being big is actually being imbalanced. An army that reaches a certain size also eats a lot of food, produces a lot of waste, is subject to disorganization. Where do you put it? How do you move it from one place to the other?

A lot of RTS games, in my view, are built on the principle of "build some stuff, kill the other guys, the more you take over the faster you make money and the more powerful you become" but what's missing, in my viewpoint, is the other important details. Gold mines collapse. Disease breaks out. While I have no interest in seeing those things manifest directly in games, what I would love to see is a game where the person going gangbusters making every type of ship and unit and A-moving across the map is subject to some type of actual, realistic phenomenon such as upkeep, wear-and-tear, mutiny, etc.

I always go back to Pokemon as an example of a perfect game, because so many of the concepts in the game make perfect sense and are completely harmonious with the way the natural world works. The type system is amazing, the evolution system is wonderful, etc. Catching pokemon involves a chance of failure, you are constantly wearing down your team and needing to restore them, everything has a cost, etc.

You just don't see that level of depth reflected in these modern RTS games. Apparently, tanks and battleships don't require additional fuel as time rolls on and tactics are really nothing more than build stuff fast and attack pre-determined map locations where the enemy is likely to spawn.

My argument is, and shall remain, that all of these RTS games have the brawn turned up way too high and the brain turned down way too low. There's no spirit there, no inspiration. Just rote memorization of build orders and the soulless, ice cold repetition to build your APM.

The best RTS player is a computer, and that's not fun for me.

 

See my post to the penguin and to the strout, it answers many of your points, as they are largely the same points.

 

How is this, and the rest of your post, relevant to anything?

Yes diminishing returns exist in the real world. Yes exponential growth exists in the real world. Yes limiting factors exist in the real world. None of these are mutually exclusive concepts.

There are several existing RTS games that simulate these things. Warcraft had upkeep. This generally meant that it was never the best idea to have a full size army. Arsenal had vehicle refueling, with a bunch of tactical considerations to go with it. Stronghold had unhappiness and moral as a key factor.

If you don't like the genre, why are you concerned about it?

But seriously, you should step out of your StarCraft blinkers and try some other RTS games. There are plenty that don't degenerate to simple optimize build queue problems.

 

This approach makes many bad assumptions. It assumes that there is a single right way to make an RTS. It assumes that everyone else generally wants what you want. It assumes that it's possible to make something that is flawless.

I strongly suggest that you check out what Malcolm Gladwell has to say about spaghetti sauce (video link).

But that is exactly what SC2 is about. It's a game designed from the ground up for competitive multiplayer. Honestly, that's like walking into a bar and arguing the evils of alcohol. I've no doubt that the message was delivered bluntly and probably even rudely, but the message is correct nonetheless. If you want a relaxing game then SC2 isn't it and has never pretended to be. It's just plain not designed to provide the kind of fun (link) you want to have.

Just as there are different types of spaghetti sauce that satisfy different tastes, there are also different types of ways that games can provide fun (repeated link). You're playing a game that's not at all aligned with the type of fun you want to have, and instead of changing games to something that better suits you're instead railing against the game being fundamentally "flawed".

Consider, though, that if the SC2 is changed to better suit your desires, it's probably going to fail to meet the desires of its' already huge player base.

No, I haven't forgotten it. I simply take it as a given that no game is for everyone. My not wanting to play a game doesn't make it "flawed", it makes it "not for me".

This:

Go give Rise of Nations a shot, for starters, where territories and the concept of attrition are a part of the core design.

You're probably right there. My exposure to RTSs these days is pretty slim compared to a decade ago, so I could be wrong there.

 

Actually I had a quick look through my dates. Apparently I still play a lot of old games. My assessment of new and current is probably inaccurate.

 

My main exposure to RTSs lately is SC2, Planetary Annihilation, and a little Sins of a Solar Empire. All of those are pretty big on the expand-exploit-exterminate side of things. The only exposure I've had to more "relaxing" style RTSs any time even kind of recently is was hearing about the Age of Empires remaster a couple of years ago. As you point out, though, that doesn't mean they're not there, it's just that I haven't seen them, and I have to admit I've not been looking.

 

They were conquered by Alpha Chad RTS AI while you were contemplating lack of realism in video games.

Because real life isn't an RTS game and RTS games are not constrained by real life hardships. Success in most RTS games breeds success because they need to reward the player.

Success is not "gain without loss" or "loss-less increase". Success is "more gain than loss".

Unrelated. If gain - loss > 0 then action was successful. You can't just switch operands in a method and expect same result. That's insanity. Failure breeds evolution, not success. Why would you repeat an action that already yielded failure? If task is no longer succesful at acceptable rate, find another task. Why would you continue performing the same task if you are already descending down the other side of a bell curve? While you were ascending the bell curve, the success the repetition of the task yielded was enough for you to find new taks that yields success at low risk, efectivelly resetting the bell curve and starting over.

Opinions. I can do this as well:

Just like Pokemon.

 

Ok, I played a lot of RTS back in the day (I was pretty competitive in early SC:BW and the like).

The "snowball" problem isn't limited to RTS, being in the stronger position makes it easier to win in all competitive games that involve destroying resources (units, building, etc). The snowball problem is a big one in MOBA, Competitive Card Games, etc. Hell, it's a problem in chess and checkers as well.

The most important solution to the snowball problem is simple:
- Make the game end fast once one side has an advantage.

This is generally the preferred approach. In games where the process of losing takes too long, you have a culture where resigning is common place. In Chess and StarCraft, both games have cultures that respect a quick resignation.

In MOBA on the other hand, you have the "never surrender" problem because you have 5 strangers teamed together, and if someone just quits it kind of ruins the experience for the other guys. A lot of the most rage induced games of LoL I've ever played involved constant bickering over resignation votes.

 

The problem of snowballing is a real one though.

Yes, success breeds success and all that, but in terms of game play - allowing the losing side to stage a comeback is so important to maintaining interest.

Different games have taken different approaches to the problem of allowing space for comebacks vs rewarding the player for making better plays vs allowing the game to end fast.

WarCraft had like a "unit overhead" count, where it was harder to build more units once you pass certain thresholds, this burdened the winning player a little, and allowed the losing player better chances at a comeback.

There are different approaches, but I think the "lose fast" approach is probably the most successful overall. The problem with most approaches is that generally, you don't allow for comebacks as much as you just drag out the process of losing.

 

The snowballing problem, perfect!

That's EXACTLY what it is.

I understand a lot of people's suggestions that it's o.k. for RTS games to incorporate a fundamental game breaking flaw because some people like it, or some people have developed the "GG" code of conduct, proper manners is to give up when you realize you've lost.

I am a very creative person with strong opinions, I am not simply going to say "fuggit" because other creative people disagree. Not going to happen. If you believe that snowballing in RTS is a simple matter of taste, and this is allowable or even beneficial within the genre, I will just remind you that the genre has declined significantly, with virtually only Starcraft 2 remaining relevant in any way as of today. Much of what makes SC2 successful is fans of SC. So much so, that they have brought SC:BW back. Look it up.

Lose fast makes sense, but in an RTS game why would I want to rapidly lose a bunch of matches? RTS doesn't have to be a slow paced genre, but I generally enjoy a longer game with more battles.

Warcraft 3 did have upkeep, but it also had heroes which exacerbated snowballing x1000 due to their incredible power and rapid leveling. WC3 gave rise to DotA, because it was a natural extension of how useless your army was compared to the power of your hero.

I don't understand the mentality to tell a creative person that their unique opinion is not to be taken seriously or that it is invalid. If no creative person believed that their ideas were better than the ideas of those that came before them, why create anything at all?

I believe that an RTS game that bucks snowballing and focuses on lots of small battles and has comeback mechanics would be enjoyed by a lot of people.

If you disagree, you're welcome to make another SC or WC clone and become greatly successful and show me I was wrong.

 

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.

 

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.

• 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.
• 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.)
  • 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.
    • Large maps also provide the opportunity for multiple bases- Retreat is only a viable option if you have a place to retreat to.
    • If you have to deploy resources across more area than you can secure, you must think about what you choose to defend.
  • 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.
  • 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Pffffttt...competitive multiplayer RTS is the very cancer I'm trying to escape.

 

There is no point in trying to compete with Blizzard. They are like a Frankenstein's monster, they are made up of all the successful parts of everybody else's games that they liked, they duplicate then modify artwork and lore and swap names. They promote it to their ravenous fan base, using bought-and-paid-for internet created hype and power fantasy cinematics and then place people in front of cameras to take credit for the brilliant designs and genius imagination, even though it's the result of sweatshop labor and teams of behind-the-scenes talent.

Their goal is to push everybody else out of a genre and then to sit on top as the #1 game in said genre, regardless of what they have to do in order to get there.

StarCraft is only still a thing because StarCraft's races really are so dang cool and the voice acting is amusing. They did a great job with the art and music on SC2. It's a very playable game that took over the genre, and there's no going forward in RTS games unless you're going forward FROM SC2.

 

And yet you've just gone out and collected all the best ideas and brought them here in one place!

Three cheers for cantankerous internet discussion!

I don't have time to play as many games as other people. This isn't just something that I say as an excuse, it's literal.

I particularly love the idea from that seven kingdoms game, of resource locations spontaneously appearing on the map, and notifying all players. Do you go for it, or do you let the enemy have it, or do you attack his base while he's distracted, or do you wait until a closer one spawns for you...

Also, this goes back to the snowballing issue. If a player is behind, the resource locations could "for some unknown reason" always appear on their half of the map . . .

 

Penguin, honestly, too personal.

 

Hey, if we are gathering the best design features from random RTS games, I can spout these for pages.

In which case, you've got thousands of options to choose from. Just take the bit you most hate about Star Craft, and throw it out entirely.

Seven Kingdoms had a lot of cool ideas that haven't been followed up on since. Its well worth a look for ways to do things differently. The military side wasn't great, but the economy was fun. Some interesting aspects to consider

• Every unit had loyalty. Loosing a battle would drop a units loyalty. Doing nasty things like attacking unarmed villagers or trade units would drop a units loyalty. A units loyalty could drop far enough for them to desert and join another player.
• Each player had a reputation. Attacking the creeps on the map increased your reputation. Attacking another player without declaring war reduced your reputation. Attacking villages and trade units decreased your reputation. Reputation had concrete effects, it directly affected the loyalty of your units, and was an important factor in determining which side a deserting unit would join.
• Resources weren't used directly to produce military units. Resources had to be mined for ore, then manufactured into finished goods, then sold to the villages. Villages with more goods grew faster. The villages could then be conscripted to produce military units, or employed in factories to produce siege weapons.
• Units could be trained as spies. Spies could switch team colours, but still be controlled by the same player. Spies could do all sorts of things, including assassinations, bribes, and switching sides (possibly taking other units with them). It wasn't unusual for a battle to start with half the troops switching sides. (Or joining a neutral third party and walking away.)
• Each individual in the game had a race and was reasonably racist. Mixed race villages were less happy. Mixed race troops were less effective. Anyone with the same race as your king was far more loyal then anyone who wasn't.

In general the game made peace fairly profitable most of the time. So you tried to only get into fights where you had a decisive advantage. And often those fights were local skirmishes over control of a single village or resource, rather then total war.

The snowballing problem wasn't a huge deal. Being out front tended to make other players gang up on you. On the other hand the game did suffer from picking on the looser. It tended to be advantageous to engage in a war with someone who was already engaged in a fight.

 

Maybe look into the gdc slides for the Deserts of Kharak presentation and then reevaluate if multiplayer is feasible:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024571/The-Great-Divide-Unique-Visuals

And maybe play Infested Planet. I'm really liking it a lot more than I expected. It's casual in the sense that it's not super complicated and punishing, but it still is very challenging. I think they've struck a nice balance where at the right difficulty setting the game becomes sort of a puzzle game, which is a characteristic many tactical combat games that I like share.

 

I like how each unit is valuable and they don't give you direct control over how fast you can produce them, seems to shift focus away from building your economy and more onto positioning, tactics, and strategy.

I think that at some point in the 90's computers gained a lot of RAM, so the developers focused on seeing how much stuff they could get on screen. That tradition then continued, adding improved graphics and sound to the mix. But, the fundamental formula and player base have remained the same.

I see lower numbers of units, each having names and levels, that you become attached to being better than large numbers of generic units that are all identical.

Also, with a smaller number of units, what each one is doing becomes more important to the overall game.

Edit: Also, over-committing can be dangerous. If you lose enough units, you won't be able to defend yourself for a minute.

 

The essence of any games is dictated by how you loose at that game.
The absolute essence of a RTS strategy can be described into 1 word : Defense.
Regardless of whatever complexity you add onto it, it all starts with that word.

Every RTS have the goal of some unit or building to not get beaten. It can have sub-objective like destroying a target or building a city, but in the first and foremost goal is to stay alive, hence the "Defense" being the absolute essence.

Try playing a RTS where everything has 1 HP and get destroyed in 1 hit. It's possible, but you will barely feel the RTS side of it. (Then again, you could consider "numbers" as a form of defense and have massive armies of thousands trying to overtake massive amount of incoming attacks.)

How do you determine the Defense? With attacks. You can't defend if you're not attacked. Hence the presence of an enemy with at least enough capacity to hit you. Of course, you can't just keep defending as you would only be defeated in the long run so you got to be able to attack back. Now, you got at least 2 units hitting each other.

If both units are identical, it would be boring as either it would always end up with the "first to hit wins" so you add range of damage, evasion and other funky thing to both units. Now, nobody knows which unit will win in advance, but if one wants to have advantage and be certain to win, one could have 2 units instead of 1. So, one must be able to add this unit. Here comes another unit that can create those new units.

Have you noticed... I haven't even started to think about how each units are controlled or what type of units or what's in the environment, etc. We're still at something that could be set with primitive mesh on a plane. Since we want that new unit that produce unit to feel different than the smaller unit, we make it visually different. (It could be anything in a finished game... from a building to a mage or a cloning machine, a portal... whatever that "creates" in the scene)

Of course, you don't want the player to be able to create an unlimited amount of units so you got to find a way to limit his ability to create. You could put a timer on the ability or a resources cost. If you put a resources cost, you got to create those resources in the area or make it so that the player gets them in a timely manner. Could be gold, mana, wood, rock, eggs, meat, dead babies or whatever. This is the first choice you got to make when creating a RTS from scratch. Usually, if you have an idea of the "lore" of the game, it usually comes with an immediate idea of what should be the resources, but no resources are absolutes.

Then, should the opponent be able to also create his own troops or should he have pre-made troops? That's a divine question where you got to think about how the difficulty of the game will be set.

For example, you could have a game where the opponent have limited troops that are much harder than the player's troops. Or he could be able to create them at a slower pace. Or you could give it the same available units as the player. Or you could have multiple races/clan/groups where each have their own units with pros and cons. This is a major decision that will change the whole game in the end. It could be multiple of those or not.

This is where you start thinking about what the units actually are in the game... and you haven't even really touched the UI/Controls yet! You got to know "what should be accessible" before even thinking about the controls & UI and you can't know such a thing without knowing a bit about what the player can do. In this case, what unit are available? Are there tons of units?
Then you start adding uniqueness to the units. Some can't attack, but craft/create while some can't move but hit hard.
Should all the unit be created from a different kinds of units (such a buildings) or should they all be available from 1 unit (like main base/mothership)? Should there be some kind of unlockable content mid-game (like researches)? How should those be unlocked? You find them in the map? You level up? You use resources? All of those at the same time?

From then on, you can start thinking about the UI. If you got plenty of different units, having multiple units (buildings) that can create specific units (troops) might be a good idea as having the whole list of units in a single menu might be too much.

This is also when, depending on the content you have though about up to now, you decide what is "Time" in the game. With the different units, their abilities/stats/whatever, you can determines if the game works with turns, real-time or even instant action. You can also determines their movements capacity.

"Real-Time-Strategy" makes you think it's in full Real Time, but that's not even close to true. For example, maybe the unit can kill each other in real-time, but their movement are based on turns. Maybe they can attack in real-time and each unit has a stamina bar that deplete whenever they move which reduce their fighting capacity? It doesn't have to be the full action that has to be in Real-Time for it to be a RTS. After all, if RTS would "absolutely" be in real-time, you wouldn't be allow to pause the game when in single player (or even in some RTS multiplayer), right? Otherwise, it's not "real-time" anymore if you can do action while the time is stopped. (Think about Age Of Empire, Star Craft or Warcraft without the ability of stopping time in its campaign to give orders to the troops.)

By determining what is "time", you get an idea of how fast the controls of the units should be. If you don't allow pause or defenses, you got to think of a UI/Control scheme that push the "fast action" further. Less complicate action/controls is beneficial in that case. Maybe even allowing the units to use skills/attack by themselves is a way of making it easier for the player to handle the action. If the units are all slowpoke and units barely can damage each other, having more complex controls and actions could be a way of avoiding the game to become boring or too easy.

From here, it's where you're mostly on a path that is more easy to see as most of the decision you have made previously already kinda forge the rest.

Still, a RTS always starts with the word Defense at its core.

While you could think it would be the same with any other game genre, I would say, in their essences, not many starts as a "Defense".

For example, a 3rd person action (be it RPG or not) or bird-view (Diablo) is usually an "Offense" in its essence because it's focusing on you killing stuff above surviving as you can die plenty of time and continue like if that death was only a flesh wound. In a RTS, loosing all the units (building and troops) means Game Over and you got to restart the map or area or whatever from scratch. In a 3rd person, you usually can "live" with a death. The only exception is the kind of Hardcore/1-Life mode of those game (when available) and if you look closer, the way any player plays those mode is closer to a RTS than an action game. They don't jump in the fray and avoid as much the fatal damage as possible and goes well belong the first layer of the stats and items.

Racing game are more toward the "Precision" in essence... a bit like music-rhythm games as you got to press the right buttons/controls at the right time and if you do it perfectly, you win and every time you do the same level, it's the "same" thing every time with maybe only small amount of changes.

FPS are usually a mix of "Offense" and "Precision" depending of the moment, mode, respawn, etc. It's rarely a "Defense" as the way to loose is to not kill enough. In a RTS, you can win without killing anything in some ways.

 

Spotted the guy who turtles his base for half an hour

For me, the heart of RTS is adapting to the opponent. He's building rocks, you want to build paper, if he's building paper you want to build scissors.

Then you want to figure out where he has mostly paper so you can deploy your scissors most effectively.

 

If you want to make the anti-SC2 (which if I'm understanding correctly, is what you want to do), I don't see how SC2 can serve as a starting point.

If you remove economy focus and build order optimization from SC2, there isn't really a lot left.