Scrumpmonkey said:
Petroglyph have been very unlucky but, especially in the last few years, have made some baffling and slightly breathtakingly pitiful choices. Their kickstarter was no non-starter and whilst Trion Worlds killed off "End of Nations" quietly, the project looked to have been in real trouble and has effectively been brought in house by them to try and salvage it.
People who know who Petroglyph are tend to be the avid, bitter old school Westwood fans who consider it like some kind of last hope. But in reality it is just a company which has struggled to bring anything substantive to market since 2007.
As for CnC, there are HUGE nostalgia dollars out there for that franchise, many many more than AoM. If someone decided to make a stripped down, isometric CnC game with a focus on classic style combat there would be a chorus of "Shut up and take my money" i guarantee it. From what I've seen there is a real hunger for any RTS titles at all, especially in that more base building more casual 90s style.
I agree strongly.
The problem as I see it however is risk vs reward. Yes, if EA was to release a hypothetical HD C&C Collection, it would (or rather, it should) be a quick and easy profit. But an entirely new IP released by a developer on any scale? An Indie developer could go out of business if it tanks (this has happened a few times in the past), and the triple A guys (let's say EA) I don't think would approve of it, because in their small and simple minds (to use PC terms), the game would not sell because there is (allegedly) "no market for RTS games" - and in their mind, that includes the more modern, thousand click per minute, resource point holding RTS games.
As for Petroglyph? It's become something of a love & hate relationship. I feel their own sense of arrogance and narcissism is getting the better of them - in addition to the free pass they get from most, one only needs to look closely at
Grey Goo to see that several ideas have been borrowed from
Earth 2160 (the core concepts around the Goo faction mainly, though the Human base construction method also borrows heavily from the game), and yet they repeatedly claim we "haven't seen these mechanics anywhere in an RTS before".
As one of the few players who managed to get into the End of Nations beta - it was DREADFUL. It remains to this day the only Beta where I've willingly wanted to have my Beta permissions revoked. The balance strongly favoured the Shadow Revolution all the way up until the end, as AOE spam simply won the day. There was nothing the Liberation Front could do to counter them, and anytime Liberation Front players found a tactic that could work, they were nerfed - repeatedly. The Shadow Revolution (to my knowledge) never received a nerfing as severe - jumping back in about six months after I left, I found that the same Shadow Revolution players were winning using the exact same AOE spam tactics. I never went back after that, and thank merciful gods Trion killed it. It was a cosmic horror the likes of which only H P Lovecraft could think of.
On the other hand -
Grey Goo could well be that hypothetical 90's esque slow paced, base building RTS we've all been begging for (the Humans especially seem fixated around their base). On that basis alone, I would like Grey Goo - and to an extent, Petroglyph - to succeed...however, Frank Klepacki has resorted to using Dubstep. I'll let that speak of just how desperate Petro has gotten.
Otherwise, it's this or going back to playing Starcraft II.
