Double A said:
Therumancer said:
mirage202 said:
Well, that killed my hopes for Homeworld 3.
RTS really is a dying genre isn't it?
Well, I think the issue is that Blizzard set the mark so high, and has dominated the scene so intensely with Starcraft that most companies are afraid to even try, the last real attempt was from the "Command And Conquer" franchise and it didn't go all that well.
I also think MOBAs did a lot to hurt the genere just as MMORPGs hurt single player RPGs. The basic arguement being from an investor standpoint is that for the same basic outlay of money you could put a lot of these really in depth and tested games online and then make a ton of money from microtransactions and/or subscription fees. Thus for a long time you saw all the RPG developers working on MMOs, or like with Amalur... doing single player games only as lead ins TO an MMO, a and with RTS games you've largely seen people looking at how what started as RTS mods (ie DoTA) making huge bank so everyone has wanted to jump on that bandwagon. All of these fly by night MOBA games pretty much being in place of what would otherwise have been regular RTS games.
Such are my observations.
Wait, companies are perfectly willing to try to usurp the immortal throne of WoW, but making a decent RTS is just suicide?
Who set this precedent and where is his face?
Well, on a lot of levels, we did it as gamers. You can also blame the way a lot of foreign E-sports evolved around specific games.
See, with WoW it's always been quite beatable, it's just that nobody has been able to put the design and budget together in order to do so. Typically AAA MMOs wind up failing because there is no decent endgame, and that is where WoW thrives and keeps people re-upping subscriptions and playing. Sure, WoW didn't have much of an endgame when it launched, but then again nobody really did, and it has one now. People max their characters, pretty quickly given that there aren't many true MMO "newbs" anymore, and then find nothing that really motivates them to keep playing. They aren't going to sit around and keep paying for months or years for a company to finally get around to expanding the endgame, instead they will leave for a game that already has one. What's more pretty much all AAA MMOs out there try and embrace the fickle, casual demographic, and set themselves up where pretty much anyone can dial it in and wind up with top of the line gear, something which drives away most of the dedicated players because really if anyone can succeed, what is the point for them to even play? The casuals themselves tend to get their gear and move on, having nothing left to strive for, and being eternally drawn to the next shiny thing sparkling in the horizon. People keep trying because on paper WoW should be beatable but executives keep interfering with forecasts, and in general, as I said, companies who have the budget like EA tend to do stupid things like put single player game developers in charge of an MMO (ie ToR) and then bring in failed MMO developers (like Mythic) to make things even worse. Ironically a lot of the most solid games out there are relatively humble "Free To Play" affairs where they had innovation in spades, but didn't have the budget to develop to a AAA level. Pretty much every attempt to build a WoW-killer pretty much failed in the board room before they even started, and in general Blizzard has been able to tell this just by listening to these guy's own hype which is why they have rarely shown any signs of concern.
When it comes to RTS games though, it's a differant animal, the primary market for RTS games has largely become competitive, with single player existing as a market, but being seperate. You tend to largely see them played by guys like Korean E-sports players, or as MOBA games like "League Of Legends" or "Defense Of The Ancients". The thing is
that with a basic RTS foundation Blizzard has pretty much hit perfect game balance, without mirroring everything, or
at least as close as possible. Before you can even enter yourself into the equasion you have to be able to do the same thing, while still making the game fun, and that is incredibly hard to do. If you can't come up with three very distinct factions and have them be near perfectly balanced you have no real chance against Starcraft. The same can be said to an extent with MOBAs which sees more competition due to the money being made, LoL has it's problems but is also pretty solidly balanced between a huge array of characters as most people will point out (and you can see with their global win/loss percentages) if you can't produce a similar array of unique but balanced characters your dead on arrival, which a lot of people doing MOBAs have learned, you mess up, people just go back to LoL and don't come back. You become the next "I tried it, it sucks compared to this" mention in chat for the next year.
) Oh well, better uphold Yahtzee's commandments about hyping games. EUIV is going to be complete rubbish..EUIV is going to be complete rubbish...
