On RTS Games
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I just don't understand why hanging someone up next to a small short-crust pastry containing raisins would be considered a terrible fate...Eric the Orange said:
I kind of had an idea for an game similar to your RTS variants but instead of starting with a game like starcraft think of something like battlefront, less about buildings and resources, but more about huge armies capturing territories. You would have two or more teams, each with a general and a number of "elite" troops. The general has at his disposal an army of bots that he can deploy and control while the other players play as more powerful (and more competent) troops who can customize their characters and get more powerful Modern Warfare style. But here is the real key; the bots are powerful enough that a single human can't necessarily go-it-alone without the aid of the general and as the army as a whole meets objectives the general gets points that he can spend to power you up, thus giving you a benefit for working together and giving the general power without removing free will.
Now, this still has the problem that killed the commander idea from TF2: what if your general is incompetent. My only suggestion for that would be some way to, in the middle of the game, elect a new one if the players don't like their current one, but that could create further problems.
Now, this still has the problem that killed the commander idea from TF2: what if your general is incompetent. My only suggestion for that would be some way to, in the middle of the game, elect a new one if the players don't like their current one, but that could create further problems.
The reason I don't play RTS's is because I can not multi task whatsoever, and therefore find them impossibly difficult. I tend to not like things I'm not good at.
As a fan of Starcraft (I and II alike) and RTS in general, I'm perfectly okay with this. Yahtzee doesn't have to waste his time playing a game he doesn't enjoy, and we get to be spared him ripping apart perfectly good gameplay because it's not his kind of thing.
I like the ideas outlined in this - the result would not be a serious, twitchy RTS like Starcraft, but a slightly more crazy, dynamic deal in which the actions of the wild third parties can cause unexpected consequences. It'd be disliked by those who adhere to RTS standards and uphold the value of "APM" and suchlike, but probably enjoyable to more casual players like me.
Thinking about it, something akin to this setup could be possible with custom Starcraft maps. Player 1 and 2 play "regular" skirmish, while Players 3 through 8 play as individual hero units. With the "Use Map Settings" mode, you could play it online against or with just about anyone. It would require a lot of tweaking and balancing, but it's doable.
I like the ideas outlined in this - the result would not be a serious, twitchy RTS like Starcraft, but a slightly more crazy, dynamic deal in which the actions of the wild third parties can cause unexpected consequences. It'd be disliked by those who adhere to RTS standards and uphold the value of "APM" and suchlike, but probably enjoyable to more casual players like me.
Thinking about it, something akin to this setup could be possible with custom Starcraft maps. Player 1 and 2 play "regular" skirmish, while Players 3 through 8 play as individual hero units. With the "Use Map Settings" mode, you could play it online against or with just about anyone. It would require a lot of tweaking and balancing, but it's doable.
The only thing more boring than playing an RTS is reading articles about an RTS.
opinion, don't crucify me
opinion, don't crucify me
Well, I've skimmed through, and no one seemed to have mentioned Planetside?
It was successful, in the techincal sence, at making an MMOFPS - but with RTS elements for those few elites amounst the 400 odd combatants in any zone.
You could fly, bomb, drive, gun, use giant mechs, repair bases, refuel bases, create spawn points, lead global fronts of 100+, lead specialist squads of 2-10, lead a platoon of 12-30...
Its sadly jsut died now as its too old to look good, but Planetside 2 is supposedly in developement... I urge people to check it out, as the best part is that fact its ACTUALLY large battles (like you'd see in a RTS) rather then lots of little instanced fights that vaguely effect each other.
It was successful, in the techincal sence, at making an MMOFPS - but with RTS elements for those few elites amounst the 400 odd combatants in any zone.
You could fly, bomb, drive, gun, use giant mechs, repair bases, refuel bases, create spawn points, lead global fronts of 100+, lead specialist squads of 2-10, lead a platoon of 12-30...
Its sadly jsut died now as its too old to look good, but Planetside 2 is supposedly in developement... I urge people to check it out, as the best part is that fact its ACTUALLY large battles (like you'd see in a RTS) rather then lots of little instanced fights that vaguely effect each other.
I don't get the hype with RTSs the fun of battle is running around and shooting people in the head, or slashing down monsters with your sword that according to the laws of physics you shouldn't be able to pick up let alone swing around. But that is just my opinion.
As Yahtzee said it is basically chess, and while I have no problem with playing a chess game I ain't going to pay to play it no matter how pretty it is.
A game genre hybrid I do want to see is something where Hack and Slash elements and Third Person Shooter elements combine (well, might I add). Where you can pick to shoot your enemies but when you run out of bullets or get tired of firing you can take out your melee weapons and use combos to take out enemies.
As Yahtzee said it is basically chess, and while I have no problem with playing a chess game I ain't going to pay to play it no matter how pretty it is.
A game genre hybrid I do want to see is something where Hack and Slash elements and Third Person Shooter elements combine (well, might I add). Where you can pick to shoot your enemies but when you run out of bullets or get tired of firing you can take out your melee weapons and use combos to take out enemies.
play the game zombie master its on steam its a mod for half life 2 its basically one guy controls a huge amount of zombies spawning them using resources. then the players try to overcome these zombies. also the zombie master has a few traps made by the map maker. also these zombies varry from the hulk who is a fairly fast and strong tank that can whipe the floor with a whole team but the attacks are extremely slow to the banshee who acts like the half life 2 fast zombie. and theres some others. its farely old but really fun.
Battlefield 2 sortof took a crack at it, with it's commander role. Ofc it wasn't much RTS, since every one of his "units" was a player, who he could only give orders, without knowing wetehr or not the player owuld follow them.
He could spot enemies, and send in vehicles, ammo and air strikes.
As for the mercenary thing, you could do an RTS in the style of DotA, Heroes of Newerth, League of legends Demigod.
In those games all the normal units are computer controlled and just follows predetermined paths, and has some aggro rules, and the players each controlls a hero, like the heroes in Warcraft 3. They'er sortof like a mix of RTS and combat RPG (the don't have teh role playign elements, but they have the leveling and gear elements of RPG's scaled down)
But i don't see why you couldn't have one player controll all the creeps (the AI controleld weaker units) on each team, and have heroes controleld by players as well. That way one guy on each team would be playing RTS and x otehr players on each team would be playing solely their hero like in the games mentioned above.
Demigod had a feature, where players could use their money not only on new gear for themselves, but also on upgrades for the team, like shorter respawn rate, thougher buildings, tougher creeps, more gold income etc. Stuff liek this could be handled in a more RTS-ish way by a single player controlling all the non-hero action.
Heck, you could even let some heroes be played in first person with ranged weapons to please the FPS players. I seem to remember that in dungeon keeper 2, there was a spell taht allowed you to directly controll one of your minions from 1st perosn view, so i don't see why it shouldn't be possible here. You'd just haev some sort of cooldown on your attack, like a lot of weapons have in FPS games.
Dunno how to turn this into a single player thing though, but i guess thats redundant anyways, cause if they wanna play RTS, they could just pick up an RTS, and teh same for otehr genres.
Only problem with it not beeing single-player friendly i can think of atm, would be that story would suffer greatly. As all the above mentioned games are pvp games (or player vs AI) and are played out in rounds, so having an story more complex than faction A hates faction B so they fight in them would prolly be kinda hard.
He could spot enemies, and send in vehicles, ammo and air strikes.
As for the mercenary thing, you could do an RTS in the style of DotA, Heroes of Newerth, League of legends Demigod.
In those games all the normal units are computer controlled and just follows predetermined paths, and has some aggro rules, and the players each controlls a hero, like the heroes in Warcraft 3. They'er sortof like a mix of RTS and combat RPG (the don't have teh role playign elements, but they have the leveling and gear elements of RPG's scaled down)
But i don't see why you couldn't have one player controll all the creeps (the AI controleld weaker units) on each team, and have heroes controleld by players as well. That way one guy on each team would be playing RTS and x otehr players on each team would be playing solely their hero like in the games mentioned above.
Demigod had a feature, where players could use their money not only on new gear for themselves, but also on upgrades for the team, like shorter respawn rate, thougher buildings, tougher creeps, more gold income etc. Stuff liek this could be handled in a more RTS-ish way by a single player controlling all the non-hero action.
Heck, you could even let some heroes be played in first person with ranged weapons to please the FPS players. I seem to remember that in dungeon keeper 2, there was a spell taht allowed you to directly controll one of your minions from 1st perosn view, so i don't see why it shouldn't be possible here. You'd just haev some sort of cooldown on your attack, like a lot of weapons have in FPS games.
Dunno how to turn this into a single player thing though, but i guess thats redundant anyways, cause if they wanna play RTS, they could just pick up an RTS, and teh same for otehr genres.
Only problem with it not beeing single-player friendly i can think of atm, would be that story would suffer greatly. As all the above mentioned games are pvp games (or player vs AI) and are played out in rounds, so having an story more complex than faction A hates faction B so they fight in them would prolly be kinda hard.
I actually think the idea of the two commanders going at it with a bunch of mercinaries messing things up would be a great idea, the other commander would be messing up your plans anyway so it wouldn't pose too much of a problem, so long as you didn't make the mercinaries able to cut down an entire army it would probabally work, i know i'd play it.
Valve attempted a "commander/squad" mix of fps and rts with team fortress 2. Despite many months working on the ideas.. they didn't find one that would work so they stuck with the fps style.
I think back to playing Dungeon Keeper 2 back in the day, and I always thought it would be a good time playing against real goody-two-shoes archetypes.qbanknight said:
This idea was used in a user made map on Starcraft 1, Kings and Knights, up to 4 players would be kings and play much like a normal Starcraft battle, while the knights would have super powered single units and go around killing what ever they wanted (they were paid through kings sending them money for certain actions, or just to keep them from killing their units.
It was a fun map, and maybe with Starcraft 2 could be extended into a much better first person view or with tighter control for the knight.
It was a fun map, and maybe with Starcraft 2 could be extended into a much better first person view or with tighter control for the knight.
I've lost your line of thought somewhere, but it seems to me you want to make every player play a single unit in a strategy game. While I have no clue as to why you want to do that, I'd have to spoil it for you. It has already been done. In the Chinise emperrors' court they used to played live chess. And yes, the pawns did kill eachother when ordered. I think your plan will have the same success and result.