Why is RTS so heartless?

[KiloFox]

War. War never changes.

awesome

and a couple RTS's i've seen (the ones i'd prefer) basically have all units fully mechanized. so there's no actual loss of life except for the commanders... i also don't like RTS because there's no character development or anything... it makes you think of each unit as just cannon fodder to whittle down the HP of your foe's army. this is why i play Turn Based Strategy RPG's like Disgaea and Fire Emblem. each unit has stats, a face, levels, a name, backstory, and relations with the other units. making me want to keep each and every unit alive as best i can. this is why i've played almost every US release Fire Emblem game and havn't lost a single unit (when i do i restart the level). Disgaea it's not so much because i can rez characters after the battle, but i have a limit to how many i can have, i can't just grow more units out of nowhere.

there was a character-driven RTS that came out though... it was one of the Blue Dragon games on the DS. but from what i played of it it was total crap and the mechanics didn't work at all... but that's because each unit had special attacks and such... you HAD to make units take twisting routes just so you had time to select special attacks... a game like Fire Emblem would be better suited for an RTS port.

 

[NiPah]

See title.

Simply put, I'm just a bit frustrated about how RTS games as a whole seem to be "Go kill stuff, who cares about friendly casualties?" It's focused as a genre on just doing lots of damage, and never on what your men think and feel. Why is that? Why is there not a decent, character-driven RTS game where you are encouraged to look after your troops, but countless games where you are pretty much encouraged to not give a rat's behind about them?

Really the only game that comes close to character-driven RTS is a title called "Codename Panzers", and even then whatever importance you give your troops depends on you, there is no inherent importance on keeping them alive, which bugs me severely.

So, your thoughts? Why is RTS so cold and heartless, and why has nobody saw fit to try and change it?

Because programming computers to think and feel is a feet yet conquered by gaming programmers? What genre have you played that had emotions outside of scripted events and cut-scenes? And I'm not sure about you but a primary tactic of RTS games is to give a rats behind about your troops since they are needed for survival.

I think the idea of one lone character being important is dead to RTS mainly due to RTS games being more realistic and not a stylized version of war you get in FPS or other genres. There are some games like Tiberian Sun where you actually have to protect mission important heroes who tend to die easily, of you can look at the hero units of Starcraft and Warcraft for more scripted characters in RTS.

 

[iLikeHippos]

Well, if I lose a batch of zerglings, marines or zealots - no fucking problem.

If I lose a ghost with full energy - GHOST NOOOO!!! FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU YOUR LIFE WAS TOO SHOOOOOORT! *cry*

 

[Eddie the head]

It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself.

I'm not a Prisoner, I'm a free man and my blood is my own now. Not a number i'm free man.

 

[teebeeohh]

earth 2150(by war the best entry in the series)
Total war series (yes, you send legions of low-level spearmen into their death but you do not want to loose the elite unit of heavy cavalry)
also: supreme commander, i cry for every human killed in that game
basically any game where experience actually does shit

 

[repeating integers]

Funny you say that. Homeworld sort of subtly encourages you to care about your ships - after all, there are only at most 700,000 of your entire species left, you know every loss will be felt hard after the game's finished.

 

[lapan]

Majesty 2 had you grow attached to your units since you could name some of them, they would level up and you could hire your named units in all your other missions. It was buggy for a long time though and it took them ages to make a german patch...

 

[TwiZtah]

The Myth series did this by being damn hard and you needing every damn soldier you could get.

 

[lapan]

War. War never changes.

God,this remminded me of Fallout.

Or every second FPS of the last few years.

 

[Therumancer]

See title.

Simply put, I'm just a bit frustrated about how RTS games as a whole seem to be "Go kill stuff, who cares about friendly casualties?" It's focused as a genre on just doing lots of damage, and never on what your men think and feel. Why is that? Why is there not a decent, character-driven RTS game where you are encouraged to look after your troops, but countless games where you are pretty much encouraged to not give a rat's behind about them?

Really the only game that comes close to character-driven RTS is a title called "Codename Panzers", and even then whatever importance you give your troops depends on you, there is no inherent importance on keeping them alive, which bugs me severely.

So, your thoughts? Why is RTS so cold and heartless, and why has nobody saw fit to try and change it?

Not sure if anyone has pointed this out, but the point of strategy games is to be kind of cold and heartless... like a general moving units around, deciding who lives and dies in pursuit of the objective.

That said, there ARE various hybrid games that combine RPG and story elements into the mix, things like say the old "Spellforce" series, or "Dragon Sphere" which made things a little more personal by having some pre-defined characters involved and a little more backround behind the missions.

You also have squad based combat games, which work like an RTS, but scaled down to focus on individual units as opposed to groups of units. Something like say "Freedom Force" for example is a RTS-like combat game, but one where you control a bunch of distinct super heroes with a more personal (if very goofy and campy) plotline. More towards the RPG aspects you of course have thigns like Baldur's Gate, or Icewind Dale.

I'll also say that to be challenging RTS games don't always use common sense tactics, sometimes you have to do the obtuse to win, and really if you got into knowing the name and life story of every grunt you send to die wearing down defenses it would actually get kind of annoying.

But again the operative word is strategy, and your detached like some general thouands of miles away from the fighting. Heck in some games they might conceptually have you sitting in a space ship in orbit or whatever, or as a napoleaonic-type general conceptually moving figures around a map while sipping wine and considering your purely intellectual detachment the height of elegance.... these aren't gritty war stories, there are other games for that.

 

[Keava]

See title.

Simply put, I'm just a bit frustrated about how RTS games as a whole seem to be "Go kill stuff, who cares about friendly casualties?" It's focused as a genre on just doing lots of damage, and never on what your men think and feel. Why is that? Why is there not a decent, character-driven RTS game where you are encouraged to look after your troops, but countless games where you are pretty much encouraged to not give a rat's behind about them?

You really can't get much further from truth with that statement. Every RTS rewards player for actually caring about their army. Players who just mindlessly send wave after wave after wave are players that never utilize basics of strategy.

Every unit costs resources and time, loosing that unit means You loose resources and time. Very good players keep retention high. Sure, there often are units You sacrifice en masse to achieve certain goals but it's always weighted about how much resources/time You loose due to that as compared to gains or opponents losses. That's how generally strategy works in life.

Character driven strategies often become tactical games, and loose the scale. You can't have 100+ units and care for each and every of them. And even then, like in chess, You have to sometimes sacrifice a figure.
You also have games like CoH/DoW in which training new units is much more expensive than reinforcing a squad, especially when You factor in upgrades and experience bonuses. You want to do everything to save at least that 1 last guy so he can run back to nearest base and get his squad to fulls strength.

 

[loc978]

supreme commander, i cry for every human killed in that game

That was my first reaction. Since a vast majority of your units in that are AI drones, the loss of an ACU or SACU with a pilot and fusion core onboard is made all the more tragic... and explosive.
How people can use SACUs as suicide bombers, I'll never know. Bastards, all.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

Funny you say that. Homeworld sort of subtly encourages you to care about your ships - after all, there are only at most 700,000 of your entire species left, you know every loss will be felt hard after the game's finished.

Agreed, I do sort of mourn for the loss of my ships. Especially my capital ships like Battlecruisers, Destroyers, or Carriers.

 

[9thRequiem]

Although I'm not sure how much of an RTS it counts as, and there's no statistical reason to keep track of them, I always got attached to my troops in Cannon Fodder.
Each soldier has their own name, and if they die, have a permanent gravestone on the hillside where you see the new troops arrive ...

 

[RoboGeek]

a game that i think kind of does what your describing is the blood bowl game - although a turn based strategy rather than real time, each character has there own name stats and bonus's and perks and such, when one of your team gets killed you do get annoyed or upset.

i think this is because each unit is a single character and they progress getting better after each game, so an RTS where you control single characters that level up and get stronger could give a close experience to the one in the op.

but of course the attachment is only one of stats, you dont have an attachment to the character itself but just his stats

 

[Gerishnakov]

It's not an RTS but it does have real time battles - the Total War series is very heartless. There is good reason for this however. Throughout most of history, generals have cared little for the wellbeing of their armies.

It is only really since the atrocity of warfare that was the First World War, and then the subsequent development of mass news media through the C20, that has led to us caring about the armed forces. Even now military brass and politicians only really have to care about the troops because they'd have a PR shitstorm on their hands if they openly didn't.

 

[SmegInThePants]

best rts's (imho) are the ones where you only get X number of units, and when one dies, you can't replace it. No buildings pumping out units. So you tend to care in such rts's when a unit dies, because now your force is permanently smaller. You have to put each unit to its best use or lose the battle.

First one i played like this was the first myth, then myth 2. Loved the multiplayer. Still remember the jack nicholson sounding "casualty".

None of the warcraft clones are too interesting to me except for a very short while sometimes when I have friends drag me into one for a stint. Games like myth proved that rts's don't have to be warcraft clones, however.

I guess mobas kind of count (league of legends, etc...), you have just one character and only one, you lvl it up, buy items for it, it has stats and a name and a bio, and its all real time.

 

[RustlessPotato]

There was a small scale RTS - well, Real-Time Tactical would be more accurate - back on the Amiga in the nineties called "Cannon Fodder". Each individual soldier had a name and when you lost some on a mission, the between-mission screen would have have a little grave marker for each dead soldier. These grave markers stayed there for the whole game, so by the end of it the hillside would be covered in little graves, each one with the name of a lost soldier. It was quite poignant, really.

"War has never been so much fun! Go to your brother, kill him with your gun, leave him lying in his uniform dying in the sun."

I remember that game, it was great xD.

 

[doodger]

I think the idea that every soldier matters is fairly recent (maybe from the vietnam war). Back in the days, the average human leader cared more about inflicting debilitating damage to the ennemy than keep his guys alive

Also, most RTSes place you in a situation where you winning is imperative. For example, sacrificing dozens of protoss to stop the murderous swarm from closing in on a city in starcraft, building a bridge of corpses with the imperial guard so that you can stop the necrons from killing everything in dawn of war, sacrificing waves after waves of troup in medieval 2 to keep the mongol away from your population centers in Medieval 2, in all those situation it's the need of the many that wins out.