On RTS Games

[WolfLordAndy]

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.

 

[ReaperzXIII]

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.

 

[ninjajoeman]

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.

 

[Mantonio]

So Yahtzee: How is Fun Space Game: The Game going?

 

[teisjm]

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.

 

[sarahvait]

EDIT: Also, if you don't review RTS because you admittedly aren't well-versed in them, why do you review JRPGs?

Refer to the Final Fantasy 13 review. I think you'll find your answer (Hour 3 part).

Okay, but what about The World Ends with You? Then again, it's been a while since I watched that one.

 

[sarge1942]

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.

 

[ScruffyTheJanitor]

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.

 

[Dirty Apple]

Or what if you did a First/Third Person shooter vs. the RTS, with the player playing the RTS taking the role of like say the AI director thing from Left for Dead, and they can lay traps, change the environment, or move units and the like.

Actually that's a pretty cool idea. It seems way too multiplayer focused though. I would like a single player to accustom myself and get into the multiplayer later.

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.

 

[ninjajoeman]

Or what if you did a First/Third Person shooter vs. the RTS, with the player playing the RTS taking the role of like say the AI director thing from Left for Dead, and they can lay traps, change the environment, or move units and the like.

Actually that's a pretty cool idea. It seems way too multiplayer focused though. I would like a single player to accustom myself and get into the multiplayer later.

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.

zombie master plays just like what shamgarr was wanting

 

[NiPah]

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.

 

[Dobrev]

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.

 

[Shjade]

This is a good choise for Yahtzee.

Lets cut the Bullshit. He either praises it, which, people will ***** about. THATS NOT FUNNY, I DIDNT LIKE IT, ETC.

Or, b. He rips it a new one. In which case, look at Brawl. That + More. It will just annoy him.

Exactly.

To the folks asking why he reviews JRPGs if he doesn't like those either, I would hazard a guess that a JRPG is a hell of a lot simpler to play than an RTS assuming you don't like the mechanics of either type of game. Hell, I LIKE Starcraft 2 and I still fumble with build orders and micromanagement and, well, just about everything to do with the game. Final Fantasy - the more recent entries in the series, at least - you can pick up and figure out well enough to break them pretty quickly. The whole turn-based thing helps a lot with that: you can pause every turn to consider what you want to do in a fight if you're new/confused/in a bad position. In RTS games, well, that's what the "RT" part means. You don't get breaks. You don't get time to think. If you're under attack you'd better do something about it NOW or else nevermind it's over you lost bye get out.

It's not a very forgiving genre is what I'm saying.

 

[Giest4life]

He says, it's not just that he sucks at them, but because "it's not [his] cup of tea."

Right. That's why I used the term "well-versed". Where did you get the idea that it means: "sucks at them"? It means, not very knowledgeable.

You might say "JRPGs" are also not his cup of tea.

Don't mind me, I'm a hyperbole junkie.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Yeah, there's really no point in him reviewing Starcraft II. I can already predict the comments page afterwards:
-You didn't try the multiplayer
-You suck at RTSs
-You didn't play the first game so you didn't understand the story
-You just hate Blizzard

etc, etc. As someone who personally loves Starcraft I - in fact I would go as far as saying it's my favourite game of all time - Starcraft II is a disappointment. It's not a poorly designed game or anything, and the campaign is absolutely spectacular as per what usually happens when Chris Metzen rolls up his sleeve, but it honestly does not feel like 12 years have passed. My brother's first comment upon playing the game was "it's basically the same but with better graphics", and I've heard many say the same. Sure, there are new units in the multiplayer, but there are absolutely no gameplay innovations. Which coming from Blizzard is absolutely pathetic - it would be like if they had released Warcraft III without adding heroes, items, merc camps, creeps etc.

So despite taking twelve years to add almost nothing to the game - and indeed to subtract things such as LAN under the slim justification of targeting pirates - Blizzard are charging people 60 bucks for a graphical update. That, in conjunction with the way they didn't hand out any pre-release copies of the game to reviewers, says: "You know what? We can do whatever we want, and people will still pay for it." And no one is really prepared to call them out on it, and the same excuse gets parroted over and over again: "it doesn't have to change, the Koreans would riot if it did". No one's saying it HAS to innovate, but if you're prepared to obligingly accept sudden mark-ups in price for little to no extra content, in a few years time you'll swiftly be paying a hundred dollars for your games. That's why I was hoping Yahtzee might knock it down a peg or two, but since he admits he's not really knowledgeable on the subject of RTSs it's better for him to just leave it.

 

[sosolidshoe]

I might not be the first to mention it, but I'm tired and not going to read 6 pages to check:

Yhatzee my man, you just described DUST 514, the console MMO/FPS hybrid being developed by CCP, creator of that other game you really, really don't like; EvE Online

 

[Misterian]

Seems like a reasonable outlook on RTS's.

personally, I decided against playing them because I think I lack patience for them, building up enough ships to maybe shame Nazi Germany's airforce only for it to nearly-instantly get blasted by anti-air units, had that problem playing Starcraft 64.

 

[Stabby Joe]

Slight issue with most real-time strategy games is most strategies end up swarming with the best unit.

Real-time tactics on the other hand, real strategy is the only way to play since the units you get at the start is all you get.

Also, since Yahtzee said that Halo Wars "didn't sell him on the genre", then it's no wonder... Halo Wars is FAR from the best example of it's kind, for one it's on a console.