Why is RTS so heartless?

[Hawk eye1466]

I always wondered why the troops wouldn't eventually refuse to walk directly into enemy cannon fire.

There is a good historical context here, there weren't many soldiers refusing to charge a machine gun position in world war 1 even though the casualty rates were above 90%, as there weren't many Japanese pilots refusing to smash a plane through an enemy target. It is the same with any well disciplined/indoctrinated force.

OT, because it would suck (in my opinion) RTSs are my favorite genre of game and I would really hate having to have individual stories of the units shoe horned in. I recruit/build them and then send them in the best way I can, be it sacrificial or not. An RTS to me is as a good game of chess is, only more complex. I don't care which pieces need to be sacrificed to meet my objective.

Well yes your right but I meant more like my troops would take the most direct route and not try to walk around the pitched battle. And true it would get tedious as all hell but I think it could be fun to have at least a little story with your commanders in your command center but not on the battlefield so you don't do what I always do whenever I had special units which is hide them in the back.

 

[Rainboq]

Sins of a Solar Empire. The capital ships in those games were ships you leveled and gained experience, plus you could name them, so you CARED about them.

yes but you would callously throw away swarms of your frigates and cruisers to get that level 2 carrier out of harms way should the battle start looking bad

That's just you, I care for my ships, from the mightiest Radiance, to the lowliest Disciple.

 

[MercurySteam]

Nah, it's right here.

Also sums up how RTS can play at empathy.

You good sir, are correct. The Imperium overcomes!

 

[ShakyFt Slasher]

I can think of X-com as an example that provides at least a little more heart than usual. I mean every soldier has a name and mental and emotional attributes plus they never come back so every loss of someone you like is at least felt a little in your cold shriveled heart.

 

[Blind0bserver]

Sins of a Solar Empire. The capital ships in those games were ships you leveled and gained experience, plus you could name them, so you CARED about them.

The same goes for planets, too. I remember more than one occasion where the bloody TEC fired a tactical nuke at one of my planets and I launched a full-on crusade in retribution as a result.

 

[Torrasque]

Every zergling lost brings victory closer for the Swarm.

LIVE FOR THE SWARM

War. War never changes.

I love this quote.

OP: I'd say that because when you are fighting for survival, you don't have time to stop and talk to your enemies and say "hey, wanna go have a beer and forget all this?". Whether it is Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires, or Kingdom Under Fire, your goal is to complete your objectives and if need be, kill everything in your way. In between missions, you can talk to the Protoss commander about how futile more bloodshed is, or talk to the enemy commander about how you don't want to fight, but when in combat, it is all about killing your enemy.
Keep in mind that your position in RTS games is the field commander, crushing your enemy and seeing them driven before you. The job of hearing the lamentations of their womens falls to the politicians and other people that are not you.

 

[Okysho]

This is why I play fire emblem. Each character has a face (an actual face, not just a helmet or generic sprite) a backstory etc. Though it's a TBS not RTS, it makes you value the characters and their abilities. If you lose them, you don't get them back.

Also, Dawn of War 2. While it's still easy to lose units, because they're in smaller numbers (debatably) it makes you value each individual unit more within a squad. IE. Space Marines have 3-4 in a squad (4 with sergeants) each marine you lose is 1 whole boltgun and however many hit points. Plus, they level up as they kill, granting more damage and health. Keeping them alive is pretty imparative. I enjoy their squad system over Starcraft, though starcraft 2 can still be fun sometimes...

 

[Okysho]

Nah, it's right here.

Also sums up how RTS can play at empathy.

You good sir, are correct. The Imperium overcomes!

If you are not prepared to fire artillery onto your own infantry, YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO WIN!!
-Lord Commisar, Dawn of War retribution

 

[triggrhappy94]

All RTS's are "Heartless" because none of the units honestly matter. Either Middle Evil Europe invited speedy cloning and never told anyone, or there's two people in that barracks with the fastest gestation time known to man.
Most of the time you watch them die from orbit and it was part of your plan that they get killed, so oh well.

I get annoyed when an RTS tries to put in too much dialogue and narrative in between the single player missions.

In short it's hard to care about something that dies if you hit the delete button, but can just be spawn again at the nearest barracks.

 

[El Dwarfio]

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?

Play Alexander Total War.

It starts off as you describe, but as you push deeper and deeper into Asia each individual person in each individual Macedonian unit becomes more and more irreplaceable. By the time you reach India you'll cringe each time one of those little dudes drop. No game has ever made me care so much for a common, faceless soldier.

And that's before we consider Alexander's companions, each of his close friends appears as a general in the game (I think there are like 11 in total) ad if they die on the battlefield they're gone for good. Furthermore if one of Alexander's closest friends like Hephaistion or Parmenion cop it then it can have serious psychological effects on Alexander and make him weaker.

Finally there is Alexander himself, if he dies the whol spiel is game over. This is the most personal and hardest RTS I've ever played and it makes the whole thing so much more immersive.

 

[Antari]

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?

As to why they are so heartless, I couldn't begin to guess. But not all of them are the Faces of War/Men of War series are a different take on RTS. You don't have a base with an unlimited supply of rambo's. You just have what men you start with. With what ammo they have. If you want more you'll have to strip dead bodies for it.

 

[khiliani]

I always become horribly attached to my units in Lord of the Rings : Battle for Middle Earth, but then that game does give you the ability to give each battalion a name.

I love that feature - it does make you become very attatched to your units, however.

some of the total war games let you do that as well. its nice seeing how different units end up on different places of the world and following their progress

 

[AquaAscension]

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?

You're making a silly distinction here. No video game actually cares about its characters. They just... don't. At all. Ever. I think the issue is that you are only considering the "protagonist's" point of view on other (i.e. non-RTS) games. Do you care about all the enemy soldiers who presumably have stories to tell in Call of Duty or Battlefield? Of course not.

I think the more interesting question to pose would be: "Why do video games equate taking life with a progression of story elements?"

Video games treat humans as scum. RT Strategies treat them as scum with a purpose and a value attached. If anything, RTS games are more like a sociopath's cookbook whereas FPS games and their ilk are more like a psychopath's cookbook.

 

[Saladfork]

Victory at all costs, man.

Come on, try to beat Kerrigan in SC2 without being ruthless and callous in regards to your units.

 

[Zen Toombs]

that's like asking why FPS games don't care about the emotional state of each bullet.

or why chess isn't concerned by the morale of pawns.

Spoiler: If the king doesn't lead, how can he expect his subordinates to follow?

If the king doesn't lead, how can he expect his subordinates to follow?

 

[BaronUberstein]

I've felt silly pride for my soldiers in Company of Heroes many times. All my squads have to retreat from the enemy attack because they only have one or two guys left, all that I have with full health on that front is a single captain. But...what's this? He just killed a German w/ squad machine gun, and I just told him to grab it. HE HOLDS THAT LINE.

Those tiny moments of "man that guy is a badass" also sometimes applies to tanks, where you have one tank left and it's kicking ass as the rest of your troops get slaughtered. I had a Marder II tank hunter in a game a day or two ago where the enemy called down massive amounts of artillery on it...and not a single shell hit it. There were craters ringing the vehicle, but it was FINE and still firing at the incoming enemy tanks. It had 21 tank kills by the end of the game. If anyone here plays CoH, you know that Marders are not well armored.

But overall, sometimes you need those squads to simply hold the line, even if it means you lose a squad. I was playing the eastern front mod and my friend used waves of Russian infantry as mobile armor for my last tank, absorbing incoming AT rounds with hoards of poorly armed men. Sad? yes. Effective? surprisingly so.

But at the end of the day, any commander who throws his men's lives away carelessly is likely going to lose to one who takes those tiny measures to keep them alive. Maybe that's why I love CoH (and to a lesser extent Dawn of War II), because each squad of infantry is an investment of munitions (machine guns, rifle grenades, AT weapons) and unless you're in a game where you have manpower coming out the ass, those squads are precious. If you play American or Panzer Elite they're even more valuable because they gain experience individually.

I've never fired artillery on my own troops, with the exception of Churchill tanks, because artillery shells apparently just bounce off those fuckers so it works to have them drive through your own artillery fire to crush a retreating enemy.

 

[dobahci]

Why would you want to empathize with the soldiers in a strategy game? It'd get in the way of the... strategy.

Strategy at its highest and purest level is by driven by dispassion and logical thinking. Empathizing with each soldier and mourning every loss would only obstruct your ability to win a battle (or the entire war) by preventing you from being able to make the sacrifices that would allow your side to secure an expedient victory.