CNC: 4 Announced

[Nephtys]

Remember, Crippled interfaces cater to 'skilled' players. Because heaven forbid you design something that's both competitive AND functional, right? Making a UI that isn't your enemy at all times removes all the skill from the game!

[Stark]

Well honestly, no bases = no strategy or depth, and your units doing anything you don't expressly tell them to do (once) = game plays itself. Right?

I've seen people who honestly think Starcraft and Dune2 were good because moves didn't make your unit shoot anyone (unless you attack-moved) so you had to nursemaid your units as they travelled. This is why the RTS genre is the way it is.

And anyone who suggests otherwise should go play counterstrike!

[JonB]

Don't be ridiculous; 'interstellar war' might require changing the formula. They'll just find a magic door that lets you use mammoth tanks IN SPACE on maps that are just like the old ones only PURPLE.

SPACE purple.

So.... Star Craft then?

[Stark]

EXACTLY! You see how my mind works? It's like a laser.

A SPACE laser.

[Nephtys]

Yes. Which is why space fighters and capital ships = zeppelin with one gun.

[Stark]

If units have more than one gun, how are you supposed to have paper-scissors-stone? I mean, unless DREADNOUGHTS need CORVETTES as escorts against FIGHTERS, where is the balance?

What do you MEAN any set of weapons/units/whatever will naturally balance itself and you need to be aware of this and set meaningful costs and tradeoffs? TANKS ARE WEAK VS INFANTRY OK???

[Darth Wong]

It's funny, but when I think of the word "strategy", I think of a person thoughtfully planning his next move. I don't think of a person frantically clicking as fast as he can while flittering all over a map and running through pre-optimized "build orders". It seems that the obsessive RTS fans have so much influence that they can actually force developers to make their games worse to play, just so that they will feel that their precious (and otherwise completely useless) RTS skills are valuable. Each generation of C&C seems to get worse in this regard, not better.

[Stark]

The RTS genre in general shares the change, it's not just CnC. Whether the clickfest players are a sizable slice of the market or simply a powerful marketing demographic, RTS games that cater to them seem to be percieved as more profitable or 'safer'. Even these days RTS games are made that break that mould, but they're shouted down by the clickers, get average reviews, poor word of mouth, and sink.

It's worth considering the nature of online multiplayer too; you need a 'critical mass' of players such that someone can start up and get into a match. Smaller communities (like the WiC community) don't really have this flexibility and often no games are available within your criteria at all. This is, I believe, a major element of the success of many crap-but-popular games like Counterstrike or World of Warcraft; snowballing communities.

From the perspective of 'older' gamers, who first played RTS games in their early teens, the way they became more and more complex as computers allowed the detail, and then collapsed back into the Starcraft Snowball, is very interesting.

[Darth Wong]

It's more surreal than interesting. After becoming accustomed to new games being more slick, more intelligent, etc., we suddenly started seeing games that seemed almost cartoonishly dumbed-down, for no discernible reason. It wasn't until I started arguing with some of the idiot RTS fanboys on this forum that I realized there are fucking morons out there who actually want this to happen.

I still remember there was one particular RTS idiot fanboy here who accused me of opposing RTS micromanagement just because I lack his awesome micromanagement skills: an argument which implicitly assumes that I actually want to play a massively micro-managed game and am simply crying sour grapes because I lack the ability. I don't actually recall his username, but he was emblematic of everything wrong with the genre today.

[Stark]

The first time I went to the forums for an RTS to suggest some UI tweaks... and was shouted down for 'ruining' the game, as allowing the player to control factories from one interface/set default AI settings/auto-group units (all features seen in older games) would make them 'play themselves', it was clear that there is a very loud group of people who just want to click very, very fast instead of thinking about things.

How many RTS games have perfectly symmetrical maps, because otherwise it's 'not fair'? In the mid-90s it was like 50s optimism; games were becoming more and more complex and people were excited about how new processors would allow more sophisticated games and smoother but more thoughtful play. The reality turned out to be 'exactly the same as 10 years ago, only with more bloom shaders'. Hell, even that isn't true; WiC is still arguably the best-looking RTS around, and it's two years old.

EDIT - What you mention (and I recall that thread ) is how these people react everywhere - skill = click faster, anything that reduces reliance on player clicking = reducing skill. If you accept their broken premise, it makes sense; they just can't see that games could be played differently to the way you HAD to play Starcraft and Warcraft and CnC1 because they were so primitive.

[Nephtys]

A lot of it is poor perception of what 'deep' really means.

Let's take the Nouncraft model, of Warcraft and Starcraft that has many clones, of which I consider include games like RA3. You get some units mass-produced by virtually uninterruptable logistics (IE, mining inside your own base), then you send them out in mixed groups of six AA tanks, twelve battle tanks and what have you. The mindless masses consider 'I can use my tank's increase damage buff ability when I see a lot of enemies!! That's strategy! Also, AA tanks protect me from the air!'. That's what RTS popular games cater to these days.

Attempts for strategy not by visible clickable gizmo, but by maneuver, positioning, planning and deception are labeled as 'cheap and unfair', and scorned meanwhile. One of my most rewarding games of Total Annihilation for example, had me out expanded and outmaneuvered, but I managed to lure a massive enemy force by fighting a retreat into a nuclear minefield, destroying enough of their force to buy time for another small task group of mine to end-run for their base. Or in WiC, using smoke, airstrikes and hit and run attacks to deceive your enemy of your true force concentrations, so that you can surround and destroy their elements in detail.

Such kinds of things are 'cheap' because they don't have mindless hard counters. They require adaptability that quite frankly is terrifying to most gamers. Look at how Ground Control or Homeworld was received. Fantastically by some, and ignored by the masses because the very thought of attacking using the damned Z-axis apparently blew minds.

And yeah, Symmetrical maps are a scourge as far as I'm concerned. If a game is so predictable that the EXACT map layout is a deciding factor, then that game is too easily optimized and is not a game, but an exercise in rote memorization.

[Stark]

People have complained that having someone else's heavy tanks flank around on a ridge while you hold the enemy in place is 'cheesy'. This is the community of players so stupid that they will constantly drop units at the same point on the map, even though I have five heavy tanks next to it killing them instantly - because THEY DON'T KNOW YOU CAN MOVE DROP POINT, and DON'T WANT TO ASK THE TEAM FOR HELP.

[Darth Wong]

I suppose their reasoning makes sense if you assume that the point of an RTS game is to test your ability to work through a really horrible interface and incredibly stupid units. Mind you, by that logic, we could make an even better game by simply removing most of the interface and forcing the player to type in complex commands at a console prompt. That would require even more "skill". After all, the whole GUI interface "reduces skill" according to their rationale, by making it easier to do things. This way, they could drop a console prompt and type "pri weap bearing 45 unit 362" in order to fire a shot from a tank. Ultimate challenge!

[Stark]

That's the attitude I run into whenever I talk to internet RTS players. The interface isn't broken - because fixing it would make the game 'play itself' and 'too simple' with 'no depth'. They really do think fighting the GAME to express your orders is part of the 'skill' or 'challenge', rather than thinking the UI or unit balance should just be changed. I have honestly had people criticise World in Conflict (which has no bases, units being airdropped from off-map) as having 'no depth' because TACTICAL DEPTH IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT BASES OR RESOURCING. They're -that- blinkered and limited and conservative.

Remember when SupCom came out? And even though it had interesting UI ideas (like the mapzoom, the waypoint system, etc) the units and economy and giant '33% of the screen' interface were pure 90s.

[Vympel]

That's the attitude I run into whenever I talk to internet RTS players. The interface isn't broken - because fixing it would make the game 'play itself' and 'too simple' with 'no depth'. They really do think fighting the GAME to express your orders is part of the 'skill' or 'challenge', rather than thinking the UI or unit balance should just be changed. I have honestly had people criticise World in Conflict (which has no bases, units being airdropped from off-map) as having 'no depth' because TACTICAL DEPTH IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT BASES OR RESOURCING. They're -that- blinkered and limited and conservative.

That's pathetic. It also reminds me that I really need to get around to actually playing WiC, since I keep getting distracted by other games.

Of course, Empire:Total War is also on my fucking list ...

Which RTS out there do people think had the best UI?

[Nephtys]

SupCom had it's own issues with balance, but it's UI was mostly sound outside of queuing up units for build in multiple factories. Your units tracked targets and prioritized based on enemy type, proximity, etc. When moving, tanks would actually bring their weapons to bear without you telling them to, unless you specifically set them to hold fire or return fire only (such as if you were trying to sneak around their lines). You could have units auto-assist others in the most sensible way for them, such as AA vehicles forming anti-air escorts, or repair vehicles conducting maintenance. You could make construction units queue up a dozen or so buildings in weird formations and let them go. Your arty could be ordered to saturate anything that entered a given area. Your repair units can be ordered to automatically patrol areas for salvagable material, while interceptors flew automatic CAPs with periodic refueling.

See? That's an interface that REDUCES the mindless work load.

For me, the perfect game is one where everything functions exactly as you want. As in, your air units do this or that just as you expect, and you're never fighting the incompetence of the game, only the competence of your opponent.

E:TW is a hilarious mess for other reasons, Vympel

It's hard to figure 'best' UI, since many of the better RTS are extremely different from each other.

[Stark]

I think WiC has a UI that presents it's business well in a bunch of small elements (as opposed to GIANT RUNWAY DOWN SIDE OF SCREEN) and the only crap part is the bottom left cluster of move/load/unload/face/reverse orders (which nobody is ever going to click on anyway) It also has the Q-menu, which is pretty much the next best thing to god.

The Q-menu (which appears in the middle of the screen when you hold q) allows you to click on premade messages (grouped by type, such as 'assault here' and 'need repair' and 'I am going here' and 'warning!' which you then place with a click on the map or screen. They're basically contextual pings driven through a console-style popup menu, which allows 90% of the common communications (man here, help me, this is what I'm doing) to be transmitted with two clicks in the absence of voice. It also allows you to drop an 'attention' or 'need artillery' on a glimpsed unit so someone else can deal with it, which encourages teamwork.

Basically, any post-WiC RTS that doesn't have something similar is retarded.

[Losonti Tokash]

Too bad that asking for artillery always means that the idiot on your team with 3 MRLS is just going to bomb your current position and not the one you asked for.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

The RTS genre is indeed in a sorry state. Even the once better behaved Relic RTS games have begun the slide into special-ability driven clickery - multiplayer in Dawn of War II dropped the base building, but it seems the only to allow players to micro-manage the life or death special abilities many units have more effectively.

World in Conflict is an odd one. There are still ridiculous micro-management things like helicopters that will not automatically launch their missile decoys even when they are being murdered by AA missiles - but the problem is minimised because the player can literally watch his small group of units for 100% of the game. Strategic choices the player makes to do with where/when/how to fight also do have a much bigger impact in WiC than in XXXCraft style games, but I think this is mainly a function of the much more advanced terrain setup in WiC with cover for infantry, lines of sight etc...

Another thing I have noticed about WiC, which may partly explain its popularity problem: if you watch a multiplayer game unfold, it seems like the unit special abilties act as a kind of honey-pot trap for traditional RTS players who try the game. In MP games there is usually a big, constant and pointless battle going back and forth over one part of the map - I have a feeling these are "traditional" RTS players trying to defeat the opposition purely by micro and failing; this causes them to think WiC has "no depth" because they can't win by using their tried and tested micro-skills. Meanwhile the better players are busy with flanking attacks and other, more thoughtful, plays.

Now, I'm cautious saying this, but I also think EndWar actually has some overlooked features that should be used in most RTS games. The main thing is the voice command system - it was well implemented, fast and reliable; it added a whole new "channel" to control units with. Obviously the game was designed with it in mind, but it is not difficult to see how it could easily be added to any other modern RTS with a little bit of dev time and some money for the off-the-shelf voice recognition libraries - I see no reason why this should not be a basic, expected feature of RTS games, just like units groups and such.

The other feature of EndWar which I think could be useful in other RTS games is the concept of "shields" for units which protect them from a moderate level of damage and recharge quickly outside combat - this allows players to retreat their units "penalty free" for a few moments after a battle starts, and generally cuts down on stupid tactics like kiting.

I currently work on an RTS modding team which makes the Shockwave and Rise of the Reds mods for C&C Generals. I have tried as far as possible there to influence the design of both mods to remove micro-management features, but there is much resistance. As I have done the vast majority of the design work for Rise of the Reds I have managed to remove most micro-heavy features or to nip them in the bud before they get in the design - even then there is always a brain dead chorus of "game will play itself" etc... And usually, once a micro-heavy feature has been changed or removed, people will admit that it is better the new way... but there is just this fear of the change. And of course, next time I say XYZ is a bad idea because it is pointless micro drudgery, the very same people will come out again and say "Ahh, before was fine, but this time it's different..."

[Nephtys]

Shockwave is a good mod for CNC. It feels like basically old school CNC in a lot of ways, and massing is not the way to defeat defensive positions, since your units will not be able to overrun entrenched positions without taking appalling losses. It promotes the combined use of artillery to crack defenses and the use of other units to protect the arty from enemy sorties.

It probably has some stupid optimizable crap of course, but when I played it, nobody knew about it, so everyone was on similar footing for how to do things.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Shockwave is a good mod for CNC. It feels like basically old school CNC in a lot of ways, and massing is not the way to defeat defensive positions, since your units will not be able to overrun entrenched positions without taking appalling losses. It promotes the combined use of artillery to crack defenses and the use of other units to protect the arty from enemy sorties.

It probably has some stupid optimizable crap of course, but when I played it, nobody knew about it, so everyone was on similar footing for how to do things.

I think the reason Shockwave avoids some of that is through sheer scope - there are so many units and with such a wide array of different abilities that there are just too many variables, as it were, to build up a reliable rote-memorisation based victory formula.

For Rise of the Reds we simply do not have the manpower to make 5 factions on with as much content as the factions in Shockwave had - so instead we are trying to make something more focused on a smaller number of individual units but which are less redundant.

[Darth Wong]

The entire RTS mechanism of rapid-spawning units is one of its worst aspects IMO. Some of the early RTS games limited this by simply limiting real-estate: Dune 2000 tended to give you precious little space upon which to safely construct buildings (the rest of the map was sand), so you didn't generally make one of these death-complexes of war factories churning out tanks at a ridiculous rate.

Ultmiately, what was once a neat innovation (being able to manufacture units on the fly) ended up becoming the entire point of RTS games. It's a race to see who can build the most and best units first: a skill you could just as easily apply to a game called "Flower War", where the objective is to grow a flower garden faster than your opponent. It makes a mockery of the whole idea of war strategy games.

[ray245]

The RTS genre is indeed in a sorry state. Even the once better behaved Relic RTS games have begun the slide into special-ability driven clickery - multiplayer in Dawn of War II dropped the base building, but it seems the only to allow players to micro-manage the life or death special abilities many units have more effectively.

World in Conflict is an odd one. There are still ridiculous micro-management things like helicopters that will not automatically launch their missile decoys even when they are being murdered by AA missiles - but the problem is minimised because the player can literally watch his small group of units for 100% of the game. Strategic choices the player makes to do with where/when/how to fight also do have a much bigger impact in WiC than in XXXCraft style games, but I think this is mainly a function of the much more advanced terrain setup in WiC with cover for infantry, lines of sight etc...

Another thing I have noticed about WiC, which may partly explain its popularity problem: if you watch a multiplayer game unfold, it seems like the unit special abilties act as a kind of honey-pot trap for traditional RTS players who try the game. In MP games there is usually a big, constant and pointless battle going back and forth over one part of the map - I have a feeling these are "traditional" RTS players trying to defeat the opposition purely by micro and failing; this causes them to think WiC has "no depth" because they can't win by using their tried and tested micro-skills. Meanwhile the better players are busy with flanking attacks and other, more thoughtful, plays.

Now, I'm cautious saying this, but I also think EndWar actually has some overlooked features that should be used in most RTS games. The main thing is the voice command system - it was well implemented, fast and reliable; it added a whole new "channel" to control units with. Obviously the game was designed with it in mind, but it is not difficult to see how it could easily be added to any other modern RTS with a little bit of dev time and some money for the off-the-shelf voice recognition libraries - I see no reason why this should not be a basic, expected feature of RTS games, just like units groups and such.

The other feature of EndWar which I think could be useful in other RTS games is the concept of "shields" for units which protect them from a moderate level of damage and recharge quickly outside combat - this allows players to retreat their units "penalty free" for a few moments after a battle starts, and generally cuts down on stupid tactics like kiting.

I currently work on an RTS modding team which makes the Shockwave and Rise of the Reds mods for C&C Generals. I have tried as far as possible there to influence the design of both mods to remove micro-management features, but there is much resistance. As I have done the vast majority of the design work for Rise of the Reds I have managed to remove most micro-heavy features or to nip them in the bud before they get in the design - even then there is always a brain dead chorus of "game will play itself" etc... And usually, once a micro-heavy feature has been changed or removed, people will admit that it is better the new way... but there is just this fear of the change. And of course, next time I say XYZ is a bad idea because it is pointless micro drudgery, the very same people will come out again and say "Ahh, before was fine, but this time it's different..."

The saddest thing is the fact that WiC didn't manage to stay on the radar for a long period of time as opposed to games like Starcraft 2. I highly doubt that WiC 2 would ever be made.

I really have to wonder if the market for a non-micro heavy RTS game is even big enough for companies to make those kind of games.

[Stofsk]

The only thing I am going to play Starcraft 2 for is the story. That is it.

And Blizzard is still going to screw everyone by releasing the game three times. Or something. What they're doing is complete and utter bullshit, but people will accept it.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

The saddest thing is the fact that WiC didn't manage to stay on the radar for a long period of time as opposed to games like Starcraft 2. I highly doubt that WiC 2 would ever be made.

Well the makers of WiC, Massive Entertainment, were bought by Ubisoft and are apparently now in the process of making a Tom Clancy MMORTS - and it's a good bet it will be very close to WiC in style, as Ubisoft has proven willing in the past to try slightly risky things so long as it has brand appeal. I think that actually has quite bit of promise given Massive's talent.