losthellhound

Okay.. I wrote this up tonight after discussing some things with a friend. I wanted to share, and see what people had to say.


The Future of Real Time Strategy?
Breaking the mold for the future of the Genre

Real Time Strategy games, or RTS games, have become a staple of gaming. Since its early roots in Dune, to classics like Command and Conquer and Star Craft, RTS games have garnered a share of the gaming market that is impossible to ignore. The attention has allowed the genre to grow in complexity and value. It has however produced a “template” for the game that, for good or bad, survives to this day. As the gaming industry grows, and players demand more and more from games, the RTS offerings must keep pace. Breaking these templates or stereotypes may be the only way to continue to succeed. There are four areas that can be readily identified as weaknesses in many if not all RTS games.

Resources
Everyone has been taught, from an early age, that nothing comes for free. This basic tenant of life has translated into the RTS market as well. Be it wood, oil, spice, or the ambiguous “requisition points”. Every unit and building has a price. Players memorize the prices, discuss the prices, and some even memorize the timing it takes to get the exact number for that first unit. There are several variations on the theme however. In Dawn of War you gain points slowly, depending on how many key map points you control, and in Alien versus Predator the predators gain based on how many “trophies” they collect. No matter how creative designers make the system, it is still the same as 100 minerals for a SCV. What happens when you remove the resources all together? Imagine a system where a player receives units based only on their progress, how effective they are, and the fickle whims of the force they represent. Some might argue that in the absence of resources the player forgets the value of the forces under their control. The argument however is based on the notion that the player has an unlimited supply of units willing to be thrown away, and that there are no repercussions for rash action, or worse, inaction.

Fog of War
Sine its earliest inception, RTS games have employed a little piece of reality that is so entrenched in the genre; every game adopts it without question. The idea is that since a commander doesn’t have a building or unit in an area, it is “grayed out”. No matter if you have a watch tower or a simple peasant standing out in the middle of nowhere, a player can watch an area and issue commands there as if they too stood there. Since this idea was implemented to offer some realism and difficulty to the game, why not make it realistic? Issue your commands to units, send them off on their missions, and once they leave your influence then the unit is on its own. A player is faced with the reality that the unit may not make it, may fail, and hopefully they have issued the right kind of orders for success. Sporadic radio communication and nerve racking silences offer more atmosphere and intensity then staring at a lone soldier in the field just in case the opponent draws near.

Horde Mentality
After playing most of the RTS games out there, and reading all the marketing comments about difficulty, Artificial Intelligence, and Strategy, I am left with the heart sinking reality that the best way to win any RTS game is the same: The Horde. Every player knows it, and every game has its own version. As a player, take your cheapest or most powerful unit and create a hundred of them. Then like a cloud of locusts, send the horde across the map. The availability of this tactic breeds inaction, hording of resources, and removes ‘Strategy’ from Real Time Strategy. Solving this problem is a tough one, either remove a lot of the resources, which causes players to run out and lose by default, or lower the unit cap, which makes creating a diverse army impossible and makes the problem bigger. Instead of a mass of units, the attack becomes a constant stream of units.

Difficulty
Balancing the difficulty of a game is difficult, and represents a very thin, very sharp blade. If you make a game too easy it looses its “replayability” and players will abandon it quickly. If you make the game too hard, cheat codes and walkthroughs will become the norm and players will abandon the game even quicker. Even attaining the correct level of difficulty is hard, and many games have resorted to the above mentioned “horde mentality” or allowing the computer to “see” where the player is at any one moment. All hope is not lost however for a properly balanced game. Force players to use units more intelligently, use strategy, and reward them when they do. Program an AI that reacts well to the player, but doesn’t resort to cheating.

There are so many avenues that have not been traversed by the creators of RTS games, and constantly new companies are created that are adding new material into the genre. In an age however where video games are improving and evolving in leaps and bounds, the Real Time Strategy players will crave and expect more, and the onus will rest on the game creators to offer something not only palatable, but addictive.

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"Life is possible only with illusions. And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?"
-- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death