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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bltzkriegmcanon

A pretty good little essay. Some spelling errors, but altogether effective and educational for the non-RTS-player (me).

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losthellhound

spelling errors? I didnt catch them (nor did my spell checker).. where are they?

__________________
"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

Coppertop

This essay could stand some more exploring. I particularly like the idea of not necessarily being in direct control of your units. Ever heard of Combat Mission? It is a very similar concept that just so happens to work excellently.

Redjake

I like it. There are some good ideas in there. The content is fine. I would change some grammar in there but other than some small changes, it's pretty much ready for the printing press Like the above person said, I like the idea of not being able to see your units. That would be interesting.

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Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Yakk

Cute.

A concrete example of the fog of war:
You have "scout" units that, traditionally, report back. When a unit reports back, it tells you what it saw (and what others told it) while out in the field.

Your map consists of the known terrain (which doesn't change), and fuzzier information about enemy troops. The older the report, the more transparent the icon representing the troops is. Possibly some simple strait-line extrapolation is done if they where seen marching.

It would be a very different game than a normal RTS.

Edit: Another interesting read:
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wargames.html

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

snowy

Very cool. As a long-time RTS player I found your essay to have some interesting ideas and also a lot of truth. Thank you for sharing.

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Kostya

Word.

To be honest I think that RPG's and FPS's are also somewhat bogged down in their own respective dogmas of design.

When they made the battle maps in Rome Total War dependent on the various positions of armies in the epic strategy map, that made the game much, much more interesting.

The Magic

Personally, I think it's best to analyze the game (or genre) in terms of multiplayer. Topics like difficulty should be more geared towards balance.

Also, in online play the "horde" or zerg strategy is not always a surefire win at all.

Siege

Alright, I haven't played any RTS games seriously since back when Starcraft came out. I agree that there pretty much is a set template and the difference b/w games is the units/spells. But here's my take.

Resources- My opinion is that you NEED resources in a game. If you don't, you REALLY will have the horde mentality you mention. Why? Because if everything is free, why don't I just keep throwing things at you?

In terms of progress, what kind of progress can you make with only a certain amount of unit base? Let's say John and I play Starcraft. I'm given 10 marines and he's given 5 zealots. What's to say what is progress? Should it be based on kills? It can't be, because if I manage to kill one of his zealots (or he kills one of my marines) One of us is already faced with a clear disadvantage. One of us has made progress in terms of kills while the other one will have even more difficulty making said progress. Should it be based on time? Again, this doesn't seem logical. We're going to be playing this game equally, so when I hit the 10 minute play time, so will John. If it's discovery of the map, the answer becomes "choose the race with the fastest units." In terms of effectiveness, going back to my Starcraft example, the only effectiveness you can have with a limited unit base is based on combat. Do I get extra units because I can micro manage my marines better than John does his zealots? If that is the case, this becomes a problem, because if the AI suddenly decides that John did an AMAZING job of micro managing, he could suddenly have a ridiculously large army and overwhelm the game. As for the fickle whims of the forces I represent. That is MUCH too random (which is why they're fickle I suppose). If you make such a large decision completely randomly, that takes out a lot of the strategy. The strategy soon becomes "the race that makes the best decisions consistently vs. the race that either gets 1 unit or 1000" and hoping for something in your favour. While your suggestions are good ones. I don't think they will work if you can only get units by receiving them as opposed to building them. Or it would help if you could tell me a little more about what you want to suggest.

Personally, my solution to resources is to make the person you train also a resource. If you want to train a marine, you'd better have a civie who can receive said training. Or else tough luck (or retrain some other unit. But that's way too complicated.) If you have an ever growing population, then you constantly have units to train. But this solutions has some BIG flaws. Which I won't go into unless someone wants me to.

Fog of War-

This seems like an easy way to get rid of micro management. Micro management is difference between an average player in RTS and a good player. If you make it that an avatar of yourself MUST be at a battle for you to take command, that severely limits your ability to micro manage and what happens if that avatar of yourself dies? Do you automatically lose? If you decide to go out and battle in an opposing country, and your home country is invaded. You won't be able to micro manage your defences. Realistically speaking, every army should have a general "managing" your forces anyway. So why not make that general the player him/herself? If you don't like the idea of enemies knowing about you, go out and kill his scouting units. The key to RTS is to know what the enemy is doing, while at the same time not letting him know what you are doing.

Horde Mentality-

Again, I will use Starcraft, since it's the best reference. Let's say John is Zerg. According to your theory, John should mass Zerglings. This strategy is HARDLY undefeatable. The terrans have their firebats, and the protoss have their reavers. Yes, reavers are mid-late game units. So let's think more early game. If I know that John is simply going to overwhelm me with trashy units (which I should have a clue of, if i've done my scouting properly), then John's strategy is to have those 200 or so zerglings beat the living hell out of my 30 or so zealots. Well, zerglings can't fly. And any respectable tournament map has choke points. Why wouldn't I build a few zealots to be meat shields, have some dragoons and some photon cannons? All these units/buildings are easily attainable by the time John has a respectable amount of zerglings. And to be honest, I won't need very many zealots/dragoons/cannons if i've done a good job selecting a good choke point because not all the zerglings will fit and the cannons/dragoons will tear up the zerglings before a decent amount of zealots are all destroyed. Granted that John can wait til he has the transporter upgrade. But without the speed upgrade, the overlords aren't going anywhere without getting shot down. But by the time he has that, I should have at least 3 reavers up and running. I don't care how many zerglings you have. 3 reavers properly micro managed with even a TINY support force will destroy HUGE amounts of zerglings as long as I have the minerals to buy scarabs.

Now to be honest. Marines really DID fall under horde mentality before Brood War came out. The zerg didn't really have a way to deal with them effectively. Stim packed marines were cheaper, and better than hydralisks. That is why they introduced lurkers. As long as there is an effective area-of-attack unit, horde mentality shouldn't be the dominant strategy.

Difficulty-

I won't talk about the difficulty section, because it seems you are talking about the single player side of the game which I don't really have a solution for either. I'm more about the multiplayer side of games.

I'd like some comments on my take especially from the thread starter

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