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Original post by Kazgoroth Quote: Original post by Daniel Miller The more micro-intensive a game gets, the more fun the games are to watch and the more skill matters in deciding the outcome of the game. Anyone could get good at a slow paced game from reading an online strategy guide, but it takes practice to reach 450 actions per minute. Says you. Don't forget, there is a large percentage of gamers who prefer games where they don't need to practice like this to be good, and don't need to look after every little detail - so there is a market for a game designed towards either group. It's worth considering both of these points of view, as any particular given game may be better suited to either of the two. And don't forget - there are types of skill other than being able to click the mouse and use hotkeys really fast, and there should be some games that cater to these as well. [wink] That being said, I myself am a fan of being able to micromanage, and love games that allow me to make usage of this. I also enjoy a well designed game that doesn't require this skill set on occasion.

Look at the continued popularity of Starcraft (it has more players than WC3) and you will see that there are legions that agree with what I was saying.


Starcraft isn't just who can click faster, there are established openning builds, counters, formations, etc. just like any other RTS would have.

p.s: Can anyone find any numbers on the estimated number of players worldwide of StarCraft and Counter Strike? I suspect Counter Strike will have more, but in Asia Starcraft is immensely popular, plus it always wins the online polls at the gaming league websites. Anyway, StarCraft is insanely popular.

StarCraft's popularity comes from its excellent balance and the diversity of the races, not from the insane micro or the steep learning curve. If there was a game that had all the balance of SC, with all the different strategic options, but included far better AI, a more intuitive control scheme and better graphics, it would be better than SC. The problem is that no game has been able to improve on SC's weaknesses (lemming AI, single-file marching, easily distracted units, the M&M no-stim problem discussed above, etc.) without breaking something that was great (balance, single-player story, early/late game upsets, etc.)

Don't think that you have to clone the experience of StarCraft to make a good RTS. Look at Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. There's a fun game with small unit counts, complex behavior controls for distance and offensive/defensive action, decent unit grouping, "attitude" settings for reacting to threats or opportunities, and vast, 3D battlefields. You can issue a handful of commands and then just zoom out for a minute or more and stare, click-less, at the battlefield while you try to discern your opponent's strategy. It's more of a dance, compared to StarCraft's frenetic tech-rush-pump-harass race for swarms of cracklings and battlecruisers.

Go ahead and make a game that doesn't nod to Blizzard at every turn. Somebody at Blizzard sat down with a blank piece of paper, and they eventually made great games. You can do the same if you aren't bound by precedent and preconception.

Good luck. Let us know what you decide on.

P.S. - The WASD system would be decent, but try getting some zoom ability into the camera system. I'm always just unable to get a whole fight or my whole base onto the screen, and it bothers me. If you're using a fog of war and line-of-sight systems, the zoom won't offer unfair advantages.

How involved are you with the Starcraft community? WC3 is also balanced and has diverse races... but it's dying and SC isn't.

Part of what has kept SC going is the televised proleague matches in South Korea. It is a very fun game to watch; it is fast paced, has huge battles with tons of units, and becuase of the extreme learning curve in order to really get good, the pros play on a level that players can really appreciate and aspire to. For the same reasons that make it so fun to watch, it is fun to play. You may not think so, but if you are very involved in the StarCraft community you would find that others agree.

Like I said in another post, when the most recent patch was released (for a 7 year old game!): because of a misplaced comma in a leaked news item, the entire community was terrified that you would be allowed to select multiple buildings at once in order to build units more easily. Everyone knew that this would put the game on a lower common denominator, which is why there was an uproar. It would make games so much less exciting to play because it would take out a whole level of skill and franticness.

I am ashamed of the role I've played in helping to derail this thread, and I apologize to d INC for the hijack. That said:

The SC purists (of which I am one) understand that the SC community is the soul of the game. If it was released today, it would be panned for having lousy graphics (640x480? 2D? please!) and awkward controls (so many handy features of WC3 would benefit SC, like auto-harvest, idle-worker detection, in-group special commands, etc.). But the absolute quality of the game is secondary in this case to the frothing devotion of the enthusiasts (myself included).

We realize that to alter the experience by throwing in the features I described above, or by putting it in (ugh!) three dimensions, or even adding new units or map features (imagine a terrain type "quagmire", that only hovering units or flying units could cross) would destroy the game. It wouldn't actually lead to a less enjoyable game, but it would corrupt the "perfect" gem at the center of the community.

It's like steroids in pro baseball. If everyone does them, then it really isn't unfair in play, but when the honest, noble records of great athletes are crushed by juiced-up cyborgs, there's a sense of sacrilege. If any old newb can micro three quick psi-storms into a horde of mutalisks by holding shift and clicking three times with his High Templars selected, or systematically Yamato a whole base worth of cannons, or scourge four carriers without two dozen precise clicks, then the dignity of the task will be eroded. The simple act of making it easier to issue complex commands to a group of units would do terrible damage to the established roster of tactics. If you had a button to do a lurker drop, or if your reavers rebuilt scarabs automatically, or if medics would autocast restore, then the game would be changed. It might be improved, but the evil of change would undo the good of progress.

So the reverence SC players feel for their game is born not out of true perfection, but out of tradition and conservativism. d INC's game will not come out of the box with the SC community behind it, and so it will gain little by paying too much homage to a seven year-old piece of software. StarCraft was made to be cutting-edge, and was patched and expanded with great insight and no small amount of luck to become the cultural phenomenon that it is today.

d INC, make your game according to your own inclinations and intuition. With luck, effort and perseverence, you may end up with a popular, successful game. I think it's unreasonable for any game designer to expect anything on the level of StarCraft's enormity, but a degree of excellence is surely available to you.

P.S. - Sorry about the deviant posts; it's a silly argument.

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Compiled from the posts of Daniel Miller ...StarCraft... ...StarCraft... ...StarCraft... ...StarCraft... ...StarCraft...

I take it that there's no point in ever trying something different, or even creating other RTSes given that StarCraft is the be-all and end-all of RTSes. Right?

Clearly not, so stop using it as an excuse not to explore alternatives. I played StarCraft once - for all of 10 minutes. I've been toying with the idea of an RTS of sorts: the player is literalized on the battlefield, and perception is limited to what he can reasonably perceive. Delegation is key: use the sergeant to relay commands to all of your men, use a squad leader to relay commands to the entire squad, use a fireteam leader to command a specific fireteam. Resources are abstracted into a "War Machine" or Military-Industrial Complex, in that you can make requests to your immediate superior which get relayed up the chain of command and are serviced on the basis of perceived merit, which takes into account how central your actions are to the current overall war strategy, your record as a commander and the availability of resources.

You may think that StarCraft is insanely popular, but consider this: there are far more people who are not playing it than are. It's quite possible that a different mix of features would appear to an even greater audience than StarCraft.

Food for thought...

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Back on topic, I'm in favor of only directly commanding aggregations, but allowing the creation of special teams - ad hoc unit reorganizations, essentially - as well as the designation of one or two soldiers as scouts, who can be individually commanded (I'd implement that as a one-man Scout Team, allowing for the possibility of placing more men on scout duty, say, to scout a perimeter).

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Original post by Oluseyi I take it that there's no point in ever trying something different, or even creating other RTSes given that StarCraft is the be-all and end-all of RTSes. Right? ... You may think that StarCraft is insanely popular, but consider this: there are far more people who are not playing it than are. It's quite possible that a different mix of features would appear to an even greater audience than StarCraft.

Come on, you know that logic is aweful! There have been countless RTS games over the span of the last 10 years. It is painfully clear which strategy game out of the dozends that have been released has been far and away the most popular. While it is good to try something new, most of the ideas here have been used in some a past RTS -- a past RTS which has come and gone.

You can't discount living proof of what gamers like.

But we all digress.....suffice it to say I've spent a good deal more time playing WC than SC. But my planned design basically makes any further discussions of either useless (unless it's to directly make a point to back up an opinion on my design specs). If folks want to start a fan boy shouting match over which rts that I don't like is the best in the world (personally, I dislike most of the ones mentioned thus far), please start a new post to duke it out there. Thanks. :)

But we all digress.....suffice it to say I've spent a good deal more time playing WC than SC. But my planned design basically makes any further discussions of either useless (unless it's to directly make a point to back up an opinion on my design specs). If folks want to start a fan boy shouting match over which rts that I don't like is the best in the world (personally, I dislike most of the ones mentioned thus far), please start a new post to duke it out there. Thanks. :)

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Original post by d INC But we all digress..... *snip*

Indeed, apologies for the disruption of the thread.

Oops....double posted sorry to myself for spamming my own post. hahaha :P