Quote:

Original post by BrianL Those who are looking for a more boardgame like experience may want to look at turn based strategy games. Many have a different pace and aren't as resource focused.

Actually, that's another very good point. I'm surprised none of us had thought of that before... [grin]

As pointed out somewhere above, the motivation for wanting to get rid of resource management is to give the player time to consider his situation properly, use every unit fully, and do the optimal thing.
That will *never* become possible in a realtime game, because the entire point in realtime is that you don't have time to stop and think indefinitely. The aim of a realtime system is to put pressure on the player and force you to choose what to focus on.

The reason you can manage every unit perfectly in the tabletop game is because it's turnbased, and not because it avoids resource management.

Edit:
Hey, look! I made a short(ish) post!

Oh, another point that occurred to me.
About defensive play being a valid tactic, that might be true, but there's quite a lot to be gained by forcing players to be offensive.
A simple reason is that the defender pretty much always holds an advantage. He can choose where to fight, he can position his troops in advance, use the terrain, maybe build defenses too.
In DoW, you get the extra advantage that many units can't fight as well while moving, which again hinders the attacker.

So, all this stacks up to give the defender a large advantage.
That's where it's so damn clever to *force* both players to be offensive. If the game didn't do that, a game would take forever, and the winner wouldn't be the best tactician, but the one with the least patience. The most defensive player would win, simple as that. But when both players are forced to attack occasionally, both players have to fight when the advantage isn't theirs, which is where good tactics really win the day.

It also inverts the slippery slope descriped in the OP. You're not usually on a slippery slope to failing. Because the more pressure you're under, the more time you'll spend defending, which actually puts you at an advantage of sorts. I've played lots of game where the enemy has literally been in my base, taken out half of it, and then been crushed before I went on to win (Of course, the opposite has happened too). This ability to make things harder for the winner, while helping the losing side is damn brilliant game design when it can be achieved. Other RTS games have virtually never managed that. They've had the typical slippery slope. Once an opponent gets into my base, I just have to waaaaaait for them to finish the job. And if I'm annoying, then they have to waaaaait while they try to track down my last unit... We both know I've lost, but it just takes ages to finish the job.

But this "inverted" slope in DoW means that *if* a game goes on for hours, it's not because it simply takes ages for the loser to finally lose (typical slippery slope), but because the loser might actually not lose. With one clever move, he'll be back in the game, as strong as ever, and the guy who looked like he'd win a moment ago might now be the one being pushed back. And it means that *when* you lose, it tends to happen quickly, at least. No slow slide down the slope, because in those cases, you typically recover and fight back. You need a lot of momentum to crush your opponent, but once you have that, you'll win without having to wait an hour for your opponent to finally reach the bottom.

[Edited by - Spoonbender on July 23, 2006 1:09:33 PM]

Quote:

Original post by Spoonbender Edit: Hey, look! I made a short(ish) post!

So very nearly... ;)

I once played a shareware game that was an RTS with no resource management. You played a colony of beetles fighting other colonies of beetles, and your hive poured out beetles constantly without giving you any way of changing it (as I remember).

I really didn't like that game. At all. As I recall, it was built to be some sort of experiment, too, so I feel even more justified in my immense distaste for it.

Quote:

Quote: Original post by Inverurie Jones Quote: Original post by Spoonbender Edit: Hey, look! I made a short(ish) post! So very nearly... ;)

Hey, it was short until that edit! [lol]

Anyway, DuranStrife, I thought for a moment you were talking about Battle Bugs.
Which is perhaps the best example of how not having resource management can be. [grin]

I really loved that game. Completely forgotten about that. In that game, you didn't have a "hive" or anything though. You just started with a predefined number of bugs, and had to conquer all the candy/foodstuff on the map, and/or wipe out the enemy bugs.

I've thought of another idea that might suit a resourceless system well( though I'll probably change my mind before I ever get round to starting :P). I'm thinking in the style of the film "Running Man", where players are part of a futuristic gladiatorial gameshow. I'm imagining Unreal Tournament style scenarios, but with the player controlling a team of combatants rather than an individual, with a top down perspective, no respawning and survival the main goal, victory in the gameshow a second priority.

The army selection between campaigns could be simplified as well, perhaps in the gameshow you are limited to what contestants are offered to you and your team votes in it's preferred choice of contestant to join the team. So I suppose what I'm suggesting is Big Brother, meets Unreal Tournament, meets Running Man, meets Warhammer :P. I'd prefer to pull off the idea with less of a comic book feel however as the style of Running Man didn't really appeal to me.

For anyone unfamiliar with the film, just take a look here.

Quote:

Original post by Mephs players are part of a futuristic gladiatorial gameshow. I'm imagining Unreal Tournament style scenarios, but with the player controlling a team of combatants rather than an individual, with a top down perspective, no respawning and survival the main goal, victory in the gameshow a second priority.

personally, I'd much prefer a more "real" scenario. I've always been turned off by those dumb "We can't think of a reason why people are fighting, so we're gonna call it a tournament" pseudosettings.
Every fighting game ever made has done it, and that was bad enough before Unreal Tournament decided to bring the same moronic idea to the FPS genre...

That's just me though.

Yeah that's kinda what I meant by not liking the style. I think the gameplay could work, but the background is somewhat weak and I do like the extensive background used by DoW.

I'm not talking about cloning anything though, I would hate myself if I did rip off someone elses idea, which is why I'm here trying to innovate. I'm just playing with concepts by comparing to what I know. You're looking at my ideas too much as if they are are rigid inflexible things that must be exactly like my influences, which is not the case. Please can we keep this positive because anyone can pick apart ideas, and trying to criticize them is far from constructive.

To illustrate that I'm not so single minded as to rely on one idea, something else I considered that I don't think has been done before is to take idea of a virtual world like the Matrix (or even like the Warp in Warhammer 40k or plain Warhammer), and apply it to an RTS style game. Have the fight taking place in 2 worlds simultaneously. Following the idea of the Warp in Warhammer Fantasy Battles... you could even carry this idea to a fantasy landscape under the right setting.

This would however probably add to the micromanagement, but I think the tactical opportunities for such a system could be immensly interesting. I think careful control would be needed to keep the world switching to a minimum though.... perhaps in the virtual world, everything happens in milliseconds of real-world time, so when a player goes online, the outside world battle is effectively paused. Perhaps the online player has control of when to terminate the online session, but the opponent can also pull the plug if they meet a certain objective. You can then have gameplay implications of remotely hacking, downloading your body into some kind of alternate body, getting your soul trapped online... all kinds of cool ideas to play with, and I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface.

Actually... I'm really starting to like this idea... more than the last at least :)

Quote:

You're looking at my ideas too much as if they are are rigid inflexible things that must be exactly like my influences

Well, I can only look at what you write. When you post one idea, that's all I can relate to, no matter how many alternatives and modifications you have in mind. But you can't really object to me picking your ideas apart *at the same time* as I regard your ideas as rigid or inflexible. Picking them apart is only possible if I look at them as flexible. [wink]

Quote:

Please can we keep this positive because anyone can pick apart ideas, and trying to criticize them is far from constructive.

Criticism and taking apart ideas can definitely be constructive. Much more so than regarding ideas as sacred and refusing to point out possible problems with them. :). Anyway, I thought you meant you wanted that kind of setting, which was why I said I found "tournament-style" settings boring.

Thought you meant it was the comic book feel you didn't like?

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, this entire discussion has been 100% positive from everyone involved. I think you've got some good ideas and some valid points. I'm just pointing out what I see as weaknesses in your ideas. Not much fun in just saying "I agree", is there? [wink]

Quote:

perhaps in the virtual world, everything happens in milliseconds of real-world time, so when a player goes online, the outside world battle is effectively paused

Obvious problem here is multiplayer games. Wouldn't it be annoying if the game suddenly pauses just because your opponent felt like popping into the virtual world for a bit?
That said, having two "worlds" to fight in is a really neat idea, and like you said, it could add a lot to the game. I've been pondering a similar idea (Also based on the Warp) for a turnbased game I'm working on when I have time (that is, hardly ever), although I'm not sure how well it'll fit into my game. Still, the idea is great, and in RTS games, it could potentially add a lot to the gameplay.

Sorry yeah, I'm thinking about a lot more than I'm writing down (if I wrote all I was thinking I'd be here all day), so I'm not getting my full opinion across which is leading me to argue points that I have made in my head but not written down.

Glad to see that response though... I didn't really see much coming back from the previous conversation though other than it's not broken so don't fix it, which is all well and good, but I'd like to come out of this with a better idea rather than no idea. Suggestions to improve my (possibly flawed ideas) are what I see as constructive. But anyhoo, forget it, I see from your response that was not your intention and that's fine :P

As for the battle pausing in the dual world system, my intention was (again, thought but not written) that somehow both players would be drawn into the alternate world. This could get irritating though if it interrupts play too often... we would need a method of controlling the regularity of entering the world. Perhaps the 'matrix' world could be accessed by some sort of telepathic abilities. This would explain how all players are drawn into the battle. Maybe we say that a player can store a set amount of 'psi energy'. The player can only open a gateway to the psychic network when they reach full points, or when another player opens a gateway. This limits the frequency of alternate world battles to the speed at which players can recharge energy to open the gateways.

This system does need some work, I'm thinking now about whether or not the gateway opening player should receive an advantage for opening a gateway. I'm not even sure what the style of play in the alternate world should be. I'm toying with the idea of ghost in the machine style demons, combined with viruses and other technological opponents, kind of 'matrix meets the warp'. I'm thinking either a TRON style environment, cyberpunk style or a matrix style environment... though I'd prefer to be original. Perhaps the alternate environment could feature an intertwining of technology, occult and the mind of your opponent, which would be nice as that neatly combines all my favourite genres in a single environment that makes some kind of sense. I could imagine there would be some twisted and very much stylized environments that would result from such a setting.

Cheers,

Steve