40 replies to this topic

[Comrade Kal]

I am not bound by genres. I am a free man.

[duke_Qa]

ron as in rise of nations? its not really my style either. although it does add some new elements to strategy-games, it doesnt really revolutionize anything. the settlers is one of my favorite strategy-games ever. alot of resources, alot of buildings and plenty of time to do things. if i ever made a hybrid of sorts i think i would have used settlers pace and resources as a core.

making every ounce of a resource feel like it matters is a good feeling

[Calisto]

@Calisto:: Play RTS and start warming up your brain rather than playing FPS and aching your fingers!

Actually, that is the one genre I don't care for, only thing I'd rather play less is a sports game.

[Grobi]

I'll play anything really, but I voted for RPG as it has a greater escapism effect usually.

[Calamity_Jones]

ron as in rise of nations? its not really my style either. although it does add some new elements to strategy-games, it doesnt really revolutionize anything. the settlers is one of my favorite strategy-games ever. alot of resources, alot of buildings and plenty of time to do things. if i ever made a hybrid of sorts i think i would have used settlers pace and resources as a core.

making every ounce of a resource feel like it matters is a good feeling

Remember Settlers 2? That game was so fucking good... I [acquired] it again recently, was playing it a few weeks back I loved the huge range of resources and the way everything would run out eventually. It was kinda slow paced, but you still had to keep expanding so as to not run out of stuff.

Going on a basis of the type of game I've played the most, I voted RTS. I've played more of them than anything else... I assume it includes things like Civ and Sim City too. Them games, especially Civ IV, are brilliant too. Civ IV is probably the most dangerous thing I own... it pretty much single-handedly destroyed my plans to revise over christmas

[Comrade Kal]

RON was the epitome of the RTS genre.

It did nothing new but stole ideas and combined them better than ever before.

[Ash]

Lol, the big proponent of "originality" praises Generic Strategy Game #532.

Nothing wrong with Generic Strategy Game, if it's good. I don't value originality as highly as quality. There's little else you can do with the FPS or RTS genres these days. SupCom has about covered the last base.

[Comrade Kal]

Exactly As I said, the RTS is dead. RON just did what RTSes should have been doing for ages, really. By combining a lot of various elements it did make a game that played differently to most of the other ones out there.

[Ash]

Just because it's been done doesn't mean it's dead. What else can FPS do? But that genre's as alive as it's ever been. Beat 'em ups...not REALLY a lot of scope for gimmicks in THAT genre either but they're as popular as they've ever been, too.

[Comrade Kal]

Popularity means nothing.


The FPS is advancing in other elements. Like having believable environments and characters. RTS in it's current form cannot do this.

[Ash]

"Popularity means nothing."

I would consider a 'dead' genre to be an unpopular one.

And the FPS isn't that believable environment/character-wise. They can have good storylines...though so can RTS. Admittedly, the acting was wooden and the gameplay needs a bit of rebalancing, but Earth 2160 was a really, really good game.

[duke_Qa]

settlers 2 is one of the greatest games out there. i believe they've re-released it in 3d these days. its not the same as back then though(tried the demo), but childhood doesnt last forever.

sim city and civilization are also great games, theyre not really RTS's as theres not really anything happening realtime in them, but they certainly are thinking games. or perhaps it should be called planning games, since thinking can be a rubrics-cube game for all i know.

my biggest issue with RTS's these days is most likely that i've become jaded to the damage systems and sometimes lack of realism that they have. Company of Heroes is the bottleneck for future RTS's imo, as it emphasises realism as a part of the strategy. get in cover, squad AI's that gets soldiers into cover, flanking and encouragement to work outside the book.

for example, if i wanted to make a game where macgyver was the special unit the last 10 years, he would be invincible because you can't take out macgyver, he can do anything, but you don't really have a nice way of turning this into a vital part of the gameplay because old strategygames does not focus on the small things while leaving you open to worry about the big things. in Company of Heroes, theres a much bigger chance that a macgyver unit would have been quite interesting if you microed him well enough and he had special abilities that would work excellent at certain situations(invent something to get out of trouble, invent something to stop a tank, invent something to cover a bunch of friends with the help of this handy rock. stuff like that).


basically though, it seems things are branching off a bit at the moment within RTS's. on one hand you got COH, where you are closing up and making combat more realistic and less based on the infamous paper-scissor-rock theory(naturally its still a major part of it, but you can get around it by being smart most of the time.), and then you have Supreme Commander which makes RTS go global, where you don't have a minimap because you use most of your time zoomed out over the entire map. less focus on the micro and special abilities of units, more focus on the paper-scissor-rock balance theory again.
In the end i'm not sure i will be very interested in the big-ass strategy of supcom because i get that from Civ4 and the likes. but it might work out well on smaller maps.

[Calamity_Jones]

The great thing with supreme commander is that they aren't using rock paper scissors balancing. They're basing everything on realistic physics. The huge super powerful units really are super powerful and don't have some obvious achilles heel. If you don't want to be totally wiped out, you have to work to kill them.

Tanks are also less accurate moving for simmilar reasons

of course, I've not played the beta... so I don't know how much they've adhered to these promises...

[Blodo]

Rise of Nations was great. I wouldn't call it generic, in fact combining different ideas that have already been used alone with success is an original thing. What I despised about it to hell however was the totally rock/paper/scissors balancing. What a boring way to do stuff.

To me the epitomes of the RTS genre are Total Annihilation and Dawn of War. TA went completely radical on the general strategy side of RTS gaming, meanwhile DoW jumped on the tactics. Both revolutionised the genre, because they put mediocrity aside and just plainly advanced one way straight to the end. That's what you can call original.

[duke_Qa]

indeed, i have high hopes for Relic within the strategy-business. i don't even think starcraft2 would have a chance against them if they put a few years into a project(DOW2 or battlefleet gothic+dow in one game? drooool)

yes, thats what i remember the best about RoN, you needed to have like 3 different units to stop anything properly. empire earth 1 wasnt too bad imo, it had a nice style to it, and it gave me the AOE nostalgia. AOE1 was a cool game because it gave me that Settlers feeling(everything goes back to settlers you see). building up from the stone-age collecting food and wood and stuff before going far up into the ages and get catapults and the likes. sweetness that was.

so the question is which one will have the shiniest future, the supreme strategic games or the action-filled and bloodgory tactical ones.

[Nemoricus]

Personally, I think that both tactical and strategic RTS's will coexist peacefully, along with games in between the two.

By this I mean that both will have a good future.

Edited by Nemoricus, 23 January 2007 - 11:13 AM.

[Daeda]

Voted FPS, though i prefer a RPS (Role playing shooter), because they tend to have a better story. Basically, any epic FPS owns all.. well except for Zelda, but thats a genre on its own

[Calamity_Jones]

I hope sierra and vivendi sell the homeworld licence to relic... I'd cry with joy if Relic were making Homeworld 3

[duke_Qa]

hmm, so relic doesnt have the rights for it? bummer for them

meh, if they got those then they wouldnt make battlefleet gothic a proper RTS game

[Blodo]

Oh yeah, Battlefleet Gothic as an RTS game would own all balls freestyle. Mix it up with Dawn of War style play on multiple planets, stealing ideas from EaW = winner.