Thread 2110430

>>2110430 (OP)
You put on a mind/machine interface helmet and control things with your mind. APM will go through the roof.

>>2110435
something along the lines of this. We need a new UI or interface if we want the genre to really evolve.

maybe riot games should make one

>>2110430 (OP)
Stormgate is already out

For me, going forward to be going backwards to the conviction and world building of the Blizzard IPs. Unique asymmetrical factions, full of character, immersive UIs for each faction (and perhaps even respond to the game conditions, such as becoming more sophisticated as you research technology upgrades), a combination between creep-incentives and homebase mining. I would like to play an RTS with a blockbuster campaign again.

>>2110445
This.

>>2110445
>>2110456
For real? Everything I've watched looks like a 1:1 playdough recreation of Starcraft 2 (which was already made from polystyrene)
What is next level about it?

>>2110430 (OP)
A game where the AI is capable of believably emulating a human player and posing a challenge to another human player without the need to artificially boost it's stats and resources.

A game with an amazing campaign that is actually a story rather than a glorified tutorial with some dialogue

A multiplayer game that is a (i'm sorry but its the truth) a casual experience with multiple fun gamemodes rather than a strictly pvp experience

Also a game that finally cuts ties with the legacy of blizzard. Starcraft players circlejerked too hard about how hard, elite and turbo competitive their game is and scared everyone from giving RTS a try.

>>2110467
What's the difference between a non-cheating AI that emulates a human and poses a challenge and... a human? Did you forget to mention
>it has to let me win every time while pretending to try

>>2110430 (OP)
I think it would need to have multiple layers of gameplay that all could function as a game on their own. So different types of players could enjoy the different types of gameplay and socially engage.

Stuff like tower defense and moba that has split off from rts generally needs to be reintegrated in a way that brings together the best of all the gameplay types that rts has

Also>>2110448 I think to be a success it qould have to feel like they are making a game they care about and not just a thing to sell and get money from. And given the cost of making the above kind of game it would be functionally impossible to get the funding required without selling out

>>2110430 (OP)
It can't be done. Warcraft 3 cannot be improved upon.

>>2110430 (OP)
Shouldn't the stone be a smirking Pepe?

>>2110738
He smirked the first thousand years. But recently he's seen how sad the whole situation is.

>>2110466
>What is next level about it?
First OP says "Next-gen" not "Next-level."

And the point of his answer was Starcraft2 already achieved the peak as we know RTS so there is no going further unless you completely change things from scratch.

Posts like >>2110435 completely misses the point. Making new fancy controls or interface does not change the game itself only the tools you use to play it. It is like changing a car for car race, you can change your car but it will still be a car race, even if you win because your car is way faster you are still playing a car race.

>>2110430 (OP)
I broadly agree with >>2110448's notions regarding bottom-up design to get a good "feel" for casuals and >>2110510's of re-integrating the derived genres for a stab at the "platform game" space modern gaming seems to revolve around, but in addition to them I think that RTS needs to pursue rubber-banding mechanics and balance with "Bronze League Heroes" in mind to hold in the bottom of the ladder so the hyper-sweats don't burn out the playerbase AGAIN.

>>2110519
Pathing error induced combat inefficiencies, opaqueness of control groups, and control group size limits greatly complicating army management all disagree. That said, it IS an absolutely wonderful foundation in a whole lot of ways, making it an incredible shame almost everything springboarding off it turned into separate genres altogether.

>>2110759
SC2's near-perfected model is a pretty specific subset of RTS, it just has all the eyes due to Korea. Even just Warcraft 3 has plenty of differences that could be pushed to wildly different ends, let alone the Total Annihilation design family. Hell, even Brood War's acceptance of varied base layouts would create a rather drastic difference, SC2 is INCREDIBLY straightjacketed by esports gookclickers.

>>2110430 (OP)
I unironically think RTS is just a living fossil. It achieved its final form and the genre is defined narrowly enough that you can't make a substantial change without becoming something else like GSG, RTT, MOBA. They are different paths but RTS itself hasn't changed.
I feel like the progress in game design and technology made RTS obsolete because the limitations that created it are not there. Asking for next-gen RTS is like asking for a next-gen point'n'click adventure game. Like yeah some indie ones exist but as a deliberate throwback and/or because developers are also working with limited resources but it will never be a mainstream genre again.

>>2110816
I take it you don't play MP?

>>2110817
I've played decent amount of AoE in recent times, picked up BAR for a bit and dabbled in other games more on RTT end. It's not that I don't play MP at all but most strategy games just can't sustain the playerbase to be a casual and I don't want to make the commitment to participate in the arms race for one.
How do you think it reflects on what I said first though?

>>2110819
I misread your words. Nevermind.

>survive initial rush
>long haul until beefy units
>flood the opponent with 300 tanks
there is no reason why not to double down on the original formula, just making it like X10 more intense, and disregarding crunch

>>2110430 (OP)
Better unit autonomy and unit instruction UIs stuff. Kind of like what SupCom started into with editable movement/patrol queues and such, but in more detail, like being able to drop down a "hold this area" order and then assign factories or even a general region of production output to try to hold it, and the unit AI will automatically path its way over, perform its own combat micro, etc - and you can set what kind of reinforcement behaviour you want e.g. ASAP, waves, etc., tune the engagement aggression, give the hold order a threshold where it'll automatically be pulled back or deleted if casualties are unfavourable, etc.

Basically, make it actual strategy, not fucking around telling individual units how to tie their shoes.

>>2110826
>>2110817
nigger

>>2110496
>What's the difference between a non-cheating AI that emulates a human and poses a challenge and... a human?
AIs never eat, never tire, never cry. You can play them any time you wish. You can have as many of them as your computer can handle in a single match, while for people, it depends on how many friends you have or how many weird strangers you are willing to tolerate. People may stop playing, the playerbase may shrink to almost nothing, but AIs won't.

>>2110937
i think that poor anon forgot to take the game's lifespan into account because he was too intent on posturing and participating in the online sp vs. mp war he's been a part of for at least a decade

>>2110466
They're making a joke about how infamously shit Stormgate is.

>>2110430 (OP)
1)Great story line.
CoH 1 storylines are good enough. The characters are white men. I don't care if they included Japanese, just don't put Japanese in places they do not belong. Do not put blacks into places they do not belong. Do not put women in places they do not belong. Do not call me racist because I refuse to believe your fairy tale.

2)Excellent game loops.
The after game should be close to a forever game. Custom map, custom skins which allow for customized faction. I can still happily play CoH and DoW today. It's works better than it did then. WC 3 Reforged still crashes and requires an external graphics card.
After the main story line is beaten the game should still be very much playable.
Customizing factions is the final frontier. Warhammer does this very well.

3) AI should be more similar yet never balanced. ie in a WW 2 game U.S. should have stronger combat air support while Germany should have excellent light infantry and tanks.
Similar, not balanced. Balanced is a purity spiral that destroys the game. I do not care for balanced, the juggle is skill challenge. Do not let fanboys trick the devs in a balanced game.

4)Thorough debate about map painting and overlay maps.
Would a turn based map like Attila or a moba like Bannerlord be better world creation and giving sense to the battles. Would just a few points like Warhammer DoW work best? I am so happy with HoI 4 I cannot really tell anymore.

Game world, story, features and gameplay. In that order. The art would be kino like Attila Total War, the game loop smooth like CoH 2. It would have AI similar to HoI 4 AI that plays to historical and it would have to be based on in game amounts of resources not buffs.

tldr Good art, good story, comfy game loop, customized faction and skins, AI that doesn't cheat to be challenging.

>>2110886
This is an interesting idea. It's more like a tactical simulation. It would have to be fairly slow paced to navigate all the UI stuff you'd have to navigate to make that happen though.

Also, morale mechanics, y/n? Like units retreating without orders, cowering, or surrendering if outmatched, making ill-considered attacks because they're being skirmished, etc.

>>2110435
You think I'm ever gonna hook up my mind to a commercial piece of software? You're insane, the risk is infinite

>>2111398
>It would have to be fairly slow paced to navigate all the UI stuff you'd have to navigate to make that happen though.
Well, it's stuff you'd interact with on the map. So I guess there would be micro still, but it'd be orders micro rather than direct unit micro. And if it's done well (SupCom style) it should be fairly snappy and easy to interact with.

>Also, morale mechanics, y/n? Like units retreating without orders, cowering, or surrendering if outmatched, making ill-considered attacks because they're being skirmished, etc.
It's a good thing if it matches the setting, I think. Not a good fit for robot armies, for example, but good for historical, modern era, fantasy, etc.

Starsector is kind of a good primitive illustration of this, it has a clunky UI, mind you, but it does run on the principle of just giving general orders and then the ships mostly try to carry them out - but depending of officer personality their behaviour varies.

>>2110430 (OP)
probably something along the lines of BAR but like tabletop WH4K with draft.
for example, every player gets 1,000,000 basic grunt units to field and you can't build new units; which is strong but impossible to manage on a human APM level (logistically too many clicks).
but you can trade those units for upgrade/more advanced units (100 units per tank, 1000 per jet fighter, etc.
so you turn the standard RTS of say WH4K, add the scale of BAR and the deck building of Magic the Gathering.
lots of meta and counterplays and blah blah blah...

>>2111398
>Also, morale mechanics, y/n? Like units retreating without orders, cowering, or surrendering if outmatched, making ill-considered attacks because they're being skirmished, etc.
RNG has no place in MP games because then skill no longer matters.

>>2111771
Yeah that's true, battles in real life famously have no luck aspect

>>2111771
>RNG has no place in MP games because then skill no longer matters.
Luck is a skill.

Any game that will take advantage of the new AI craze and letting you assign commanders to menial tasks to reduce the microand giving them simple commands which will run scripted tasks like capture enemy points but avoid confrontation with retaliation force (youre a commander after all, microing is both gay and unfun)

>>2111792
Just micro away the entire game while you're at it

>>2111793
This but unironically.

>>2111630
They could just read your brain waves or something. All passive, with no way to affect your brain. Or so they will claim. No doubt the first few passive ones would actually have unintended side effects and/or the media hysteria to match. Or simply just the side effect of re-wiring in your brain to make the apparatus respond better. But then again that would be no different from all the neuroplasticity the brain is doing for every activity it does.

>>2110430 (OP)
General ai run bots. Hyper realistic physics and object collision, terrain deformation, dynamic object interaction. Country size maps.

>>2111831
This plus Z levels where you can dig underground and shit. The environment around you changing based on your and other players actions.
Not sure about the country size maps though.

Everyone here keeps saying that it should have a good story, I mean yeah no fucking shit the story ought to be good, nothing really next-gen about it(unless if the story becomes malleable, like it changing based on your decisions and which units die or live. Which just doesn't sound realistic for modern standards.)

>>2110430 (OP)
Star Craft 2 can't really be topped from the point of technical execution, its just way too buttery smooth - its actually perfect in that regard. What you can change is the gameplay style. I think DORF, if done with high-budget, could innovate - perhaps a less army micro intensive game with in-depth economy building. But that's just Stronghold, except Stronghold had absolutely dogshit UX and technical quality, so hey, maybe do Stronghold but with all the tech from SC2.

>>2111776
>Yeah that's true, battles in real life famously have no luck aspect
Games are, by definition, NOT REAL LIFE! I swear, we are in 2025 and still people keep using this idiotic strawman of an argument. No serious competitive scene wants to play real life accurate games specifically because real life is too random and too complicated.

>Luck is a skill.
Maybe in your favorite JRPG. Otherwise. RNG should be kept as minimum the uncertainty is already huge without the game arbitrarily making it even worse.

>>2111955
>No serious competitive scene
Fuck them, they keep killing the games by burning out the bottom of the playerbase until only a tiny margin of ultra-sweats remain. RNG is a perfectly valid piece of the toolbox against that, directly applying noise to small execution differences to push for actual strategic skill instead of gookclicking.

>>2111955
>Maybe in your favorite JRPG.
It's a skill everywhere, even if you're not mindful of it.

>>2111771
It doesn't have to be RNG. Actually, in most games that implement it - such as Dawn of War (which admittedly does have a lot of pseudo-RNG; very few RTS have true RNG since that would break their network model) - it's just a bar of points similar to hit points, but it generally goes down faster than health and/or can be pushed down faster by certain weapons or units.

So certain units and/or weapons will lead to fast morale breaks; others will lead to slow morale breaks if at all; and some units are immune to morale loss, but in any case it's not random.

>>2111891
I like Manor Lord so much because it dumped the grid building system. Curving roads and build zones did it for me I will never go back. If they just improved AI over spawning them in from the nether it would be the next Stronghold.

If the next gen was done without traditional building, like Myth TFL, Fallout Tactics, Kenshi, then that would draw players in.

I could see 12-24 year olds getting into a Fallout Tactics 2 that had more AI than just doing drive by's on mutants and robots. I could the world of Myth TFL being remastered or made into a MMO world. But if Manor Lords added 2 or 3 game modes and AI it would qualify as next gen methinks. I believe Bungie owns Myth and Bethesda still owns Fallout. I have no clue if Microsoft owns them all now. If so I don't think anything new will see the light of day unless it is indie.

>>2110430 (OP)
Larger scale games with more players and better supports for different group sizes, no player elimination, support for drop-in play, better controls, better pathfinding, more interesting maps/terrain. World in conflict and ground control had some of these features nicely integrated, AI war also has some unusual designs that could be adapted to other games. Supcom/BAR strategic zoom, formation drawing, and other macro control features should be standardized. I think evolution here needs to focus more on the player interface and controls as well as the multiplayer experience overall.

>>2110467
>A game where the AI is capable of believably emulating a human player and posing a challenge to another human player without the need to artificially boost it's stats and resource
starcraft kinda got to this point
A game with an amazing campaign that is actually a story rather than a glorified tutorial with some dialogue
A game with an amazing campaign that is actually a story rather than a glorified tutorial with some dialogue
>A game with an amazing campaign that is actually a story rather than a glorified tutorial with some dialogue
again, starcraft (atleast the first one) and warcraft 3, AoE 3 and mythology tried the same, probably something similar can be said for command and conquer
>A multiplayer game that is a (i'm sorry but its the truth) a casual experience with multiple fun gamemodes rather than a strictly pvp experience
yeah i'll agree with this one, but it comes from RTS being complicated to begin with, the sweat factor is never not present in anything higher than VS cpu
>Also a game that finally cuts ties with the legacy of blizzard. Starcraft players circlejerked too hard about how hard, elite and turbo competitive their game is and scared everyone from giving RTS a try.
if only RTS wasn't a dead game genre, killed by his own offspring of MOBA

>>2112596
>threepeated line
how do you resize the reply window, this laptop is small as fuck

Company of Heroes 4

I want to be able to watch the action all the time. I should not have to spend half the game with my camera away from interesting stuff thats happening on screen. This does not happen in almost any other genre save for mobas occasionally.

>>2110430 (OP)
SupCom 3

The fact that people think that a game that came out 15 years ago was the peak of RTS is depressing.

>>2110937
Building your game around it dying seems like a weird design choice. But maybe for RTS it's necessary

>>2113405
Good AI and good multiplayer aren't mutually exclusive. That's a skill issue on the developers' part. Not everyone will have an 8+, or even a 6+, strong group on hand, and large skirmishes certainly have their appeal, not to speak of FPSes or other team-based genres where matches can involve more than 100 players at a time. Besides, if I wanted to play with human opponents exclusively all the time, I could just go outside and play a board game, or hell, play a sport like paintball. I want to play a COMPUTER game here.

>>2110752
>>2110738
Pepe rock is as much of a prisoner as Feelyphus.

>>2111831
>Hyper realistic physics and object collision, terrain deformation, dynamic object interaction

Any one of these 4 will be your next gen RTS. Basically, if you can build a fortification from scratch.
>but you can build a Wall Building in--
Not the same.

>>2111823
Yeah they'd also be reading all your thoughts. Fuck that

>>2112991
> I want to be able to watch the action all the time. I should not have to spend half the game with my camera away from interesting stuff thats happening on screen

> tfw I lost dozens of games because I spent 3 seconds not focusing on the fight but watching big boom arty splatter enemy troops
2k25 and we still do not have a proper "replay" system for RTS-games
why do they still make you watch through the whole game? And why is the max Speed 8x?

>>2114738
>why do they still make you watch through the whole game?
Because how replays work in most RTS is literally re-play. What is saved is just a series of commands. You need to run them all to get to get the same result.
This is also why if you somehow manage to load a replay from wrong version of the game it will desync and weird things will start happening.

>>2114743
> Because how replays work in most RTS is literally re-play. What is saved is just a series of commands. You need to run them all to get to get the same result.
yes ik that but no way there is no way to do this faster today - like couldn't one do "snapshots" at certain points?
and even if starting out from 00:00 why is the max replay speed limited to the same speed they had 15 years ago? And why is there no "play backwards" option? Everything of this would be possible it's just that the basic and barebones replay-system is easier to implement (and often they even fail to implement even that at launch)

>>2114746
I think starcraft2 has some snapshots and a limited rewind feature. Dunno how they implemented it though. The issue with keeping snapshots is that they are just going to be large because the game state is pretty complex and saves are big and as for rewinding you can't just run the game engine in reverse.

This anon >>2110448 nailed it, RTS are old games and should be developed with that in mind (Like >>2110816 says, it's similar to the point'n'click)
The difficulty from an RTS game comes from the mechanical trouble of having to click and controlgroup and keep track of a bunch of shit in *real time*. The strategy part is not really so deep, they build horses so you build spears type of planning. When you add auto mining, smart casting, multiple building selection, unlimited unit selection, improve the pathfinding etc all of these features meant to improve the genre just sucked the actual mechanical gameplay from them.
RTS games should be made to be archaic.

>>2110467
>A game where the AI is capable of believably emulating a human player and posing a challenge to another human player without the need to artificially boost it's stats and resources.
AOE2DE

>>2110435
That's probably harder to control than to use muscle memory on keyboard

having to THINK about X doing Y is more time consuming than mashing your keyboard in a memorised way

>>2114865
Aoe2DE is pretty close, the kiting micro could be tweaked to better resemble human play.
The AI will micro each archer individually kiting away from your troops which is not human. If the bot was constrained so that it could only micro one formation of units at a time it would be much more human, and more fun to play against because I find the individual archers running every direction to be annoying.

>>2114857
Fuck you and your dogshit opinion. The more I have to fight a game's UI to do what I want the less I'll like it.

>>2115152
What RTS games do you like?

>>2115170
SupCom and everything related.

>>2114857
>The strategy part is not really so deep,

If units are not given terrain, range, and height modifiers I'm not touching that shit. I'm not going back to flat battles that insult my intelligence like WC 3. I'm not going back to AI that cheats and lies because I am expected to play a certain way to counter like the auto resolve bar lying or night battle option in Total War after infinite resources cheats.

And terrain adjustments have been a thing since the 1990's, so there's no excuse.

>>2110430 (OP)
next-gen is a term used for consoles

>>2110430 (OP)
>What would a true next-gen RTS be like ?

>>2110430 (OP)
It would have to defy the stagnant model of
>make workers
>kill workers
>loop until someone wins

RTS is a dying genre because its evolution has been dominated by fans of the competitive multiplayer experience of it, but that experience can now be more efficiently found in MOBAs.
Originally (like Dune, Warcraft 1) RTS was made of 2 experiences: building a base that makes an army, then fighting with that army.
I think competitive multiplayer is basically an additional experience that was improvised using the core RTS mechanics. MOBAs had their mechanics designed with this competitive experience in mind from the start so do it better.
Because comp mp was an improvisation it ended up invalidating the core experiences of building and army fighting:
>you can never spend enough time building a "cool" base that is appropriate for the visual aesthetic of the game (aesthetics are chosen because it improves the experience or fantasy) because you have to build a barebones, ultraefficient machine due to MP pressures
>you can never amass a huge, cinematic army because of MP pressures so instead all battles are small, frequent skirmishes
>you can never stop to appreciate your cool base or your cool army fighting a similarly cool looking army because of MP pressures

I think there's still an audience for these experiences, but they're currently scared off by MP and instead play Total War games, settlement games, base defense and some grand strategy.
>mechanics and AI should be tuned towards creating large, impressive settlements whilst giving the player time to do the same; creating a large impressive armies and then moving to visually impressive, large scale battles.
>replicating those campaign missions where there was a large existing enemy base and you had to build up your infrastructure to create a mega army to crack their defenses. But also expanding on it to make them more adaptable.
>more asymmetrical gameplay modes, especially if you want to include competitive MP. Ideally, MP would be co-op against an asymmetrically powerful AI.

>>2116854
Good & insightful post. Can't count how many times I've heard someone say they played RTS games to "just build a base" or other lines to that effect.
With that in mind its no wonder why Age of Empires 2 is among the top RTS ever made:
>Several architecture and terrain types
>Huge focus on building and developing your town
>Gameplay and units are relatively slow compared to other RTS
Of course, the ultra efficient quick-walling drush, flush, trush shit sucks the fun out of that. These games are simply more fun when played in a non competitive way.

>>2116985
> These games are simply more fun when played in a non competitive way.

While I mostly agree, there is a real and strong appeal in facing off against real opponents and from there you get the descent into meta builds and timing pushes, which can be impressive feats of skill but unfun for a sizeable chunk of the player base.

Figuring out how to balance that and not just have PvE is some very tricky design work that might not even be functionally possible

>>2116854
I think following in the Supcom vein is a good angle to go with for most of these things. That game still needs high APM at the high end of MP play since you're running so many things at once, but on the scale of your average casualfag even symmetrical multiplayer is pretty low-pressure, since the sheer scale of the game's maps means you're insulated against rushes. And huge armies crashing against each other was that game's entire MO.

There was a degree of encouragement to make your bases 'aesthetic' there as well since there was a mechanic where buildings would give small bonuses when placed next to each other. I think that would need to be played up significantly, but having an actual mechanical reason to try to make a nice base instead of a soulless blob is definitely the way to go there I think.

There was a successor game in that same vein, Zero-K I think, that had two key features that would also be good things to copy. Auto-microing units (they didn't micro perfectly in all situations so if you still wanted to spamclick around you'd still get somewhat better performance, but it wasn't mandatory even if you were a huge sweatlord), and having all the resource income and costs be flat factors of 10 so you could easily calculate them at a glance.

Destructible and modifiable terrain could also be interesting additions, which Zero-K also did. Though hiding inside of Castle Kickass would need a lot of easy counters to prevent one guy from just walling off his part of the map completely.

I think smoothing out the earlygame experience so that you don't have to train yourself to slam out specific hyper-optimized all-purpose build orders to not immediately fall behind in the first few minutes would be a good idea, since that shit is also definitely a huge filter, and frankly if removing that makes the game shallow, then that's a fundamental issue with the game's design.

>>2110430 (OP)
It would be a better version of Pacific Storm. It will involve managing the oilers coilers and maintinence crew of your armies and vehicles. And then will allow yountonfight the battle yourself but also jump into the battle and fight as a random solfier FPS style.

>>2110430 (OP)
lego rock raiders 2

>>2110430 (OP)
what no one in this thread wants to admit is that the next really big viral indie RTS will be an idle clicker game

>>2116854
Players should just start with an premade aesthetic base and build off of that.

>>2110430 (OP)
I think true next gen would have working cover and FOV system for units.
Like shooting from behind would do more damage, That unit would not shoot through their own people(like in Starship Troopers Terran command), where ambushes actually work together with cover fire and suppressing fire.
It would make RTSes into strategy games instead of mass blob armies and throw at each other. It would allow someone who is behind in resources take an upper hand due to being good strategist. It could also have FOV change due to day/night cycles and using additional tech like nightvision or thermalvision.

>>2110816
>the limitations that created it
I like what you're saying, can you spin this out a bit for me? I've never thought of RTS as constrained by limits in the same way as say, TBS

This but with fancy graphics. They made so many UX improvements and innovated the genre that it's basically next gen compared to what people are used to, even if it was released 14 years ago.

>>2110430 (OP)
bg3

>>2110430 (OP)
>Doesn't copy WarCraft, StarCraft nor Age of Empires
>Actually takes stuff from games like DoW, HW, Impossible Creatures, Earth 2150/2160 and polishes it
>Caters to casuals while ignoring the hardcore multiplayer minority
>Has a well written and well build campaign
>Is more focused on fun than anything
That's all.

>>2110445
And it flopped so hard Frost Giant has to do outsourcing jobs to balance out the losses.

>>2134836
You rejected the two C&C clones.

>>2135272
Wait. Tempest Rising I know it's one of them.
But what is the other one?