76 réponses à ce sujet

[Voxr]

"making it more like a Grand Strategy"

 

Are you saying Huntress massing isn't grand? 

[SnipedArm]

Supreme commander is still well populated for a 2007 game. 

[ApocAlypsE007]

Who cares? I'm looking for what I want to play, not a bunch of South Korean "professional" players.

 

Total War is fun when you're not having every piece of the game sold to you as DLC by those SEGA bastards.

Indirectly, you should care. Professional play generates revenues from tournaments, it is the best way competing with the dumbed down console market, and it leads to more and higher quality games in the genre. And I get it, you don't want a challange, but many people don't like it when it easy.

 

The control scheme is not "basically the same". I can't think of a single RTS that uses the standard QWER controls of a MOBA. MOBAs consists ONLY of micro, because micro is the only overarching element in a MOBA. You control 1 single unit. There's no macro involved.

You micro the same way as an RTS, it uses hotkeys for abilities as SC2 casters and WC3 heroes. Just in RTS you also have to expand, manage the economy, build units and control many more units.

[Melra]

Gimme Warcraft 4 with all of that WoW derpiness removed from the lore, well everything except maybe the main story points. Like Black Temple, Lich King, Deathwing. Forget about Pandaland and possibly even WoD. Most of the story outside of Wrath was pretty poor and boring.

I mostly enjoyed my RTSes as singleplayer experiences, with Warcraft 3 and Shogun 2 being exceptions. Warcraft 3 still has tons of custom maps to play that offer something different and new. Blizzard has been pretty good at keeping the ladder RTS gameplay interesting to more casual audience. Remember back in early Warcraft 3 days when people would simply play a race cause they wanted to unlock a certain portrait for your account (you needed certain amount of wins to unlock a portrait).

Just logging onto play against other players won't interest me, RTS games tend to have rather long matches and simply beating another player isn't enough of a reward after 30-40 min matches. I like my trophies.

But yeah, I will always buy an RTS with a good singleplayer campaign. Starcrafts 2 and all of its expansions are must buys even though I no longer play the multiplayer. Total Wars have started to turn into crap with Rome 2 or maybe even earlier. I am not big fan of muskets and such, so I never bought Napoleon etc. The old ones still have ton of replay value left in them though.

Company of Heroes also had a pretty good campaign, so did the first Dawn of War. Those are the games I mostly miss, the ones with effort being put into campaigns.

[Melra]

Indirectly, you should care. Professional play generates revenues from tournaments, it is the best way competing with the dumbed down console market, and it leads to more and higher quality games in the genre. And I get it, you don't want a challange, but many people don't like it when it easy.

 

You micro the same way as an RTS, it uses hotkeys for abilities as SC2 casters and WC3 heroes. Just in RTS you also have to expand, manage the economy, build units and control many more units.

Basically if you didn't use hotkeys while controlling your units in SC2 or WC3, you weren't doing it right. The pro players are bit similar to the great old school raiders in WoW. Many people like to have something to aim for, even if they might never reach that goal. It is better to have something to look up to and go "Well I want to get there" than how things work today. Most games give everything without much of an effort nor do they offer a challenge unless you really want to crank up of the difficulty and make things more difficult for yourselves.

[Fidite Nemini]

Basically if you didn't use hotkeys while controlling your units in SC2 or WC3, you weren't doing it right. The pro players are bit similar to the great old school raiders in WoW. Many people like to have something to aim for, even if they might never reach that goal. It is better to have something to look up to and go "Well I want to get there" than how things work today. Most games give everything without much of an effort nor do they offer a challenge unless you really want to crank up of the difficulty and make things more difficult for yourselves.

 

Cranking up the difficulty isn't even a reliable challenge anymore. It's obviously subject to individual skill, but even the highest difficulty settings aren't necessarily challenging. Think ME insanity difficulty or the ME3 MP difficulties, I personally can't solo Platinum with a level 1 Volus and the Avenger like some other players, but I did two Gold solos for the Lonewolf challenge and can positively cheese through the singleplayer. And ME (particularily 2 and 3) are arguably better at managing difficulties than other games because they come with sufficient skillgates that players can master as opposed to simply having cheap difficulty BS like simply giving every enemy insane health and damage output (even though ME difficulty does that too).

 

And offline RTS games are positively plagued with cheating AIs being giving income modifiers, ignoring fog of war, knowing which buildings/units you have in your build queues, etc. pp.!

On the other hand, online gameplay is skillgate incarnate and most of those skills are stuff the game itself doesn't teach. Things like optimized build-orders, economy harassment, area denial, etc. is something that hardly gets taught by the game, or even is remotely effective enough when playing against AI to incentivise newcomers to improve their skills in those regards. That's especially bad for games that don't already have a huge playerbase, as it typically tends to end in a very small number of skilled players dominating the rest.

[goofyomnivore]

You micro the same way as an RTS, it uses hotkeys for abilities as SC2 casters and WC3 heroes. Just in RTS you also have to expand, manage the economy, build units and control many more units.

 

I wouldn't say the same way. In a RTS you are often controlling multiple unit types and manipulating the battlefield to put them in the best position. A MOBA you are controlling one unit with a very specific role.

[Fishy]

But you have WC4. Just give them $15 bucks a month, plus $40, plus 3-4 weeks in leveling, plus another 2-3weeks in gearing up. Another week in finding a decent group. Oh **** they raid Wed, Fri, Sat. Welp gotta find another one, found it another week later. Got that Tue, Thur, Fri raidtimes now mane. Oh damn, what's this? "AllyPally" Wants to jump in a private vent channel with you? What!? DPS was too low?? 

/GKicked

 

Well.... Maybe Horde has a decent raiding guild. 

 

WARCRAFT 4: WC4 is WoW (Mike Morhaime is laughing his ass off)

 

Than when you're finally geared up they release a new expansion and your gear are worthless  .

 

I think mmo started to get boring when they become just a mean to farm endlessly so you can have the best gear and compete with others who have already farmed endlessly.

 

I'm kind of a weird mushroom though. I purchased WOD just recently( It's was 50 % off. So I paid 20 $ for it). Used my 10 day trial so I could level a character to 100 with the level 90 boost ( My first level cap ever). It took me 40 hours to level cap and when I did my trial was almost over ( 10 hours left lol). I actually just wanted to know the story of world of dreanor. I actually love the lore of warcraft. Yes I know. It's silly .

 

I did not resubscribes because seriously I dont want to grind raid and compete with people who have been playing this game for years. It's like .. I'm way too ****** late.

[Melra]

Than when you're finally geared up they release a new expansion and your gear are worthless  .

 

I think mmo started to get boring when they become just a mean to farm endlessly so you can have the best gear and compete with others who have already farmed endlessly.

 

I'm kind of a weird mushroom though. I purchased WOD just recently( It's was 50 % off. So I paid 20 $ for it). Used my 10 day trial so I could level a character to 100 with the level 90 boost ( My first level cap ever). It took me 40 hours to level cap and when I did my trial was almost over ( 10 hours left lol). I actually just wanted to know the story of world of dreanor. I actually love the lore of warcraft. Yes I know. It's silly .

 

I did not resubscribes because seriously I dont want to grind raid and compete with people who have been playing this game for years. It's like .. I'm way too ****** late.

They've added very easy catch up mechanics to the game. It's just the "legendary ring" thing that might be troublesome, otherwise it isn't hard to catch up in gear, though with the current expansion there's really nothing to do after you do get the gear level closer to 700. Most people just idle and do nothing but play their "facebook game"

[Cyonan]

Than when you're finally geared up they release a new expansion and your gear are worthless  .

 

I think mmo started to get boring when they become just a mean to farm endlessly so you can have the best gear and compete with others who have already farmed endlessly.

 

I'm kind of a weird mushroom though. I purchased WOD just recently( It's was 50 % off. So I paid 20 $ for it). Used my 10 day trial so I could level a character to 100 with the level 90 boost ( My first level cap ever). It took me 40 hours to level cap and when I did my trial was almost over ( 10 hours left lol). I actually just wanted to know the story of world of dreanor. I actually love the lore of warcraft. Yes I know. It's silly .

 

I did not resubscribes because seriously I dont want to grind raid and compete with people who have been playing this game for years. It's like .. I'm way too ****** late.

 

Really if you're going to be playing WoW for a decent amount of time, finding new challenging raid bosses to kill has just got to be something that you enjoy doing. If it's all about the loot, you're going to get bored and frustrated that the treadmill never ends. All my best memories of raiding on WoW are the people I raided with and killing certain bosses that were a huge hurdle for us, not the epics that I got off of doing all that.

 

Though as far as not being able to compete, as Melra mentioned they offer "catch up" mechanics designed to help newer players and alts catch up in gear.

 

You could also just enjoy leveling alts or PvP. I did a lot of that in the time between raids.

 

I also love the lore of Warcraft, so I don't consider it silly =P

 

I wouldn't say the same way. In a RTS you are often controlling multiple unit types and manipulating the battlefield to put them in the best position. A MOBA you are controlling one unit with a very specific role.

 

As somebody who isn't amazing with micro in RTS but enjoys them anyway, I find a MOBA is much easier to play in that regard.

[Fishy]

Yeah. Well I Unlocked my HOTS mount. Which is good.

 

Just out of curiosity. What Ilvl I needed for dungeons or raid anyway ? I was something like ilvl 620 overall ( On the panel). I really just did a few rare in Nagrand and purchased a couple of apexis gear . My Garrison was just level 2 

 

I leveled a Feral druid. Which I loved. Than I made a level 20 holy Paladin after my trial expired ( Because you can lvl to 20 for free). I had purchased 3 heirloom for it. Than I realized I should have made a pally.

 

Oh well.

[Melra]

Yeah. Well I Unlocked my HOTS mount. Which is good.

 

Just out of curiosity. What Ilvl I needed for dungeons or raid anyway ? I was something like ilvl 620 overall ( On the panel). I really just did a few rare in Nagrand and purchased a couple of apexis gear . My Garrison was just level 2 

 

I leveled a Feral druid. Which I loved. Than I made a level 20 holy Paladin after my trial expired ( Because you can lvl to 20 for free). I had purchased 3 heirloom for it. Than I realized I should have made a pally.

 

Oh well.

Ah yes that "MOBA" with most broken matchmaking ever. :/

 

For for heroic dungeons think you need 615 or 620 + you need to complete proving grounds "challenge" on Silver difficulty or higher for your appropriate role.

You can start doing the early raids at 630ish or 640sh. The current raid's lowest difficulty requires 650.

[o Ventus]

 

You micro the same way as an RTS, it uses hotkeys for abilities as SC2 casters and WC3 heroes. Just in RTS you also have to expand, manage the economy, build units and control many more units.

 

Starcraft uses different hotkeys for the unit abilities, not QWER. In no MOBA do you ever build more units or control many units, with the sole exception being 1, maybe 2 characters in a game with a roster typically sitting in the dozens. Literally the only MOBA characters I can think of where you actively control more than 1 unit are Abathur and The Lost Vikings in Heroes of the Storm. Abathur can clone other player characters and create his own super minion to independently control, and each of the 3 Vikings is controlled via a hotkey in lieu of having abilities. I've played Heroes of Newerth, Smite, League of Legends, Infinite Crisis, Monday Night Combat, and Heroes of the Storm, and only the examples I gave above exist across all of those games, unless newer characters have been added since I took a break from playing that introduced these elements. You also definitely do not expand. Your home base either stays the same in size or shrinks, you never ever make it grow, nor can you acquire a second base.

 

MOBAs are hugely different from RTS games, people who say they are similar almost certainly have never actually played a MOBA or an RTS.

[o Ventus]

They've added very easy catch up mechanics to the game. It's just the "legendary ring" thing that might be troublesome, otherwise it isn't hard to catch up in gear, though with the current expansion there's really nothing to do after you do get the gear level closer to 700. Most people just idle and do nothing but play their "facebook game"

Even the legendary ring quiest line has a catch up to it. It's only really "hard" on your main. Any alts that you progress on have the farm quests nerfed, so you collect more runes/fragments/whatever. So instead of needing 900 rune fragments out of Blackrock Foundry like you normally would and only looting 9 off of each boss, you'll loot 18 or 27 (or whatever other multiple of 9).

 

And speaking of the legendary ring, the quest line so far has been painfully dull. Just farming and farming and farming. Something like 150 Abrogator Stones, 900 tablet fragments, and now 33 tomes.

[Melra]

Even the legendary ring quiest line has a catch up to it. It's only really "hard" on your main. Any alts that you progress on have the farm quests nerfed, so you collect more runes/fragments/whatever. So instead of needing 900 rune fragments out of Blackrock Foundry like you normally would and only looting 9 off of each boss, you'll loot 18 or 27 (or whatever other multiple of 9).

 

And speaking of the legendary ring, the quest line so far has been painfully dull. Just farming and farming and farming. Something like 150 Abrogator Stones, 900 tablet fragments, and now 33 tomes.

Getting a few more runes is hardly too big of an catch up mechanic, the grind is still really mind numbing. It is the main reason I will stick to playing on one character alone for rest of the expansion, whenever I play that is.

I think they should stop with timegating crap and simply make hard solo or 5 man quests to earn your legendary ring stuff. TBC's attunements weren't really hard but time consuming and it wasn't boring.

[Voxr]

On Topic: I just bought Age of Empires II: HD Edition.

 

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[Fidite Nemini]

On Topic: I just bought Age of Empires II: HD Edition.

 

Wololololololololololo!

 

Ftfy.

[ApocAlypsE007]

 

On the other hand, online gameplay is skillgate incarnate and most of those skills are stuff the game itself doesn't teach. Things like optimized build-orders, economy harassment, area denial, etc. is something that hardly gets taught by the game, or even is remotely effective enough when playing against AI to incentivise newcomers to improve their skills in those regards. That's especially bad for games that don't already have a huge playerbase, as it typically tends to end in a very small number of skilled players dominating the rest.

No competitive game will give you the knowledge to compete with the top players. Sometimes the metagame changes so quickly that everything that worked yesterday, seen countered by a pro today and tomorrow it is useless. If you want to be good at a game, read online stuff, watch top players play, practice, practice, practice, and don't expect the game to give you that by default. It's not only in RTS, it's in all competitive games. The few dominate the game because they practiced the most, in all competitive games today you have a replay feature. Moreover, in RTS you have no one to blame but yourself, and that can be very hard to accept.

 

Starcraft uses different hotkeys for the unit abilities, not QWER. In no MOBA do you ever build more units or control many units, with the sole exception being 1, maybe 2 characters in a game with a roster typically sitting in the dozens. Literally the only MOBA characters I can think of where you actively control more than 1 unit are Abathur and The Lost Vikings in Heroes of the Storm. Abathur can clone other player characters and create his own super minion to independently control, and each of the 3 Vikings is controlled via a hotkey in lieu of having abilities. I've played Heroes of Newerth, Smite, League of Legends, Infinite Crisis, Monday Night Combat, and Heroes of the Storm, and only the examples I gave above exist across all of those games, unless newer characters have been added since I took a break from playing that introduced these elements. You also definitely do not expand. Your home base either stays the same in size or shrinks, you never ever make it grow, nor can you acquire a second base.

 

MOBAs are hugely different from RTS games, people who say they are similar almost certainly have never actually played a MOBA or an RTS.

I've played both MOBAs and alot of RTS games, I've reached my best in Starcraft 2, was i Masters as Protoss for a while. All I can say is that MOBAs are FAR less demanding on a single player, but the control scheme is based on RTS. If you care about the specific hotkeys, you can change them in most games to QWER if you wish so. The basics are still the same: move click with the right mouse, use hotkeys to cast abilities, aim with the mouse, scroll the map by moving to the edge of the screen or by clicking the minimap. The importance of minimap awareness, higher play speed, efficient casting, all important both in RTS and MOBAs. It is currect that you don't build bases in MOBAs compared to RTS, and that makes RTS more chalIening, demanding and ultimately more satisfying. In Starcraft Broodwar you must have about 300 apm to play proficiently. In SC2 you need about 150-250 depending on the race (Protoss is lowest, Zerg is highest), in MOBAs you don't need more than 70-80.

[Fidite Nemini]

No competitive game will give you the knowledge to compete with the top players. Sometimes the metagame changes so quickly that everything that worked yesterday, seen countered by a pro today and tomorrow it is useless. If you want to be good at a game, read online stuff, watch top players play, practice, practice, practice, and don't expect the game to give you that by default. It's not only in RTS, it's in all competitive games. The few dominate the game because they practiced the most, in all competitive games today you have a replay feature. Moreover, in RTS you have no one to blame but yourself, and that can be very hard to accept.

 

You didn't understand what I was saying. I wasn't talking about the metagame, I was adressing the most basic skills that are employed in every RTS match, none of which I ever saw taught in the RTS games that I've played (perception bias obviously applies). There is a huge conceptional difference between not being good at that basic stuff and not knowing that basic stuff. This isn't about competing with top players as much as it is understanding the game.

 

I've played (talking CnC here) against people who were so hilariously oblivious to basic tactics like economy harassment that I literally harvested the same Tiberium/Ore fields as them whilst I left those closer to me alone until all the ones close to the enemy were depleted and the only available ressources were protected by me. Reconnaissence? Naw mate, I'll just sit here and build a perfectly symmetrical base that's so pretty an-WHERE DO THOSE FLAMETANKS COME FROM??? Area denial, what is that? Why should I have an attack buggy patrol the far-off Tiberium/Oil rigs to kill any lone engineer trying to capture them?

 

 

Now, keep in mind that I pretty much stuck with CnC for the vast majority of my RTS experience and never quite bothered to play any tutorials for other games as I knew the trade already, so I can't exactly judge how good other titles prepare newcomers, but my personal experiences is that new players are thrown into the ocean and told to swim without really knowing how.

[Steelcan]

[ApocAlypsE007]

You didn't understand what I was saying. I wasn't talking about the metagame, I was adressing the most basic skills that are employed in every RTS match, none of which I ever saw taught in the RTS games that I've played (perception bias obviously applies). There is a huge conceptional difference between not being good at that basic stuff and not knowing that basic stuff. This isn't about competing with top players as much as it is understanding the game.

 

I've played (talking CnC here) against people who were so hilariously oblivious to basic tactics like economy harassment that I literally harvested the same Tiberium/Ore fields as them whilst I left those closer to me alone until all the ones close to the enemy were depleted and the only available ressources were protected by me. Reconnaissence? Naw mate, I'll just sit here and build a perfectly symmetrical base that's so pretty an-WHERE DO THOSE FLAMETANKS COME FROM??? Area denial, what is that? Why should I have an attack buggy patrol the far-off Tiberium/Oil rigs to kill any lone engineer trying to capture them?

 

 

Now, keep in mind that I pretty much stuck with CnC for the vast majority of my RTS experience and never quite bothered to play any tutorials for other games as I knew the trade already, so I can't exactly judge how good other titles prepare newcomers, but my personal experiences is that new players are thrown into the ocean and told to swim without really knowing how.

Define "Basic Stuff". The game needs to teach you the absolute basics: how to build stuff, how to order units to move or attack, the game's campaign also needs to introduce slowly new units and their mechanics. Scouting, area control, harassment, economy denial etc. are higher level concepts that require understanding of all unit roles, they can be learned through experience, practice and common sense, or online guides if you want to take shortcuts. Take for example Scouting: what unit do you send in the beginning? At what time in the game? What is the scouting pattern on the map? What are you looking for? If you see X what do you do? How do you account for cheese and proxies (aggressively placed production buildings in favor of ending the game quickly, more relevant to Starcraft than CnC)? These are all questions with no easy answer, and the answers vary even between professional players. The game CAN'T teach you that.

 

Lets also take for example Unreal Tournament. The game doesn't tell you to keep moving, the game doesn't tell you how to control the shield belt, the game doesn't tell you how to use well your weapons, you need to figure out by yourself, you need to learn from experience, from getting stomped. All the game gives you is a campaign mode to teach you the various types of game modes and a vague description of the weapons.

 

Starcraft 2 actually takes the step forward in introducing some basic online play concepts at a form of in-game tutorials, but that is enough only to win a bunch of games in the Bronze League (bottom 20% of the players), because the more complicated stuff you need to learn by yourself.

[Fidite Nemini]

Define "Basic Stuff". The game needs to teach you the absolute basics: how to build stuff, how to order units to move or attack, the game's campaign also needs to introduce slowly new units and their mechanics. Scouting, area control, harassment, economy denial etc. are higher level concepts that require understanding of all unit roles, they can be learned through experience, practice and common sense, or online guides if you want to take shortcuts. Take for example Scouting: what unit do you send in the beginning? At what time in the game? What is the scouting pattern on the map? What are you looking for? If you see X what do you do? How do you account for cheese and proxies (aggressively placed production buildings in favor of ending the game quickly, more relevant to Starcraft than CnC)? These are all questions with no easy answer, and the answers vary even between professional players. The game CAN'T teach you that.

 

The game can't teach you how exactly to go about it and how to respond, but it damn well should teach you the necessity to do such stuff. I consider scouting, economy harassment and area control/denial basics. For the simple reason that if you try to play without that, you're going to lose against any player who remotely knows what they are doing.

 

Mastering different aspects of a game is one thing, knowing there are specific aspects to a game that you're supposed to master is another.

[Fast Jimmy]

The game can't teach you how exactly to go about it and how to respond, but it damn well should teach you the necessity to do such stuff. I consider scouting, economy harassment and area control/denial basics. For the simple reason that if you try to play without that, you're going to lose against any player who remotely knows what they are doing.

Mastering different aspects of a game is one thing, knowing there are specific aspects to a game that you're supposed to master is another.

The only way a game can teach you these types of mid-to-higher level concepts is through the single player campaign. And such tactics are often considered too hard (such as having the enemy escort its resources collectors and destroy the player's) in many games. Developers are concerned with making the game enjoyable for a new player to pick up, not to train them to become top tier competitive players.

I agree that games (ALL games) should be better refined to teach their systems to players instead of letting players phone it in, but it's hard to hold a player's hand to teaching more advanced stuff.

[Fishy]

Ah yes that "MOBA" with most broken matchmaking ever. :/

When you unlock mUrky there's no turning back.

 

[Fidite Nemini]

The only way a game can teach you these types of mid-to-higher level concepts is through the single player campaign. And such tactics are often considered too hard (such as having the enemy escort its resources collectors and destroy the player's) in many games. Developers are concerned with making the game enjoyable for a new player to pick up, not to train them to become top tier competitive players.

I agree that games (ALL games) should be better refined to teach their systems to players instead of letting players phone it in, but it's hard to hold a player's hand to teaching more advanced stuff.

 

Imho it would go a long way of offline play would have such things being viable. Most players being insecure about playing other people try to use offline play as a form of boot camp, but the genre typical fake difficulties employed by AIs counteract the valuable lessons that should be taught.

 

Most AI doesn't scout, because it's not penalized by the fog of war. As a new player with little experience, how are you supposed to emulate the behaviour of scouting when the opponents you play against don't use it? Or economy harassment being a waste of precious ressources on your end because the AI can easily replace lost economy infrastructure because it gets more income than you. Or proper rushing, which falls flat because the AI has a larger starting budget and can simply outproduce your rush attempt (in conjuction with whichever forms of AI cheating being present).

 

Which brings me back to my original point: offline gameplay vs AIs doesn't prepare players at all in most games, because it doesn't operate as a player would. RTS AIs are by far and wide little more than simple cheats. And most of the time, they're pretty stupid too, meaning you can defeat them with strategies that when used against human players fall flat on their ass, so when a player feels confident and ventures into PvP, they get defeated consistently.

 

 

I'm aware this is largely a limitation as making a somewat smart AI to play against is incredibly complicated (RTS games aren't exactly the most linear gameplay formulae anyway), but this is what I believe to be the defining issue RTS games have to deal with if they want to expand their audience to more players than the already existing diehard RTS fans. That and the lack of creative spins on the standard RTS formula to create something different than just: build base, build army, crush enemy or be crushed.