HSRTG wrote:But you can limit how much control is needed. I shouldn't have to tell my machine guns to aim at infantry, not bounce .50 cal ammunition uselessly off of 6 inch armor plated steel (AKA A tank).
And instituting some common-sense shit like a machine gun firing on infantry is wrong? I'm sorry, I like having my units to have some semblance of brains.
It is not wrong, it is not that important.
A game's strategy is defined by a PLAYER's input. If you are willing to accept abstractions (which every RTS player is suppose to, just look at the mine and build times), one can simply remove the game play part involved.
Every unit, every event and every gameplay "feature" is really a black box with an "player input" and a "result output." What is inside the box and how things are resolved is simply irrelevent to the player.
In this particular case, you can simply replace rifle infantry and rocket infantry with an "infantry squad" that does similar damage to both tanks and infantry. There, you've removed micro without requiring AI. The game play remains.
Bullshit. A good game feature requires zero player management. Or perhaps you think we should make resource harvesting a manual activity? I know! We should make SCVs only bring resources in when their told to, even if they're full.
SCV mining is not a "gameplay feature" as mining is a boring event which few would want to pay attention to even if it takes strategy. Resource harvesting can be reduce to slapping a "mining building" on top of the resource instead of silly things like SCV running everywhere, which is mostly just eye candy.
I'm not saying that everything have to be done in a clumsy manner, but that down the line at some point, the player has to be spending its time choosing between an set of activities which he can not simulatously fulfill.
A game's gameplay is defined by where the player do have to manage things. The other things can just be toss out in abstraction boxes as they are just eye or ai-candy that do not define gameplay.
Or they could concentrate on creating diversions, traps, you know, the things that only 300 APM guys can do right now. No wait, that's boring.
Diversions and traps has most of its meaning when the person on the other side is overloaded with his own micromanagement problems. Try playing starcraft at 1/20 its base speed for example (giving the average player 1000APM post scaling) and things like distractions no longer mean anything. Your opponent can easily deal with any distraction and everything else at that speed and it ceases being a gameplay factor.
Yes, it is difficult for the average player to execute complex battle plans, however it is difficult for them to counter them as well. The goal of the game is not to have "perfect planning" but to have "plans that beats your opponent."
Because controls are so hard in Starcraft, things like muti-direction drops are effective as your opponent would have to struggle to move units out of traffic jams and manage not to have its units arrive in chaotic piecemeal.
Remember, the gameplay factor that defines RTS is player input. The ulitmate factor on whether something will be done in a game is on the cost-effectiveness of the action. If one designs the game so that complex battle plans pays off heavily relative to the amount of control required, it will be the focus of the game. This can be done in a infinite numbers of ways, and AI is merely another factor like health points, weapon range, unit speed, unit size, but it is one that is most expensive to develop and do not necessarily do anything more than passive factors.
Increasing the range of possible strategies via minimizing unnecessary micro is a bad thing?
You do
NOT increase the range of strategy via reducing micro. Like I said, you can reduce micro VERY EASILY. It is so easy it is trivial.
If you've played an "RTS" with only one unit, one building, in numbers with mechanics where micro is infeasible, than you'd see that there is not more inherent strategy in that sistuation. In fact, there is no strategy beyond endless waves of units.
Strategy is
NOT what your units or your forces do. Strategy is what YOU, as the player, do. Strategy comes from having a large set of choices to make at a give time. Strategy IS the choices one makes.
When the AI takes over a factor of gameplay, it removes that from strategy. There is a choice in "whether or not I micro my machinegunners to shoot enemy infantry" while there is no choice in "my machinegunners engage the enemy. The AI is good, I don't have to look at the troops."
The question of where, and how to micromanagement units is an dimension of RTS strategy. It is not just about clicking fast. It is about clicking at the right things.
Black/White fallacy right here. Very nice. See what I described above about less-stupid units. Or would you prefer to have manual resourcing too?
Incidentally, there are games with manual resourcing. (AoK comes to mind, as are some european offerings)
The particular part about Age of Kings is hunting animals to boost the economy. (one gathers food faster by hunting than killing sheep, picking berries or farming) It is poorly automated, requiring the player to babysit the peasents to not killed by wild animals or other forms of stupidity.
When it comes down to it, that part about the gameplay does not detract from the AoK in general. The reason is that it is that the player have a choice as to whether or not to micro for food or to use a less micro intensive method like berry gathering. This is a choice, and that is a good thing.
Your kind of strategy is a mind-numbingly boring clickfest that sends me to sleep.
Just because it is boring to you does not mean it has no strategy or is easy to master. I found standard Starcraft boring too, and spend my time playing use map setting. However it does not mean I know or could easily learn about all the details of strategy involved in a standard game.
At last count I had 4000+ maps for Starcraft before I quit. More maps do not work.
Given that you do not play at a high level where minor map differences make the difference, I don't think you are in a good position to judge. I doubt you even really understood what different start locations on lost temple really means for combat given the different races.
Also, because of all the assymetries of races, only maps of a very limited design could be balanced for every race. There is not enough leeway build into the system to allow for drastic changes in strategy.
The more skill you have, the less chance plays a part. You've been an advocate of "skill" all along, and now you're saying...well...I'm not sure what you're saying here. Lay out how a game could be too complex for skill to be important.
Because in a non-total information game, much of what is going on is gambling.
In a "simple" game, there is usually a set of "safe builds" that is reliable to be competitive against any other start the opponent could get. Because those builds, aka "strategy", is so consistant and reliable, it can be reused quite a bit and is not really "creative" after the few experimenting souls developed them. The starting strategy involve usually is for choosing a set of competive "safe builds" and use micro-skill and game knowledge to make up for any minor disadvantages between those builds.
However, to build a "complex" game, there can not be a set of safe builds that the competitive against any other build, or else it would be used exclusively. As an result, the game has to be between a large set of unsafe builds and the lucky could win by guessing right.
But really, the lack of "strategy" is also reflective of the generally uncreative player base. For all the whining about "lack of strategy", most players never put in the effort of actually learning about all aspect of the game to form a effective original strategy anyways.
So creativity from developers should also be quashed? 'Cause I think if the developers gave a kick to the player base, there'd be a shitload of creativity very quickly.
The players have spoken, and they've decided to stick to counterstrike until the end of time?
Anyways, few RTS players actually "want" to think very hard about all dimensions of strategy. Even the AI fanclub have little coherent idea of what strategy actually is.
Strategy is about the choices the player makes. The objective a game designer is to give the player a set of carefully crafted, non-obvious but still important, choices at every moment in the game. The rest is just eyecandy.
AI or no AI, that is the truely critical part of the game that is the engine behind the game. AI is just a tool, it is not a wonder drug. It can be used to remove, alter or create new choices, but that does not good without guidence. Gameplay is build by having a plan. IF one has a plan, than all else is just tools. The important part is having one.
Gameplay is not build be reducing unit stupidity. Stupid units are like badly render lego units and fugly terran. Annoying, but it is not by itself an driving factor.
The question isn't that units are stupid.
The question is what is it that the player ought to be doing.
Once you have a complete answer on what sort of management tasks you want the player to follow, it is not to hard to trivialize all other parts of game dynamics to make it unimportant to the player in terms of management.
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Why not? It'd certainly hone your skills. I wouldn't complain if an AI was actually "skilled" and honestly kicked my ass.
Well, depending on the game, it is possible to seriously develop killer AI by focusing on the AI's greatest strength. Infinite APM and perfect execution. In long, complex and ambigous games, AI development becomes quite difficult and expensive.
In other words, the best AI opponent would be one that tank rushes in a micro-ed way that no human can match.
But thats cheesy like a aimbot FPS enemy with a sniper rifle.....so thats the end of it.
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Conventional "stay quiet" move, prioritizing the move (but allowing the unit fire initiative), and conventional attack-move (which would actually give the AI more initiative than conventional move).