Adam Beckett

The End of an RTS era? Starcraft 2 Legacy of the Void

Recommended Posts

Waking up to the formidable Science Fiction Space Opera Single Player RTS Campaign, that is the "Legacy of the Void". The last chapter in the Starcraft 2 saga... and maybe, also, the end of an era?

I share the rhapsody that was intoned in the latest Three Moves Ahead podcasts. Even Blizzard has moved on to greener pastures with their latest IP's (although, who would have thought that the online version of card games would be such a hit, despite the 'online poker' crowd, and the loyal 'Magic the Gathering' few? Well, obviously a small team at Blizzard did). It's all Lords Management and F2P and multiplayer always online, always smart phone/tablet from here on out, isn't it?

Never mind "Grey Goo", or the - once again - failed attempt of Eugen to make a campaign for their "Act of Aggression" (did these guys really make R.U.S.E.?), the future certainly doesn't lie in the kind of games, some of us grew up with: the big budget, "triple A" single player RTS games (with skrimish vs AI and multiplayer as 'Game 2' and 'Game 3' included addons.

Ensemble Studios which was Bruce Shelley was kicked out of business thanks to Microsoft, it feels like ages ago. Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor failed to find an audience on Kickstarter for his Supreme Commander revival and found refuge under the umbrella of Wargaming.net (who are working on a 'new' Master of Orion(!!), if some of you forgot about that. Westwood Studios - now 'EA Los Angeles' - had their swan song a while ago with their weaker and weaker C&C series. Creative Assembly is lurking into the F2P market with their Total War ARENA, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes, there will always be 'niche' market developers, 'indie' games, which will try to fill the void, but my question is rather "are 'we' - the classic RTS crowd - a dying breed?"

Of course, people will always play RTS games. In their many different (smart phone?) shapes and forms, but which companies will have the money to finance a two-three digit multi-million RTS game, which gives you a fantastic single player game experience?

 

So, while I enjoy my experience with the last Starcraft 2 edition, it feels like a farewell, a bitter-sweet last chapter, what was such a familiar 'feeling': motivated by outstanding cutscenes and characters, diving into the gameplay, to achieve the objectives, to crush the enemy, just to be awarded at the end of a mission with new bits of the story. A single player campaign, which is more digestible than the frantic multi-player online matches against super-human enemies.

And even though Blizzard is holding the 'classic RTS' torch high and proudly and making extra efforts to invite new, inexperienced players to their RTS game (again, superb, didactic tutorials and training modes, even a new coop mode), I hardly see 'new', younger audiences grabing this standalone 3rd installment of Starcraft 2 out of curiosity, like we picked up new game boxes from the retail shelves of our local game store, just because we found the art work of the box interesting.

I am usually not the kind of person to say "Punk is dead" ... "Rock'n'Roll is dead" ... "Jazz is dead" - but find myself in that corner. Quite a lonely place.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Maybe, but I'm going to stick with my gun on 'RTS just needs to be easier' theory.

 

The 'pure-old-school' RTSes are just too hard to even feel competent in.  WC3 and CoH (and its Warhammer spin offs) did a lot right in that regard.  Shame that Blizzard didn't pursue WC3 style of RTS... seriously, Orc's tier 1 unit had almost twice the HP of Ultralisk and half of its DPS, it was very slow and very forgiving with built in defense for all 4 races.  CoH is still going pretty well it seems, but the completely fractured piecemeal model is... well, I wonder how that is working out from both player base and profit angle?

 

Wargame has excellent combat mechanics but I'm not a fan of how you have to blind pick a deck and just roll with that from multiplayer perspective.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Planetary Annihilation is actually decent now, I haven't tried out Titans so not sure about the expansion.Ashes of the Singularity is coming out soon. Relic is maintaining Company of Heroes 2 and will most likely continue to do so. Warhammer Total War looks much better than the last few games. Blizzard is finishing Starcraft II, but I wouldn't be shocked if they released another Warcraft at some point. 

 

I don't really miss the Red Alert/C&C style of freeform base building and individual units that lack formation options. I played Grey Goo and just don't find that style of game interesting anymore. Same thing happened to me with Diablo style games. 

 

I think what is happening is the old RTS powerhouses are moving on, Westwood is gone and I think EA is done with C&C games. Blizzard has always been slow in releasing games. But in this new indie powered gaming space I wouldn't be surprised to see more small companies try their hand at making a "classic" RTS.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

RTS is really just a term for the interface of managing lots of units

 

there's just a huge difference between management and strategy

 

deciding what to do with resources is strategy. actually performing all the clicks to do those things is not.

and the genre is not so great because there's way too much emphasis on the second part, and Blizzard is a major part of the problem there.

the fact that the starcrafts 'won' and rise of nations 'lost' was basically the end of hope for the genre. ironically, that was largely due to the single player campaigns & cutscenes/storytelling, but the 'why' doesn't really matter

 

if the genre (referring to strategy, not management) wants to thrive, it almost needs to get rid of the interface because it's always a giant barrier between the management part and the strategy part

i don't know how that can happen without some far-future neuroscience tech, so it's probably better to just go turn-based

 

the RTS campaigns are kind of different, but i don't know if 'save/reload until you figure out how to beat each level' really counts as strategy

 

part of the reason Hearthstone was popular is that there just aren't many strategy games to play. I guess board games are probably popular somewhere, but i don't know how PC gamers really get into that.

civ 5 was & is awful. paradox doesn't really make "games". everything else is way too unpopular for multiplayer. and i'm not going to get started on why all these devs are awful at making single player AI that actually works vs strategy gamers...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what is being said here.

 

I've spent the last several months with something lacking for gaming in general, and for me it is the lack of compelling story driven single player campaigns. I don't think this is something specific to the RTS genre though. The types of games I am interested in seem to be emphasising multiplayer or a sandbox style where you have to create your own story. Thats great as far as it goes (for example, I love EU IV), but sometimes I want to held by hand and told a story. Quite often I look at my Steam library and go 'meh' because there are just no great stories for me to find there. I find it odd that I look forward to Telltale's Games pick a path style Walking Dead games.

 

With respect to the RTS genre I am going to agree with Biz - I get a bit frustrated with the micromanagement style that has come out of the Starcraft style of games. Just today I reinstalled Starcraft 2 and damn - I know what I want to do (I watch SC2 tournaments!), but achieving it in the time provided is impossible without serious practice that I am not going to give. It is not strategic at all.

 

I would love to see a modern Kohan style game that pairs back the micro so that once the armies are engaged you have only a few choices - add more troops or retreat. A game where the real battle is the positioning and preparation - professionals study logistics, not tactics. EU IV has a bit of this, but it is too abstract. I can't see such a game eventuating though. And as much as I loved how the Kohan games played, their campaign stories sucked.

 

So I dont see Legacy of the Void as heralding the end to an RTS era, that particular ending happened a few years ago. Legacy of the Void is just very, very late to the party.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I do see this as the final mark of an era but I don't think it's an extinction event. Long 'dead' Sea creatures from the Cambrian era are still turning up in New Zealand alive and well.

We've left the Cambrian eras for sure, the cryptic sea life and armoured fish of the C&C, *Craft, and *Annihilation style games are no longer the dominant forms. They've instead been supplanted by the weird amphibians that are the Lords Management games. But I don't think it's goodbye.

While we're trotting out 'x is dead' examples I'll say that hey did anyone see Chaos and X-Com making a come back? Or the return of classic adventure games?

Maybe classic rts games get a shrunken market? What if they ended up as a niche genre like so many Paradox games? Those still do well even with mid tier budgets.

Wouldn't it be funny if the classic RTS genre got it's own publisher like what Paradox is for 4x history games?

Personally a gift from the ancestors would be another perfect C&C game in the style of Tiberium Sun. But that's thinking pretty wishfully. Blizzard are still thinking about keeping their older titles relevant, playable at least, the Overwatch setting is likely going to host different genres.

People are still releasing content expansions for Age of Empires 2.

Dawn of War 3 is more than likely going to be a thing.

Not many were thinking about Blues Rock until The White Stripes and The Black Keys came and repopularised it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Blizzard had an announcement around hiring a new senior software engineer while talking about their original *craft, and Diablo games. Although I'm not sure if that represents a commitment to update their visuals and/or mechanics rather than just making them compatible for modern computers. Like anyone still playing Diablo 2 now is forcing resolutions higher than say 1024 768 by fluffing with .ini files.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Blizzard had an announcement around hiring a new senior software engineer while talking about their original *craft, and Diablo games. Although I'm not sure if that represents a commitment to update their visuals and/or mechanics rather than just making them compatible for modern computers. Like anyone still playing Diablo 2 now is forcing resolutions higher than say 1024 768 by fluffing with .ini files.

 

They clarified it was only to keep lights on for the old games. No HD remasters.

 

"We need engineers to help maintain our legacy games. We have a history of maintaining our games for many years. Our earlier games are still played and enjoyed today, so we want to continue to maintain them for those communities."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Anyone actually put any time into Legacy of the Void? I really enjoyed the campaigns of the first two parts of Starcraft 2 and would love to know if this new one lives up them.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

the RTS campaigns are kind of different, but i don't know if 'save/reload until you figure out how to beat each level' really counts as strategy

 

part of the reason Hearthstone was popular is that there just aren't many strategy games to play. I guess board games are probably popular somewhere, but i don't know how PC gamers really get into that.

civ 5 was & is awful. paradox doesn't really make "games". everything else is way too unpopular for multiplayer. and i'm not going to get started on why all these devs are awful at making single player AI that actually works vs strategy gamers...

 

I think your assertions are both unqualified, and extremely ungenerous. There are dozens and dozens of strategy games. Not all of them are real time, not all of them are fast paced, but they certainly exist. Browse Steam releases sometime- there are so many that I'm completely overwhelmed by them.

 

Why is Civ 5 awful? Why aren't Paradox products "games"? What does Civ have to do with making an RTS? How popular does something have to be to do multiplayer? I played CoH:Online for months (until it was canceled, in fact) with a tiny community. People still play Warcraft 3 online. I checked Twitch just now, and there are 1200 people watching War3. It's a 13 year old game.

 

Why are the devs awful at making single player AI? Have they always been? Is this recent? Do you see a path to a solution?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think your assertions are both unqualified, and extremely ungenerous. There are dozens and dozens of strategy games. Not all of them are real time, not all of them are fast paced, but they certainly exist. Browse Steam releases sometime- there are so many that I'm completely overwhelmed by them.

 

Why is Civ 5 awful? Why aren't Paradox products "games"? What does Civ have to do with making an RTS? How popular does something have to be to do multiplayer? I played CoH:Online for months (until it was canceled, in fact) with a tiny community. People still play Warcraft 3 online. I checked Twitch just now, and there are 1200 people watching War3. It's a 13 year old game.

 

Why are the devs awful at making single player AI? Have they always been? Is this recent? Do you see a path to a solution?

 

I'm not the original author, but I have opinions!

Civ5 was fun, but it has scale issues, moving large amounts of units or managing larger empires quickly becomes a boring slog. There is also a lack of depth in most of its systems. 

Some people consider Paradox games as 'map painters' or spreadsheets as opposed to games. CKII is great so I don't know what they are talking about.

 

Not sure about AI, some games have pretty solid AI others not so much. Supreme Commander comes to mind as a good one, especially with the saurian mod. I also remember one of the AI types in C&C: Tiberium Wars (guerrilla AI maybe?) that was specifically designed to find the weakest point in your defenses and attack there, build more defenses and the switch targets. 

Most games increase difficulty by giving the AI a head start, a better resource rate and/or faster build times.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think your assertions are both unqualified, and extremely ungenerous. There are dozens and dozens of strategy games. Not all of them are real time, not all of them are fast paced, but they certainly exist. Browse Steam releases sometime- there are so many that I'm completely overwhelmed by them.

 

Why is Civ 5 awful? Why aren't Paradox products "games"? What does Civ have to do with making an RTS? How popular does something have to be to do multiplayer? I played CoH:Online for months (until it was canceled, in fact) with a tiny community. People still play Warcraft 3 online. I checked Twitch just now, and there are 1200 people watching War3. It's a 13 year old game.

 

Why are the devs awful at making single player AI? Have they always been? Is this recent? Do you see a path to a solution?

 

i'm not saying there's a shortage of strategy games

 

i'm saying there's a shortage of good popular online computer strategy games.

lack of alternatives is one reason why some games (eg. hearthstone) get more popular than they would be otherwise

 

starcraft 2 is full of people who don't really enjoy the game but might play it anyways for some time because there's literally nothing else.

i'm not saying it's impossible to play other games in small communities (for example, I still play civ4 multiplayer to this day), but that's a far cry from being accessible or thriving. you need popularity for things like skill-based matchmaking or playing on settings you enjoy to work.

and don't confuse dota with warcraft 3. those are action games with a RTS interface, not strategy games.

 

civ5 and paradox games are the only non-starcraft products with a large enough audience to even attempt multiplayer, but for various reasons they fall short. i don't really mean to single them out for quality reasons, but they're examples picked for popularity reasons.

even if you like the game's design, civ5's problem is simultaneous moves being a "who clicks first" minigame. the games are also too long and unstable.

paradox makes sandboxes where you can do lots of things and sort of simulate history, and some people enjoy that ride. multiplayer basically needs "game-like" victory conditions with more fair starting conditions. and i don't know if those experiences would even be satisfying in the span of a couple hours instead of days. the last time I played EU, you couldn't even win or lose. i'm not sure how that lends itself to competitive play

 

the problem with single player vs. AI is that it's rarely good enough to beat even mediocre players without massive amounts of cheating. once you learn the rules of a game, you basically win 100% of the time. RTS game AI can do a little bit better than turn-based games by being really fast & precise compared to humans, but there usually isn't any strategy mastermind behind that APM. i'm not going to derail the thread further by elaborating on that point

 

RTS is struggling, but if you can find ways to have fun with it more power to you. i just miss the progress and advancement of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Anyone actually put any time into Legacy of the Void? I really enjoyed the campaigns of the first two parts of Starcraft 2 and would love to know if this new one lives up them.

 

The mission design in LotV campaign is stellar as usual so if you liked WoL and HotS, go for it. The story is kinda all over the place but I don't know how much you care about that. I'd say the missions overall are harder than HotS was; I beat HotS on Brutal but I struggled a bit on Hard in LotV. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm likely in a bit of a unique position here, in that I've played all 3 starcraft 2 games over the last few days.  I picked up Legacy of the void to play over thanksgiving, and realized I only got about halfway through wings of liberty and only a couple missions into Heart of the Swarm after playing Legacy's prologue.  At the moment I've played through wings of liberty and heart of the swarm, and am currently 10 missions into legacy of the void.  It's been interesting to see how the games have developed over that time period, and so far Heart of the swarm seems to be the best campaign so far, mainly through the liberal use of Hero units throughout.  This might not be a big deal on the lower difficulty levels (I've been playing on Hard), but the addition of a unit like that makes the combats much more manageable, whereas in the other two campaigns the battles seem to start and end very quickly often before you have the chance to respond, and they rarely get a chance to develop or change over time.  With the addition of hero units your armies are more likely to push or get pushed around, battle lines to form, as opposed to the typical starcraft style where two armies meet and one gets destroyed.

 

So far legacy of the void is quite good, at least in the gameplay department.  The story is as hammy and ridiculous as ever, which I can certainly appreciate but for the most part I found this to be tiresome.  Blizzard has moved away from the idea that upgrades are permanent (such as the evolution missions in HOTS or unit upgrades in WOL) and that added flexibility is a fantastic.  In general, if you liked the previous games Legacy of the void is generally an improvement and something you'll enjoy as well.

 

In playing through all these games I've gotten the sense that RTS games of this type have come about as far as they can and generally need a redesign from the bottom up for the current and next generations.  I can see how few people are willing to engage with these games, as even something as simple as camera control is quite clunky and imprecise when compared with virtually any other style of game around today.  In all the RTS games I've played, it just seems like no one has taken the time to sit down and ask why certain things exist the way they do, or why certain controls are implemented the way they are.  After supposedly 10 years of iteration, even minor things that could serve to smooth out the gameplay (for example rebuilding lost units in a control group, auto-hotkey of production facilities, dragging on the ground to put units into a line vs selecting and moving them individually, etc) haven't been implemented.  It seems like a few improvements were made from Brood war to WOL, but at that point the changes stopped and they began to rely on established ideas.  This isn't necessarily something Blizzard is responsible for, as they generally are the best at making these kinds of games, it's more something that RTS developers have been reticent to change for whatever reason. 

 

The campaign levels have been quite good as has been pointed out, but this always seems to be based around the introduction of a particular unit.  In missions where flying units are introduced there is little in the way of navigable ground, or that ground is littered with cliffs and narrow passageways in an attempt to highlight the unit.  This style in my opinion tends to fall apart once you have access to the whole array of units, but Starcraft 2 seems to get around this by ending the campaign 2-3 missions later.  As fun as the campaign missions have been, I've found myself making more or less the same type of army regardless of the type of mission, typically favoring the tougher units.  I think part of the reason the lords management games have gained in popularity so much is first the large emphasis on combat as opposed to economy, and the great differences in how individual units operate.  Ultimately I feel as though the dimensions of asymmetry, the mechanical depth, and focus of the gameplay have just become stagnant and cumbersome.  While Starcraft 2 is generally the best at squeezing the most variation out of these things, I don't think you're going to get someone who isn't already sold on the formula interested.  RTS seems to be the last genre where requiring the player to do busywork is acceptable, while most other genres have removed this kind of thing or improved their interfaces to accomodate it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm pretty sure Rise Of Nations had "drag a line with mouse to position units in a line or several lines". It might have had other similar features.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Age of Empires 2 had buttons you could click that automatically create formations for your army, and I'm sure other games do too. In StarCraft, its popularity, or rather, perception as a competitive multiplayer game restricts what kind of shortcuts and ease-of-access features the developers could add. Superstars of Brood War were known for their ability to perform numerous manual actions under pressure, and removing that when making its sequel wouldn't sit well with top level players and fans of the competition. 

 

I think Archon Mode is a step in the right direction, where one player can focus on base management and economy, while the other player focuses on combat. I know some people who excel at decision making in the game but don't have the speed to keep up in a battle. And also the opposite where a player has the mechanical skill to control units in a fight effectively but doesn't have the multitasking for macromanagement at the same time, so they'd be a good fit for an Archon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now