Ever since I saw Red Alert at the place of my big cousin, I liked Command & Conquer. Not rts, just Command & Conquer. Starcraft, Warcraft, Battle for Middle Earth, etcetera, they simply do not appeal to me. Yes, I am a true C&C fan! Therefore I chose to not refer to games other than Command & Conquer in my article. Yes, I am aware of those games; no, I am not close minded; they simply don’t appeal to me.
Single Player
I base my article on multiplayer. Sure, single player might be heaps of fun, but not for long. The ideal single player mode for me is one that can be whatever as long as it doesn’t hurt the multiplayer. I have full faith in EALA presenting a top-notch singleplayer mode, I have nothing else to say about this aspect. It doesn't mean that I don't care; of course I'd like a good singleplayer, but it wouldn't be for me since I don't get much fun out of it.
Graphics and sound
Plain and simple, I want the game to look good and sound good. I did not just spend my lifetime savings on a pc with the newest graphics-card and sound systems just to be confronted with the same level of graphics and sound as the game I have been playing for the past 3-4 years. That is unacceptable. Even though I most clearly put the gameplay and its cousins higher on my lists of priorities, graphics and sound are aspects not to be neglected and taken into high consideration! But I do not worry, for every piece of lifeform somehow attached to the genre that is rts whines about graphics, so I sit contently behind my pc waiting to be blown away by a new epic ‘feel’ of adventure provided by top-notch graphics and sound attributes!
Conyard versus Dozers
I have played Red Alert 2 and Yuri’s Revenge since their release, and I never got annoyed by the concept. Obviously because I didn’t know any better, but at the time it worked perfectly. I agree with everyone who states that Dozers > Conyard, but not entirely. I always found the concept of selling your Command Center a bit of a dumb thing to do. I mean, George W. Bush doesn’t sell his White House to operate from a gypsy wagon either, right?! It is a retarded example but a decent analogy! Though I find the old concept to be too slow-paced. Basically, you could build only one unit and one structure at the same time, slowing down the pace of the game and becoming a bit dull at times. I want hardcore action from the word go!! Who doesn’t? But I don’t want players to be able to sell their Command Center either. So I think that the hybrid solution EA came up with is genius. I don’t know the exact details of it, but the Conyard sporting a mini-mcv that you can use to deploy somewhere else to build a base, together with a Crane to build additional buildings there is simply brilliant. No Command Center selling, but no dull moments either. I am completely satisfied with this concept, if it works like I think it does.
Gameplay
What it’s all about. Bad gameplay = bad game. The gameplay has to be fast and fluid. It has to have room for clear distinguishments between experienced gamers and newbies. The following aspects come to mind:
Response and pathfinding
When I order my unit to move to the left, it should move to the left. It should not stay idle, it should not move to the right and it should also not move to the left but a minute after I gave the order to move to the left. I simply want my units to respond. Fast. They should also not have their own will. With that I mean incidents like colliding with an ally unit, rotating 360 degrees, then rotating 360 degrees back and wait for further orders without doing anything similar to the order I had given! I would like to see my units respond fast and fluid with decent pathfinding along the way.
Unit-mixing
Simply put: constant building of one unit, otherwise known as spam, shouldn’t win you games. Unit mixing brings depth to the game: you have to think ahead about what unit to make, instead of mindless spam until you have overpowered your enemy. Feels good, doesn’t it, pressing the same hotkey a hundred times over while rally-pointing and point-click destructing your way to victory. Well, not to me.
ZH is a good example of how it shouldn’t be done. The danger lies in the accessibility of too few units, forcing those units to be multi-purpose. A fine example would be the GLA Stealth General. Basically, he relies solely on Quads with the minor assistance of RPG Troopers. Quads to counter aircraft, Quads to counter infantry and yes, Quads with a little help of RPGs to counter tanks as well. This totally kills rts, it should force you to think ahead! This way, no matter the situation, building Quads is the way to go. No experience needed, everyone can do this.
Lag
Yes, lag. Not so much the fact that there is lag, because it is inevitable. Wherever there is the thing known as ‘connection’ there is lag, because nothing is perfect. And I accept that! But then the developers coming up with factions that rely on units that on their turn rely on lag-free games in order to function properly is ridiculous.
ZH for the example-library again. All the USA factions rely heavily on the Humvee. Well, Rockvee, because it needs Missile Defenders inside to be of any use. They have low stamina, thus can’t stand much fire before they succumb to it. Instead, they rely on speed and range to get their job done. But you know, this is quite a feat to accomplish when your Humvees don’t respond in time because the game lags as hell. Suddenly, factions based on mediocre ranged but powerful units counter everything and are unstoppable. This shouldn’t be the case and should definitely be taken into consideration when creating an rts. It can make a whole faction totally useless when skill hasn’t even come to question yet.
Macro
On one hand, macro is about decision-making. Which unit to build? Harass or expand? Attack or defend? When to tech? How to adapt to the opponent? These are important questions you should be asking yourself over and over again when playing an rts. None of the questions I presented here should be absent, they all make for a nice in depth strategic game with the word ‘mindgame’ coming to surface as well. If you make too many units and don’t watch your economy, you will end up low on cash and will soon be overwhelmed by your opponent because he does have the means to battle on. If you focus too much on economy, you might lose the battle early on because you have too little units to defend yourself with. Also, thinking ahead in terms of units plays an important role as well, hence the term ‘mindgame’. When you sport an army with solely tanks and no anti-air, you can bet your life on it that your enemy is going to make some air units. So think ahead and get some anti-air to counter his aircraft with.
Economy
On the other hand, macro can be too present. I have heard, but not more than that since I haven’t actually played the game, about AoE3 being a game too focussed on economy. You need a setup-time of five minutes to even get started, and have to watch your economy at all times, seeing as it exists out of multiple resources. Of course you have to watch it, it needs to be protected, but you shouldn’t need to manage it. Little strategic insight comes to surface when managing such complex economy. It is unnecessary, annoying and shallow. One source of economy, automanaging itself with only the need to protect it, not managing it, should be the case.
The secondary economy should work along similar lines. It should be based on the fundamentals of primary economy, as in not losing the essentiality of map control and not rendering the Harvesters useless when the primary economy has run dry. I hate to have useless units driving around being cannon fodder.
Micro
Obviously. Micro would be the aspect that most clearly distinguishes professional players from average gamers. It is the difference between theory and practice, the difference between only knowing what to do and actually being able to execute it. So an rts should support this aspect fully.
I remember Red Alert 2 being nearly completely about one unit: The Rhino Tank. While the game did feature the ability to withdraw damaged or targetted units in order to save them and let your other units dish out the damage while your enemy kept chasing the withdrawn unit without success, it didn’t feature much else.
ZH had lots of units that were extremely micro-dependent. The two that immediately come to mind are the USA Missile Defender and the China ECM Tank. The USA Missile Defender, MD, had this special ability called ‘laserlock’. You could lock onto a target using this special ability when pressing L, so that your MD dished out loads more damage while also being a lot more accurate. But since you had to (1) select MD, (2) press L, (3) select target, (4) get out of laserlock-mode when the target was destroyed, (5) press L again and (6) select next target, it was quite a micro-intensive unit which had a lot of potential when in the hands of a professional player while being pretty crappy in the hands of a newbie. In the same trend, the China ECM Tank sported two abilities: it could disable a unit, or it could deflect rockets. But not at the same time! Thus you had to keep the ECM moving in order to keep deflecting rockets, or select the target you want to have disabled. This becomes increasingly micro-intensive when you have multiple ECM Tanks in your army, offering much depth and the ability to put yourself into an advantaged position through superior micro.
Multi-tasking
Multi-tasking is perhaps the toughest part of an rts game to master. It involves the combination of map awareness and micro. Whereas a first-person shooter solely focusses on micro and reflexes, being so because you only have one unit to play with in the first place, rts is all about multiple places. You should have the means to be able to micromanage multiple units or small armies at once. This is very necessary on higher skill levels because it forces your opponent to do the same. If you are able to micro at two or more fronts at once and your opponent is not, he will be at a severe disadvantage because he just can’t keep up and will lose at least one of the two battles.
To support this aspect, an rts needs to have units that can dish out damage. There are rts games out there that require huge armies to accomplish something. In my opinion, this completely kills the game. If one unit on it’s own is useless, then what are you supposed to do in the first couple of minutes of the game? And furthermore, there is no difference between someone that can micro multiple units in different areas at the same time and someone that can not, which makes the game shallow. It should also be noted that maps that have only one entrance to one’s base are the epitome of shallowness as well, for obvious reasons stated above.
Hotkeys and numbering
I remember buying The First Decade, wanting to try out at least the original Command & Conquer because I had never played it before. Even though it looked good and was undoubtly an extremely nice game for it’s time, it simply lacked functions! I wasn’t even able to select every unit of the same kind on the screen, killing micro purposes completely. In Zero Hour you just have to double click them, which is obviously better.
Notice the difference in actions required when comparing a hotkey-based control to a select-and-click control in this scenario, taken from Zero Hour: You have a Tunnel Network and are about to evacuate units to counter the incoming enemy units with. * Hotkey-based: I numbered my Tunnel #0, thus double press “0” to scroll to this part of the map and to select the Tunnel – press “V” to evacuate – press “Q” to select all units on screen - attack, * Select-and-click based: Scroll to the Tunnel – select the Tunnel – click the evacuate icon – select all your units – attack. No contest.
Evacuate, deploy, selecting same-type units, spread, home and many others, they should all be there in order for me to function on a decent level in an rts game.
Also the numbering system is extremely important. While the keyboard offers #1 till 0 to use for numbering purposes, I often found myself coming short of ones; especially when playing in games where I had lots of aircraft that needed individual numbering. I would recommend that they remove the bookmarks because they are useless (numbering does the same, but more) and include the F-keys into numbering, expanding the total to 22. I would like that!
Experience system
The system used in Command & Conquer Generals and Zero Hour is amazing. You have to watch out for unnecessary losses at all times, because the enemy gains experience when killing units to unlock devastating general powers and unleash them upon you. It is simply brilliant, because it promotes careful and precise micromanagement. Every lost unit counts. Even though the general points themselves are too much of a point-click destruction nature, the whole concept of giving off experience when losing units is awesome and should definitely not be thrown away.
Well this kind of wraps it up. I am so looking forward to C&C3 because I feel that it totally lives up to my demands. Hope to be seeing you all there!
Yours sincerely,
Sparky
This post has been edited by Sparky: Jan 30 2007, 18:27 PM
Nice read, never really cared too much for good gfx on games, but I guess if some of us (like me) need to buy a new pc to handle it then It better look good
Good read Sparky. Being a (hobbyst) RTS designer myself I really love reading players perceptions and vision about all those ever important aspects of gameplay and balance. Thumbs up!
I also care for graphics and music. I remember the first time I played gens I thought the game looked absolutely fantastic and its a great memory.
As for music. We know Frank Klepakci makes great music and RA wasn`t RA without Hellmarch.
About the lag though. I have always found that China is at a disadvantage against GLA when there is lag. The problem is that your already slow units react even slower and clumsier (Imagine a technical coming out of the dark) and before you know it 4 terrorist already blew up your WF or a BB did a drive-by shooting and owned your shit.
Against USA it is probably less bad because humvees die fast and they have to turn around and accelerate and stuff which takes time. You would think that that applies to the technical as well? Well I think not because the technical turns around very fast, reacts fast and is even faster than a humvee. Also it isn`t used much to harass units but more to deploy some units and leave.
all in all good article but what with the hate for selling the command center. It gave u some early cash and u couldnt use all of ur powers so it was fairly balanced, just like an RTS should be.
all in all good article but what with the hate for selling the command center. It gave u some early cash and u couldnt use all of ur powers so it was fairly balanced, just like an RTS should be.
P.S just throwing in a smiley for the heck of it
If that was a counter argument, you missed my point. I agree with you, but I dislike the concept, not the result n terms of gameplay. Playing without radar is an advanced skill which I like, but you may as well have separate radar buildings and not choose to build them.
I dislike it because it doesn't make sense, that's all. This was never EA's intention.
ZH for the example-library again. All the USA factions rely heavily on the Humvee. Well, Rockvee, because it needs Missile Defenders inside to be of any use. They have low stamina, thus can’t stand much fire before they succumb to it. Instead, they rely on speed and range to get their job done. But you know, this is quite a feat to accomplish when your Humvees don’t respond in time because the game lags as hell. Suddenly, factions based on mediocre ranged but powerful units counter everything and are unstoppable. This shouldn’t be the case and should definitely be taken into consideration when creating an rts. It can make a whole faction totally useless when skill hasn’t even come to question yet.
GLA relies on speed as well but with lag GLA is only harder to beat because u don`t move your units on time and they get owned by Bikes, Battlebusses etc.
If that was a counter argument, you missed my point. I agree with you, but I dislike the concept, not the result n terms of gameplay. Playing without radar is an advanced skill which I like, but you may as well have separate radar buildings and not choose to build them.
I dislike it because it doesn't make sense, that's all. This was never EA's intention.
Playing without radar is like cutting your arm off and fighting with 1 arm instead of 2. Radar brings something extra. Also u dont have to scroll around like crazy, u can click on the radar to go anywhere.
Selling your C&C was way more effective than not selling it so it wasn`t really balanced too.
Single Player
I base my article on multiplayer. Sure, single player might be heaps of fun, but not for long. The ideal single player mode for me is one that can be whatever as long as it doesn’t hurt the multiplayer. I have full faith in EALA presenting a top-notch singleplayer mode, I have nothing else to say about this aspect. It doesn't mean that I don't care; of course I'd like a good singleplayer, but it wouldn't be for me since I don't get much fun out of it.
Graphics and sound
Plain and simple, I want the game to look good and sound good. I did not just spend my lifetime savings on a pc with the newest graphics-card and sound systems just to be confronted with the same level of graphics and sound as the game I have been playing for the past 3-4 years. That is unacceptable. Even though I most clearly put the gameplay and its cousins higher on my lists of priorities, graphics and sound are aspects not to be neglected and taken into high consideration! But I do not worry, for every piece of lifeform somehow attached to the genre that is rts whines about graphics, so I sit contently behind my pc waiting to be blown away by a new epic ‘feel’ of adventure provided by top-notch graphics and sound attributes!
Conyard versus Dozers
I have played Red Alert 2 and Yuri’s Revenge since their release, and I never got annoyed by the concept. Obviously because I didn’t know any better, but at the time it worked perfectly. I agree with everyone who states that Dozers > Conyard, but not entirely. I always found the concept of selling your Command Center a bit of a dumb thing to do. I mean, George W. Bush doesn’t sell his White House to operate from a gypsy wagon either, right?! It is a retarded example but a decent analogy!
Though I find the old concept to be too slow-paced. Basically, you could build only one unit and one structure at the same time, slowing down the pace of the game and becoming a bit dull at times. I want hardcore action from the word go!! Who doesn’t? But I don’t want players to be able to sell their Command Center either. So I think that the hybrid solution EA came up with is genius. I don’t know the exact details of it, but the Conyard sporting a mini-mcv that you can use to deploy somewhere else to build a base, together with a Crane to build additional buildings there is simply brilliant. No Command Center selling, but no dull moments either. I am completely satisfied with this concept, if it works like I think it does.
Gameplay
What it’s all about. Bad gameplay = bad game.
The gameplay has to be fast and fluid. It has to have room for clear distinguishments between experienced gamers and newbies. The following aspects come to mind:
- Response and pathfinding
When I order my unit to move to the left, it should move to the left. It should not stay idle, it should not move to the right and it should also not move to the left but a minute after I gave the order to move to the left. I simply want my units to respond. Fast. They should also not have their own will. With that I mean incidents like colliding with an ally unit, rotating 360 degrees, then rotating 360 degrees back and wait for further orders without doing anything similar to the order I had given! I would like to see my units respond fast and fluid with decent pathfinding along the way.- Unit-mixing
Simply put: constant building of one unit, otherwise known as spam, shouldn’t win you games. Unit mixing brings depth to the game: you have to think ahead about what unit to make, instead of mindless spam until you have overpowered your enemy. Feels good, doesn’t it, pressing the same hotkey a hundred times over while rally-pointing and point-click destructing your way to victory. Well, not to me.ZH is a good example of how it shouldn’t be done. The danger lies in the accessibility of too few units, forcing those units to be multi-purpose. A fine example would be the GLA Stealth General. Basically, he relies solely on Quads with the minor assistance of RPG Troopers. Quads to counter aircraft, Quads to counter infantry and yes, Quads with a little help of RPGs to counter tanks as well. This totally kills rts, it should force you to think ahead! This way, no matter the situation, building Quads is the way to go. No experience needed, everyone can do this.
- Lag
Yes, lag. Not so much the fact that there is lag, because it is inevitable. Wherever there is the thing known as ‘connection’ there is lag, because nothing is perfect. And I accept that! But then the developers coming up with factions that rely on units that on their turn rely on lag-free games in order to function properly is ridiculous.ZH for the example-library again. All the USA factions rely heavily on the Humvee. Well, Rockvee, because it needs Missile Defenders inside to be of any use. They have low stamina, thus can’t stand much fire before they succumb to it. Instead, they rely on speed and range to get their job done. But you know, this is quite a feat to accomplish when your Humvees don’t respond in time because the game lags as hell. Suddenly, factions based on mediocre ranged but powerful units counter everything and are unstoppable. This shouldn’t be the case and should definitely be taken into consideration when creating an rts. It can make a whole faction totally useless when skill hasn’t even come to question yet.
- Macro
On one hand, macro is about decision-making. Which unit to build? Harass or expand? Attack or defend? When to tech? How to adapt to the opponent?These are important questions you should be asking yourself over and over again when playing an rts. None of the questions I presented here should be absent, they all make for a nice in depth strategic game with the word ‘mindgame’ coming to surface as well.
If you make too many units and don’t watch your economy, you will end up low on cash and will soon be overwhelmed by your opponent because he does have the means to battle on. If you focus too much on economy, you might lose the battle early on because you have too little units to defend yourself with. Also, thinking ahead in terms of units plays an important role as well, hence the term ‘mindgame’. When you sport an army with solely tanks and no anti-air, you can bet your life on it that your enemy is going to make some air units. So think ahead and get some anti-air to counter his aircraft with.
- Economy
On the other hand, macro can be too present. I have heard, but not more than that since I haven’t actually played the game, about AoE3 being a game too focussed on economy. You need a setup-time of five minutes to even get started, and have to watch your economy at all times, seeing as it exists out of multiple resources. Of course you have to watch it, it needs to be protected, but you shouldn’t need to manage it. Little strategic insight comes to surface when managing such complex economy. It is unnecessary, annoying and shallow. One source of economy, automanaging itself with only the need to protect it, not managing it, should be the case.The secondary economy should work along similar lines. It should be based on the fundamentals of primary economy, as in not losing the essentiality of map control and not rendering the Harvesters useless when the primary economy has run dry. I hate to have useless units driving around being cannon fodder.
- Micro
Obviously. Micro would be the aspect that most clearly distinguishes professional players from average gamers. It is the difference between theory and practice, the difference between only knowing what to do and actually being able to execute it. So an rts should support this aspect fully.I remember Red Alert 2 being nearly completely about one unit: The Rhino Tank. While the game did feature the ability to withdraw damaged or targetted units in order to save them and let your other units dish out the damage while your enemy kept chasing the withdrawn unit without success, it didn’t feature much else.
ZH had lots of units that were extremely micro-dependent. The two that immediately come to mind are the USA Missile Defender and the China ECM Tank.
The USA Missile Defender, MD, had this special ability called ‘laserlock’. You could lock onto a target using this special ability when pressing L, so that your MD dished out loads more damage while also being a lot more accurate. But since you had to (1) select MD, (2) press L, (3) select target, (4) get out of laserlock-mode when the target was destroyed, (5) press L again and (6) select next target, it was quite a micro-intensive unit which had a lot of potential when in the hands of a professional player while being pretty crappy in the hands of a newbie.
In the same trend, the China ECM Tank sported two abilities: it could disable a unit, or it could deflect rockets. But not at the same time! Thus you had to keep the ECM moving in order to keep deflecting rockets, or select the target you want to have disabled. This becomes increasingly micro-intensive when you have multiple ECM Tanks in your army, offering much depth and the ability to put yourself into an advantaged position through superior micro.
- Multi-tasking
Multi-tasking is perhaps the toughest part of an rts game to master. It involves the combination of map awareness and micro. Whereas a first-person shooter solely focusses on micro and reflexes, being so because you only have one unit to play with in the first place, rts is all about multiple places. You should have the means to be able to micromanage multiple units or small armies at once. This is very necessary on higher skill levels because it forces your opponent to do the same. If you are able to micro at two or more fronts at once and your opponent is not, he will be at a severe disadvantage because he just can’t keep up and will lose at least one of the two battles.To support this aspect, an rts needs to have units that can dish out damage. There are rts games out there that require huge armies to accomplish something. In my opinion, this completely kills the game. If one unit on it’s own is useless, then what are you supposed to do in the first couple of minutes of the game? And furthermore, there is no difference between someone that can micro multiple units in different areas at the same time and someone that can not, which makes the game shallow.
It should also be noted that maps that have only one entrance to one’s base are the epitome of shallowness as well, for obvious reasons stated above.
- Hotkeys and numbering
I remember buying The First Decade, wanting to try out at least the original Command & Conquer because I had never played it before. Even though it looked good and was undoubtly an extremely nice game for it’s time, it simply lacked functions! I wasn’t even able to select every unit of the same kind on the screen, killing micro purposes completely. In Zero Hour you just have to double click them, which is obviously better.Notice the difference in actions required when comparing a hotkey-based control to a select-and-click control in this scenario, taken from Zero Hour:
You have a Tunnel Network and are about to evacuate units to counter the incoming enemy units with.
* Hotkey-based: I numbered my Tunnel #0, thus double press “0” to scroll to this part of the map and to select the Tunnel – press “V” to evacuate – press “Q” to select all units on screen - attack,
* Select-and-click based: Scroll to the Tunnel – select the Tunnel – click the evacuate icon – select all your units – attack.
No contest.
Evacuate, deploy, selecting same-type units, spread, home and many others, they should all be there in order for me to function on a decent level in an rts game.
Also the numbering system is extremely important. While the keyboard offers #1 till 0 to use for numbering purposes, I often found myself coming short of ones; especially when playing in games where I had lots of aircraft that needed individual numbering. I would recommend that they remove the bookmarks because they are useless (numbering does the same, but more) and include the F-keys into numbering, expanding the total to 22. I would like that!
- Experience system
The system used in Command & Conquer Generals and Zero Hour is amazing. You have to watch out for unnecessary losses at all times, because the enemy gains experience when killing units to unlock devastating general powers and unleash them upon you. It is simply brilliant, because it promotes careful and precise micromanagement. Every lost unit counts. Even though the general points themselves are too much of a point-click destruction nature, the whole concept of giving off experience when losing units is awesome and should definitely not be thrown away.Well this kind of wraps it up. I am so looking forward to C&C3 because I feel that it totally lives up to my demands. Hope to be seeing you all there!
Yours sincerely,
Sparky
This post has been edited by Sparky: Jan 30 2007, 18:27 PM
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