|
Sam Bass, lead designer on Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, has worked at Electronic Arts Los Angeles on the Westwood-originated series for a long time, and has seen the audience for RTS games shrink over the years.
He says this game, developed in parallel to other installments in the series, is a conscious effort to save the RTS genre from itself -- to keep it from becoming the domain of only a completely hardcore audience, as has happened to the flight sim genre.
While StarCraft II will undoubtedly be one of the biggest releases of the year, this is a genre that is struggling to evolve with the times, suggests Bass. In this interview with Gamasutra, he describes how the team approached a design that will satisfy both new, inexperienced players and series veterans at the same time.
How long have you been working as an RTS designer at EALA?
Sam Bass: I came to EA in 2002, and I did Medal of Honor for awhile, then I moved over to the RTS group with Battle for Middle-Earth II. I've been a senior or a lead designer on all our games since then.
What was the genesis of this particular project? It's being painted as something with a unique direction -- more evolutionary gameplay mechanics, and the last game in this series.
SB: C&C4 is interesting, because it has been a skunkworks project for a couple of years. We did C&C3 in 2007, then we moved on to Kane's Wrath, the expansion pack, and Red Alert 3, but at the same time we had a little skunkworks team developing C&C4.
We figured, if we're going to do a Command & Conquer 4, we didn't just want to do C&C3 but with higher resolution, and trot out Kane again and go, "Look! Kane!"
We wanted to actually come up with different forms of gameplay within the RTS paradigm -- keep the C&C elements of fast gameplay and lots of units, but adding more team play elements, objective-based multiplayer elements. We wanted to see what we could do. It's gone through a ton of revisions before we actually started full development on this [incarnation], which was about two years ago.
What was your role during those early times, when it was overlapping with Kane's Wrath and the rest?
SB: I was actually the lead on Kane's Wrath when the skunkworks team was doing it. We actually kept borrowing people from that. (Laughing) It's been in pre-production and discovery phases for a couple years as we worked it out. We didn't want to just go, "Hey! Here's this new thing!" until we were sure it worked and it was fun, because we do have a lot of new elements in the game compared to previous ones.
That does always seem to be a particular concern with RTS. When you look at the most well-known RTS series -- C&C, Warcraft, and particularly StarCraft -- they actually have relatively few sequels considering how long they've been around. If they were any other genre, like action games, they would probably have three times as many entries in them by now. That must make it all the tougher to decide, "We're really going to change direction with this one."
SB: Exactly. It's also the conclusion of the Tiberium saga. So it was a really big deal. We wanted it to be weighty; we didn't want it to be just another sequel. Command & Conquer has been a franchise that I've loved since I first started out as a game developer. The first one came out when I had my first development job and nearly caused my first game to not ship, because we were playing too much C&C.
Back in '95?
SB: Right. So we approached it with a great deal of seriousness, asking ourselves, "What are we going to do with it?" We wanted to move RTS forward a little bit, because the central RTS paradigm of "build your base, do some harvesting, build some units, go kill the other guy" has been around a very long time and, compared to other genres, hasn't evolved significantly. We're starting to see some different evolutions from the various developers now.
I'd say Relic is doing really interesting work in bringing evolution to the genre.
SB: Yeah, Relic's doing some really interesting stuff; they're bringing in a lot of RPG direction with their games. We wanted to see can we keep the RTS-style "build a bunch of tanks and blow stuff up" fun, but also add a more class-based approach.
One of the problems -- maybe I wouldn't say "problems," but one of the things about classic C&C play is that it favors rushing -- building a bunch of tanks and moving in fast, doing micro-play where you're really good at clicking a thousand times a second. Our lead balance designer Jeremy Feasel clicks so fast I cannot see his fingers. I'm not that guy; I like to build the base. I'm a bit of a turtle.
We thought, "Can we come up with different ways to play, where the guys who want to rush can still rush, but it's actually tactically or strategically valid to play in a more base-building or defensive way?"
|
Printer-Friendly Version
Well there's your problem right there. Trying to please everyone.
The thing that has always done in RTS - that has made it disconnect with ordinary people - is the artificial notion of building your forces while you are in the middle of a battle. Since it doesn't happen out there, people have to be indoctrinated into it. It's an alien concept. Besides - it doesn't reward strategy gameplay; rather, it rewards fast keyboarding.
Far better to go back to Chess and start over.
For example, my fiance is not a gamer. Yet, Warhammer Online opened up MMO's (PvP especially) because of it's implementation: she really enjoyed sitting behind healing everyone on her Zealot because it was easy to do, fun, and did not require a huge grind of any sort. Likewise, Team Fortress 2 opened up the hardcore world of online FPS for her as well because of the Medic class. I tried (forEVER) to get her into the game, and she'd finally buckle and play...and get owned. The Medic class fixed that.
I think this "support" class will be a great way to introduce more casual gamers (or at least hardcore gamer's girlfriends/boyfriends) into the RTS genre. With this approach (think TF2, but an RTS) I believe they will be successful in appealing to the hardcore, and the casual...it's not like its never been done before.
My one fear is: will "objective based" multiplayer be like...capture the flag? King of the Hill?
It's not hard to imagine the End of RTS when you consider the direction it is being pushed. =/
I think the genre is not dead, just not too many companies out there building these games. The first person shooter movement is as strong as ever, with no end in sight. The RTS crowd is aging (30 +), however the industry needs to teach the younger generation of players to think, to have long-term strategy when playing, plus these games do have countless hours of replay value. They are not dead, just on life support.
Use single player as a training ground to help grind some mechanics through use of fast paced mini game sorta battles. Build units well = high score for you = practice for macro. Little fast battles to practice micro. Make it all feel fast and fun like a 2D arcade game with tons of implicit depth. Then players can make the connection that unit grouping works this way or faster production or expansion = more units = more fun without needing to sit down and carry the 1. Make a background story to being a fieldmarshal. Teach marshaling and how to be a BFCO. Players should feel like kids who go ' oh well I have XYZ' and 'well i have xyz AND k' and to that the other answers and it's like a card games excitement. Translate that for victory.
I hope EALA gets another chance to make an RTS. It just needs to do strategic choices well and needs much better single player to go with the great dramatic story elements that only a company like blizz or EA can bring to the table.
I think we as an industry screwed up when the RTS became one of the key genres of gaming. Starcraft (Warcraft) and C&C are the long running staple franchises, and are great games. But too many people made the mistake of thinking the market could sustain multiple major franchises. Unlike the FPS and Platformer genres which is filled with many successful franchises and unique directions, RTS is a micro genre with very little to differentiate. Even fighting games have more long running major sustainable franchises than the RTS genre.
That's not to say there aren't many great RTS, your Total Annihilation's, Trash, etc. But we fell victim to multiplayer, tech trees, and hotkeys, and have a result been repackaging the same core gameplay for years now.
What should have happened is we should have pushed the parent genre, Strategy games. Your Civilizations, your Heroes of Might and Magic, board games like Catan and Carcassonne, as well as your lightweight RTS like Outpost Kaloki and Galcon. Then maybe we'd have a flourishing super diverse strategy genre full of turn based, real time, and everything in-between. I'm always saddened when I hear a developer has decided to make an RTS. The general audience wants Starcraft and C&C, not your game.
My 2 cents.
Still Relic is doing a great job as well :)
I hope EA will just stop making RTS games they are killing the market for it!
I agree with Tim, trying to focus on everything so it appeals to a wider audience is a bad thing.
Ok I'm a loooong time C&C fan (got into RTS with Dune II) and RTS player, I've played them all along with many other strategy games along the way. Why, oh why would you put so many experimental game designs ideas in a game that CONCLUDES the story that HARDCORE C&C players started and played through!? I was really looking forward to the conclusion of the story yet I will not pick this game up. I mean go for it on the game after C&C4, which would have a new story and thus a better game to draw in new players, but don't alienate your core fan base now.
The decisions of the game designs with C&C4 really screwed the pooch in my opinion. I play a lot of games, game art & design alumni, but I've just found things clicked playing RTS games due to my personality and how my brain works. I've played Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, C&C, Warcraft, Starcraft, Company of Heroes, and Rise of Nations games over the years because their design clicked. C&C4 sorry doesn't due to the mashup of design issue implemented into the project.
Hate to keep going here but I'm just going to throw this out there. If you wanted it to be more playable to newcomers, thus implementing in the respawning design idea, than why not turn respawning off for higher difficulties where say a hardcore RTS player would play on? Seems like a simple design issue solution and just sloppy/lazy dev team. Taking out the core gameplay element, harvesting Tiberium, was also a huge evolution in the wrong direction.
By the way I've been playing a lot of Dune 2000 recently, Westwood you will be missed.
Thats what i can say to EA about whole C&C ! Old good gameplay of series worked so well, so better gfx, new storyline and some minor improvements is simply what we all needed.
Now this game turned into something else what claims to be C&C, but totally do not match to what we used to consider as C&C.
Only thing from C&C here is Storyline and names, the rest is different game which seems not enjoyable for me. Game is simply fcucked up now. Terrible game design mistakes + this new stupid trend "no free play via LAN = no LAN at all" and even worst trend "hey lets make our game work when internnet connection is online and we dont give a muck about internet connection issues, random drops and poor countries that have dial-up modems yet and peoples who are in travels with their laptops without constant internet connection" = i will not buy this terrible game, wiill take it as present only or will pirate it, at least with crack i will be able to play it on my laptop when im traveling and have no internet connection .
I am part of a gaming group associated with government employees ect and those of us that enjoy strategy games in our opinion havent had a decent RTS since Empire Earth or Rise of Nations.
I will speak for the group and even my personal friends and say that RTS games today and the mechanics that they employ are not fun and from what I have tried to experience have no long term User Base.
We constantly talk about what would make game x better and it really seems to come down to these common elements.
EPIC Scope.. B.C. ---> Future
Random Seeded Maps
Building a Nation (Expansion): and planning strategic resource and military installations. (To be specific resources that are seeded randomly as well)
Those (3) things come up almost everytime we get to talking about RTS games and whats wrong with todays games in my opinion. I personally like the AOE series although its not EPIC in scope. (The maps were painfully too small) Rise of Nations and Empire Earth (the original) the rest of the series got hit in the head trying to innovate.
Im just pointing this out from a gamers perspective and will say I can represent a dozen or so like minded gamers among friends and a gaming group I am associated with.
Last game we tried to play World At War. Lost its appeal in approx. weeks and we moved on. We have tried just about everything.
Everybody complains about lack of innovation and recycling the same mechanics over and over again as a general rule, and now, without ever giving it a chance, we are upset about EA not repackaging the same old gameplay and trying something substantially different.
RTS's are in desperate need Change. I have put more hours into RTS's than any other genre, but for a couple of years now I haven't had much interest in RTS's (with a couple of exceptions) because it seems like I will have to learn a whole new system just to keep doing the same stuff I have been doing since Warcraft 2.
The future of RTS: Online videogame.
Regarding the game-play: Obviously all we born with games like CIV-Dune-AgeEmpire-Starcraft; we know the tech tree, the resource mechanic, the bases are there and we want more. But what about the new player? You need a game allowing different speeds, different mechanic in the same context. It should be a multipath game; the gamers must choice their preference between more logistic management or tactical approach, micromanagement and high level decision… etc… so not easy, and quite long for discussion.
I do agree with Victor in the sense that RTS is not a profitable business any more. RTS are far too easy to pirate and have no real added value for the original buyer.
I'm an RTS lover and its one of my favourite genres to game design and develop, and the real challenge its to make it fun and deep enough for the player, keeping it balanced and interesting(as it is with most games). Adding value to an RTS depends on its sustainability and balanced gaming.
My 2 cents.
I have no affinity for C&C specifically, so I don't care what horrors may be enacted upon its legacy. But, I think the introduction of RPG elements to RTS was a disaster in the form of WCIII. It exacerbated the main issue that finally turned me away from one of my favorite genres, that is that they have evolved into uninteresting click-sports that have little to do with strategic thinking. Tactical at best.
The other thing that ruined RTSs for me was Total War, specifically the morale mechanic common to all the titles in the series. Once your lil' troopers have morale, everything becomes much less abstract and more interesting and realistic. For tactical, strategic, and logistic depth nothing beats 'em. I do realize there's little in the way of mass market appeal to these games, but they do scratch the itch of this armchair general better than any RTS has in years.
No profit in non-online RTS's? How is it, then, that Warcraft III still frequently takes spots in the top 10 selling PC games, despite being ridiculously easy to pirate. Company of Heroes was also a hit, and, though I could be wrong, I don't think that it forced online play.
The RTS genre has tons of profit potential, but there's very little room for clones and unpolished games. Action-adventure or RPG games are typically consumed within a couple weeks, leaving the player looking for a new one, while RTS's, on the other hand, are usually played for months or even years.
There's still plenty of profit to be made in the RTS genre but you have to offer something that's both high quality and unique. It's one genre where the same gameplay with a different skin and story just doesn't cut it.
What he said. :) I'd pay good money for a souped up version of Steambirds.
i thought Dawn of War 1 did everything right, and had a morale system as well. it didn't really add anything new, yet it was such a complete, polished well designed game it didnt matter. it was the ultimate RTS for me.
WCIII offered a different style of gameplay in an RTS: Fun for some, less so for others. By not simply being Starcraft with a different skin, it was able to co-exist with other RTS's, some people prefering one and some the other. That's exactly what games should do.
As for Dawn of War, it brought some very significant new stuff to the table. Reinforcing your units on the fly made DoW a game of continuous pitched battles, rather than occasional battles separated by long periods of base building and minor skirmishing, which is what most other RTS's are. Likewise, the way DoW gave most units both close combat and ranged attacks (and the tactics that resulted from using the right one for different situations) was also a major part of the game that I'd never seen in an RTS before, at least in that style. The way their changes all worked together made it a completely different experience than you could find in any other game that I was aware of.
We do have one point of agreement: Dawn of War is awesome.
i could swear ive seen similar ways of reinforcing units before DoW, just never that well (though i cant think of one off the top of my head.) they just really had the basic elements of RTS games mastered.
i never played part 2 because it seemed too much like the WCIII route and i wasnt interested. i may get around to picking it up one day if its any good, but it didnt look like my kind of game.
Some of this I swear is a result of game critics panning good execution in favor of original concepts even when they're horribly implemented.
My 2 cents :
I think RTS devs chased after DoWs success with streamlining the model and hurt themselves. DoW II's heavy reliance on micro is really monotonous - more so than the base building and tech advancement that they tried to streamline this go-round.
classic RTS is about efficiency and systems management more than combat itself. Sure there is combat, but typically the combat is also about efficiency and sustainability. I think its quite possible to expand that system in ways that are meaningful, intuitive, and fun for players without rehashing the same game over and over again. The trend towards heavy micro (combat) oriented RTS makes the game little more than an excruciatingly limited combat platform.
Adding classes, progressive or RPG elements, loot, etc. can deepen the fighting as well as the tech / econ / build system, but I think you're taking the S out of the RTS if you try to do away with, streamline, or oversimplify the systems management aspects.
Each C&C has been overly-simplified, so I lost interest in the series. C+C: Generals was one of my favorite games a while back as well.
If EA stops making RTS games the genre isn't going to die! The RTS genre has a lot of potential but trying to appeal to FPS crowds, or RPG crowds, isn't the way to go. By trying to please everyone you are going to please no one.
It'd be smarter to reinvent the genre with complexity and expansion of ideas, not the consolization and simplification. I'm not sure how sales were for BattleForge but that seemed like a good idea to me, with the micro-transactions.
In comparison, C&C4 is just a mess.
I believe COH is the greatest RTS ever, even if sometimes it may be a bit unbalanced. As a fan of that game i might be biased, but here's some things that i would really like to see in more (multiplayer focused) RTS games.
-just a few dozen units on the field. This makes you care about your troops.
-a cover system. Any RTS should have this in my opinion.
-early units keep value (sometimes only when upgraded or when employed in battlefield preparation)
-no god units. Even the heaviest tank can be taken out by some cheap AT equipped infantry when unsupported. This leads to a much bigger need for combined arms tactics.
-maps are not wide-open spaces with just a few obstacles. They got much more character to them without being too bottlenecked.
-Not too much rock-scissors-paper. Most infantry can be equipped with some kind of AT and even a veteran mortar crew in cover can hold out some time versus enemies. (The RUSE beta really suffers from this IMO)
-map control is the most important thing to develop mid/late-game units. Turtling is losing. You have to get out there and fight, right from the start. I was a turtler myself before COH, but found that the immersive, frantic gameplay of COH mainly stems from that mechanism.
-Resources have a clear 'identity'. ammo = special abilities/upgrades, fuel = teching/vehicles. Combined with the option to cut someone from resources you have influence over your opponent's options.
-Still, manpower income doesn't increase that much with map control. That means that a skilled player can get out of a nasty situation even with inferior troops, just because he can field enough of them.
-pinning down/suppression.
-retreat option makes you can stay alive to fight another day.
When they'd equip consoles with a keyboard/mouse i am sure this would boost the RTS genre, and others as well. I don't believe that no parts of the console crowd are interested in those 'hardcore' PC games. They are just not given a way to control and thus experience them properly.
I feel that many modern RTS titles have taken the last vestiges of strategy in favour of the latest "innovative" mechanic which by itself is supposed to be fun. When I think about it, the fun for me was in the planning, strategizing, and surviving that made the game - the mechanic itself was a means to that end. I still had fun even when waypoints and unit grouping had not been thought of. The point is that new designs seem to orbit around a specific feature instead of giving the player the necessary basics for him to "create his own story" within the world presented. The result: restrictive gameplay in which everytime you seem to be able to do less or, worse, were there is only a limited way to do things.
For me this trend started a long time ago. There were missions in SC2, WC3, and the commando missions in C&C which almost made me groan out loud just from the thought of having to play them. Since then, developers have been looking for gimmicks to get the edge, but they invariably seem to result (IMHO) in a diluted experience. Never mind that it was already hard to find the "S" in RTS (the name should have been real-time tactics), modern mechanics really boil things down to "rock-paper-scissors" approach.
I think a new innovative game will be the one that can be as simple as the originals, but with a great production values implementation to give it the edge. Catering to "new" players is a massive mistake in the eyes of RTS veterans.
My 2 cents.
..Yes, and how come so many fans are still playing C&C 1 and how can it be, the modding community is transferring C&C 1 to newer platforms like Generals? Maybe because gameplay is essential. C&C was F-U-N. In fact, it was so fun, the developers could´nt stop playing the game themselves. Wonder if this was the case with C&C 4 :)
While not taking itself too serious, at least C&C had real-world elements one can relate to, somehow. No dark worlds and massive, weird and inhumane units on a planet far, far away. Relations and feelings were created with the player for the little funny soldiers, as their animations went from scratching themself, cleaning their guns, doing push-ups and you even forgave them for not always being able to find their way through the map. Strategy elements were resource gathering and basebuilding. What exactly happened to the "s" in "RTS" with C&C4?
Graphics make the game longlasting, and excellent tools like WorldBuilder makes the community cherish and buy the game for decades, like what happened to Generals:ZH. Graphics are important, yes, but not as important as the basic game design. Turtling or not, lets realize it - there is nothing like watching TV while playing a good, de-stressing and fun skirmish battle! :)