The basic problem with RTS is that you can build units in real-time. This means that strategic thinking isn't what is rewarded but fast "micro". The faster you can input commands, the better you do. What does that have to do with strategy? It's a broken gameplay model, in my view. They should return to some more classic wargames to figure out what works.

I agree with this. The same thing happened with Street Fighter 4 and the fighting game genre. Many great fighting games have come out between Super Street Fighter II and Street Fighter, many of these titles are arguably better, and much of the innovation from these other fighting games were used in Street Fighter IV (Focus Attacks, Ultra Combos, etc.).

Starcraft II has that same type of influence in the RTS genre. Many people consider it the best title in its genre, and everyone almost unanimously agree that it has the most mainstream name recognition. Hopefully the release of Starcraft 2 can generate in other great RTS games like Command and Conquer and Dawn of War II.

Too bad C&C4 is taking RTS games a couple steps backwards by excluding LAN and dedicated servers. =/

thats just the nature of any non-turnbased multiplayer game. i loved Star craft for the single player, not the getting crushed by Koreans online :)

Did I read that right? A game designer having positive remarks and blessings of tremendous success towards a competing franchise?

My goodness, this is certainly the feel-good story of the day for me. While I agree with his sentiment that the success of a game in a certain genre would benefit the success of other games sharing that genre, I feel the true story here is openly embracing competition, and hoping that not just your company, but the industry as a whole, grows.

To me the RTS genre died a while ago. It think it stems from the fact I hate the multiplayer aspects of it and the single player AI is just horrible to play against. It is rarely about what you build and instead about how fast you build it, then you can add in the strategy of building the most effective unit for the job. But you usually only know what to build by trail and error and memorizing what the AI is going to do.

I really liked CC:Red Alert, Warcraft 2 and Starcraft. As I tried to get back to the genre though following those titles I always came to the point, online play is not for me, and the single player AI is just dumb (attacks in waves that are easy to defend, or has magical insight into what I'm building and doesn't play human like). So I quit playing the genre outright.

Starcraft 2 has done little to peak my interests though as Blizzard never develops a cohesive single player campaign. Instead they leave cliffhangers and force two or three expansions on you to finish the original plot line, and I'm not going to spend $150 for something I think should have been available as one product. At least with this edition they are trying to be more honest about it and telling people up-front that one will have to buy all three to see the one story they wanted to tell.

That and it seems like the focus is on the multiplayer (balancing, online hubs, match making...) and not single player fixes.

I might get it when it hits a $20 battlechest though.

Tim, you don't believe that thinking quickly is one aspect of strategy? That's like saying that timed chess games have no strategy.

In real combat, victory doesn't just go to the person who can think of the best tactics but the one that can think of them the most quickly. Yes, super-fast click skill is highly valuable in an RTS, and you need it to some degree to handle an initial rush, but if you have no strategy, you'll only get so far. There's enormous tactical depth for somebody who really takes the time to learn the game.

Besides, whether you like the genre or not, it's hard to make a case that a game that sold over 10 million copies and is still heavily played 11 years later has a "broken gameplay model".

I enjoyed the co-op 'campaign' (I almost wrote, co-op single player :s) aspects fo, I believe it was BFME. It was some fantasy RTS. I also see the option in C&C3. I would love it if more went thought route so I could still play with friends, without them knowing they could outright destroy me 1v1. Well, I am sure they know, but without me having to sit through it!

Is that like saying "The fact that so much Accent has been sold will allow us to sell so much more Prius because people will have learned to drive"? Yeah make perfect sense... With all the shit C&C game that have been shoveled down our throat in recent years they should consider themselves lucky if this one sell at all, especially considering the approach they take with this one, i know i will need a 10 foot long pole to touch it.

Jonathan,

No, to answer your question, it's not like that. The population at large is already familiar with the benefits of owning cars, and most people already know if they need one or not. However, extreme popularity of a specific model can absolutely drive tertiary success of that model's CLASS of car.

This is not at all an uncommon phenomenon. Starbucks frequently ends up boosting business at locally-owned coffee shops, simply because more and more people become familiar with a particular type of coffee drink. And devices like the iPhone can drive interest in smartphones generally, because of the wide exposure and familiarity it brings. In those cases, Starbucks is still more successful than the local coffee shop, and the iPhone is still more successful than the competing smartphone, but the local coffee shop and the competing smartphone would still be doing better than they would be if the more successful products had not driven additional interest to the segment.

Also, if you have already vehemently made up your mind about C&C4, then clearly you are not a realistic target consumer to begin with.

Chris, I'm not sure if this is true for Jonathan, but I know that a lot of people who might have been interested in C&C 4 won't be interested due to the online DRM requirement. The decision to use such a method is not acceptable to many consumers no matter what arguments are used to justify the decision.

I think it's a shame because it's just not a very positive way to evolve the business model, at least as far as I can see.

Oh, I'd like to add my own view with respect to strategy verus RTS gameplay. RTS may still have strategy; I would agree it does, in fact. However, strategy is not the main focus, as Tim pointed out. Yes, chess is timed in professional play, but you do not use speed chess rules for professional chess tournament play. RTS is like speed chess, not normal chess. That doesn't make it bad, per se, nor does it mean it has no strategy, but it does mean that strategic planning is much less important than speed of issuing orders, building units, or any other activity. Strategy requires thinking and planning, and that takes time. RTS would be far better if there were a mixture of contexts where some missions required very fast speed ordering while others were normal, drawn-out strategy sessions. The technology could certainly handle such a mixture, and real life warfare and battles are normally both types and everything in between.

Hi guys,

I would like to share my 10 years of experience with eSport (also known as competitive gaming or professional gaming) with you. Playing RTS games online successfully is a combination of fast micro and strategy. The trick is to perfect both.

But while micro management is a static variable (hand and finger coordination) in your gaming skills, strategies are dynamic and increase the more people compete online.

If you take a closer look at the eSport scene, you will find numerous websites providing replays from players all over the world. Professional players spend as much time with watching and analyzing those replays, as with actively playing. They try to memorize different strategies (buildings, units, expansions, leveling, items, strategic areas) and must be able to switch between different combinations when facing their opponent. I have especially followed WC3 during my time in eSport and I can tell you that there are unlimited strategies out there due to the large amount of players. There are times when a certain strategy is popular (e.g. tower rush) and lots of players try to perfect it. Then suddenly a different player surprises the scene with a brand new tactic and people try to adapt it. It’s an ongoing phenomenon.

So, in order to compete with other players you need to have different strategies in mind at first place. Micro only helps you to perfect your strategy and also allows you to react effectively and faster to your opponent’s tactic. When you watch players fight for glory at an event like Blizzcon or World Cyber Games, it’s really interesting how different their strategies are. Top players for example practice extra hours before events to create a different version of an existing strategy or if possible invent a new one. This leads to the fact that other players observe it and react to it and so on – it’s a catalyst.

If you are interested in more information about eSport don’t hesitate contacting me.

I think that both sides are correct, but not precise enough.

RTS games have a lot of strategy in them, you need to consider your build order, unit composition, agresion or turtling, your expand patterns, how and when to scout, where to place your army etc. No matter how fast you click if your units die before they reach their target, because they have too short range, you'll loose. But all this stuff you need to research before the actual play.

During a game your preparation is tested. Depending on how well you execute your strategy you will succeed or fail, and because it's real time most ideas will require high amount of APM to do correctly. You don't really have time to devise a new strategy during play - if you start thinking too much your execution will be poor. Its not like you don't think at all, you need to adapt to what your opponent is doing and transition correctly, but you never have more than half a minute to make a correct decision, and it's not really enough time to think everything through.

I wonder whether a RTS that would help to learn strategy in game would be successful. I played Go (baduk) on KGS - this board game has a lot of strategy and I really enjoyed the interface they give you after a game. You can review a play by navigating through a sequence of moves, the review interface enables you to select some part of the board and place some markers there to highlight some area. It even enables you to change your move creating a branch, you don't know how your opponent would respond, but it's still useful to consider some variations. It makes learning the game much easier. I wonder whether such game review system would be a good idea in RTS - if an experienced player could review a game and send such replay to less experienced players so that they know what to work on. An option where you could pause a replay and click [let me try] to go against AI from this point on and try to do sth different. Especially with AI scripting for players it could be an awesome feature, but im not sure weather the cost of making this would pay off.

Of course, my observations are about single player gaming, not competitive gaming. I don't care for competitive gaming, personally.

In playing C&C 3, strategy had little to do with winning against the computer, and that's the point when you want to see the story. Instead, it was about seeing what the computer would (quite unfairly in human terms) do, and then issue orders as fast as possible to win (because the computer did things that are humanly impossible to do such as seeing the entire battlefield, issuing multiple orders to units far apart from each other, etc). If you want to play a strategy-driven game, this approach to AI takes a lot of the fun away from the experience.


Modern Western RPGs are suffering from a similar type of problem. If an RPG relies on the player's abilities rather than the character's, then it isn't really roleplaying the character, but rather testing the player, and that undermines the potential of roleplaying (such as experimenting with different identities, for example).

I always thought some strategy game based on pre-combat would be fun. With possibity to build small AI macros so you mostly guide the troops as a coach, taking micro management for both combat and building out and strategy in.

One of the best RTS I played was NFL Street :)