Arathain

I've been thinking along these lines and I agree. I think it's really important for there to be a voluminous story bible. Characters should have life histories and quirks thoroughly documented. Every place in the world ought to have a history that sets it apart and connects it to everywhere else. Developers should know and care passionately about that stuff. It is a mistake to assume that your players will or even should care. The point is not to tell the player your amazing made up histories- that makes them like that person who roleplays and tries to tell you the story of their last session. Yawn. The point is that your efforts in creating the fiction of the world will feed into your efforts to create that world on the screen. It'll pay off in subtle but tangible ways.

The new maps have renewed my appreciation for the map design in this game. I recall that it was very important to the developers that they create environments that looked believable, because it's so much more atmospheric and eerie to fight aliens in familiar environments. Within the constraints the tactical game (and the engine provide) I think they've done a fantastic job all round. There's just something about tossing a grenade in a convenience store or seeing Chrysalids tear about a museum, you know?

With what Mr Heron says about his style I can understand why shotguns might not seem like his thing, but I love them to pieces. Huge to-hit bonuses at close range largely negating cover. The ease with which Assaults can achieve flanks. Big damage output from multiple shots at high-crit chance. Of course, if you run into a crowd of aliens and kill one you're going to lose your Assault to the others. But think of it this way- shottie Assaults don't start fights, they end them. It helps that they come with some nice insurance policies. Lightning Reflexes is amazing, obviously, but Tactical Sense (extra defense for every alien you can see) had an unexpected benefit, at least in the pre-expansion version. Aliens would always shoot at the target they were most likely to hit, which, cover being equal, was almost never your Assault. You can't get hit if you never get shot at. I was always pleasantly surprised by how readily my Assaults would survive. Not like my poor Supports.

On the other hand (because I am Contrarian Man in this thread, for some reason) the manual was beautiful and rich with detailed descriptions of everything, and I remember it bringing me some joy as a young person. I'll take an awesome albeit slightly inaccurate manual over a post-beta glorified reference sheet. Ah, manuals. Let us all take a moment to remember how great they could be. We will miss them.

Yeah, it was an oversight. I think it's worth remembering that Blizzard were breaking some ground in terms of matching story with mission in an RTS. Scripted missions like that one were managed much more gracefully than Westwood or anyone else at the time. I have no doubt they learned some things from that mission alone that have carried through to other Blizzard games.

Yeah, that one was an interesting failure if you were too good and broke through what was expected of you. A finer example of ludonarrative dissonance there never was. Still, if you suck like I do (or like I sure as heck did back in the day) it had the effect it was supposed to have.

I know it has been Blizzard's constant line that the game is designed to be played co-op online, and I get why they stick to it, but it still seems very hollow. While I can appreciate the very skilled work that allows such fast and fluid drop-in/drop-out multiplayer, the fact is that the game itself strikes me as very comfortably single player. The class design allows any character to easily build to be fully independent. There are very few skills for any class that directly affect other player-characters. WoW is a great example of a primarily multiplayer game that can be played solo (but you'll miss out on lots of content). Diablo 3 is a single player game in which you can do everything solo, but you can bring other people along if you like. I give Blizzard credit for removing the Auction House and rethinking the way loot is dropped, although I think the rampant inflation forced their hand somewhat. I get that a major reversal of an avowed intent is a major shift for a big, public company. It goes some way to making up for previous errors. There's a little distance still to travel before I really trust them again, say, with a pre-order. On Blizzard stories: I enjoy them. They are grand scale depth-less romps featuring archetypes rather than fully fleshed out characters. There's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. For any games with a grand story-line in which the story is not the focus of the mechanics (say, RTSs, or ARPGs) the story should do three things: provide adequate motivation for whatever I'm doing; provide cool moments, and stay out of my way if I decide I don't care. Blizzard give me all three of these things. Kerrigan being swarmed by the Zerg as the Terrans are pulling out? Cool. Her reappearance as the Queen of Blades from the cocoon you've been protecting? Neat. Opening the tomb in Diablo 2 to find the angel Tyrael chained where Baal used to be? Nice. Arthas taking Frostmourne and just walking off into the snow, only to return and kill his father? Chilling. Kael'Thas, desperate to feed the addiction of himself and his people, cast out by the Alliance and forced to take up with the demonic Illidan? Fun. Diablo 3? OK, that was really bad. I couldn't hit the skip button fast enough. The superb cut-scenes really help. No-one does cut-scenes like Blizzard. Only Square-Enix at their best really come close. I know it's pulp, but there's nothing wrong with a nice spot of brain candy that stays out of the way of the game bit.

I'm really delighted BlizzCon left so many skeptical folk feeling good about where Blizzard are going. They're such a good company when they're on form. Blizzard games have always been wonderfully varied and well realised. I'm surprised to discover that the more I hear about Heroes of the Stone or Hearth of the Swarm or Heart of the Stone or whatever it's called, the more excited I am about it. I played League of Legends for a few months in its earlier days and had some fun with it, but I found that having to commit to the number and length of matches necessary no longer fit into my life. Shorter matches? Smaller knowledge requirement? Greater variety? Familiar characters? Silliness? Sounds kind of great. I'll definitely give Heathstone a go, too.

Ah, but have they done it for hero brawler yet? Edit: evidently not.

Do people think there's a sweet spot? Take a fairly classic RTS design: an economy to allow one to acquire a variety of units to defeat an opponent with. Could you make one of those that would not be nearly as stressful as your Starcrafts and your Supreme Commanders, but would still be deep enough that hardcore players could play for months or years? I think to truly be popular a multiplayer match or an AI skirmish needs to be done in under 45 minutes. Does that condition throw off the design?

hexgrid, you mention Total Annihilation and its excellent progeny (the Supreme Commander games); specifically their excellent interfaces making the micro more managable. On the other hand, I remember SC frequently referred to as exhausting to play. In the terms I used above it's not a difficult to execute game, necessarily. It's very difficult to co-ordinate. In particular keeping your economy in balanced, optimised production is an intense mental challenge. I never really enjoyed the Blizzard execution-focused style. I respect those who do, and I know that it allows for a very high skill ceiling and a satisfying sense of growing mastery that attracts a wide audience. The other thing I think it's important to keep in mind is that part of what automation does is allow the player to manage other things. I bet a good Dark Reign player would still have a high APM. There's nearly always something useful one could be doing at any given time, and the player who can do more will do more of these things will have an advantage. It wouldn't surprise me to learn good Sins players actually do give quite a few commands in combat (as well as managing other things, naturally).

This episode had a really interesting chain of thought, which I took away as: the RTS is a niche genre characterised by extremely high demands on the player's ability, particularly in multiplayer, which is where the genre is at its most interesting. The genre was propelled into the mainstream by an accident of timing, and, barring Starcraft, has largely receded back to niche status in recent years. It's a new way of thinking for me- as a long time PC-focused gamer the RTS was always a core genre of the platform. Heck, Dune 2 was the first game I ever really fell in love with, in that glorious "why is it 2.00 in the morning?" kind of way. It rings true, however. I see the demands placed on the player as largely two-fold: difficulty of co-ordination, and difficulty of execution. Starcraft is famous for its difficulty of execution, hence the advantage granted by high actions-per-minute. I'm more accustomed to Relic's Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2. 100+ APM is by no means necessary for skilled play here. The difficulty arises from the need to co-ordinate precise position, movements and actions often in more than one part of the map. The easiest way to lose a unit is to forget you sent it to capture a point in hostile territory. In any real time game the advantage is going to go to the player who can do more in a given time space. That's just how it is. Unless you slow the whole thing down so that everything just takes a long time (Sins of a Solar Empire) multiplayer RTS is very likely to be difficult and exhausting.

Sword of the Stars is pretty much a game about ship customisation. It has nice stripped down 4x mechanics that don't really get in the way, and a lovely big tech tree full of toys that are more interesting than Laser 3. The ship designer is easy to use and lets you produce some very varied designs for whatever tactical or strategic (stealthed bio-war bombers!) goal you might have. Battles are real time, so you can play with the toys you've made, with every turret and projectile lovingly modeled. There's still the issue of having to update your designs for no-brainer upgrades like better engines. It's doesn't take that long, but it feels like there's a lot of make-work clicking involved. Still a great game. What? It's a thread about Card Hunter? Oh, I like Card Hunter. I can't remember which podcast I heard it stated this way, but it was the clearest description of why this game works as well as it does. Tactical RPGs have the issue that once you've settled on your skill set you tend to deploy the same optimised rotation for most encounters, which becomes boring. The card draw mechanism means no turn is the same, and you always have to think carefully about the options you have available. Card games suffer from the luck of the draw- you can just draw a bad hand and be screwed. Playing on a tactical map allows the player to use movement and terrain defensively until they can draw the cards that they need.

I think this idea of reviewer objectivity is a tempting trap and a huge mistake. I think it's impossible to ask any reviewer to transform into the mythical everyman, able to speak for everyone. In practice, I think it typically results in badly written reviews, that are ultimately not very useful. The primary way a lot of reviewers try to square the circle is by doing basically what you describe- breaking down the game into a list of things they reckon they can analyse. So you get: the graphics are good. The sound is good. The voice acting is OK. The plot is confusing. Well, OK, sure. But what's the game like to play? So, any game is a more or less complex mix of tons of different things. I make some input and the game systems respond in some carefully tuned way displaying sights and sounds which change according to what I do. I am a laughably complicated mix of biology, memories, cultural conditioning, mental strengths and deficiencies, reflexes and personality. The game causes all sorts of bizarre and interesting things to happen in my brain. Somehow, in some mind-bogglingly chaotic yet somehow consistent fashion, I will have an impression of pleasure or worth, or the lack thereof, from my time interacting with the game. You have a similar process, but all the factors that make up me are slightly or completely different for you, and your reaction may, or may not be, different. We often make the hilariously oversimplified reduction of this unimaginable process and call it 'taste'. I don't want a reviewer to try and tell me whether I'll like a game. The concept is absurd- demonstrably so. I'm sure any gamer out there could talk about games that most other players had loved that they had just hated. Likewise, there are games that most people who have played them do not like, which you happen to really enjoy. One interacts with your hyper-complex you-ness in a bad way, one in a good way. Neither outcome could have been easily or reliably predicted. I want a reviewer to tell me about their personal experience playing a game. Do I want them to talk about the graphics, or the UI, or any other specific element? Sure, but only in the context of telling me about how the game felt for them. If they are a good enough writer, and I read their review carefully I have the best possible shot at translating their subjective, yet well described experience to predicting what my own will be like. If you remove the element of the personal from the review process I have no hope of making this leap. Here is what I think should be the gold standard for a reviewer. You can read a review of a game that they really liked, and know that it isn't for you and that you shouldn't buy it. Vice versa, you an read a review of a game they didn't like, and know that you'll have a good time with it. Good writers can make this happen. Your 'objective' buyers guide analysis? Almost never.

So I went ahead and gave it a go. So far I'm pretty happy. Everything is unlocked so I can gawk at all the shiny toys. I've only touched the intro campaign, but I like it so much better than the usual scripted stuff. Plus, it'll teach me something about playing the game. I love the way air units are implemented. Very logical and slick.

Hmm. I'm torn. I really wanted to like Wargame: EE, especially after the original TMA episode talking about it.. After playing it for a bit I had to admit to myself that I just wasn't getting much out of it. So I listen to this episode, and now I want Airland Battle, and I worry I won't like that either and feel like a (slightly poorer) fool. You podcasting chaps do have a knack for making a fellow want stuff. Let me lay out why I think I didn't like EE, and maybe those who've played AB can make an educated guess as to whether I should give it a try. I liked the idea of deck building with armies and having fun with lots of different toys, but I don't have time in my life right now to dedicate myself to learning to play multiplayer, as much fun as it looks. This one looks like it would take quite a bit of play to figure out even the basics of how the units interplay and what one does in a given situation. But, you say, that's what skirmish is for. OK, but skirmish didn't give me any points to unlock more interesting toys to experiment with, in a game about experimenting with interesting toys, a decision I found a bit on the odd side. Alright, you say, but you could play the campaign and get unlocking star points. I could if the campaign was enjoyable enough in and off itself. For me, it wasn't. The missions I got through just weren't that interesting. They didn't feel at all dynamic and were standard RTS fare. Go from here to there blowing up the odd tank or what have you along the way. Blow up a bunch of unreactive units waiting for me on an objective. Defend this bit against a scripted attack. I mean, this would be OK. I'm not the biggest fan of RTS campaigns, because they usually feel artificial, unreactive, and kind of puzzly compared to a live opponent or even a competent skirmish AI. Whatever, though, I've played though a few. Here, the game combines this sort of staid setup with a harsh attitude towards errors, and an unwillingness to guide a newer player in the tactics they will require. Example: A mission midway though the first campaign has you assaulting a couple of defended towns for the first time. It was not obvious to me what the best way to do that was. I needed to use infantry, but how to get them close enough when the tin cans they traveled in would pop to a mean look from a LAW wielding Commie? Marching them in across an open field would hardly work better. Artillery seemed like it ought to be a good disrupting tool, but seemed too inaccurate to do so reliably, or in a reasonable time frame. A poorly executed assault could have heavy casualties, which had consequences not just for the mission, but for the rest of the campaign, because there were only so many Panzergrenadiers to go round. Would it have been too much to have a little box pop up at the start of the mission with some advice on assaulting enemy held towns? Could selecting a unit for the first time maybe have treated one to a quick paragraph on its uses and drawbacks? I get that the game is supposed to be lethal and uncompromising, and I really like that. I don't think that would preclude a little guidance . Oh, and does AB have a pause function that'd let me take a little look at the battlefield? I don't see the harm that would do in the campaign.

You won't find your colony management with SotS. It really is just a slider that you mostly leave alone anyway. It's focused on constructing and moving fleets of space ships which then engage in highly detailed real time battles. The hooks come from the diversity across the races, the tech tree, and a galaxy full of interesting dangers.

I don't want to get the thread too focused on Sword of the Stars, since it's not a part of the podcast, but I did want to come back to one relevant thing. No text walls, promise. While ship customisation on SotS does suffer a few of the problems discussed in the episode, I think there a couple of reasons it works here more than it doesn't. Firstly, it's quick and easy to make the ship you want to make. Pick your mission and command sections, and stick the best engine on that you have. Then stick on the guns that fit the role you're trying to fill. Want a brawler? Armour mission, Hammerhead command, your best close range weapons. Missile boat? Perhaps a War mission and a command with some torpedo slots. Fill up on missiles. Quick. Easy. Minimum of clicks, no awkwardness. Secondly, the diversity of tech and range of options including hard and soft counters make your choices meaningful. Powerful enemies can be defeated by smart choices, even when disadvantaged by numbers or overall tech. An important factor that really hangs this together: the AI can use the tech tree and the ship builder effectively. Expect to see specific counters to your designs filtering into AI fleets. While the AI is still no match for a human, especially in the expansion phase and in the tactical combat, it manages its fleets well, and you'll face some unexpected defeats due to being smartly countered.

Good grief, I really need to learn to be concise. SotS has six races: Humans, Tarka, Liir, Hivers, Zuul and Morrigi. First four have been there from the start, and the other two added in expansions.

Interesting show. I think you both figured out some important stuff. While there are a bunch of space 4Xs not mentioned in the show, and you'd have to be badly obsessed to try to play all of them, I would be interested to hear from those who have played the first Sword of the Stars. It's a fascinating game, and a very good one. Total War in space is not an awful description; you manage your worlds and fleets in turn-based format, and battles are fought in a highly detailed real time. There's a lot of the same emphasis on conquest that you'd find in Total War, too. Diplomacy is a little threadbare, and while you can and will form alliances, it's really all about who you are fighting with next. It manages to solve some of the bureaucracy problems by eliminating them. Worlds mostly manage themselves, leaving you focused on assembling custom designed fleets and telling them who to fight. It has the nicest ship designer I know, managing to be both easy and quick to use, and being hugely meaningful, with tons of viable way to put ships together. You pick a command module, a mission module and an engine module. Each module has hardpoints for weapons, coming in three sizes. Stick your weapons in there, maybe tick a box for some extra armour, done. It helps that there is huge weapon variety to be gleaned from the enormous, lovely tech tree. Far more interesting than laser #3. The way it handles adding colour to the otherwise bland galaxy is interesting. The races are nicely distinct- in particular, each has a different way of travelling that very much affects how you play. Liir are fast in deep space but slow down the nearer they are to a system, leaving them picking their path between worlds carefully, and looking to intercept fleets out in the black. Humans travel very fast along natural node lines that only they can see, but there isn't always a handy line where you want one. They therefore see distance for their fleets in terms of node length, rather than distance in space. HIvers travel painfully slowly to new systems, but can build instant travel gates when they get there, making their hold on a system immensely strong, once they finally get there. Mix in different races occupying the same area of space, all looking at the map quite differently, and you get something a little bit like terrain. Furthermore, the galaxy holds more than just the playable races. Old asteroid based defense platforms, ancient relics with active defenses, deadly space wasps who spread via enormous starfaring queens; they all make your exploration and expansion much more interesting. When you are established the galaxy gets a visit from a Grand Menace, all of which are terrifyingly powerful, have different consequences and are dealt with in different ways. These act like the disrupters talked about in an recent episode. These make the galaxy feel like more of a real place, rather than just a bunch of worlds to either ignore or colonise. The final thing I want to mention is the role the lore plays in the game. There is a huge body of material on each of the races, which manages to be well written and rather interesting. The curious should visit the official forums, and skim through some of the enormous threads where the author answers lore questions. The level of detail in the worldbuilding is very impressive. This feeds into the game in interesting ways that are not always obvious. Race affects your chance at researching certain techs, since not all of them will be available on any given playthrough. Liir get better chances at energy weapons and bioweapons. Hivers like projectile weapons and nearly always can get the best armour. The lore feeds into how the turrets on their ships are arranged, which sections get the most armour, speed and maneuverability. If you know the backstory, you know why the Tarka put so much armour on the front, and why the Zuul ships are mostly heaps of guns and an engine held together with string and duct tape. You don't have to know any of this stuff, but the deeper you look the more you find, and I actually found myself invested in the world they had built, rather like you described with Star Trek and BSG. Of course, this can be a little jarring when the game, when you get down to it, is about spreading your ink blot to the violent detriment of other ink blots. FOr such a thoughtfully constructed universe there sure is a heck of a lot of thoughtless genocide.

I didn't realise it until he was talking about it, but I feel exactly like Tom. I'm all for this early release stuff. It sounds all sorts of neat for those really invested in upcoming titles, and useful for developers to put some polish on their game. There's lots of good there. I want no part of it. Present me with something signed off as finished (with the proviso that the meaning of that can be highly flexible these days). If I get a handful of recommendations then I'll buy it. I don't watch trailers for movies I'm interested in either.

This is sort of anecdotal, and in no way meant to disparage or even to reflect on the right honourable posters here, but players inexperienced in RTS, and multiplayer in particular, seem to gravitate to turtle style defensive strategies. It's logical thinking- RTS battlefields are messy, hard to predict places, so it makes sense that before you try and win you make sure you can't lose, not to mention the fun of building impenetrable, layered defenses for your foe to batter themselves off fruitlessly. It can be problematic when moving into the multiplayer space, however, where such tactics surrender the initiative and map control to your opponent. Even in the Supreme Commander games, where, like Total Annihilation before it, fantastic arrays of turrets and barriers can be built to your heart's content, you risk giving up access to the vital metal harvesting points on the map. Relic RTSs Company of Heroes and Dawn of War (2, in my case) are good for getting you out of your base and skirmishing right from the start of the game, since your resource flow depends entirely on your ability to hold territory. The game becomes a series of escalating conflicts, which may not be decisive by themselves, allowing for the possibility of a comeback. Good therapy for those held back by excessive turtling.

I have always loved RTSs for being great big toy boxes, filled with powerful and interesting toys that do exactly what I tell them and make things explode. The campaign is typically a varied way of making my pretty toys explode some other pretty toys. That said, once I started playing some competitive multiplayer the campaigns lost a lot of their shine. When you're playing against a person, and each of you is constrained by certain rules, every sighting of the enemy forces is potentially laden with meaning. If I play Company of Heroes, and I see American Riflemen sporting BARs early in the game, I understand that my infantry are going to be on the back foot for a while, but I don't have to fear an early vehicle because of the resources invested in the upgrade. Perhaps I can get defensive around the fuel points and hold out for a fast vehicle of my own, and I can put off anti-tank guns. My opponent may be caught off guard by my defensive artillery, but it'll tell him he doesn't have to fear camouflaged Stormtroopers or Tiger tanks. There's this whole chain of mental activity which is very satisfying to navigate successfully, and there's a little thrilling 'Aha! That's what they're up to.' moment. In a campaign, when I see a unit it means the level designers put that unit there, and it typically tells me little or nothing about which options I should plan for in the future. All I have to do is have a plan to deal with that unit. Then I'll find another one and deal with that. And so on. All that delicious meaning is sorely diluted or entirely absent. I guess (and I wonder if this is some of what Tom was getting at when he was talking about core RTS values) that for a good multiplayer RTS a match is about navigating a complex space of different possibilities along with your opponent. Each of you picks different, branching paths, both to execute a pre-conceived plan and in response to that of your opponent's. As you navigate some branches are closed off and others open up. This navigation is hugely interesting and satisfying to perform successfully. The other thing I found is that I actually valued my toys more if I felt that I had to work to get them, and I wasn't guaranteed to succeed. If I could surprise my enemy with an Ork Battlewagon late in a Dawn of War 2 match I would get such a thrill from flattening their best units; more so because fielding the super-units required careful play and couldn't (and shouldn't!) happen every game.

I find playing Warlock quite relaxing. The interface makes keeping track of everything nice and easy, being a nice parade of decisions that need making. Oh, these cities can build something. Alright, I'll have one of these over here and one of those over there. Two units got promoted; pick those perks. Hey, I can have werewolves now. Give me a unit of those. Eight units need orders. No problem. Lets go clean up that holy site so we can grab it later, then maybe head for that city. Alternatively, SupCom 1 or 2. Big map, free for all, lots of low level AI. Have fun building over the top defenses and giant robots and admiring all the pretty explosions.

Unless you're playing a Chaos Warrior in Zangband, in which case levelling is frequently a disruptive event. I do love me some Chaos in that game. Perhaps someone will correct me, but I seem to recall the galactic events in GalCiv 2 were not completely random, and that the game attempted to work out which events would cause the most disruption to the current galactic order and be more likely to use those. It's an interesting idea.