TIGSource Forums

I have been thinking more and more about this genre as a whole, while I was getting more into it. Having played some of Starcraft, Civ IV, Ground Control, and Rome: Total War, I am beginning to like how it distinguishes itself from most of the genres out there. Consoles have yet to really make really good use of this genre, which is among the many reasons why I've now been converted to a PC gamer...but that's not what I really wanted to bring up as a topic.

An interesting discussion about where strategy games are going surfaced during GDC 2011, which I know happened more than a month ago, so this is kind of late for me to jump in on it, but just please bear with me. Where is the strategy genre heading in the next 5-10 years? Will we see the GoldenEye of strategy games (a really popular console game that sells millions of units and attracted console gamers to the genre)? And does the RTS game have a chance soon at becoming more like an empire-building/4X game like that of Sins of a Solar Empire?

Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6302465.html?tag=result%3Btitle%3B0

As I continue to learn more about the differences between RTS games and TBS ones, I've noticed that the latter has way more than just attrition as an option. Diplomacy and a really complex economic system are intact in games like Civilization, whereas something like Starcraft, an RTS, greatly lacks the balance between warfare, politics, and economics. Depending on what happens in the future, I may choose to stick with TBS games for the most part, or if more games like SOSE come out, I may be more inclined to explore the RTS genre further.

I for one really liked the way soase balanced the rts side of the genre with the diplomacy side, it seemed to mesh togeter really well, heloped along by the zoom in/out ability.

Overall, I think the two cater for two different types of gamer, sc1 & sc2 cater more for people who like the speed of making snap decisions, whilst empires and the totals cater more for people who plan ahead.

(cue paul eres coming along to tell me I'm wrong)

I stopped caring about the strategy genre when I discovered Dwarf Fortress.

not enough pictures, i'm bored

Ummm...Dwarf Fortress does involve at least some degree of strategy.

I don't see why manufacturers (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) can't include keyboards and mice as optional accessories, which would then allow strategy games to be played a lot more easily. Also, with plenty of controllers out there already, including the Xbox 360 and PS3 standard controllers, the Wii remote, the Playstation Move, and the Kinect, how can one make any excuses as to why developing a strategy game is not financially sound.

Why anyone would pass up this genre is beyond me. It's probably the most complex genre out there today, more so than most RPGs. Grand strategy (i.e. Europa Universalis III) takes strategic planning to a whole new level with perhaps greater complexity than a TBS game. Do most really have such short attention spans that they can't afford to play strategy games?

If SCII is the only good type of strategy game that can be marketed very well, then I will be very disappointed. Activision/Blizzard is making a big mistake by not porting its Starcraft, Diablo, or Warcraft franchises to consoles. At least they could try to come up with a new IP and make it also available on consoles, but I guess that its CEOs don't give a crap about us.

there, you've answered yourself.

i like my strategy simple and tactics-heavy http://wesnoth.org/

i think turn-based strategy games that you need to read manuals to play and play for hundreds of hours before you get good at them and where decisions are fewer and less frequent but more thought-out appeal to a minority of the people, and will appeal to a minority for the foreseeable future. even games like civilization 5 aren't blockbusters, they're a minority compared to much more highly-selling games

i don't particularly see this as a problem. visual novels and text adventure games also appeal to a minority of the people, you won't really see a blockbuster text adventure which sells millions of copies either. but there's no shame in being niche. it's just a shame that the big companies which used to make really great turn based strategy games had to turn to adding in some mindless action to make people buy them. compare koei's historical simulation games (nobunaga's ambition, romance of the three kingdoms) to their current games (samurai warriors, dynasty warriors). the reason they focus more on the latter now is because they sell better, and take less effort to create. it's a business decision.

(http://wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/170765_full.jpg)

(http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/113/1130426/dynasty-warriors-7-20101026023729832.jpg)

to most the latter just looks more appealing to play than the former, even though they may have more fun with the former if they give it a chance

All wrong.

good explanation on the incorrectness of his post phubans. I totally agree with your reasoning on why he is wrong.

YAY Everybodys so happy!

One area I don't see investigated so much in strategy games is in making planning more detailed and more intrinsic to the gameplay. In both turn-based and real-time games, you make every decision at nearly the lowest level possible, you have perfect or near-perfect information, and your opponent can make a response nearly instantly - and they can make the optimal response and go tit-for-tat most of the time. So strategy in most strategy games, from Chess up to Starcraft, emerges mostly by tricking the enemy into a corner, with decisions that work in the small and fail in the large. (Though I should allow that Starcraft makes it difficult to execute the optimal response, but not impossible.)

But in many, even most real world conflicts, opponents can't react instantly to each other; information is imperfect and a detailed plan with fallbacks is needed - and the fallbacks may not be optimal for the situation. The plan can be adjusted once set in motion, but not instantaneously, so one has to "hedge bets" and try for a plan that can accommodate multiple scenarios. Writing a game design in this way, where plans are executed in large chunks in a synchronous fashion, would be a much more direct method of achieving rock-paper-scissors dynamics without dumping tons of mechanics into the game.

(One example of this in action - Toribash. Turns are synchronous, there are numerous ways to attack and no optimal defense for all of them, and once your fighter is in motion, it's literally hard to stop and make adjustments.)

Yes, I can definitely see turn-based games as remaining less pleasing to most gamers, at least in the Western games market. However, I don't know about RTS games not becoming less niche. After all, they usually require few actual strategic elements at all and are mostly tactical. Hence, it would make more sense to call them real-time tactics games, with a tiny bit of strategy thrown in. And while a game like Sins of a Solar Empire may seem a bit more complex with its 4X-like gameplay that normally is seen only in TBS games, it shouldn't prevent RTS games from offering more options than eliminating the enemy.

And as the amount of capacity that a disc can hold increases, I would assume that not only will games become more graphically impressive, but they will be more hybrid-like experiences, even with FPSs, which typically last for less than 10 hours. In the future, that all may change. Complexity will be embraced more and more, as game developers find ways getting around the trap of constantly streamlining certain game mechanics.

You may have a point there about strategy games lacking enough realism in the decision-making process, but as the AI continues to improve, one can infer that this will be less of a problem than it is right now.

As for Starcraft seeming more complex than a game like Civilization, I don't agree with you there because the former doesn't allow you to do more than eliminate your opponent(s); you can't win by various other victories like peace or by having the largest culture. The options are even more limited in SC and many other RTS games, except for SOSE, which still is not well balanced enough with its politics, economics, and warfare, but is a lot closer to being perfect than most of whatever else is out there.

@dove - yeah i was specifically thinking of turn-based strategy games (which are what i think of when someone says 'strategy games' -- i compartmentalize 'rts games' in a completely different category).

i think a big problem with a blockbuster console rts in the style of goldeneye is that it's hard to make rts games without mouse control. there are a few, but they don't feel as strategic or as easy to control as mouse-controlled rts games. the best attempt i've seen is pikmin, and that had to do it by fundamentally changing what an rts game is (making it single player, making it about exploration rather than conquest, etc.).

also, do you include dota-like games as "strategy" games? if so, currently league of legends is a very popular strategy game, with at least as many players as sc2, if not more. but again, it's pc-mainly (exclusively?), probably because of the mouse thing.

halo wars (spinoff rts) solvd som control issues with consol rts's but peopl would rather play starcraft

lol console RTS

As far as I'm aware it did, but the rest of it was pretty buggy and nasty.

There was that other console rts, except I cant remember its name, but that was buggy as shit, even though it had pretty good controls as well.

IIRC there was a Dawn of Discovery Wii version, butI dont know how it played. Also, Starcraft 64

Played Yomi? http://www.sirlingames.com/pages/games (http://www.sirlingames.com/pages/games)

Card game that simulates a fighting game. "Double-blind RPS with uneven/unequal trade-offs".

Does PES wii qualify as a strategy games ???
Or a proof of concept?
It also introduce a lot of neat verb that could be use in every click and play interface and would work on RTS too.

That was my point. DF is pretty much my dream strategy game so everything else in the genre kinda pales in comparison.

Yeah, I suppose that DOTA-style games can also be called strategy games. They're kind of like Tower Defense games, combined with (not directly) controlling and leading a bunch of smaller units to destroy another opponent's tower structures, so it is at least somewhat strategic. I would also group tactics games as a sort of subgenre that originated and is part of the strategy genre. So, games without base building, like the Myth franchise, Ground Control 1 & 2, Commandos, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, etc. would all fall under this category, too.

Maybe if game developers emphasized thinking over click-fests there would be a lot less problems with porting RTS games to consoles. I think that TBS games are easier, in this regard, because you and your opponent(s) take turns, with many of the game mechanics not appearing too different from the ones seen in many JRPGs (like Valkyria Chronicles, for instance).

I've tried to get into DF before, but its controls were probably too difficult for me to grasp before. However, that was a few months back, when I didn't have as much knowledge about the strategy genre as a whole, so maybe I could do better with understanding DF's rules and finally be able to see what all the fuss is about.

From what I've heard, it also offers some city-building and RPG elements, too, right? Like, you can build structures and even create your own stories, so it's very nonlinear and sandbox-based in that sense, which greatly distinguishes it from a lot of other games out there.

Not gonna lie, DF is probably one of the hardest games to get into, in part due to its admittedly terrible controls. If you do manage to cross the entry barrier, it's incredibly rewarding though.

It was probably somewhat easier for me because I was already heavily into games like The Settlers and Dungeon Keeper when I discovered it, so I had the core gameplay down pretty quickly.

Well, if I could have the patience to get into a game like X2: The Threat or a complex TBS game, then there is no reason why I cannot learn how to play DF. Perhaps if I knew some websites that provide great tips on the game and a good walkthrough, I would be more motivated to play it.

Also, with a game like Valkyria Chronicles, do you see more third-person tactics/strategy games coming out for consoles in the future? With another Pikmin game possibly in the works, will this give other game developers a greater incentive to develop console strategy/tactics games? Maybe some really good indie developers can put together some relatively easy-to-play but hard-to-master console strategy games.

Sport game are really strategy games, they have attacker and defender, and there is another camp to destroy by poking in their weak spot, generally guard by a special unit. You need to manage the resource of unit to keep their efficiency up. The main difference is that generally the main resource to farm is the weak spot of the other camp and there is only one unit that can farm that resource and only one camp can own it at a times, the other camp must steal it to prevent poking on its weak spot.

I'm serious, sport game are where we should look for console RTS. ???

I am honestly concerned about the state of the strategy game genre. The problem could not be more real.

civ 5 was/is sloppy

I heard that Civ 5 doesn't include religion, which is disappointing, considering how it was a large aspect of all the other Civ games. Didn't  Shogun II also appear more simplified than its predecessors? Is the whole idea of streamlining gameplay in strategy games and games in general unavoidable? If so, I wonder what role games will play in the future.

it wasn't a large aspect of civ1, civ1 didn't have religion except for discovering a few religious-related things on the tech tree (which unlocked a few wonders); civ5 is similar

that said there are like a thousand civ5 mods. if you don't like civ5 without religion, add in a religion mod.

Heck, I can build transforming robots with Tinkertoys and LEGOs, and even *I* don't have the patience for most RTS/TBS games outside of decent roguelikes. I really don't think the majority of people have that kind of attention span outside of maybe PokeMon-level range. PokeMon is probably the closest thing to a mainstream strategy game you're gonna find. And portable systems - especially the DS - are presently WAY better equipped for that type of gameplay, anyways.

There's a certain type of dehumanizing to looking at your troops as disposable resources, as opposed to say, an RPG's characters that, while fewer in number, are often more robust in personality; which engages the players more personally/directly.

It kinda goes back to the streamlining thing. Streamlined strategy = standard-faire RPG. And RPGs ironically have one of gaming's largest devoted followings. If you just take the strategy concepts, deck it out in kickin' RPG graphics and terms, and have some degree of predetermined plot points about it, you'd be set with the most popular RTS/TBS ever. The trick, as discussed in the streamlining thread, is all about HOW you choose to streamline.


I seem to recall "Advance Wars" having quite the following in the GBA days. :shrug2:

@The_Flying_Dove

The reason that DF is so difficult to learn, aside from the obvious problematic controls, is that there's no easy explanation. There's no structured way to learn to do things; almost all aspects of the game are completely necessary for you to understand before you can do much good, because they all rely on each other. It makes for an incredible sandbox strategic experience, but also an unrivaled cliff of a difficulty slope.

I believe the first 2 warcrafts as well as the first starcraft came out on consoles at the time.

I do remember a certain Starcraft 64.

And a Command and conquer 64 too

CC was also on saturn

Porting them to consoles only further simplifies/reduces depth of a strategy game, since most of them require a mouse/keyboard.

Didn't the PS2 and/or Xbox have some support for a keyboard and a mouse? If so, why haven't the major manufacturers considered making keyboards and mice good alternatives as console devices for shooters and strategy games? After all, even FPSs are easier to play this way than with controllers. And maybe that would remove the need for oversimplifying many games that are ported to consoles.

But then why would they do that if they could just play on their PC?

You know many console gamers; they don't want to waste too much money to buy gaming rigs. Hence, they can get a console and still be able to use keyboards and mice. It doesn't seem smart profit-wise to avoid this kind of potential, unless somehow it really is that much riskier than even developing motion technology. Then again, the Move and the Wii remote have the potential to work pretty well with genres like strategy games, so game developers can still develop these titles. It's only the publishers and the game developers themselves that prevent such games to be developed and done properly.

My best guess is that they're too lazy and would rather stick to easier ways of making big money, which would be to develop well established genres nonstop, even at the expense of frustrating those gamers that expect more innovation.

Consoles just don't lend themselves to keyboard/mouse input because they aren't set up at desks all that often. I agree regarding the new input devices like the Wii remote, but those things do not lend themselves well to precision. Basically I'm saying that the PC/console genre divide is there for a reason. If any huge company like Blizzard saw the opportunity for profit they would jump on it.

It's funny when you mention game developers and publishers not being open to that or to niche genres like simulation/strategy games, when handheld games are probably even more likely to attempt these risks. Knowing this, do you think that it will really be the upcoming handheld consoles that make these genres go mainstream than their console counterparts?

Yes, I know that Blizzard at least attempted some console versions of their games, which I'd assume didn't sell well enough to release more console ports in the future. However, it can still try to take a smaller risk, which would be to make a Starcraft, Warcraft, or Diablo game on a handheld device, like either of the three competitors (Sony, Nintendo, Apple). That might even work to its advantage, just by carrying the label "Activision Blizzard," "Blizzard Entertainment," or simply "the maker of World of Warcraft."

When it originally came out, the XBox was supposed to usher in a new era of gaming, where PC users and console users could play together. However, playtesting showed that an inferior mouse-user could beat a better player when they used an XBox. In other words, PC users had an unbeatable input advantage. Yes, if the skills were lopsided enough, the XBox player could win, but the issue was there.

Microsoft dropped their XBox - PC crossover plans, and went a step further. They issued a demand to all XBox developers that nobody was to ever make a software that incorporated a mouse. Period.

Come to the next generation, and we have players using the XBox controllers on their PC, and the XBox 360 does not have a no-mouse rule. On the other hand, results seem to show issues of precision when using a mouse - the 360 isn't set up to be so precise, so tearing and other things can occur, though idk, that could only be for games designed for the proprietary controller (including auto-aim).

I'm not gonna touch the Playstation.

Strategy games? Fire Emblem all day every day. Although that's because I'm obsessed with making numbers go higher, and FE has a lot of numbers to increase.

It think it's more convenience than money tbh. PCs, even "gaming rigs", are actually the cheaper solution. Unless you strive to always be able to play the newest FPS at max graphics settings that is.

I understand what you mean, C.A. Sinclair, and I am one of those PC gamers that chooses to buy older games, due to the fact that I don't have a gaming rig. Yes, there is more than one type of PC gamer. And while I would like to understand how to build a PC, I don't see myself constantly spending tons of money each month or annually, just to play a new game.

What suggestions would any one of you give towards making strategy games more streamlined, but not to such an extreme extent that it causes a lot of the gameplay to be dumbed down?

Readability!

Whatever the complexity of a fighting game, it's pretty easy to see the effectiveness of a move base of the space it takes, the timing it have and the damage it deal.

Now in a RTS how do I know that lazer work against some type of unit and not other?, clearer opposition between unit is necessary. Also build order, any experience gamer can see clearly the benefit of each based on cost, build time and type of unit ... except it's necessarily obvious how much it affect the strategy and why you fail but after 100 pwnage.

Having a better feedback about the direction (degree of turtling, booming and rushing). If the player have a clear feedback on his strategy it might compare what the other have done and learn faster (ho I see he have made an information booming early to counter my build order).

Better micromanagement tools, micro management is generally a consequence of exploiting the high flexibility of selecting and controlling unit, it reward fast clicking . PES Wii with cursory control had show a fantastic set of indirect verb that could be done in any RTS (holding click on a space could attract or repel nearby units to that space, or simply make a group sparser, tracing a line without unit selected, etc...). If those idea are already implemented, they should be way more obvious.

"advisors" is a good idea -- recommending courses of action. the civilization games use those well, but they could be applied to any strategy game. 'sir! i recommend you do this, and here's why!'

Wouldn't advisor's sort of take away a bit of the fun of making your decisions?

yes, but that's the point. you use them when you don't know what you're doing, and gradually you come to know more about the game and be better at it than the ai advisors are. but the advisors are always there to fall back on. besides, it doesn't really "take away" making decisions from you at all: they just advise, they don't command. it's still your decision. do barack obama's advisors take away the fun of being president?

Yeah, I kind of like having an advisor in a strategy game. Either that or have a good tutorial mode that teaches you how to play the game. It would also work great in a simulation game.

Is there any chance that we'll see another Civilization game come out for consoles? It might just be the push that we need to see more game developers craft strategy games.

Sim City 4 had advisors because of the sheer amount of things you need to manage. It helps to have someone to tell you your education coverage has fallen too low since it's easy to miss that -- it's not obvious at all.

I like those, but it sometimes gets to be you get too reliant on them. Civilization can be played entirely by advisor and won. Sucks.

"advice" entities usually phase out later in the game (ie. fire emblem) so they're never really a problem, but usually the stuff they tell you is so obvious most people are turned off by it.

not on the harder difficulty levels, or in multiplayer -- i think it's fine for it to be beatable that way on 'easy mode' though

Speaking of fighters, I wonder how many people notice that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 isn't just the most successful fighter of all time, but is actually also the most successful RTS too. In high-level play, it's considerably more RTS than it is fighter, even.

no? having strategy doesn't make it less a fighting game

The control issue is the only real barrier. I don't have any of the new systems, and I never really got into the PS2 all that much, so I dunno if there's a game like this already, but if I were given the task of designing an RTS game for the consoles, I'd probably focus on squad building, squad-level interaction and commands and give the player some sort of mechanic that allowed them to pause the game while they organized their squads. You couldn't really make a functional realtime control system with a game pad. Instead, select the squad and issue commands in realtime, and pause the game to build the squads, formations and deal with the tech-tree stuff, maybe. Kindof a compromise, but it would allow for battles to play out in realtime while still allowing for the depth of your typical RTS game.

With the Wii you could probably figure out a decent system of getting your troops selected and maneuvering around the map and menus without having to pause much or at all.

I imagine you could probably come up with a very workable system using the Kinnect, though I doubt any publisher would want to use such a gimmicky peripheral to make such a non-gimmicky game mechanic.

As far as turn-based strategy, I think the consoles have got some of the best ever made, and most of the superior PC titles have gotten ports of some sort, with the exception of the more detail-oriented military strategy games like TOAoW. They may be easier and not as deep as PC games, but Advance Wars and the Military Madness series are pretty good. I don't think stuff like Ogre Battle and FF:Tactics should be included, since you can just grind your guys up and throw tactics and strategy out the window. I'd like to see a Tactical RPG where the "RPG" elements were ripped out or severely limited, but still somehow involved. Advance Wars but with a reward system for keeping units alive from one battle to the next.

I'm not quite sure but that sounds like a Fire Emblem. Yes, characters level up but at least in 7 and Sacred Stones you couldn't grind too much (well, there was couple arenas, but they were risky) and while it was possible it wasn't really option IMO. And in FE most characters die permanently if they die in battle so that could be counted as "reward system" (keep your favorite chars alive and use them in next chapters) ?

sounds like Master of Monsters on Genesis/Megadrive (it also exists on playstation but that version kind sucks)

Wrong, the Tower of Valni and Lagdou Ruins in Sacred Stones presented endless grinding. I do -sort of- agree though.

^^ Tower of Valni is for pussies. It was really unnecessary, too, since Sacred Stones was already the easiest game in the series without it. And besides that was the only Fire Emblem with grinding opportunities. In all the rest there is a finite amount of experience in the game you have to make do with. Although you can still beat most Fire Emblems without any strategy getting involved if you don't play on hard.

FE6 is my favorite TBS. I still haven't beaten it on easy mode. Not because it's hard, but because it's so freaking long and I tend to lose interest right around chapter 26 or so of Eliwood's story.

Well, most FEs have arenas you can abuse to get some extra exp if you want. The first Fire Emblem game on GBA only has them in time limited areas, though, so there's a cap on how much you can get from them.

I'm a fan of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, which you can consider a mix of turn based strategy and Total War games, with a little rpg thrown in. Your officers, who you assign to any tasks you need done, can also do research and so on to improve themselves, using points you earn by building or fighting. However, grinding in such a circumstance is hard considering if you just sit around building traps to get research points means you're not making troops or upgrading your cities, which is necessary but doesn't give points. There's a risk/reward thing there that works really well.