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Why are there no new MMORTS's?
clbembry
Member Posts: 94
I feel like that last high quality mmorts was StarCraft and that was years go. wth?
Comments
StarCraft is not a MMORTS. It's an outdated RTS with multiplayer. That said there have been several MMORTS and most have failed. My personal favourite was Beyond Protocol but it went the way of the dodo. As for new MMORTS you may be interested in the following kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2122031929/novus-aeterno-the-next-evolution-in-rts-games
Ask the game companies. Why would we know what games they design and what games they don't?
Answering as someone who isn't a game designer, personally I feel like once you've played a couple of RTS games (online or off) you've played them all. I played "Dune" 10 or 12 years ago, and two or three more after that and they may as well have been the same game thereafter. The "build this to build that to build this next..." game mechanic got real old real fast. As I say, this is purely my point of view. As to why game designers don't make very many MMORTs these days, well, only they could give you a definitive answer.
I think rts sort of fell out of favor when they started to really dumb them down. I think they're a good example of what's happening to mmorpgs.
The micromanagement part and the small scale economy parts of it was half the fun of the game. By taking it out and simplifying construction they attracted more people but it made the games very generic and they all felt the same. What they got was a short lived boost in numbers playing these types of games but killed the "genre" because the rts lovers stopped buying them.
I wouldn't really call any of the rts games mmos...but what isn't an mmo now days. End of nations was suppose to be an mmorts but that's floundered around in development so long I think it's changed to a MOBA now...../rolleyes.
"By taking it out and simplifying construction they attracted more people but it made the games very generic and they all felt the same."
That might as well be a statement about gaming in general. The difference is going easymode in RTS knocked the genre, going easymode in MMOs did not stop the money flowing in. They may be 2 minute wonders but MMOs still make money.
I don't think any of the ones that did come out did very well. From the overly-complex mess of End of Nations to the creative but pay-to-win hybrid BattleSwarm, most of them did miserably.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It's hard in a strategy game to make it persistent without giving the people who are there at the beginning a huge advantage. I've been really enjoying Illyriad (massive map turn based strategy persistent game) but even there the people that were there at the beginning have the lion's share of the power in the game. (It's still a wonderful deep game that I recommend you check out if you like the idea of a massively multiplayer strategy game with real depth and complexity).
In addition, most strategy games have online options where people can just play them with other people. It's much easier to get an online game of Starcraft or EU4 going than find people to play D&D with. So the novelty in the MMO part is only in the persistence which as I said above, while potentially a very cool idea, creates a lot of balance problems in a strategy game.
Ive always thought of EVE as a MMORTS. It takes place in real time and youre effectively maneuvering your unit to control territory and destroy enemies and expend resources. You don't steer your ship, you click where you want to go and if you command a squad they simply each control a unit. It has a very complex meta game. Some of the RTS features are instead MMO features, like trading.
However, the reason there aren't more MMORTS is mostly because of WOW, but also because its not a popular style of gaming, and its difficult to implement as a MMO. How would you deal with an army of units in an open world? Base building?
Because no one has yet figured out what to do about the need for people to log out for real-life reasons. Or at least if anyone has, I haven't been able to find their solution.
RTS games are traditionally based on attacking and defending bases. But how do you defend your base while logged off? How do you defend against a guild twice as big as yours coming and overrunning yours? How do you make it so that the optimal strategy isn't to attack people who are offline? If being offline gives you magical protection, how do you defend against people seeing that an attack is coming and logging off to thwart it? Any solution I've seen to some of those problems immediately creates others--and massive, game-breaking things, not just minor quibbles.
Your traditional RTS can avoid all of those problems by having a fixed set of players present from start to finish, and having the game end in a reasonable amount of time. But that immediately breaks down if you try to have arbitrarily many players or a persistent game world.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
So we are classifying Starcraft as an MMO now? Wow.... So a game that can't even host 16 players is now an MMO. No wonder people think games like Neverwinter are an MMO (I enjoyed Neverwinter, NOT AN MMO THOUGH).
Go away for awhile and things get even worse. I hope one day this site returns to its former self. What with mods moving threads such as this to the proper sections (and fixing the title).
I disagree. There are tons of well produced games with deep gameplay. Examples:
- Dishonored
- Borderland
- Deus Ex Human Evoluation
- Xcom Enemy Unknown
- The Room 1 & 2
- Republique
.........
There's a PBBG called Tribal Wars that I used to play that came up with one solution, called "Account Sitting". Basically you set it up so that when you log off you can have it set for someone else to be able to control all your territory and units. (The actual implementation on the game is clunky and flawed but I think the idea is good)
The counter to it is that in territory-based games, players are usually in a team due to location and short-term safety. Half the players are in it for themselves not the team, so you end up with players secretly working for enemy teams. Once a team knows there's traitors somewhere in their team, the "account sitting" is more guarded or stops altogether. By that time, the traitors/"spys" have already handed the login times to the enemy. When the team falls, the spies defect to the enemy, or (if not in the front lines) join the team that the enemy plans on fighting next.
This creates some inertia, because players want to win, which means they usually don't back-stab their team when it's winning, but when the team is losing or has bad leadership it happens fast.
They came up with one set of trade-offs, certainly, but not really a solution. Most people have to be offline most of the time, so in order to always have someone in control of your stuff, an awful lot of people will have to be able to control your base at least part of the time. That leads to the problems that you cite.
They came up with one set of trade-offs, certainly, but not really a solution. Most people have to be offline most of the time, so in order to always have someone in control of your stuff, an awful lot of people will have to be able to control your base at least part of the time. That leads to the problems that you cite.
True.
I feel like it was very close to being a solution though, maybe if had some other element to it, or a different spin... but then again there's a fine line between awesome and awful.
If I had to bet, I think that sooner or later someone's going to make an MMORTS that will catch on. Even if the inherent flaws can't be eliminated, someone will find a way to minimize them enough to breathe some life into that genera.