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[PATV] Thursday, September 1, 2011 - Extra Credits Season 3, Ep. 3: The MMORTS
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
This week, we address the potential for the MMORTS genre, as well as the reasons why making one seems to be such a difficult challenge.
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You should check out the game Savage 2 if you haven't already. It's more FPS RTS kind of game, but it's got a lot of the kinds of features you mentioned. Basically, the matches are setup like a standard RTS. However, each side has 1 commander who plays the game like you would an RTS, building structures and what-not, while the rest of the players on each team play as the individual units. The commander can tell them where they need to be going, but the players are in control of their individual unit. They can choose to spawn as a more powerful unit at the cost of more team resources. It's a really great game, worth checking out.
Myth II holds the key to the mmorpg lock. Especially through the form expressed in this video of a point system per army. It is amazing how a skillful player can find a way to win with any set on a map that is well balanced. Heightened strategy. Also the rank system of Myth was interesting - it was a caste system, as opposed to a traditional ladder. This could work well in an mmorts. The discussion of the future of myth continues.
Check out the still living community at www.mariusnet.com!
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Basically had the instanced map thing - there was a grid with a bunch of territories and three competing factions trying to control them. Each faction had a base, which couldn't be captured and basically provided all the base functions to players of that faction - you built your units here, repaired them, upgraded them, etc.
In battles, you had one squad of units at a time, and basically micro-managed those few units through the battle. If you're wiped out, you can deploy additional squads from the entry point, but you had limited units so if you're careless you wouldn't last the entire battle. Winner of the battle takes the territory.
It wasn't perfect by a long shot, had a lot of obviously abandoned/unfinished features, but most of the answers to how an MMORTS could work were tehre. Felt like pre-expansion WoW when it had blocked off dungeon portals and invisible walls cutting off entire zones and quest lines that just aborted half way through. I also vaguely remember that balance basically vanished if you ever left the newbie planet, so it didn't have answers to ALL the problems.
I am completely shocked Shattered Galazy wasn't mentioned (and also that anyone besides me actually remembers it). For having a relatively low budget and very little care and attention it was a really great game and has had a shocking lifespan - for the record, it's still out there http://www.sgalaxy.com/, although having not played in some years I don't know how it's doing.
No need for leveling, as the progression would be done with the amount of units and types you have. Then as a member of a faction a small army could very well be the member of a small squad in an attack having the balancing a matter of faction vs faction. so in a grand scale battle limit the number of soldiers like 1000 vs 1000(or within a range, calculated with points etc..anyway just an exemple).. in those 2000, in a team you could have 4 veterans with 200 soldiers each and the rest being formed of players with smaller armies.. other team could have 6 veeterans instead and less new players.. there would be no issue of having someone too high level since everyone bands together, skill would be of more importance.. and the interest of playing and being high rank with a big army, would still be interesting as to have more control over the battlefield..even then, maybe the highest ranked player in the factions could be assigning tasks to the others prior to the battle , or during the battle, so new players less skills wouldn't be necessarily sent in the front line to die(or would they?
anyway, I think there's always a way of doing anything, just sometimes it seems trickier because some mechanics might need some adjustments and constrains to be fitted, or in other cases, it would only please a smaller group of people which isn't seen as viable by standard game companies, yet there's a lot of people out there for a lot of different experiences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boneyards
what was interesting about it though was it managed to overcome some of the problems they bring up in the video, but they did it all by community self management and cultural taboos within the game. Basically it was just in bad taste to attack newbs, and if you did the community would rise up against you and crush you if you did. Just imagine being sieged by the 3 largest guilds in a game at the same time and you start to see how that works. Also interesting was if you quit the game and abandoned it, usually your friends or allies would be the ones to conquer it so that they could divvy up the resources within your guild etc.
It makes me wonder how much of this could be accomplished via other means than just mechanics balance (which is still important) and how much could be accomplished by enabling certain behaviors within the community. just a thought.
We just talked about the MMORTS in a Developing Digital Games class the other day. The Prof seemed like he's been waiting for a game of this genre to exist if only to study it, so it's a shame there hasn't really been a successful contribution to the genre. Hopefully some indie out there is striving to make this and maybe even taking some notes from this episode.
I don't see any big guys coming out with this game, not with the advent of the MOBA. Maybe once MOBA hype dies down and we stop seeing new major additions to that genre on an annual basis, more developers will explore the MMORTS.