Comment on Age of Empires designer believes RTS games need to finally evolve after decades of stagnation
Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week agoI’ve discovered this project this month but haven’t played it yet nor am I an RTS player. What do they do differently?
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
I was an extremely casual rts player for years playing mainly aoe3. Beyond all reason captured me instantly with the controls. Basically other rts games control difficulty with limited control scheme so you require high apm. Bar gives players as many quality of life controls as they want and allows for long action queues. I can queue up a unit to operate for 10mins while I focus on other parts of the game.
Bar also has basically no pop limit so you’re only limited by the resources you control it also doesn’t incentivize storing large amounts of resources. So wealthy is income focused. This means if you have more map control you have more wealth but because units drop a %of their cost in wrecks if you’re behind and you win a good fight and can control the wreckage field you can catch up.
There is also so much more like the ability to transfer units, metal, energy to other players at 0 cost means working together is op. Strats involve a lot of “communism” and communication to decide where on the map needs the resources.
Example I might have won my side of the map and I’ll send some metal over to another player who is losing so they can stay in the fight. Or my eco player will make units and sell them to players for their metal costs. Which means front players don’t need to pay the metal and energy cost of building a t2 lab they just pay the unit cost.
ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 1 week ago
This sounds a lot like what Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance has been doing for ages, and that expansion came out in 2007. The only difference is the unit limit but that’s mostly for performance reasons (and is rarely hit in competitive matches anyway).
How are these mechanics next-gen if they’re more than 15 years old?
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
Ive played faf its a very different feeling game. Faf feels awful. I’d say bar is next gen because a total annihilation style game has never been a huge rts title and I think bar is the one that can reach the mainstream rts audience and beyond.
Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Thank you. I will pay a closer attention to the project then.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
Play the co op vs ai/scav lobbies or max rating less than 20os lobbies.