3 ms·

I think this is nowhere more evident than in the world of games. In my opinion RTS games stagnated and died because they failed to innovate in interface departm

by b0rsuk 8y ago

I think this is nowhere more evident than in the world of games. In my opinion RTS games stagnated and died because they failed to innovate in interface department, outside of a few like Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander. The classic Dune2/Warcraft interface only works for selecting single units and squares. So when any bigger engagement happens, it's just people throwing blobs at one another and juggling group hotkeys. I think RTS games should be controlled primarily by keyboard, not mouse. Select units of X type by pressing a key, target them at units of Z type, make the command 'attack' by pressing A. Vim-inspired. It's not surprising that games are chiefly aimed at the least patient people - the goal of publishers is to sell to as many people as possible.

projektir 8y ago
Hmm. To me, large-army games and small-army games are just very different games, and I have little interest in large-army games. I don't see Total Annihilation ever replacing StarCraft for me, for instance. If I could only control the game via keys, I'd be very uninterested as that'd be a very different kind of game. Most of these games went turn based for a reason. I specifically like AoE II for the feeling of grabbing a pack of Mangudai and watching them quickly run somewhere and fire arrows. It's not realistic, but it's understandable and pleasing, in a way that a super serious military simulator isn't. I think RTS, like many other genres, mostly "died" due to stagnation around clones, which I think has more to do with the industry at large that is not innovating all that much anymore, and RTS is often not the genre of choice for a small indie developer, either.