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Hard disagree with many comments here. For ennemies AI, ok: we made progress. But for human-vs-human gameplays, we basically had everything in the nineties.

Hard disagree with many comments here. For ennemies AI, ok: we made progress. But for human-vs-human gameplays, we basically had everything in the nineties. Warcraft II over Kali (to simulate a LAN over the Internet for Warcraft II didn't have battle.net) was basically the gameplay of Warcraft III reforged. Half-Life and then it's counterstrike mod were basically the FPS of today. Diablo II (development for Windows 1995 started in 1997 and game came out in 2000, so not 2000 per se but nearly) was basically so perfect from a collaborative gameplay point of view and was the perfect "hack n slash" game. It was so perfect that a few weeks ago Blizzard released the exact same game, with an identical gameplay, even down to most bugs (some were fixed, like the eth armor upgrade bug). It's the same game, but with modern looking graphics. Games were so good that more than two decades later you can re-release the exact same gameplay with updated graphics. That's how perfect things already were. So very hard disagree that "games had simpler gameplay". Many game genre back then had already reached perfection from the gameplay point the view. Since then we added shiny.

jpgvm 5y ago
Not to mention some of the games back then had vastly more complexity because it wasn't as necessary for every game to have universal appeal on account of much smaller budgets. I think the golden age of games is behind us but I'm looking forward to a new golden age of VR/AR sometime in my lifetime.
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  > Not to mention some of the games back then had vastly more complexity because it wasn't as necessary for every game to have universal appeal on account of much smaller budgets. Indeed... Ultima IV, Ultima V and then "Sundog: The Frozen Legacy" (on the Atari ST) comes to mind in my case. There were, not arguably, but factually, more complex game than 99.5% of the games produced today.
meheleventyone 5y ago
I agree it’s usually less simpler gameplay and more simpler simulation. For some genres, notably RTS games they’re actually simpler in their modern incarnation. There’s basically a complexity limit for gameplay we definitely had already hit in the 90s. These days we can do much more complex simulation but usually the surfaced complexity isn’t much different.
candybar 5y ago
Warcraft II is a bad example here - it's completely unplayable if you're used to any kind of modern RTS. Terrible unit AI (not computer AI), selection limits, no rally points or queuing. It also has just 2 factions. Starcraft, which only came out just over 2 years later, blows it away from gameplay perspective. Warcraft 3 came out in 2002 (6 and half years after Warcraft 2) and represents an even larger improvement in gameplay and a huge increase in complexity (all of the improvements from Starcraft carried over, 3D terrain, perspective and unit rendering, 4 factions). Arguably that's when things started to slow down in terms of improvements - the gap between Starcraft 2 (2010) and Warcraft 3 (2002) is much smaller than the gap between Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1 (1998), which in turn is much smaller than the gap between Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 (1995).
- egfx 5y ago
  Not to mention that Warcraft 3 was Blizzard's first ever 3D engine. It was actually carried over from an engine developed for Descent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973306), effectively a simplified perspective shooter. Constraint sometimes bubbles up to the surface the best solutions. A bit late to this thread. I was the QA Graphics Lead for WarCraft 3.

jpgvm 5y ago

Not to mention some of the games back then had vastly more complexity because it wasn't as necessary for every game to have universal appeal on account of much smaller budgets. I think the golden age of games is behind us but I'm looking forward to a new golden age of VR/AR sometime in my lifetime.

TacticalCoder 5y ago
> Not to mention some of the games back then had vastly more complexity because it wasn't as necessary for every game to have universal appeal on account of much smaller budgets. Indeed... Ultima IV, Ultima V and then "Sundog: The Frozen Legacy" (on the Atari ST) comes to mind in my case. There were, not arguably, but factually, more complex game than 99.5% of the games produced today.

meheleventyone 5y ago

I agree it’s usually less simpler gameplay and more simpler simulation. For some genres, notably RTS games they’re actually simpler in their modern incarnation. There’s basically a complexity limit for gameplay we definitely had already hit in the 90s. These days we can do much more complex simulation but usually the surfaced complexity isn’t much different.

candybar 5y ago

Warcraft II is a bad example here - it's completely unplayable if you're used to any kind of modern RTS. Terrible unit AI (not computer AI), selection limits, no rally points or queuing. It also has just 2 factions. Starcraft, which only came out just over 2 years later, blows it away from gameplay perspective. Warcraft 3 came out in 2002 (6 and half years after Warcraft 2) and represents an even larger improvement in gameplay and a huge increase in complexity (all of the improvements from Starcraft carried over, 3D terrain, perspective and unit rendering, 4 factions). Arguably that's when things started to slow down in terms of improvements - the gap between Starcraft 2 (2010) and Warcraft 3 (2002) is much smaller than the gap between Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1 (1998), which in turn is much smaller than the gap between Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 (1995).

egfx 5y ago
Not to mention that Warcraft 3 was Blizzard's first ever 3D engine. It was actually carried over from an engine developed for Descent (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973306), effectively a simplified perspective shooter. Constraint sometimes bubbles up to the surface the best solutions. A bit late to this thread. I was the QA Graphics Lead for WarCraft 3.