"Playing SimCity"

[PauloMorfeo]

We've all seen it - some games there's this one noob just turtling in his base, [...] we call it "Playing SimCity".
[...] try hard to discourage this behavior, because [...]
But it got me thinking - what if there was a game based on this sort of "SimCity" behavior? [...]

Without reading the whole thread and being quite late,
This was very noticeable in Spring ever since its birth. Almost no one wants to play the mighty pro 1v1s, they almost always want to play team games. SpeedMetal emerged, allowing players to play SimCity each in it's own "island". And the map Castles. And the map Altored Divide. And the mod Chickens, which is just turtling against the computer.

What you're describing is partly the evolution of RTSs, if you think about it.

Warcrap 3 had a very strong focus on the heroes. But you still had all those "chores" that were "annoying" and removed you from focusing decently on the most "fun" part of the game. Thus DotA emerged and latter LoL and Heroes of Newerth. You no longer have those petty chores and all you do is play around in the front line, where the action is. DotA and LoL had huuuge successes because they catered to desires the players had but that weren't being satisfied by any other games.

On the other direction, you can see from some years a great emmergence of Tower Defense games. You just turtle, have absolutely no armies and just babysit your base. Plants vs Zombies had a huuuge success because it catered to desires players had that weren't being satisfied by any other games.



The standard position about playing SimCity in RTSs is to regard the players as wrong. I think *that* is wrong. I think the stance you're having about it is highly commendable - the fact is that players are having desires uncatered for and why should any game developer regard the players as being wrong instead of the other way around?

There are many paths I'd like to see pursued in catering for the player's specific desires without forcing players into the standard RTS paradigm where you have to do everything (SimCity, Tower Defense, raiding, etc, etc, etc). Even with the emergence of Tower Defense games and MOBAs, I believe there's still lots of ground that can be covered here.

A success example in Spring is Delta Siege Dry. I believe it works so well because it allows the games/mods to cater for many different needs on the players. You have 3 roles in those games: the SimCity guys at the back; the raiders at the bottom; and the Tower Defense guys at the top.

Much ground can still be "broken" (ground-breaking) by breaking away from the rigid classical RTS paradigm and new success stories can come up.

[KDR_11k]

I'm unconvinced that simbasing is gonna work in a competitive RTS due to the efficiency factor. In a competitive context that would become BO/macro: the game and still be pretty stressful even if it's shallow.

[Pxtl]

Again, a little randomness and some careful design that nullifies the utility of high APM could go a long way for making an RTS casual-friendly.

[KDR_11k]

It's not about high APM, just about tight play. RTS newbies float resources like they collect interest, they don't build stuff as fast as they can.

I don't think that playing Anno competitively would be fun.

And frankly if you add enough randomness and fudge factors that newbies don't get steamrolled you just end up with a game where the player doesn't really matter (cf. SimCity)

[smoth]

random stuff is one of the most hated things for competitive players. They try to eliminate as many variables as possible so they can focus on other aspects

[KDR_11k]

Random can be pretty damn frustrating, after all when the RNG turns what should be a certain victory into a defeat that's just utter BS. Of course some people take the hate of randomness too far but when you've got nonsense like CoH's vehicle system (a vehicle will only die to a critical hit, as long as the RNG doesn't roll one the vehicle just stays at 5% HP despite repeated penetrating hits) you can get some really WTF moments. You can try to minimize or calculate risks but in the end you may still suffer an unfair loss at the hands of the RNG.

The worst example of "RNG says you lose" is probably Mario Party, followed by the f***ing blue shell.

[Neddie]

Which is not to say RNG used wisely cannot be a part of good design.

[Pxtl]

Random can be pretty damn frustrating, after all when the RNG turns what should be a certain victory into a defeat that's just utter BS. Of course some people take the hate of randomness too far but when you've got nonsense like CoH's vehicle system (a vehicle will only die to a critical hit, as long as the RNG doesn't roll one the vehicle just stays at 5% HP despite repeated penetrating hits) you can get some really WTF moments. You can try to minimize or calculate risks but in the end you may still suffer an unfair loss at the hands of the RNG.

The worst example of "RNG says you lose" is probably Mario Party, followed by the f***ing blue shell.

Yes, but RNG is not incompatible with competitive gaming. Obviously you want to avoid games where the RNG is too decisive in choosing a victor. The "pikeman kills my tank" Civ effect should be avoided. But lots of random games are successful at a competitive level. People play Poker competitively. Catan competitively. Magic the Gathering competitively. Drawing inventory is a *great* place to put randomness, for example. Forget the Blue Shell in Mario Kart and look at the pickup system itself - there's a lot of randomness there, but it provides a tight competition. Maybe not fit for a pro tournament, but high-enough level play that hardcore players will not feel the game is broken.

And by APM, I meant *any* action, building included. If the pace were adjusted so players had time to spend their resources properly without panicking? That would help. Even look at KP - you could easily avoid the "excessing" thing by having the home-facs pump out swarmers when nothing else is selected.

[KDR_11k]

Well, what exactly does the player do then?

Having the home fac spew swarmers in KP is a very band-aid thing, that's almost never what you want it to do unless you're going for early cheese. So people who don't order their home fac still get bad results.

[NeonStorm]

The game system should handle excess automatically

After 5-20s of income are stored in your storage, the system should produce queued units.
Each unit has a priority (priority in seconds of stored income required to drain ressources)


Instead of our current tower-model, towers should be able to morph weapons for cost (less micro heavy).
* To balance the build power, morph centers could provide global build power for morphers (each morpher has personal limit too)
Laser towers which can channel another idle tower's dps could replace heavier towers.
Less heavy towers let the short ranged units be still usefull vs some porc.

The same can be archived with bunkers (hp-buff vs agility, low investment in statics).
Bunkers could also protect coms from air raids without adding too much push-ability to them.


The worst thing that happened to BA is rocket-arty OR the high cost of deflectors which almost always make them useless and encurage static plasma arty.

The worst thing that happened to ZK/Cursed is the shield link script in it's current mechanic.
Not that link is bad (effectively custom-shaped shields), only too strong if the charge flow is dependend on average grid charge vs the damagd shield's charge AND if shields with limited charge cause constant overflow (which is distributed mainly to weak shields)

[Pressure Line]

I did have the thought of creating a non-combat RTS that is all about resource/people (in the form of morale) management and base-building. I did a bit of preliminary work about 6 months ago, and have recently thought of a way around a few stumbling blocks.

is it something people are actually interested in?

[PicassoCT]

I did have the thought of creating a non-combat RTS that is all about resource/people (in the form of morale) management and base-building. I did a bit of preliminary work about 6 months ago, and have recently thought of a way around a few stumbling blocks.

is it something people are actually interested in?

People are interested in tower defese. I would say yes.

Guess the best would be if you could combine it though. Two player teams, one playing sim, the other using the gained credits for towerdefense.. :D