Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Re: My response to Monty still stands

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by Senor Barborito 08/28/2003, 7:02pm PDT

FABIO wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Any game in which rushing is the only viable method of winning is not a real-time strategy game, because the strategy never differs - there were plenty of ways in the original C&C to turtle and retort to a rush with a variation on 'the enemy's gate is down.'

I'm telling you, go buy Tiberian Sun for $0.50. That game's a turtler's and sim base paradise. After spending 15 hours playing the multiplayer with friends, we still couldn't find a way to break a competent base defense. Please though, stop holding up the original C&C as a model for RTS balance. That game had style up the wahzoo, but perfectly balanced it wasn't.

Odd. I must be basing Tiberian Sun incorrectly.

Starcraft does not have viable strategies outside of 'rush'

Teching? Expanding? You have not played any mid to high level starcraft, at all. Your quick zergling rush meets my barracaded photon cannons. As the carcasses fade, a reaver drops into your zergling only base. YOU LOSE

That's quite true - I haven't gone too far beyond the early-mid level of skill, having only invested a couple hundred hours into the game. However, my brother has spent insane amounts of time perfecting his game against the Korean minions - to the point where he's 'up there' if not in competitions. He tells me it's all pretty much rush at his level as well. I've only recently begun questioning his sanity when he ditched Starcraft in order to eat, sleep, and breathe SWG.

For some reason Monty missed that in his second response in that conversation and thought that people having different conceptions of 'min/max' was the same as having viable strategies outside of 'rush rush rush.' Frenzied clicking and tweaked build orders does not a game make, and I've long hated Blizzard RTSes for this reason. C&C fell victim in further incarnations.

You could easily defeat an opponent with more units than you in SC if you knew what you were doing, unlike any of the AoE type games. SC has oodles of sneaky tricks you can pull like your TA example.

AoE has other tactics that counter en masse onslaughts- V's bullfighter tactics (three medium-sized bases with a standby construction crew ready to start another just as you lay into the first) are perfected, vicious, and have more than once reduced me to tears, pounding the desk, and/or screaming in helpless frustration - it's like a knight fighting an ameoba, both armed with swords. You simply cannot actually HURT her to any real extent. You charge and start laying waste to a base - the other two bases are flanking you from both sides simultaneously while a third base gets built opposite from your army and progressively closer to your own base. God I hate how she plays - but at least it's a viable, skillful strategy that relies on quite a bit more than clicking quickly.

Much like Everquest, mindlessness apparently sells quite handsomely.

--SB

Maybe you should get into Adventure games....

Actually at 17 I was winning a good amount of money at Quake DM tournaments - unfortunately deathmatch isn't too popular these days and I *SUCK* at team-based FPS combat for whatever reason. I've thought about reviving my slumbering skills, going into UltimateArena or the UT2k3 DM for-money circuit but only as a passing thought. I took DM as far as I could, more or less - and I got sick of it, really. Plus the time investment is insane - I was playing 8 hours a weekday and on tourney weekends I'd come home from school on Friday and play straight until Monday morning, usually coming in fifth or seventh out of five thousand. Quake DM isn't broken, but a lot of DM games out there are - Q3 in particular has always felt a little mangled.

--SB