Having players as units in an RTS seems like a good idea. How

>>386739294
You can only control one unit? If so this is shit

Literally MOBAs.

>>386739294
It requires too much cordination and scale.

more practical aproach would be to players control hero units if you want to have large scale battles.

>>386739294
boring

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Look up foxhole. Feels like CoH but exactly that.

>>386739489
No, idiot. Natural selection is an RTS/FPS hybrid.

There's a commander that has a top down view of the map, he can build buildings, buff units, research upgrades, issue commands. All of the combat units are other players playing an FPS. When the commander orders a unit to move, it's a player getting the waypoint in their game.

>>386740076
cool

>>386739898
> Foxhole

When will this shit meme ends?

>>386740076
Sounds cool but would need alot of players

Battlefield 2142/Battlefield 4 Commander?

>>386739294
What game is depicted in this image?

>>386740536
Armies of Exigo

Savage Resurrection

It's free, give it a try

>be commander
>tell people where to go, they don't listen
>everyone will blame you if you lose
>votekicks by people who want to be commander instead

>be soldier
>idiot commander doesn't do anything/gives stupid orders
>he rages if you ignore his retarded orders
>he rages if you follow his retarded orders and predictably get slaughtered
>he doesn't build shit, researched wrong things
>can't kick him because people don't vote or he has friends on the server

I wouldn't wanna play that. Being commander in Rising Storm 2 or Red Orchestra 2 might be your thing but it's hard to get people to coordinate.
You can also try and be a team leader in CSGO but it will not end well.

>>386740430
What's wrong with it anon? I've been having fun.

>>386739898
too autistic for too few players on a server

>>386739294
Because;

RTS is a niche genre which outside Age of Empires 2 struggles to get 2 players.
There is a strong lack of control for commanders which is very boring. You cannot make new units or truly control the players in any meaningful way without making the game less fun for the actual players.
Does not translate to first person, map geometry is simple for visibility and combat mechanics are inherently limited because this poor level design.

If you want an RTS play RTS. If you want an FPS play an FPS

>>386740796
Is it decent? Played the original on a pirated version online, somehow, as a little kid.

>>386740594
Thanks Anon.

>>386740805
This. Sounds fucking gay as shit. Just play an RTS you absolute shitter OP

>>386739294
What about:

>Unit play is free
>RTS play costs dosh

>>386739294
>Having players as units in an RTS seems like a good idea.
said the armchair game designer

>>386741810
All team based vidya is pure garbage, don't kid yourself.

>>386741810
You would run into problems of trolls/just stupid units.

>>386739294
It's been tried quite a few times, to varying levels of success. NSII, as you mentioned, pulls it off pretty well. But, I think a large part of that has to do with the compact maps.

The battlefield series has always had elements like that. But, if you played any of them you'll know that basically the commander is about as important to your gameplay as whether or not you shined your shoes that morning.

PR got the commander to be useful for a while. But that kinda died out after squads were able to speak to other squads over mumble, and the coordination of a commander was less necessary.

I think the community is an important factor to consider as well. Battlefield games are pretty broad when it comes to players. PR was perfect for commanders to work in. And, NSII is small, both in general and in each game.

Basically just, RTS is a niche already. RTS coordinating with FPS is too narrow to be a marketable group, for the most part.

I was remembering C&C Renegade MP and I had the same thought. This should be a new genre.

Also there aren't many games where you can take control of a unit on screen, that'd be cool too.

>>386740805
this
sounds like a game for nofunallowed autists

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as an RTS player, having your units not listen to orders and act like retards instead if pretty fucking headache inducing. that's why you retards never have "commanders," these games suck dick from our perspective

>>386744245
or how about no one gets to be the commander, and everyone is either a different type of soldier or a engineer that builds/repairs shit, while resource gathering is automated. Just like Renegade.

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>>386740076
Nuclear Dawn did it, Iron Grip Warlord sorta too... both dead

>>386744332
what game is framed?

>>386745207
you should really play more vidya

>>386745207
HMMMM I DONT KNOW, LOOKS LIKE STARCRAFT TO ME. WHAT DO YOU THINK GUYS?

>>386745276
it's obviously Total Commander.

>>386745207
>bw.jpg
take a wild guess

>>386745349
Really? I thought that it's lotr battle for middle earth

>>386740805
It only really works when the team is all coordinated beforehand and is willing to work with one another. Completely falls apart in pugs.

I remember on NS1, I'd queue up buildings, orders, and research, and pretty much every game I'd have at least one person complain that I did something wrong because it didn't fit his personal view of what should've been done. Didn't matter if I had sent players to the wrong part of the map, researched armor instead of damage, or built too many turrets, they'd all throw a fit about some minor detail. It was the complete opposite when I played with a group of regulars though, we'd all discuss what we wanted and what we thought we should do beforehand so the majority of players would progress in the way they wanted and others would generally go along with the group instead of bitch at the commander.

>>386740076
Savage 1 and Savage 2 did it. Those were fun games

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People are thinking standard RTS gameplay like Starcraft and C&C, but what about instead taking a tabletop RPG approach?

>Four to Sixteen players play as hero characters like an RPG, complete with classes, abilities, equipment, etc.
>One to four players play as commanders, who have access to RTS building styles, can build fortifications, defenses, units, etc.
>Game plays like an MMO raid for the hero characters, except the AI they're fighting gets its orders from players.
>Map and the enemies are dynamically changing every game based on where the commander players are building defenses and sending units to.
>Commanders can call up superunits that function like bosses against the player heroes.

>>386740805
>Rising Storm 2
>Red Orchestra 2

I want to strangle you for being a casual shitter.

>>386746291
That means if youre good at micro you win everytime

>>386746436
>Players good at micro win games

Stop the fucking presses

naturally this gameplay model would try to imitate the chain of command in real life, but in real life military discipline is a strict thing enforced by years of training and harsh punishments for disobeying orders, and in RTS games it's enforced with iron rules of computer coding, without any of those it would be like herding cats

>>386746429
what games do you play anon?

>>386746789
Red Orchesta: Ostfront. The Red Orchestra that was not ruined by dumbing it down for wider audience.

>>386746819
lol

>>386739294
Can't recall the title now, but there was a game like this in mid 00s. You either played as mutants or primitives rediscovering technology after some apocalypse yada yada yada. Anyway, 32 players on each side were doing the FPS game and two players above them were doing RTS game, by placing buildings and stuff.

It was fun, but the playerbase died around 2010. I can't even recall the name now.

>>386740506
You mean like an MMO battleground.

Honestly if today's MMo's weren't so afraid of their own shadows, and actually innovated this could become the next big mmo-pvp meme.

But they won't do it until blizzard does it first. And blizzard itself won't do it until facebook does it.

So we're fucked.

>>386740805
Oh? You mean like every other multiplayer game involving coordination.. except this one gives the players half a chance at organising themselves?

If your reason for not doing this is because some people 'might' not co-operate...
Then multiplayer games really aren't for you, stick to halo wars or something kid.

>>386743471
I beg to differ about the Battlefield series.

In Battlefield 2, having a competent commander was quite a huge advantage. Capping/defending a point with smart artillery strikes, drone placement and sattelite scans was very enjoyable as a soldier.
Commanders were still somewhat useful in BF2142, but their impact were greatly reduced in later games.

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>>386745704
I think this kind of 'complaint' is the poison that's killing the gaming industry.

>The game caused conflict in my team, please I don't want a team anymore!

This is the kind of thinking that made WoW go from something that required half a brain and communication... into a game where you could literally have 4 bots on your team, play for days.. and never be able to tell that anything was wrong.

Team conflict, resolution, and when things don't go as planned. That's what makes games fun.

Don't believe me? Pic related.

Now Imagine if someone said "Oh no, dota 2 will flop because everyone will just pick carry and not co-operate"..

They WILL pick all carries.. and that's part of the game.

Stop trying to 'mute' human nature in gaming and make it this bland hyper-colourised single-player autism adventure.

>>386748428
It isn't fun to lose to things outside of your control, not everyone is a masochist, some people actually enjoy a challenge and cooperation

>>386748428
>Team conflict, resolution, and when things don't go as planned. That's what makes games fun.
>Picks Dota 2 as an example
You might have had a point there if you didn't fuck it up with that.
I'm speaking as someone who played Dota 2 for 2k hours.

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>>386748636
>It isn't fun to lose to things outside of your control

As humans we evolved to live and work in environments outside of our control.

If it came to a choice between:

1) You are a God in a universe that no one else has free will in. Everything happens just as you tell it to. You can do anything except create something you yourself can't 'predict' and see through entirely.

2) You are an Immortal, but you cannot control other people's actions and you must live in that world.

I guarantee you, you will get bored of the first long before you get bored of the second. In the long run youl'l get more enjoyment out of the second.

In fact you're most likely to live the first option for a few months and then 'uninstall'. Pic related.

>>386748719
I'm glad you have an opinion.

Unfortunately the hard numbers disagree with your opinion.

Dota 2 is arguably the most one of the most successful games in Steam history... and it's a shitfest with people yelling raging, insulting eachother, scamming, griefing, assisting, carrying supporting, laughing, and learning.

Is it so hard to believe that if you load a game full of just pleasant feelings eventually the player will get sick of it and quit? The player NEEDS to be abused. The full range of emotions are what makes games and any media enjoyable.

>>386748636
>>It isn't fun to lose to things outside of your control

speak for yourself, that's exactly the reason why I adore 4x and roguelike games. You never know what might happen and it might lead to your hilarious downfall.

>>386739294
Multiplayer games are fucking cancer no matter what. But I've always liked this mix of genres in single player stuff. Unfortunately RTS games are relatively uncommon in on themselves, and RTS + other shit is even less common nowadays.

There were a few nice ones back in the early and mid-2000s when the RTS boom was still going on.

>>386749298
Honestly I think the idea could really be useful in an MMO setting.

Like a battleground mode or something.

>>386740805
>>386740076
>>386739294
If every unit is an another player it will fail. The commander should play a full RTS game , with unit production, and the other players can be the equivalent of heroes.
RPG style leveling, with item inventory and skills.

>>386749226
I guess you're right in some sense. It's hard to argue with the fact that Dota 2 is in fact a very successful games.

Still, you can't be throwing words like "hard numbers" around when the playerbase has been dwindling since the beginning of this year.
It could be the patch, it could be the decisions made, but on r/dota2, when I see people who quit the game, it's because wrangling 1-2 emotionally unstable retards every game isn't fun.
What is fun is the game itself. People want to play with other competent people, they want to compete against the opponent, outsmart him, not get shouted at and, as you put it, abused.

>>386749559
Forgot to include this link with HARD NUMBERS in my post: http://steamcharts.com/app/570#All

>>386748967
People who have more hours are better players, and saying the people with more hours got less enjoyment than those with much less is silly. I would enjoy Team Fortress 2 with absolutely nothing but Scout and Demoman, with no random crits

>>386749272
Then you hate playing videogames. Why even bother if you do not control the game? Might as well watch a botmatch, you are the same faggots who waste their time watching streams

>Play a single character in an RTS

So... a MOBA?

>>386749521
Except Natural Selection didn't fail. It was quite popular for a HL mod. What killed it was the fucked up sequel.

>>386749413
MMO is not a setting unless we're talking about some dumb anime.
And if you are referring to an actual MMO game, then you'd have people logging in and out all the time, too many people just fucking around and a bunch of other problems.

For this to work in a multiplayer game you'd have to have a very dedicated audience, which automatically means a niche audience, and few servers so you can get them all playing on the same place. Unless you want a more AoE style RTS with only a couple dozen units moving at once.

I think there's more people interested in RPing as soldiers than there are people interested in RPing as RTS units, so really you'd just have to get a system like this integrated into a military sim, but that does imply also putting in a lot of restrictions for realism sake.

Because you're not controlling a group of units that will obey your every command like trained soldiers would. You have "control" over a group of autistic kids who don't recognize your existence and only care about their K/D ratio. It's better to have separate squads made up of buddies that like each other and will work together to complete an objective. Then have the squad leaders communicate to each other to ensure each squad works in harmony.

>>386749906
Eliminate K/D ratio and make scoring work per team instead of per player.

Now you won't get any of the competitive FPS autismos interested in your game, but at least you'd have a more decent playerbase.

>>386749817
>And if you are referring to an actual MMO game, then you'd have people logging in and out all the time, too many people just fucking around and a bunch of other problems.

How is this a problem?

You don't actually need 100 players or anything.

Even 10 v 10 with 1 commander will do. You can have players logging in/logging out. The only people RP'ing as soldiers are literal 10 year olds who probably cried at the store for their parents to buy them the game.

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>>386739294
Because most of the time this concept works like herding cats. No one gives flying fuck about the commander and does whatever they want, then whine at the commander once they lose.

>>386749642
Then you hate playing videogames.
suck a dick
>Why even bother if you do not control the game?
I control one character in a world that's completely out of my control. For example in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup I might randomly get teleported to the Abyss fighting a low level mage enemy and either find the exit (highly unlikely at low levels) or just get slaughtered. Or I might joing a god of chaos who might decide to gift my level 1 character an undead dragon guardian.

> Might as well watch a botmatch, you are the same faggots who waste their time watching streams
might as well commit suicide you arrogant ass.

>>386745704
I've spent year playing NS1 and rarely had problems. There was an occasional idiot complaining, but usually others told them to shut up. As long as majority of the team was ok with whatever you were doing, the retards were not a problem.
This whole commander/soldier thing actually cultivated a great community, and I am really sad that Unknown World killed it with their shitty sequel.

>>386749521
The first Natural Selection was such a huge success that it got a sequel that crashed the title to the ground.
If anything, trying the concept this time will make the commander feel like an ork warboss trying to control unresponsive squads.

>>386749906
> Let's make your character not die in dark souls because dying makes players angry!

>Let's make players avoid having to turn in mario cart because hitting the wall means they fall behind and this makes players upset!

>In counterstrike when you get shot you should be able to hide behind a rock for your HP recharge because losing health and dying can make children angry and destroy their console, hindering future sales!.

>Let's reduce the amount of content in open-world MMOs that require teams because some people can't organise times to play with other people!

>Let's make all the classes in our RPG have the same re-skinned spells because what if a player chooses the wrong spell! He may grow angry with the game and proceed to damage his console which will hinder future sales!".

>Let's take our game with hard-core drop-all-when-you-die loot.. and make it so you don't drop anything! Dropping all makes people feel bad! We don't want people feeling bad right? Happy happy happy.


Fuck you. You are literally the core of what's killing video games.

>>386750110
>How is this a problem?
>Go into a battle with 100 troops
>Suddenly 20 of them log out

>Even 10 v 10 with 1 commander will do
10v10 isn't an MMO dood.
Maybe you could take some cues from the now diseased Dust 514 and have some kind of global campaign. But that's apart from the subject of the thread.

Also I shouldn't have specified RPing as soldiers, just RPing as whatever role you have in the game. And by that I mean people actually interested in having a real experience of being whatever, not just annoying kids who've seen too many movies and are actually just interested in looking cool.
Either way, my point is that you need to attract a dedicated audience who is willing to play by the rules, and you would probably have to enforce said rules in some manner, which probably involves banning a lot of people.

Whatever way you do it...Chances are your game isn't going to have Battlefield or Overwatch numbers.

Try DOTA 2, it'a the best RTS/RPG hybrid out there and it has a very well organized competitive scene.

>>386739294
If you want something incredibly niche that will probably suck without a group of people who've all agreed to play by the rules then just get a bunch of friends together to play NS1.

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>>386750673
MMO's usually have sort of instanced 10v10 mini-games like battlegrounds. That's where this could probably be implemented well.

>who is willing to play by the rules, and you would probably have to enforce said rules in some manner, which probably involves banning a lot of people.

Why though?

Look at Dota. Couldn't that argument be said about dota. A game where you can choose classes and your need to coordinate with a team to succeed..

Surely such a game would flop right?

Surely such a game would die instantly never to be played again?


I think "a feature won't work because players will have to put in effort'... should NEVER be a deciding factor in game design.

>>386739294

my man have you tried a game called Defense of the Ancients?

>>386750435
I'm sorry? Your strawmen have nothing to do with what I was saying. Players work better when in smaller groups that communicate with other groups. I wasn't suggesting to remove gameplay features or anything. A game may not have a K/D tracker but people will still only focus on getting kills than doing objectives which win the game.

>>386749521
You mean like a MOBA and you get to control the minions? Add to that you HAVE to read the chat between players.
Enjoy becoming braindead and idiotic as fuck.
Oh wait...

>>386751153
Your misunderstanding the concept.

Imagine, One player playing say; Starcraft, or age of empires. Top down RTS. Get workers, build buildings, etc.

The other players on his team.. play an FPS game. Think counter-strike. EXCEPT; they have a tool that can 'construct' buildings. The building foundations are 'placed' by the RTS player..

The individual players have to go to the foundation and build them. They are also the fighters in this game.

The RTS player can select his units (which are FPS players) and click on an enemy building or unit.

This will appear as a 'target sign' or an arrow on the FPS player's screen telling them where to move or what to do.

This means you've got all the fast paced 'twitch' reaction and skill of an FPS..

with the over-arching strategy of an RTS.. Games aren't just "rush B" or "GO ROLLER"...

They're 3 split to the roller door, while 2 construct an AWP manufactory on the roof.

The players WILL build the AWP manufactory because that's the ONLY way to get AWPS AND winning is fun.

>>386751856
This is literally Natural Selection

>>386748428
It's not really the problem that a team is required, it's the fact people are trying to use a public group and expecting wildly different team members to suddenly preform well together. And to add to the mix that the players involved have a humongous array of strategies and expect different things from a match (Some players are focused and attempting to win at all costs, others are looking to experiment and learn, some are there to practice strategies they're not good at), and you have a recipe for disaster.

What gets me is this could be prevented in an easy but unpopular way just by forcing people to communicate and experience some sort of permanence between each other. When you used WoW as an example, I would say the introduction of the dungeon finder is a prime example of destroying the long term strength of groups at the benefit of short term pickups. Whereas before, you would be required to use global or even local chat to manually communicate with people, forcing some interaction with players outside of a purely game perspective, now you can click a button, be automatched with a group, proceed through rote actions to complete a dungeon, and claim your prize all in all roughly 20 to 30 minutes.

I would suggest going forward that games in general look towards better tools for players to establish bonds between each other. Part of this is on the player themselves (For example, I've started to add people to friends' lists if I enjoyed playing with them and message them prior to dungeons or games to bring them along instead of randomly selecting someone from queue), but simply bringing about more opportunities for players to communicate with each other beyond simple dungeon instructions would do plenty to bring about better, tighter groups.

>>386751958
and NS is over 15 years old. The sequel is about 8 years old.

The OP asks why there aren't more games like this.

>>386740076
The problem is it's super hard to get people to cooperate together.

Anybody play Battleswarm
>"free" to "play"
>rts bugs vs fps marines
>you basically rented rts units or gun types for a day/week/month

>>386739294
Gloom>Natural Selection>Natural Selection 2

>>386751856
>what is WURM

>>386752714
I did actually, it sorta grew on me but you basically couldnt play the bug side for free because the base bugs were such chaff

>>386751101
The coordination in DOTA is rather minimal compared to what you would need in a game like what OP is asking for. And DOTA is a very stiff game, the map is designed in a way that reduces what a player can do, I mean it's literally just 3 lanes.
And from what I've seen even in DOTA you have people fucking around and pissing off their teammates and just going commando.

Also i'm not saying that you shouldn't do a game like what OP wants, and in fact such games have been made already. What i'm saying is that chances are it isn't going to be the kind of game where you can just jump in any day and have a million players worldwide on at all times. It is the kind of game where you get together either with friends or a group specifically to play that.

>>386751958
NS1 is dead and NS2 is shit.

>>386751314
>>386749521
Isn't this how Airmech works?

>>386740076
>>386739294
Natural selection is an RTS BARELY

it'd be cooler to have a large amount of units in play and only some players, or as many as want to join

sort of like titanfall, all the AI stuff would be controlled by a player

or 200 vs 200 where there are mostly AI but can all be replaced by actual players if they join

>>386754957
How is it not an RTS?

So like in Arma 3 with Zeus?

>>386739294
It's been tried before with varying results. The biggest problem that plagues most of those RTS/FPS hybrids is that the commander is very important and following their orders is crucial for success. This already rubs most people the wrong way because a lot of people are not very fond of having to follow what someone else says, even if it's to the benefit of the team.

Another thing is that these games often require the players to do tasks that might be important for winning, if not outright necessary, but also not always enjoyable for the majority of people. Say for instance, you need to delegate a portion of your team to strictly logistical tasks like getting resources or getting buildings up, that shit is boring most of the time with little to no action but it's absolutely essential.

There's just too many filters and obstacles that the average person has to overcome before they can really have fun with these kinds of games. That's why they always stay a niche genre.

>>386744485
Usually people realized that nobody listens to the commander and blames him if the team loses.

>>386746436
Assuming the on-the-ground players aren't gods

I also like the idea of commanders having incomplete information and they have to get some of it from players on the ground

>>386755285
barely still implies that it's an RTS, I just feel the commander's role isn't involved enough

>>386744485
>Nuclear Dawn
I still have that free second copy they handed out to try to boost server populations

>>386752945

I really, really wish someone would make a sequel to Gloom.

>>386739294
>>386739489
controlling one guy isn't that like dota and other games or those old rpg's?

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>>386739294
closest thing i played to that was a mod for doom 2. a commander basically unlocks new weapons, build facilities, set up turrets and health/ammo stations, give upgrades to marines and have a top down view of the map while the other players need to fight waves of enemies trying to destroy your base. it was amazing fun at first but there were only a few maps and got boring quickly

>>386757928
There are two 'types' of players in the suggested game style.

8 or so players play an FPS game.
1 player plays an RTS top down.

He can give the 8 FPS players orders to move here, attack that, build this etc.

They follow his orders, (or not) and beat the other team who's got the same setup.

>>386756604
In NS2 - yes. That's one of the reasons why people don't like it. In NS1 commander was a lot more involved.

Planetside 2 was kind of similar. Leaders of large platoons were pretty much playing an RTS that doesn't have buildings.

Why do people say ns2 is shit/dead? I play it everyday on a regular server and it's fun, I dont get what people think is bad about it.

Yeah it doesnt have the numbers that it used to pull, but there are always multiple full servers to play on

>>386755571
zeus is not an RTS mode
its practically a gimped ingame editor

This thread reminded me of an old game called Allegiance. I just checked up on it, and it seems that it will be getting put on Steam fairly soon.

>>386761901
did you play ns1?

>>386764325

No, cant say i did.

Was it that much better or something?

I honestly think ns2 is great

>>386765494
It was a lot more asymmetrical, much more focused on RTS and had a better twitch gameplay.
I understand why people who haven't played the 1st one, love the sequel and I wish I could do the same.