On Mon, 01 Jul 2002 07:23:11 GMT, Eric Byers
<eihjelmt@NOSPAMonline.no> wrote:
>On Mon, 01 Jul 2002 06:10:43 GMT, paranormalized
><cnendabeznyvmrdq@rndeguyvdax.arg> muttered something along the lines
>of:
>
>>Well, if metal makers bother you that badly, you could play games with
>>them disabled. Likewise, if the 'unlimited' aspect of metal patches
>>bother you, you could probably play a map with no patches and just
>>carcasses to grab for metal.
>
>And you could configure a SC map any way you'd like with the editor...
>
>>Admittedly, it might be hard to find players for such a map/game
>>setup, but on the SC side, well, over half the maps on non-ladder
>>Battlenet look like $$$ to me...
>
>Blame the players, not the game.
>
*shrug*
I was placing the blame/responsibility on the players. They're the
ones that choose how to set up their games. So you shouldn't blame TA
for 'unlimited' resources either, since it's not too difficult to put
caps on production via zero metal patches, with metal makers disabled.
It just seems that most people like the unlimited resource thing,
witnessed by the proliferation of user-created money maps in SC.
Whether this is a good thing is quite debatable.
>[...]
>>The point has some validity, but it's not a fair picture to paint.
>>One has to work as hard to keep energy/metal coming in at appropriate
>>ratios in TA for unit creation as minerals/gas in SC.
>
>The fact is that, in TA, metal is basically being spent refining it to
>energy while in SC crystals are being spent building supply. And while
>the two "resources" may deviate slightly in use or basic gameplay
>mechanics, they basically have the same primary purpose.
>
>Vespene Gas is in my book a proper second resource, insofar that it
>can't be refined or bought by the first.
>
*shrug again* I view resources from a utilitarian perspective, rather
than a lofty 'non-convertable' standpoint. i.e., do I have to keep
an eye on ratios consistently? Even if your base never gets hit too
badly in a short game, you will have to work to balance energy and
metal. Bulking up on air or construction units? Make sure you turn
enough metal makers off while building. Building a navy instead?
Turn them back on.
This is as opposed to supply, which is something that once built,
needs no monitoring, beyond maxing it out and rebuilding if destroyed.
>>The casual gamer outnumbers the hard-core by an order of magnitude in
>>any thriving game. That's why those games thrive. One in ten of
>>those casual gamers get deep into the game, joining the game
>>community. If you can't keep joe blow buying, the community
>>inevitably shrinks as gamers find other interests. So you aim for the
>>general public as much as any of the gaming otaku.
>
>They take the game quite seriously in, for instance, Korea...a
>majority of the gamers that still plays the game, are somewhat
>hardcore...
>
And how many of those serious gamers would have picked it up w/o the
ease of Battlenet? Face it, console-like accessability is the holy
grail of game design, both from a marketing perspective, and even from
the gaming perspective.
The ideal is something that can be picked up in minutes, but takes
hours to master. Unfortunately for TA, joining multiplayer takes too
long to access for that critical first time, so it lost the popularity
battle to Starcraft. So blame Cavedog for doing the multiplayer
matchmaking service thing wrong, but try to avoid the whole "it's more
popular, so it's undoubtably better!" attack. Starcraft is different,
not better, than TA.
You like spell units. Fine. Some people like extremely refined
conventional warfare. SC is for you, TA is for the latter type of
person.
The debate is still out, however, on whether SC would be improved by
automating the non-combat parts better or not. Mostly because AFAIK
nobody's tried to combine the spell-casting importance of SC with the
level of automation of TA. Currently we're mostly arguing in a
vacuum, since nobody has tried to take the RTS this far in this
direction.
>>You've also fallen into the trap of thinking that 'my clique (RTS
>>gamers) is smarter/better than the general public.'
>
>No, just the majority of the mainstream music industry...
>
And the general public doesn't support the majority of the mainstream
music industry? 
OTOH, the Music Industry is pretty damned warped as far as culture
goes. I'd start to claim that any discussion that drags them in as
an example has gotten too warped/inflammatory to stay with, sort of
like Godwin's law, except with the RIAA rather than Nazis.
The only problem with this is that the RIAA is alive and thriving,
like Germany in the late 30's, so ignoring them is way too naive. I
do think the game industry is currently a little more sane, but we'll
really start having to worry about things any day now... we already
have Mario doing milk commercials, is Tassadar and a Pepsi sponsorship
too far off?
Personally, I'd prefer Kerrigan, but we'll see if sex appeal wins out
over wholesomeness... expect Raynor first, of course.
>[...]
>>(1)- Of course, the other half of why Starcraft thrives is that it is
>>a good game. But it's GUI is still silly by comparison to TA, which
>>preceded it.
>
>Depends on whether or not you want the game to play itself, rather
>than to depend on you to control it...
>[...]
Riiight.. So Starcraft is the epitome of RTS GUI evolution, and
everything I've read about what they're doing in WC3 is wrong. Good
heavens, autocast?! Selecting a group of spellcasters and being able
to easily use spells w/o horrible overlap problems? What are these
fools thinking! Anything that reduces the amount of clicking,
selection, and scrolling brings us closer to the day when HAL9000
starts telling us, "I can't let you do that Dave. That peon must
harvest lumber, not build structures. My judgement is always
correct."
Jonathan Fisher
open the cd-tray door, Hal....
----------
paranormalized man, subnormalized otaku
ROT13 and then delete all instances of the letter after P to email
Yeah, I've been getting my alphabet mixed up the past couple months.
Sorry.
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