Hellraiser
Arcane
When SMA corners the world's tranny porn market.
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Prosper Atari Corpse Looting: Stardock got Star Control, Wargaming got MoO and Total Annihilation
When SMA corners the world's tranny porn market.
General Maxson
Arcane
Damn it. I want Star Control and Master of Orion. Is it so hard to make a great sequel to those games? I mean it's action/adventure/rpg and 4x FFS. And yet Stardock got SC and Wargaming MoO. 
Can't wait to see what will they do. SC 4 will be a boring soulless excel spreadsheet simulator and MoO tablet "strategy" for "soccer dads". 
Can't wait to see what will they do. SC 4 will be a boring soulless excel spreadsheet simulator and MoO tablet "strategy" for "soccer dads". 
Space Satan
Arcane
I know some people related with Wargaming.net and I can say one thing - they are swimming in money. Sometimes I think literally. They hire writers to pump books about goddamn tanks and shit left and right. Their budgets can rape CoD and still be easily affordable profitable from tens of millions of WoT donaters. What gives me hope is that they have shitload of people working in balancing department only. Which means we can see MoO remake done right.
Dexter
Arcane
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Zero. They're busy making billions with the Skylanders franchise and probably have ironclad no-compete clauses with Activision.
Dead IP.
I shouldn't hope but TA being owned by Wargaming must at least mean they'll get a competent 3rd party dev to do it justice? Right? ... :'(
World of Annihilation, control your commanders to fire nano-goop to build up defenses and shit in this psuedo-RTS MOBA. That's my prediction.
World of Annihilation, control your commanders to fire nano-goop to build up defenses and shit in this psuedo-RTS MOBA. That's my prediction.
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I've been thinking about Stardock getting the Star Control license, and I'm having a hard time seeing how this is good news. It has nothing to do with Stardock themselves, but with the fact that all the races and characters that defined the franchise are copyrighted by Toys For Bob (Kotick).
It is literally impossible for Stardock to do anything with the license without getting permission to use TFB's copyrights. Otherwise it's just Star Control 4 all over again, which was obviously a further step in the attempt for Accolade to distance themselves from the (legal) fact that Ford and Reiche owned the copyrights to the Star Control characters.
Stardock could probably do a worthwhile Star Control game that emphasises the strategic element over the character interaction (a la Star Control 1) but it was Star Control 2 that made the franchise legendary, SC2 is the only reason the franchise is worth anything today. They would have to come up with writing and characters at least close to the ones that appeared in SC2, combined with a decent strategy game that both mimics and improves upon SC1's gameplay, and then use SC3 as a warning of how not to combine the two. First step, get permission from TFB to use their characters. If that fails, abort. The SC fans won't touch it.
I don't see how TFB giving Stardock permission to use their characters would violate "no competition" clauses as long as they keep it just at that, giving permission. Any further input from them would naturally be invaluable to Stardock, but we'll just have to wait and see how far that can go.
It is literally impossible for Stardock to do anything with the license without getting permission to use TFB's copyrights. Otherwise it's just Star Control 4 all over again, which was obviously a further step in the attempt for Accolade to distance themselves from the (legal) fact that Ford and Reiche owned the copyrights to the Star Control characters.
Stardock could probably do a worthwhile Star Control game that emphasises the strategic element over the character interaction (a la Star Control 1) but it was Star Control 2 that made the franchise legendary, SC2 is the only reason the franchise is worth anything today. They would have to come up with writing and characters at least close to the ones that appeared in SC2, combined with a decent strategy game that both mimics and improves upon SC1's gameplay, and then use SC3 as a warning of how not to combine the two. First step, get permission from TFB to use their characters. If that fails, abort. The SC fans won't touch it.
I don't see how TFB giving Stardock permission to use their characters would violate "no competition" clauses as long as they keep it just at that, giving permission. Any further input from them would naturally be invaluable to Stardock, but we'll just have to wait and see how far that can go.
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With the Planetary Annihilation KS thing I'd imagine a MOBA is probably most likely. Fits Wargaming's F2P model. Stupid really as it's not even as if the TA franchise holds that much weight. Fans are already used to each decent version of the game being a spiritual successor, what with the dual shittyness of SC2 and TA:Kingdoms. Guess it'll generate some column inches when it's announced, I guess.
Jeff Graw
StarChart Interactive
Well, at least MoO went to a developer that doesn't have a history of making shitty 4x games, unlike... umm, every developer that currently makes 4x games.
Who could have actually done MoO justice? I would have said Kerberos prior to SoTS2, but now I'm not so sure. Certainly not Stardock, Amplitude, or Firaxis. Those guys couldn't design a good 4x to save their lives.
What developer would actually understand that the core gameplay from MoO 2 took quite a few steps back from the original, that Civilization is a cesspool of poor design that shouldn't be emulated, and excessive micromanagement only leads to formulaic playing and not depth?
The perfect 4x game would take MoO 1 as it's base, expand it with more content, add the parts from MoO 2 that worked while disregarding the crappy bits stolen from Civ, marry it with Homeworld style tactical space combat, and create a multi-turn ground combat system involving high level strategic choices with the low level stuff abstracted.
Who could have actually done MoO justice? I would have said Kerberos prior to SoTS2, but now I'm not so sure. Certainly not Stardock, Amplitude, or Firaxis. Those guys couldn't design a good 4x to save their lives.
What developer would actually understand that the core gameplay from MoO 2 took quite a few steps back from the original, that Civilization is a cesspool of poor design that shouldn't be emulated, and excessive micromanagement only leads to formulaic playing and not depth?
The perfect 4x game would take MoO 1 as it's base, expand it with more content, add the parts from MoO 2 that worked while disregarding the crappy bits stolen from Civ, marry it with Homeworld style tactical space combat, and create a multi-turn ground combat system involving high level strategic choices with the low level stuff abstracted.
Space Satan
Arcane
Homeworld means real-time. Should anything real-time made it into MoO - it'll be ruined by default. And making ground battles similar to space ones is a horrible idea as well - wasting time in capturing 4 population rock? No way. Better make ground battles simplistic yet with choices like we saw in GalCiv2 - gas warfare, propaganda, surgical strike and such. but without retardation of permanently losing planet quality and limited number of building slots.
Jeff Graw
StarChart Interactive
That's a pretty simplistic argument.
When you think about it turn based space combat is not ideal in a 4x. You end up running into one of two pitfalls, MoO1 fell into one, MoO2 into the other.
MoO1 turn based combat worked at the cost of being overly abstracted. It wasn't unenjoyable by any means, but wasn't particularly deep or fun either.
MoO2's system on the other hand was much more in depth, early on it was quite a bit of an improvement over MoO1. Unfortunately, it completely broke the late game. Turns took far too long, the side that moved first had an overwhelming advantage, and things ultimately got bogged down to the point of complete dysfunction. Turn based gameplay becomes a hindrance when you have too many elements or too much micro.
You could try to solve the issue by limiting fleet sizes, or after a certain limit is reached you could switch to stacked ships like in MoO 1. Unfortunately, the former is limiting and the later is convoluted.
The most fun tactical space combat I've ever seen was in Homeworld. I imagine the majority are in the same boat. Makes sense to start with something that is proven to work over something that's proven to break down (MoO2), no?
Sure, but I never said to make it similar to space combat.
By the same token, it doesn't make sense that a heavily populated home world could be captured by ground forces in a single turn.
So design a system where a 4 population rock is easy to capture, in a single turn with a large force, while taking over a core world is usually a more significant event.
Something like a mix between GalCiv2 and MoO3, give the player very high level strategic choices without going all the way down to tactical combat. As far as retardation goes, having planetary building slots in a 4x and treating planets like a city in Civ tops the list.
Turjan
Arcane
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- 5,047
That's something they licensed from Hasbro, not something they own. The contract had a few iffy parts, though.
No love for Airborne Ranger. Farewell, old friend.
Gives them something to work with at least.
I had quite a lot of fun with the then pop-a-mole version Solar Winds.In line with the style of other modern "reboots", they'll probably name it just "Star Control" and pretend the originals never happened.
General Maxson
Arcane
Yeah, but there was something, Toys for Bob had a web site that wanted a SC sequel, a petition or something if I remember correctly. But you're probably right, they don't give a shit if they're raking in millions doing facebook games.
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