Strategy games are better RPGs than RPGs

King's Bounty, *cough*

Ok, so strategy games don't focus on the character all of the time, but there are some great ones. A game that hasn't been too recommended around here is Settlers 7. I must say it's the best strategy game in years. It's a mix between a board game like Settlers of Catan and the Settlers gameplay of building up your economy. Every part is well done. Just the DRM sucks...

Anyone looking forward to Heroes 6? I know it's a bit simplified, but they are doing it to make this a multiplayer game. And no Heroes game so far has been good in multiplayer. The game could also use some better design, the game isn't visceral enough and the battles could be improved. I hope it suceeds.

 

I dont think those 2 statements are contradictions. Multiplayer strategy games need to be very good at communicating who has the upper hand, what is happening, what are the important ressources to capture etc It's a lot like a chess game, at their best.

Heroes falls down too often in just exploring around to pick up ressources, killing some random mobs, and having long supply chains. When one plays the game, most of the time is spent clearing up the map for items and xp, not doing anything that will directly lead to victory. That process could be improved.

I am definitively waiting for the verdict on Heroes 6, I'm just excited that for the first time in the series they will try to make this a multiplayer experience.

 

Strategy/RPG has such an ill-defined boundary that arguing over it is fairly meaningless. In most cases all it comes down to is semantics, the scale of the game, and how it is marketed. Most of the best games have elements from both anyways.

 

In what way exactly dumbing down the shit out of the game improves multiplayer where you will have to repeat the same 3 things all the time instead of 10 pre-dumbing down?

Maybe I've missed something but since when making a game more boring, featureless and repetitive makes it more interesting to play, especially in multiplayer, or visceral or whatever that new retarded hype word means

Civ5 is like totally a multiplayer superhit... Oh wait Civ5-who? Isn't that the game I've played for 10 hours and forgotten forever since then?

 

Civ 5 sucked, the AI was terrible and it had other dumb ideas like using culture to be both democratic and fascist at the same time...

But for multiplayer, it's just a different design phisolophy. You could have in Heroes 6 for example all of the difference ressources like Mercury, Sulfur, Crystals etc And when playing you manage to cripple your enemy's Mercury production! great - except nothing happens as a result. THAT is boring.

Multiplayer is all about feedback. In Heroes 6, if you eliminate your enemy's crystal production, you KNOW its economy or army will grind to a halt. Therefore, these ressources become massive areas of conflict. The pressure is immense to make these key breakthroughs, your adrenaline goes up, the game is simply better.

If you don't see it, you don't see it. But a multiplayer game has to be all about competition and bringing that competition between the players. That means changing some of the crap.

 

But... but it was done for multiplayer's sake (c) !

You mean like enemy is unable to build a large chunk of stuff = boring and has to manage all those resources = boring - but having just 2 or 3 so you can easily keep a steady flow of them in = supercool superfun

And why other resources can't be massive areas of conflict? Yes having 2 areas instead of 6 is much better and interesting

More like "managing 6 resources is teh hard" is the real reason

There was not a single useless resource in HoMM that you could've taken away and it had no effect on the enemy - saying that is bullshit

 

Look at vampire session, and compare it to a strategy game session. (on table) I guess these games are sharply different.

 

The equivalent HoMM II screenshot took more than 1 minute of googling, so it's not included...

And if you mean "changing the nature of the game to suit lunch break multi-player with facebook intergration", I'm starting to cast Implosion.

 

HoMM3 had too many resources you had to fight for 6 instead of 3 baw

 

Op is right, many strategy games feel more like rpgs than a lot of action rpgs.
No game has made the wizard role better than master of magic ,the powerful wizard kind who summon armies and rule cities, not the magic missile spamming one, and now elemental follow that pattern (its a bit better since 1.2), the line is even more blured now most of the time you move a party on the map fight monster ,do quests, collect loot.
Want to roleplay a demi god ? dominion 3 is for you, i cant remmber a rpg with so many options , customization...
Its turn based, stat heavy , ton of diffferents units, monsters, troops, magic items ,heavy on the lore, much more than any classic rpg.
None remember birthright it was a perfect blend of strategy and party exploration.

 

You don't have to act smart, if say Mercury production is out, the other player simply pulls out the marketplace and trades for more mercury, maybe from a ressource he has an excess of. His economy might slow a bit, but it will probably be unnoticeable to you. Same thing happens in Heroes 6 and he won't be able to paper over the problem, he'll be in deep shit.

I agree with you that you can have strategy and competitiveness with complex strategy mechanics and many ressources, but you get more feedback if the number of moving parts is lower. Maybe it also leads to more upsets, which is also more fun and engaging for new players. The battles still should be in-depth.

I do want to yield that the goal isn't to chop as many features as possible, to "streamline" everything. Settlers 7 has like 25 ressources and processed goods and it works perfectly multiplayer, because it's really good at giving you feedback. The map is divided into several "regions", all connected to other regions. Each region has only like 2-4 ressources so it's easy to see how capturing a region would cripple the player's ability to produce soldiers, or priests, or gold, fancy food etc

Its complexity is its strength. If the enemy can produce a bigger army than you, you can shift your economy to produce more defenses, there's always this multi-dimensional battle going on. I just don't think that the Heroes 6 gameplay can be that optimized while keeping its complexity.

As for multi-player for previous games, I know. I was there. It was super slow and disconnected all of the time. Even my friends lost patience. You can imagine strangers.

 

cock > vag

 

What about the marketplace? Did they cut out it too?

You mean for retards?

Geez I wonder how all those new players fared in old HoMM?! They must've been rage-quitting after seeing the overabundance of the "feedback" and HoMM never sold!

So what?

How do people able to play Paradox games online? You get like a huge excel table for anything you do in HoI and it's the most popular Paradox's MP game.
I feel myself as a genius now cuz I can play it.
In fact I feel myself as a genius too often when reading the Codex these days and I'm p. dumb. This is worrisome.

You and your friends having an attention span of a gnat doesn't tell me much. I was a stranger to HoMM too back when I was 13 and my first experience of it was multiplayer without any tutorials and dumbing down. In MP it was fluid. Starcraft was harder for me than any HoMM game at the time.

 

Like Football Manager. The smallest choices can have profound consequences, turning a team of worldbeaters into a bunch of useless cunts and so on.

 

They both came from tabletop wargames in the beginning.

But I don't agree that the games are very similar, aside from tactical rpgs, which are really strategy games using rpg systems.

 

INVASIO BARBARORVM 2: CONQVESTVS BRITANNIAE >>> King Arthur RPG becouse it's lacks Magic and gay Elves.

 

Totally agree about Master of Magic and Dominions 3. XCom and JA were pretty close to RPGs too. Birthright was a very good concept with a poor execution (the tactical battles were a bit so so, and the dungeon raiding was somewhat horrible IMO). I wish there were more games like that. I'm not too much into paradox games, but the Crusader Kings series felt a bit RPGish, with the player trying to get the perfect bloodline (but the funniest parts came from managing a kingdom lead by a mad king).

 

Was good, but holy shit did that game need a grid for building placement.

 

Yes, however PC RPG's lack the most important aspect of PnP games, the GM, who can adapt and thus allows for the freedom that is PnP and makes it interesting. In a typical CRPG you have a very limited set of options. And a CRPG should revolve around options - just like any strategy game. Strategy games with a very limited set of viable options are usually shit, and that also goes for CRPG's.

 

I thought that was Peter Molyneux? That said, I'm skeptical about emergent gameplay. I think it can only make games feel artificial. Neat concept tho.

As for strategy games that are better RPGs than a lot of RPGs, I'd have to say JA2 is the best example.

 

Strategy games are frequently better simulations than roleplaying games, but they're not better roleplaying games. RPGs should occur through an individual's perspective. Strategy games occur at the macro level, effectively simulating an entire nation collective.

A strategy game could theoretically become a roleplaying game IF:

You were given direct control of the ruler of that nation
You no longer had omniscient perspective but one that showed only what the ruler could see and/or hear
Your control of other units occurred indirectly through that ruler's influence rather than through the god-hand

 

What about party based RPGs? Do they always have an MC who can't die?

 

Why are you talking in thread from 2011?

 

So Majesty is a rpg then?