The EndWar beta is over (and has been for a couple weeks now). My RTS odyssey has continued nonetheless. I’ve been faithfully watching a lot of professional Starcraft; my weekly GOMTV sessions augmented by some great YouTube-hosted english commentated pro matches. The highlight of which has definitely been the OSL final with one of my favorite players taking the championship, JulyZerg. In addition, the CoH gamereplays.org section is starting to reach critical mass in their videocasting, with some significant numbers of new and recent matches getting the videocast treatment.
The more matches I watch, Starcraft or Company of Heroes, the more I think I’m starting to understand how to play RTS’s in general. Which is why i’m a bit confused by how EndWar works. Since the beta’s over and since I’m not revealing unit specifics or anything, I think this is not NDA-breaking to talk about. But EndWar’s unit balance revolves around what is basically a Rock-Paper-Scissors system, with tanks, light vehicles and gunships/helicopters taking the roles respectively. I think this is a mixed blessing.
First of all, Rock-Paper-Scissors, or RPS, is a well-understood system. This confers a bit of an advantage as a game designer, as it simplifies the learning process on behalf of the player. Once you establish which units generally inhabit which role, you have to do very little to teach most players which unit to use at which point in time. It’s also a bit of a crutch. I don’t mean to belittle EndWar, since there is some genuinely innovative stuff in the game. But it seems somewhat, for lack of a better word, non-mindblowing, for a game which seems so intriguing to rest atop such a familiar foundation. To be fair to EndWar again, this may be somewhat related to one of the above mentioned innovations: This is a console RTS. Simplicity and ease of use have to be one of your core goals if you plan on assaulting the seemingly impossible goal of marrying “console” and “RTS”. But does that necessarily mean simplicity in game design? The problems with console RTS, in my opinion, revolve around control scheme and precision of control, neither of which are particularly related to game balance per se.
A game like Starcraft, or even Company of Heroes now in its newly well-balanced form, don’t use this approach. This may take a bit of explaining. Imagine you’re playing EndWar. What would your ideal army be? Assuming you don’t know what your opponent is fielding (if you do, it’s a simple case of building massive numbers of the appropriate counter unit as per the RPS system), you have 2 choices:
- Create a balanced army of nearly equal numbers of all three roles
- Play the odds and build an army of mostly one role (ie. a heavy tank army)
Assuming both you and your opponent choose option 1, the game will be decided by your individual skill and finesse in handling the units in tactical battle: In other words, your micro. The problem is that if you keep army cohesion (which you should at the risk of being out-flanked and having one third of your army decimated), this micro will consist of units not trying to shoot each other, but the group they’re specifically weak against. It would be like a three-way gunfight where none of the fighters are shooting back at the person who’s shooting at them. It feels strange. I’m not disputing that you can’t build a game around it, but it feels less like a tactical war game in my opinion. And my analogy degrades somewhat since EndWar includes infantry units, which don’t really fall into any of the three roles. But games like Starcraft and Company of Heroes involve terrain, environment and formations more in the determination of who wins individual battles. Whereas a game like EndWar would find terrain/formations to be important only in battles between like-groups (tanks versus tanks according to the RPS model), a game like Starcraft would have formation and terrain be important factors in all match-ups, even such that it would swing victory in the favor of those who would normally lose, if all things equal. A medic/marine ball in Starcraft, normally decimated by lurkers, can suddenly and swiftly turn the tide with a well-placed comsat scan. And the Zerg player in turn can counter by a swift retreat and by fortifying another position outside of comsat range. A well-rounded Terran force of siege tanks and vultures is on equal if not superior footing with masses of dragoons, but flanking or the addition of a small number of game-turning units (dark templar, reavers, arbiters) turns the tables back. In all of these cases, it is not the presence of a counter unit to a specific role within the routed army that causes defeat, but rather knowledge of the map or the addition of small numbers of “enabling” units, that somehow augment the fighting capabilities of the large majority.
I’m generalizing a lot here, since Starcraft and CoH aren’t quite so easily summarized. Plus, I’m sure I’ve overlooked something. There’s also still the fact that hydralisk spam is so much fun when I’m playing Zerg. That’s gotta count for something.