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Melissia wrote:

It is most likely since this is an mmo you will only be able to control one player, yourself, the character you made and possibly a henchman or something.

City of Villains had a class that controlled six henchmen. It wouldn't be so hard to think of a Guard Sergeant with four Guardsmen as henchmen in comparison.

My initial hope was that all IG classes would be pet classes ala the mastermind (my favorite CoV class). With a cover engine and a more in depth control scheme for commanding individual troops it could be quite a fun class to play (and would scale well and make sense within the universe).

First. It wouldn't necessarily be pure PVP. PVE battles could have the same impact, maybe to a different degree, but otherwise the same. Its not about mining resources its about the war materiel brought into an area. If a group of marines are expected to defend an area they'd have to bring ammunition, grenades, fuels, etc... thats what it represents. The gain a side makes in winning represents being able to resupply or raiding enemies supplies. The point was not to say the ideal is driven by resources as it was to say that some metric should be used emphasize not just the tactics of the battle but the strategy of the war.

I still question the superiority of that methodology over the more standard zone interaction that's proven highly successful in games like WoW or city of heroes. Most games which utilize server-rotating warzones in pvp settings (Chromehounds, WAR, planetside as examples) tend to reduce individual interaction within game zones and battlefields and often times make the user him/herself feel that they are less connected and important within the world even if their interactions have a palpable effect from a macro observer. Most successful games within multiplayer settings just fake it. This isn't an RTS, one person doesn't control hundreds within a time lapse setting. Fighting mobs so that ostenburg can flip sides in a day or two (When i'm not playing) is no more "Involving" than me and a few friends raiding a chaos stronghold and taking down a specific demon, even if that demon just respawns a few hours later.

The reason it perpetuates is because once an enemy takes a territory they need to expend time and resources to secure the position and assert control. In that time frame the opposing side can attack that location or others while the previous victor is occupied. Also while they attack to wear down a region they won't always be successful, that weakends their territory and opens it up for attack. So while my poor marines get slaughtered by bezerkers in an attempt to maintain a region, my fellow battle brothers might be attacking one of his territories that is neglected.

Thats what WAR did. It wasn't particularly fun most of the time. Large open world pvp/pve conflict tends to reduce the capability of that world to really provide a good experience on either end. It oftentimes removes capable storytelling and interesting quest interactions and does quite a bit to damage open world pvp (which in and of itself is actually not a popular feature in any mmo game).

Then retool it to work well. DOWII came up with a system that worked with a single player and reflected some of the type of things I'm talking about, its about translating it to MMO. It boils down to making missions that actually reflect the predicament the campaign is in. Such that territories in need are the ones where quest style missions lead people.

Retooling it and making it work is something you can say about any concept and issue. It's not actually a functional suggestion or discussion form for game mechanics. Dawn of wars implementation of the holdings allowing for more air strikes or drop pods was somewhat ridiculous and non functional, especially when the same abilities just became energy abilities or useless later. It was an add in to create free form missions separate from the maine storyline and at least in my experience the real value of the shrines was the exp and loot you got for taking them in the first place. Something which doesn't require the contiguous component for special abilities they provided after the mission ended. I fail to see how that experience would translate well to an MMO proper.

I wouldn't call WoW amazing (quite the opposite), but that's the general logic, yes.

metallifan wrote:In fact, I think Vigil stated years earlier that the game would feature squad-based combat. Unless they totally retconned that idea (going by the video I'm guessing they haven't) then you'll probably get an NPC buddy or a small fireteam beside you depending on your choice of race.

As I said in another thread a while ago, this was a fan based hope that snowballed. We've been following the game pretty solidly over at warhammer40konline.net for a while now and its not been mentioned.

In fact looking at whats been said over the past couple of days, it'll be a traditional MMO (ie WoW style,) but with better shooting elements,. Hell have you played Darkstalkers, Vigil love to be 'inspired' by other games, WoW being the top dog (love or hate it) means they'll be looking in that direction. In fact one of the guys said today they where doing things Blizz had been talking about for a while, but first, so Blizz should watch out. Or words to that effect. They are obviously looking at WoW as a benchmark. As you can see in my Sig, that means I'll be very happy as I love the game style.

The other two massive things they have done, is using the Darksiders engine to save time, and then designing the core engine from that with a small team first, before adding content. The fact that vid is pre-alpha footage is amazing as far as I'm concerned.

The only question mark for me atm is number of factions, I can live with two, but oh so want it to be more.

twistinthunder wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

And I'm one of htem. WoW is the biggest reason that the MMO genre is stagnating instead of producing anything new and innovative.

If you could be any more pedantic and shallow in your fanboi snowflake game bashing the hiltons would build a statue of you. Care to explain how it's stagnating a genre that it helped to grow six times over alone?

stagnate:idle, to exist in a changeless situation =/= growth. e.g. warhammer has 100 fans (it's just an example) this is increased to 1000 fans except the rulebook and game style hasn't changed, the fan basis has grown but the rulebook has become idle/stagnant.

melissa is talking about how the genre is stagnant not the fan basis, the genre has become a blur of WoW clone after WoW clone as such the genre has become stagnant because almost no-one dares make something innovative and those who do are shot down by the consumers because of technical issues (which every MMO has at the beginning) and is ditched for WoW because it's amazing (having started up awhile ago)

WoW was quite similar to everquest when it launched. It revolutionized a few forms of interface and heavily refined the raiding and item loot system it uses. The MMO genre has never been a genre of particularly credible progression and the myth of progression in games is something that I find annoying in general. How revolutionary are todays first person shooters as opposed to those from five years ago? Did the last command and conquer feel particularly "innovative"? World of warcraft is a success, but most other MMO developers have thanked world of warcraft for growing the genre to the point where they believe their games can sell. When WoW launched having 400 thousand players was considered a massive success, and many games that have come afterwards exist within that framework hapilly. WoW has not stagnated the genre, the genre is just not one thats going to have a particularly fast innovation curve. Second life was and still is huge and is nothing like WoW. Eve Online is quite significantly different. City of heroes/villains/champions online function quite differently and have done well for themselves. Recent startup MMOs that have failed haven't failed because WoW killed them. They've failed because they were unable to provide an experience that could compete particularly well with a six year old game.

WAR failed because it was a bad WoW clone with high system settings (despite poor visuals) and bugs that persisted for months after launch.
Tabula Rasa failed because it sucked.
Conan failed because no one could play it with the systems of the day.
Auto Assault failed because it was plain awful as will star trek online.

This doesn't mean the genre isn't changing though. APB looks quite "revolutionarily different" and games like guild wars and Aion have done quite well for themselves with reworked fantasy models for gameplay.

Nitros14 wrote:Blizzard is the most hilarious company for ripping off everything they can find to avoid coming up with their own ideas. I know this well, I grew up on Blizzard games and played WoW for a good five years. Warhammer and Games Workshop are far from the only company that Blizzard kind of blatantly copies.

Warcraft 2 quote from a Dwarf

"This Warhammmer cost me 40k, hehe"

Strimen wrote:
Even better, PhantomViper go check out Motrals Online (just released this month). You can kill any player you want any time and take everything off their corpse. Hows that for a death penalty. Its an awsome mechanic and really makes you think and learn to store/build things. As well as not do somthing stupid like attack someone next to a guard (Because the guard can kill you then the player you were picking on can loot your corpse and run!).

Why stop there, why not have your character erased when it dies? That's very realistic! And realism is always the goal right.

MMORPGs are kind of a genre where you put so much time and effort into the game that a model where you pay a tremendous penalty on death is probably not the most fun.

I will say WoW did one thing very very well. WoW Raiding is just so far in advance of any other large scale PvE out there.

the myth of progression

Apparently you haven't actually played many games then... I've played quite a few MMOs that had some good innovations. Some of them are still running even-- I liked Combat Arms, and I'd still be playing it if I could withstand its player base (whiny even for an RTS player base). It's certainly an MMO, even if it uses RTS for the actual game portion.

Melissia wrote:"the myth of progression"
Apparently you haven't actually played many games then...

Or I just know significantly more about them and the industry then you. You want to actually debate the point then try it. But I don't think you actually can.

http://combatarms.nexon.net/

Combat arms says its a first person shooter, not an RTS.

ShumaGorath wrote:Or I just know significantly more about them and the industry then you.

Prove it.

My bad, I was distracted and put RTS instead of FPS.

Melissia wrote:I wouldn't call WoW amazing (quite the opposite), but that's the general logic, yes.

WoW is amazing. Its accomplished so much, and is a huge world. It's a major PVE game, and that's apparently what most people want (11 million people says so)

Saying its not a extremely successful game is false. Just because one person, who's opinion doesn't matter AT ALL and won't change anything, doesn't agree, doesn't make it so.

Shuma is completely correct in his argument, and really, why are we talking about WoW? All I said was its graphics were similar to WoW's graphic style (which is pretty common across all games) but its people who think that they are somehow superior because they think differently, is ludicrous.

We can call it similar to whatever game, but one thing will always set it apart: It has the largest following lore wise, it has the best background, it has the most open possibilities for content and expansion, and its the most unique.

Melissia wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Or I just know significantly more about them and the industry then you.

Prove it.

And here I figure I have been with names and numbers in all of my posts while you just say "WARCRAFT SUCKS" over and over again. We can keep playing the game but you're going to actually have to make a post thats more than two or three sentences if you want to try and pretend you have some experience with the subject matter.

If you want a commentary on combat arms I can't really make one considering I haven't played it, but it looks like a first person shooter. I assume you shoot guns at other people but its big difference is microtransaction purchases of equipment. I wouldn't consider the profit engine of the game to be a really revolutionary feature, microtransactions have been a part of the discussion for years and tribes was hitting the ludicrously high player count fps servers long before planetside or combat arms.

ooooh, you brought out APB, guild wars and aion some of my favourite (looks wise except guild wars) mmo's. i like you.

ShumaGorath wrote:
WAR failed because it was a bad WoW clone with high system settings (despite poor visuals) and bugs that persisted for months after launch.
Tabula Rasa failed because it sucked.
Conan failed because no one could play it with the systems of the day.
Auto Assault failed because it was plain awful as will star trek online.

Hey now, Tabula Rasa was fun... there just wasn't anything to do!
WAR was totally brought down by horrendous bugs, balance problems, population problems, and more bugs.

Haven't played the others.

You guys forgot one of the major ones of why WAR failed: Its game engine was the worst possible. It literally was the opposite of what they needed. They had the content for HUGE battles, but such a weak engine for the servers that when people tried to do that content, the server crashed! They couldn't even handle their own content.

Karon wrote:You guys forgot one of the major ones of why WAR failed: Its game engine was the worst possible. It literally was the opposite of what they needed. They had the content for HUGE battles, but such a weak engine for the servers that when people tried to do that content, the server crashed! They couldn't even handle their own content.

WAR was a mess all over, it had great ideas but the team was titanic even for MMO standards and it didn't come together at all. There was no quality control at any level of the game and it ended up showing through quickly. There's no reason a game with those visuals should have performed the way it did. It barely looked better than WoW (mostly due to higher polycount models) but it chugged along like I was trying to play crysis. The issues only exacerbated by the fact that it came out years after WoW with those visuals and those problems.

Karon wrote:

Melissia wrote:I wouldn't call WoW amazing (quite the opposite), but that's the general logic, yes.

WoW is amazing. Its accomplished so much, and is a huge world. It's a major PVE game, and that's apparently what most people want (11 million people says so)

WoW is sort of losing its older players I find. But I suppose they may well make up all of them with their new model of making the game much more casual friendly. I think it would be more correct to say WoW was amazing. It's sort of running on past glories at this point. It has so much content now that people new to the game will find a huge world to be drawn into. But after five years I'm finding they're just going through the motions of appealing to the veteran crowd with no real spark of genius.

ShumaGorath wrote:

No MMO releases without server crashes or bugs. None ever has. It's the nature of the product itself. WoW had quite a few when it launched.

Yea of course I was there playing it and laughed at how bad it was. The problem is, is that everyone else seems to have forgotten this or didnt experience this at all so when they see a new mmo come out and release day is less than perfect they call foul and immediately hop back onto wow.

Karon wrote: WoW is amazing. Its accomplished so much, and is a huge world. It's a major PVE game, and that's apparently what most people want (11 million people says so)

You know what the most popular show in the world is? Baywatch. By definition, it is the best show on TV, yes? The best restaurant? McDonalds. The best store? Walmart.

Taking a formula, and crudely digesting it into bland pablum that anyone can digest doesn't make something good.

Ouze wrote:

Karon wrote: WoW is amazing. Its accomplished so much, and is a huge world. It's a major PVE game, and that's apparently what most people want (11 million people says so)

You know what the most popular show in the world is? Baywatch. By definition, it is the best show on TV, yes? The best restaurant? McDonalds. The best store? Walmart.

Taking a formula, and crudely digesting it into bland pablum that anyone can digest doesn't make something good.

World of warcraft also isn't a show about a porn star in a bikini, nor is it a low cost monopsony. Tastes are subjective and quantitatively by virtually every form of press on this planet world of warcraft is still the best playing, best performing, and deepest MMO on the market.

Not liking it is purely subjective and is quite acceptable, but saying it's bad because walmart is a popular store franchise is stupid.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Ouze wrote:

Karon wrote: WoW is amazing. Its accomplished so much, and is a huge world. It's a major PVE game, and that's apparently what most people want (11 million people says so)

You know what the most popular show in the world is? Baywatch. By definition, it is the best show on TV, yes? The best restaurant? McDonalds. The best store? Walmart.

Taking a formula, and crudely digesting it into bland pablum that anyone can digest doesn't make something good.

World of warcraft also isn't a show about a porn star in a bikini, nor is it a low cost monopsony. Tastes are subjective and quantitatively by virtually every form of press on this planet world of warcraft is still the best playing, best performing, and deepest MMO on the market.

Not liking it is purely subjective and is quite acceptable, but saying it's bad because walmart is a popular store franchise is stupid.

Exactly.

And, for the fellow who said WoW is losing its players and such and was better at the start, is completely correct. I remember awesome Molten Core raids...that was so fun. As well as BLW, heh.

I thought it sort of started moving downhill after outland, and even more so when they re-did Naxx instead of making a new instance.

But, it's still the most successful, and the best MMO on the market at the moment

WoW's two biggest problems (And the reasons I left) were because

A) The increasing level of young players (8-14 bracket) has caused Blizzard to start bowing to whining and snivelling of the "Waaaah, this is too haaaard! I don't want to have to work for results! Waaaaaaaah!". It made doing -anything- group related that wasn't incredibly dumbed-down by patches impossible. A lot of the common dungeons became so simplified that it was a joke. finding a group with members that knew what they were doing was a nightmare. I gave up on most dungeons because I'd get healers and DPS that thought they were tanks, tanks that tried to be DPS, Casters that did nothing but loot or toss out random buffs that helped no one but themselves, etc...

Stupidity/dumbing down of the game for kids under the T/16+ rating (As well as for any mildly slowed people IN the 16+ range) is the biggest hit against this game. At the time I left, you were just paying monthly for "In my anus", "Chuck Norris" and "Ur mum" jokes in city trade channels, and long, dull grinding sessions. Not much more.


B) Most players that -are- worth time (and practically all the ones that aren't) are completely disconnected with reality. Want to join a raiding guild that actually completes dungeons without wiping every ten minutes? You better not have anything else to do for 20 out of 24 hours, 7 days a week, because most expect you to be present for about that long. Most PvP guilds will require that you have a certain Tier of armour to join, but grinding (suprise) to get it is awful when your teams in Battlegrounds won't listen to bloody orders and you end up wasting two hours running around just trying to kill as many enemies as you can before you lose.


No. Let's hope that this is NOTHING like WoW beyond some visual aspects. Let's hope that this is -better- than WoW. Though if you've experienced the last few terrible years of WoW, that's not a hard goal to achieve.

Yea, I'd like an mmo that forces you to learn how to play your class, and know your roll in the group.

IMO, I doubt W40KDM can avoid that, Metallifan. You and I both know the majority of what the crowd of 40k is: Children.

Even worse, adults who act like children.

Saying its not a extremely successful game is false

And I do not equate success with good. American pop singers are successful, but lip syncing (Which is all too common in that industry) is not musical talent. One can have a good game but be unsuccessful, similarly, a successful game doesn't even have to actually be a good game in comparison to others in the genre. Some companies are simply more fortunate than others-- I think of the difference between Blizzard and Cavedog. Who remembers Cavedog anymore? And yet Total Annihilation was truly innovative, and widely rated as the best RTS game of its era-- yes, even over Starcraft on many sites. Cavedog as a company floundered and died due to financial problems. TA:Kingdoms receiving a lukewarm reception (the engine was not suited for a fantasy setting) was another handfull of nails in the coffin. There are other reasons a company fails than just the quality fo their games-- we do not live in a perfect (nor perfectly) capitalist society.

ShumaGorath wrote:And here I figure I have been with names and numbers in all of my posts while you just say "WARCRAFT SUCKS" over and over again. We can keep playing the game but you're going to actually have to make a post thats more than two or three sentences if you want to try and pretend you have some experience with the subject matter.

Numbers? Heh.

But you actually did more to prove my point than your own with the last sentence of your little rant. Claiming progression is a "myth" and then giving examples counter to your claim is not a good way to prove your point.

As for the rest:

FPS games: Today's first person shooters are not very revolutionary, I agree. I blame it on "let's try and be like HALO" syndrome, myself. But some smaller developers are really doing a good job-- Penumbra comes to mind, using an FPS engine (Though technically I wouldn't call it a shooter) to provide quite possibly the best horror experience in recent years bar none. . Generally the more innovative ones tend to be indy developers, as the big companies tend towards "safe" games. Still, some of the bigger games have had nice ideas. Admittedly I have not kept up with this genre quite so much as I would have liked, however. Most of the newer shooter games seem to be leaning towards 3PS rather than FPS-- the businesses believe this is what the customers want apparently, though I certainly prefer FPS myself. Space Marine is going to be a 3PS for example, and quite a few recent big name ones have been as well. Several MMO3PS games have been started as well, including the hilariously bad Crimecraft, and the much more promising APB. Compare this to the shooter genre in the past-- there has, generally, been a progression from FPS single player games, to multiplayer fragfests, to "realism" style modern or WWII games, and then the most recent progression appears to be towards third person shooters, which haven't been explored quite as much as first person shooters have.


RTS games: CnC4 I haven't played yet. But really, do you think I'd expect innovation out of Electronic Arts? They do provide good games every now and then, but in their games tend to be SAFE rather than risking with something new. But the rest of the RTS genre? SupCom2 changed quite a bit from SupCom:FA, many of the changes were for the better even if it aliented some of the hardcore fans (SupCom, despite being a very high quality game, was basically the Crysis of its genre, and for some people its core concepts were hard to grasp)-- that they also have it on the 360 has increased their profits a bit as well. Dawn of War 2 caused a big fan-made fuss with the changes it made from DoW1, yet financially it was a pretty big success for Relic. The RTS genre has typically been rather slow to progress, yet it has, gradually moving away from the older -Craft style of gameplay towards more RTT style, which is easier for the average consumer to pick up, understand, and enjoy than the intense base building of the RTS. The fact that there is now a distinction between RTT and RTS doesn't really separate them in the minds of most of the population I would think, they're still "strategy" games, even if, say, Warcraft 3 and World in Conflict have dramatically different playing styles. Just like they combine 3PS and FPS into "action" or "shooter", often also including "adventure" too for kicks. The progression in this genre seems to be going away from traditional style RTS games, and more towards RTT style, even if there are still a few traditionalist games being made every year (though very few of them can be called notable aside from Starcraft II). If I'm not mistaken, even CnC4 reflects this.

Karon wrote:IMO, I doubt W40KDM can avoid that, Metallifan. You and I both know the majority of what the crowd of 40k is: Children.

Even worse, adults who act like children.

I played WoW when it launched and then just after BC came out. I saw no real difference in the community. It's always been an incredibly mixed bag while raiding guilds have always been obsessive and douchy. Peoples perceptions of the game always change once they are ground out of it which is why they call it market churn. People join and get churned out. It's rare indeed for a player to like a game as much when they leave as when they start even if it's changed not at all since launch. It's the nature of experiential learning and the human mind. The more you know something the more you know its flaws and little things you never noticed at first can plague you at the end.

WoW has a market churn of roughly 18 months (as in the average box purchase pays for a year and a half of time before quitting).

Before WoW, MMORPGs were a small and unknown niche. WoW made it a popular mass phenomenon (outside East Asia), making every other MMORPG with old customer numbers look like a failure. WoW now is the standard, popular among and targeted especially at teens, that's why the graphics are "family friendly". This is the basis for their economic success and also creates new niches for more exotic games like EVE and AION, who now can hunt a 10fold or 100fold larger customer base.

Dark Millenium will have a chance because it is a SciFi shooter MMORPG with cool bad guys and later vehicles, easy, appealing fun not too close to WoW. If it gets a low age rating (12+ or 15+), it can even be an economic success, but certainly not as big as WoW.

Karon wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Ouze wrote:

Karon wrote: WoW is amazing. Its accomplished so much, and is a huge world. It's a major PVE game, and that's apparently what most people want (11 million people says so)

You know what the most popular show in the world is? Baywatch. By definition, it is the best show on TV, yes? The best restaurant? McDonalds. The best store? Walmart.

Taking a formula, and crudely digesting it into bland pablum that anyone can digest doesn't make something good.

World of warcraft also isn't a show about a porn star in a bikini, nor is it a low cost monopsony. Tastes are subjective and quantitatively by virtually every form of press on this planet world of warcraft is still the best playing, best performing, and deepest MMO on the market.

Not liking it is purely subjective and is quite acceptable, but saying it's bad because walmart is a popular store franchise is stupid.

Exactly.

And, for the fellow who said WoW is losing its players and such and was better at the start, is completely correct. I remember awesome Molten Core raids...that was so fun. As well as BLW, heh.

I thought it sort of started moving downhill after outland, and even more so when they re-did Naxx instead of making a new instance.

But, it's still the most successful, and the best MMO on the market at the moment

Pretty much every thing Karon said is what happened with me. I played when it started and then quit when they started rereleasing old material because they couldn't think of anything else.

ShumaGorath wrote:
I still question the superiority of that methodology over the more standard zone interaction that's proven highly successful in games like WoW or city of heroes. Most games which utilize server-rotating warzones in pvp settings (Chromehounds, WAR, planetside as examples) tend to reduce individual interaction within game zones and battlefields and often times make the user him/herself feel that they are less connected and important within the world even if their interactions have a palpable effect from a macro observer. Most successful games within multiplayer settings just fake it. This isn't an RTS, one person doesn't control hundreds within a time lapse setting. Fighting mobs so that ostenburg can flip sides in a day or two (When i'm not playing) is no more "Involving" than me and a few friends raiding a chaos stronghold and taking down a specific demon, even if that demon just respawns a few hours later.

But its a more realistic interaction. Look I was speaking in generalities, that if you could get a set up like that to work, feel balanced, and be able to pat players on the back it would make for a more dynamic setting.

I was trying to point out that the flaw of most things that have come before this either have no real manipulation of the world, the player gets a cookie, a pat on the head, a "good job," loot, and then another mission. Or its too easy taking only a few days to flip hands.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Thats what WAR did. It wasn't particularly fun most of the time. Large open world pvp/pve conflict tends to reduce the capability of that world to really provide a good experience on either end. It oftentimes removes capable storytelling and interesting quest interactions and does quite a bit to damage open world pvp (which in and of itself is actually not a popular feature in any mmo game).

Just because something hasn't been done well doesn't mean it can't be.

Karon wrote:IMO, I doubt W40KDM can avoid that, Metallifan. You and I both know the majority of what the crowd of 40k is: Children.

Even worse, adults who act like children.

The thing is, WoW became a virtual kindergarten because Blizzard bowed to children and skill-less players that couldn't complete even the simplest of tasks without a handicap. You know, the ones that natural selection should've killed off by that age.

If THQ makes the game an actual test of skills and tactical aptitude (Like WoW -used- to be), then most of the too-young kids will stay away "Cuz duh game R 2 hurrrd!". It worked for WoW in the past, it can work for THQ now. All they have to do is make sure that they don't kneel to every little complaint. Seriously. If Blizzard would actually do some research before beating a dungeon or a boss senseless with the Nerfbat , they would see that most of the time, it's just groups that can't get their act together because they're too young (or stupid) to understand group operation. I'm happy with the graphics, the audio (From what we've heard of it in videos) is great. All we need now are game content and game mechanics reviews and we'll be able to tell whether or not this is going to be everything WoW -should- be. I'm certainly hoping so, but time will tell.

And I do not equate success with good. American pop singers are successful, but lip syncing (Which is all too common in that industry) is not musical talent. One can have a good game but be unsuccessful, similarly, a successful game doesn't even have to actually be a good game in comparison to others in the genre. Some companies are simply more fortunate than others-- I think of the difference between Blizzard and Cavedog. Who remembers Cavedog anymore? And yet Total Annihilation was truly innovative, and widely rated as the best RTS game of its era-- yes, even over Starcraft on many sites.

Yes, those same people were the ones saying that crysis was the best FPS of its day. People are impressed with glitz and flash and the best test is the test of time. No one cares about total annihilation and starcraft is still more popular than supreme commander, the spiritual successor of TA that wasn't released a decade ago. TA was a crappy game with a ludicrously high unit cap and high end graphics (for the time). Glitz.

But you actually did more to prove my point than your own with the last sentence of your little rant. Claiming progression is a "myth" and then giving examples counter to your claim is not a good way to prove your point.

Actually the myth is experiential progression from title to direct title and the quantitative superiority of titles that utilize technological or interactive "progression" as a form of advancement within the market (Remember the firs person action rts games? No? They existed.The myth of progression). The myth of progression is the idea that a game (or anything) is better simply because it's different when more often than not the opposite is true. The concept of a static field within a technological entertainment medium is silly and I would appreciate it if you would know the terms I'm using when you choose to try and argue against them.

FPS games: Today's first person shooters are not very revolutionary, I agree. I blame it on "let's try and be like HALO" syndrome, myself.

Which is funny considering the fact that halo is still one of the more "innovative" games within its field, but I think you just dislike popular franchises as you label them cookie cutter when you fail to realize that franchises are popular often times because they refine what they did not innovate. Not everything can be new.

Most of the newer shooter games seem to be leaning towards 3PS rather than FPS-- the businesses believe this is what the customers want apparently, though I certainly prefer FPS myself. Space Marine is going to be a 3PS for example, and quite a few recent big name ones have been as well.

This leads me to believe again that you don't know the industry or it's history very well. Third person shooters have fallen far out of favor, space marine is a third person action brawler with guns, and there are more first person shooters per game released now than there ever have been before in history.

The trend towards multiplayer is noticeable, but thats more an artifact of the capability of systems and the superiority of multiplayer to deliver a diverse play experience.

RTS games: CnC4 I haven't played yet. But really, do you think I'd expect innovation out of Electronic Arts?

You should. They're just as capable as anyone else, no matter what you liked to demonize years ago (activision is the current punching bag, keep up).

They do provide good games every now and then, but in their games tend to be SAFE rather than risking with something new. But the rest of the RTS genre? SupCom2 changed quite a bit from SupCom:FA, many of the changes were for the better even if it aliented some of the hardcore fans (SupCom, despite being a very high quality game, was basically the Crysis of its genre, and for some people its core concepts were hard to grasp)

Concepts like building generators for the first 20 minutes of every game and then building a rock paper scissors force of tiny ugly units so that you can set two waypoints and then ignore what they do while you build another few hundred. It was new, but not what the majority of the rts community would consider to be a step in the right direction (theres that myth of progression again).

The RTS genre has typically been rather slow to progress, yet it has, gradually moving away from the older -Craft style of gameplay towards more RTT style, which is easier for the average consumer to pick up, understand, and enjoy than the intense base building of the RTS. The fact that there is now a distinction between RTT and RTS doesn't really separate them in the minds of most of the population I would think, they're still "strategy" games, even if, say, Warcraft 3 and World in Conflict have dramatically different playing styles. Just like they combine 3PS and FPS into "action" or "shooter", often also including "adventure" too for kicks. The progression in this genre seems to be going away from traditional style RTS games, and more towards RTT style, even if there are still a few traditionalist games being made every year (though very few of them can be called notable aside from Starcraft II). If I'm not mistaken, even CnC4 reflects this.

Indeed it does reflect that, but what I think you're noting is the increased capability of computing power allowing for deeper forms of interaction. Dawn of war 2 was new because dawn of war 1 could not do what dawn of war 2 did, nor could a great many games have done so. The number of AI routines DoW 2 runs while its AI scrambles for cover and to make intelligent decisions would have melted an old Voodoo. You also are noting a false progression, most people were not a fan of the stripped down economics of the new red alert and many players dislike the removal of the base and economic management from dawn of war two. Many players enjoy the economic aspects of rts games and it's removal and the alteration of the system isn't a new concept (Ever played seventh legion?). The command and conquer generals series still involves bases, as does red alert. The tiberium series is not the bellweather for the genre and dawn of war 2 has no where near the success the first had as far as tournament penetration goes. Wait... Supreme commander is practically nothing but bases and econ management..

But then I think we're arguing different things. You're arguing that new things do occur, I was arguing that new things aren't always better. These ideas are not mutually exclusive.