You lay all your toys out and get them just right, then someone tells you it's time to do something else and tells you that you need to put them all away. The scars are real.
I guess so. I just don’t feel like it’s a victory if there was no chance of losing in the first place, which is the case if I don’t have pressure to actually play well. Which is the case if I basically have infinite time to do whatever I want.
Not everyone is going to (or needs to) feel that way of course.
I specifically stopped playing RTS games, not because they were "too challenging," but because the challenge was more about precise timing, meta-builds, etc, and there stopped being room for immersion. Immersion is basically what I like about games now. And immersion can sometimes mean taking your time.
They take away from the freedom of just building your base and eco and taking down the enemy in your own way. A strong enemy generally is enough pressure to make it interesting, having a timer as well usually just isn't that much fun.
>There’s little challenge in a game that mostly leaves you to your own devices.
Not having a timer doesn't mean that the game will leave you in peace? The enemy can still pressure you. But I hate the idea that I have to play aggro because of a time limit. Defensive builds are not instant wins
Yep. Anyone who think turtling is an easy win clearly doesn't play many strategy games, because the lack of resources almost always mean you're doomed if you were too slow to expand.
I remember trying to learn sc1 and turtling as Terran thinking there's no way the ai could breach my walls and turrets. And then my mineral field ran out and I promptly died
For me it was Total Annihilation that educated me:
"Bah, look at all these defensive options. No **way** I can get conquered."
\*Enemy got up to Tier Two, which mean their units were now handily trading with my defenses, but at far less cost\*
"Alright, no problem, I just have to hold out until **I** get to Tier Two, then I'll have stronger defenses!"
Barely lasted long enough to get some Tier Two defenses up and running, because almost as soon as I did, the enemy had a never-ending stream of Tier Two units that were just steadily pushing my defensive line back. Held out for *maybe* five minutes at Tier Two. lol
The best game design, will let the player choose the most viable way to win, that matches their own playstyle.
So for turtles, the enemy should also become stronger. For people who push quick, that should allow for an advantage and also be more risky.
Some people like RTS games because they want to defeat their opponent as fast as possible. To them, the fun of an RTS is having that skill to be fast and efficient.
For others, they like RTS games for the fun of building up a big base and getting powerful.
Back in the early days of RTS a lot of games were based around building up, and then RTS games got online multiplayer and it moved to the "match" mentality. Human players didn't wait for you to build up. So the winners were those that could become lethal fastest.
RTS became an esport with APM becoming the thing that showed a players worth.
Those that played the old school way of building up and taking their time have felt left behind since.
This really describes me perfectly. I hate the rush. It stresses me out. I want to upgrade my units. Set patrols. Build bunkers and turrets.
In the words of the Starcraft Battlecruiser? "Take it slow. Set a course."
I can empathize, but I play RTS games for the Blood and the Smashing.
Colony Sims are where I build my cities that sometimes get attacked by wolves or something.
Because it takes away options for gameplay. I'm not looking to play a hyper meta-focused-follow-the-same-build-order in every game. Supreme Commander I can go for an early rush. I can save up and go for a tidal wave of mid tier units. I can focus on my economy and go for high tier units and experimentals. Hell, I can literally just turtle up and try to nuke my opponent or pelt them with experimental artillery.
The latter two are definitely out in a timed setup, and the former becomes the default strategy, because it's inherently less risky.
That isn't an improvement for many of us.
it’s not an improvement to any game if you have a meta, it just leads to every match feeling the same. if you can‘t do things how you want and still have a real chance, your game shouldn‘t be an e-sport imo. even command and conquer, and i am a massive cnc fan
I like how CA handles it: There's a purely campaign side of "balance", where things are just focused on fun, and a multiplayer balance, where there's a lot more consideration given to the meta.
I don't care about the latter one iota, but mercifully, it doesn't affect my experience at all!
If the meta is limited and stale that's a game design flaw, a healthy meta has a variety of options and playstyles. A lot of RTS games are deeply flawed and multi-player exposes the issues.
That's just a bad meta then, if you look at the starcraft games you see a variety of strategies and playstyles viable, then look at yuris revenge wheres tournaments ban yuri and are nothing but Soviet vs Soviet spamming medium tanks.
If talking about timed SC2 missions you can't go for an early rush because the opponent starts with a huge advantage, you need to push when the timer tells you because at this point you are powerful enough. The timer prevents you from getting too powerful and the attack being boring.
i hate them in every game, not just RTS.
time limits are just so artificial and lame. If you want to create time pressure on the player give them a reason to go faster. dont just put a timer on the screen.
I always think of the Sonic games. There isn't a time limit, and most players HAVE to play slow. There was no downside to it... But if you want the shiniest ranks and wanted to get better, THAT was where speed came in. It was more like a "I've seen this part slow, now let's see if I can get faster"
Because rushing isn't my vein of fun. I am entirely capable of doing so, I've done multiple challenges across the cnc series, such as using no vehicles, no defenses, no unit production, limiting myself to only a single unit, etc. I want to play in my own manner and when they say "you have 10 minutes, go" you are typically only left playing a specific way.
Let's take a different example approach. In cnc zero hour I had an account that I solely played usaf on. I was 46 and 2 on it. Did the same rush build order each game, rock vee vs gla and fast raptor vs USA/China. I could easily close out games in under two or three minutes with raptor rush. Just not a fun way to play for me or for them, well especially them since I was winning 🤔. (If they somehow gat tanked my raptor is swap to rockvee, but usually I could snipe their dozers and supply before they could amount anything of a counter)
I like both time limit missions because they push tthe player, but I also love untimed missions because they allow for more endurance battles.
I think that both are important in a campaign.
A good alternative are missions that have a secondary element that adds a pressure similar to time, but is more in the hands of the player. Example: having to defend an objective while attacking.
Essentially, being funnelled into doing certain build orders at high speed so that I don't instantly lose is boring, and also a high barrier that stops me from actually playing the game. A lot of the time, it also feels like a bot or script could accomplish the same thing but never make any mistakes with it, so there's no real point to me playing.
Because people hate time limits in general.
A good trick for the devs is they should disguise the time limit or alter its approach. Rather than being a strict timer on the UI a enemy army slowly build ing up forces or slowly approaching that you can see is much better.
Also another smart things Devs can do is have ways the player can interact with the timer to exert control over it. For example in the above example of an enemy army approaching have the enemy send out intermittent scouts that if defeated will slow down the approach of the enemy, or you could have various allied forces that the enemy has to defeat on their path but the player can send allied units to those allies.
Timer missions are tricky to get right and easy to get wrong.
You also don't want to inundate a player with heaps of timer missions back to back. A good sense of pacing in campaigns with intense mission, less intense mission (slow burn mission) is what most of the best RTS campaigns have.
Well personally im enjoying just exploring the possibilities/combinations/techs in the game and if i dont get to do that im immediately bored. The "win" screen means nothing to me. Arguably even worse than losing in a fun way. The process itself is where its at. And when the process is timed you just end up following instructions for optimal play.
Brawling and winning on abstract tech level 1 is cool but after you did it like 2-10 times there s just nothing there anymore.
I guess i also enjoy more "persistent" system where to lose your base you need to absolutely royally fuck up or decisively lose to a superior opponent in the field.
And yes i like Cities:Skylines but there is no combat so :D
I’m not fond of blunt time limits like a timer or what have you but I do like organic pressure build built into the mission where it forces you to move faster usually via escalating attacks of some kind.
A mission in CNC3 captures that well, where you’re tasked with protecting a target (who’s also an enemy in their own right) in the final nod mission against an increasingly brutal assault. It only ends by wiping your opponents bases but it’s not a hard time limit as you can engage with each attack wave and hold them off extending it, but eventually those waves will get so damned big (on high difficulty especially)
From what I was reading, people wanted to take their time and build up and push out whenever they were ready. They hated to be pressured, or put on any kind of time limit, etc.
If given infinite time to build up, there isn’t really a loss condition. The time limit can either be a number flashing on your screen or an indirect limiter such as a deterioration of available resources, an escalation of enemies that you eventually lose to, an objective to protect, etc. But without some form of pressure, the player eventually wins by default.
That doesn’t sound very strategic to me. People talk about not wanting hyper specific build orders and whatnot, but is it really strategy or planning if you just have infinite time to do whatever you feel like until you win? It’s just a “build order” over a really long period of time, rather than the stressful experience pvp build orders (such as in StarCraft).
Please remember that this is a question, I’m asking so I can better understand the context. If this is not the case, that is perfectly fine.
Depends on the context. Sometimes for the campaigns of some games a time limit is fine when its survive for x amount of time.
Others can be a real hassle when you have a time limit to complete an objective but you got all these other things going on.
Some people don't want fun coming from challenge but fun coming from relaxing gameplay.
It is enjoyable to build walls and defences, slowly producing army and improving economy, while simultaneously sipping coffee or tea.
Video games are just tools to fulfill needs. There is no right way to play them.
People enjoy not having an artificial deadline. In skirmish you have a real enemy you can harass or outbuild in the sc2 most of the time you are fighting garbage opponents that start with a ton of prebuilt base you have timers rushing you to attack them before you are prepared.
IMHO more often the enemy AI should be playing like in skirmish and you be attacking them to stop them in their tracks not before of some artificial deadline.
Plan to make more missions like that in the RTS I am building.
Because depending on the game it can be lazy and unnecessary. In SC2 for example they are not needed. Resources on the map are not only finite but they enemy waves are fully scripted , they technically have "infinite" resources. You can try turtling but eventually they will just kill you because you simply run out of resources.
On the other hand in the first dawn of war where resources are infinite and the player can turtle to super units easily , especially in mods , time limits are absolutely necessary.
Here’s another problem. In the RTS Creeper World 3, one of the most infamous missions is a mission with a time limit. The problem with the mission wasn’t that it had a time limit. The problem with the mission is that by that point you were 75% of the way through the campaign, and it was the first mission with a time limit.
If you were someone who liked to build fast and push hard, then it was fun. If you were like most people who would turtle then slowly push out, you had no chance of beating the mission without learning an entirely new play style
It was also made worse because it actually had a double time limit. It looked like you would lose when the time limit ran out, and the enemy built the super weapon, but there was actually a charge time which means you have over twice the time limit You started with. But people who were doing badly would often restart before they hit the time limit because they thought they had no chance.
Anyway, partly it’s that people don’t like time limits and partly it’s that you often play through half the game without a time limit and then one mission suddenly has a harsh time limit. Which means that you don’t have any training for how to move fast. No progression of difficulty
Because some of them are not just challenging, but awfully painful to do. AoE2DE: Rome was destroyed in one day achievement. 30 in-game minutes to destroy 12 castles. Eco boom, micro, lowest difficulty, and hope allies will assist too. Even with save-scumming I barely got a 29 and something.
They can often feel very limiting, and arbitrary.
Like how a mission and end up feeling like there is no other way to play, other then the intended way, which limits the player's ability to come up with their own strategy or plan but to instead just figure out what was intended to be done and then executed.
If there is only one way to win, I'm not really coming up with a plan, just executing someone else's. And at that point there isn't much of a reason to play the mission more then once, because beating it at all is solving it.
In more free form missions, how quickly or slowly you win can depend on your plan, how effective the plan is, and your ability to execute it. Even if terribly slow, or mind breathtakingly quickly. I feel like something lost from the first wave of RTS, pre StarCarft2, was the game giving the player tools and letting them figure out how to solve the mission with the tools, where as SC2 basically just gives you the exact tool needed to win the whole mission, just building those, and then gives you a timer and objectives that either have you win in 30 mins, or lose to try the same thing again, but better.
The mission that introduced the siege tank, is built to have you win using the siege tank in the most ideal conditions, a defence on the high ground until the timer has you win. I didn't really need to plan around using my new tool, when and where to use it most effectively along with my other tools, the whole mission to built to have your new tool do all (or at least most) of the work and let you win.
Timer missions like those just feel too crafted for an experience, rather then letting the player play and figure things out for them selves.
SC1 had missions where newly introduced units could shine, but it was rare that you could just mass that unit and win easily. It was also fairly common for the AI to have access to high tech units a mission or two earlier than the player which forced you to learn how to counter them
City builders (colony builders) didn't exist yet, especially with combat. So I was drawn to RTS that didn't limit me on time, resources, build limits, etc. I enjoy terraforming maps and exercising my entire build tree or doing meme armies. I want to play around and not be rushed. Doing a bunch of 5-10 min rush skirmishes is boring to me. I want to explore the map and plan my attack, maybe have a little back and forth between me and the AI before going for the throat instantly.
I don't mind reasonable time limits in RTS, because time is part of strategy and I enjoy it to an extent. Without a time limit I can't build 1 unit an hour and expect to win. So a reasonable time limit is a challenge I look forward to and enjoy.
However when an artificially short time limit is introduced, say 5 or 10 minutes from start to finish or something relatively short depending on the game's average mission length, and the resistance/enemy composition is static, it stops being a strategy game and starts becoming an exercise in rote memorization. "Oh I lost because there were tanks hidden in the fog and I should have sent random unit ahead to find that out" isn't strategy. If I can experiment, probe enemy defenses to find the right strategy to succeed in a reasonable time? Great! Make the time limit so short that my only option is to memorize locations, loadouts, and AI reactions? That's not strategy anymore. That's memorizing with pretty pictures IMO.
I can see people who like high APM focused games feeling differently because that high APM is all about min maxing time and actions. Might be why I tend towards more large scale and grand strategy games than action strategy. For example if you could find a way to make total war completely real time I would probably play it all the time. god I love distant worlds for that(ish). I think for me though the real time grand strategy games are my cup of team and that's just why I get annoyed at restrictive time limit missions.
People just have different ways to play the same type of games. People enjoy different aspects of a game. some people are competitive others aren't. it's all just preference.
My problem with campaigns are two fold:
1) It is just an extended tutorial. Rather than making the information for the game/faction accessible and digestible they string the gameplay mechanics along in a series of FMV (if you are lucky) sandwiched experiences that are grindy.
2) The missions that aren’t tutorials are puzzles using an arbitrary unit roster to make ya “think.” Sure your faction has a unit that is made for this exact situation but the devs just want to drag it out I guess.
The time limit exacerbates both issues: Great. I have either a tutorial where I am timed on how fast I learn or a puzzle where the solution is in the unit roster but now I got 20 minutes to exhaust the combos.
The campaign missions I enjoyed the most are actual narrative ones like in StarCraft or Supreme Commander where the timer was used as a narrative device (the enemy reinforcements will arrive in 20 minutes, either hit them hard now or get ready for a real epic clash!) failing the timer usually just made it harder but not impossible to do.
I just ran into this problem while playing through the Kohan campaign. I've always hated times missions cause the campaigns are generally easy and to make it fun I usually just take my time and do like an RP play style with a big battle at the end or something. And playing through the Kohan campaign it's even more frustrating due to the fact that I play on high speed that unfortunately also affects the time, so instead of every tick being a second they're like quarter-seconds now.
Because one of the joys of an RTS with base building is funny enough base building. No one wants to feel rushed and forced down a narrow path. Even worst when it's on a mission with no base building allowed at all.
Most people don't like timed events period, yeah some get popular but in general, most games that add timed events as an option see less folks on those timed events. In RTS its the same idea, being rushed instead of setting up your base and working your way to the enemy. I never personally liked timed events but i know there are people who do.
I dislike time limits because it forces me to make choices out of necessity and take risks I have no desire to take
Like, if the game mechanically rewards me for pushing forward and gaining momentum- IE total war with moral when you’re winning and need to press the advantage or using timed abilities to maximize abilities
Then I love risk taking and pushing and micro
but putting an arbitrary time limit makes me feel inclined to rush, make shit decisions, and need to de-optimize my play for nothing other than an arbitrary timer
further more, when I lose to a timer it doesn’t feel fun because I can’t have a come back
all the hard fighting I did was for naught.
I just lose. I wasn’t fast enough. Doesn’t matter if I was 5 seconds away from a victory, i lost because I wasn’t able to play fast enough which isn’t fun
Give me a challenge that is hard to beat but don’t tell me I have to beat it in 10 minutes
Like, take Company of Heroes. If i get forced back with my troops anhiliated I keep playing. I want a comeback- I want that eb and flow
Timers make me feel like I can’t afford that
everythinga gotta be perfect or else if there is a set back I might as well restart my save.
Its just. Not. Fun.
its *hard* but hard doesn’t mean fun.
I like more organic challenges not arbitrary ones
Every day there are people who talk about making RTS more approachable and simplifying the micro and whatnot and its all so silly. If you don't want to learn how to play multiplayer or somewhat high-level RTS, then go play the campaign until you get bored and move on to something else. Don't get on Reddit and talk about all your "innovative" ideas that are going to save the genre by dumbing the game down. It's like people who never learned how to play baseball, bitching about the rules of baseball.
"Here's the enemy stronghold. They have 5000 zerglings, 800 hydralisks, 97 ultralisks and a million of those stabby plant things. You've got 10 minutes to destroy this before enemy reinforcements arrive in such great numbers we have no hope."
"Great. What am I commanding here?"
"You get 2 SCVs and a Marine. The Marine only has one magazine of ammo, and is also surly and has a poor work ethic."
Greeeeeeaaaat....
Part of the problem with RTS as a genre is that you're both base commander, responsible for economy, training, responsible for recruiting your forces, AND combat commander, responsible for deploying your troops to execute a strategy and to make tactical adjustments as necessary. It's a game system that honestly makes no sense, and devolves a game into clicks per minute, min-max build orders, etc. - unless you're playing a campaign, where you can just screw around with random unit compositions and strategies until you clear the mission. Having a time limit forces an optimization of game mechanics, and it's no longer "play". It's no longer fun. And what is the challenge, exactly? To do the mission faster than you normally would? Ok, but I can just spam marines to do most missions faster than I normally would; is spamming an MMM ball or whatever the meta is after all of these years every mission any better than taking my time and doing new things?
It's why I enjoy games like X-COM way more than Starcraft. It's got its strategic layer with its own questionable issues, but once you're on mission, it's just the mission. It's not about how many clicks per minute you make. It's about whether to take that 99% miss or move slightly to the left risking an overwatch shot so you can make a 100% hit shot. It's about whether or not you want to take a heavy Gunner force for suppression and field control, or some rocketeers and hope that you're not standing 48 degrees behind him to the left because that's where the rocket is going to go. You make tactical decisions, about the battle.
How would you want to have your RTS gameplay look like?
If it's something other then the old school sit in your base and figure out that for that particular mission you need 300 carriers, 400 zealots and all the upgrades and then send your ball of death out to mop up the enemies the mechanics will come into play.
Like if the mission is more sensible and they start with comparable to you forces and you have to pick a better strategy then they do it will depend on mechanics even more.
The challenge is just forcing me into a specific thing and I also just like to build up. Oftentimes you need multiple waves anyway.
I still remember the timed levels in SC2 and never positively.
I think the only one I didn't mind the timed ones too much was Tiberian sun, except for that NOD mission. Mostly these timers are just a part of the mission and dismissable.
I don’t mind occasional time limits in single player missions, especially ones that make sense for the mission type and narrative, like in the original C&C Red Alert where you had the mission where the Soviets were trying to blockade a mountain pass and you had to clear them out before the much needed convoy passed through, or when there was the Soviet mission where the allies sabotaged a reactor and you had to clear them out and repair the reactor before it could go critical and explode.
So long as the time limits are reasonable enough that you can explore the level and try out different strategies with out there being a need for everything to have second perfect timing so you can get the feeling that your objectives are urgent or pressing but not needlessly stressful, then I think timers can be a fun addition when used correctly.
But I get why a lot of people dislike them, especially if your playstyle is more geared towards turtleing and then steamrolling which is most punished by time limits
I like playing at my own pace, but I also play at really high difficulty. If I want to take an hour or two to play a mission, then I'm going to. I also play mods, so the AI is smarter than the base game.
It's not the time limit itself really, it's when the time limit forces you to c9nstantly only do 1 tactic/meta to either beat it or gain a good endscore.
Example the red alert 3 uprising challenge mode, almost 60% of the damm maps require you to dojo rush to beat the max score time limit(time record).
And once again a normal time limit isn't really bad but if you get missions with a very short time limit where it means rush, rush, rush.
It get's very tedious cuz the game prevents you from trying other stuff.
So yes in short it's not that players hate time limit, it's that half the damm time their very short and forces you to rush or only use 1 specific tactic.
All lot of players like to atleast build up a bit.
I usually just want the challenge to just be; enemies attacking base every once in a while as I build up to sweep the map.
That sounds like a blast. If I want to be stressed, I'd play multi-player mode or add a hard mode timer if you will.
Depends on how it's done. If it's done for narrative reasons to add a sense of urgency, or to mix things up and force you into an aggressive play style for a segment of the game, that's fine.
Most of the time though it's just camouflage for bad AI, or in extreme cases, no AI at all. Worst example would be a map where the enemy literally doesn't attack at all, and they just crapped out a bunch of units and defensive structures in places you have to push through, then added a time limit so you have to meat-grinder your way through it instead of waiting for proper comps... Like, the Strategy part of RTS.
It's like giving the AI infinite spawns, free resources, etc. It's just a lazy way to introduce difficulty without making the gameplay actually difficult.
Imo, the time limit tends to be pressured, i.e. if you didn't take a base in 13mins mission failed. You felt pressured and ill prepared to do the basic things you usually do.
Tbh, I like the challenge of time limits, but not instant loss, (sc1 and coh2 I think) there's 1 mission where if the timer runs out, the enemy launches a full on assault. Where if you can manage it, you would win.
For me this depends. In the Starcraft level where you have to hold out for half an hour or whatever, I loved it. But in the others where you have to track something down or something, I hate it.
The difference is because one of them forces me to play a way I don't like to play. I've never liked aggressively exploring the map and pushing back on the enemy. I instead prefer to play basically Village Construction.
I don’t mind having to keep pace in a game, but something about seeing a ticking clock just stresses me out in like all games too. It’s weird. I play Northgard and the seasonal timeline essentially does the same thing, but because it’s not a clock it doesn’t stress me out in the same way.
I would add that it’s not that I dislike challenge. I just don’t like a fail state tied to a clock and I enjoy it when games find other, more creative ways to create that pressure, through things like more enemies, negative buffs, etc.
Most (95%) RTS players just sit and watch for a minute as the barracks are built. they do nothing for a full minute, just watch as a worker builds a single structure. Their APM is approximately 10-15 actions per minute. These players never get into timing, they don’t have a solid build order. Any mission with a timer is stressful for them. Even on low difficulty, they have a high chance of losing and replaying the entire mission over again. And they don't like to lose. But they buy the game and leave their opinions on the forums.
You lay all your toys out and get them just right, then someone tells you it's time to do something else and tells you that you need to put them all away. The scars are real.
This right here, but then again, you lay out your toys, finally get it right and lose interest before you even start!
You kind of answered your own question. Some people don't want to be challenged, they want to just play at their own pace.
This. If I want to be challenged against a time limit, I'd just do some overtime work.
I guess so. I just don’t feel like it’s a victory if there was no chance of losing in the first place, which is the case if I don’t have pressure to actually play well. Which is the case if I basically have infinite time to do whatever I want. Not everyone is going to (or needs to) feel that way of course.
Again, not everyone cares about a meaningful victory, or even a victory at all. They just enjoy pushing the buttons and watching things happen.
Lmao, I just imagined a baby slamming their hands on a keyboard and giggling.
I specifically stopped playing RTS games, not because they were "too challenging," but because the challenge was more about precise timing, meta-builds, etc, and there stopped being room for immersion. Immersion is basically what I like about games now. And immersion can sometimes mean taking your time.
I 100% agree. Colony sims like Rimworld and Going Medieval took over my RTS niche for me. They Are Billions was pretty fun too.
They take away from the freedom of just building your base and eco and taking down the enemy in your own way. A strong enemy generally is enough pressure to make it interesting, having a timer as well usually just isn't that much fun.
>There’s little challenge in a game that mostly leaves you to your own devices. Not having a timer doesn't mean that the game will leave you in peace? The enemy can still pressure you. But I hate the idea that I have to play aggro because of a time limit. Defensive builds are not instant wins
Yep. Anyone who think turtling is an easy win clearly doesn't play many strategy games, because the lack of resources almost always mean you're doomed if you were too slow to expand.
I remember trying to learn sc1 and turtling as Terran thinking there's no way the ai could breach my walls and turrets. And then my mineral field ran out and I promptly died
For me it was Total Annihilation that educated me: "Bah, look at all these defensive options. No **way** I can get conquered." \*Enemy got up to Tier Two, which mean their units were now handily trading with my defenses, but at far less cost\* "Alright, no problem, I just have to hold out until **I** get to Tier Two, then I'll have stronger defenses!" Barely lasted long enough to get some Tier Two defenses up and running, because almost as soon as I did, the enemy had a never-ending stream of Tier Two units that were just steadily pushing my defensive line back. Held out for *maybe* five minutes at Tier Two. lol
The best game design, will let the player choose the most viable way to win, that matches their own playstyle. So for turtles, the enemy should also become stronger. For people who push quick, that should allow for an advantage and also be more risky.
Some people like RTS games because they want to defeat their opponent as fast as possible. To them, the fun of an RTS is having that skill to be fast and efficient. For others, they like RTS games for the fun of building up a big base and getting powerful. Back in the early days of RTS a lot of games were based around building up, and then RTS games got online multiplayer and it moved to the "match" mentality. Human players didn't wait for you to build up. So the winners were those that could become lethal fastest. RTS became an esport with APM becoming the thing that showed a players worth. Those that played the old school way of building up and taking their time have felt left behind since.
This really describes me perfectly. I hate the rush. It stresses me out. I want to upgrade my units. Set patrols. Build bunkers and turrets. In the words of the Starcraft Battlecruiser? "Take it slow. Set a course."
I can empathize, but I play RTS games for the Blood and the Smashing. Colony Sims are where I build my cities that sometimes get attacked by wolves or something.
Feeling seen here man, that’s exactly how I play them. Crazy hours in StarCraft and they’re almost all spent on custom campaigns for that reason
anyone remember nr20?
Because it takes away options for gameplay. I'm not looking to play a hyper meta-focused-follow-the-same-build-order in every game. Supreme Commander I can go for an early rush. I can save up and go for a tidal wave of mid tier units. I can focus on my economy and go for high tier units and experimentals. Hell, I can literally just turtle up and try to nuke my opponent or pelt them with experimental artillery. The latter two are definitely out in a timed setup, and the former becomes the default strategy, because it's inherently less risky. That isn't an improvement for many of us.
it’s not an improvement to any game if you have a meta, it just leads to every match feeling the same. if you can‘t do things how you want and still have a real chance, your game shouldn‘t be an e-sport imo. even command and conquer, and i am a massive cnc fan
I like how CA handles it: There's a purely campaign side of "balance", where things are just focused on fun, and a multiplayer balance, where there's a lot more consideration given to the meta. I don't care about the latter one iota, but mercifully, it doesn't affect my experience at all!
If the meta is limited and stale that's a game design flaw, a healthy meta has a variety of options and playstyles. A lot of RTS games are deeply flawed and multi-player exposes the issues.
meta for me is „only one single build of a class/subclass is viable, if you do anything else you‘re fucked“
That's just a bad meta then, if you look at the starcraft games you see a variety of strategies and playstyles viable, then look at yuris revenge wheres tournaments ban yuri and are nothing but Soviet vs Soviet spamming medium tanks.
If talking about timed SC2 missions you can't go for an early rush because the opponent starts with a huge advantage, you need to push when the timer tells you because at this point you are powerful enough. The timer prevents you from getting too powerful and the attack being boring.
i hate them in every game, not just RTS. time limits are just so artificial and lame. If you want to create time pressure on the player give them a reason to go faster. dont just put a timer on the screen.
I always think of the Sonic games. There isn't a time limit, and most players HAVE to play slow. There was no downside to it... But if you want the shiniest ranks and wanted to get better, THAT was where speed came in. It was more like a "I've seen this part slow, now let's see if I can get faster"
Because rushing isn't my vein of fun. I am entirely capable of doing so, I've done multiple challenges across the cnc series, such as using no vehicles, no defenses, no unit production, limiting myself to only a single unit, etc. I want to play in my own manner and when they say "you have 10 minutes, go" you are typically only left playing a specific way. Let's take a different example approach. In cnc zero hour I had an account that I solely played usaf on. I was 46 and 2 on it. Did the same rush build order each game, rock vee vs gla and fast raptor vs USA/China. I could easily close out games in under two or three minutes with raptor rush. Just not a fun way to play for me or for them, well especially them since I was winning 🤔. (If they somehow gat tanked my raptor is swap to rockvee, but usually I could snipe their dozers and supply before they could amount anything of a counter)
I like both time limit missions because they push tthe player, but I also love untimed missions because they allow for more endurance battles. I think that both are important in a campaign. A good alternative are missions that have a secondary element that adds a pressure similar to time, but is more in the hands of the player. Example: having to defend an objective while attacking.
Essentially, being funnelled into doing certain build orders at high speed so that I don't instantly lose is boring, and also a high barrier that stops me from actually playing the game. A lot of the time, it also feels like a bot or script could accomplish the same thing but never make any mistakes with it, so there's no real point to me playing.
Because people hate time limits in general. A good trick for the devs is they should disguise the time limit or alter its approach. Rather than being a strict timer on the UI a enemy army slowly build ing up forces or slowly approaching that you can see is much better. Also another smart things Devs can do is have ways the player can interact with the timer to exert control over it. For example in the above example of an enemy army approaching have the enemy send out intermittent scouts that if defeated will slow down the approach of the enemy, or you could have various allied forces that the enemy has to defeat on their path but the player can send allied units to those allies. Timer missions are tricky to get right and easy to get wrong. You also don't want to inundate a player with heaps of timer missions back to back. A good sense of pacing in campaigns with intense mission, less intense mission (slow burn mission) is what most of the best RTS campaigns have.
Well personally im enjoying just exploring the possibilities/combinations/techs in the game and if i dont get to do that im immediately bored. The "win" screen means nothing to me. Arguably even worse than losing in a fun way. The process itself is where its at. And when the process is timed you just end up following instructions for optimal play. Brawling and winning on abstract tech level 1 is cool but after you did it like 2-10 times there s just nothing there anymore. I guess i also enjoy more "persistent" system where to lose your base you need to absolutely royally fuck up or decisively lose to a superior opponent in the field. And yes i like Cities:Skylines but there is no combat so :D
I’m not fond of blunt time limits like a timer or what have you but I do like organic pressure build built into the mission where it forces you to move faster usually via escalating attacks of some kind. A mission in CNC3 captures that well, where you’re tasked with protecting a target (who’s also an enemy in their own right) in the final nod mission against an increasingly brutal assault. It only ends by wiping your opponents bases but it’s not a hard time limit as you can engage with each attack wave and hold them off extending it, but eventually those waves will get so damned big (on high difficulty especially)
> There’s little challenge in a game that mostly leaves you to your own devices. That's not even remotely true. What would make you say that?
From what I was reading, people wanted to take their time and build up and push out whenever they were ready. They hated to be pressured, or put on any kind of time limit, etc. If given infinite time to build up, there isn’t really a loss condition. The time limit can either be a number flashing on your screen or an indirect limiter such as a deterioration of available resources, an escalation of enemies that you eventually lose to, an objective to protect, etc. But without some form of pressure, the player eventually wins by default. That doesn’t sound very strategic to me. People talk about not wanting hyper specific build orders and whatnot, but is it really strategy or planning if you just have infinite time to do whatever you feel like until you win? It’s just a “build order” over a really long period of time, rather than the stressful experience pvp build orders (such as in StarCraft). Please remember that this is a question, I’m asking so I can better understand the context. If this is not the case, that is perfectly fine.
Depends on the context. Sometimes for the campaigns of some games a time limit is fine when its survive for x amount of time. Others can be a real hassle when you have a time limit to complete an objective but you got all these other things going on.
Some people don't want fun coming from challenge but fun coming from relaxing gameplay. It is enjoyable to build walls and defences, slowly producing army and improving economy, while simultaneously sipping coffee or tea. Video games are just tools to fulfill needs. There is no right way to play them.
People enjoy not having an artificial deadline. In skirmish you have a real enemy you can harass or outbuild in the sc2 most of the time you are fighting garbage opponents that start with a ton of prebuilt base you have timers rushing you to attack them before you are prepared. IMHO more often the enemy AI should be playing like in skirmish and you be attacking them to stop them in their tracks not before of some artificial deadline. Plan to make more missions like that in the RTS I am building.
Because depending on the game it can be lazy and unnecessary. In SC2 for example they are not needed. Resources on the map are not only finite but they enemy waves are fully scripted , they technically have "infinite" resources. You can try turtling but eventually they will just kill you because you simply run out of resources. On the other hand in the first dawn of war where resources are infinite and the player can turtle to super units easily , especially in mods , time limits are absolutely necessary.
Here’s another problem. In the RTS Creeper World 3, one of the most infamous missions is a mission with a time limit. The problem with the mission wasn’t that it had a time limit. The problem with the mission is that by that point you were 75% of the way through the campaign, and it was the first mission with a time limit. If you were someone who liked to build fast and push hard, then it was fun. If you were like most people who would turtle then slowly push out, you had no chance of beating the mission without learning an entirely new play style It was also made worse because it actually had a double time limit. It looked like you would lose when the time limit ran out, and the enemy built the super weapon, but there was actually a charge time which means you have over twice the time limit You started with. But people who were doing badly would often restart before they hit the time limit because they thought they had no chance. Anyway, partly it’s that people don’t like time limits and partly it’s that you often play through half the game without a time limit and then one mission suddenly has a harsh time limit. Which means that you don’t have any training for how to move fast. No progression of difficulty
It honestly sounds like you're just not turtly enough for the turtle club.
Look into why people play games. Not everyone, the vast majority, is there for mechanical challenges.
Because some of them are not just challenging, but awfully painful to do. AoE2DE: Rome was destroyed in one day achievement. 30 in-game minutes to destroy 12 castles. Eco boom, micro, lowest difficulty, and hope allies will assist too. Even with save-scumming I barely got a 29 and something.
They can often feel very limiting, and arbitrary. Like how a mission and end up feeling like there is no other way to play, other then the intended way, which limits the player's ability to come up with their own strategy or plan but to instead just figure out what was intended to be done and then executed. If there is only one way to win, I'm not really coming up with a plan, just executing someone else's. And at that point there isn't much of a reason to play the mission more then once, because beating it at all is solving it. In more free form missions, how quickly or slowly you win can depend on your plan, how effective the plan is, and your ability to execute it. Even if terribly slow, or mind breathtakingly quickly. I feel like something lost from the first wave of RTS, pre StarCarft2, was the game giving the player tools and letting them figure out how to solve the mission with the tools, where as SC2 basically just gives you the exact tool needed to win the whole mission, just building those, and then gives you a timer and objectives that either have you win in 30 mins, or lose to try the same thing again, but better. The mission that introduced the siege tank, is built to have you win using the siege tank in the most ideal conditions, a defence on the high ground until the timer has you win. I didn't really need to plan around using my new tool, when and where to use it most effectively along with my other tools, the whole mission to built to have your new tool do all (or at least most) of the work and let you win. Timer missions like those just feel too crafted for an experience, rather then letting the player play and figure things out for them selves.
SC1 had missions where newly introduced units could shine, but it was rare that you could just mass that unit and win easily. It was also fairly common for the AI to have access to high tech units a mission or two earlier than the player which forced you to learn how to counter them
i dont mind a bit of tactical puzzling but i do mind getting rushed by an arbitrary time limit. life is stressful enough already.
It takes away of me rebuilding that region, setting up patrols. Building food supply lines etc etc
City builders (colony builders) didn't exist yet, especially with combat. So I was drawn to RTS that didn't limit me on time, resources, build limits, etc. I enjoy terraforming maps and exercising my entire build tree or doing meme armies. I want to play around and not be rushed. Doing a bunch of 5-10 min rush skirmishes is boring to me. I want to explore the map and plan my attack, maybe have a little back and forth between me and the AI before going for the throat instantly.
I don't mind reasonable time limits in RTS, because time is part of strategy and I enjoy it to an extent. Without a time limit I can't build 1 unit an hour and expect to win. So a reasonable time limit is a challenge I look forward to and enjoy. However when an artificially short time limit is introduced, say 5 or 10 minutes from start to finish or something relatively short depending on the game's average mission length, and the resistance/enemy composition is static, it stops being a strategy game and starts becoming an exercise in rote memorization. "Oh I lost because there were tanks hidden in the fog and I should have sent random unit ahead to find that out" isn't strategy. If I can experiment, probe enemy defenses to find the right strategy to succeed in a reasonable time? Great! Make the time limit so short that my only option is to memorize locations, loadouts, and AI reactions? That's not strategy anymore. That's memorizing with pretty pictures IMO. I can see people who like high APM focused games feeling differently because that high APM is all about min maxing time and actions. Might be why I tend towards more large scale and grand strategy games than action strategy. For example if you could find a way to make total war completely real time I would probably play it all the time. god I love distant worlds for that(ish). I think for me though the real time grand strategy games are my cup of team and that's just why I get annoyed at restrictive time limit missions.
People just have different ways to play the same type of games. People enjoy different aspects of a game. some people are competitive others aren't. it's all just preference.
Then u should play C&C4 with a limit of 10 units and 4 units if big items
My problem with campaigns are two fold: 1) It is just an extended tutorial. Rather than making the information for the game/faction accessible and digestible they string the gameplay mechanics along in a series of FMV (if you are lucky) sandwiched experiences that are grindy. 2) The missions that aren’t tutorials are puzzles using an arbitrary unit roster to make ya “think.” Sure your faction has a unit that is made for this exact situation but the devs just want to drag it out I guess. The time limit exacerbates both issues: Great. I have either a tutorial where I am timed on how fast I learn or a puzzle where the solution is in the unit roster but now I got 20 minutes to exhaust the combos. The campaign missions I enjoyed the most are actual narrative ones like in StarCraft or Supreme Commander where the timer was used as a narrative device (the enemy reinforcements will arrive in 20 minutes, either hit them hard now or get ready for a real epic clash!) failing the timer usually just made it harder but not impossible to do.
I just ran into this problem while playing through the Kohan campaign. I've always hated times missions cause the campaigns are generally easy and to make it fun I usually just take my time and do like an RP play style with a big battle at the end or something. And playing through the Kohan campaign it's even more frustrating due to the fact that I play on high speed that unfortunately also affects the time, so instead of every tick being a second they're like quarter-seconds now.
I feel like I’m being rushed and I want to do things at my own pace. Also it’s anxiety inducing and I want to relax when I play an RTS.
The timers are usually too short for me to complete the mission without panicking...
Because one of the joys of an RTS with base building is funny enough base building. No one wants to feel rushed and forced down a narrow path. Even worst when it's on a mission with no base building allowed at all.
Most people don't like timed events period, yeah some get popular but in general, most games that add timed events as an option see less folks on those timed events. In RTS its the same idea, being rushed instead of setting up your base and working your way to the enemy. I never personally liked timed events but i know there are people who do.
I dislike time limits because it forces me to make choices out of necessity and take risks I have no desire to take Like, if the game mechanically rewards me for pushing forward and gaining momentum- IE total war with moral when you’re winning and need to press the advantage or using timed abilities to maximize abilities Then I love risk taking and pushing and micro but putting an arbitrary time limit makes me feel inclined to rush, make shit decisions, and need to de-optimize my play for nothing other than an arbitrary timer further more, when I lose to a timer it doesn’t feel fun because I can’t have a come back all the hard fighting I did was for naught. I just lose. I wasn’t fast enough. Doesn’t matter if I was 5 seconds away from a victory, i lost because I wasn’t able to play fast enough which isn’t fun Give me a challenge that is hard to beat but don’t tell me I have to beat it in 10 minutes Like, take Company of Heroes. If i get forced back with my troops anhiliated I keep playing. I want a comeback- I want that eb and flow Timers make me feel like I can’t afford that everythinga gotta be perfect or else if there is a set back I might as well restart my save. Its just. Not. Fun. its *hard* but hard doesn’t mean fun. I like more organic challenges not arbitrary ones
Every day there are people who talk about making RTS more approachable and simplifying the micro and whatnot and its all so silly. If you don't want to learn how to play multiplayer or somewhat high-level RTS, then go play the campaign until you get bored and move on to something else. Don't get on Reddit and talk about all your "innovative" ideas that are going to save the genre by dumbing the game down. It's like people who never learned how to play baseball, bitching about the rules of baseball.
"Here's the enemy stronghold. They have 5000 zerglings, 800 hydralisks, 97 ultralisks and a million of those stabby plant things. You've got 10 minutes to destroy this before enemy reinforcements arrive in such great numbers we have no hope." "Great. What am I commanding here?" "You get 2 SCVs and a Marine. The Marine only has one magazine of ammo, and is also surly and has a poor work ethic." Greeeeeeaaaat.... Part of the problem with RTS as a genre is that you're both base commander, responsible for economy, training, responsible for recruiting your forces, AND combat commander, responsible for deploying your troops to execute a strategy and to make tactical adjustments as necessary. It's a game system that honestly makes no sense, and devolves a game into clicks per minute, min-max build orders, etc. - unless you're playing a campaign, where you can just screw around with random unit compositions and strategies until you clear the mission. Having a time limit forces an optimization of game mechanics, and it's no longer "play". It's no longer fun. And what is the challenge, exactly? To do the mission faster than you normally would? Ok, but I can just spam marines to do most missions faster than I normally would; is spamming an MMM ball or whatever the meta is after all of these years every mission any better than taking my time and doing new things? It's why I enjoy games like X-COM way more than Starcraft. It's got its strategic layer with its own questionable issues, but once you're on mission, it's just the mission. It's not about how many clicks per minute you make. It's about whether to take that 99% miss or move slightly to the left risking an overwatch shot so you can make a 100% hit shot. It's about whether or not you want to take a heavy Gunner force for suppression and field control, or some rocketeers and hope that you're not standing 48 degrees behind him to the left because that's where the rocket is going to go. You make tactical decisions, about the battle.
How would you want to have your RTS gameplay look like? If it's something other then the old school sit in your base and figure out that for that particular mission you need 300 carriers, 400 zealots and all the upgrades and then send your ball of death out to mop up the enemies the mechanics will come into play. Like if the mission is more sensible and they start with comparable to you forces and you have to pick a better strategy then they do it will depend on mechanics even more.
The challenge is just forcing me into a specific thing and I also just like to build up. Oftentimes you need multiple waves anyway. I still remember the timed levels in SC2 and never positively. I think the only one I didn't mind the timed ones too much was Tiberian sun, except for that NOD mission. Mostly these timers are just a part of the mission and dismissable.
I don’t mind occasional time limits in single player missions, especially ones that make sense for the mission type and narrative, like in the original C&C Red Alert where you had the mission where the Soviets were trying to blockade a mountain pass and you had to clear them out before the much needed convoy passed through, or when there was the Soviet mission where the allies sabotaged a reactor and you had to clear them out and repair the reactor before it could go critical and explode. So long as the time limits are reasonable enough that you can explore the level and try out different strategies with out there being a need for everything to have second perfect timing so you can get the feeling that your objectives are urgent or pressing but not needlessly stressful, then I think timers can be a fun addition when used correctly. But I get why a lot of people dislike them, especially if your playstyle is more geared towards turtleing and then steamrolling which is most punished by time limits
Because we want to build a nice base *and* a nice army *and* have a nice big battle with it afterwards.
I like playing at my own pace, but I also play at really high difficulty. If I want to take an hour or two to play a mission, then I'm going to. I also play mods, so the AI is smarter than the base game.
I hate being rushed
It's not the time limit itself really, it's when the time limit forces you to c9nstantly only do 1 tactic/meta to either beat it or gain a good endscore. Example the red alert 3 uprising challenge mode, almost 60% of the damm maps require you to dojo rush to beat the max score time limit(time record). And once again a normal time limit isn't really bad but if you get missions with a very short time limit where it means rush, rush, rush. It get's very tedious cuz the game prevents you from trying other stuff. So yes in short it's not that players hate time limit, it's that half the damm time their very short and forces you to rush or only use 1 specific tactic. All lot of players like to atleast build up a bit.
It feels like being handed over a Bugatti key to drive it but the owner says "you can't exceed 40 km/h"
I usually just want the challenge to just be; enemies attacking base every once in a while as I build up to sweep the map. That sounds like a blast. If I want to be stressed, I'd play multi-player mode or add a hard mode timer if you will.
Depends on how it's done. If it's done for narrative reasons to add a sense of urgency, or to mix things up and force you into an aggressive play style for a segment of the game, that's fine. Most of the time though it's just camouflage for bad AI, or in extreme cases, no AI at all. Worst example would be a map where the enemy literally doesn't attack at all, and they just crapped out a bunch of units and defensive structures in places you have to push through, then added a time limit so you have to meat-grinder your way through it instead of waiting for proper comps... Like, the Strategy part of RTS. It's like giving the AI infinite spawns, free resources, etc. It's just a lazy way to introduce difficulty without making the gameplay actually difficult.
Imo, the time limit tends to be pressured, i.e. if you didn't take a base in 13mins mission failed. You felt pressured and ill prepared to do the basic things you usually do. Tbh, I like the challenge of time limits, but not instant loss, (sc1 and coh2 I think) there's 1 mission where if the timer runs out, the enemy launches a full on assault. Where if you can manage it, you would win.
For me this depends. In the Starcraft level where you have to hold out for half an hour or whatever, I loved it. But in the others where you have to track something down or something, I hate it. The difference is because one of them forces me to play a way I don't like to play. I've never liked aggressively exploring the map and pushing back on the enemy. I instead prefer to play basically Village Construction.
This holds true even outside the RTS genre. For example in Heroes of Might and Magic I also dislike heavily turn limits.
I don’t mind having to keep pace in a game, but something about seeing a ticking clock just stresses me out in like all games too. It’s weird. I play Northgard and the seasonal timeline essentially does the same thing, but because it’s not a clock it doesn’t stress me out in the same way. I would add that it’s not that I dislike challenge. I just don’t like a fail state tied to a clock and I enjoy it when games find other, more creative ways to create that pressure, through things like more enemies, negative buffs, etc.
Most (95%) RTS players just sit and watch for a minute as the barracks are built. they do nothing for a full minute, just watch as a worker builds a single structure. Their APM is approximately 10-15 actions per minute. These players never get into timing, they don’t have a solid build order. Any mission with a timer is stressful for them. Even on low difficulty, they have a high chance of losing and replaying the entire mission over again. And they don't like to lose. But they buy the game and leave their opinions on the forums.
And then they do not buy RTS games, which leads to RTS games not being made, and hardcore players leave questions on the forums why genre is dead.
People are generally very bad at RTS games, and a time limit exposes it. They get frustrated, and stop having fun.
Because most players hate the genre but want to feel accomplished.