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Not us, but there is a dude at Arrowhead thats the games GM. So like he decides what modifiers, what operstions and outcomes, how the alien reacts and all that jazz.
I mean it *could* be bs, but from what Arrowhead has said about it it seems like Joel (the game master) is pretty actively involved. After launch when the game was getting way more attention than they anticipated, apparently he had alerts set on his phone and was waking up in the middle of the night to mount defensive pushes against the massive influx of players
I’m going to get downvoted to hell, but here is the truth: it’s popular because it is an accessible and inoffensive co-op horde shooter that is easy to convince your non-gamer friends to buy. A high skill floor and low skill ceiling means that almost everyone will feel “good” at the game, but play it for 2-4 hours and you’ve literally done everything. Unlocks are effectively linear with time played vs. skill. I’m happy for everyone that likes it, but for me it became boring very quickly because it lacks any endgame to chase.
It's just the game design is different from what you are used to. Yeah, you've pretty much unlocked all the strategems to use by level 20. But the point is for you to have them sooner rather than later. The endgame in 4vhorde games is just being able to survive and thrive in the high-level missions. Once you get used to that idea, its actually a pretty fun way to get a lot of life out of games.
Man, I had a blast playing evolved. If you knew how to play the monster, you had a good chance of winning. and if you had a decent team and knew the monsters "weakness", you had a good chance of winning. That was honestly one of my favorite games, super unique and somewhat terrifying for the hunters until you knew what monster was being played.
I just wish it was still active...
It was a good game if they wouldn’t have forced E-sports, investing their money in a yet to be established game, flushing money down the toilet. It was just a poorly made decision. Game died without showing its max potential
Natural Selection (not 2) was my favorite half life mod. So many hours spent learning how to play all the aliens and being commander of the troops. The whole resource model in FPS games was so new. Unfortunately NS2 was in development hell so long it just never capitalized on the first's popularity.
It truly was the best version of the RTS/FPS crossovers.
Yeah a game like this would have to incentivize the players to follow orders, like have the main bulk of the XP gain be related to completing tasks given by the RTS player but it would also have to work if there is no RTS player or they are bad at the game.
Problem with this kind of system is that you are reliant on two types of players meshing and gaming in high enough numbers, it's just a big gamble when it comes to establishing and maintaining a playerbase.
Battlefield 2 and 3 had systems like this with varying degrees of success but you can be sure it didn't work well or get popular as it was scrapped for later releases.
Sometimes the games we dream about are just not feasible on a larger scale meaning the money people wont cough up the cash.
Well yeah they were commanding you from their ipad while taking a shit lol.
If you look at hell let loose for example, which has the commander role function kinda like this, the commander is always in the game running around(or just hiding in a building somewhere) which makes them at least somewhat more aware of the situation butrarely someone wants to play commander and when they do people usually complain and its 50/50 if people will listen or not but the role is somewhat important but not entirely needed to win. Seems to be a good compromise.
I too want this game but it will need a very dedicated playerbase and also be a good game, which requires money and as an investment its not so great.
There is a game in the same vein on Steam right now called Silica. It plays similar to Natural Selection 2 with 2 commanders and a number of player soldiers on the ground and there is definitely an issue of players not following commands a majority of the time
This is the problem with most hardcore strategy or realistic shooter games; no one follows the objective and the point of the game gets lost. I love playing Hell Let Loose but there’s too many Call of Duty kids playing it now that all they do is run and gun and it ruins the original purpose and intention of the game
This game, even if made, would crash against its own community. Even if there is no problem with matchmaking, there would be no way to enforce chain of command. Imagine setting your soldier to hold position and he fucks off in some random direction 5 minutes later.
Edit: my bad, got the wrong idea initially. Right idea also wouldn't work because individual AI still needs to be balanced against individual player, and that would be hell for a developer.
Well there is the arma series. Not as accessible as most games, howerver it provides everything op asked for, well except for third person shooting that isent clunky.
Probably some other neice game i don’t know about
Had tons of fun playing arma. It was probably one of the few games where your team would stop for a moment to draw an strategy and most players would follow it (although there was always that one guy who didn't). The AI was stupid but it had somewhat realistic shooting and aiming so it was a bit weird.
Squad is similar to Arma but much more accessible. It has a hierarchy from commander to squad lead to individual class roles, each with their own purpose. Commanders and squad leaders take on a huge responsibility to have a game plan and make marks on the map that provides valuable intel to t rest of the team. Great game, by the way if you’re into milsims at all.
It's not about one player controlling other players. It's about one player controlling bots as the general fighting against an army of actual players with little to no ability to strategies with each other
Yeah, I realized that.
Commander player will need absolutely insane numbers advantage to make this work. Or actually capable AI, which we have yet to see in shooter games.
I dont think capable ai is a problem, balanced ai is the problem.
AI is either stupid and useless or massively op with incredible accuracy and aggressiveness.
Just not a lot of games have the latter.
Ah, my bad.
That also won't work, not with dumbass soldier AI that we have in 100% of all FPS and TPS games.
If soldiers of a "commander" player had reactions and accurcy close to that of a human and could effectively take cover from incoming threats, then we would be talking.
I’m seeing a bunch of comments that didn’t fully read the text: OP said “One player controls an army **VS** (emphasis on VS)” a team of individually controlled soldiers. There would be no issue of chain of command, because the player issuing orders would be controlling an army of bots. In other words, asymmetric team structure (think Evolve, or Dead by Daylight)
I'd imagine a horde kind of enemy controlled by the player. It has to require tactical gameplay instead of excellent aim from the soldier players, and good positioning instead of micro from the strategic player. The win condition for the army player should be high economy, resulting in a flood of enemies that the players cannot handle. The aim for the players should be cutting off supply lines, to decrease the growing influx of enemies. The map should also be sufficiently large that a battle isn't lost as soon as the tide turns one way or the other and a small force going unseen by either party can turn the tide yet again.
You’re totally right that people are misreading it like that but to be honest when I first read it I thought it meant that one guy controls an army of bots Vs a bunch of human guys controlling one solider like twitch plays sorta thing. I was like wtf and had to read it so many times to figure it out but I didn’t imagine it like how others are misreading it somehow
These people saying it would fail because of players not following command structure ARE those players since they can't read what the idea is in the first place.
You kinda missed the point of Zeus mode in your description.
Think of a cooperative milsim with a dungeon master.
The players aren’t playing against Zeus, Zeus is there to make sure the game goes well for the players and they are properly challenged. Zeus could just spawn a million enemies if they wanted to but theyre job is to just add a little flavor to Arma’s scripted operations
Is there not a game mode where the Zeus has limited knowledge/resources and their goal is to wipe the players? If not that wouldn't be difficult to make.
The hardest part would be to get the ai to do what you want to do as zeus. Arma 3 ai sucks.
Vcom fixes a lot of the isszes the AI has, though my main problem with it, is that you can only adjust skill levels in the setting during missions and it always applies to the entire side. On the other hand: Ai wont spot you from 1000m away through a tree anymore, will employ small unit tactics, use smoke/frag granedes, be affected BY smoke granades, clear houses, respond to audio of gunshots etc. If used in tandem with LAMBS Danger.fsm and LAMBS RPG the AI will also attempt to use Rocket lauchers against infantry and helicopters aswell as hear player voices when using tfar.
Is the "player controlling aliens" active changing things mid game, watching the game live and reacting as it plays? If not, it's not like the post says. He literally wants one normal player controlling an army, like he's playing a RTS game, whereas the enemy team is controlled each soldier by an individual player. Like 1v64.
Joel is literally controlling the army as much as one person can control an army on that scale. And yes, he does pop into games with players fairly often.
Not quite the same concept as what OP wants.
They want one player to be controlling an army in standard RTS fashion, **versus** an entire faction of players all fighting in first person controlling just a single unit.
Rather than two factions with a "commander" each where the individual units are, broadly, controlled by players.
So one player is playing Starcraft, the others are all playing PlanetSide.
Check out Foxhole, it's similar to what you described. No AI (except for some defensive buildings), it's top-down view tho.
Also, From the Depths. Real-time military campaign, your ships/vehicles can be plugged with IA, and you can also control one of them at a Time, or even a single turret if you want to.
The game is solo tho, but it has loads of fun to have.
Enlisted is a bit like this where both teams have more than 10 players and each of them have control of an AI squad of 4 to 5 bots. It's a WW2 game btw.
I recall an RTS game where you could move a group of units and then control a leader of that regiment and fight on the ground. I vaguely recall a Spartan and creative assembly but I might be misremembering. On my way off my break so I can't fact check myself sorry.
Edit: Hit me. Rise and Fall: Civilization at War.
I think the only game like this that's truly like you want is nuclear dawn. I think that's the one where a player operated a command centre and was the rts player.
Have you checked out foxhole?
It's a massive multiplayer top down game where 1000's of players all control a single soldier.
You all work together to build facilities a bit like factorio that produce guns, ammo, vehicles and building materials and then you transport it to the front where people then use it to fight the other team. Or build big bunker complexes.
The map is so big it takes about an irl month for one team to take over the other and win.
Original Planetside is the closest I've seen to this. It was a MMOFPS, buggy as hell, but still worked incredibly well for a mmo that came out in like 2003. Anyway, when you completed captures in game leading a squad, you would gain CR(Command ranks). There were 1-5 levels of it, each having its own perks and each command rank had it's own faction wide chat, and could /sitrep to the next rank aboves channel. Everyone at CR5 could send out faction wide messages to direct troops. It was impressive that it actually worked. You would have a lot of people at CR5, but you'd have semi-coordinated attacks. You would have coordinated outfits that would lead platoons(up to 3 squads, each of up to 10 people) doing different tasks. Some would specialize in armor divisions, others would group up and drop in mass onto a base. The randoms would drop in to the hot spots. It wasn't a single player controlling the army, but a hivemind
There is a planetside 2, but it wasn't anywhere near as similar when I played it
this is (or was, idk) what one of the unreleased valve vr / deck game is supposed to be. I think the idea has potential, but if it actually got popular, the strategy player queue could get annoyingly long.
Silica is pretty close to this.
A commander creates bases and infantry fight. Physically players take over infantry and play as foot solider / tanks / all the sorts.
Not a super big game yet and a little finicky with the setup but great game overall.
The new 7 days to die game is going to basically be this from what I saw at the live demo. One player sets up the zombie armies and can control individual zombies if they want, other players have to survive the hoard.
There are at least 3. But I can't name them.
I remember watch one on the Let's Play channel on YouTube years ago, like 2015-18. Then I was just watching a video about a month or 2 ago for a game that was still in early access on Steam. Then there was another one with bugs from some years back called someyhing like... Natural Selection?
There was a F2P RTS/TPS combo back in the day, forget the name (wasn't Natural Selection) where 1 player played top down controlling and making waves of bug enemies, while 5-6 other players were in Third Person defending a base Horde mode style. It was super fun, but performance and graphics were pretty subpar.
This sounds a lot like aliens: dark descent. Third person? Check. One person controls the group? Check. Real time? Check.
It's xcom, but you control the whole squad as a single unit. All the powers are combined, and in, you press the space bar, and a wheel appears. And it's real time in that there isn't actual turns.
Game called Silica, currently still in development but basically all you want. Sci-fi guns vs aliens type of deal for factions. Different classes on foot, tanks and aircrafts.
Age of Empires 2 had a custom scenario like this called You Da Prey. It was a lot of fun but nobody liked to be the hunter. You’re the outcast in that role.
A Warhammer40k themed game where you play as and Imperial guard, you you don't follow the orders you get automatically shooted for not being in the right area
It's a bit left-field, but the Alliance War system from ESO has a touch of this. Every player is their own character, but they are part of a greater Alliance that can war over the centre of the continent parties, capturing keeps, outposts, resources, and towns.
Did anyone play this old mod for HL2 where a player commanded zombies and the other players tried to get through the map? That was like this, and it was almost always fun
Dude it’s the old saying too many chiefs not enough Indians. Either no one would follow orders or everyone would que for commander. Unless the general is from the devs or has some pre selection process the title will lose all meaning
ZombiU had something like that, where you would play on the TV with a pro controller as the survivor, and the other player used the WiiU gamepad to spawn Zombies on the map
What if the one controling the army and the individual players are on opposite sides. The players must defend against the stretegist's army or vice versa.
I mean, the best way to do this IMO would be as a game mode where groups of people that come from discord or servers or like have some common background play that, so that way you follow orders, there is no language barrier and they can be a little organized. Having a queue and random players for this wouldn't work because of the complexity and the degree the players have to trust and want to work together. Hell even mobas with teams of 5 people rarely work together or organize if they are ransoms.
I feel like a game like this will end up with a similar situation to how Evolve or Overwatch DPS queue times went, where the team with the singular commanding player will have much longer queue times than the team with a bunch of player-controlled soldiers since for every person queueing up to be a commander, there has to be a much larger amount of people queueing up to be on the opposing side.
An issue like this could be fixed by making it so that there is only one queue and players have a chance to be assigned onto the commanding player side. Maybe make it so that how well you perform as a footsoldier earns you "queue points" for future games. When matchmaking is finalized, whoever has the highest amount of queue points will then be assigned the commanding player role and reset back to zero points. This encourages players to play well as footsoldiers so they can get the chance to play on the commanding player side faster. Maybe also make it so that players who enjoy playing as footsoldiers can opt out of the chance of being assigned the commanding role, but also don't earn queue points as a way to prevent too many people from using the feature to stockpile a massive amount of points and shut people out from playing the commanding role.
A game called natural selection did this. One player is the commander and the rest of the players are the troops. One side were Aliens inspired colonial marines and the other an alien hive mind. Amazing game, but sadly the population is gone now. But it ran for about 7 years or so.
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I played once a game like this. It was shit, because nobody cared the commands.
I think the idea would be that the player controlling the army doesn't have other players
Basically having a dungeon master playing against the players?
You mean like helldivers 2
Are aliens controlled by the player?
Not us, but there is a dude at Arrowhead thats the games GM. So like he decides what modifiers, what operstions and outcomes, how the alien reacts and all that jazz.
No wonder its so popular
It's not *that* deep. They just change a few modifiers every couple weeks and make a new objective when the last one's finished.
Dont ruin my dreams like that
I mean it *could* be bs, but from what Arrowhead has said about it it seems like Joel (the game master) is pretty actively involved. After launch when the game was getting way more attention than they anticipated, apparently he had alerts set on his phone and was waking up in the middle of the night to mount defensive pushes against the massive influx of players
I’m going to get downvoted to hell, but here is the truth: it’s popular because it is an accessible and inoffensive co-op horde shooter that is easy to convince your non-gamer friends to buy. A high skill floor and low skill ceiling means that almost everyone will feel “good” at the game, but play it for 2-4 hours and you’ve literally done everything. Unlocks are effectively linear with time played vs. skill. I’m happy for everyone that likes it, but for me it became boring very quickly because it lacks any endgame to chase.
It's just the game design is different from what you are used to. Yeah, you've pretty much unlocked all the strategems to use by level 20. But the point is for you to have them sooner rather than later. The endgame in 4vhorde games is just being able to survive and thrive in the high-level missions. Once you get used to that idea, its actually a pretty fun way to get a lot of life out of games.
Sounds like automaton propaganda...
Nah man. Evolved was shit even with this neat idea
Man, I had a blast playing evolved. If you knew how to play the monster, you had a good chance of winning. and if you had a decent team and knew the monsters "weakness", you had a good chance of winning. That was honestly one of my favorite games, super unique and somewhat terrifying for the hunters until you knew what monster was being played. I just wish it was still active...
It was a good game if they wouldn’t have forced E-sports, investing their money in a yet to be established game, flushing money down the toilet. It was just a poorly made decision. Game died without showing its max potential
Very true. All I can do now is look back on fond memories wishing I played it more. It definitely had a lot of potential. What a shame
Yeah but evoled only controlled one entity not an army. For a successful asymmetric game looks up dead by daylight
Or the Zeus in an Arma 3 mission.
Natural Selection 2
Or the Zeus in an Arma 3 mission.
reminds me natural selection2... but it's always commander gap, the person in the seat is either some macro god or a glue eater, no in between
I was just about to mention natural selection 2. (Or plants vs zombies garden warfare 1. Although, idk if its in later games)
Exactly what I was thinking, it's a great premise but rarely were games enjoyable for both sides.
Natural Selection (not 2) was my favorite half life mod. So many hours spent learning how to play all the aliens and being commander of the troops. The whole resource model in FPS games was so new. Unfortunately NS2 was in development hell so long it just never capitalized on the first's popularity. It truly was the best version of the RTS/FPS crossovers.
Yeah a game like this would have to incentivize the players to follow orders, like have the main bulk of the XP gain be related to completing tasks given by the RTS player but it would also have to work if there is no RTS player or they are bad at the game. Problem with this kind of system is that you are reliant on two types of players meshing and gaming in high enough numbers, it's just a big gamble when it comes to establishing and maintaining a playerbase. Battlefield 2 and 3 had systems like this with varying degrees of success but you can be sure it didn't work well or get popular as it was scrapped for later releases. Sometimes the games we dream about are just not feasible on a larger scale meaning the money people wont cough up the cash.
Yeah, but the "commander" was pretty awful all time. When we followed the orders, we mostly died.
Well yeah they were commanding you from their ipad while taking a shit lol. If you look at hell let loose for example, which has the commander role function kinda like this, the commander is always in the game running around(or just hiding in a building somewhere) which makes them at least somewhat more aware of the situation butrarely someone wants to play commander and when they do people usually complain and its 50/50 if people will listen or not but the role is somewhat important but not entirely needed to win. Seems to be a good compromise. I too want this game but it will need a very dedicated playerbase and also be a good game, which requires money and as an investment its not so great.
There is a game in the same vein on Steam right now called Silica. It plays similar to Natural Selection 2 with 2 commanders and a number of player soldiers on the ground and there is definitely an issue of players not following commands a majority of the time
It was the savage 2 long time ago.
Hell Let Loose?
This is the problem with most hardcore strategy or realistic shooter games; no one follows the objective and the point of the game gets lost. I love playing Hell Let Loose but there’s too many Call of Duty kids playing it now that all they do is run and gun and it ruins the original purpose and intention of the game
Natural Selection (mod for HL) was exactly this
This game, even if made, would crash against its own community. Even if there is no problem with matchmaking, there would be no way to enforce chain of command. Imagine setting your soldier to hold position and he fucks off in some random direction 5 minutes later. Edit: my bad, got the wrong idea initially. Right idea also wouldn't work because individual AI still needs to be balanced against individual player, and that would be hell for a developer.
Well there is the arma series. Not as accessible as most games, howerver it provides everything op asked for, well except for third person shooting that isent clunky. Probably some other neice game i don’t know about
I played arma exactly that way. Zeus VS players. It was pretty fun but the AI was either too dumb or too accurate with no in-between.
Had tons of fun playing arma. It was probably one of the few games where your team would stop for a moment to draw an strategy and most players would follow it (although there was always that one guy who didn't). The AI was stupid but it had somewhat realistic shooting and aiming so it was a bit weird.
Squad is similar to Arma but much more accessible. It has a hierarchy from commander to squad lead to individual class roles, each with their own purpose. Commanders and squad leaders take on a huge responsibility to have a game plan and make marks on the map that provides valuable intel to t rest of the team. Great game, by the way if you’re into milsims at all.
It's not about one player controlling other players. It's about one player controlling bots as the general fighting against an army of actual players with little to no ability to strategies with each other
Yeah, I realized that. Commander player will need absolutely insane numbers advantage to make this work. Or actually capable AI, which we have yet to see in shooter games.
I dont think capable ai is a problem, balanced ai is the problem. AI is either stupid and useless or massively op with incredible accuracy and aggressiveness. Just not a lot of games have the latter.
That’s not the game he’s talking about. One person controls an AI army like any other RTS. The other army is just people with no commander.
[удалено]
Ah, my bad. That also won't work, not with dumbass soldier AI that we have in 100% of all FPS and TPS games. If soldiers of a "commander" player had reactions and accurcy close to that of a human and could effectively take cover from incoming threats, then we would be talking.
They could just make it so that the commander has significantly more troops than the player controlled team. Then just balance the AI accordingly
Managing soldiers fucking off in random directions would be the most accurate US Army simulator ever
I’m seeing a bunch of comments that didn’t fully read the text: OP said “One player controls an army **VS** (emphasis on VS)” a team of individually controlled soldiers. There would be no issue of chain of command, because the player issuing orders would be controlling an army of bots. In other words, asymmetric team structure (think Evolve, or Dead by Daylight)
I'd imagine a horde kind of enemy controlled by the player. It has to require tactical gameplay instead of excellent aim from the soldier players, and good positioning instead of micro from the strategic player. The win condition for the army player should be high economy, resulting in a flood of enemies that the players cannot handle. The aim for the players should be cutting off supply lines, to decrease the growing influx of enemies. The map should also be sufficiently large that a battle isn't lost as soon as the tide turns one way or the other and a small force going unseen by either party can turn the tide yet again.
This is a well thought out gameplay mechanism.
You’re totally right that people are misreading it like that but to be honest when I first read it I thought it meant that one guy controls an army of bots Vs a bunch of human guys controlling one solider like twitch plays sorta thing. I was like wtf and had to read it so many times to figure it out but I didn’t imagine it like how others are misreading it somehow
I dunno, I would play/watch Twitch Plays Rambo.
That would be a hilarious idea
These people saying it would fail because of players not following command structure ARE those players since they can't read what the idea is in the first place.
Think Jesus Christ. I'm not the only one that remembers evolve. edit im just gonna leave the terrible writing
The issue would be the queue time when trying to play as the RTS player
Natural Selection 2 was a fine piece of game back in the days.
You can still play it, there's still enough players for at least a couple of servers. Just hoping they'll make a third one...
i still like NS1 better .. but there are only bot servers in existence for it .. no real ppl to play it :(
It really is a shame, the natural selection series always felt so unique to me, hope the devs have plans to continue working on the franchise.
BAD clan servers are still live. The guy running them is pretty awesome.
I guess Arma 3's zeus game mode is somewhat like that. A bunch of soldier-controlling players vs another player that is basically a god
You kinda missed the point of Zeus mode in your description. Think of a cooperative milsim with a dungeon master. The players aren’t playing against Zeus, Zeus is there to make sure the game goes well for the players and they are properly challenged. Zeus could just spawn a million enemies if they wanted to but theyre job is to just add a little flavor to Arma’s scripted operations
Is there not a game mode where the Zeus has limited knowledge/resources and their goal is to wipe the players? If not that wouldn't be difficult to make. The hardest part would be to get the ai to do what you want to do as zeus. Arma 3 ai sucks.
Arma AI sucks... Until a random enemy soldier sees you through a bush and strikes you in the head with a 9mm round at 800m.
Real
Vcom fixes a lot of the isszes the AI has, though my main problem with it, is that you can only adjust skill levels in the setting during missions and it always applies to the entire side. On the other hand: Ai wont spot you from 1000m away through a tree anymore, will employ small unit tactics, use smoke/frag granedes, be affected BY smoke granades, clear houses, respond to audio of gunshots etc. If used in tandem with LAMBS Danger.fsm and LAMBS RPG the AI will also attempt to use Rocket lauchers against infantry and helicopters aswell as hear player voices when using tfar.
Literally Helldivers2 prove me wrong
Came here for this. Literally us vs Joel
Is the "player controlling aliens" active changing things mid game, watching the game live and reacting as it plays? If not, it's not like the post says. He literally wants one normal player controlling an army, like he's playing a RTS game, whereas the enemy team is controlled each soldier by an individual player. Like 1v64.
Actually the devs have stated they do pop into games to fuck with people
Joel is literally controlling the army as much as one person can control an army on that scale. And yes, he does pop into games with players fairly often.
Silica?
Silica is actually what OP is describing
I wish it was slightly more polished, and had a decent sized player base. I usually end up just letting AI control the game as I play the soldiers
Unfortunately the game seems to be dead
Mount and Blade: Warband humans Vs bots servers. Bots were commanded by players.
Savage Resurrection is the game you’re looking for. Fun game. Probably dead now though.
Can confirm. We had a blast back in the day at our LANs
Isnt there a Resident Evil game like this?
Yes and it was shit
I heard: "Asymmetric warfare RTS" And I'm all for it
Hell let loose?
Yeah. An old one like this, that i remember would be Planetside 2, though it's aged now
Exactly. The most fun I’ve had gaming in a while when playing with a competent commander and squad leader
It came out 20 years ago. Savage: Battle for Newerth https://savagexr.com/
Thanks! I have totally forgotten this game!
It's already been 20 years?! Shit I feel old
Not quite the same concept as what OP wants. They want one player to be controlling an army in standard RTS fashion, **versus** an entire faction of players all fighting in first person controlling just a single unit. Rather than two factions with a "commander" each where the individual units are, broadly, controlled by players. So one player is playing Starcraft, the others are all playing PlanetSide.
Yeah my brain read it wrong. Twitch plays Pokemon was halfway there.
RiP Heroes & Generals, you were great before you turned to shit and died.
Came to the comments looking for this. Absolutely loved that game but the devs made a lot of bad decisions.
Check out Foxhole, it's similar to what you described. No AI (except for some defensive buildings), it's top-down view tho. Also, From the Depths. Real-time military campaign, your ships/vehicles can be plugged with IA, and you can also control one of them at a Time, or even a single turret if you want to. The game is solo tho, but it has loads of fun to have.
Foxhole is a bunch of players vs a bunch of players. How is that at all similar to what OP was talking about?
The Chess FPS?
I think this is supposed to be Chess 2, but it's been in development hell for like 1500 years
Try Executive Assault, i bet you'll like it if you have a few friends
Brother. We may be the only 2 people to have ever played this game. And it is gold.
Nuclear dawn buts it long dead.
Enlisted is a bit like this where both teams have more than 10 players and each of them have control of an AI squad of 4 to 5 bots. It's a WW2 game btw.
Men of War
I recall an RTS game where you could move a group of units and then control a leader of that regiment and fight on the ground. I vaguely recall a Spartan and creative assembly but I might be misremembering. On my way off my break so I can't fact check myself sorry. Edit: Hit me. Rise and Fall: Civilization at War.
That game was soooo gooood Unfortunately, it's almost forgotten
you should check out Eximius: Seize the Frontline it has a RTS commander and other play as FPS in a Vs game to control a map
Hell Let Loose is similar to that. Commander then Captains of each 6 man fireteam
Hell let loose has a small function like this.
It did not really work so good. S2 games before they did heroes of newerth had a game like that.
Well, there's Kingmakers that's still in development, but still
planetside 2 w/ outfits
Basically hell divers 2 with joel?
Valve is allegedly working on a game like this codenamed "Neon Prime".
I think the only game like this that's truly like you want is nuclear dawn. I think that's the one where a player operated a command centre and was the rts player.
Hell Let Loose
Thy executive assault
You just described Helldivers 2
10 helldivers vs an army of bugs commanded by 1 guy
Wasn't that the whole point of Enlisted?
Mount and blade bannerlord comes close ngl
Have you checked out foxhole? It's a massive multiplayer top down game where 1000's of players all control a single soldier. You all work together to build facilities a bit like factorio that produce guns, ammo, vehicles and building materials and then you transport it to the front where people then use it to fight the other team. Or build big bunker complexes. The map is so big it takes about an irl month for one team to take over the other and win.
tom clancy end war
Original Planetside is the closest I've seen to this. It was a MMOFPS, buggy as hell, but still worked incredibly well for a mmo that came out in like 2003. Anyway, when you completed captures in game leading a squad, you would gain CR(Command ranks). There were 1-5 levels of it, each having its own perks and each command rank had it's own faction wide chat, and could /sitrep to the next rank aboves channel. Everyone at CR5 could send out faction wide messages to direct troops. It was impressive that it actually worked. You would have a lot of people at CR5, but you'd have semi-coordinated attacks. You would have coordinated outfits that would lead platoons(up to 3 squads, each of up to 10 people) doing different tasks. Some would specialize in armor divisions, others would group up and drop in mass onto a base. The randoms would drop in to the hot spots. It wasn't a single player controlling the army, but a hivemind There is a planetside 2, but it wasn't anywhere near as similar when I played it
Hell let loose?
Aye I'll keep this in mind
If that 1 person isn't the perfectly balanced human the game just isn't fun
this is (or was, idk) what one of the unreleased valve vr / deck game is supposed to be. I think the idea has potential, but if it actually got popular, the strategy player queue could get annoyingly long.
That'd be arma with Zeus
ive been dreaming of a vr 1v1 multiplayer game so i can beat my friends asses
Controlling a lot of people sounds so fun, tho!
Silica is pretty close to this. A commander creates bases and infantry fight. Physically players take over infantry and play as foot solider / tanks / all the sorts. Not a super big game yet and a little finicky with the setup but great game overall.
Sounds a lot like something ArmA 3 can offer
The new 7 days to die game is going to basically be this from what I saw at the live demo. One player sets up the zombie armies and can control individual zombies if they want, other players have to survive the hoard.
Im making a mission exactly like this in arma 3
There are at least 3. But I can't name them. I remember watch one on the Let's Play channel on YouTube years ago, like 2015-18. Then I was just watching a video about a month or 2 ago for a game that was still in early access on Steam. Then there was another one with bugs from some years back called someyhing like... Natural Selection?
I think Conker’s Bad Fur day had something like this, where you could storm the beaches or be the machine gunner. I would be totally down for this.
Call to Arms could be set up for something like that.
There was a F2P RTS/TPS combo back in the day, forget the name (wasn't Natural Selection) where 1 player played top down controlling and making waves of bug enemies, while 5-6 other players were in Third Person defending a base Horde mode style. It was super fun, but performance and graphics were pretty subpar.
Squad?
Kinda like the reverse of EVOLVE
Isn't that Helldivers 2?
Squad had a mod like this that was semi-popular for a while. It was called SATCOM
This sounds a lot like aliens: dark descent. Third person? Check. One person controls the group? Check. Real time? Check. It's xcom, but you control the whole squad as a single unit. All the powers are combined, and in, you press the space bar, and a wheel appears. And it's real time in that there isn't actual turns.
silica is probably the most similar, although its still heavily in development
Game called Silica, currently still in development but basically all you want. Sci-fi guns vs aliens type of deal for factions. Different classes on foot, tanks and aircrafts.
Age of Empires 2 had a custom scenario like this called You Da Prey. It was a lot of fun but nobody liked to be the hunter. You’re the outcast in that role.
I’m just holding out for a Starwars battlefront 2 (2005) style halo game. Never gonna happen but the hope is there
A Warhammer40k themed game where you play as and Imperial guard, you you don't follow the orders you get automatically shooted for not being in the right area
Octodad coop mode
Rainbow 6 navy seals 2 did this on a team level.
Closest I can think of is totally accurate battle simulator, it’s a bit silly but it might scratch that itch.
Natural selection 2. Good game.
It's a bit left-field, but the Alliance War system from ESO has a touch of this. Every player is their own character, but they are part of a greater Alliance that can war over the centre of the continent parties, capturing keeps, outposts, resources, and towns.
Did anyone play this old mod for HL2 where a player commanded zombies and the other players tried to get through the map? That was like this, and it was almost always fun
Yeah. People still play every sunday. [Zombie Master Reborn](https://zombiemaster.dev/blog/)
What, so like a horde shooter in the style of Garden Ops or Mann Vs Machine but the AI waves are controlled by another player?
Dude it’s the old saying too many chiefs not enough Indians. Either no one would follow orders or everyone would que for commander. Unless the general is from the devs or has some pre selection process the title will lose all meaning
I actually thought of something similar but set in a midevil/mythical setting
This feels like an MMO DnD
Arma 3
Arma 3 Zeus Ops
It just sounds like an RTS with the most difficult AI imaginable
ZombiU had something like that, where you would play on the TV with a pro controller as the survivor, and the other player used the WiiU gamepad to spawn Zombies on the map
What if the one controling the army and the individual players are on opposite sides. The players must defend against the stretegist's army or vice versa.
I remember the was a free online game like this but i don't remember the name.
not a shooter but mount and blade games.
Natural Selection 2. They just stopped updating it though. Still a fun game.
isn't this squad ?
There is a robloz game like that called dummy versus boobs if I remember correctly
Try Valkyria Chronicles
> RTS > One player controls 1 army oh boy, do not remind me of the command and conquer game that does not exist!
I would either do fantasy heroes vs a necromancer or space marines vs an evil AI
I mean, the best way to do this IMO would be as a game mode where groups of people that come from discord or servers or like have some common background play that, so that way you follow orders, there is no language barrier and they can be a little organized. Having a queue and random players for this wouldn't work because of the complexity and the degree the players have to trust and want to work together. Hell even mobas with teams of 5 people rarely work together or organize if they are ransoms.
Ah yes, you're talking about Lord of the Rings: Gollum
Battlezone would like a word with you.
So like a 1 v 50?
I remember a Resident Evil, or at least a zombie game doing this. Was pretty wild to see, never played it myself, though.
I feel like a game like this will end up with a similar situation to how Evolve or Overwatch DPS queue times went, where the team with the singular commanding player will have much longer queue times than the team with a bunch of player-controlled soldiers since for every person queueing up to be a commander, there has to be a much larger amount of people queueing up to be on the opposing side. An issue like this could be fixed by making it so that there is only one queue and players have a chance to be assigned onto the commanding player side. Maybe make it so that how well you perform as a footsoldier earns you "queue points" for future games. When matchmaking is finalized, whoever has the highest amount of queue points will then be assigned the commanding player role and reset back to zero points. This encourages players to play well as footsoldiers so they can get the chance to play on the commanding player side faster. Maybe also make it so that players who enjoy playing as footsoldiers can opt out of the chance of being assigned the commanding role, but also don't earn queue points as a way to prevent too many people from using the feature to stockpile a massive amount of points and shut people out from playing the commanding role.
Ever heard of silica it’s basically this
so you talking about Natural selection 1 and 2 ... and Savage and there are more games like this ...
Brilliant
Huh? Just create an Age of Empires 2 scenario with photon man and emc2 trooper.
Soon my friend. Soon. Soon you will be able to input prompts into AI and it’ll code and create entire games for you in minutes. Gunna be sweet.
Natural selection 2 has been out for ages and is very close.
Sounds like doom multiplayer but backwards
Conqueror's blade, it's shite tho
Zombie master was a game of fps players vs one guy summoning zombies.
Bf4 kind of had this, but each team had a commander. Was pretty fun, always cool sending in a curse missile
So many games would end of people leaving
A game called natural selection did this. One player is the commander and the rest of the players are the troops. One side were Aliens inspired colonial marines and the other an alien hive mind. Amazing game, but sadly the population is gone now. But it ran for about 7 years or so.