Just a thought!

Let's see... according to your argument I could say:

"Chess is such a crappy strategy game. The map is always the same non-random square grid. You're forced to move units one by one, and you can't even move two units in the same turn. There's not even any path finding; if my Pawn is in front of my Rook, I can't move him at all! Besides, how the heck are you giving orders to your guys anyways?"

I'm sorry, but your argument is what is "smoke and mirrors".

Have you ever played War3 at a high skill level? Have you ever watched replays of pro players? Apparently you haven't, because most games are certainly not a matter of "attack and the game is over quickly"! Again, don't talk about games you don't understand.

You repeatedly state that War3's units are "unintelligent", "moronic", "bad AI", etc. What do you expect, do you want your units to fight the battle for you? Units in 'Craft games behave exactly the way they are ordered, and they will counterattack if they are attacked. The pathfinding works; if there is a clear path from point A to point B, a unit will go there. I don't think you want them to be any more intelligent than that. In early versions of Battle Realms, units were highly independent and would make combat decisions independently from the user, even moving out of the way of other units to solve pathfinding issues. People complained - their units were doing too many things without being ordered, sometimes screwing up - so they patched the game to make unit AI less intelligent.

The queuing system for 'Craft games has been highly controversial since Starcraft. Bottom line is, some people prefer the Command&Conquer/Total Annihilation style "spend as you go" queues, others (myself included) prefer the Age of Empires/Craft "pay before you build" queue. Still, the queue in War3 is not a major issue; the numbers of units you build are so low you really don't need queues. (Unlike Starcraft)

I fail to understand why both of you emphasize how "stupid" 'Craft units are. What makes units in Starcraft or War3 so stupid? Are units in Age of Empires or Command&Conquer any more intelligent? Do you want the units under your command to have a mind of their own? Based on the experience of Battle Realms, I'd say that most gamers do not.

Also, what do you mean by "obedience of troops"? This really puzzles me. When was the last time you saw an Orc Grunt disobey your "Hold Position" order and start chasing an Archer, or a Necromancer suddenly decide to Raise Dead even though you have it turned off? If you see such a thing, please report it, it's a bug!

Warcraft 3 and other games in that style (AoE, C&C, Homeworld) are not meant to be detailed strategic simulations. They are a very stylized form of strategy game, no more aimed at realism than Chess is. Just because a game is simplified does not make it brainless; the Japanese game of Go has only one game piece and very simple rules, yet it is one of the most complicated board games in terms of strategy. Although Warcraft 3 has very simple rules of gameplay, and relatively few units, it is highly successful at blending some degree of Starcraft-style strategy with a very large degree of Micromanagement.

The thing you two don't seem to understand is the Micromanagement focus. Ordering your units to focus fire, dancing spellcasters and Heros, and manually targeting siege units is not "babysitting" your units, it is a display of skill. Your units will fight just fine without your mangement, but a skilled player can make their units do truly amazing things; look at some of the old Zileas reaver drop schemes in Starcraft.

Unlike Diablo 2, Starcraft and Warcraft deserve every heap of praise they have recieved. If you happen to dislike the genre, go and play some other game, stop complaining about WC3.

 

BoddoZerg,

Chess uses abstract representation. And if you knew anything about how battles used to be carried out, you'd understand why terrian isn't of much concern.

Ah, talk about a fallacy. I've heard such weak arguments from women, who say, you don't know what it's like to have to do this and that... as they try and prove their point. It's a cheap trick to try and "win" and argument but it doesn't prove a point.

So far, it seems you fail to understand anything outside your realm of thinking. The reason the units are stupid in my eyes, is because they do really moronic things in battle. They scatter to easily. They don't do any team work based on the squad/group they've been assigned to. They break from formations easily and rarely maintain them when moving from point to point. The path finding is poor. If it's a simple path, big deal if it can be found. Simple paths are not a problem. It's the even moderately difficult ones that cause it to break down.

I don't mind the queuing system that much in some ways it's better than the C&C system, except for the fact that it has dumb restrictions. For instance, one can't queue up units to build while research upgrades. I should be able to queue up the command but it doesn't. As for the commiting of resources, that should either be done as needed OR if you've queued multiple units and have paid the cost upfront there should be some extra return on initial investment.

It's called morale.

That's great, if you didn't have to trip over the interface all the time. It's rather poor in a lot of respects. I wish there was a simple scripting language that I could use to repair it. There are some obvious places for improvement in inter-group selection and ordering.

Micromanagment can be great, but when there are obvious failings of the interface with which to micromange that's another thing.

 

Boy did this topic go to crap.

 

I like W3 even though the ai is quite crap and sometimes a SP game gets boring because the ai takes only 10-15 units to attack a heavily fortified base. The ai's units die out so quick because it doesn't recognise what strat to use against the strat I'm using.

 

Play games? Who's got time to play games nowadays?!?

Seriously though...

The last game I actually started and finished was MOHAA. I never finished JK2, F1 2002, Morrowind, SSam:SE among a few others... can't remember which ones were bought prior to MOHAA.

ATM the game that I usually find time to play is Tiger Woods 2002 with F1 2002 occupying a bit of my time as well.

 

LOL Rev you sound just like me..
Tend to go purchase alot of games just to put them on the back burner after a few days/weeks of tinkering around in them.

One game i keep coming back to play tho is IL-2 Sturmovik, i am constantly amazed with this game and the level of support the dev's are giving it. In fact i believe there is a new patch with new planes due out today. I think this makes the 5th patch this year for it, which mainly is to add planes and tweak some of the gameplay, otherwise a great game and nearly flawless. And again, i am AMAZED at the level of Dev support, some companies should look at how UbiSoft and Maddox Games handle their gaming community, and learn from it.

others:
JK II - great graphics, love the MP, but the SP experience got too old too fast.. one day i hope to see a game that isnt just running around flipping switch's. I couldn't force myself to finish the SP game if i had to.

GTA3 - well it was a good idea, and great on the PS2, so i heard, but.. with the lack of support from Dev's, not being optimised for PC, tendency to start to chug after a certain amount of time playing, and NO MP, i find myself not as enthusiastic as the kiddies over this one. I wish i would have waited after the inital PC release period before picking this one up, as i usually do these days, i might not have been so disappointed.

SSam: SE - er.. i love the graphics, open spaces, humor and such but.. alas.. it got to be too much of the same thing.. for me..

Day of Defeat and TFC mods for Half-Life..
I am still very addicted to both, tho i hate that they decided to start including some CS type game elements into DoD-Mod, as in, timed games with rounds.. But Valve took over, and i guess they wanted it to be a WWII version of CS, sadly. And i cannot stay away from TFC, it just seems to be some all around fun at times.

BF-1942 MP Demo - This is one of those i didn't expect much from, but when i started playing, i could see they had something here.. From what i have read it was supposed to be more.. erm.. Realistic.. but for what it is, and what it offers, it does very well, and has pretty tight net code to boot. Only complaint has to do with the kiddies who camp the planes and constantly TK.

 

Ah, Fallout 2, I bring that with me to work, seeing as how I work on boats, it works on my laptop

I'm with you on the Privateer. No other game even comes close to it for the sheer enjoyment of upgrading your vessel, blasting pirates, selling stuff, heck, even the story line is pretty good for a space sim. I've been waiting for something to replace it, IW2, Tachyon, and others, but they just don't seem to get it right. They aren't freeform enough, I guess.

 

Lets see. Passed NFS5 - Porche Unleashed.
Couldn't pass JKII single player, too boring, but still to this day play on MP dueling servers. 1v1 with no Force Powers (except jump and/or throw) is perfect entertainment. That or a quick round of Q3 RA feed my need for a quick kill or two to fill in the time now and then.
MOHAA is more of a "sit down for a couple of hours and play" game.
I also play DAOC still, sold my 44 sorcerer, then quit for a couple months, then came back (bought a friends account) and made a new char, got him to level 25 (eldritch) on the PVP server (Mordrid), but think I'm about finished with DAOC now.
Can't wait for AC2, SWG, and DOOM3.
Yeah. I play games.

AMD ATHLON 1700+
ASUS A7V133 (KT133 chipset)
Enermax 350w PSU
1GB Crucial PC133 SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9700 PRO 128MB DDR
SBLIVE

P.S. - Craft games get old fast, and there is no way to ultimately outsmart and win based on intelligence, its all speed and memorization of patterns and use of cheap tactics. Which is strategic, but its not neccesarily fun for very long.