The Rise and Fall of Command and Conquer

[Deleted member 13524]

TL;DR:
- Warhammer: Dawn of War was successful so they punched C&C in the face so much that C&C4 became a Dawn of War clone.
- Always-online and draconian DRM are stupid.

Dear EA: Don't try to follow the money trail that others are leaving through completely different games by morphing your currently successful franchises into someone else's copy cat.


We could be buying C&C6 and Red Alert 5 nowadays, just by sticking to the base-building RTS basics that so many people kept buying for almost two decades, and then iterating on new storylines, improved graphics and unit diversity.


Just look at the Civilization series. All 2K had to do was not act like EA and let Firaxis do the thing that people love, over and over and over again.

 

[Davros]

Just by sticking to the base-building

You could have buildings as microtransactions....

 

[Silent_Buddha]

If it had been a DoW clone, it would have actually been pretty good. As it was, it was a complete piece of crap. I could find no redeeming value in the game. DRM didn't kill it. The poor design choices killed it. It was a game originally developed for the Asian competitive gaming market. Late in development EA decided to slap a C&C mainline RTS veneer onto it and then call it C&C 4.

In other words, when the game started development it was never meant to be a mainline C&C RTS. But instead of funding a proper RTS, EA decided to slap C&C onto this turd and call it C&C 4. I was so mad back in 2008/2009 when they announced the change in development for this title and that it would become C&C 4.

People were asking for years for a sequel to Command and Conquer: Generals (arguably their best RTS ever, or at least my favorite in the series ). But instead they released that piece of crap. Hell, C&C 3: Tiberium Wars was actually a somewhat decent RTS that should have been the basis for C&C 4. But nope.

Ugh, I still get so pissed off thinking back to 2008-20010 following the development of C&C and how EA just completely #%@ed the pooch on it. #%@#$@%.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 13524]

You could have buildings as microtransactions....

OMG you should totally send a resume to EA!

 

[hoom]

Rise: I bought Red Alert
Fall: I played it & found the same shitty click-intensive, limited GUI as so many other RTSes
Whats C&C?: I bought Total Annihilation.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I forget when I stopped playing C&C. Whichever version they made that had really small maps and I remember there being a large problem with the naval warfare. But I used to love those games.

 

[Cyan]

Rise: I bought Red Alert
Fall: I played it & found the same shitty click-intensive, limited GUI as so many other RTSes
Whats C&C?: I bought Total Annihilation.

The original Total Annihilation? That's an amazing game, one of my favourite RTSs ever. Too bad my GoG version refuses to run for whatever reason, even if I use compatibility settings on my Ryzen 1500X and RX 570. That is a perfect game to play using VSR and 4k field of view.

In regards to Command & Conquer I played the original on a Windows 95 virtual machine a few months ago. It was as good as ever, too bad the unexistent drivers made my experience miserable because the OS and the game ran with very few colours /like 16/ and super low resolution.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

In regards to Command & Conquer I played the original on a Windows 95 virtual machine a few months ago. It was as good as ever, too bad the unexistent drivers made my experience miserable because the OS and the game ran with very few colours /like 16/ and super low resolution.

Why would you do this if the re-launched versions of C&C1 + Tiberian Sun + Red Alert, all with full support for all windows versions and even MacOS and Linux can be legally downloaded and played for free?

 

[Cyan]

Why would you do this if the re-launched versions of C&C1 + Tiberian Sun + Red Alert, all with full support for all windows versions and even MacOS and Linux can be legally downloaded and played for free?

thaaaaaaaaanks ToTTenTranz -shall download them when I am done with Phantom Dust download, I am at 3GB and it is a 9,5GB download and it takes most of the bandwidth of my 6MB connection. Now I just need to find a fix for Total Annihilation not starting on my computer. It could be something stupid, I guess. It ran on both my notebook and previous laptop.

 

[swaaye]

Those CNC net releases must be new-ish. I see they even have the old TSPatch as a download option. So much fun with Directdraw wrappers and Win8/10...

 

[hoom]

The original Total Annihilation? That's an amazing game, one of my favourite RTSs ever.

Yes. It was everything C&C failed to be once I managed to get my brain around it.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Rise: I bought Red Alert
Fall: I played it & found the same shitty click-intensive, limited GUI as so many other RTSes
Whats C&C?: I bought Total Annihilation.

TA was absolutely a fantastic RTS. I loved that artillery was actually really long range as it should be, especially the fixed artillery. I loved that flying units had to behave believably. Too bad TA: Kingdoms wasn't nearly as good.

Both TA and C&C have their place and both are equally good in their own right. One focuses on managing a limited pool of resources and expanding in order to exploit additional limited sources. The other focused on managing the flow of resources and expanding in order to increase the flow of resources.

Regards,
SB

 

[hoom]

Lol so I just got around to finishing watching that vid.
So little have I cared for C&C I didn't even know that C&C Generals != C&C3 nor that there were any games after that...

Both TA and C&C have their place and both are equally good in their own right. One focuses on managing a limited pool of resources and expanding in order to exploit additional limited sources. The other focused on managing the flow of resources and expanding in order to increase the flow of resources.

More important to me: One focused on making the GUI harder to use, the other focused on making the GUI easier to use.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

RA2 rocked. Custom maps with tons of or and building screen filling massive kirkov airship fleets bringing my PC to it's knees

Once EA got it's hands on it C&C joined a long list of great series molsted and killed by EA's hands.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

TA was absolutely a fantastic RTS. I loved that artillery was actually really long range as it should be, especially the fixed artillery. I

Regards,
SB

Which C&C game was it that artillery broke the game because they were so long range you could just build a bunch of them to surround your base and never worry about any ground attacks because they'd wipe out any attacking force before they got within range?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Which C&C game was it that artillery broke the game because they were so long range you could just build a bunch of them to surround your base and never worry about any ground attacks because they'd wipe out any attacking force before they got within range?

A bunch of C&C games had very long range artillery, but they would only work if you had clear visibility over the base. I.e. if you managed to sneak an unit inside the base or did a satellite scan (that last one was temporary so it would only be good for a couple of shots).
Plus, if the sneaked unit was infantry or light vehicle it could be killed by the artillery itself.

That said, using artillery to destroy the opponent's base wasn't all that easy in any of the games I remember.

 

[swaaye]

Sneaky sandbag approaches were fun.

I lost interest in the series for the most part once Total Annihilation came along. Starcraft was neat too but didn't do that much for me besides the campaign. Still baffled by that game's mega popularity.

I was stoked for Tiberian Sun. Bought the $70 Collector's edition. But meh it was just too much more of the same. Nice look and feel however.

I can't remember much of Generals, but I had some friends who were crazy about it. It remember it being entertaining but I still preferred TA. Lots of cool RTS games back then.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

No, I meant using artillery as defense for your own base because none of the enemy land units could get close enough before your artillery wiped them out.

It was a big issue with one of the games, eventually the game was patched to reduce the range of artillery but then that made them essentially worthless for any purpose.

 

[Cyan]

TA was absolutely a fantastic RTS. I loved that artillery was actually really long range as it should be, especially the fixed artillery. I loved that flying units had to behave believably. Too bad TA: Kingdoms wasn't nearly as good.

Both TA and C&C have their place and both are equally good in their own right. One focuses on managing a limited pool of resources and expanding in order to exploit additional limited sources. The other focused on managing the flow of resources and expanding in order to increase the flow of resources.

Regards,
SB

TA is my favourite RTS ever along with Age of Empires 1 and 2. It only has a single flaw and it is that the antinuke system never worked for the AI, so if you had a chance to start sending nukes the game was likely too difficult or over for the CPU. It is also a game where the CPU played really well overall without the need of a tweaked AI -unlike let's say Age of Empires 2 where AIs like Barbarian are much better than the default AI-. Command and Conquer would be like my 3rd RTS overall, but it is also the first of those I played and it was quite the experience.

I finished downloading the updated versions, thanks Tottentranz!

 

[Davros]

The only C&C game I think I have is Renegade,
and I enjoyed it