I don’t know about you, but I’ve still got a sour taste in my mouth from the Command & Conquer Rivals reveal at E3. A franchise that once pioneered the Real Time Strategy genre is now being turned into a ‘free to play’ mobile game by the very company that brought it to life. It’s no surprise so many people are either disappointed, angry or both.I’ve grown with RTS games like Age of Empires, Cossacks, and Command & Conquer, and after having seen what the popular RTS games nowadays are, I can only be worried about the reveal of Command & Conquer Rivals. And for plenty of reasons, both foundational and the fact that EA is publishing it as a free-to-play game, Man, EA, mobile RTS game and free to play, now that’s a trifecta for failure for sure.
Now with all of that out of the way, let us delve deeper and take a look at why mobile RTS games are flawedfrom a design standpoint. Let us first start with the basics for the uninitiated, sowe’re all on the same page.
What Is an RTS Game?
It’s important to note that the RTS genre is quite complicated. There’s also a whole other genre that’s quite heavy on the strategic side of things which is Turn Based Strategy games, or TBS games for short. ThereforeI’ll stick mostly to what’s relevant to the point I’m making.
Base Building/Base Management:
No matter the sub-genreof RTS we’re talking about, be it micro or macro-oriented, one element always stays present, and that is building. Buildings are one of the core foundations of an RTS game; theyserve to both to showcase the art styleof the gameas well as control the flow of the match. In most cases, a seasoned player an easily tell for how the matchhas lasted and in some cases, veterans can even predict the winner before the big battle takes place.
The gist of it is that building isthe primaryway you progress in the game, offering new units and more upgrades to keep your army effective. However, each game has its owntwist; somegames limit the space in which you can expand like Company Of Heroes. Other games like Age of Empires don’t restrict the player by giving them a designated building area, ratherby locking them behind more expensive upgrades and in AoE’s case, it’s advancing through the ages. What all these games have in common though, is how they put forth to the player the dilemma of either creating a small army but a flourishing economy, or vice versa. Keep in mind that both strategies can be equally viable depending on the circumstances.
Unit Management:
Knowing how to build a decent base can only get you so far. In order toensure a better chance at victory, you’ll also needto understandhow to control and manage your army. A vastarmy with a badleader will only fail more spectacularly than a small army.
When it comes to this aspect of the RTS genre, there are two types of games. You have the micro-styled games which focus more on how you control smaller portions of your army like Company of Heroes where you control squads and can invest in uniqueequipment specific to each team. In these games, the brainwill almost always beat brawn. On the other side of the spectrum, likethe games that allow you to control massive chunks of your army and letting you enjoy the battle for all its glory. Cossacks come to mind when talking about this type of games where the battlesare enormousin scope.
To ensure a fluid player experience, it falls upon the game’s AI to make sure that everything is clearfor the player to see and that the screen doesn’t look like someone just unleashed explosive diarrhea on it.
Unit Balance:
When it comes to unit types, there are a plethora of them. Some games are symmetrical, offering the same units but altering the bonuses for each faction. The best example of this is Ageof Empires, where all civilizations have the same unit types. However, each one also has its ownbonuses which isenough to make them distinguishablefrom each other.
On the otherhand, some games offeran asymmetricalexperience. What we meanby that is that each faction is different from the other. The Command & Conquer games are one of many examples of this. In Command & Conquer Generals, you have threemain factions, while its expansion Zero Hour offered threevariations for each branch providing for a mix between symmetricaland asymmetricalgameplay. There’s also Company Of Heroes where you can either play as the Allies or the Axis which both differ considerablyeven when it comes to how to unlock different buildings.
The best way to think of a well balanced RTS game is to see it as a game of rock paper scissors. The only difference is that the RTS games have so much more than just rocks, papers, or scissors.
The logic is simple; there’sno such thing a perfect unit. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses. The ‘unit to rule them all’ doesn’t exist in a good RTS game. Eachunit has its counter in the form of another unit, thus making the process of creating your army that much more strategic as you experiment with different armies to adapt to different situations. The bestplayers are usually the ones who adapt faster than their opponents. Knowing your enemies’ weaknesses can go a long way in winning you more battles.
This kind of balance makes everyone’s lives easier, both for the player and the developer. From a player standpoint, it’s an easynotion to grasp and makes for intuitive gameplay that allows for a fun experience. As a developer, it’s way easier defining specific functions to each unit as it reallysimplifies the balancing process and allows for easier tweaking and finetuning the ensure the best experience. Win-win as they say.*
On the other hand, it’s essentialto keep in mind that the same rock paper scissor logic can backfire and cause some frustrations.
In some cases, if each unit’s weakness is amplified, it can create endless loops where each side will justkeep on countering the other until one of them runs out of resources. While a game of attrition might seem fun on paper, it’s very frustrating in practice. The opposite case would be if the units’weaknesses aren’t that substantial, thus resulting in the absence of strategy and it’ll just make everyone goes with the groupwith the highest stats without a second thought, which kills the purpose of the game in the first place.
With that said, this is something that almost every mobile game gets wrong. For such an essentialpart of RTS games, these games justdon’t give it enough, if any, thought.
Modern RTS games:
When I say modern Real Time Strategy games, I’m referring to games like Clash of Clans and the like. Those mobile games have gained such amassivefollowing that it’s stupid to think of them as great influencers for the RTS genre.
Ask anyone you know about what games they play on their phone, and most of themwill tell you that they play Clash of Clans or Clash Royale. These games have become behemoths when it comes to how big they’ve grownand how much profit they made. Thisis very troubling as the shift of the Real Time Strategy genre into mobile gaming brought with it a lot of flaws especially when it comes to gameplay design. The fact that the companies that make these games prioritize revenue over anything, they’ll do anything to make more money. The most common way is advertising the game ass a free to play one while offering microtransactions to speed up the progress process or justto visually customize the player’s army.
It’s easy to see how this can become problematicwhen nothing is sacred anymore, andevery element can be monetized. The fact that there are no limits nor restrictions on where and how much microtransactions to put in the game, coupled with publisher and companies that put forth profit in front of everything is already a huge red flag.
Not only that, but to add more insult to injury, the way microtransactions work is througha randomized system in the form of loot packs or loot boxes that randomly unlock a specificitem/items. The chances that you’d get an item you already have or in other words, a duplicate, are in many cases biggerthan the chanceyou’d actuallygetwhat you want. Thishas radicallytransformed free to play real-timestrategy mobile games into the new slot machine where people go to waste their money for a chance to get what they want.
With that said, the developersdon’t directly force you to buy packs or boxes. You can always play and gain them by completing specifictasks. Some games give you free ones to start with, andothers just let you farm for hours and hours for that one pack that is more likely to be a disappointmentthan anything.
Aside from the monetary side of things, modern RTS games usually overcomplicate their games with systems that don’t quite complement each other in order toallow for more progression thus giving them more things to monetize. While more progress might seem like a great thing, by appearing beginner friendly and straightforward at first and evolving from that point forward becoming more complicated and introducing new systems and units.In this case,it’s poorly made, resulting in a different type of gap between players. Usually,if a player is stronger than his opponent, the difference between them is called a skill gap. However, in the case of modern RTS game, it’s more of a wage gap, where the person who throws more money in has better odds ofwinning sincehehas access to better units.
The Main Offender: Role Playing Strategy:
Like we discussed earlier, Real Time Strategy games are basedon a rock paper scissors system where each unit can be countered by another, making for something akin to a food chain so to speak.
This system can also be called Role Playing Strategy. It’s the main thing that modern RTS games get wrong. In order tostrike the perfect balance, each unit should be effectiveat its job no matter the circumstance. Locking progression behind a paywall or a considerabletime commitment is just hindering the balanceas it can lead to the player with the bigger money bag to win.
Each player should have access to the same upgrades no matter the circumstances. In an asymmetricalgame, each player should have the corresponding counterpart to the other player’s upgrademaking the only determining factor skill.
The reason Modern RTS games fail so hard is that not only do they make the player worry about unlocking more units, but they also make him worry about upgrading them through a long haul of sleepless nights farming for the paradeshe wants. It reallydrains the player and is just an indirect way of forcing him to buy microtransactions in order tosave him the timethat he otherwise shouldn’t be wasting in the first place.
Such a system doesn’t mesh well at all with the role-playingstrategy element of RTS games. It makes for a janky experience that defeats the very appeal ofreal-timestrategy games.
By adding more arbitrary obstacles and abstractions to the player both inside and outside the centralgameplay experience, it puts him in a rut, thus creating significantproblems. One of those problems is the fact that balance can be easily broken. Another problem is the fact that the game will lose its competitive appeal. The reason why a game like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is still a very viable and favoritecompetitive game is because even though it offers microtransactions, it’s only in the formof cosmetics. In its case, microtransactionsare what kept it alive for so long bringing in more casual players all while the competitive scene stays pure from microtransactions. And while Counter-Strikeis not an RTS rather an FPS game, the monetization aspect of it should apply to all games no matter the genre. Players love customizing their avatars, what they don’t like is losing to someone because they haven’t paid as much money as their opponent.
Conclusion
To sum up, it’s heartbreaking for me to see that mobile games havebecome the ‘pioneers’ of the real-timestrategy genre. The more mobile RTS games I see, the more I feel sad. Seeing what mobile gaming and greedy companies have done to such a revered genre is just appalling in my opinion
On the bright side, there are always people who are hard at work at providing a pure and genuine RTS experience. Let’s hope that Age Of Empires 4 will rekindle the once deadflames of the RTS genre. I’m always hoping that the RTS games will rise again from the ashes like a phoenix.
What’s your stand on mobile real-timestrategy games? Which one have you tried? And which old-schoolRTS games have you played? I’d be glad to hear your opinions on this matter. Cheers!