By Alec Meer on May 19th, 2011 at 1:44 pm.
Welcome back, commander. We know EA’s deathless strategy titan C&C is due for yet another reboot, but we don’t really know anything about what form it will take. Turns out EA – or at least their new strategy studio Victory Games – haven’t entirely worked it out yet either. Hence, they’ve put out an open call for suggestions and requests from players. It’s been a bit of confused old dear of late, but hopefully with fans’ help this once and future RTS king can be restored to its former glories.
Said an unnamed and grammatically-wobbly C&C bloke on Twitter, “Tell us your idea on how to improve future cnc games. Maybe it will be your idea, which changes everything!” Maybe it will be. To offer your ideas, you should head to the community forum here.
Already suggested? ‘Return to the basics.’ ‘Ignore the story in CNC4.’ ‘Really big maps.’ ‘RTS+FPS.’ ‘Crossover of all 4 C&C universes.’ ‘Don’t just push effort on Graphic! We need a good gameplay too!’ And generally a whole lot of moaning about how C&Cs 3 and 4 weren’t like the earlier ones. So it goes.
If you’re going to add a suggestion of your own, do be sure not to repeat one that’s already been stated. And try not to make it one related to some snippet of obscure or abandoned C&C lore, because that’s only fun for you.
19/05/2011 at 13:48 Steven Hutton says:
My request: New Generals Game.
19/05/2011 at 13:54 4026 says:
Pretty much this.
Though it is worrying that their designers are suffering such a dearth of inspiration that they’ve turned to the community for new ideas.
19/05/2011 at 14:25 FalseMyrmidon says:
Pretty sure it’s just a PR move.
19/05/2011 at 14:35 Ovno says:
/signed
Generals 2 all the way.
19/05/2011 at 15:30 Caleb367 says:
YES.
Generals 2 = me very happy.
(And please, make it mod-friendly. Seriously.)
19/05/2011 at 16:55 iniudan says:
All of you are wrong, it need to be an other Renegade.
/run away before getting kill
19/05/2011 at 17:12 LionsPhil says:
I don’t think people would object to another Renegade if they could fix its flaws which—if memory serves—were a pretty lousy graphics engine (well, plenty of sufficiently competent developers/things to license there to get it up to at least “average”) and some real clangers of singleplayer design, like maps where the only ammo available was of a type that the enemies on that level were immune to (again, plenty of developers around to get average FPS basics right).
Recycle the (IIRC) decent singleplayer campaign with vehicluar antics on top, and wrap the whole thing in the same delicious multiplayer, and I bet you’ve got an easy 80+ game there. Really push for talent and you could make game-of-the-year status, I reckon. It’s not like TF2 or Battlefield 2[142] or Savage really trod quite the same ground and stole its thunder (Savage came closest but also seemed to flop, sadly).
19/05/2011 at 20:17 Barnaby says:
Generals is the exact point when the franchise turned to shit. Why would you ever ever ever want a new Generals game? Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 were by far the best in the series (I’d type imo here but I just don’t want to).
I can’t imagine people who played the earlier games in the series actually liked Generals… I miss you Westwood.
19/05/2011 at 20:45 Koozer says:
I played every entrant in the series and liked Generals. Is your mind now blown? C&C 3 and RA 3 didn’t grab me though, and I didn’t bother with 4. Tiberian Sun is by far the most entertaining with its cyborgs and visceroids, closely followed by Red Alert 2 with its Chrono Legionnaires and zepplins. Renegade is its own marvellous beast. I always remember the cavernous black voids where people’s mouths should be in the cutscenes.
19/05/2011 at 23:55 Fumarole says:
I too prefer Generals over RA2.
20/05/2011 at 03:25 Dana says:
@iniudan
People still play Renegade online, unlike Generals.
20/05/2011 at 07:24 vani77a says:
hey i enjoyed Generals.
red alert 2 was also great
19/05/2011 at 13:49 N says:
Forgot about that FPS project of theirs, really wanted to see how that one turned out. Man, they are really desperate huh?
19/05/2011 at 13:49 ChaosSmurf says:
Did I miss how CnC 3 was really very different at all from Tib Sun and Dawn? Other than the obvious graphics stuff, they seemed pretty similar.
Anyway yeah, make Generals 2.
19/05/2011 at 14:02 cuc says:
>Did I miss how CnC 3 was really very different at all from Tib Sun and Dawn? Other than the obvious graphics stuff, they seemed pretty similar.
As Adam Isgreen (lead designer of Tib Sun) said, C&C3:TW has the fast pacing of a Red Alert game. The Tiberium games are slower.
It actually makes sense in a way: back when TW was in development, the EALA RTS Team stated that they love the “tank war” aspect of C&C (most likely, this means Red Alert more than anything), so when the first chance to reboot the series came, it’s natural for them to try to follow up the RA model they loves, rather than the Tib Sun model.
19/05/2011 at 14:27 FalseMyrmidon says:
Tiberium Sun was shit anyways so who cares if they didn’t model the reboot on it.
19/05/2011 at 16:18 pagad says:
What? Tiberian Sun was amazing. Rather than treat base-building as a necessary chore, which is what most RTS games seem to do these days, it seemed to encourage creating intricate fortresses and I loved that aspect of it. A neat story, cool units and good atmosphere topped it off. Still probably my favourite RTS game.
19/05/2011 at 16:22 LionsPhil says:
None of the C&C games have really been “the same”:
1, which I’m replaying right now and having tons of fun with—the singleplayer has aged well if you don’t spoil your own fun cheating with the sandbag exploit—is very slow and tactical. Money comes in at a trickle and you can’t afford to tank rush, despite the C&C reputation. You get much better value, and many a mission forces you to, use combined forces so your tank gets attention and soaks incoming fire while your rocketeers actually do the damage to vehicles, and riflemen keep any infantry from killing them. Little tricks on the GDI side like luring SAM sites out of their hidey-holes with an Orca strike just in time for a bunch of grenades or even a Ion strike to take them out are joyous to execute. Seriously, people, break out your DOSBoxes and remind yourselves why this game spawned a whole surge of immitators—it was bloody good.
2 was darker (goodbye, day-after-tomorrow setting; hello NOD’s scorpion fetish being turned up to 11) and blue Tiberium and faster harvester unloading, like RA’s gems and ore trucks, meant you could tank up more. Basebuilding was slower and more Dune 2 due to the need to pave areas to prevent having your day ruined by a tunneling APC or your precious flat building terrain becoming dented, but the economy and unit fights were faster, I’d say. Also it went for what would become the Supreme Commander norm of most of the game being a rush for a super-unit (Mammoth Mk2+Orca Carryall or Cyborg Command+Subterrainian APC) which would mostly level a base on its own, where the hardest part is working out the order in which to click on things to make dead. (Also it had a lot of horrible, horrible gameplay upsets like those damn hunter-seeker drones in skirmish.)
3 was stupidly fast and micro-heavy, like they developed it on a caffine-fueled Starcraft bender. I went from buying every last C&C game and expansion to dropping the series wholesale. (Also the graphics took a nosedive into “indecipherable particle maelstrom”.)
4 did the whole crawler thing, which was an interesting concept but kind of widely loathed and a huge shift.
I mean, I quite clearly prefer the first game by miles. But it’s not like the difference between 2 and 3 is that far from the distance between 1 and 2.
19/05/2011 at 13:50 applecup says:
A pin-up poster of Kane.
19/05/2011 at 13:52 Mr_Day says:
Command and Conquer vs Capcom.
19/05/2011 at 14:02 4026 says:
Command and Conquer Vs. SupCom
19/05/2011 at 14:07 deejayem says:
Command & Conquer vs Popcap!
19/05/2011 at 16:31 LionsPhil says:
♫ There’s a Visceroid on your lawn…
19/05/2011 at 13:54 Olero says:
I’d like to see a C&C with the mechanics (not the graphics) of Battlezone. And you can call it Commander & Conquerer. Thanks
(now, can anyone send this to Victory Games (??) on this crazy thing called Twitter for me?)
19/05/2011 at 14:45 BathroomCitizen says:
I vote this!
A game that takes Battlezone as inspiration deserves to be made.
19/05/2011 at 15:38 Makariel says:
Indeed, there should be another Battlezone. A great game which was overlooked by many.
19/05/2011 at 16:29 Azradesh says:
Oh hell yes!
19/05/2011 at 13:57 BooleanBob says:
Cloth maps.
19/05/2011 at 13:59 BooleanBob says:
In the game, I mean, not as a part of the physical product. Think ‘Kirby’s Epic Yarnocide’.
19/05/2011 at 14:01 Morlock says:
Baking bread.
19/05/2011 at 14:02 Atic Atac says:
All I want is cartoony soldiers that do pushups when I’m not bossing them around. This would make me happy. C&C 3 and 4 forgot the humor and felt cold. (except for the cutscenes of course)
19/05/2011 at 16:39 LionsPhil says:
Really? I think you need to replay the first two.
1 – Playing it straight, day-after-tomorrow, gets away with it since nobody is acting too hard
2 – Hamming it up but taking itself seriously (the FMV is so terrible in this)
Neither are particularly zany, and the closest they come to dark humour are probably Kane’s briefings in C&C1, which is just Josef Kucan uncontrollably radiating awesome before they smothered him under that awful school-play-grade plastic mask in 2.
I mean I guess there were the FUNPARK missions in C&C1, but they’re an easter egg (and even then pretty much the entire joke is “there are dinosaurs; now you are the dinosaurs”).
(If you really want a suprise, play RA1. It’s so serious, at least until the expansion pack that added Volkov and his cybernetic dog, Chitzkoi, or again with the giant ants easter egg. Miles away from what it became since.)
19/05/2011 at 14:02 Latedavid says:
Hmmm, not really sure if I can get that excited about this. They tweaked it one too many times in the later editions, Red Alert is till my favourite although 2 isn’t bad. Anyone else hoping for a battlezone style experience? Now that would be good fun.
19/05/2011 at 14:05 Vexing Vision says:
Make it turn-based!
19/05/2011 at 14:10 4026 says:
With hexagonal tiles!
19/05/2011 at 14:24 Big Murray says:
And so you can build Wonders!
19/05/2011 at 14:37 c-Row says:
Which takes ages!
19/05/2011 at 14:50 Rakysh says:
Get Sid Meier in!
19/05/2011 at 14:57 4026 says:
And have a spearman unit that can defeat tanks!
19/05/2011 at 15:26 Vexing Vision says:
But…. but that would change NOTHING!
19/05/2011 at 14:09 Jimbo says:
This, bodes well. Learn from your mistakes and stop making C&C games for a while. Your franchise has tiberium poisoning.
19/05/2011 at 14:15 SMiD says:
Easy; build a time machine, and go back to 1996. Oh and change your name to Westwood.
*Damn stupid reply. I… am ashamed.
19/05/2011 at 14:11 DeanLearner says:
Get Daddy Pig to do the intermission voice over.
19/05/2011 at 14:12 Bhazor says:
So… what are the chances on the first press release mentioning “Facebook” and “appealing to the emerging market”?
19/05/2011 at 14:13 Gothnak says:
Have an RTS not about clicking as fast as you can building hundreds of units and overwhelming your enemy with numbers… Instead, each unit you build has hp represented by the number of units in it (e.g. a squad of 8 men is 1 unit, or 2 tanks etc) and have each unit having decent abilities that when they get into a fight need a bit of micro management or intelligent placement.
I stopped playing RTS’s when i realised i didn’t know the optimum build order to get Unit X into combat asap. Give me an RTs that every battle plays differently rather than a mad rush to tech level X and big fight in the middle.
19/05/2011 at 14:22 Xocrates says:
Multiwinia?
19/05/2011 at 14:26 Gothnak says:
I know this is a crap answer, but i really didn’t look like the setting and style of any of those games…
19/05/2011 at 14:32 tomeoftom says:
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not, but anyway: COMPANY OF HEROES, WHAT THE FUCK MAN. Have you been living inside a vacuum-sealed rock?
19/05/2011 at 14:36 I3LiP says:
You should play Men of War.
Infact, everyone should play Men of War.
What’s more, C&C should really take some tips from Men of War.
Unless it really wants to show what an aging dinosaur it is in the world of RTS.
19/05/2011 at 14:53 Vexing Vision says:
R.U.S.E. is that (only without hitpoints entirely).
Also, when you’re looking for older titles, KOHAN and KOHAN 2 will satisfy you greatly.
19/05/2011 at 16:16 subedii says:
He is of course talking about Ground Control.
Or Possibly World in Conflict.
Or Maybe the whole Dawn of War series.
Seriously dude, there’s quite a few games that match the description you just gave to varying degrees. I mean all the games mentioned so far have units stacked into squads. Most also place a lot of emphasis on unit positioning and abilities. Games like WiC don’t even have a tech tree or a base. DoW 2 nominally has a base but no real base building as such, that’s been streamlined to basically researching tech levels.
Personally I’m a big fan of Relics games so I’d recommend CoH or DoW2. Company of Heroes does make use of things like base building, but it’s got more overall strategy. Personally I tend to play DoW 2, and as a game that has less emphasis on overall strategy, more on individual unit control and abilities.
Either way, I’d recommend you look up Harlequin’s youtube channel HarlequinCasts, since he does some good shoutcasts for both games (mainly DoW2, but sometimes CoH as well).
http://www.youtube.com/user/HarlequinCasts
A good CoH match I remember watching which may give you an idea of the overall gameplay:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGW_xPckv0E&hd=1
19/05/2011 at 16:50 Gothnak says:
Company Of Heroes loved and finished, Dawn of War played but then hated the end of level bosses as they arbitrarily squashed your squads.
All Close Combats finished…
Still haven’t tried Starcraft 2.
think i tried Men of War but it was brutally harsh on the first russian level when you start with one rubbish tank and a few infantry…
For any of you older gamers, i worked on Warrior Kings back in the day.. :)
19/05/2011 at 16:59 subedii says:
OK hold up: Are we talking singleplayer or multiplayer here?
Because really when it comes to SP, concepts like “build order” almost never come into account, that’s pretty much reserved primarily for multiplayer.
Re: Men of War: Definitely difficult to get into. If I were to make a suggestion, it’d be to try the demo of Assault Squad, because for me at least that felt far more accessible due to things like having sensible Line Of Sight changes to the way the gameplay works. It did admittedly take a few tries for it to click, but when it did, it was awesome.
19/05/2011 at 14:18 JimK. says:
Well… another generals is on the top of my list.
And maybe add another faction like the Russians. Something easy like that could turn out to be great.
19/05/2011 at 14:22 DarkFenix says:
My advice to them? Abandon game development and take up something they’re good at. They clearly don’t even have the most basic conception of what makes a good game anymore, their games have spent the last half-decade going from bad to worse.
19/05/2011 at 14:27 Lilliput King says:
Your idea changed everything!
19/05/2011 at 16:43 LionsPhil says:
Also if the professional game designers are having to go “psh, Iunno, ask random fanboys on the Internet?” they’re kind of failing at their jobs.
19/05/2011 at 22:42 Stochastic says:
What are the odds that they’re going to take the majority of the suggestions seriously? Chances are they already have some ideas of what they’d like to do with the game and are conducting an open poll to 1) see if there are any recurring themes in players’ requests that could be easily implemented and 2) make it seem as if they have an ear open to the interests of C&C players. Publicly asking a disgruntled community for ideas is probably one of the more effective ways of gaining good karma. Obviously, I’m being extremely cynical and speculative and perhaps they genuinely are looking for inspiration. I’m not quite sure which of the two scenarios is more concerning.
19/05/2011 at 14:25 Zakski says:
Generals with updated graphics and tesla coils! EVERYONES A WINNER
19/05/2011 at 14:32 BooleanBob says:
Change every unit to Tesla Coils. Rename the game Command & Tesla Coils.
19/05/2011 at 14:36 Malawi Frontier Guard says:
Have you played Red Alert 3?
19/05/2011 at 14:34 Javier-de-Ass says:
make a Renegade sequel
19/05/2011 at 14:46 Uglycat says:
Beat me to it, but yes, Renegade sequel a la Savage
19/05/2011 at 14:48 SMiD says:
Dammit, now I have to break out my Renegade CDs. The game was actually a ton of fun; the multiplayer especially.
19/05/2011 at 16:49 LionsPhil says:
Seen A Path Beyond? It’s Renegade’s multiplayer, fixed-up to work again, and redone in the Red Alert 1 universe. The latter is kind of a shame IMO but it plays good.
20/05/2011 at 12:57 Malibu Stacey says:
Yes because Savage wasn’t shit at all.
19/05/2011 at 14:37 Gap Gen says:
Have a Greek guy go through a nervous breakdown. All the good C&C games have a Greek guy undergoing psychological trauma as a result of the conquest of his homeland.
19/05/2011 at 14:51 Slade says:
Make a game where you control CABAL’s forces and destroy EA’s headquarters as they took control of Kane and led the series to its self-destruction.
and bring back the mutants !
19/05/2011 at 14:52 BobsLawnService says:
More Vonnegut.
19/05/2011 at 16:56 Lilliput King says:
I think that phrase has just become a ‘thing’ now.
19/05/2011 at 14:52 Man Raised by Puffins says:
A return to voxels and tiny squishy pixel men, thank you.
19/05/2011 at 14:57 diebroken says:
Make a web-based/browser version of the original C&C (Gold w/ Covert Ops.).
Edit: sort of like this: http://ronco.packagecloud.com/
19/05/2011 at 15:00 hamster says:
Larger bewbs; more bewbs (to avoid confusion, i mean a pair per person, but have LOTS of persons); err better graphics that will make my gfx card outperform my oven; no need for a friggin plot; easy mode (but call it “adventurous difficulty”); jiggly bewbs; MORE optional DLC; no more than 4 hour game time…is that what you wanted to hear, huh, EA?
Well what i’m suggesting….is the OPPOSITE OF ALL THAT. Except the bit about bewbs.
edit: It’s spelt “boobs” by the way. Get it right.
19/05/2011 at 15:07 Cross says:
I am going to present my ideas in a bullet-point form, to keep it expedient:
1. Forget C&C4 ever existed. Seriously, that game was a disaster.
2. Keep the things that characterise C&C. MCV-based base building, Superweapons and resource gathering are key.
3. Stop competing with Starcraft. You won’t defeat a game that enthralls an entire nation.
4. Make the game more about strategy and less about who can click faster.
5. Hide the numbers. Make it impossible to devise an optimum build order. Leave space for personality.
6. Don’t require an online connection at all times. Again, C&C4 was a disaster.
19/05/2011 at 15:38 Anonymous Coward says:
Quit complaining about build orders and clicking? The fault really lies in one’s own personal inefficiency. If it involves any bit of number crunching and time management, for sure someone is going to devise optimal usage of both, so please cry more. It’s like asking manshoots to remove any sense that you’re firing or hitting with bullets so that people can’t calibrate themselves for better aim and reflexes. At least in the case of asking for the mechanics to be so abstruse or random that everyone must click unguided and wildly every game so that each and every possible series of actions may have roughly the same in/viability, even so much so that time is negligible. Time and of which speed is a function (of which clicking faster is a function) will always be the backbone of any rts always all the time, and as such could necessarily just be considered a logistical concern, a fundament of strategy. Try playing a board game, or a turnbased strategy.
19/05/2011 at 15:52 Malawi Frontier Guard says:
How can you not realize that hiding the numbers only makes it harder for the general population of players to base their strategies on factual information, while at the same time giving the people who use parsers and the like a heavy advantage?
Then their findings will trickle down and thus make it a requirement to learn the numbers anyway, whether they are shown in the game or not.
Good job.
19/05/2011 at 17:01 LionsPhil says:
…nope? That’s more Total Annihilation/Generals/Supreme Commander’s shtick. In C&C1 superweapons were absolutely marginal (Nod get to fire ONE nuke which damages less than a screenful in the very last mission IF they picked up requirements on the previous ones; GDI get to play with their Ion cannon a bit more but it’s basically a single-tile high-power airstrike and you would need the patience of a saint and an opponent too bankrupt to repair anything to destroy a base with it). Even in TibSun, which was more willing to have missiles flying about, superweapons were fairly limited and you’d need units to actually smash a base.
This is palpably false. Starcraft (an action game in RTS clothing) has rotted your brain.
19/05/2011 at 17:05 subedii says:
Yeah, “APM” Is not the defining characteristic of a good RTS, and it quite clearly isn’t the focus of a lot of them.
@ AC: Not that I necessarily agree with Cross’ points either (or that SC2 is an action game as such), but at least he‘s commenting using an actual account instead of one designed to spam forums.
Bugmenot? Come on dude, any one of 1000 different people could be using that account, how’s anyone even supposed to respond to you and even know it’s the same guy responding?
19/05/2011 at 22:48 Anonymous Coward says:
“but at least he‘s commenting using an actual account instead of one designed to spam forums.”
This is so fallacious and irrelevant that i do not even understand why it was even worth mentioning. Reply to the post and the contents therein and everything should be fine, no? I don’t get this e- honor of having an actual account, guess I’m not an e-gentleman.
To any extent, we can do a simple thought experiment, imagine two players who are identical in everything but apm, whomever is fastest is going to have that much more of an advantage in every case except maybe the slowest paced game where one may reach a limit of how many actions they may need to perform per minute.
20/05/2011 at 00:14 Anonymous Coward says:
Dear everyone reading this: I apologise, I’ve been a bit silly and please disregard everything I’ve posted thus far. Of COURSE he didn’t say anything about this “e-honour” thing, that’s not what he meant at all, I shouldn’t have been so flippant and disparaging!
It’s pretty obvious even to me now how ridiculous it is to try posting on forums using a dodgy login and password that are easily accessible to anyone, and thus anyone can pretend to be me and nobody can know if they’re talking to the same person.
Naturally this causes other problems for comments systems regardless, because such widely abused systems are regularly used to constantly spam up message boards by people who then pretend it wasn’t them.
Not that I would ever think to do that of course!
BTW: I also acknowledge that whilst APM can make a difference in RTS’s, that his point was probably that most RTS’s don’t have a high skill ceiling for such things, at which point it becomes pretty much irrelevant, as he stated. I mean, even the really high tier Dawn of War 2 players have an APM of somewhere around 80 or 90, since the nature of the gameplay doesn’t require anything further.
19/05/2011 at 15:10 Down Rodeo says:
C&C 4 was obnoxiously bad, I ragequit so hard I uninstalled it with barely a thought other than “DIE DIE DIE”. I mean, it was just so… annoying! It did everything to make me hate it. So, like, not that? I appreciate taking brave new directions with a series but, I dunno, I’d consider C&C4 a failed experiment. At least they were willing to experiment though eh?
19/05/2011 at 16:40 Commisar says:
I feel you, I played the beta and knew it would suck from the 1st minute. I believe that EA was so embarrassed that they WROTE C&C4 OUT OF CANON to avoid ever having to mention it again
19/05/2011 at 18:34 Down Rodeo says:
My favourite bit was possibly when the shuttle was hit by the missile moving so slowly and unphysically it would have fallen out the sky.
19/05/2011 at 15:13 hosndosn says:
I expect a PR statement similar to this in the coming weeks:
“We listened to our fans and clearly they’re yearning for Facebook integration and microtransactions! Your wishes are our commands (and conquer!)”
Maybe a few more smiley faces and reassurances of keeping the “core gameplay”.
Yea… that franchise is a bit dead.
19/05/2011 at 15:26 Drake Sigar says:
Bring back dune. The spice must flow!
19/05/2011 at 15:27 grimskin says:
FarmVille: Tiberium ?
Spore: Tiberium mutations ?
Sims 3: NOD Encampment ?
19/05/2011 at 15:30 fuggles says:
Massively subjective, but am I the only one who preferred the tone of C&C1? I enjoyed the near future setting with realistic and current conflict a lot more than the future tosh of C&C2 onwards. That said I have not played generals.
19/05/2011 at 16:54 LionsPhil says:
You are not alone. I liked NOD much better before EA cranked up the “religious wackos” factor, although to be fair Westwood gave that ball a pretty hefty kick with TibSun. The general look and feel of the C&C1 world was a good one.
And you should play Generals, it’s quite fun indeed and sits around the same near-future period.
19/05/2011 at 21:44 godwin says:
Yup I agree, I summed up my… nostalgia, I guess, here in this painting: http://godwinfj.deviantart.com/art/At-its-Dawn-75464672
19/05/2011 at 15:59 Rocket Fiend says:
3d is when the franchise lost me…as odd as it may sound, I loved the look and feel of the older games.
I want Red Alert 2 back, only more.
19/05/2011 at 16:14 DrGonzo says:
Change isn’t the problem. It needs to change and evolve! C+Cs formula was already stale when we got to Tiberian Sun ( which sucked).
So come up with something original, that is nothing like C+C4.
19/05/2011 at 16:19 pagad says:
Why do you all hate on Tiberian Sun :(
19/05/2011 at 17:41 LionsPhil says:
Probably because C&C1 was literally genre-definingly good, kicking off a surge of RTSes where Dune 2 hadn’t. C&C2 was better than the average C&C clone but nowhere near as big a leap again and also had a lot of horrid flaws (hunter-seeker drones and FMV acting STAND UP PLEASE). By the time it was released Total Annihilation had been out for just shy of two years and its weak queuing and waypointing, its dozy pad-bound air units, its battlefields failing to accumulate TA’s huge mass of broken scrap, and its harvesting economy* stood in stark contrast.
It basically had the same living-up-to-its-parent-while-being-a-bit-iffy issue as DX: Invisible War and the same eclipsed-by-a-stellar-newcomer issue as Dark Reign.
*I’m not saying which of this and TA’s resource mine economy is better, but it seemed “old” against a good “new”, and unfortunately that will form a negative opinion even if the new is not actually better.
19/05/2011 at 16:22 Teddy Leach says:
Tiberian Sun was brilliant. Shut up and go away.
19/05/2011 at 16:37 mollemannen says:
i remember when red alert units were just a red pixelguy with a rifle and left a yellow-red puddle when killed.
19/05/2011 at 16:48 Teddy Leach says:
I remember this too. There’s also a Red Alert box right next to my monitor.
19/05/2011 at 17:00 LuNatic says:
Bigger maps. Maps with a single infinite resource pile in the very center, so you have to go fight over them once the funding gets low. Higher Pop Caps. SupCom style advanced waypointing, so less micro for mid battle reinforcements.
19/05/2011 at 17:00 plugmonkey says:
I have a suggestion:
Don’t listen to any ideas from the ‘community’.
Sound advice, though only at the cost of a universe destroying paradox. Oh no!
19/05/2011 at 17:02 subedii says:
I’m not really sure what the point of this exercise is other than to try and pretend to people that they’re getting exactly what they wanted and thus encourage more sales.
I mean there’s a dozen different directions that a new C&C could go, and there’s going to be hundreds of suggestions telling them to go in ALL of them.
They certainly weren’t all that interested in feedback going into C&C4. Even on the proviso that “This time it’s different!” (TM), what exactly are they supposed to glean here?
Most of the suggestions are going to be along the vaguest terms of what C&C SHOULD be, what defines the series it’s not really going to be that valuable without specifics. And if you’re getting into the specifics of actual design document territory here, then they’re basically asking the fanbase to do their work for them.
Most if not all the suggestions as to what the evolution of the C&C franchise should be will have already been considered by the dev team. Those that haven’t (and even rarer, might possibly be good) will struggle to be heard over all the noise. I mean looking at the forums now, dozens of topics, all being spammed by suggestions.
If I were to make a suggestion to the C&C devs, it would be this: Decide first off, whether you want your RTS to have an e-sports focus, and eventually gain wider appeal through a well developed hardcore element. OR, whether you want to go for something that is “cooler” and gives more spectacle. possibly appealing to a wider casual audience by default, but that may sacrifice parts of that hardcore element in order to do so.
Because typically when it comes to RTS’s, one gets sacrificed in favour of the other. Once that’s decided (or you’ve got a good idea of how you want to try for both) then you’ve already got a good idea of where you want to take the series.
19/05/2011 at 18:34 Hirmetrium says:
May I distill your infinite knowledge?
Basically, you choose if you want to make Starcraft II (popular cause of 1337z0rz skill) or Company of Heroes (popular because its the best RTS game ever crafted by human hands, with massive tactical depth).
it’s honestly not hard. Nobody wants another Starcraft II – not when theres two more money grabbing expansions to come. We all however, want more games like COH, like DOW, like MOW:Assault Squad, etc, etc, etc.
Yes CNC3 had a great competitive scene. That died when you fucked off and didn’t patch it. Learn your lessons – make a great game and nurture it, adding more modes, more combat, making meaningful expansions with new story and modes. Kanes Wrath came close to the mark, but still missed because it lacked the required polish.
Victory games need to wake up and realise that they need to make CnC fun again. Remember Red Alert 2? That was fun. RA3 wasn’t fun because for some reason, all my shit had to be “balanced”. Where was “balanced” when the allies had fucking ridiculous anti-armour infantry and I had my shitty telsa troopers, whom I could no longer clone?
There are things CNC got right:
1. Make a compelling universe with two very different, but equally competitive factions.
2. Make a compelling single player with a metamap (so, so important – Emperor battle 4 dune style, played that so much)
3. Make a compelling, STABLE multiplayer where I can get into a game and tank spam the fuck out of my opponent.
And for gods sake, use tiberium as a collectable resource, or at least ore.
Lets face it, if you reboot the original tiberian sun universe, so its not full of mutants and shit, and we can all spam tanks, everyone wins.
Or make generals 2. Should be easy now china is still there, and the middle east is still full of terrorists, and the US is still international force. And add europe to that, whom have super tough tanks and a really turtling diplomatic army.
P.S. Oh! I know! Make Generals 2! Give the GLA a plane loaded with bombs! then set a mission in the city! You’ll get controversial coverage! that always wins!
19/05/2011 at 21:55 Thants says:
It’s a little silly to put down Starcraft 2 for having expansions while singing the praises of Company of Heroes.
19/05/2011 at 18:37 Hensler says:
Generals 2 could be good, as would a crossover multi-dimensional battle with the Generals fighting the Tiberians fighting the Red Alerts.
19/05/2011 at 22:06 MythArcana says:
My suggestion: put this franchise in a stasis chamber for at least 5 for more years and wait for the hottest dev house to emerge at that time and strike a deal to make the C&C game FANS WANT.
We don’t want another pump and kill console game like the last one…
19/05/2011 at 22:31 Josh W says:
Well one of the things I love about the command and conquor concept is the resource mining left over from dune. I’d like to see the game shift to be about prospecting, finding each other’s mining vehicles, resource clumps spawning randomly but not on places near where structures are built (with a weighting formula that creates a table/megatexture at the start of the game that balaces the average clump distance from the two starting locations).
I’d like to see deeper use of radar, spotting planes, mobile anti-air, and stealth harvesters, and risk reward with harvester vs tank spamming.
I’d like to see buildings affect each other, and be able to form little complexes just be being next to each other, encouraging you to tempt fate vs bombing runs.
I’d also like to see xp for turrets and defences, so weathering a storm with your fortress makes it better, basically making it a game about fortresses and prospecting, where you cannot turtle, because your defences will make it impossible to mine, but preserving buildings. In fact maybe the oldest factories auto-upgrade?
Hmm, can’t really fit that in a tweet!
19/05/2011 at 22:50 cheeley says:
Infinite Dragons?
19/05/2011 at 22:53 Jake says:
More FMV, but classy – with real Hollyoaks actors/former wrestlers etc.
20/05/2011 at 00:13 Zwebbie says:
Call me craaaaaazy, but I think the lowest common denominator has been getting overlooked in RTS a lot and deserves more attention. Developers try to create balanced, quick, agile games of action, while most players want to build fortifications upon which the AI keeps being smashed, until they’ve gathered an overwhelming force of the highest tech units. Even when they can end the game in fifteen minutes, they like to drag it on for an hour. Build a pretty base. Launch a nuke and storm in with fifty tanks. I know, I used to be like that. So if I were developing a new C&C, I’d go for something like that, defensive, epic, AI-centered. It’s hardly strategy, but most people consider it good fun, and it might actually become so if developers actually base their game around it, rather than discouraging you to play like that at every turn.
20/05/2011 at 00:47 subedii says:
I agree actually.
That’s actually something that SupCom 2 does really well, as a single player or in coop. They have very good AI in that game, and most importantly, it’s fun to fight against. PC Gamer actually rated it their top coop game of 2010.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/12/25/pc-gamer-uks-co-op-game-of-the-year/
GPG would’ve done well to have spun that out into its own dedicated game mode. I genuinely think the game mode could have really taken off, similar to how The Last Stand did for Dawn of War 2.
But as it is, it’s still pretty good if that’s the style of play you’re looking for. I agree that most RTS players aren’t actually looking for that kind of competitive play, they actually prefer the more relaxed pace and being able to actually watch battles unfold instead of constantly being stuck in the anxiety / heart-attack zone. Which is where most competitive RTS’s put you.
That said, I don’t believe that it should be the focus of a new C&C game (at least when it comes to multiplayer). But it should DEFINITELY be a key game mode.
20/05/2011 at 01:55 Zwebbie says:
subedii: I would actually argue that RTS games don’t specialise enough, so I’d totally make it the focus if I were a designer. There’s absolutely no way that Victory Games can beat Blizzard or Relic at their own game. But beating everyone in the area of comp-stomps when nobody takes that aspect of RTS seriously? That should be a whole lot easier. Both C&C4 and DoW2 lost the whole base building aspect, when many people like that best, and Starcraft has never been too big on it. Mind also that competitive play is extremely hard to design and balance. You saw how long Starcraft II took, and I’ve personally followed about 2 years of Company of Heroes patching, after which it was still considered unbalanced.
(It also occurred to me just now that Total War games are pretty close to this. You can barely call them strategy games, but they’re oh-so pretty and spectacular.)
I’ve never played SupCom 2 and only the demo of SupCom. I think they’d be helped if they had more character. It’s all blocky stuff fighting on bland terrain. Ludologically speaking it’s nonsense, but it’s always more fun when the tanks have hammers and sickles on them and the locale is Washington DC. Or the Emperor’s Space Marines in the ruined cities of Lorn V.
20/05/2011 at 03:06 Jake says:
I agree as well, I miss RTS games where I could spend a ridiculous amount of time building a beautiful base with many layers of walls and guards on patrol routes, I’ve obsessed about building lovely bases in everything from Age of Empires to Company of Heroes.
I would like the ability to build roads with checkpoints and working gates, and parking areas for the tanks so they don’t just sit there in a big blob.
And an AI that won’t attack me until I am READY, and all the things are in their correct places.
20/05/2011 at 05:21 TenjouUtena says:
This might sound flippant, but it’s not intended to be. Is there anything you want out of this that isn’t satisfied by a tower defense game? Cause it kinda seems like that’s what you’re describing.
20/05/2011 at 07:55 subedii says:
That’s actually covered in last week’s “Three Moves Ahead” (strategy game podcast), where they talk about Tower Defence games and what makes them.
Aside from talking about what makes them popular, one of the general conclusions they came to was that basically Tower Defence in itself shouldn’t be considered a genre as such, so much as a mechanic, one which more games could stand to adopt. And in general I’d agree there.
20/05/2011 at 08:33 Corrupt_Tiki says:
I actually agree, one of the things I always obsessed with in RA2 was setting up elaborate bases against the Computer controlled sides.
I never play strategy games online, I always stress too much.. (I love fps titles however) So in RTS games, ones with ‘Starcraft-esque’ game play don’t really interest me too much..
Sure they have their audience but, I’m sure there are quite a few more people who feel the same way.
20/05/2011 at 10:56 bogeymanuk says:
This is how I play pretty much every base building RTS game I’ve ever laid hands on.
Scouting, harrassing, build orders etc are very nice for a multiplayer battle but, for me, nothing compares to building an impregnable fortress bristling with turrets that can annihilate anything thrown at it and sitting in it for an hour building a thousand planes or tanks or both and rolling over the map. Probably the reason why I moved away from the cnc games to TA/SupCom.
20/05/2011 at 03:53 Man-E-Faces says:
Westwood FOREVER!!! Down with EA!
20/05/2011 at 05:18 TenjouUtena says:
Remember when they made a movie about what people on the internet thought would be best? Remember that movie being good? Yeah, I don’t really think so.
20/05/2011 at 07:20 starclaws says:
Generals 2 or Red Alert 4. You don’t always have to redesign a new tank for every game. Remember our military use the same equipment for 100s of years. You don’t always have to follow the “It needs more lasers” thought pattern that everyone else falls into.
20/05/2011 at 08:22 Corrupt_Tiki says:
Get the Westwood team back together you imbeciles! Fuck, my favourite game universe got raped hard by EA… I can not forgive them..
My Favourite RTS games of all time;
1. Red Alert 2 + Yuri’s Revenge
2. Warcraft 3 + TFT
3. Company of Heroes
4. C&C Original
5. Red Alert
6. Tiberium Sun + Expansion
Man. I yearn for those days, everything in the game was fun.
I really despised C&C 3, I’m not sure why, it was entertaining enough, just.. Not enough heart I guess.
The early ones captured the imagination, Chrono Soldiers! Squids! Cruisers! Tunneling APCs! Tanya & Boris! ahh..
20/05/2011 at 08:28 Corrupt_Tiki says:
Also Red Alert 3 Seemed way too over the top, even for me.. I mean, The Armoured bears were just too crazy, It really was the sign to me that the series had truly become a laughing stock of all the other RTS games out there.
Also, Personally I don’t think that Red Alert or Command and Conquer need the greatest graphics etc etc, I mean, I would buy them again if they had DoW 1 graphics.
It makes me so sad, thinking how much they punished this once great gaming universe…
20/05/2011 at 08:52 DeCi says:
This ™
20/05/2011 at 11:41 Slade says:
I want Red Alert 2 meets Red Alert 3 cast actors.
20/05/2011 at 11:18 Pyrosity says:
Let me conduct asymetric warfare as NOD, sewing lies and corrupting media. And let me try, however futilely, to bring another dilapidated GDI base back online after funding has been cut.
Don’t screw around with tiberium mutants and other bullshit, that shit isn’t even remotely original or even interesting at this point.
21/05/2011 at 18:28 Hatsworth says:
I want a challenger to Blizzard’s iron grip on competitive rts, but I doubt EA are up to the task. Someone has to at least try though.
I also want Red Alert 2 revived much id’s Quake Live project.
Alternatively, a very fast paced 2d game built in its spirit, could be a budget title.
Focus on PC, if there are console ports, don’t let their existance impact the game design of the PC version.
And lastly don’t license some sort of prebuilt multiplayer infrastructure like gamespy, windows live etc.
21/06/2011 at 23:54 Sandune says:
Stick to the original interface — be true to the game.
The one good thing about Generals was that you got rid of gathering off the ground from Dune.
It worked in Dune. Not so much with gold and gems.
The upgrades that came into later version of the game added depth that was good.
Need more depth if any thing to increase the strategy aspect of the game with out getting rid of speed.
Speed is where CnC is strongest I would say.
If I had a wish list it would be.
1. Make it possible to use all former units depending on the side chosen. From all versions of the game.
2. Include the World domination mode from CnC 3 Kanes Wrath. Its like Risk and CnC combined. Do more with that make it multiplayer.
3. The upgrade on towers was one of the best features enhance that and include more types of trees depending on tech tree chosen. But make the player choose a route and have to stick to it, that will enhance strategy.
4. Rather than create a list of new units. You could make the existing units upgrade based on tech researched. Addons and enhancements. In the process the player will create new units with combinations of abilities. The game has all these features they just need to be organized.
5. The base fortifications from Sun where awesome for adding an additional element to the game.
6. I loved Red Alert 2 and 3 the water adds another element. It needs to be in the game to be complete.
7. Super weapons of all types should be availble to all players depending on research and money.
8. Forget Tiberium — Generals was better for resources. Made more sense.
9. Mobile factories are do not make sense either. If your going to use them make them resupply to make more units or have them supplied. It makes no sense a field unit would just keep making units.
10. Include — Medics, Engineers, Snipers, Pilots, Commandos, Chronolegionars.
11. More Resolution options and the ability to zoom further out.
12. Vetrancy added alot to the game, enhance that and make it easier to establish teams that will support one another like medic, engineer, ect working together as a team healing one another fixing units ect..
The game has plenty of depth already. Problem is sometimes you guys scrap really good things that the fans like. If anything you should keep them, enhance them and add more depth to the game. Strategy is the genre stick with that. Bring it all together and enhance it and — people will buy it.
I have a played every game back to Dune II and my favorite so far is CnC3 Kanes Wrath. But there are things that are gone that I wish where included still as an option. I wish I could develop my own units and structures with parts from the existing that would add depth. And Include a map editor like the orginal CnC had.
Of the senarios I enjoyed the most were the ones like in the orginal CnC where you started out with a damaged base, but a real base with walls ect.. and then you had to build some units to defend while trying to get some resources to survive and repair your base all at as fast as you could.
That was fun — enhance that.