Command and Conquer needs good exceution, not innovation

[[GR]Agm]

what we need to have imo is a proper incentive to make singleplayer people play online, not 'force' them into it by not doing a singleplayer at all...

This is why RA3's co-op campaign was a great idea. It gets people accustomed to the idea of teamwork and/or treating the game as a social medium.

Fixed.

Not fixed. Since MP requires only the nuts and bolts mechanics, it's CHEAPER to develop than it is to develop singleplayer, which still requires nuts and bolts mechanics and a massive array of other expensive art/coding tasks on top of it. A multiplayer-oriented game is actually more efficient when it comes to dev costs, and it produces more re-playable content per dollar invested than singleplayer does.

Well not anymore, RNA is gone

True, but Frostbite 2 could be the same old graphics-over-gameplay nonsense. When I played the beta for BF3, I ran into some troubling issues. The hit registration was downright awful. I'd get behind cover, and then 3 seconds later I'd die. Or I'd empty a clip into someone and do no damage, and then they'd turn around and one-shot me. I even joined servers with less than 40ms pings.

It seems DICE decided that pretty graphics and "fluff" were more important than rock solid basics of FPS play. Let's hope Frostbite 2 isn't as laggy and unresponsive as SAGE/RNA. For anyone who has played HoN or SC2, that's what BioWare should be aiming at. If they don't think that kind of responsiveness is necessary for good gameplay, they might as well just abandon this project altogether. Of course people will spend $60 and play a few hours of singleplayer and think they got their money's worth though...

in a way youve gotta understand his position as well tbh - he -has- been running RTS communities for several years now, been in almost every EA community summit, knew many of their devs personally, alpha/beta tested every one of their games etc... and finds the same old problems cropping up in EVERY single title (generals/zh/bfme/bfme2/rotwk/cnc3/kw/ra3/ra3u)

itd be hard not to get frustrated when you're in that position and feel things CAN be easily improved, and youve voiced your ideas but they only ever seem to fall on deaf ears

Thank you.

Guys, look. Here are the facts:

1. Sales of C&C games since Generals have declined
2. They declined so much that EA fired its entire RTS team
3. There have been two consistent characteristics in all C&C games since Generals:
- Under-developed gameplay and multiplayer
- An expensive singleplayer component

Therefore logically speaking, this singleplayer approach IS NOT WORKING FOR THEM. Thus it's fair to say that the people who actually enjoy C&C singleplayer are a sales minority, else the sales wouldn't have declined.

Nobody can honestly sit here and argue that repeating this strategy is going to magically work. They need to do something different, and the ONE THING they haven't tried yet is focusing on good, polished gameplay while making singleplayer an afterthought.

[Nerdfish]

Not fixed. Since MP requires only the nuts and bolts mechanics, it's CHEAPER to develop than it is to develop singleplayer, which still requires nuts and bolts mechanics and a massive array of other expensive art/coding tasks on top of it. A multiplayer-oriented game is actually more efficient when it comes to dev costs, and it produces more re-playable content per dollar invested than singleplayer does.

How does that make re-playablity any less overrated ? Perhaps people regularly brought multiple copies of games they like where you come from. but here on earth people buy the game once regardless how much they play it.

[Golan2781]

Therefore logically speaking, this singleplayer approach IS NOT WORKING FOR THEM. Thus it's fair to say that the people who actually enjoy C&C singleplayer are a sales minority, else the sales wouldn't have declined.

Nobody can honestly sit here and argue that repeating this strategy is going to magically work. They need to do something different, and the ONE THING they haven't tried yet is focusing on good, polished gameplay while making singleplayer an afterthought.

That's neither logical nor factual. The biggest problem is that you are implicitly assuming that SP was good, when it fact it wasn't. It degraded just like MP did. From this, you can't extrapolate that SP fans weren't put off by it as well or that the decline of the franchise is due to any focus on SP.
Another thing they haven't tried yet is making a polished game. A complete one.

[bombspy]

all honesty mate, its -you- who has the strange perception of rts

if you liked cnc4 but not the games before it, its because:

1) cnc4 actually pretty much forced or coerced you to try multiplayer... i think 90% of people who played cnc4 must have played online too, whereas im sure its <40% for other cnc games.
if you'd bothered to actually get into the multiplayer of previous cnc's, youd have seen how they were 10000000x better in so many ways than cnc4.... even if they werent even very refined.

2) cnc4 spoonfed all the game mechanics to you entirely, and watered down several aspects of what makes an 'RTS'... while this is bad for people who actually understand RTS, its good for newbies who havent a clue of RTS basics --- and if youre so opposed to 'rushes', you clearly appear to belong to the latter category, no offense.

lol I hate C&C4, but still the MP had some interesting aspects
I said I like it SOMEHOW, because it was something new, teamplay orientated with less focus on "I can build 100 tanks in 2 minutes, I'm so friggin cool".

[[GR]Agm]

lol I hate C&C4, but still the MP had some interesting aspects
I said I like it SOMEHOW, because it was something new, teamplay orientated with less focus on "I can build 100 tanks in 2 minutes, I'm so friggin cool".

See, this is what we mean. C&C games are not "I can build 100 tanks in 2 minutes". You have a very distorted and inaccurate understanding of what C&C gameplay is. Generals/ZH for example is usually about how well you can control 3-4 units. Even C&C 3/KW is not "100 tanks in 2 minutes". If you actually tried C&C multiplayer, watched some replays/vods, and read a couple strategy guides to help orient you to what multiplayer is actually like, you would have a different opinion of MP. Even if you didn't like it, at least your opinion would be accurate.

[Cypher[CS]]

AGM, your sales claims are based on lacking information.
You simply don't know why people bought Generals in the first place, to claim, with 100% certainty that the Multiplayer was the major sales point. Actually, if you consider that around 70% of all C&C players are SP players, it stands to reason that the gap between RA2 and Generals, the 3D and C&C moniker on Generals is what triggered the major sales of it.
Now, if you, for example, get your hands on ZH sales that would be closer to (still far from 100%) the MP driven sales, I'd wager.

With that in mind, your whole pyramid of claims about MP being more efficient to develop (obviously objectively so) kinda breaks down when you put that bit of subjectivity into it.

Yes, I'm all for a great MP experience and barring major innovations in SP narrative then I'm all for driving the MP to surpass it in every major way (but again, we've had the argument on good narrative and SP, and narrative in MP as well - let us not rehash it). Just don't base your claims on insufficient data.

As for the BF3 beta.
I've read several official claims, by DICE, that there was method to that madness. If you're referring to the public beta for BF3, they had those bugs there by design. Or rather, introduced some old bugs and left some already fixed things unfixed for the beta for various reasons of pirating and code theft. All things that were fixed with a Day 0 patch (again, part of EA's overall anti piracy strategy).
I can try and look up those statements for you, if you want.

That's neither logical nor factual. The biggest problem is that you are implicitly assuming that SP was good, when it fact it wasn't. It degraded just like MP did. From this, you can't extrapolate that SP fans weren't put off by it as well or that the decline of the franchise is due to any focus on SP.
Another thing they haven't tried yet is making a polished game. A complete one.

You are right, with that last statement, Golan, but I don't think that AGM is assuming that SP was good, just that it took lots of money to make. Not that it detracts from your later point.

[Golan2781]

His conclusion doesn't work if one doesn't assume that SP was good. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to isolate MP as the cause for CNCs decline. SP taking lots of money for putting tits in it isn't much of a reason to be against SP in principle, it's a reason to be against an SP running mainly on tits. They pretty much wasted money on hollow marketing and SP had the bad luck of being the easiest element to do that with.

BTW if you don't mind, can you look up those statements from DICE on BF3 bugs? I'd really be interested in them. PM is fine of no one else is interested.

[[GR]Agm]

AGM, your sales claims are based on lacking information.
You simply don't know why people bought Generals in the first place, to claim, with 100% certainty that the Multiplayer was the major sales point. Actually, if you consider that around 70% of all C&C players are SP players, it stands to reason that the gap between RA2 and Generals, the 3D and C&C moniker on Generals is what triggered the major sales of it.

Now, if you, for example, get your hands on ZH sales that would be closer to (still far from 100%) the MP driven sales, I'd wager.

Jim Vessella said that Zero Hour had the highest attachment rate of any C&C expansion up until that point. Suffice it to say, people must have been very satisfied with Generals despite the "cheap" in-game cinematics and derivative plot (contrary to what a very vocal minority of "purists" think about Generals).

But I'm not even trying to claim why people bought Generals. I'm simply observing that Generals didn't have expensive full motion videos and actors and things, while all subsequent C&C games did since apparently that's what C&C players like. Except if that were true, then sales wouldn't have declined to the point where they shut down their RTS studio. C&C games I think are the only ones that still offer full motion videos of live actors. You'd think that this is the pinnacle of storytelling in a game since it's what we're used to from TV and movies. So if THAT's not good enough according to Golan, how much more money has to be spent before it is?

[Cypher[CS]]

According to Golan?

You really do have some flaws in logic thinking. Either that, or you're trying to make his claims seem wrong on purpose.
Good SP and good story telling and good narrative in games has NOTHING to do with those FMVs. Well, not nothing, obviously, cause it's a chosen execution of part of the narrative. But it is NOT a pinnacle nor has he claimed, anywhere, that it is or was.

As for Generals - what if I were to tell you that the $12M budget that Generals had was partly blown on the creation of then EA Pacific in their new location (which was, about a year and half later, or so, moved again to consolidate with EALA at Playa Vista)?
Good teams can do great things with a small budget. Bad management, even with great talent, can do bad things with giant AAA budgets.

[BogoX]

I totally agree with agm once again. For me, the MP is the most important part on c&c games cause i'm one of those who love competition. Ladder wars, ls, conquecups and other tournements are the main reason that i play c&c games . Also, Don't you think that beating a human is more fun than beating stupid ai ?

Long time ago i used to play only single player, i played the campaign once or 2 times but not more, and the rest of time, skirmishs but each time i got tired of the stupid ai so i stopped playing the game. Until i started playing ra2 on lan with my friends; So i discovered a new dimension to c&c games and how much fun it is to play against humans.
I can assure you guys that those were one of the best memories of my childhood ! And that's that reason that got me started to play MP and competitive play principally.
So i think that the developpers should focus a little more on MP than previous c&c games. And the campaign should be like a big tutorial to learn how to use the units, their abilities etc... It should be fun to play ofc and the storyline must be coherent.