Where C&C 4 wen't wrong?

[Kane_J]

I think it's because the damage of the weapons are too low. I mean, it takes a full blast from a elite mastodon to just kill one cyborg.
Compared to red alert 2 and 3, the units are cheap (compared to the amount of money you have) and it's a come-and-go process, you don't last very long.

[Incia]

I think it's because the damage of the weapons are too low. I mean, it takes a full blast from a elite mastodon to just kill one cyborg.
Compared to red alert 2 and 3, the units are cheap (compared to the amount of money you have) and it's a come-and-go process, you don't last very long.

It's because it has a hard counter system.

For instance Laser does something like 5 damage to a tank, while it does 100 on Heavy units.

Mastodon does Blast damage, it's supposed to be only good versus structures.

Also, if you Host a game then you can change the lethality:
http://www.gamereplays.org/commandan...name=lethality

[Zwapp]

I was thinking back to the story of Tiberiuma while ago, the games, and what I think went wrong over the years.

Warning: lots of rambling

Now, I haven't played tib-dawn, I have played sun and all the ones after that.
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I'll start at the end of the series and work in the earlier ones as I go along.
Also, when I first heard about the crawler design, I was actually positive about it.
I myself had thought about making bases smaller and more mobile, though not to the level of the crawler obviosly. And since the game wasn't released yet, I was willing to give ea a chance to make it work.
After playing it though, I wasn't that optimistic, and thinking back, it seems that ea has just overlooked alot of detail.
so lets start:
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-Story: (note: spoilers for all games in the series)
tiberium, the slow apocalypse, I mean, here we have this alien plant that's just taking over the world and there's nothing we can do about it, it's a great setting and the atmosphere was perfect, litteraly making our world alien.
Then there is the thing with the good and the bad, GDI and Nod were both very interesting factions, contributing to the story in a great way.
First there is GDI, the good guys, cus we need those, who try to save the world from the alien plant, but obviosly can't, and thus end up just being peacekeepers and humanitarians.
Then there's Nod, that on the surface might seem like a shade of grey but if you go deeper to the core you're quite certain it's rotten.
Nod is thinking a bit like "hey, we can't beat tiberium, might as well make it an advantage", so they experiment with it to try to make humans able to live with tiberium, but, there's also Kane, and he certanly has his own ideas that we cannot even comprehend (we're just mortals), I'm not gonna say much about Kane other then that he was a really cool badguy.
Then the Scrin ship crashes and we all go "WTF?" it was a mystery equal to Kane himself and therefore interesting enough to join the darkside just to find out.
Oh and I gotta mension CABAL too, a great antagonist, a bit sad to see him go so easily but he can still make a comeback in some way, the end of firestorm was still good.

Then, things begin to go weird, and not in a good way, in comes Tib Wars.
The Scrin are revealed to just simply be a harvester race not too different from the zerg/tyranid/borg/you get the picture, and thus the mystery is so much gone you almost fall asleep of boredom at the sound of it.
Kane is once again back and while he is still just as much a mystery as before he does become alot more involved, making him feel less like a god and more of a general, thus removing most of his charisma.
The GDI are even more the same as before then before (how's that possible?), they're basicly just to counterbalance the really interesting faction: Nod, that also got hit hard in the interesting part.
And that sums up wars, now on to Twillight
As I play through the campaign the story seems to be mostly in the backround, I'm more interested in the game then the story, and in a campaign that's not exacly a good thing, I remember my reaction at the end of it though "so he's an alien! oh fine then" and then I dismiss him completely, no single shred of interest left.

To sum it up, the story was good until the end of Firestorm, I personally have already rejected the storyline after that point and substituted my own.
speaking of, ppmsite has a good post firestorm story.

(no more spoilers)
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-Gameplay:
Now comes a big one, and let's NOT start with the obvious biggie.
Instead, I'll make a comment of what I felt by the time I put away Twillight:
"I've been playing an UNFINISHED game", and not in a good way like I had something to look forward to, I mean like it should have been going through another half year of production because the current state would bore away customers.
Now on to what the haters considered the biggie:
WTF? CRAWLERS???
Yes, while it was quite a bit further then I would have thought a good idea, I was willing to let it slide, and I still am.
That being said, I do think that is wasn't done either, I can't point a finger at something specific but I know what It felt like, again: unfinished
BUT NO RESOURCE???
this one is a bit bigger, no more tiberium fields to farm, the thing is, I feel like I lost this in tiberium wars already, In sun the tiberium fields were big, they were scattered across the world, and you had to keep an eye on your harvesters, I'm gonna get back to this.
I'm gonna have to agree partly with the haters on this one, losing a restriction this big is was quite a heavy hit. And without something to compensate the game felt, strangely enough, spammy, that does not mean I consider it a bad move removing tiberium farming, just that it was done the wrong way.

What I consider to be the REAL biggie is this:
Tiberium and the feeling of danger:
Tiberium is dangerous, it's mere presence is dangerous, and it's changing the world to something uninhabitable by humans, in sun this was a pretty big deal, you had to move your infantry around the tiberium fields, keep an eye on the veinhole veins, and visceroids were quite tough, and the terrain could be deformed quite easily, for better or worse, oh and let's not forget the poison clouds. (and ice on winter maps)
while playing I almost felt like I wasn't just fighting the enemy, but the very battlefield itself, it was a feeling of danger, and a need to secure myself against both tiberium dangers and enemy agression.
Almost I said, because it wasn't quite there, could be simply because of the level of technology those days, but there was potensial in this, sadly though, it was also forgotten.
In wars the tiberiumfields were reduced to just a different form of starcraft minerals, patches of cash lying around near your base and expansions, no planning ahead, just there is your expansion, there's the enemies expansion, duke it out.
the veins were gone, the visceroids... I don't really know, and while there was alot more eye candy, the atmosphere didn't quite get there.

a few other notes on the gameplay I'll add:
size: I know the arguments against it, but in sun they were big, in wars there wasn't much space to plant your off bases anymore and in twillight the was almost no room to move, I just miss the open space, maybe combined with the tiberium danger I talked about.
Superweapons, I know it's called superweapons but seriosly, it's such a lame way to crack a base, among all the games in cnc, red alert, generals and tiberian, I liked the ones in sun the best, reason is that they simply weren't SUPER-weapons, they were TACTICAL-weapons, like a well placed multi-missile over the enemies power plants to knock out power long enough to make an attack, or an ion cannon strike on a fully loaded harvester, they didn't wipe out the base, they made it easier for you to follow up with something to do that.
Walls: I miss them, but obviosly there's no need anymore now that tiberium isn't posing any threat anymore.
Bases: I liked base building, but that does not mean I disapprove of the crawler Idea completely, having mobile bases is something I think could be a fun thing to have.

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Thinking back I think maybe a hybrid of the crawler design and old base design could be fun.
Like, shared base, no more seperate bases per player, let the players build their base together, with someone dealing with most of the power supply, others doing resource income, speaking of, if the danger element was to be introduced aswell, there could also be a different resource system based of simply keeping the enviormental danger down, making some sort of multi player resource right there.

[gundammark2]

Lack of building bases , only one gametype , short campaign , lack of " It's story" , how we got crawlers and meets all these people on the campaign.

That all i got. I still like it little.

[City17Citizen]

I think CnC4 is flawed as far as online people continue to quit the match once it is launched. Most of the time it ruins it all.

[GChildress]

Haven't bought the game yet. Not sure if I ever will. I saw Youtube previews of gameplay, just didn't look very interesting. No harvesting? No base building? What kind of C&C game is this? It seems like many tried and true games I've loved over the years have recently tried to break away from the formulas that made them great games to begin with. Dawn of War, Civilization... It reminds me of Microsoft and Windows 7. I still use XP, can't stand the new MS Office layout.

[City17Citizen]

Haven't bought the game yet. Not sure if I ever will. I saw Youtube previews of gameplay, just didn't look very interesting. No harvesting? No base building? What kind of C&C game is this? It seems like many tried and true games I've loved over the years have recently tried to break away from the formulas that made them great games to begin with. Dawn of War, Civilization... It reminds me of Microsoft and Windows 7. I still use XP, can't stand the new MS Office layout.

If you expect traditional(base building, resource gathering) cnc game, you should not get it. Idea of this game is to team up. It tests how well player cooperates with his teamates in order to win. Good communication is crucial. Moreover, if you buy this game to enjoy single player, well...dont. TT is absolutely great only in multiplayer and is made only for that purpose.

As I said before, TT is a decent game and I think its bad reputation came from the fact that it was named Command and Conquer. It encountered wall of cnc fans who expected "traditional" cnc gameplay. Some other ppl criticized every aspect of cnc4 game without even giving it a shot (I was one of them sadly).

[Reno]

I think some song lyrics will be relevent here (When They Come For me):

"...A blue-print is a gift and a curse, because once you got the theory of how the thing works, everybody wants the next thing to be just like the first."

I don't understand the fear of change, and certainly don't understand the thrill of playing the same mundane thing over and over again. I personally welcome change with open arms. I agree, Citizen, C&C4 is good for what it is and has decent multiplayer. Sadly, I feel it could have been a lot more with more development time, as I already said.

[Commander32]

If you expect traditional(base building, resource gathering) cnc game, you should not get it. Idea of this game is to team up. It tests how well player cooperates with his teamates in order to win. Good communication is crucial. Moreover, if you buy this game to enjoy single player, well...dont. TT is absolutely great only in multiplayer and is made only for that purpose.

As I said before, TT is a decent game and I think its bad reputation came from the fact that it was named Command and Conquer. It encountered wall of cnc fans who expected "traditional" cnc gameplay. Some other ppl criticized every aspect of cnc4 game without even giving it a shot (I was one of them sadly).

Indeed, if they kept the CnC Arena name and made it a spin off and made it 20 bucks at the start I can say it wouldve been a whole alot more successful.

(Nevertheless I find the Models and Sounds from the Game useful for me mods.)

[Namechanged]

That is a good thing that it is for, since professionally recorded sounds are better.