In reading this forum, it seems the devs / stardock staff go out of their way to try to get "better" reviews or counter their perceived "low" reviews scores without looking at what pretty much all those reviews are saying. Looking at http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/ashes-of-the-singularity for user reviews, it pretty much shows that, AotS is a average game.
At this point in time, the game shouldn't be getting anything higher than a average rating, which is backed up with most user reviews that I have seen on this forum, and others.
It was released too early, and screams of being unfinished.
The biggest selling point was that it is one of the first DX12 games, and people so much wanted to see what DX12 is capable of.
Take that away, and you are left with scratching your head. As a tech demo/benchmark, it is pretty darn good!
The campaign game is just not working. There is no real story telling, no way to immerse yourself into the game. When you look at the buildings and units, nothing really stands out about them, and have that overall generic look to everything. The explosions are dull & bland, the textures are bland as well, and this also applies to the terrain textures. Where are the environmental effects, the day/night cycles? What about terrain features? Nothing can deform the terrain either, not even a hint that something happened there. Is everything just barren land? The same goes with the sound cues, boring, hard to understand, and way too repetitive. Yes, I understand that these issues should (will?) be fixed with proper voice overs, and a revamp of the campaign at sometime in the future, but, that only proves my point in that it was released too early. The UI interface itself is just not customizable enough. The only option there is, is scale, and that is done in an odd way. Instead of using truetype fonts where there will be little if any degradation in quality, it seems it is currently vector based, or is resampling down very poorly. Why not offer sliders like what browsers do when you have more information than can be displayed?
The sound controls are odd, why is the voice tied to music? They need to be split apart. The mouse cursor itself tends to get lost in all the action, so you spend lots of time trying to find it again.
How about the current units available? The selection is minuscule compared to other titles out there, and why is it you can't design your own as was done in another RTS game (Warzone 2100)?
The amount of support structures is also limited to just a few. You can't even build walls or anything of that nature. No mines, no VTOLs.
I could go on, but, I think I have made my point.
Creating your own maps is a very difficult process, as you need a machine with insane amounts of RAM to get it working correctly.
On the modding side, I suppose a SDK of some type will be released at some point, so, can't really comment on that.
For those of us who could care less about MP games (way too many obnoxious, foul mouth brats out there), this game just doesn't offer anything new that other RTS games haven't done before, (with the exception of having a ton of units).
I know the fanboys will throw a hissy fit over this, but sorry, I call them like I see them, and I have been played pretty much all RTS games ever made as was shown in another post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_strategy_video_games
Thus, I don't see how it is possible to review something that isn't finished, and from looking at the roadmap, won't be finished until sometime in '17, without giving it a well deserved average score.
A lot of the negative reviews involve people who have played less than 20 minutes who then tell people to go play FAF.
That doesn't, by any means, make your feedback less relevant. I'm just saying that people aren't giving negative reviews because the music and the event sounds are tied to the same options slider.
have you seen sins of a solar empire??? never had a campaign ..and we dont know the whole story..and it has done great for irself....ashes will improve over time...people who want a clone of another game and only play 20 minutes..give negative reviews...there are some negative ones that make valid points...but the vast majority is just that....i have also found negative reviews where people cant play the game and call it not optimized but then later getting them to reveal their specs..they have toasters...not meeting minimum specs....and if you payed attention...campaign has taken a lot of flak...and stardock has said they will improve on it and allready working on it...so they do listen to their player base
Here is a dash of hard truth, but hear me out. The premise of the OP that the game feels unfinished is correct, when viewed from a gaming industry standard. So when Ashes is compared to other games, and we all know reviews are not done in a vacuum, the result will be average scores. All Stardock games I've played, and I've only played a few in the last few years, feel this way at release.
It boils down to their development model. If a complete-feeling title from a typical large studio costs $10M from start to release, a game that costs $2M to produce really cannot end up with the same kind of polished results. Stardock's model has some good things and some bad.
Good things:
- You don't have to go through cycles of heavy hiring and lay-offs
- Your games get built by reliable experienced developers who you trust so you can count on a certain quality of work
- Up-front costs are (relatively) low with (fairly) quick return on investment so DLC and expansions can be used to fund further development for years instead of taking many years to recoup the initial development costs.
- You have the staff and funds after release to improve the game based upon player feedback, not just offer minimal support for a static game.
- Players who stick around are rewarded with an ever-improving experience, cultivating loyalty.
Bad things:
- The man-hours dedicated on the game through the development process is (relatively) low, so you have to compromise somewhere to deliver in a timely manner (art, character, gameplay depth, UI)
- Because you have to compromise, the game has an incomplete unpolished feeling compared to $10M titles that damages peoples' first impressions of the game (hence negative reviews)
- These negative reviews and average scores impact early sales and there is a deflating feeling of semi-failure.
Can a game ever fully recover from the initial barrage of average reviews after 1-2 years of continued improvement? This should be a core question asked about the develoment model in general. That is a question only salesmen, marketers, and CEOs can answer, not a casual gamer like myself. Stardock is still alive and kicking so it is obviously working to some degree. But is there a better way? Another question for CEOs.
People like the OP are taking the game at face value, and not considering the development model. They cannot be faulted for that since the Stardock model is pretty unique. Furthermore, players don't spend hours a week contemplating development models, they want to spend that time playing fun games. All this to say that many of the negative reviews for Ashes are fair (not the trolls), as are the average ratings, when the reviewer is an honest person only interested in having fun playing games.
Note: I want to be perfectly clear that, while the game does feel average compared to $10M titles, I think the state of the game at release is fun and pretty good, and in a few limited ways more polished. As such I gave it a positive steam review. I know/hope it will get better, which indicates that I have some faith in the development model. Only time will tell if my faith is well placed. In the interests of full disclosure I still don't think GalCiv3, which follows the same model, has reached that point a year later.
AotS was built using modern technology with future-proofing in mind to allow the game to continue to improve and grow for many years to come. It could have stayed in early access until it was "finished" in 10 years time, this would not make any sense.
It is a balanced, playable, and fun game, which is under constant improvement, which if players continue to support it could be improved upon regularly with DLC and expansions for the next 10 years.
Often games which are released as "Finished" tend to have little after release support, and often plagued with as many if not more bugs at release than AotS. I have had much worse experiences playing many AAA titles which have had very little replay value, which are discarded by the developers for yet another mediocre sequel a year later.
Almost every RTS game has had a non-existent or completely useless campaign, this is common to the genre. RTS games are almost always about skirmish vs AI or multiplayer, which AotS does both very well.
I think Eviator's breakdown is not bad. The worry I have is that GalCiv 3 is a primarily single player experience where Ashes is more of a MP one. That means if the game comes out at a AAA price but is not polished and gets average reviews not so many people will pick it up and the MP will die before it can establish itself. So even if the game is much better a year down the line people won't pick it up because the MP is too small. You could argue that SP skirmish will keep it alive like GalCiv, but GalCiv is I believe a much more complex game with many different ways you could go about playing it. Ashes is too simple to have the same length of SP appeal I think (EDIT: Also Ashes is a new IP so won't have the built-in audience of a game series like GalCiv). The game really should have had replays in at launch, as well as the ability of a player to stick around to watch the game after he has been killed. The Campaign needed a few obvious improvements too. I dunno, I don't mind a smaller consistent MP for myself but I want the game to keep getting supported for years and that relies on sales; I don't know how patient Stardock is. I think they should get the improved campaign out asap with the improved UI and modding stuff and some of those free units/buildings in and get the game out there again at a 25% discount sooner rather than later. I think Stardock are playing the long tail game, where they can make money off a game slowly for many years to come (made much easier with Steam and digital distribution than in the past) but for the immediate health of the game I think getting those improvements sooner rather than later would do much good.
Obviously I like the game as it stands and I've friended people on Steam who like it so I can always get a game when I like. For me the key thing in all this is the long term support. If a Dev came on here and said the game has sold within an acceptable range within their predicted sales range, and going by those numbers they fully intend to support the game with navy, a 3rd faction, T4 units, more tilesets, more units, larger maps with more players, AI personalities, ability to customise the games further (unit/building restrictions), the ability to share resources/generators with allies, great mod support, more powerful UI etc. and that was all locked in at this point then that would be that for me and I would be a very happy chappy. I just don't know if sales will allow all that as I don't know if they hit their targets.
Btw, some "professional" reviewers did a very poor job in their attempts to play and get the most from the game, so that was a bit sad to see. It felt like they went in not wanting to like it.
I hope this game never be finished , most players dont understand wy they choose to play a game.
There are some games that i just pause the game to look all the awsome work done and the all the fantastic view that is created ,because there is much work that many are unaware, this was the reason I ask a quick introduction of the studio and some work that ashes team do because its really good and very professional, so some could understand that want its not always enouth.
A unfinish game like Ashes is a produt i will always buy.
This means new ideas, new units, ui designed and modified, continue to have the feedback we have had, constantly improve the game engine and all the code structure to please all.
Creating your own maps is a very difficult process? I dont see wy!! ( we need a bether editor true but its not that so bad )
Modding !!! Its just fantastic ,Ashes will be the best on modding ,when you undestand how to do it, for me just click to change something in automode its no fun any one can do that ,you have to understand the wy , and Ashes give you all that.
Ashes My friends, not many understand is a constant study cycle, which was launched a base idea to be playable and with DX12, that is being worked on constantly.
When you have a finish game its like GAmeOver no return ,no changes nothing new its that what you got..
Ashes team its the best social team gamer ever was ,and that means they are with you and rest players every sec to understand whats rong and change for bether in next patches.
Anyway ty for the feedback, i have saw so many games with 5x or more the money Ashes have to make this game and they arent even close to what we have now.
@Eviator
Is there an RTS released in the last couple of years that you feel is "finished" and was successful? If not Ashes, what recent RTS would you recommend?
Games don't exist in a vacuum.
Is HW:DOK "finished"? It has 5 skirmish maps and fewer units than Ashes. How about Planetary Annihilation? It didn't include a campaign and only has one faction. Acts of Aggression? Grey Goo? What is the goal post you're trying to set here?
There is a fine line between expectation management and gamer entitlement.
Supreme Commander was $59.99 when released in 2007. Forged Alliance was another $19.99 when it was released some months later. That's a $80 investment in 2007 dollars.And I suspect few, if anyone in this thread actually played SupCom when it came out. The UI that shipped in SupCom doesn't bear any resemblance to what it has today. Its multiplayer, GPGNet, didn't even function correctly for the first few months for most people.
I can list any number of criticisms I have for Ashes. But suggesting it's somehow unfinished because say there isn't a separate volume slider for the voice announcer is absurd. StarCraft II doesn't have such a slider either. Is StarCraft unfinished?
The point is, these arguments aren't persuasive other than suggesting that some people in the RTS market are out of touch of where things are today. At the end of the day, if you want to play an RTS, what are you going to recommend? Because if your recommendation is some 10 year old game, then we have nothing to talk about.
That's a $80 investment in 2007 dollars.And I suspect few, if anyone in this thread actually played SupCom when it came out.
Personally, I am still happy with that investment. The cost of the game was nothing compared to the amount that I had spent on building a computer that year to run it (which for a university student was much more than I should have).
The only thing that I liked about planetary annihilation was the concept of the Galactic War mode (which was just plain broken and unplayable). This could have been a good alternative to a campaign.
Exacly Frogboy.
I did play SupCom from beta to last day we knew about Fa, so i know very well and agreed with you Supcom was a totaly bugged game but many know that.
Ashes its bether by far.
yestarday i play FAforever with the usual friends and was the match me and them realize the FA limited engine, with +/- 3k units on a 8 players game we have to give up and drop from the game and all have i7 and i5 new generations cpus.
Ashes engine its a mark on history games.
Please understand that I'm not criticizing the game, the developers, or even the development model. I am (perhaps mistakenly) sensing a slight tone of defensiveness, but I assure you I am not on the offense here. I am looking at the factors I experience with as much neutrality as I can muster, with no intended animosity. Think Spock.
I haven't played RTS games in years before Ashes. I am not a hardcore RTS gamer, just a guy who likes fun games. As such I would imagine I am right in the center of your target audience. If not, tell me now and I will go find another thing to sink my time into. I consider Ashes (hopefully) a revitalization of the genre. On a scale comparing Ashes to RTSs, I will cede that I have no idea and will submit to your knowledge. But the comparison between Ashes and other RTSs isn't my angle. I make the comparison between Ashes and other games that I could shell out $60 for today.
Is it a valid comparison? Sure...you want my $60 don't you? Your competition isn't just RTS games, it's all games. I could just go buy Dark Souls 3, try another early access game, or find another game with an "Overwhelmingly Positive" review. See, I am a typical gamer, and I would think the kind of person you are hoping to attract to your game. I am probably just like the thousands of people who have Ashes on their wishlist, looking for a great game, whatever genre. I just had the disposable income to take and chance and pay for Ashes. Incidentally you have attracted me to your game. As you know I am an Elite Founder who offered a lot of feedback going back all the way to Pre-Alpha. I like the game. I have fun playing the game. As an average gamer I could have chosen amongst several other games, many of which are rated higher, and not because of review bombers. Do you want to appeal to casual gamers like me, or do you just want to appeal to hardcore RTS players? If the former, try framing Ashes in that perspective and consider the state of Ashes compared to non-RTS games.
Let me ask this: If you had triple the budget, would you have been able to do more with art, character, and gameplay depth? The answer is of course yes. Since these attributes contribute to the "completeness" of the game, it means there is room for improvement. Now for every game released the developer would answer the same way, so the standards of completeness cannot be applied too strictly. But generally speaking many other games (not in the RTS genre) with bigger budgets do get further along on these attributes, thus feel more complete upon release. Stardock chooses to take a model of releasing a good enough game, perhaps top of the line within the genre, then growing toward more completeness over time. You state this yourself, and it's a fine approach. But you have to be willing to accept that in the interim people who have $60 to sink into whatever game will provide the best experience will consider the initial release product to not be up to their standards of completeness and therefore offer a negative review.
Taken individually, none of the arguments made by the OP are valid reasons for pressing the "Thumbs down" button. But taken as a whole, and I'd venture to guess the OP's specific criticisms scratch the surface in the interests of brevity, the OP's point does have validity for those who are not dyed-in-the-wool RTS players. Maybe Ashes is the best RTS on release in a decade. But is it the best game? Top 10? Top 100? When someone is figuring out which game to give their money, why choose Ashes right now when there are many other vastly higher rated (non-RTS) games? That is the question you need to answer internally. That is the perspective you need to consider when reading a negative review. Does Ashes offer enough art/character/depth/replayability, in short completeness, for an average gamer to warrant its purchase over other games? Maybe if you are an honest unbiased hardcore RTS player it does. For the average casual gamer, maybe Ashes won't be there for another 1-2 years.
Don't worry Eviator.
I realize that many people reading this thread may not understand what my own motivations in this.
Our industry has changed a lot in the last 20 years.
I'm the last one. I don't know how many of you even realize that most of the class of 89, so to speak, are gone. My contemporaries all, well they all "retired" so to speak. I don't think the average PC gamer even realizes that we're the oldest indie left.
Sid and co sold out to Take 2. Even Carmack is gone. They're all gone.
The model Stardock follows isn't new. It's the ORIGINAL model of how PC games were made. You made a game and you iterated on it. That's how games were made.
I enjoy debating these issues because they're interesting and stimulating. This is why I'm here. I don't get paid anymore and haven't for many years. I'm here for the gamers because I enjoy making games.
How much you pay for a product or service is driven by supply and demand. The days of getting an RTS with a $20 million budget are long gone. There have been exactly zero games since SupCom that have gotten that kind of budget.
Supreme Commander's 2 budget was $7 million and that was only because Square required it to be on the console and they would own it (including the trademark).
There will be no Supreme Commander 3. Ever.
I think Ashes is overpriced at $49.99. Unfortunately, we live in a highly regulated worldwide market. We started at $49.99 and various "consumer protection" laws prevented us from lowering the price to $39.99 at release which is where I wanted it.
Now...
That said: Homeworld: DOK is a $49.99 game. Do you consider it finished?
Except, Dark Souls 3 doesn't have an overwhelmingly positive review. It has about the same review score as Ashes and costs $59.99 for the base game (deluxe edition is $85).
Of course. But I would never have done so because no NEW RTS has made enough money to justify that kind of investment since......I dunno, Rise of Nations? An Ashes II would justify that but for new IP? No way.
Since these attributes contribute to the "completeness" of the game, it means there is room for improvement.
You can't have it both ways. Room for improvement doesn't mean a game isn't complete. The OP talks about things like player designed units. That's a totally different game.
By any reasonable standard, Ashes is a complete game now. Not just complete but a very good game.
Not to put too fine a point on the obvious but frankly, if RTS players want RTS games made, they should support RTS games. Ashes is doing very well because we kept its budget down. It lets us keep evolving the game over time. Do you think SupCom is getting any updates? How about DOK? Grey Goo? PA?
I want Ashes to become THE go-to RTS. But if it doesn't, and there's no other game that they flocked to instead, the reading of not just me but other game developers will be because there's no market anymore for RTS games of any real size. That's just reality. It won't be "Oh, if only they had a fourth volume slider for announcer voice! That's why!"
BadVoltage has he own opinion about the game and good for him, that's hes way of thinking and let him be I guess, BUT....
I just want to tell BadVoltage something about Ashes, there is no game at all that you can call finished game, ever! people always want more and more, Ashes does need a lot of work still, but its fun!, I love this game, but i want more, more and more and that more i know i will get from Stardock and Oxide, they Promise us a 5+ years of support and updates/expansions, who does that? only 5% of gaming companies does it, Stardock is one of them, so I am happy about getting new content and optimizations on a game that I like to play.
You should do the same, go search for a game you like and support it, if you don't like Ashes then leave it alone, thousands of players do like it so far so I am good.
It will be nice 1-2 years from now when Ashes will be in a state typical gamers will find comparable to the best games available and be nearly unanimously reviewed positively so you end up with a 95+% rating. I did my part. Hopefully the current average ratings don't stop that progress. In the mean time I look forward to your iterations.
ASADDF, one may argue that the OP's criticism is an attempt to support the game, not just complain. Or maybe it's to help others make an informed purchase decision, something all consumers should value. In a way, being silent could be worse than offering a negative opinion. I never review games on the basis of how good it promises to be in the future. If it doesn't meet my standard of fun today, it will get a negative review and a promise that I will change my review if the game ever does live up to those standards.
The only thing you took away from the orignal post was the sliders comment? [e digicons]:'([/e]
That missing feature by itself wouldn't qualify as making the whole game unfinished, but it shows lack of polish / testing. The campaign was never part of the steam 'early access' testing, and if it was, it could have easily been reported & fixed at release time. (Heck, I bet the feedback would have most likely changed a lot of things as well concerning the campaign.)
StarCraft as a whole was much more polished at release stage than what AotS offered. Lots of times, it is the little things that people noticed the most, but they all add up in the end.
The problem with trying to compare this game to the "current" crop of RTS games is, most of them fall into the same category of what I call unfinished, they each have different reasons on why though.
So, trying to find a current RTS game that hits all the marks isn't possible, that is why we must go back in time to pick out RTS games from the past. That means, even if we need to go back X years to find something good, that doesn't excuse AotS from criticism just because the "current" crop of RTS games happen to be weak in areas as well.
This isn't about the system requirements that AotS has either (as was mentioned in another thread), if anything, I rather bump up the specs, but, I also know that doing that will leave out lots of people that happen to have machines with the incredibly slow intel video chipsets, and is the bane of most developers, from playing the game.
I would have thought that in the design stage of AotS, the designers would go back and play lots of other RTS games (not just the ones made in the last few years!), and pick out some of the best features from each of them, and package them into one solid RTS game. Instead, it seems they thought that just throwing a ton of units on the screen and having a epic light show is enough.
I noticed that there will be a postmortem @gamasutra about AotS, and I am hoping that it will answer lots of the questions on why some decisions were made.
Let me ask you this though, if you cap the huge unit counts (let's say cap them to 100 per player), in AotS, what are you left with? The AI is much better than most other RTS games, and ... um... what else does it offer that is unique to AotS? (I took the campaign out of this, since it is being redone.)
I see only two problems with Ashes. One is minor, in regards to the current multiplayer based around quick games, and the other a rather significant gaping hole in peoples single player expectations.
The campaign, in it's current form, is short, much too short, and utterly lacking in character due to the simple text interfacing, lack of choices, and any serious climax. Supreme Commander, since you keep using it for a comparison, had a fully voiced, three branch story, which ended in a pretty massive map. I'm aware of the road map and have confidence that it will be a much better experience later on, but this is basically 20 points off most of your review scores, and it probably wouldn't have been a budget buster to do it in the first place and be the top seller on steam in return.
The other flaw is a lack of high scale depth. There's not a lot here to justify playing a larger game. We only have orbitals for strategic weaponry, bigger, higher resource maps wont make the game more expansive. They'll basically come down to spamming even more generators to orbital strike the shit out of each other and ramp up the monotonous research system. I'm not asking for shield bubbles and strategic artillery, but the layers of counters are what made the game great, and those layers were there for release, I blew through the campaign when the game came out, it was awesome, and infuriating, to set up an epic defensive line only to have a spider bot blow away the entire thing and wipe my base because I didn't have anything to counter it. The all encompassing orbital nullifier just doesn't cut the mustard. We don't even have a rapid transport mechanism.
There are five games that redefined my gaming experience, one of them was simply a Half-life mod that stomped an entire genre of AAA releases and built the modern FPS. It blew away everything that came before it and most of what came after. One is HoMM2, which has a depth of character and style far greater than any of Stardock's TBS games do even if they have far superior AI, I still play it and it's sequel more than any other TBS. The other three are RTS games. Warlords: Battlecry, Supreme Commander, and Sins of a Solar Empire. All three of these games utterly destroyed the standard that came before them. WBC was a niche game with a small following and an even smaller budget, but to this day it remains unmatched, hardly even approached, in melding role playing and RTS games. Equally impressive was the massive over-reach in the depth of the faction designs. The only thing that kept it from making Blizzard a memory was an utter lack of balance, mostly due to the near impossible task of balancing persistent heroes on top of 9 sides as unique as they are in Starcraft, never mind doing it on a shoestring budget. Supreme Commander is, naturally, the pinnacle of strategic warfare. The sheer scope of what you could do, if your damned computer could run it, put everything else to shame, it still does. Then we have Sins, the first successful 4X/RTS hybrid and a damn fine game in every way.
Ashes, in it's current form, will simply redefine engine design. There's not enough depth for me to lose a week of sleep over it. I've played each of those games every spare moment, sleeping four or five hours a night, turning myself into a health deprived zombie. I'm in my thirties now so it's a bit harder to do that(well, easier), but I wouldn't do it anyway. I'd probably put in a couple hours a week for a while doing multiplayer if I had a better connection, but I'd drop it in a heartbeat to play a game of WBC or Supreme Commander with a buddy, and even Sins, which I burned out on big time dumping thousands of hours into the SOA2 mod, would probably interest me just as much or more. Red Alert 2 holds more interest. Snipers, mammoth tanks, kirov's, charging tesla coils for extra oomph. There's no character, no humor or attachment, just six floating battleships with two upgrade paths and a six second lifespan in the wrong conditions. I got all wistful playing it and damn near got out my RA2 disc the other day, I'm contemplating it again writing this post.
If you want it to be the go-to RTS, you're going to have to evolve it past it's predecessors first. The potential is there, but right now it's only potential, far outstripped potential. It's unpolished, which is expected from companies other than Blizzard, but it's more than just unpolished. I've probably forgotten more interesting games, which depresses the hell out of me, because I was really hoping you guys would break the mold again and redefine how I saw games. It really needed to release with huge maps, and enough strategic depth to validate them. If it had, the campaign would probably be forgiven in 90+ review scores. If the campaign was a standard setter as well, you'd be in line for game of the year awards and hit the #1 seller spot on Steam.
What are these best games available in the RTS genre that you are comparing Ashes to?
You do realize that the same complaint could be made of nearly every independent game from Factorio to Undertale.
If all the current RTS games are unfinished by your criteria then I think it is you, and not the game that has the issue.
Supreme Commander, since you keep using it for a comparison, had a fully voiced, three branch story, which ended in a pretty massive map.
And shipped with multiplayer essentially broken.
The other flaw is a lack of high scale depth. There's not a lot here to justify playing a larger game. We only have orbitals for strategic weaponry, bigger, higher resource maps wont make the game more expansive. They'll basically come down to spamming even more generators to orbital strike the shit out of each other and ramp up the monotonous research system.
Could this not be said of every RTS? SupCom has nuke spam. StarCraft has endless complaints of MMM spam. People who debate World War II argue the Americans won through Sherman spam.
That isn't to say that Ashes shouldn't continue to evolve to become a richer strategy experience. I'm just saying that these particular criticisms mostly argue that this particular game isn't your cup of tea.
And Supreme Commander lost millions of dollars and GPG is gone.
The days of the $20 million RTS game are long long gone. Ashes doesn't have the scope of SupCom did because it had 1/7th its budget. But that doesn't mean it's not finished. It just means that it will take time and money for Ashes to evolve into whatever it is to become over the next several years.
This is the way new PC-only games used to be made and now, with the fall of retail, this is how they are once again being made with the exception of console ports and long-standing franchises.
Ashes, in it's current form, will simply redefine engine design. There's not enough depth for me to lose a week of sleep over it.
And that's fine. But it doesn't mean the game is unfinished. You just don't like it.
Unfortunately, if we had shipped a game as you describe, we'd be talking about massive layoffs because no PC game can justify the budget you speak of to deliver the ideal game you speak of.
The basic problem in this discussion is that you are assuming we lack the imagination or design capability to deliver this ideal game you want.
Double the Ashes budget and I would have given you 3 distinct races, each with 7 unique air units, transports, naval, 4 tiers, each with 5 to 7 units each with not just more economic depth but with artifacts, harvesting (including wrecks), resource processing (turning 1 resource into another), etc.
But we can't because the PC market can't deliver the customer base to that genre given the hardware specs a modern RTS requires. That's the part people ignore.
Let me give you one example: You want truly ridiculously sized maps? For us, it's a variable we could set. But even with our very large maps (which are as big in terms of land area as SupCom maps and we have actual 3D terrain) we barely fit in GB of video memory. Even slightly bigger maps would require an I7 with 4GB of memory to play well unless we totally gimped the terrain for everyone.
There's no scenario where a new RTS IP is going to be the #1 best seller (other than maybe a day or two). Real-time game engines are hard to make and a modern one, just like SupCom back in the day, has hardware requirements that are pretty far beyond the average PC user.
Fair enough. Here's 10 off the top of my head and I won't even count the AI or the fact that the game can handle thousands of units which in itself is a pretty big deal when we're talking about a large scale RTS.
You can make the case that we need more content to flesh out these unique features. But in terms of innovation, Ashes brings a lot to the table and these are not gimmicky innovations but ones that deliver a level of depth that no other game currently has as part of its engine on day 1.
What are these best games available in the RTS genre that you are comparing Ashes to? You do realize that the same complaint could be made of nearly every independent game from Factorio to Undertale.
Hoping to repeat my point once again for clarity, I didn't say "best games available in the RTS genre", I said "best games available". That's right, I'm talking all games. To get an "overwhelmingly positive" rating (and you do want that right?) you can't just be the best RTS, you have to try to be one of the best games ever. Ashes has the bones to be top notch amongst all games, and I fear you are aiming low hoping just to be the best RTS game, which in today's field is like saying you hope to be the best Dodge (zing). If I have $50 to spend on a single game of any genre, I'm going to try to find the one that offers the highest degree of fun. Do you want me to buy Ashes with my $50? Then make it the game in all genres amongst the highest degree of fun. That's a high bar, I know. But if Factorio and Undertale can do it, why not you?
To answer your actual question, I cannot name a single game in the RTS genre that I would want to play more than Ashes right now. If you understand my previous paragraph, you will know that that statement isn't as complimentary as it seems.
When you live and die by your metacritic/steam review aggregate, spending twice as much money to get a 90 average instead of the mid 70's isn't a bad investment. You guys barely hit the top ten with Ashes, it's so not cool when it deserves to sell way better than it is.
And Supreme Commander lost millions of dollars and GPG is gone. The days of the $20 million RTS game are long long gone. Ashes doesn't have the scope of SupCom did because it had 1/7th its budget. But that doesn't mean it's not finished. It just means that it will take time and money for Ashes to evolve into whatever it is to become over the next several years.
Going bankrupt several years later after a string of flops, including the sequel, doesn't really apply to Supreme Commander, which did better than a million copies. I'm not expecting Ashes to manage that.
If you had waited until summer and released with your deluxe campaign, which you're clearly paying for and implementing regardless, most of the bombed reviews would be much better. They don't care about your development model. They ignore you while you're in beta, and they'll continue to ignore you six months from now when they'd rate you in the 90's if you were releasing the game as it will be then. I'm not seeing any monumental cost increase here, just a steep hit to your sales because half the reviewers are bombing you over the campaign.
Patience, actually. Based on your previous entries and the reasons reviewers are giving, I figure another three months and you'd be riding high 80's, six and you'd still be in the top ten at this point with most reviews being 90 plus. My depression is over your results, not your end product which will surely be fantastic, and played by a small fraction of the people it could have...
Most of the things listed are not unique to AotS though, except for the light source for each object, but that is more of a engine thing than a game play thing. (In other words, it wouldn't make any difference if it was there or not, it is just eye candy with no real purpose except for giving more eye candy to the user.) I would even argue that the unit formation can be a bad thing, in that the rear units are the weakest, and now, when you are trying to retreat, they end up being fodder (since they are being pushed to the back, waiting for the front line to retreat) while the front line units run for cover.
Not sure why you think a having a 'clear hard counter' is a bonus, it falls into the rock, paper, scissors mentality, (They come at me with a rock, I need paper. They come at me with paper, I need scissors!), but again, that isn't unique, and pigeon holes people to have the same counters over and over again, and this is usually because of lack of different units types.
For everything else, those have also been in other games, so, nothing truly unique was presented.
I know you think I am being a PITA (or worse), but, honestly, I am trying to nudge the game to be a more complete game, thus generating higher review scores, thus generating more sales.
As was already mentioned, not many review sites will go back and review the same game again, and that is unfortunate for AotS, since it does have lots of potential to leave a definitive mark on the RTS community, but, it just isn't there at this time (see original post). The saving grace here is, that user reviews can and do change over time, and in the long run, you will have the higher review scores that you were first seeking.
I have no idea if you have played these RTS games or not, and in no particular order, Warzone 2100, Dark Reign 2, World in Conflict, Universe at War, Ground Control 2, Metal Fatigue, Z, Act of War, (not listing Westwood/Relic/Blizzard/Cave dog games), but, these are the ones that come to mind with your list that you made. These games are not perfect, but, each of them have a piece of the puzzle of the definitive RTS game that we are all looking for.
Funny enough, the only game that is still being developed from that list is Warzone 2100 (https://sourceforge.net/projects/warzone2100/) so, it still shows that people are still playing "old" games trying to get their RTS fix. Maybe one day AotS will be open sourced as well.
I take the time to list 10 unique things about Ashes and your response is to hand wave those things away? I'm done talking to you.
No one lives and dies by metacritic anymore. Also, forgive me for being a little snarky but until you actually run a game company, please understand how arm chair game industry advice sounds to someone who's been doing it successfully for 20 years. Many of the best selling Indie titles don't even have metacritic scores.
Secondly, going to the pain thrust of your post which is "You shoulda", is your advice that we abandon Ashes and move on to a new game? If not, then what, exactly, are you hoping to accomplish? Some sort of lessons for the future? Because again, there's nothing particularly constructive in your post. If we knew the campaign would so heavily affect the reviews, we would have done the Deluxe edition of the campaign on the outset. Sins had no campaign. Demigod had no campaign. GalCiv I had no campaign. We had no expectation that this would be a huge issue. So other than having a time machine, there's not a lot we could have done on that.
We already took the campaign lesson to heart and applied it to Offworld Trading Company which will ship with an extensive campaign.
And: You are moving the goal posts. None of your arguments indicate that Ashes was unfinished.
Your main argument seems to be that we should have done what SupCom did which was lose millions of dollars. SupCom 1 did not sell a million copies at full price or anywhere near it. So they did FA to try to address it and it did ok but not well enough to abandon the entire game design to do SupCom 2.
Will Ashes sell a million copies over time? Who knows. What I do know is that it will make a profit which will allow us to keep working on it -- despite the implication by you that we should just give up on it (unless you're just trying to be a demoralizing for the sake of being demoralizing).
If you guys were looking for a way to make me lose interest in talking to you, you were successful.
guys... SupCom is dead... even the modding community is barely alive
let Ashes (which is in it`s current state a good game and i am a very critical person, played Grey Goo, Act of Aggression etc. and dont like them) evolve
Stardock is independent since 20! years, mainly developing Strategy Games
there are so many RTS Developers (BIG succesfull ones) which got closed
Westwood Studios, GPG, Ensemble Studios, Stainless Steel Studios etc.
anyway, if you dont like the game fine... everyone has a different opinion but stop hating in here
if you want to compare it to non RTS games fine... but this wouldnt be fair at all since non RTS games got ALOT higher budgets (and are shipped in a beta state after all) while most Indie games arent as complex as Ashes
(from Eviator)
Just to emphasize this point: I agree with your earlier break down of the pros and cons you listed.
To answer your specific question here:
The reason is the genre, budget, and price. First, price is a huge factor. If you're $20 most people will let it slide. Have you played Factorio? While I personally like it, if it had been priced at $49.99 it would have gotten murdered in reviews. Should Ashes have been priced at $19.99? Who can say. HomeWorld: DOK is $49.99 and has a higher review score than Ashes and Ashes will pass it in sales probably the end of Summer.
In short, new engines are hard. New IP is hard. Putting them together is super hard. Petrologlyph is releasing a new RTS today (8 bit armies). It's the Nth RTS they've done with that engine and they're pricing it at $14.99. We'll be watching closely to see how they do.
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