How many actual MMORTS games have you played?

[szatuchny]

MMORTS stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy Game. As gamers on this forum I would hope most of you at least know this much. However knowing what MMORTS stands for should allow players to classify games correctly into this category, unfortunately that is not the case.

MMO – Massive Multi Player Online. This means that a game has to allow multiple players to game together. Not 2 not 4 not even 16 but hundreds or even thousands of players in the same world. Having a matchmaking system that allows you to find a game with 6 other guys doesn’t cut it.

I would also argue that MMO means the world is fully persistent. This means the world can’t reset whenever it gets so out of balance that continued play is impossible, otherwise you’re just playing an RTS game over multiple sessions. In this one area Shattered Galaxy failed miserably, although I forgive this one infraction due to all the other innovations. SAGA on the other hand fails at allowing you to see all the players at the same time, however it is fully persistent going on 2 years without a reset and none planned.

IMO Persistency trumps all because you want to feel attached to your character. You want to know that building a powerful army and creating powerful weapons has real permanent meaning and isn’t something that will disappear in a month’s time forcing you to start from scratch.

RTS – REAL TIME Strategy. You see what I did there with real time? This means you need to move your troops around a board in real time. While I enjoyed Evony a lot and am looking forward to playing Trivian, and OMG Heroes of Gaia is AMAZING. None of these are RTS games. They are pure strategy, which is a genre I also love.

So I say in order for a game to be fully classified as MMORTS it must

1. Allow thousands of players to interact in one large world.
2. Be fully Persistent
3. Be playable in Real Time

Using those 3 simple rules I would have to say I never played a real MMORTS, however a true MMORTS remains my dream. Our new game code named Saga Pirates (we have no pirates) due out this year is all that and more. I hope Dawn of Fantasy also fills the bill, because while I really enjoy Saga Pirates you can’t really play your own game.

[Supreme]

How about this: it is one large world divided as one big chessboard of squeres of which you can pass through gates (north, south, west, east). That was the system they had in the game I mentioned earlier.

[blackfang]

http://beyondprotocol.com/ thats your game that has released. Its awesome however its hard to learn it... Its persistent and its a lot of players... its real time

[Vimes]

I am noticing a distinct lack of Scifi (understandableon a Fantasy themed games forums lol) and two very big omissions. Mankind was the precursor to Beyond Protocol though I think mankind will have amuch harder time keeping its code up to date. Beyond protocol is the zenith of MMORTS atm and if you havent tried it with serious intent then do so before getting into this game. It will give you a good taste of many aspects of the genre you will find here shortly and I would hope moderate your frustrations as this genre has its 'issues'. Dont assume im here pimping,as my latest blog article on the site shows - i am done with the devs and game changes.

For the devs - if there is one piece of advice you will take from this somewhat tired and jaded gamer with a passion for this genre its simply this. Go play Beyond Protocol and learn the lesssons they trip over before you get to them yourselves. there are many issues you may have considered - go witness them occur in all the bloody detail. The one key lesson is get a good team on the front line. Dont let a coder who has to slave to their many wishes loose on them lol.. its never pretty. Or the game owner (thats a personal observation lol). I have yet to meet a dev who has seriously played through the genre like a real player. Maybe Treeform lol.

Im not here stirring for Beyond Protocol but I remain shocked at how little folks look around the genre. On my sites game list there is 35 games - many i will agree dont count as true mmorts but still little mention on threads like this.

[blackfang]

http://www.mmorts.com/ This is where i check REGULARLY!

[Vimes]

Yeah they have done such a great job for the genre that site.. thanks for the emphasis lol. That site was why I set up mine lol. Nice to see him active after a few years - think he sensed my distraction last few months with 5 kids and such lol. He will go quiet again shortly as I intend to make a final push for dominance mwuahahahhah... oh this is the sites not the games... never met him in a MMORTS tbh..

[Zeluk]

Never played a MMORTS before, so largely a nub. I look forward to the experience as I'm beginning to doubt the gaming industry as a whole. Just not enough new recipes being added to the mix, too few innovations being made and developers are starting to get lazy.

[DarkMaster]

I would also argue that MMO means the world is fully persistent. This means the world can’t reset whenever it gets so out of balance that continued play is impossible, otherwise you’re just playing an RTS game over multiple sessions. In this one area Shattered Galaxy failed miserably, although I forgive this one infraction due to all the other innovations. SAGA on the other hand fails at allowing you to see all the players at the same time, however it is fully persistent going on 2 years without a reset and none planned.

I hate resets . It's better to just start a new server to complement the old one, or to expand the existimg one IMO.

RTS – REAL TIME Strategy. You see what I did there with real time? This means you need to move your troops around a board in real time. While I enjoyed Evony a lot and am looking forward to playing Trivian, and OMG Heroes of Gaia is AMAZING. None of these are RTS games. They are pure strategy, which is a genre I also love.

I have to disagree with your view on "real time" here. Real time simply means that things are happening all the time while you're playing. In other words, if the time at which you click the button to move your troops effects the game, then it's real-time. If you have to wait for a certain "phase" or "turn" to do so, then it's turn-based. I can't think of a single game which doesn't fit in either of these two categories.

[blackfang]

ooo i can, its called cs and its and fps Anyways the best mmorts out there yet is beyond protocol, i played through the entire beta test but i lost the means to play it, i could not play it anymore due to the monthly (my parents are very strict about those) Anyways it is a cool game, i was part of the black hand. We were the top ranking group during beta and fought both qua'sha conclave and traders consortium, we were the most famous alliance on that game But then the real game started and half our guild quited due to p2p and now they are harassed by qua'sha and tc since we pwned them back in beta Ohh and traders consortium was actually a bunch of players wanting to role play but then they unconditionally started conquering systems so we just returned with server crashing fleets 10 k ships on the screen at once meant serious lag and eventually crashing the server. (out of all the crashes the black hand stood for two of them ) Anyways enough of me explaining BP its great go buy it Ohh and P.S if you find Sir Paradox go give him a wack tell him its from me, he was my rival. I was a small player in front of him but i cleared him out of every system i found (tc)

[welshie]

Originally Posted by blackfang

ooo i can, its called cs and its and fps Anyways the best mmorts out there yet is beyond protocol, i played through the entire beta test but i lost the means to play it, i could not play it anymore due to the monthly (my parents are very strict about those) Anyways it is a cool game, i was part of the black hand. We were the top ranking group during beta and fought both qua'sha conclave and traders consortium, we were the most famous alliance on that game But then the real game started and half our guild quited due to p2p and now they are harassed by qua'sha and tc since we pwned them back in beta Ohh and traders consortium was actually a bunch of players wanting to role play but then they unconditionally started conquering systems so we just returned with server crashing fleets 10 k ships on the screen at once meant serious lag and eventually crashing the server. (out of all the crashes the black hand stood for two of them ) Anyways enough of me explaining BP its great go buy it Ohh and P.S if you find Sir Paradox go give him a wack tell him its from me, he was my rival. I was a small player in front of him but i cleared him out of every system i found (tc)

Its a real time FPS, sorry to burst ya bubble, lol any who MMORTS' are hard to come by as the word 'Massvily multiplayer' comes in the contention i have played many RTS' online but not many of them consisted of enough players to call then 'Massivly Multiplayer' and i do hope there will be enough for DoF to enter this