>only
i dont mind new games (like shadow empire) but good ones are so rare and almost always from indie developers i doubt zoomers will ever know about them
It really did peak in the 90s huh
2020s strategies just try (and fail) to artificially recreate that "old school flavour" like an ice cream maker making strawberry gelato out of crude oil
Goes to show that og xcom (mods and vanilla) and both MoOs are still superior to this day
>og xcom
Pure nostalgia and forgetting how fricking raw the game was without extender, OXC and balance mods. >the only weapon worth using is heavy plasma >psionics compeltely break the game >useless half-baked features, such as base defense missile batteries and cloaking >air game boils down to avalanches into plasma beams, everything else is useless >0-200% damage RNG
>>the only weapon worth using is heavy plasma
You only unlock it late in the game. What do you use until then?
Also, you're forgetting the blaster launcher and small launcher.
Also, the game isn't just weapons. There's also a lot of actually useful grenades, and let's not forget the most important and holy item in the entire game: the high explosive
>You only unlock it late in the game
No, you unlock it after the first terror mission, or earlier, if you get lucky with alien drops. You can research and use it immediately, there are no prerequisites or technology tiers in old-com. >blaster launcher and small launcher
Unusable because ammo takes up too much of the 80-item limit, another excellent "feature" pre-OXC vanilla had. > the most important and holy item in the entire game: the high explosive
Trash and nobody used it. OXC has an option to make it much more powerful, you might be confused because of it.
>golden ages aren't real >progress is happening, games must necessarily be getting better as they become part of publicly traded companies that only care about pleasing shareholders
if you don't like big budget game development, well, good thing self published indie titles have never been more prolific or high quality. expand your horizons.
volume is no replacement for quality, but yes there are some good games, just absolutely no replacement for Diablo II, Brood War, Civ III, Combat Evolved, Perfect Dark, etc.
see that's the misunderstanding. there is no need to replace the classics, they are still here. and if you play new games in hopes of finding something that can, well, that's wagging the dog. you should play new to games to play _new_ games.
amazing how many of these were from microprose (and transport tycoon, railroad tycoon). between 1993 -1995 it felt as if every month there's a new genre defining title
but they're all refinements of older games:
- laser squad
- avalon hill's civilization, incunabula
- civilization mixed with magic the gathering
- spaceward ho
like every time it's some half baked idea form the 1980s that got polished off, benefiting from the new hardware that finally caught up, and matured battle hardened designers. i think just in the 4x genre, it had to be like 10-15 failed predecessors. fresher examples - factorio and infinifactory, minecraft and infiniminer.
there's a lack of shitty but original games, that could get ripped off and refined, and there's overabundance of clones of things, that got perfected 20 years ago.
to be honest i would buy remasters all of OP games if they were good quality
so far >xenonauts - plain suck compared to UFO >various freecivs suck >the remaster of MoM is fricking terrible >RotP have shitty art direction and other frick ups
Nothing wrong with remasters, a lot of games could definitely benefit from them. The problem is when it becomes a bad remake or a hamfisted homage or sequel.
>the biggest insult is that these clones are not even good
The annoying thing is, I think they aren't shameless enough.
If they were shameless, and copied more, but had a modern paint on it, without delving too much into graphics, they would be better.
I had hope for the MoM remake, since they were talking about making it basically 1:1 but hexes, but then it ended up running poorly and they were also somehow unable to recreate certain spells from 30 years ago(?????)
>avalon hill's civilization
Talk about kino. I feel like Time-Life's book series called the Emergence of Man influenced the aesthetics and feel of games like Civilization and Age of Empires. Impossible to know, though, what these men were thinking about in the 80s and 90s and what influenced them. Unless there are interviews, whatever sparked their imaginations to make the best pc strategy games is a mystery.
I don't know.
You have a solid lineup there, and even going further, RTS games, among the best and most popular to this day are also 90s rts games, Broodwar and AoE2.
Beyond that, we also have Homm2+Homm3 from the 90s.
The 90s were amazing for strategy games, but it's not like I think everything after is irrelevant.
I think civ3 was a misstep, Civ4 went out of form but it is a favourite among many, same with civ5 really. I don't even think Civ 6 is bad, but 4-6 all work very differently compared to Civ2.
SMAC though, a game I have yet to play, it does seem to play pretty much like civ2, but with a different theme, some more variety and really interesting weather and terrain mechanics.
Fantasy 4x sadly hasn't progressed past Master of Magic, and I'm not sure about space 4x really either.
I don't really know xcom.
I thought the new ones were well regarded tho?
>tabletop wargames are outpacing pc strategy games for a decade by now
There are so much ripe ideas for the picking there and all we ever get is a fricking nucom clones with different coats of paint.
I meant general design. For example Infinity is unmatched still as far as skirmish tactics go and particularly begs to be made into pc game with the amount of bullshit you need to track and sheer unwieldiness of true los in table top.
i feel like the "video games were better in the 90s" people just need to break out and play some more games. the sheer volume we get these days. there's no way you guys can't find something you like.
ok christwigger. I see that you've retvrned to smoking weed. Shadow Magic is the best Age of Wonders by far and it came out in 2003 and still couldn't match the charm of HoMM3.
why the frick does the mom remaster even slightly matter, when the far superior age of wonders has gotten like 5 games? literally just name recognition?.
it was just kinda the vibe. people crying the mom remaster sucked, and then ignoring the age of wonders series completely.
also i'm so so tired of RETVRN homosexualry and this is the video game application of it.
>people crying the mom remaster sucked, and then ignoring the age of wonders series completely. >why the frick does the mom remaster even slightly matter, when the
Have you played Master of Magic, and the Age of Wonders game?
They play very differently.
Most Age of Wonders games aren't even technically 4x games, and those that are, have very simplistic 4x mechanics.
I played Age of Wonders 1, 2 and Shadow Magic, before I played Master of Magic.
Master of Magic looked fine to me, I was recommended by a few friends, figured it would be an outdated AoW.
It wasn't.
It was better.
It does stuff that Age of Wonders doesn't do.
Age of Wonders 2 looked simple and disappointing after I played MoM.
The wizard creation is much better, the mana-research-skill three-way split is a perfect way to balance out power. In AoW I just put everything into research until I was done, and then over to mana, but in Master of Magic I was balancing that throughout my games, getting a higher spellcasting skill was always very satisfying.
When Age of Wonders 3 was coming out, and I saw that footage, first I was disappointed when I saw that they made the armies smaller, only like 6 units per stack instead of 8, or whatever it was, but I was overjoyed when I saw more than 1 figure per stack, I thought they were adding in the figure mechanic from Master of Magic, which makes MoM combat way better than AoW combat.
It was only for aesthetics.
They also removed % hit chance, which broke the balance of unit stats since they are so low.
Lower accuracy, just meant lower damage.
With a minimum of 1.
Which becomes a problem, when units already deal low amounts of damage, but then they hit for several times per attack, with more elements, like 9 guaranteed damage against an 80% resistant unit.
Planetfall went back on that luckily, but I've yet to try it.
Also, paradox is an awful publisher, so I have less hope for AoW now.
volume is no replacement for quality, but yes there are some good games, just absolutely no replacement for Diablo II, Brood War, Civ III, Combat Evolved, Perfect Dark, etc.
I'm not sure if video games in general peaked in the 90s, but I play a good amount of games since then, and strategy games specifically seem to have a lot of heavy hitters that haven't really been fully toppled since then.
When it comes to competitive rts games, the top 3 today, I think are starcraft 2, broodwar and age of empires 2.
2 of them are 90s strategy games.
AoE2 got a lot of expansions since then, broodwar got a remastered, but these players did try other games, it's just that broodwar and age of empires 2, are simply better than later rts games in a lot of ways.
My personal favourite rts game isn't a 90s game, it is warcraft 3, because of ums tho which isn't really an rts reason.
More generally speaking when it comes to people liking older games, I think it's just that when franchises wanted to expand their audiences, they often left mechanics behind that the older audience liked, or focused too much effort on things that the older audience didn't care about.
>I think it's just that when franchises wanted to expand their audiences, they often left mechanics behind that the older audience liked, or focused too much effort on things that the older audience didn't care about.
This. It's hard to expand your customer base without shitting on your loyal customers. Worse, the new customers they attract by rebranding are not loyal customers, and switch to the next new, shiny thing leaving the company with no customers.
I can't think of a single product I buy because of rebranding, but can easily think of several I don't buy because of rebranding
>the first Dominions game came out in 2001 and the game got better and better with each installment >the first Conquest of Elysium came out in 1997, but again, it got improved with each sequel >Majesty came out in 2000 >Kingdom Under Fire: the Crusaders in 2004 >Supreme Commander in 2007 >Brutal Legend in 2009
These are the definite apexes of strategy too, and they came after the 90s.
I'm a zoomer and all my favourite games are from the 90s. Game design overall has changed over the years, and different people prefer different things.
>Things I grew up with
BASED
>Things YOU grew up with
CRINGE
Any questions?
i pitty the generation who was born after 2010 and have to grow up with modern games lol
I pity those whose only joy is the past
>only
i dont mind new games (like shadow empire) but good ones are so rare and almost always from indie developers i doubt zoomers will ever know about them
I mean, post 2010 babies really are fricked.
t. 2001
I still saw authentic 90s pixels when I grew up because I didn't play shooters are every game in the 2000s and 2010s was either an MMO or a shooter.
>look in fathers shelf
>find old game
>play old game
>happy
A tale as old as games
It really did peak in the 90s huh
2020s strategies just try (and fail) to artificially recreate that "old school flavour" like an ice cream maker making strawberry gelato out of crude oil
Goes to show that og xcom (mods and vanilla) and both MoOs are still superior to this day
>og xcom
Pure nostalgia and forgetting how fricking raw the game was without extender, OXC and balance mods.
>the only weapon worth using is heavy plasma
>psionics compeltely break the game
>useless half-baked features, such as base defense missile batteries and cloaking
>air game boils down to avalanches into plasma beams, everything else is useless
>0-200% damage RNG
>>the only weapon worth using is heavy plasma
You only unlock it late in the game. What do you use until then?
Also, you're forgetting the blaster launcher and small launcher.
Also, the game isn't just weapons. There's also a lot of actually useful grenades, and let's not forget the most important and holy item in the entire game: the high explosive
>You only unlock it late in the game
No, you unlock it after the first terror mission, or earlier, if you get lucky with alien drops. You can research and use it immediately, there are no prerequisites or technology tiers in old-com.
>blaster launcher and small launcher
Unusable because ammo takes up too much of the 80-item limit, another excellent "feature" pre-OXC vanilla had.
> the most important and holy item in the entire game: the high explosive
Trash and nobody used it. OXC has an option to make it much more powerful, you might be confused because of it.
fpwp
sorry kid, I was in my 30s when those games came out and I still say that they were the best
Okay Daddy
>anon is in his 60's now
Shouldn't you be in bed, grandpa?
Played OG Xcum around 2 years before nuXcom and I still think its mechanically better.
Master of Magic as well, its just too good of a concept.
But I still think Strategy as a whole peaked around 2000-2004, where there was an actual boom and experimentation with limits of the genre.
Video games in general peaked in the 90s
Here comes the zoomer cope
>Video games in general peaked in the 90s
PSX was peak console
>golden ages aren't real
>progress is happening, games must necessarily be getting better as they become part of publicly traded companies that only care about pleasing shareholders
if you don't like big budget game development, well, good thing self published indie titles have never been more prolific or high quality. expand your horizons.
see that's the misunderstanding. there is no need to replace the classics, they are still here. and if you play new games in hopes of finding something that can, well, that's wagging the dog. you should play new to games to play _new_ games.
Boomers have to vent about their nostalgia sometimes.
amazing how many of these were from microprose (and transport tycoon, railroad tycoon). between 1993 -1995 it felt as if every month there's a new genre defining title
but they're all refinements of older games:
- laser squad
- avalon hill's civilization, incunabula
- civilization mixed with magic the gathering
- spaceward ho
like every time it's some half baked idea form the 1980s that got polished off, benefiting from the new hardware that finally caught up, and matured battle hardened designers. i think just in the 4x genre, it had to be like 10-15 failed predecessors. fresher examples - factorio and infinifactory, minecraft and infiniminer.
there's a lack of shitty but original games, that could get ripped off and refined, and there's overabundance of clones of things, that got perfected 20 years ago.
>and there's overabundance of clones of things, that got perfected 20 years ago
the biggest insult is that these clones are not even good
It's in all media, tv, film, games. If you can't even make a sequel that builds on and improves on the predecessor, why should I buy it?
Shit like CoH3 and D4 stand out, but there are dozens.
to be honest i would buy remasters all of OP games if they were good quality
so far
>xenonauts - plain suck compared to UFO
>various freecivs suck
>the remaster of MoM is fricking terrible
>RotP have shitty art direction and other frick ups
Nothing wrong with remasters, a lot of games could definitely benefit from them. The problem is when it becomes a bad remake or a hamfisted homage or sequel.
>the biggest insult is that these clones are not even good
The annoying thing is, I think they aren't shameless enough.
If they were shameless, and copied more, but had a modern paint on it, without delving too much into graphics, they would be better.
I had hope for the MoM remake, since they were talking about making it basically 1:1 but hexes, but then it ended up running poorly and they were also somehow unable to recreate certain spells from 30 years ago(?????)
>avalon hill's civilization
Talk about kino. I feel like Time-Life's book series called the Emergence of Man influenced the aesthetics and feel of games like Civilization and Age of Empires. Impossible to know, though, what these men were thinking about in the 80s and 90s and what influenced them. Unless there are interviews, whatever sparked their imaginations to make the best pc strategy games is a mystery.
We still have Dominions
Shame that 90s UI sucks ass.
Master of magic with 1.60 community patch which adds customizable hotkeys and edge scrolling unironically has better UI than the "remaster"
I don't know.
You have a solid lineup there, and even going further, RTS games, among the best and most popular to this day are also 90s rts games, Broodwar and AoE2.
Beyond that, we also have Homm2+Homm3 from the 90s.
The 90s were amazing for strategy games, but it's not like I think everything after is irrelevant.
I think civ3 was a misstep, Civ4 went out of form but it is a favourite among many, same with civ5 really. I don't even think Civ 6 is bad, but 4-6 all work very differently compared to Civ2.
SMAC though, a game I have yet to play, it does seem to play pretty much like civ2, but with a different theme, some more variety and really interesting weather and terrain mechanics.
Fantasy 4x sadly hasn't progressed past Master of Magic, and I'm not sure about space 4x really either.
I don't really know xcom.
I thought the new ones were well regarded tho?
>I thought the new ones were well regarded tho?
They're well regarded by people that never played the original.
Ah, fair
>tabletop wargames are outpacing pc strategy games for a decade by now
There are so much ripe ideas for the picking there and all we ever get is a fricking nucom clones with different coats of paint.
you need to have friends to play tabletop anon, not even mention a table
I meant general design. For example Infinity is unmatched still as far as skirmish tactics go and particularly begs to be made into pc game with the amount of bullshit you need to track and sheer unwieldiness of true los in table top.
i feel like the "video games were better in the 90s" people just need to break out and play some more games. the sheer volume we get these days. there's no way you guys can't find something you like.
Who says we haven't?
it was just kinda the vibe. people crying the mom remaster sucked, and then ignoring the age of wonders series completely.
also i'm so so tired of RETVRN homosexualry and this is the video game application of it.
ok christwigger. I see that you've retvrned to smoking weed. Shadow Magic is the best Age of Wonders by far and it came out in 2003 and still couldn't match the charm of HoMM3.
why the frick does the mom remaster even slightly matter, when the far superior age of wonders has gotten like 5 games? literally just name recognition?.
>people crying the mom remaster sucked, and then ignoring the age of wonders series completely.
>why the frick does the mom remaster even slightly matter, when the
Have you played Master of Magic, and the Age of Wonders game?
They play very differently.
Most Age of Wonders games aren't even technically 4x games, and those that are, have very simplistic 4x mechanics.
I played Age of Wonders 1, 2 and Shadow Magic, before I played Master of Magic.
Master of Magic looked fine to me, I was recommended by a few friends, figured it would be an outdated AoW.
It wasn't.
It was better.
It does stuff that Age of Wonders doesn't do.
Age of Wonders 2 looked simple and disappointing after I played MoM.
The wizard creation is much better, the mana-research-skill three-way split is a perfect way to balance out power. In AoW I just put everything into research until I was done, and then over to mana, but in Master of Magic I was balancing that throughout my games, getting a higher spellcasting skill was always very satisfying.
When Age of Wonders 3 was coming out, and I saw that footage, first I was disappointed when I saw that they made the armies smaller, only like 6 units per stack instead of 8, or whatever it was, but I was overjoyed when I saw more than 1 figure per stack, I thought they were adding in the figure mechanic from Master of Magic, which makes MoM combat way better than AoW combat.
It was only for aesthetics.
They also removed % hit chance, which broke the balance of unit stats since they are so low.
Lower accuracy, just meant lower damage.
With a minimum of 1.
Which becomes a problem, when units already deal low amounts of damage, but then they hit for several times per attack, with more elements, like 9 guaranteed damage against an 80% resistant unit.
Planetfall went back on that luckily, but I've yet to try it.
Also, paradox is an awful publisher, so I have less hope for AoW now.
volume is no replacement for quality, but yes there are some good games, just absolutely no replacement for Diablo II, Brood War, Civ III, Combat Evolved, Perfect Dark, etc.
I'm not sure if video games in general peaked in the 90s, but I play a good amount of games since then, and strategy games specifically seem to have a lot of heavy hitters that haven't really been fully toppled since then.
When it comes to competitive rts games, the top 3 today, I think are starcraft 2, broodwar and age of empires 2.
2 of them are 90s strategy games.
AoE2 got a lot of expansions since then, broodwar got a remastered, but these players did try other games, it's just that broodwar and age of empires 2, are simply better than later rts games in a lot of ways.
My personal favourite rts game isn't a 90s game, it is warcraft 3, because of ums tho which isn't really an rts reason.
More generally speaking when it comes to people liking older games, I think it's just that when franchises wanted to expand their audiences, they often left mechanics behind that the older audience liked, or focused too much effort on things that the older audience didn't care about.
>I think it's just that when franchises wanted to expand their audiences, they often left mechanics behind that the older audience liked, or focused too much effort on things that the older audience didn't care about.
This. It's hard to expand your customer base without shitting on your loyal customers. Worse, the new customers they attract by rebranding are not loyal customers, and switch to the next new, shiny thing leaving the company with no customers.
I can't think of a single product I buy because of rebranding, but can easily think of several I don't buy because of rebranding
ITT redditoids pretending that Overwatch is better than TF2
nah. golden age is over. only pale imitations remain.
NO new thing is good, I don't want to accept that I missed the boat on video games!!!
>the first Dominions game came out in 2001 and the game got better and better with each installment
>the first Conquest of Elysium came out in 1997, but again, it got improved with each sequel
>Majesty came out in 2000
>Kingdom Under Fire: the Crusaders in 2004
>Supreme Commander in 2007
>Brutal Legend in 2009
These are the definite apexes of strategy too, and they came after the 90s.
If you ask an older person to select their favourite game, they will probably select something nostalgic.
If you ask the same of the younger person, they will probably select something new. The truth is somewhere in between
I'm a zoomer and all my favourite games are from the 90s. Game design overall has changed over the years, and different people prefer different things.
my fav games are the games that I play, most of them are old