I genuinely can’t stand the click to control scheme. It took micro-ing, an emergent and annoying feature of RTS, and made it the entire basis of a control scheme.
In RTS, there’s necessarily a layer of abstraction over combat, to enable control of more than one or two entities. It makes sense that you just click, and the entity auto moved and auto-attacks. It’s an unfortunate side effect that players could get an advantage by wringing every last degree of control out of that control system.
The problem is it feels terrible. Any other control scheme gives more granularity of control. With micro, the control scheme itself is the challenge. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for that sort of thing. I like QWOP, Surgeon Simulator, and Getting Over It as much as anyone else. But it’s a novelty, not the basis of a strategic multiplayer game.
I agree but I don't know how you solve it without locking out player control after a combat engagement has started. One idea I had a while ago was that instead of allowing the player to control units in combat what you do is have one extremely simple "retreat" option. Either the units are engaged in combat or the units retreat from combat to a safe location. This would eliminate combat micro.
The casual side of the RTS audience that doesn't micro anyway will probably like this while the competitive side that has developed with micro existing will hate it.
I genuinely can’t stand the click to control scheme. It took micro-ing, an emergent and annoying feature of RTS, and made it the entire basis of a control scheme.
In RTS, there’s necessarily a layer of abstraction over combat, to enable control of more than one or two entities. It makes sense that you just click, and the entity auto moved and auto-attacks. It’s an unfortunate side effect that players could get an advantage by wringing every last degree of control out of that control system.
The problem is it feels terrible. Any other control scheme gives more granularity of control. With micro, the control scheme itself is the challenge. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for that sort of thing. I like QWOP, Surgeon Simulator, and Getting Over It as much as anyone else. But it’s a novelty, not the basis of a strategic multiplayer game.
I agree but I don't know how you solve it without locking out player control after a combat engagement has started. One idea I had a while ago was that instead of allowing the player to control units in combat what you do is have one extremely simple "retreat" option. Either the units are engaged in combat or the units retreat from combat to a safe location. This would eliminate combat micro.
The casual side of the RTS audience that doesn't micro anyway will probably like this while the competitive side that has developed with micro existing will hate it.