> > I love the idea of an RTS set in the Halo universe, but Halo Wars failed miserably.
> >
> > First of all, you cannot expect an RTS on a console to do well. Halo Wars made playable controls, but a gamepad just won’t do for the amount of control you need and want in an RTS. (Microsoft is mainly a PC company, they should have released it as part of their “Games for Windows Live” thing.)
> >
> > Second of all, the only RTS that ever did well with only two factions were Command & Conquer, and those games had almost completely mirrored units. You need at least three factions to get a “paper, scissors, rock” thing going. They claimed to have made one with “vehicles, infantry, aircraft” but infantry just can’t beat aircraft unless seriously massed against a laughably small fleet. If the Flood had been a playable faction maybe, then you’d have UNSC*(Terran), Flood(Zerg)*, Covenant (Protoss).
> >
> > Third of all, you can’t make an RTS and only have a campaign for one of the factions (Starcraft 2 can, because they’ve planned expansions with campaigns for the other two factions). It gives the one faction too much focus and only really teaches the player how to play that one faction properly.
> >
> > And finally, you cannot have one faction with leader units and one without, it decimates any chance of balancing the game. Right now the Covenant player has to be superior to the UNSC player in order to beat him and he has to rush, because late-game there’s just no way.
> >
> > I would like a Halo strategy game, but that’s because I’ve been playing XCOM lately and I think our universe has superior aliens. I’m crossing my fingers for a balanced and fun Halo Wars 2 on PC, though.
>
> Considering success is based on sales reception and critical reception, Halo Wars did do well, extremely well in fact.
>
> Saying that a RTS on the console cannot do well is akin to saying that a racing game on the pc cannot be expected to be great if you only have a mouse and keyboard, or saying that a FPS on the consoles is going to be rubbish as you lack a mouse. Arguably you have a massive advantage when designing a RTS for a computer, however Halo Wars does offer the complexity required to make it possible to play it seriously, and not just casually. This is because halo wars was designed to be played on the xbox, not the computer and then ported. The controls worked, but it meant the developers had to hold back, at the end of the day though it made the RTS scene more popular and mainstream as the whole game was less complicated and more casual. Fans of the FPS versus genre were playing an RTS game, and they loved it, and they were playing it on a console, how is this not a success?
>
> To combat triangle did fail in halo wars. Infantry are inferior to aircraft because 1: 10 aircraft can shoot simultaneously at infantry whereas infantry get stuck on one another so that only 5 infantry/20 are fighting one aircraft simultaneously. 2: Infantry move far slower than aircraft and cannot pass over impassable terrain. If only infantry did twice as much damage against aircraft or moved faster the problem would be solved. Still, because of this, it does mean that teching up to vehicles/aircraft is more viable than spamming as many infantry as possible, which I suppose one could argue is a relief.
>
> There is nothing wrong with only having one race having a campaign on a game where their are multiple races. It is just beneficial to have multiple campaigns. Do you really think a risky investment such as this was going to spend time developing a second campaign when the first one was so well thought over and developed. You had to make all the epic cutscene. Integrate it into the plot along with the UNSC campaign, and of course the canon of the halo universe and all this had a price and time tag.
>
> I don’t understand how this is a issue. It is a absolute lie to say that to win as covenant you must be a better player than a UNSC. As covenant on some maps you will dominate as your leader will let you get hooks, allow you to constantly harass the enemy to keep their tech down and prevent them from expoing. Plus the covenant have early access (t1) to vehicles and aircraft for a reason. Some maps make it easier for covy and some for UNSC, but overall the leaders are extremely balanced and the fact that the humans don’t have on field leaders yet get access to global abilities really adds to the variety of the game and makes it more enjoyable.
I didn’t read this before several hours later and I’m very tired right now, so I’ll just be quick and address one thing that bothered me about your comment.
Sales is not the way you measure a game’s success. If you do, then you’re not a gamer. Halo Wars is a dead game, and has been so for years. Whether it was a good investment for Microsoft or not is irrelevant to the player. The game is horrifically imbalanced and FULL of major flaws that were never addressed and never will be.
A console RTS is too slow and sluggish to create a pro-scene, or become an entertaining eSport to watch. You could argue that a gamepad is slower than a mouse in an FPS too, but you don’t need to multitask micro and macro (that’s another thing, Halo Wars is EXTREMELY sluggish micro-wise. They units are almost non-responsive and there is no way to make them stop doing something instantly or make them hold position) nor do you need to move across the map swiftly to check different areas, nor can you even hotkey troops.
And yes, the Covie player needs to be of superior skill when fighting a UNSC player, unless they rush of course. Late-game there is no point in even playing if you’re the one with the shiny base. Actually, arguing with you made me realize even more how much this game sucks. What a terrible way for a beloved developer like Ensemble to go out.