Where's My Dictionary?

This has been a long time coming, but it is an issue that is dear to me, even if in the end my core arugment might be summarized as mere semantics, but I do not really care. The use of the term strategy, in Real Time Strategies has long irked me to great end. Because having focused rather extensively upon military history my professor took a class to carefully make sure we each understood what Strategy meant in war. He established it by stating that it took place involving certain numbers of troops, and if you went smaller then you descended into the realms of tactics. And there is a difference between tactics and strategy. 
Tactics wins battles, strategies win wars. 
Since almost all RTS games are more about battles than an overall war, it should stand to reason that tactics is what matters in the game. Being able to have better memorized a specific build order, or micromanage your troops to effectively maximize their damage outputted while minimizing whats taken has next to nothing to do with strategy. 
Basically I'm saying that the 'Craft' series by Blizzard, the C&C games, and the billions of their clones, have all failed to bring strategy into the RTS genre. This extends beyond mere multiplayer matches, most singleplayer games leave out the strategy as a part of the storyline. Which I can understand is necessary in many cases, but it means you are not playing a strategy game. You're playing a game in which you given tactical control of a series of battles to linearly progress onwards to the next battle. There are some actual "strategy" games, but the only dominating my thoughts at the moment would be Total War, and it is a partial Turn Based.
I should be clear, this is not a condemnation of the style of play that dominates RTS games, but rather a critique that most of them fit more into FPS style play than strategy gamers will care to admit. Precise skill and control is far more valuable in RTS games than it should be. I mean strategies are carefully formulated, but in an RTS time is of the essence so it is better to get a shit load of something. Put simply, it is my thought that RTS games contain as much strategy or less than a shooter. The only true strategy games are turn based games. Where you can form plans, respond to changes effectively and generally see a strategy fall apart and try to salvage it.
One of the most horrific moments of late is watching the Starcraft 2 Battle Reports, which feature two pros battling. The fact that blizzard is actively encouraging the use of workers as meat shields, the micromanagement of units for peak performance is complete garbage. It only promotes the multiplayer game as something that advocates a ludicrous style of play that has no real world significance and completely ignores the advances done in recent years of RTS. Sure Dawn of War I & II and Company of Heroes are just as guilty as being more tactical than Strategical, but the Relic openly admit to it; Supreme Commander attempted to bring the Strategy into RTS and made significant inroads. 
I'll still get and adore Starcraft 2, but the multiplayer is not a part of RTS games that has any appeal to me. Micromanagement fests between economy and battles is not my idea of compelling strategy gameplay. Being hit by an early game rush accomplishes nothing other than tell me that the game embraces quick reflexes over sound thinking. And if I want to play a game about reflexes I can play DotA, TF2, L4D, or any other number of shooters. If i want a strategy game I play turn based ones.  I'm pretty sure that story interests me more than the actual gameplay of 'Craft' games ever has.  Well that and the custom game modes that inevitably show up.

Thats all I've got to say and matters of 'strategy'.

Ciao.

Well Since Everyone Else Everywhere Has Done One!

Here goes my E3 Predictions:

Microsoft will make a big deal about something that no one will care about and will be largely ignored, but will still have enough wowswers stuff that they arent pushing yet that it wont really matter too much. There will be no mention of their Games for Windows beyond the plastering of the logo on games that are being pushed on 360. 

Sony will show lots of great new stuff, lots of their old franchises that we're all waiting for, and some system changes that are not really all that compelling to anyone. They'll do something with the PSP but it wont amount to anything.

Nintendo will try to seem hip and cool to the hardcore and casuals and they will fail miserably. It will not matter though because critical acclaim is now irrelevant to Nintendo. They'll show a brief sizzle reel that will wow the dwindling hardcore gamers they do have. 

The Third parties will show us all the real good stuff and will rise to conquer the earth as we know it. Which it turns out is in fact just a lot of basements in very small sections of urban centers. Weird. 

There you have it. I spent all of like 5 minutes thinking those up so if they turn out to be right I demand worship.

Night. Ciao.

We Are Intrigued

I've never really thought of myself as an uber-min/maxer when I play RPGs. But my sister recently started playing Mass Effect because she wanted to play a game and that was the only one that really has any appeal to her; Her appeal being JRPGs, or games with obscenely pretty male protagonists. Anyways I watched her playing a bit and was shocked that she did not fully explore conversation options, and tried really hard to bite my tongue when she went to the level up screen. I mean I quickly realized that playing an RPG is all about your own experiences when you play it. And just because I played the game a specific way in no way means that she should follow mine. If hers works great, if it doesnt she can figure out how to get past it herself or can ask me for help.

I think this is a problem with hardened hardcore gamers we see a game and immediately think of the cost/gain effect in gameplay terms. But Casuals just look at the game and experience it, they dont care about trying to find which skill/item set maxes their damage, nor do they care if they miss an extra quest that gives them a wicked +5 Fire damage Mace. 

Maybe thats something we hardcore could learn again. But then again, you cant regain innocence once you've lost it. I even though I might try to simply experience a game, I think a part of me is always going to continue to try and game the game to the fullest for those min/max benefits. Meh I guess as long as I enjoy the game at the end of the day what does it really matter? 
Okay. Thats all.
Ciao.

YOU SHALL LIVE!

Seriously. Since the new TF2 update, the servers are alive again. It is nice. And the new item system, while confusing the crap outta everyone, seems to be great for new player to try out new weapons. 

Oh and Star Ocean 4. Pretty fun. Great boss fight I had today. But the cinematics. Dear god. Its like they asked how to make them as bad as possible and then one upped that. 

Thats all I got right. I'm told it is an American holiday so that would explain the lack of news.

Ohhhh My Favorite Little Game I Love To Hate

Oh Demigod. So faithful. I just don't know what I'm gonna do with you. On the one hand you have many appeasing factors. On the other hand I have no clue if it is balance issues or a lack of general knowledge about what to do.
See in DotA if you've got skills you can pick up the knowledge along the way. But if there is no skill involved and just memorizing what items to buy and how to level your character up then the so called depth of said game is gonna be short lived. Hence unless I feel like reading dozens upon dozens of blog posts how each character should be built to deal 'x' foe,  assuming he is using 'y' build, then i will have 'z' chance of victory assuming that my partner is somewhat decent as well, and assuming the other opponent is also moderately skilled. 
But then I realize the core problem with Demigod.
I have never played a Multi-player match with more than 4 players total. That means 2v2. 
Perhaps if I could try a 4v4 or 5v5 I would be greatly illuminated as to things, as matchups are far more interesting when you have a diverse field of demigods to combat with. 
Yes I believe I have made a realization here. 
2v2 Demigod is boring and devolves into who luckily got matched up with Demigods that they have inherent advantages over. 
4v4 or 5v5 however. THAT would be a match I would be interested in seeing.
Too bad the system apparently can barely manage 3v3's and it is highly unlikely that I'll ever get to play a good 5v5 match. 
For the record 5v5 is DotA's standard size. Accept no substitutes, if you arent in a 5v5 match then you are not playing DotA proper. You are playing some side gimmick that has no real worth. 

It would seem Demigod may be similiar. Hopefully they release a massive patch that will enable the removal of P2P hosting and switch to servers for gameplay. Because that would be far, far, far better.

Oh Demigod. I only bitch because I care.

Super Duper Quick Observation

Funny how Duke Nukem Forever's biggest press release after being announced was that the game is dead in the water some 12 or so odd years later. 
That will be all.

Oh It Is Truly Is A Grand 'Ole Time

Headshotting people, getting achievements, backstabbing and being backstabbed (since I suck with the spy). The new patch is out and brought something very strange with it that highlights an issue that is very important when patches come out.
They changed the method in which the new weapons are unlocked. Suffice it to say they used to be tied to the achievement system. But now they are like random loot that you get for... well, thats the problem no one really knows why certain people are getting weapons. Often times duplicates. 
The point is developers need transparency behind the changes they make in a game. So if you say you changed something. You need to explain precisely what those changes are and what they are trying to accomplish by changing it. 

Allegedly Valve will explain the new unlock system later today. So that is alright.

Another game that is pretty good with the transparency is Demigod. Although to understand the aims of patches one needs to find the dev journals on the demigod forums and read those. But the results are quite interesting providing very detailed explanations to thoughts regarding why certain choices were made and so on and so on. 
DotA used to suffer horribly from 'bad patch notes' syndrome. Whereby you would read the patch notes and find horribly vague things like 'x' item altered, 'y' hero remade, 'z' hero slightly weakened... Nowadays the map maker, Icefrog, realizes the first thing the community would do was gut his patch notes and expand them so people could actual understand that the item's cost was increased 100 gold, and its damage increased 2 points. Or that the hero had its Str gain lowered by .4 per level.  Now Icefrog includes the detailed patch notes himself since it is just easier, although more time consuming.

So word to the wise. Do not treat the gaming community like fools. Give us the gritty details (well not super technical gritty) to explain what is going on with each point of a list of changes. Most devs are usually pretty good with it.
But finding something like:
- You now find new and old items as you play, instead of through achievements.
Gives us absolutely no fucking clue as to the meat of what the change actually does. And demands further explanation.

Meh I'm probably overblowing this whole scenario, I mean in 12 hours we should have the TF2 blog update which explains the whole thing. Then we can get back to bitching about how now that we understand it in detail, we fucking hate it, and want the other way we hated back.

Yeesh. There is just no pleasing us gamers is there?

Ciao.