OTC: Lessons for Ashes

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

I recently purchased Offworld Trading Company and WOW am I impressed. Frogboy likes to ask "What is an RTS that released recently that was better that Ashes at release?" The answer is OTC. Last I checked it has a little higher steam rating and a much higher metacritic rating (even throwing out the Gamespot muck job).

OTC has an incredible amount of depth in skirmish and multiplayer. The dynamic resources system means all games play differently, sometimes drastically so, and your approach (strategy) for each match has to accomodate those resources. That means there is a lot of replay value. Even the campaign has a lot of replay value. Both Ashes and OTC have global abilities. Both have research, though OTCs is a little bit deeper. OTC has four factions that play kinda differently, Ashes has two. OTC has at least some character, not much but some. Ashes doesn't. OTC has a little bit of map dynamics (clouds, dust storms, solar flares, day-night cycles). Ashes doesn't. I've watched videos of the OTC tournament game casting and it works well as a competitive game.

"But OTC is a 32-bit DX11 game": Yep, Ashes has the potential to, and perhaps for some rigs does, look and perform better. This doesn't trump gameplay depth for me.

"But OTC didn't have to spend a lot of money on art assets": Yep, Ashes did. Art costs lots of money which takes money away from other aspects of the game, like gameplay depth.

Look, Ashes obviously is a different game with different philosophies for the RTS genre. But OTC did a lot of general things well that the Ashes team could learn from. Things like depth of gameplay, variety of strategies, wild swings in tactics, effective game-enders, tension escalation, lots of replay value, and mutliplayer friendly.

I have no idea what kind of replies I'm going to get on this post. Just know that Ashes is pretty fun, but I'm not finding it anywhere near as fun as OTC. I hope someday Ashes will achieve the degree of fun and replayability that OTC has managed to achieve even in its release state. Cheers!

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Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I have played Ashes for over 400 hours, and have only played OTC for about 5-6 hours.

 

I really like OTC.

I particularly liked the build animations in OTC although I felt OTC was small and limiting in the number of buildings that could be built with games being rather short and a little anticlimactic.

 

I don't know how much Ashes could learn from OTC as the things that make OTC great are a core part of the very different style of gameplay.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I don't know how OTC plays but the designer is Soren Johnson and it has to be said he's a bit of a legend at this point I think, so I'm not surprised the game is good and I'm glad it is.

I will make a quick comment on 2 things you said after taking a quick look at ATC.


"But OTC is a 32-bit DX11 game": Yep, Ashes has the potential to, and perhaps for some rigs does, look and perform better. This doesn't trump gameplay depth for me. 


I don't know how this is that relevant. Not all games need 64bit. Would solitaire benefit from being 64bit? Of course not. It doesn't look like this game would benefit from it either. Ashes on the hand does and will more so in the future. They are really very different games and that requires different ways of accommodating those needs. This comment seems more of a reaction to the game advertising on its tech merits more than the game itself. Most websites which took an early look at Ashes were tech orientated and its free PR so it is not surprising, even if it did come across as unbalanced.

"But OTC didn't have to spend a lot of money on art assets": Yep, Ashes did. Art costs lots of money which takes money away from other aspects of the game, like gameplay depth.

Actually the Devs said Ashes had a tiny art team and that is one reason they had to scrap all the asymmetrical units originally blueprinted (which they have shown off). Also part of the reason for the generated maps was that hand made maps take a long time and need more artists and a bigger budget. From what I have read the Homeworld team was a lot bigger than the Ashes one and they only had 5 MP maps at launch due to the time and costs it takes to make them.

It is also an odd comparison, looking at OTC there only seems to be a couple of unit types and they look very simple. Ashes by its nature, just like Supcom or Starcraft, has to have many units and they have to look different. Again, the very different needs rather weaken the comparison.

Having said that the atmosphere and buildings do look very good and the interface looks more interesting in OTC. Clouds, dust storms, solar flares, day-night cycles sound good too.


(Edit: for some reason I thought part of learning the lessons also included EA so added this bit, I'll leave it in though it has been on my mind a bit lately) Frogboy mentioned they would think long and hard about using Early Access again because of people trying the incomplete version and reviewing it like a complete one so it hurt their Steam review %. That is likely true but for me I think the biggest problem with EA is that unless it is a mainstream game you lose momentum. If a whole bunch of people buy the game in the first few days of release then MP games are easy to find and a community is far easier to form. Loads of people bought Ashes before and during the EA and tried it on and off so there was never a mass group all at once. Then the release price was too high and loads of people who wanted it had already got it so the initial surge of players at release that many games get was lost. In an ideal world they should have waited until Q4 of this year to release and polish the game a whole lot more, but they didn't so we get the riskier long play model Stardock seem to often use. As a more MP orientated experience over GalCiv and SINS I am not sure the long play model was the best one for Ashes, time will tell I guess. 

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Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I'm not sure you realize that I'm the President of Mohawk.  My involvement in OTC was non-trivial, especially in some of the areas you call out. 

The two biggest differences between OTC and Ashes/GalCiv are budget and iteration time.

When you use an existing, mature game engine, you know what the engine can and can't do and design your game around that from the start and iterate on it.

When you make a game with a new engine that is being developed at the same time, you have a lot less time to iterate.

For example, with OTC, we had a fully working playable game in early 2015.  It went into Steam early access in February 2015 and April 2016.  It was able to do this because it had a much higher budget because we knew, from day 1, that this was going to be an excellent, successful game because we had Soren as the designer and an engine that could execute on his fully realized design.

By contrast, with Ashes, we didn't even know if it was going to work. A lot of the tech in Nirous is sci-fi ridiculous. It renders its scenes the same way movies do. Me and my colleagues at other studios didn't think that would ever work.  Most "units" are actually several units. That is, in an engine, every single gun has its own AI.  This will give Ashes a pretty insurmountable lead in the future in terms of what designs we can do with it in the future, but in 2015, we weren't willing to bet the farm on it.

The first game on a new engine is tough.   When people look at how good GalCiv II was it is important to remember that GalCiv II was the culmination of 9 years of engine development. And Ashes couldn't have been made with Unity.

If you want to do a comparison, wait until Ashes II. ;)

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Frogboy, I did realize it. My post was in part a kudos. The rest of your post is a good satisfying response.

Ticktoc's point about EA: I bet you could get away with a founder/founder-elite program so you still get some player feedback during development, but not do EA. Much of pre-beta we were under NDA, and I could see extending that until much closer to release. Yeah multiplayer would be hard to test, but I think players vs. devs Friday helps a good bit. Perhaps do two a week to accommodate different parts of the world.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 3

If you want to do a comparison, wait until Ashes II. ;)

 

wait wait wait, does this confirm Ashes II? Or at least says there's a high chance of it? 

 

like, idk if Ashes sold well enough to show its popular enough to have a sequal 

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting Around999People, reply 5

wait wait wait, does this confirm Ashes II? Or at least says there's a high chance of it?

By having a higher budget it means that you can create a more Complete and better game in every-way, more Units, bigger maps, better multiplayer, Naval Units, etc...

I am sure that AOTS did really well and it will get better and better, I just want think how will Sins 2 plays using Nitrous Engine in 1 or 2 years with a 3x or more Budget than AOTS, I am sure Every RTS player out there will drool :drool: for Sins 2.

Having AOTS2 in 3-4 years with higher budget and a much better Engine.. will be.. :drool: WOW  :drool: .

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting eviator, reply 4

Frogboy, I did realize it. My post was in part a kudos. The rest of your post is a good satisfying response.

Ticktoc's point about EA: I bet you could get away with a founder/founder-elite program so you still get some player feedback during development, but not do EA. Much of pre-beta we were under NDA, and I could see extending that until much closer to release. Yeah multiplayer would be hard to test, but I think players vs. devs Friday helps a good bit. Perhaps do two a week to accommodate different parts of the world.

I appreciate that.  Any tiime I see one of your posts I seek it out as they are always thoughtful and insightful.

I guess my point is that there wasn't a lot of lessons to be learned because the differences were well known. 

With Ashes now out, we can now begin the polish phase of its existence.  Future Ashes titles (yes there will be an Ashes II eventually) and future GalCivs will be able to build on what we have.

What OTC allows us to demonstrate is that when we have a mature engine and an appropriate budget that our games are as polished as the best of them. :)