Why is this not on Console? *Read to understand*

What? Civilization is a TBS but, it still worked well when it came to Xbox… when it became backwards compatible… people flooded in to play the game they love… Command & Conquer 3 was released on Xbox and it was made quite well using a controller. Halo Wars is made specifically for Xbox One & PC now but, it works just fine. Supreme Commander worked well as well. I mean cmon huh… If they have done it before with HW and C&C 3 why the ■■■■ can’t they do it with this? Here’s a good controller scheme for AoE DE…

A- Select
Double Tap or Hold A- Select All units on screen and then Holding will give you All units in general.
B- Cancel out of something.
X- Attack move when you have units selected.
A whilst units are selected- Move to that location.
Left Thumbstick to move your cursor.
Right thumbstick to move your camera.
Dpad can be used for many things such as the many moves units can do… or selecting something when you press A on a building.
Start obviously to pause.
Select/Share- obviously to see the scoreboard or important information.
LB- Diplomacy
RB- Tech Tree
RT- Could be used for several things,
Same with LT…

I mean seriously guys… Microsoft has done it before with HW… They know it isn’t that hard to make an RTS on Console. MANY people want a Age of Empires game on the new gens… Please give us what we have been wanting for YEARS.

THE REAL QUESTION IS… THAT IT CAN BE DONE… SO WHY DON’T THEY DO IT?

I’m looking to hear peoples opinion on this matter and what they think. Preferably people who have played RTS games on Console.

I mean, it CAN be done. To add to the list of games, i remember playing Starcraft on my N64.

I also remember the far more confusing control schemes the CnC games had, a lot of double tapping and holding, although one could make it work. The biggest weakness i remember from console RTS’s is the lack of real micro potential, you just couldn’t focus fire with the right precision in a timely manner. Control groups were connected to menus and clunky to use, Hotkeys were stuck in a similar vein(or just nonexistent).

Halo Wars was designed for consoles originally, and you can see certain things influenced by that. Bases were built off a single hub, there were no sprawling tech trees, resources were either drip fed or in boxes units picked up. While i admit a good deal of this might of been lack of faith in the console audience, as CnC ports carried those things over, it still demonstrates design decisions built around an Xbox controller/a player-base with less precise equipment.

As i am writing this, i am realizing this is what Dawn of War 3 kinda became, and I’m wondering why they didn’t try to console port that. Or Company of Heroes 2…hmmm

Now as far as Age of Empires goes, i could actually see it on a console. The amount of units and techs per building isn’t excessive ( The worst is the temple with Train Monk+9 techs, but i imagine the triggers could be held down to change what the face buttons do, so 4+L4+R4) and unit movement lacks formations to worry about. Given that the pop cap is built into the game already(it was tacked onto console ports of CnC) and the fact the most micro intensive actions i can think of are Monk conversions(which usually target elephants) and Villager management (which they advertise as something that’s being improved anyway) I don’t see much a gamepad couldn’t achieve well enough. CnC Red Alert 3 had a lot of unit abilities that were just awkward to use on console, but AoE has none of that.

In a more devils advocate position, i could argue it would add a lot of legitimacy to the Windows 10 exclusivity if they make this a UWP thing, although i doubt that was really a design goal. The obvious issue with that is, of course, you cannot have PC and console compete in an RTS. Just, nonononono.

Functionally though RTS like AoE rely heavily on the mouse. Their UI elements, unit selection, etc all depend on precision clicking and multple clicks. Think of a high level starcraft players are measured in actions per minute. More actions means you’re ‘probably’ being more efficient. Even if you hotkeyed everything in the game to your controller, there are still a lot of things that are almost impossible.

The minimap is one example. Games like AoE rely on map control a lot. The minimap is critical in being able to quickly manage areas but also to deal with situations all over the place efficiently. Think of a situation where you are attacked say on 2 fronts in a MP game. With mouse/kb you can efficiently move your screen to each area, assess your situation, queue up attacks/movements, then quickly move to the other front, and then move quckly to your home base to maybe spawn more units or move units to new battle fronts. Think of having to do that on a controller.

If you look at SupCom remember that on the x360 it was pretty terrible for awhile. Also SupCom is actually much more macro designed than micro designed. Its broad design made it better for consoles since tons of micro controlling wasnt really the point. It was about broad strategic decisions and movement. SupCom only had 2 resources to manage, while AOE1 has 4 (food/wood/stone/gold). Think of worker management between these 4 different resources and how critical the timing of moving even 1 worker over to another one is so important.

Differences between controller and kb/mouse is important for devs to understand. Overwatch had to nerf Torbjorns’ turret on the console. But on PC the precision of the kb/mouse meant that his turret was more or less manageable. The lack of precision on the controller made his turret OP for console players and thus the nerf for consoles only.

Games like Halo Wars tried to make RTS concepts work on consoles without much success. And that was a game designed with controllers in mind. Some things can translate over to a controller based setup with ease, but other kinds do not.

The point being that Game A sort of working as an RTS on a console, does not mean that AOE makes sense on one. Any more than Starcraft on a console would make sense a game that is ultra micro heavy. A pro starcraft console player would get crushed by a kb/mouse one due to the differential in how micro play makes such a giant difference in that game.

tl;dr Not all RTS are created equally and design and gameplay decisions for each game can heavily impact whether a controller based input scheme is even feasible.

If they allow mouse and keyboard to xbox, then it would be just a matter of porting it over - however, that may be difficult depending on engine.

Otherwise, it just seems like you’d be a lot slower using the controller, or else, more frantic to perform the same things you could do on a M+Kb.

It would be good for a single player where things are more relaxed/ enjoy the visuals and story, or multiplayer against other console users. But unless you have mouse and keyboard, I see it being harder to compete in higher difficulties or vs PC players.

Halo Wars just doesn’t compare to other RTS games because it was built for console. It doesn’t have the depth that PC exclusive RTS titles have, like Supreme Commander (NOT Supreme Commander 2), Company of Heroes, Age of Empires, Starcraft, etc.

Command and Conquer 3 was perhaps the only RTS game that was cross-platform that was decent as a RTS title, but even then CnC 3 was nowhere near as good as the previous titles in the CnC series like CnC Generals. CnC 3’s multiplayer community died quickly and became pretty much non-existent within a year.

There are severe sacrifices that are made when an RTS game is made for console. For Halo Wars, it’s a brain-dead no-micro point and click type of RTS where you build stuff and tell them to attack a certain location. The maximum amount of strategy allowed in Halo Wars is where you attack on the map. However, people that have enjoyed RTS games and are very good at them (I’ve played every RTS game you could possibly think of, including ones people have never heard of such as Impossible Creatures, Earth 2140/2150, etc) know RTS games have an incredible amount of depth to them, more than what the developers intend in its design from the beginning. Build orders and timings are very important in an RTS game, and a controller simply cannot keep up with the flow of an RTS game like a M+KB can.

What do I mean when I talk about “flow” of the game? Well, imagine you were playing Starcraft using a controller. How much resources do you think you would be floating? I would think a lot, considering it would take you significantly longer to build workers, scout the enemy base, build structures, an army, control units, etc. When you’re floating resources, and unable to do the most basic mechanical things that an RTS game requires, the game simply isn’t competitive anymore, unless they purposely slow down the game for a console experience. There’s just too much in an RTS game for a controller to handle, and playing with a controller is simply not the way the game was meant to be played. If I could provide an analogy, it would be like trying to play Overwatch by aiming with foot pedals.

It doesn’t work at all if you wanna play on any level beyond highly casual. And it won’t happen anyway. End thread?

Halo Wars had a pre-existing console based mythology to tag onto to generate interest, yet the reviews were not great. AOE (aside from AOK 2 on the PS2) wouldn’t have an existing interested customer base. I played C&C on the Playstation and itvwasnt ideal, you certainly couldn’t have PC players against console players in multiplayer so would split the community.

The sort of PC required to run AOE:DE isn’t going to be that expensive and if you like strategy games you likely have a PC already.

Ultimately, the vast majority of people who are interested in strategy games should have realised by now that the PC experience is better and should have bought one.

FPS are better on PC’s as well but here consoles shine through standardisation and optimisation allowing people to play good graphics games at lower price points.

AOE:DE isn’t going to be system heavy (aside from win 10) however so most PC’s should be able to play it.

The community for AOE is pc based.

Red Alert on the PS1 worked quite well as the economy wasn’t micro intensive but as @Satoru pointed out in AOE you have four resources and lots more economic units where balance and micro on the economy side as well as the military is crucial.

I had the AoE II for PS2 and PC, the control was terrible plus the speed of gamelay was much slower on PS2 than on PC, I tried to do the tutorial and took twice as much to finish it on PS2 as on PC, it is not Nothing practical, I think RTS games should be only for PC.

Yeah, it could be done, but it really shouldn’t. AoE2 on the PS2 was a failure. Sure, it worked, but try playing a whole game and then telling me if you enjoyed it…cause I sure didn’t. RTS games have always been, and always will be, PC games. Console ports or editions are outliers, at best.

Besides, cross-platform play would be laughable, and I’m not sure that splitting the fanbase like this would be beneficial to MP.

@RWNorthPole said:
Yeah, it could be done, but it really shouldn’t. AoE2 on the PS2 was a failure. Sure, it worked, but try playing a whole game and then telling me if you enjoyed it…cause I sure didn’t. RTS games have always been, and always will be, PC games. Console ports or editions are outliers, at best.

Besides, cross-platform play would be laughable, and I’m not sure that splitting the fanbase like this would be beneficial to MP.

I agree, but I thought then rejected the splitting the community argument as in reality anyone with both a PC and Xbox would play on the PC, so the xbox community would be an addition not a split.

@“Mystic Taboo” said:

@RWNorthPole said:
Yeah, it could be done, but it really shouldn’t. AoE2 on the PS2 was a failure. Sure, it worked, but try playing a whole game and then telling me if you enjoyed it…cause I sure didn’t. RTS games have always been, and always will be, PC games. Console ports or editions are outliers, at best.

Besides, cross-platform play would be laughable, and I’m not sure that splitting the fanbase like this would be beneficial to MP.

I agree, but I thought then rejected the splitting the community argument as in reality anyone with both a PC and Xbox would play on the PC, so the xbox community would be an addition not a split.

That’s very true, although I don’t think the demand for AoE on xbox is high enough to keep a vibrant community alive.

@SognaVetr said:
It doesn’t work at all if you wanna play on any level beyond highly casual. And it won’t happen anyway. End thread?

This is called a discussion… not being an annoying prick. :wink:

It’s all about the controller.
On a more macro level, console controllers are designed to allow the player to control one unit very effectively, whether it’s a jump-man, a car, or a soldier in an FPS.
PC “controls” (mouse and keyboard) were designed to allow the user to manage several units (specifically application windows) at once and rapidly switch between them.

Civ works well because it’s turn-based, so you don’t need to manage everything as efficiently as you can on PC. Pikmin is wonderful because all the management is done from one unit. But multi-tasking strategy games never work well on consoled unless they’re designed for the controller.
Forget AoE; Cooking Mama doesn’t even work well on consoles.

It’s hard to justify spending all the man-hours it takes to redesign half the game in order to provide Xbox gamers a clunkier and inferior experience.