Many game developers tend to think that more is better: more content, more options, more players. This is especially true of the MMO genre, which tends to pile on vast quantities of content, options players and just about anything else they can fit in the game, such as with Petroglyph’s upcoming massively-multiplayer real-time strategy game, End of Nations.
End of Nations is an RTS that aims to give players a sense of war on a massive scale, by allowing up to 56 players duke it out on a map designed for two teams of 28. There are cooperative PvE elements as well as competitive PvP elements, and to ensure players are able to manage their units in battles on such a massive scale, unit squads are limited by a certain total number of points.
I recently played through three different maps, each of a drastically different scale. The smallest, Last Stand, is a 1v1 map which pits two players against each other in a non-traditional way. Rather than duke it out directly, each player is on opposite ends of a map which is primarily controlled by AI enemies. The AI enemies attack both players in waves, vying for control of a strategic point which each player must try to defend. The last player still controlling a point wins. You could play it purely as a battle for survival, using resources earned by capturing other areas of the map to resupply units as they die and reinforce your defenses. You could also use those resources to bombard your enemy’s defensive position with missile barrages and air strikes. You could even try to move your units out of your base and attempt to capture the enemy’s point yourself to complete your opponent’s humiliation – but with so many AI-controlled enemies in the center, it’s not an easy option.
Last stand could benefit from a much clearer display of the state of your enemy’s defensive point. When the match first began – and in fact throughout the entire battle – I actually had no idea I was playing against someone. I thought it was a single-player survival map. Only after a victory screen sprung up (seemingly at random) with my opponent’s score did I realize what was actually happening, and did I realize that the scenario is quite ingenious. But a lack of clear competition, easily illustrated by a couple on-screen progression bars illustrating my opponent’s and my own defensive integrity would go a very long way.
Resource Hog, a four-versus-four map, was much clearer, and surprisingly enjoyable. A capture-and-hold map, Resource Hog put players on a large area of open terrain, with certain locations near the edges giving players the resources needed for victory, and others closer to the center giving cash needed to resupply units. Teams have to strike a balance between shifting their objective points higher and being able to recover from enemy attacks. Resource Hog is also fascinating because there are key portions of the map that are completely inaccessible by certain unit types. One of the cash capture-points could only be captured by infantry, with metallic structures blocking entrance by tanks and larger units.
Resource Hog presented a lot of opportunities for cooperation and conflict, and showed how important your squad composition can be. It showed how a well-coordinated team could overcome a team that was less-so. Even Resource Hog could do with a better illustration of progression towards the map’s objective.
But it was the 12 versus 12 map, Deep Hammer, which made me think that perhaps more isn’t always better. Most RTS games are busy-looking by default. Watch a pro play StarCraft II and unless you yourself are extremely adept, you’ll find yourself struggling to keep pace with everything that is happening on-screen. While lower unit limits help somewhat with that busy-factor for End of Nations, getting 24 players on the same map, each with a dozen units, and watching them have at it is a little nightmarish.
Part of it may be the unit designs. Different vehicles are very similar looking at a glance, as are several of the infantry units which behave wildly differently. And with so much happening on-screen, even when things look disparate enough to tell them apart, it can be difficult to perceive what is going on or who is winning the outcome of a fight. It’s certainly in a better state than it was last time I saw End of Nations, but overcoming this barrier of understanding is still going to be one of Petroglyph’s greatest challenges.
It could likely be fixed, much like the issues outline in the previous maps, with some tweaks to the user-interface, such as icons that represent the unit type floating next to unit health-bars, or under the units themselves.
End of Nations is still in development, with a lot of placeholder art floating around in the version I played. There’s plenty of time for Petroglyph to slap some polish on End of Nations before the scheduled Autumn (Spring in Europe) launch later this year.
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