2D vs. 3D

[Toejam]

For me ther is no question 3D harmed the game... just look at the gameplay of Heroes 6 and compare it with 2-3 or even 4, how can you say it didn't...

As many, i don't mind 3D, but not at this cost...

[ywhtptgtfo]

For me ther is no question 3D harmed the game... just look at the gameplay of Heroes 6 and compare it with 2-3 or even 4, how can you say it didn't...

As many, i don't mind 3D, but not at this cost...

*cough* Do you think Nival or Blackhole would've made a much better game using a 2D design?

[MattII]

Functionally there is little difference between the two, there's little you can do with a 3D engine that can't also be done with a 2D one, and in most cases the 2D one will do it much cheaper system-wise, albeit less impressively.

Commercially 3D is necessary for any game wanting to make a name for itself these days, the only games still done in 2D are either cult-classics, fan-made versions of cult-classics (same appearance, but probably many new features), Gameboy/other handheld console rips or ultra-low-budget private releases. You may on occasion be able to get away with 2D-Isometric (AKA 2.5D), but it's unlikely to fool most people.

[Tress]

Heroes 4. The most beautiful and detailed graphics in whole series. Including M&M:H-VI. You can discount it as a matter of personal taste, of course.

Was always under impression that combat units are 3d models....
Not to mention pretty poorly animated except some(e g vampires)

[Groovy]

Reading through the comments, there are two questions that stand out for me.

Why is immersion in the game world so important for a turn-based strategy game? I would expect conceptual immersion – immersion in the concepts that make up the player’s strategy – to be primary, and immersion in the game world to play a supporting role.

How did it come to be that 3D graphics are essential for a game nowadays? Has there been a shift of interest away from strategy games, or are strategy gamers themselves confused about what makes a great strategy game and are unwilling to spend money on games with 2D graphics?

[Mozared]

Reading through the comments, there are two questions that stand out for me.

Let me attempt to answer these.

Why is immersion in the game world so important for a turn-based strategy game? I would expect conceptual immersion – immersion in the concepts that make up the player’s strategy – to be primary, and immersion in the game world to play a supporting role.

I think the main reason is because the story and lore has to carry TBS games, which in turn is because of the simple fact that they aren't as easily accessible and playable as other genres.

Compare the two to football vs chess. Everybody can play football - you kick a ball and that's it. There's plenty of skill involved in the game, but everybody can at any time just join in, play, not suck completely and have fun. It's not that easy with chess; you have to sit down and think. Consequently, chess has a smaller audience. Both games can be thrilling, entertaining to watch and educating, but football's where the big audience is at.

Because a chess set doesn't cost a lot to make, it can support a relatively tiny amount of players. Since games are a business, you need a minimum number of players to support its creation. Seeing how TBS is a by default niche genre (as I just explained), it needs something to make up for that. The people willing to take the time to think about things are also often the people who enjoy a reading good story and like lots of lore behind a game, hence how lore carrying Heroes fits nicely.

Ask yourself; if they'd remove all the lore from the game, would you still play Heroes? Imagine if every single Heroes scenario you've played up 'till now had absolutely no backstory aside from the mission objectives "Conquer City X", "Defeat hero Y" or "Obtain artifact Z". No cutscenes, no creature lore, just the basics of the game. Would you still want to play any Heroes game at all? I know I probably would've given up after trying H3.

How did it come to be that 3D graphics are essential for a game nowadays? Has there been a shift of interest away from strategy games, or are strategy gamers themselves confused about what makes a great strategy game and are unwilling to spend money on games with 2D graphics?

I don't think people are unwilling to spend money on 2D games in general. It's probably more that it's become so much easier to create 3D games that there's fairly little reason for 2D games to be produced. It still happens, and they can be good (LoL, for example, is really succesful and is only '2,5D'), it's just less common.

[Dalai]

Was always under impression that combat units are 3d models....

Every object in H4 (including objects on strategic map) was 3D at some stage of development. Then all of them were animated and movement frame sequences were created. The game does not contain 3D models on CDs, all 3D models were left in NWC office. In case of H4 3D is just different way to get frames - instead of drawing them.

As I said earlier,

It is not how it's made, it is how it works when you play it, how it is displayed. In H4 it is a set of frame sequences (short movies), prerendered, and because of that, of high quality. It does not actually calculate anything in real-time - shadows, sizes, angles and all the stuff which should not be in Heroes game in the first place.

I see that some people confuse the way it works and the way it looks. Real 3D does calculate "shadows, sizes, angles", allows camera change, dynamic lighting and so on. Very useful in FPS, pointless in TBS.

Not to mention pretty poorly animated except some(e g vampires)

When I said it's the most detailed and beautiful Heroes game up to date, I was mostly referring to strategic map with animations on. Look at the mines, how they work, ponds, creature dwellings.

At the time when the game was released it was quite resource-hungry. Now we can replace any combat animation with more modern and detailed, we just need someone to create it. It's no big deal.

[Groovy]

If I understand you correctly, Mozared, you are saying that TBS games are not made primarily for TBS fans, but for players that are captivated by an engaging story and an immersive setting and see the TBS aspect as more peripheral? That would explain the direction that the HoMM series has taken with H6.

What I find perplexing is the fact that Civilization has become one of the most popular strategy game series of the past two decades with no lore at all. It’s as if the depth of its strategy alone is enough to keep a large following.

[Dalai]

What I find perplexing is the fact that Civilization has become one of the most popular strategy game series of the past two decades with no lore at all. It’s as if the depth of its strategy alone is enough to keep a large following.

Great point! Imagine what Ultimate Heroes Game could be - with both depth of strategy AND lore!

[Mozared]

If I understand you correctly, Mozared, you are saying that TBS games are not made primarily for TBS fans, but for players that are captivated by an engaging story and an immersive setting and see the TBS aspect as more peripheral? That would explain the direction that the HoMM series has taken with H6.

Hmmmmmm, yes, partly I guess. I don't want to go all out and say that nobody cares about the TBS crowd and TBS games simply come with an awesome story to carry the game, but I do think that because the market for TBS games is so niche, and because people who play less action-packed games tend to focus on story more, there's been at least a movement towards more emphasis on the story in TBS games in general (though I think Heroes really is the only serious one still running).

What I find perplexing is the fact that Civilization has become one of the most popular strategy game series of the past two decades with no lore at all. It’s as if the depth of its strategy alone is enough to keep a large following.

I have to join you here. Civilization is a phenomenom I have difficulty explaining. It's TBS, there's no story, it's not particularly revolutionairy in gameplay and yet it's ridiculously popular. My best guess is that Civilization was the first TBS series that got well known, and that play play the newer games more out of nostalgia than because they think the game is so great. That's not to say it's a bad game, it just doesn't fit in my model.

[Pitsu]

Combination of individual 2D images into a map generates space, which in summary has more dimensions than 3.

Sorry, I totally don't understand what you are saying here.

@popularity of Civilization:

-Random generation makes every game unique. In contrary to Homm it also has dynamic map - it starts rather empty and the player builds and terraforms it as he wishes.

-Very simple principles. They may be hard to master, but once you learn how to settle towns and how special are workers the rest is obvious or not cruicial at lower difficulties.

- Similarity of gameplay of all factions is somewhat compensated by having them connected to real nations with very different history. The entire setup is a model to human society, economy, science etc. At some points it fails miserably, but it models something that everyone has a personal touch. Same reason why the Sims was successful.

[MattII]

I think the thing with Civilization is that it's historical, you don't need a back-story, because the whole of recorded history is the back-story. The same thing goes for Age Of Empires, Empire Earth and all the other 'real world' games, you already know the story more-or-less, so you don't need the campaigns so much, whereas with 'imaginary' games like HoMM and Starcraft and Supreme Commander and that, the setting is raw, unknown, so you need the campaigns to tell the story. Of course, having so many factions all playing so similarly may have something to do with it as well.

[Groovy]

Imagine what Ultimate Heroes Game could be - with both depth of strategy AND lore!

And RPG! I think that the Heroes model has more potential than the Civilization one, it just hasn't been utilised as well.

[Dalai]

Imagine what Ultimate Heroes Game could be - with both depth of strategy AND lore!

And RPG! I think that the Heroes model has more potential than the Civilization one, it just hasn't been utilised as well.

I'm sure you are right. But next developer must have a list and order of priorities completely different from Nival and especially Blackhole.

I think the thing with Civilization is that it's historical, you don't need a back-story, because the whole of recorded history is the back-story. The same thing goes for Age Of Empires, Empire Earth and all the other 'real world' games, you already know the story more-or-less, so you don't need the campaigns so much

I'd like to add awesome Europa Universalis series to the list. Though technically EU-3 is 3D, gameplaywise it's still 2D. You can zoom, but can't rotate camera. So Paradox did not spoil the game that much, but still was criticized a lot for going 3D.

[klaymen]

Imagine what Ultimate Heroes Game could be - with both depth of strategy AND lore!

And RPG! I think that the Heroes model has more potential than the Civilization one, it just hasn't been utilised as well.

What about Age of Wonders? It is basically more Heroes-ish Master of Magic (which is fantasy-themed Civilisation).

[Groovy]

I haven’t really played Age of Wonders enough to come to a definite conclusion. From the little that I have played, I got the impression that it was ahead of Heroes with some aspects of its design, especially adventure map spell casting. Some other aspects – such as diplomacy and population management – I haven’t missed in Heroes, so I don’t think I’d want to see them added.

[arthureloi]

I haven’t really played Age of Wonders enough to come to a definite conclusion. From the little that I have played, I got the impression that it was ahead of Heroes with some aspects of its design, especially adventure map spell casting. Some other aspects – such as diplomacy and population management – I haven’t missed in Heroes, so I don’t think I’d want to see them added.

Personally, I'm having a blast with age of wonders: shadow magic. Anyone can get it cheap on Steam.
In my opinion it's so much more worthwhile than heroes VI! It has that good old game feeling to it and that addictive "one more turn" craving. It's not simplified and you have a certain learning curve but it's very rewarding!
To tell you the truth I don't even think about Heroes VI anymore!
Ah, it has a random map generator, map editor and simultaneous turns!
I play with 6 people and it's so fun! You can make alliances and declare war with other players and you and other(s) can attack the CPU or other players at the same time so it's so much more engaging. Besides, tactics wise it's very rich. Like you can forge an alliance and, for example, have the other player produce siege machinery and you produce infantry, cavalry and archers and you attack a castle together so the guy destroys walls and gates while you storm. The best thing is forging an alliance with my brother, only to backstab him when he is not aware =)

[ywhtptgtfo]

Combination of individual 2D images into a map generates space, which in summary has more dimensions than 3.

Sorry, I totally don't understand what you are saying here.

Sorry, I still don't get what you are talking about :@. If you are referring to the "z-index" (i.e. the ordering of the 2D sprite layers), then that's basically the pseudo-replacement of the third dimension.

[ywhtptgtfo]

I haven’t really played Age of Wonders enough to come to a definite conclusion. From the little that I have played, I got the impression that it was ahead of Heroes with some aspects of its design, especially adventure map spell casting. Some other aspects – such as diplomacy and population management – I haven’t missed in Heroes, so I don’t think I’d want to see them added.

Personally, I'm having a blast with age of wonders: shadow magic. Anyone can get it cheap on Steam.
In my opinion it's so much more worthwhile than heroes VI! It has that good old game feeling to it and that addictive "one more turn" craving. It's not simplified and you have a certain learning curve but it's very rewarding!
To tell you the truth I don't even think about Heroes VI anymore!
Ah, it has a random map generator, map editor and simultaneous turns!
I play with 6 people and it's so fun! You can make alliances and declare war with other players and you and other(s) can attack the CPU or other players at the same time so it's so much more engaging. Besides, tactics wise it's very rich. Like you can forge an alliance and, for example, have the other player produce siege machinery and you produce infantry, cavalry and archers and you attack a castle together so the guy destroys walls and gates while you storm. The best thing is forging an alliance with my brother, only to backstab him when he is not aware =)

Yes, both AoW1 and AoW2 are a real gems that were way ahead of others in the genre in design (especially AoW1). Interestingly, they are also very different in design (I personally like AoW1 more).