Ever Play Myth?

[Makwu]

I think myth was one of the most progressive RTS’s ever and one of the least played and appreciated. What my brought to the genre:

 

1) True 3D environments

2) Weapons that could actually miss their targets

3) Highly manipulative environments

4) Amazingly balanced units in MP

5) Reliable Ranking system

6) No Unit Building

7) Team vs Team multiplayer

 

It’s sad to me that some things that myth brought to gaming back in like 1997 didn’t get more proliferated throughout the RTS genre. The last three are the ones that I want to talk about because they made for the most fun I have ever had in online gaming. And I have been gaming online since Doom2.

 

No Unit Building: The way Myth worked is that you would get unit points at the beginning of a match. (And there are tons of different types of game objectives ie last man standing, territories in which the team that is holding the most checkpoint when time expires won, and many more), So, often your unit selection would be determined on the game type even when playing the exact same map. So, map loads and there is a planning phase in which you can chat about strategy with your teammates and pick what types of units you would what. In Star wars terms: A ISD might be 18 unit points, VSD 11, TIE-I 2, TIE 1. (There would be many more units you could pick from of course). Now, I get 25 unit points? Do I want one ISD with 7 ties? Or do I want 1 VSDs and 7 TIE-I? Or maybe 2 VSD? The best part is, you have no idea what units your enemy will pick, only what they can pick from. And once you have picked, that is it. No resources, pure strategy. Now all of the sudden units special abilities get used and become vitality important, rather than forgotten about while you are building 5 more ISD’s and letting your first get slaughtered after rushing them to slow down their production.

 

Team vs Team Multiplayer: Now almost all RTS have some way to play teams wether it be through an alliance system or simply agreeing not to attack your friend. But what myth brought to the table back in 97 and I have not seen since is team coop vs team coop. It was done this way: Each team gets to pick a captain before the match begins. The captain is the person that gets to pick the units during planning time and then can give any units to any of the players. So the units would be divided up evenly and then each player or group of players was given an objective (ie take Space Station 1 and hold it for the entire match). Having the captain system was great because it allowed for two things: If a player gets dropped, then the captain can reassign the units so the match can go on without being ridiculously outbalanced. And second, it allowed teams to be on the exact same page and really feel like a team with common goals. Instead of just trying to kill the enemy, each player felt like they had a specific purpose to the team.

 

As I said, it is a shame that these two simple and progressive ideas got lost the gaming conglomerate.

[Garbageben]

My brother and I did team v. team multiplayer on the battle for middle earth. We played against two ai opponents on hard and said, "You take that one and I'll take this one." It worked really well.

[Vader89]

If your talking Non RTS game there is already one that fulfills all your requirements: HL2!!!! and CS: SOURCE. But if its RTS, EaW!!!

[Makwu]

But even in CS and such, its not quite the same. Maybe when you are in a clan tourney or something, but if you just join a server and go...everybody is playing for themselves. They might group together because its smart, but there isn't any real team coordination. In myth, every match was a team vs team game prior to even launching the game. Maybe you'd have to play it to appreciate the difference.