Rifts As an RTS

[redzimmer]

First, I searched the forums and could not find this topic already discussed, hence starting a new discussion.

Second, has it ever been considered? I look at games like Halo Wars and Red Alert 3 and keep thinking "I want to do this with Glitter Boys!"

The factions are large and varied, there is 30+ years of backstory and the expansions alone would be numerous (NGR vs. Brodkil, Egypt vs. Gathering of Heroes, Lazlo vs. Xitchitik, etc.)

Frankly, I would love to see a Rifts RTS. Has any talk ever been broached of one being licensed?

[Lenwen]

First, I searched the forums and could not find this topic already discussed, hence starting a new discussion.

Second, has it ever been considered? I look at games like Halo Wars and Red Alert 3 and keep thinking "I want to do this with Glitter Boys!"

The factions are large and varied, there is 30+ years of backstory and the expansions alone would be numerous (NGR vs. Brodkil, Egypt vs. Gathering of Heroes, Lazlo vs. Xitchitik, etc.)

Frankly, I would love to see a Rifts RTS. Has any talk ever been broached of one being licensed?

This would be an incredibly HUGE ... hit .. if you ask me

[KillingMachine]

Yeah, this sounds like a really good idea! The first thought that would probably come to mind is to make a Rifts video game some type of RPG, but after thinking about it, a real time strategy game may very well be the way to go. There are plenty of factions to work with and you could tell a story with cutscenes and in game action. Being able to have both tech and magic based units would make for some great variety.

[drewkitty ~..~]

RTS =???

[Shark_Force]

RTS =???

real time strategy.

[drewkitty ~..~]

So sort of like mechawarrior.

[glitterboy2098]

So sort of like mechawarrior.

no. mechwarrior is a piloting simulation.

like the Command and Conquer series or Starcraft. a game that focuses on building up armies and trying to deeat your opponent with them. usually (but not always in the same way) involving some form of resource aqquisition, base building, and micromanagement of army production and unit actions.

i think rifts would lend itself OK to a RTS game, but it would depend on the type of RTS game being done. your classic "spam hundreds of X" games don't really fit the setting (well, except for the xiticix), nor does the "mine X to produce units" approach.

i think an approach where completing objectives earns you your purchasing power, and you buy and deploy entire squads at a time would fit well though. sort of a cross between Dawn of war, Starwars: empire at war...but with the kind of large and 'real' looking maps of the latest command an conquer's... toss in a "commander upgrade" system like Command and Conquer Generals, just for the ability to show that you as a commander are earning higher ranks as you succedde...

which factions would be best though? Coalition obviously..post CWC ideally. Free Quebec post-succession would be a neat counterpoint (fewer robots, but units of glitterboys.)..you'd want a magic and/or monsters faction as well.. Federation of magic? those three could make an interesting game on their own, but i'd toss the Xiticix in too, just for the sheer alienness of their combat style..

[MikelAmroni]

Of course the rub is that unless a fan who is also involved a game development company gets onboard and pitches it to Kevin, it won't happen. I agree that it would sell, but the simple fact is that it requires a dedicated soul behind it, or it will bear little real resemblence to the actual game we love and play (too many things would be sacrificed in the name of balance and unit diversity).

[redzimmer]

It is always a crapshoot when you deal with such a development (the Dragons of Autumn Twilight movies comes to mind), I know.

But in an idea world, it would make a fun game if you want my opinion.

For example, here could be the Coalition States Single Player Campaign:

Chapter 1: Suppress Dissent (aka the Tuotorial)
- Clean out dissdents, intellectuals and DBs from the Chi-Town 'Burbs
- Secure CS territories
- Suppress the Juicer Uprising

Chapter 2: Securing North America
- Great Lakes: Bring Northern Gun, Ironheart and other independent states to heel
- Destroy the St. Louis Rift

Chapter 3: Tolkeen
- First Strike
- The Revenge
- Mopping Up

Which segues to proof of Cyberknights and Lazlo interference...

Chapter 4: Stabbed in the Back
- Free Quebec revolt
- New Lazlo
- Lazlo

Final Chapter: Atlantis
- Landing
- Securing
- Destroy the Splugorth

And to simplify the first game, just have three factions: CS, Lazlo & Atlantis

There are numerous possibilities with expansions as well. It is wishful thinking, I know. But I just wanted to gauge the interest among other Palladium gamers.

[Nightmaster]

Send a letter to Electronic Arts (the maker of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars).

The engine they used in the C&C3 would be perfect for a Rifts game. You have everything from APCs to aerial units and power armors.

Just send the letter (or a lot of letters) so that EA Games contact the Palladium staff about it. I doub Siembieda will refuse an offer like that if it comes from EA Games (after all the extra money would be really useful)

Just my two cents

[Khord - Lizard Mage]

Send a letter to Electronic Arts (the maker of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars).

The engine they used in the C&C3 would be perfect for a Rifts game. You have everything from APCs to aerial units and power armors.

Just send the letter (or a lot of letters) so that EA Games contact the Palladium staff about it. I doub Siembieda will refuse an offer like that if it comes from EA Games (after all the extra money would be really useful)

Just my two cents

That is a big +1. I would love to see this, especially if they went with a Dawn Of War style objective system not a resource system. Imagine a magic using faction having a ley line storm affect them or how a nexus would affect your magical rsources. My head is spinning from the possibilites. CS, Fed of Magic are two must have factions but I think Atlantis, Triax, Phoenix Empire and Xiticix should be represented.

[psam_rage]

CS Grunts would be an RTS' zerglings. Two for the price of one, and toss em' around in hordes, as there's always more where they came from.

Ok... and skelebots are like 10 for the price of 1?

If it was to be a RTS I would go with Blizzard (Starcraft) any company that can have an 11 year old RTS game continue to be a major professional competition hit would automatically draw attention to any RTS it produced, wouldn't guarentee the game would be a hit but it would draw quite a bit of attention to the RTS and the RPG and would deffinately help any Rifts movie.

No! While blizzard has the resources to sit on a game until it is actually finished, I don't think they would take commissions... at least not likely...

[Shark_Force]

on the upside, if blizzard decided to do it, it would be good once it got released.

on the downside, by the time they release it, we might have all died of old age...

[psam_rage]

on the upside, if blizzard decided to do it, it would be good once it got released.

on the downside, by the time they release it, we might have all died of old age...

You are right... it would be better than a repeat of Freelancer or Hellgate London... two great games that flopped due to being released before they were truly complete, and none of us would want to see anything regarding Palladium flop...

On a side note: N-Gage was a bad choice of console...

[Aaryq]

Dr. Shiny, you took the words out of my mouth. Rifts: Total War. You have the factions, and can build up your armies, then bring them to battle in a real-time battle scene. Turn-based strategy, real time tactics. I would definitely play it. Then again since it's Rifts, I would also play it if they made it RTS, MMORPG, or 1st Person Shooter.

[Zer0 Kay]

Send a letter to Electronic Arts (the maker of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars).

The engine they used in the C&C3 would be perfect for a Rifts game. You have everything from APCs to aerial units and power armors.

Just send the letter (or a lot of letters) so that EA Games contact the Palladium staff about it. I doub Siembieda will refuse an offer like that if it comes from EA Games (after all the extra money would be really useful)

Just my two cents

Bah C&C is small thinking especially with 3. Go with Supreme Commander (SC) or if you can get ahold of the guys that did Dark Reign (DR) that had excellent AI and combine that with the rediculously large maps and multi-screen capability from SC and maybe add in the multi stratus ability (Near Orbit and High Altitude, Land and Low Altitude, Subterranian, there was no water in the game so if that was added the Land stratus could cover surface water while the subterranian strata would deal with subaquatic) of Metal Fatigue (MF) and the linked battle zones of Conquest: Frontier Wars (C:FW) or Star Wars: Empire at War (SW:E@W). Heck while we're at it why don't we go all out? I've always wanted a game where it was RTS but at any time you could go down to FPS and control a single unit while everything else followed your previous orders or the AI setting you put them on, like Babylon 5: Into the Fire was supposed to do... kinda except it was supposed to start out a flight simulator and as you gained rank and had to command it turned into a RTS. Too bad that never saw the light of day.

[Supergyro]

To gain the unique feel of Rifts, you'd have to do some very unusual things.

For starters, maps would have ley lines on them, and magic units would get bonuses at ley lines and ley line nexuses. Now *that* would be cool!

[MaxxSterling]

Sorry guys, gotta be a FPS or no one will look at it. People are too lazy to play games these days. And look how well shadowrun panned out...

[Zer0 Kay]

To gain the unique feel of Rifts, you'd have to do some very unusual things.

For starters, maps would have ley lines on them, and magic units would get bonuses at ley lines and ley line nexuses. Now *that* would be cool!

don't forget some would have the ability to transport on them

[Zer0 Kay]

Sorry guys, gotta be a FPS or no one will look at it. People are too lazy to play games these days. And look how well shadowrun panned out...

Hmm... I think Supreme Commander did better than shadowrun. Shadowrun SUCKED it was such a let down even Section 8 was better.

[Supergyro]

Sorry guys, gotta be a FPS or no one will look at it. People are too lazy to play games these days. And look how well shadowrun panned out...

I don't know, every now and again a RTS manages to get some sales.... sometimes...

[Zer0 Kay]

Sorry guys, gotta be a FPS or no one will look at it. People are too lazy to play games these days. And look how well shadowrun panned out...

I don't know, every now and again a RTS manages to get some sales.... sometimes...

yeah cuz C&C's whole series bombed and Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander and Dawn of War and Star Wars Empire at War and War Craft and Star Craft... yeah I heard that definately won't sell I'd go so far as to say on the platform that we happen to be using, mostly, for the forums there are more successful RTS titles than there are FPSs. Maybe because FPS games translate to a console controller better than a RTS's controls or rather flexibility does.

[Zer0 Kay]

To gain the unique feel of Rifts, you'd have to do some very unusual things.

For starters, maps would have ley lines on them, and magic units would get bonuses at ley lines and ley line nexuses. Now *that* would be cool!

(for abbreviations see previous post) So they could do like C:FW or SW:E@W except instead of space travel to each planet or solar system it is linked rifts. OK so You have earth with this gigantic even bigger than SC comprising an entire world on that you have the three tiers like MF then you have the rifts which can send you to a different location in the same dimension, a different time, or a different dimension or a combination of the three. They could also use the same mechanic for space travel but instead of allowing travel with a rift it requires a ship same mechanism different target locations and different "key".

[runebeo]

I so love for some kind of Rifts video game. Combine aspects Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption, Bad Company 2, Mechwarrior and one of my all time favourite games Drakan: The Ancient Gates.

[Zer0 Kay]

I so love for some kind of Rifts video game. Combine aspects Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption, Bad Company 2, Mechwarrior and one of my all time favourite games Drakan: The Ancient Gates.

Drakan was cool. Can't forget the totally destructable environment of Red Faction! I prefer Heavy Gear to Mechwarrior and if it is a Mechwarrior it needs to be one of the earlier as they were more flexible.
So some grand game where you start out with an FPS and can gain prestige and attract followers and build a mercenary group or gain rank in an established military to the point where you are commanding ground troops via an RTS but are still allowed to "drop into" the FPS mode.

[runebeo]

I think a Techno Wizard would be a blast to play if your into crafting items and customizing vehicles. Balder's gates 2 Dark Alliance had a great crafting system and so did Elder Scrolls 2 but if this class stayed close to the core book your look at a near endless possibilities. Think how cool Tattoo Men and undead Slayer would be if they could still activate up to 6 tattoos at the same time.

[Zer0 Kay]

I think a Techno Wizard would be a blast to play if your into crafting items and customizing vehicles. Balder's gates 2 Dark Alliance had a great crafting system and so did Elder Scrolls 2 but if this class stayed close to the core book your look at a near endless possibilities. Think how cool Tattoo Men and undead Slayer would be if they could still activate up to 6 tattoos at the same time.

One of the best crafting systems I've ever played with was Arcanum but I also liked some of the concepts for Worlds of Ultima crafting or rather the part where you harvested from the world and didn't wait for a creature to drop it. Both still better than that of Baldur's gate.

Edit: wait why are we going into RPG elements?

[Rallan]

Shave off the "real time" and i'd be up for this. Something like the Total War series, so you can play around with the logistics of entire factions would be so much better. The Jagged Alliance / Tactics idea is good too.

Turn-based strategy doesn't sell. Just ask SirTech, they got oodles of critical praise for their Jagged Alliance games (including the late lamented Jagged Alliance 2, which came out after the market for turn-based strategy had died up and still got rave reviews), but that didn't save 'em. The fact that you like turn-based strategy is great (and I love it too), but don't go getting "what I like" and "what will sell" confused.

[Supergyro]

Shave off the "real time" and i'd be up for this. Something like the Total War series, so you can play around with the logistics of entire factions would be so much better. The Jagged Alliance / Tactics idea is good too.

Turn-based strategy doesn't sell. Just ask SirTech, they got oodles of critical praise for their Jagged Alliance games (including the late lamented Jagged Alliance 2, which came out after the market for turn-based strategy had died up and still got rave reviews), but that didn't save 'em. The fact that you like turn-based strategy is great (and I love it too), but don't go getting "what I like" and "what will sell" confused.

I love turn based strategy too, I really miss it.

[Zer0 Kay]

Sorry guys, gotta be a FPS or no one will look at it. People are too lazy to play games these days. And look how well shadowrun panned out...

I run from anything resembling a FPS, mainly because there are a thousand and most are crap.

Not to mention you have a ton of people say "It's SOOO realistic", you get it and then you get killed by this idiot you can't get a bead on because he's hopping all over the place. FREAKING BUNNY HOPPERS

[Rallan]

But anywise, the real question about a Rifts videogame is the one that we should be asking from a software developer's point of view:

If you want to make a licensed game you're going to have to spend a lot of time hashing out a deal with the owners of the property, and then pay them a large sum of money for the rights to the brand. If you slap the Rifts brand on a new game, will it generate enough extra sales to justify that time and money?

[Zer0 Kay]

But anywise, the real question about a Rifts videogame is the one that we should be asking from a software developer's point of view:

If you want to make a licensed game you're going to have to spend a lot of time hashing out a deal with the owners of the property, and then pay them a large sum of money for the rights to the brand. If you slap the Rifts brand on a new game, will it generate enough extra sales to justify that time and money?

Well according to the lawsuit with the MMO company there is enough purchases of the main Rifts book to produce $15M at $60.00 a piece... IF each book was purchased by a seperate person.

[Rallan]

But anywise, the real question about a Rifts videogame is the one that we should be asking from a software developer's point of view:

If you want to make a licensed game you're going to have to spend a lot of time hashing out a deal with the owners of the property, and then pay them a large sum of money for the rights to the brand. If you slap the Rifts brand on a new game, will it generate enough extra sales to justify that time and money?

Well according to the lawsuit with the MMO company there is enough purchases of the main Rifts book to produce $15M at $60.00 a piece... IF each book was purchased by a seperate person.

A quarter of a million sales spread out over a twenty year period. And half those sales were made in the first two or three years after the product was released, which suggests that the pool of people willing to pay money for Rifts products is probably a lot smaller now than it was in the good old days.

Doesn't really strike me as the sort of gigantic built-in market that's gonna have developers fighting each other for the chance to pay cold hard cash to make a Rifts game. And given how commonplace the idea of mixing fantasy with science fiction in videogame settings is these days, I can't see them beating down Kevin's door because they think the setting is unique enough to make a standout product either.

[Zer0 Kay]

But anywise, the real question about a Rifts videogame is the one that we should be asking from a software developer's point of view:

If you want to make a licensed game you're going to have to spend a lot of time hashing out a deal with the owners of the property, and then pay them a large sum of money for the rights to the brand. If you slap the Rifts brand on a new game, will it generate enough extra sales to justify that time and money?

Well according to the lawsuit with the MMO company there is enough purchases of the main Rifts book to produce $15M at $60.00 a piece... IF each book was purchased by a seperate person.

A quarter of a million sales spread out over a twenty year period. And half those sales were made in the first two or three years after the product was released, which suggests that the pool of people willing to pay money for Rifts products is probably a lot smaller now than it was in the good old days.

Doesn't really strike me as the sort of gigantic built-in market that's gonna have developers fighting each other for the chance to pay cold hard cash to make a Rifts game. And given how commonplace the idea of mixing fantasy with science fiction in videogame settings is these days, I can't see them beating down Kevin's door because they think the setting is unique enough to make a standout product either.

Yeah cuz all the game companies just snicker at a built in $15,000,000. That could never possibly cover any costs. Not to mention that those numbers don't account for every Rifts fan. Every Rifts fan won't have been a part of that record nor does it necessarily also cover those who purchased the RUE and if it doesn't no wonder it is only a quarter mil. in 20 years as the RMB wouldn't be purchased any more. It would be likely that anyone trying to discredit the validity of Rifts would only use the figures for the older book where the sales have most definitely tapered off. But back to the other fans. Not every player buys the RMB or RUE instead depending on the GM for the book. So if one out of four of those sales is a player and not a GM and the groups are composed of let's say 4 players each that's 850,000 "fans" and if each bought the game for 59.99 it would be $50,991,500. Many of the sites I checked for "Best Games..." used the 1M units as the benchmark so yeah I think 850,000 fans is a good start hell .25M fans is a "good" START, its more fans than Halo had and what innovations did Halo realy bring to FPSs? It combined a lot of the good stuff from other titles and made the not so good stuff (IMO i.e. Bunny Hoppers) beleivable even if it was still annoying. So why not follow in those time honored steps of not being innovative and just collect all the "best of" elements and put them in one game. Hell combine them from all the great genres too and make the first BS (Not the stuff that comes out of bovine, but Battle Sim) using TBStrategy (for commanders to plan the initial strike and layout general plans simulating the opponents reactions, single player interface with results or "orders" sent to multi-player) and then going into an RTTactics (because lets face it, it really is tactics and not strategy that is being used while your playing it), FPS and FPSneaker (either going down from RTT level or when your just starting maybe even allowing someone to be in RTT controlling other units and giving your all PC group instructions that you can "consider" but not doing so wouldn't give you XP), RPG (gain levels, upgrade character and equipment maybe even craft), MMOwhatever (all of the above... save the TBS, MMO enabled), with a persistent world where battle lines are drawn and advances, retreats, success and failures are kept track of and territorial boarders change permanently until other player actions change it, Multi-console single world none of this we need multiple servers because of all the people no... instead you log into your factions servers and if you have multiple characters an account is not limited to a single server but rather checked against a registry server. Your faction server then competes against other factions on the single world server wich just routes the minor data to the pertinent faction server. This way it really is MMO and it is perpetual the faction server would keep your player information and a back up the world server only keeps the world status and could care less about your player information.

But I'm dreaming this requires serious cloud computing services.

@ those FPS fans out there an RTS comes on the list of best selling games ever before "THE BEST SELLING FPS" (Halo 2) which ironically just ties with GoldenEye 007... for the Nintendo 64. That and the C&C 1st Decade is around 25 mil units sold to Halo's 8 mil. Hmm... granted one can always use the comment that figures lie and liars figure. But figures are all we got to judge with other than our own opinions.

[MaxxSterling]

Actually what would rock, would to be have Bethesda do it. The guys who did the new Fallout and Oblivion. -That would be a good set up in my opinion. RTS would also be fun.

[Zer0 Kay]

Yeah lets have Bethesda use the same engine too. I had thought that would be cool but so far they've never applied it to a multiplayer system. I don't think it worked as well as others for a FPS.

[Kalidor]

Shave off the "real time" and i'd be up for this. Something like the Total War series, so you can play around with the logistics of entire factions would be so much better. The Jagged Alliance / Tactics idea is good too.

Turn-based strategy doesn't sell. Just ask SirTech, they got oodles of critical praise for their Jagged Alliance games (including the late lamented Jagged Alliance 2, which came out after the market for turn-based strategy had died up and still got rave reviews), but that didn't save 'em. The fact that you like turn-based strategy is great (and I love it too), but don't go getting "what I like" and "what will sell" confused.

... SOMETHING!


Man I loved those games. The original Fallout games played very similar, but it became a real time RPG as well not counting VATS.


Also, I wouldn't be so quick to make comparisons to people willing to pay for an outdated, unbalanced and clunky rules system in a pencil and paper game and the people willing to shell out for a high quality video game. You can't even begin to compare the two.

I doubt there was a ton of people playing Champions when the MMO came out.

[Zer0 Kay]

Shave off the "real time" and i'd be up for this. Something like the Total War series, so you can play around with the logistics of entire factions would be so much better. The Jagged Alliance / Tactics idea is good too.

Turn-based strategy doesn't sell. Just ask SirTech, they got oodles of critical praise for their Jagged Alliance games (including the late lamented Jagged Alliance 2, which came out after the market for turn-based strategy had died up and still got rave reviews), but that didn't save 'em. The fact that you like turn-based strategy is great (and I love it too), but don't go getting "what I like" and "what will sell" confused.

... SOMETHING!


Man I loved those games. The original Fallout games played very similar, but it became a real time RPG as well not counting VATS.


Also, I wouldn't be so quick to make comparisons to people willing to pay for an outdated, unbalanced and clunky rules system in a pencil and paper game and the people willing to shell out for a high quality video game. You can't even begin to compare the two.

I doubt there was a ton of people playing Champions when the MMO came out.

Woah stop the horse. Your now confusing Turn based strategy with Turn based RPG. RPG is often still done in turn base as far as combat goes even if you aren't moving since many don't care about range.

[Kalidor]

I'm not really confusing it.. just pointing out that Fallout's combat was almost identical to Jagged Alliance.. and Fallout Tactics WAS a turn based strategy game.

I don't really consider Jagged Alliance, which was heavy on combat with a backstory and Fallout which was heavy on story and had good combat to be THAT far removed from each other.

Where as a game like Warcraft II or Command and Conquer or even Age of Empires are pure strategy game in which you have to win a 'scenario' on a map.

[Rallan]

But anywise, the real question about a Rifts videogame is the one that we should be asking from a software developer's point of view:

If you want to make a licensed game you're going to have to spend a lot of time hashing out a deal with the owners of the property, and then pay them a large sum of money for the rights to the brand. If you slap the Rifts brand on a new game, will it generate enough extra sales to justify that time and money?

Well according to the lawsuit with the MMO company there is enough purchases of the main Rifts book to produce $15M at $60.00 a piece... IF each book was purchased by a seperate person.

A quarter of a million sales spread out over a twenty year period. And half those sales were made in the first two or three years after the product was released, which suggests that the pool of people willing to pay money for Rifts products is probably a lot smaller now than it was in the good old days.

Doesn't really strike me as the sort of gigantic built-in market that's gonna have developers fighting each other for the chance to pay cold hard cash to make a Rifts game. And given how commonplace the idea of mixing fantasy with science fiction in videogame settings is these days, I can't see them beating down Kevin's door because they think the setting is unique enough to make a standout product either.

Yeah cuz all the game companies just snicker at a built in $15,000,000. That could never possibly cover any costs. Not to mention that those numbers don't account for every Rifts fan. Every Rifts fan won't have been a part of that record nor does it necessarily also cover those who purchased the RUE and if it doesn't no wonder it is only a quarter mil. in 20 years as the RMB wouldn't be purchased any more. It would be likely that anyone trying to discredit the validity of Rifts would only use the figures for the older book where the sales have most definitely tapered off. But back to the other fans. Not every player buys the RMB or RUE instead depending on the GM for the book. So if one out of four of those sales is a player and not a GM and the groups are composed of let's say 4 players each that's 850,000 "fans" and if each bought the game for 59.99 it would be $50,991,500. Many of the sites I checked for "Best Games..." used the 1M units as the benchmark so yeah I think 850,000 fans is a good start hell .25M fans is a "good" START, its more fans than Halo had and what innovations did Halo realy bring to FPSs? It combined a lot of the good stuff from other titles and made the not so good stuff (IMO i.e. Bunny Hoppers) beleivable even if it was still annoying. So why not follow in those time honored steps of not being innovative and just collect all the "best of" elements and put them in one game. Hell combine them from all the great genres too and make the first BS (Not the stuff that comes out of bovine, but Battle Sim) using TBStrategy (for commanders to plan the initial strike and layout general plans simulating the opponents reactions, single player interface with results or "orders" sent to multi-player) and then going into an RTTactics (because lets face it, it really is tactics and not strategy that is being used while your playing it), FPS and FPSneaker (either going down from RTT level or when your just starting maybe even allowing someone to be in RTT controlling other units and giving your all PC group instructions that you can "consider" but not doing so wouldn't give you XP), RPG (gain levels, upgrade character and equipment maybe even craft), MMOwhatever (all of the above... save the TBS, MMO enabled), with a persistent world where battle lines are drawn and advances, retreats, success and failures are kept track of and territorial boarders change permanently until other player actions change it, Multi-console single world none of this we need multiple servers because of all the people no... instead you log into your factions servers and if you have multiple characters an account is not limited to a single server but rather checked against a registry server. Your faction server then competes against other factions on the single world server wich just routes the minor data to the pertinent faction server. This way it really is MMO and it is perpetual the faction server would keep your player information and a back up the world server only keeps the world status and could care less about your player information.

But I'm dreaming this requires serious cloud computing services.

@ those FPS fans out there an RTS comes on the list of best selling games ever before "THE BEST SELLING FPS" (Halo 2) which ironically just ties with GoldenEye 007... for the Nintendo 64. That and the C&C 1st Decade is around 25 mil units sold to Halo's 8 mil. Hmm... granted one can always use the comment that figures lie and liars figure. But figures are all we got to judge with other than our own opinions.

Nice wall of text. How does that translate into sales for an MMO based on a pen and paper RPG that's sold 250,000 copies in twenty years, with less than 125,000 of those sales in the last fifteen?

In the last fifteen years that's an average of a bit under a thousand sales a month. And it's safe to assume that (with the exception of the Rifts Ultimate Edition spike), sales for a typical 1990s year would have been a lot higher than sales for the last decade.

If sales and the fanbase are as ridiculously awesome as you claim they are (and they're not, because anyone who can do basic math can deduce that we're looking at a few hundred sales of the current corebook a month), why aren't game developers beating down Kevin's door and begging for the chance to throw money at him so they can make a fancypants state of the art Rifts MMO? Come to think of it, why are hobby stores doing so little to support Palladium's product line? Surely if it's the awesome market force you think it is, anyone who's selling pen and paper RPGs would be a fool not to stock as many Palladium titles as possible.

[Rallan]

Shave off the "real time" and i'd be up for this. Something like the Total War series, so you can play around with the logistics of entire factions would be so much better. The Jagged Alliance / Tactics idea is good too.

Turn-based strategy doesn't sell. Just ask SirTech, they got oodles of critical praise for their Jagged Alliance games (including the late lamented Jagged Alliance 2, which came out after the market for turn-based strategy had died up and still got rave reviews), but that didn't save 'em. The fact that you like turn-based strategy is great (and I love it too), but don't go getting "what I like" and "what will sell" confused.

... SOMETHING!


Man I loved those games. The original Fallout games played very similar, but it became a real time RPG as well not counting VATS.


Also, I wouldn't be so quick to make comparisons to people willing to pay for an outdated, unbalanced and clunky rules system in a pencil and paper game and the people willing to shell out for a high quality video game. You can't even begin to compare the two.

I doubt there was a ton of people playing Champions when the MMO came out.

Woah stop the horse. Your now confusing Turn based strategy with Turn based RPG. RPG is often still done in turn base as far as combat goes even if you aren't moving since many don't care about range.

The irony though is that the game mechanics of a Rifts CRPG would have to be reinvented from the ground up without any attention being paid to the pen-and-paper Rifts RPG rules (and let's face it, making an RPG out of an RPG and not being able to use the original rules is pretty ironic). Even casual CRPG players who don't try to stay abreast of all the latest developments expect a balanced game with different tactical approaches for different character types.

[Zer0 Kay]

I'm not really confusing it.. just pointing out that Fallout's combat was almost identical to Jagged Alliance.. and Fallout Tactics WAS a turn based strategy game.

I don't really consider Jagged Alliance, which was heavy on combat with a backstory and Fallout which was heavy on story and had good combat to be THAT far removed from each other.

Where as a game like Warcraft II or Command and Conquer or even Age of Empires are pure strategy game in which you have to win a 'scenario' on a map.

Yes Fallout Tactics is but you were talking about 3 which is not. An RPG is partially defined by a heavy story line, often with interactive elements... otherwise Mass Effect is a just a shooter.

Absolutely with Warcraft, C&C and AoE. But those are what we're talking about in this thread so why bring up the others?

[Zer0 Kay]

[quote="Rallan] Nice wall of text. How does that translate into sales for an MMO based on a pen and paper RPG that's sold 250,000 copies in twenty years, with less than 125,000 of those sales in the last fifteen?[/quote]
Again I want to see the figures they used and if it is the RMB only or if it included the RUE. But again we aren't conversing about an MMO we are supposed to be talking about an RTS. So what is the problem with 250,000 in 20? Are we expecting the 1/4 million buys are supposed to repurchase the RMB? It's a foundation a large foundation one larger than that which started Warcraft or Command & Conquer. If you have a fan base that large without ever publishing a video game and the game that gets produced is actually high quality and maybe even inovative... sky... no the Megaverse is the Limit.

In the last fifteen years that's an average of a bit under a thousand sales a month. And it's safe to assume that (with the exception of the Rifts Ultimate Edition spike), sales for a typical 1990s year would have been a lot higher than sales for the last decade.

As I recall the numbers said copies as in a single book so there were a lot more source book sales that they didn't even cover... specifically to make it look worthless.

If sales and the fanbase are as ridiculously awesome as you claim they are (and they're not, because anyone who can do basic math can deduce that we're looking at a few hundred sales of the current corebook a month), why aren't game developers beating down Kevin's door and begging for the chance to throw money at him so they can make a fancypants state of the art Rifts MMO? Come to think of it, why are hobby stores doing so little to support Palladium's product line? Surely if it's the awesome market force you think it is, anyone who's selling pen and paper RPGs would be a fool not to stock as many Palladium titles as possible.

I'm not "claiming" anything, I produced some numbers for a scenario. What you don't think that an average gaming group is usually 4 players and a GM and that on average only the GM and maybe one player has purchased the book? Also where does it state in the single statistic give to us that the 250,000 was not JUST for the RMB? If it is just the RMB then it doesn't cover the newer fans which only purchased the RUE nor does it account for any other book.

[Rallan]

I think we can safely bet that sales for the first couple of years of the RUE were a lot lower than the 125,000 units the original RMB sold in its first few years, and that a lot of the people who bought RUE were existing fans anyway. We're not exactly looking at an earthshatteringly popular property with vast legions of fans here.

[Zer0 Kay]

I think we can safely bet that sales for the first couple of years of the RUE were a lot lower than the 125,000 units the original RMB sold in its first few years, and that a lot of the people who bought RUE were existing fans anyway. We're not exactly looking at an earthshatteringly popular property with vast legions of fans here.

And certainly not enough fans to financially stabalize a company that is going to fail due to embezzlement. It can be proven either way with numbers that we are not privy to. Even at 125,000 that is more people than were already on board for the first Halo, Warcraft or Starcraft. Still all of them buying is 7,498,750 or 6,373,750 after materials costs is removed (normally around $9 per unit) so then does 6.4M going to cover the costs of development? Would 6.4M be enough to at least tantalize a company to start development and after they produce some work release that to the media to entice others just like every other game producer does with new titles.

Are you anti-palladium or just a pessimist who will inadvertently say your just a realist? When a realist should be saying there aren't a ton of fans but there are more than there are for the development of many other games and the subject is somewhat interesting. It may or may not catch on.