The concept of designing scenarios for RTS games has been around for awhile. Many of us have designed scenarios for some of the first RTS games to have Scenario editors (Warcraft II, Age of Empires). It is not hard to see how designing a scenario has turned from and incredibly simple task into a far more difficult one. Take for example Warcraft II. The scenario editor in Warcraft II did not have anything even remotely resembling a trigger, there could only be one goal in the scenario and that was to remove all of the enemy opponents from the map. Creating maps were as simple as laying terrain and placing units and buildings, there was really nothing else that could be done. An entertaining scenario could be created in less then a half an hour for WarCraft II. Now let us move to Age of Empires. The Age of Empires editor added new things like eye candy and victory conditions. All of a sudden designing scenarios had become a lot more complicated. Creating a fun quality scenario could now take a few hours to a few days. Now let us flash forward to the present day with the Age of Mythology editor. Creating a decent scenario with the Age of Mythology scenario Editor can take months! Now I am not in anyway saying that the scenarios created with the Warcraft II editor are on the same par as scenarios from Age of Mythology, for the most part. I am just simply stating the fact that the process of designing scenarios continues to become a longer and longer process as RTS game continue to advance.
In the days of Age of Empires I created a, decent, campaign that was scenarios long 20 in the time of a month. Imagine trying to create a, good (in today’s standards) campaign for Age of Mythology that is 10 scenarios in length. You could be working on it for the rest of your life! Even if you were a member of scenario design team and had multiple people working on this 20-scenario campaign, it could still take months to complete.
The undeniable fact that I am trying to prove here is that creating quality projects in a scenario editor like the Age of Mythology scenario editor takes a great deal longer then creating scenarios for some of the older games I had mentioned. Now, I need you to understand that in no way am I saying that RTS designers should revert back to giving us scenario editors without triggers or any of the features we have become accustom to. I am simply stating that making a “quality” scenario for Age of Mythology is quite a commitment for someone to make and it was much easier for a person to sit down and create a scenario for one of those older RTS games.
Now I would like to touch upon something I mentioned several times in my previous point; the whole idea of “quality”, “good”, or “today’s standards”. If you look back at beginning of scenario editors to now it is not hard to see that what we deem to meet “today’s standards” has changed drastically. To completely illustrate this point I am going to use the reviewing system that has existed in HG since AOEH.
Take for example this scenario for AOE, The Two Brothers created by the famous Ingo Van Thiel. This scenario contains absolutely no triggers. It would be ludicrous for you to tell me that if Ingo recreated this scenario exactly (yes I know he cannot create an exact replica) for Age of Mythology he would still get a 5.0. This scenario, even though it is quite good, would probably get somewhere around a 3.0. Now I know that the reviewing system states that a scenario should be able to achieve a rating of 5.0 even if it does not have any triggers, but lets face it what scenario in AOMH has gotten a 5.0 without having any triggers. The standard for what is considered good seems to increase every time a new RTS game is created. AOKH had a higher standard then AOEH, EEH had a higher standard then AOKH and AOMH has a higher standard then EEH. It has become extremely difficult to create a scenario that can be placed in the best of section of AoMH and it will continue to become even more difficult as time passes. Don’t believe me, look at the example of AoKH. The standard of design continued to increase for that game as more and more scenarios were added to the download section. A problem soon occurred because of this, people were trying to review things that had previously received 5.0’s and they were giving them 3.0’s because the standard had changed so much. There was a rather large debate that resulted because of this, but I am not going to dive into that.
What is considered “good” is constantly being subjected to change and it is becoming more and more difficult to reach that Best of AoMH plateau.
I covered the point that designing scenario has become a much more strenuous activity and creating a scenario that is deemed good has been become an increasingly more difficult. I have yet to really hit upon an actual trend that seems to be destroying scenario designing. This trend is the RMS script. Unlike the other situations and ideas I have talked about, this one is something that has developed from Age of Mythology and is only really a problem for Age of Mythology. Since you can now place triggers inside RMS scripts the scenario editor isn’t really needed anymore. Faster more efficient scenarios can be created in notepad. If you look at the three most popular user made creations to play in multiplayer Age of Mythology they are all RMS scripts. The RMS script with triggers now almost completely dominates the ESO, and it will not be long before they completely dominate it. RMS scripts are fast to transfer, easily editable and seemingly easier to create then scenarios. The time is not far off when we will be seeing RMS campaigns. Sure that sounds ridiculous but I remember one of RMS gurus from AoKH saying that we would never create RMS blood scripts.
So has Age of Mythology destroyed scenario designing, Maybe. All I can say is that I am not seeing very many great scenarios, campaigns or multiplayer scenarios being released. There are a few, just not that many (not what people were expecting at least).
| EE: | | Europe Under Fire (rate me) | |Day of Defeat (rate me) | | Stalingrad (4.8) | | DMDT (4.8) |
| AoM: | | Europe Under Fire 2 (4.8) |
| Empires: | | Europe Under Fire 3 (4.8) | | The Siege of Vienna (4.6) | | Halfaya Pass (4.6) | | 1837 – 1947 (4.8) | | A City on the Hill (4.4) |