Kered13

Someone hasn't patched his game

Obviously, the softcore surrounds the hardcore, with a flaky exterior surface surrounding everything

I tried to register and reply a week ago, but never recieved the activation email (it might have been blocked as spam), so finally I just re-registered with a different email, although if you can manually activate accounts I would prefer if I could use my originally intended account (name: Derek). I'm going to breakdown the article with my responses. The first half of the article is history, so there is no point in commenting on it. The rest of the article is pretty redundant, so there are really only a couple of counterpoints I need to make. Here you start to get angry, but I'll ignore the blatent insults. First of all, you assume that the so called "3rd Generation" players are new to CNC. Here you are dead wrong, the average "3rd Generation" player has been playing CNC as long as anyone else, in fact, probably longer. Personally, I started playing with RA1, but have played all the games to date (although not all the expansions). Admittedly I never got heavily involved in multiplayer until Generals when I got a broadband connection, but I know what the games were like, and have a fair idea of the multiplayer. Second, you state that they mass tanks and aircraft, while this may be true for RA2 where (from what I've picked up) the Tank Rush reigns supreme, it is so far from the truth in Zero Hour as to be utterly laughable. Indeed, it is not the least bit uncommon to play a game in ZH without seeing a single tank or aircraft, with the exception of China, the tanks are not the backbone of any army, being far to vulnerable to rocketmen, and aircraft, while effective, are expensive and weak to any AA. Zero Hour is a game where massing of any unit leads inevitably to defeat, units must be mixed and then controlled effectively to even begin to dream of victory, none-the-less acheive it. The strategic depth involved in this is quite frankly beyond your scope of comprehension unless you've actually had experience with it, which clearly you haven't. Third, you claim that the "3rd Generation" tries to finish the game as soon as possible. Another ridiculous statement. The fact of the matter is, with the exception of a small handful of true rushes, the rest of the early game attacks are not actually rushes, but merely raids intended to hamper the enemies economy and base development. If this raid leads to your defeat, then in all honesty, you suck, and it would be better for me to finish you off so we can both stop wasting our time fighting mismatched opponents. A game between two players who know what they're doing is not one of trying to destroy each other's base as fast as possible, but one of hindering your opponent while advancing your own base. To this end, important factors become the protection of resources, gaining map control, and teching up, all the while trying to prevent your opponent from doing the same. A good game between average players will last between 10 and 15 minutes, but in that time you will be employing infinitely more strategy and having much more fun than in any no rush game of any length. A game between even more evenly matched players will last longer, I've seen a game last around two hours or more (although I wasn't timing) between two pros, and a game that good will never come from holding back. Fourth, you say they save replays so that "Egos can raise through the roof" by posting them on website devoted to replays. This is a pretty thinly veiled referance to GameReplays.org. Perhaps you didn't realize then, that GR is devoted to showing people how to play well, and giving them entertaining replays, in fact, replays that explicitely show one person "owning" another are banned. While I'm sure that more than a few egos are stroke on that site, thats not the purpose of the site or the replays uploaded there. If you look you will find literally the best games of Generals and Zero Hour ever played, between the best of the best players. The addition of relays was perhaps the greatest addition to the CNC series from Generals, the ability to not only rewatch your favorite games, but also show them to others so they can learn how to play better themselves has revolutionized the CNC multiplayer community. You're right that multiplayer is supposed to extend the life of a game far beyond the singleplayer, but you're suggestions would never do it. You speak about how great CNC multiplayer used to be, but have you ever wondered why it was so small compared to Warcraft and Starcraft, despite the games having comparable popularily? Its because the multiplayer that you liked so much sucked. It sucked hard. Up until Generals, CNC was a singleplayer only RTS for the vast majority of buyers, whereas the Blizzard games couple great singleplayers with unbelievable multiplayers, there are three TV channels devoted to Starcraft in Korea, and I can promise you they don't show people playing the campaigns. CNC never had anything like that. Thats why EA decided to shake things up for Generals, they looked at Warcraft and found parts of it that seemed to improve the multiplayer and they mixed these with the CNC style of play to create an all new RTS, with the great multiplayer of a Blizzard game and the style of classic CNC. Of course, as we all know, in the process the singleplayer took a hit, but for those who are patient and take the time to learn the multiplayer, it is quite possibly the best CNC game to date, I know for sure that I've spent more time playing multiplayer ZH than I have playing all other CNC games combined. With CNC3 EA is trying to make great multiplayer in a CNC package again, but this time they're sticking a bit closer to the CNC formula, which could possibly end up defeating the multiplayer, but only time will tell that. And here you are wrong once again. A multiplayer community would be a shell without a hardcore base (hence the name, hardcore), and the only way to get a hardcore base is to have a deep, strategic, and diverse multiplayer experience, something which Zero Hour succeeded in finding, but no other CNC game before it, and your suggestions of slowing down the game and forcing players to play in your antiquated style would only put more bullets into the already crippled foot of CNC multiplayer. I'm part of Generation "Three", and I'll see the rest of you in CNC3.