- You could have a more conventional RTS where your base is managed for you, only you make requests for particular units or issue certain overall goals. This might seem bad at first, but if every player is subject to the same rules, then it actually comes out fair.
- As a variation on the above, you could have an RTS where there are two forcibly 'defined' roles. There's a field command (micro) and a supply command (macro). In single player matches, a player must choose one or the other, with the AI commanding the unchosen option. You could even expand the choices to include a third, fourth, or fifth slot (relief/recovery, split field commands, etc). In such a game you could have 1 on 1 as one league and an alternate league with multi-man teams where humans fill each slot. The key here is that the 1v1 is not viable without AI that's at least a little better than we have now.
The problem with these two ideas is that they are terrible. Now some of your other ideas were decent, but these two really create a problem where players will feel like they are powerless to fix any problems the AI creates, because they would be.
The former idea creates a situation where players do not have much room to differenciate themselves from other players. Sure, you can change your goals at key times to try and create a better outcome, but it feels like in practice the system would be prone to being too slow to implement any sort of change in production direction and would not allow a player to take drastic measures to quickly bring about a different result.
The latter idea sounds like it would be fun in more of a DotA style situation where you have human players staffing every role but seems like it would be incredibly stiffling or frustrating as soon as the majority of the roles were played by AI, especially the single player situation.
Well, what about Leoric the Skeleton King? He may be a character from a game that is almost a completely different genre than RTSs other than the currently used interface due to the fact that DotA was made as a WC3 custom map and HoN and LoL are just the first attempts at making a stand alone game in the genre and as such, borrow perhaps too heavily from DotA because DotA evolved over a long enough time that it started to get a lot of things right and they didn't want to put the time in to create something very new that may have sucked-- TANGENTAL RUN ON SENTENCE OF DOOM ABORTED
*couple breaths*
I think Diablo is a pretty cool guy. eh only has one active ability and doesnt afraid of anything.
Genre differences aside, I believe your point was not that King Leo is an example of an RTS allowing for less micro but that he was a playable character in a game that also has micro who requires less micro than say Holy Knight Chen and yet is a strong, viable character who isn't overpowered either.
Now let me just say, I always liked Leoric back when I was learning DotA but these days, I don't know if I'd actually want to play him anymore, especially if they made a port of him in HoN
1. For the uninformed, his ultimate is
reincarnation which will automatically cast if Leo is killed while he has enough mana to cast it and the spell isn't on its understandably long ass cool down. This allows for
some cool tactical thinking if placed in the hands of a pro, especially since a reincarnated Leo comes back with not only full health, but full mana allowing him to always come back able to cast his one active ability, a single target stun and light nuke. The main tactical advantage it provides is due to the conditioned concept of heroes that is in most players minds which during a key moment can cause them to misjudge the situation due to Leoric's nature.
Vis a vie:
"Phew, that guy almost got me! but I got back to a friendly tower/hero and we are both very low on health, so he'll just fuck off now. Aww shit he just ran in and killed me anyway cause I wasn't expecting such a suicidal attack. Now he reincarnated and walked away, what an ass. How dare he make a graveyard of me!"
Similarly, people can be tricked the other way as well, anticipating the reincarnate and so seeing Leo as an undesirable target when faced with multiple attackers. He can use this aura of futility to get in and inflict unexpected damage and then get out before danger looms over him, saving his ultimate for a better time.
The problem is his two other abilities are passive buffs to his fucking auto attack and this really seals his fate as a boring ass hero who really has few options at his disposal to effect a fight with. He's a dirty rotten
double liver and he can stun someone that he clicks on, woo. Oh, he steals life with he hits someone, something any hero can do with a lifesteal item, and he has a big crit chance, so you don't buy him a crit item either.
HoN now has heroes like Pandamonium who has abilities as such.
- a big cannonball jump that doesn't automatically hit the guy you target but that you actually have to land on people, however you can hit multiple people with it and you can even use it to jump over terrain like normally impassible ledges, etc.
- a flick move that does automatically hit the guy you target, but only slows them and lowers their armour so your other moves are easier to land and do more damage when they do. However, it takes up valuable time to do so other people could disable while you're doing it.
- flurry, a quick forward lunge move that hits everyone in an arc infront of you and pushes them while you fly into them, essentially disabling them as long as they are getting hit by it. The move has charges that build up to 4 over time and the ability does not go on cool down until you use all the charges allowing you to save up for big 4 hit flurries that knock people in a direction for a while or use 2 now and then 2 more in a few seconds to disrupt something. Lots of possibilities.
- a channelled ult that can be interrupted, but that locks down a single target and beats them up for a bit
Tim, a very experienced DotA veteran that I play with, always hated Leo back in the day for being a boring hero with few options to effect a fight with. I saw his point but I still loved playing the Skeleton King because of his powerful ult, generally cool look and cocky stride
2. But now that HoN has created far more interesting heroes that require more finess to play, I honestly couldn't see going back to him. I don't see Panda as being more "micro" based either. To me, mirco is having a bunch of units under your command and then having to baby sit each one because they have complex abilities eventhough most of the time I want to be controlling all of them as one unit. Chen was that hero in DotA and in HoN it's Ophelia because they make creep armies that you have to micro to be effective. Panda has complex abilities, but he's just one guy and you always have control of him. Is Mario a "micro heavy character"? Is the Doom Marine too micro intensive?
A DotA analogy just doesn't work for me because it's not an RTS. You control one guy so there's no such thing as micro.
1 If they do ever port Leo into HoN, his reimagining should be as a hero called
Kongor Jr. Who inherits his reincarnation abilities from his estranged father,
Kongor, HoN's version of DotA's
Roshan the Immortal. Hellfire blast could be replaced with a banana resembling boomerang throw or maybe he just throws a large banana peel at people and the slip on it.
2 Leoric's model was just the generic skeleton warrior who nercomancers raised in WC3. Blown up to the size of the mighty Skeleton King his animations that were exaggerated due to the intended small size of the model looked delightfully pimpish, almost boastful.