91 replies to this topic

[disneytowers]

Is it just me or does anyone else think that Atari have killed off the rollercoaster tycoon franchise.

What started out as a ground breaking simulation game with the original that was developed by Chris Sawyer has gradually become nothing more than an updated theme park world (minus that anoying park helper).

The problems with the franchise seemed to appear when Atari handed over the code for the game to Frontier to develop the expansion packs for RCT 2. Anyone remember how dissapointing these were?

unfortunatly as fans of the franchise we all bought them so Atari obviously thougt they were doing the right thing and decided to give frontier RCT3 to develop,( misguided fools ).

those of you who bought this game on release will remember playing a game that was full of bugs, it worked when it wanted to, it crashed when it felt like it, peeps came up with something new to do in parks " hell i've just spent £20 to get in here, what ride shall i go on first, no hang on a minute i've got a better idea - i will just stand here until i get bored with this park and then go home". quite simply this game was no where near ready for release at the time, and it showed.

quickly following the intial game came the 2 expansion packs, these went some way to imporoving the playability of the game, but the game still lacked the buzz and the excitement of the other two.

a quick look at the front page of the rollercoaster tycoon website just about sums up atari's support for this title as it proudly proclaims that the new expansion pack is soaked, how long is it since atari have updated this site? approx a year?

at this point in its life RCT 2 had an amazing fan culture built around the game, user created rides were appearing, all sorts of user created scenery items and 100's of user created parks some real, some fantasy.
In RCT3 we are no where near that user created rides? no chance , user created scenery? yes there are some stuff out there, but not to the extent that you could for RCT2 ( you could just about download anything you wanted for RCT2) and parks, yes there are some out there, but for some of them you need a top end machine that joe bloggs quite simply does not have or all you get a a park that when it finally loads only moves 1 frame every 30 seconds.

what atari need to do is get Chris Sawyer back involved properly with the project if RCT is to survive and remove frontier from the project. RCT never needed to go 3D, RCT 2 was a good game, it just needed the option to ride the rides, all other improvements made in RCT3 such as fire works, lighting, night and day etc would have worked well in a game style not to dis-similar to RCT 2

Phew....not posted on here for a while and then when i do its a biggie ( sorry guys). would love to know your opinions

[wabigbear]

A very thoughtful post disneytowers!



Some of it I agree with, some of it I don't.

I think that people who believe bringing Chris Sawyer back into run things will magically solve all the problems are misguided. He really hasn't had much to do with anything since RCT1, and his input in RCT2 is limited to mainly things that ported over from RCT1.

Chris's vision of game play and the look of the game I think was also much different than what many people wanted for rct2...let alone rct3. Take a look at Locomotion, a newer game of his that stylisticly is rct2's twin. If everyone would be happy playing scenario-style, without sand box play or custom objects, and with limited stylistic elements (again...look at Locomotion), then Chris Sawyer's vision of rct is okay. However it was the FAN BASE that wanted things like sandbox play, the ability to add custom content, and a more realistic style, not Chris Sawyer. Thus Atari and Frontier added what the fan base seemed to want.

The biggest gripes against Frontier for the two rct2 expansions were weak scenarios, re-themed rides instead of all new ones, and the horrible scenery. I do not for a moment blame all that on Frontier and none on Atari. Atari and Frontier are equal opprotunity offenders in all this. Frontier for putting out a weak product and Atari for rushing things out without caring what they looked like. And Chris Sawyer should shoulder some blame because his name was on the box.

You've also need to remember that Chris Sawyer and Frontier have a special relationship, Chris and David Braben are close friends as well as professional partners. I think any input Chris had in RCT2 or 3 is evident now in the games, removing Frontier from the picture probably will remove Chris Sawyer as well, he certainly doesn't have any loyalty to Atari (especially when his lawsuit against them is still underway). Even from what little I've seen of Frontier's upcoming Thrillville game for consoles I can see similar un-realistic scenery and the scenario play sounds like Sawyer's, so I think Sawyer has always had some influence on Frontier's style of games.

As for custom scenery...the floodgates are just opening. It seems to me to be following the same path as did rct2...a trickle after it's finally discovered how to add things, then a flood after people learn how. Creating items in 3D is a lot harder than for 2D like rct2. RCT3 custom rides I think will happen, but look at the variety they did give us in the game conpared to what little was there for rct2. But custom scenery for either game isn't something Sawyer supported, and I'd argue that most of the custom scenery made probably turned out better that what either Frontier OR Sawyer would have designed.

I do agree with you about the lag...that I blame on Frontier aiming the game at casual scenario players instead of the hard-core RCT players who want to build fully detailed large parks, and I blame Atari for rushing the product out the door when it wasn't ready just to make some money. But adding Chris Sawyer isn't going to change the lag, if anything he would ignore anyone who wanted to play sandbox or something more than small scenarios with limited content. And it would probably also end custom content as Chris in the past was very much against allowing it.

I'd also differ in opinions as to whether rct was meant to be in 3D. I loved rct2...but since I switched to playing rct3 I doubt that I'll ever go back. I haven't used my rct2 disc except to help judge a contest or two, and while I remember all the fun I had with rct2, despite all it's fault's, for me rct3 is so much better for the style of gameplay I enjoy. I love the 3D aspect and all it's possibilities and I'm very glad that they made that move...I just wish that both Atari and Frontier had done a better job of it...

All in all...my guess is that RCT3 is dead...unless Atari tries to come up with some lame rip-off like "Rollercoaster Tycoon Racing" to milk the name for a few more bucks. I also think Thrillville will port over to the PC and take RCT's place. However, it seems to be intended for casual scenario players and sounds like it will have limited options and little custom content, which means the lag can probably be kept in check. The hard-core RCT players will quickly tire of it but the average Joe Blow will buy it anyways. The planned Coaster Madness open-souce game will probably languish out there for years, so unless another company decided to try their hand at a theme park sim game I think we're stuck with what we got.

Sad ain't it?

Still, a good post disneytowers. I agree with a lot of what you say, but think Atari needs to share as much blame as Frontier on all this.

[GTO@2]

I agree with disneytowners in the sense that I think that if we brought Chris back into the game, it would turn the franchise around from the wreck its in now. When I had visions of what the next RCT (this was before RCT3) was going to be I thought that Disney was hopefully get involved and that Chris would still remain working with RCT. I think that Frontier and Atari made a horrible wrong turn with adding the 3D style because it took away all of the "cornyness" of the first two. I like it when the little stick people bent over and left a green spot on the ground, I liked it when I saw the little circles with strings float up so high that they popped, I liked the black emptyness of the regions beyond the park. I think that RCT3 is certainly not worthy of the name it has, I think it should have been another complete franchise with a different name. I think that Atari has gone from an RCT rated 10 to an RCT rated 3-5. They completely screwed up the franchise along with Frontier. So as far as we are concerned, even if we do get another RCT under the tree next year, it will be lame and screwed up like RCT3 is. Gentlemen, we may never see another RCT2 again, just a lame immitation that people crave over because of the gimmicks (I willfully admit I am one of them) such as the 3D modeling and such.

[RCTtom]

I agree with what you said in your post disneytowers, but the problem is that the RCT franchise has to change at some point. If the RCT sequels were always going to be the usual RCT2 type of graphics, then people would get sick and tired of it. How would like to always see the RCT sequels released with the same graphics?. You wouldn't really be able to call it a sequel.
I admit, ever since Atari got their hands on the RCT franchise the series has slowly been getting worse but you've got to at least appriciate that the RCT franchise is always changing, and it's not becoming repetitive with each new sequel. As technology gets better, so do the graphics, and the RCT franchise has to keep like that, and it might not be for the better reasons unfortuantly.

[GTO@2]

I agree that people would get sick and tired, but they could have done a much better job on the third.

[wabigbear]

I'd like someone to explain exactly how it is that they think Chris Sawyer would be the magical save-all for RCT3....what is it that you'd think he would do differently?

It is the COMMUNITY - not Chris Sawyer - that gave new life to RCT2 and helped it keep going strong. If it had been up to him I seriously doubt there would ever be custom scenery and he wasn't a big fan of the scenario editor either.

I borrowed a friend's copy of Locomotion and took it back after a short time...it was that bad, and that was a Chris Sawyer title that came out after RCT3...so how would he improve what they did with RCT3? Part of the reason I quit on Locomotion was that I have higher expectations for a game now than I did years ago, and it seemed a step backwards to me.

As for the move to 3D...not only did most of their market research show that was something that the RCT community wanted, but more importantly it was something that the far larger target audience wanted (the rct community actually is a very very small percentage of the people who play the game...). While I can see the attraction of the 'corneyness' found in the first two (something I also liked), Atari/Frontier can't be faulted for trying to give us what their own research showed was what people wanted. We can fault them for doing a crappy job of it though...

[GTO@2]

Good point, the crappy job they did is the only thing we can fault them on. I guess you are right about Chris...

[ride_exchanger]

I think that Frontier and Atari made a horrible wrong turn with adding the 3D style because it took away all of the "cornyness" of the first two.

The game is still quite "corny", I assure you. Have you seen those RCT3 peeps? Hi-larious, IMO

and the horrible scenery

haha, that reminds me of the "ultimate screw-up" of the RCT2 expacs, all those sets from WW & TT that had "walls" that take up a whole tile. Man that was a bad idea!

I love the 3D aspect and all it's possibilities and I'm very glad that they made that move...I just wish that both Atari and Frontier had done a better job of it...

I definitely agree with this too, wagi.

All in all...my guess is that RCT3 is dead...

I agree that it is dead from a "corporate stand point", meaning Atari and Frontier will have no more to do with it, but from a "community standpoint", the customization of RCT3 has just begun. I believe that years down the road, the number of RCT3 custom objects will rival that of RCT2. RCT2 came out in 2002, now in 2006 we have over 20,000 custom objects (right, Riven? ) RCT3 came out in Oct 2004, someone get back to me in Oct of 2008 and give me an update on the number of custom objects for RCT3

Also, in a few years, computers will be fast enough to make significantly sized RCT3 parks. Just think of how slow computers are from 2 or 3 years ago, when compared to todays fastest computers. RCT3 may have been too fast for our computers when it first came out, but it is inevitable that computers will catch up to, and overtake, RCT3, in speed. The game is not getting any faster, the computer technology continues to accelerate at an alarming rate...

RCT is an addiction, like a drug, and I know I will still be playing RCT3, and RCT2 for that matter, in 2008 and beyond, the question is, how many others will be playing as well?

[GTO@2]

[riven3d]

came out in 2002, now in 2006 we have over 20,000 custom objects (right, Riven? )

more than 30,000