Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?

I never ever thought this would happen... dare I say, a DDR vs. RCT thread? :)

RCT. At least it has something to do with coasters ;)

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Den said:

Whereas RCT doesn't offer any challenge to me...Building coasters is fun but ... I dunno, it just is not something I can do for hours at a time.

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Heh. That's how I feel about stomping. ;)

I dunno, RCT would be WAYYYYY more fun for me if it was....challenging...;)

Perhaps *competitive* RCT where you had to turn more profit than your rivals? Or, better yet, bureaucratic RCT where you had to fill out mountainous piles of request forms before you could spend any money?

Perhaps this state job IS affecting me after all...;)

You know that's something that has been mentioned before. An online 'competitive mode" for RCT would be cool.

For me RCT isn't about the challenge, it's about the simple creativity. So little to work with in such a limited way, yet endless possibilities. It's just fun.

I thought the same thing. Anyone who ever played Dungeon Keeper against someone else knows what I'm talking about.

The idea of competition against something other than computer-set goals would definitely add to the challenge of RCT. A competition where you need the most guests AND the highest park rating would add quite a bit to the game.

But that doesn't change the fact that RCT really is a game about creativity. The fact that you can do so much with a fairly limited pallet of variables is what makes the game. Its what SimCity was in the '90s.

I have to agree. Some would argue that games like The Sims aren't even games because there isn't exactly a stated goal (kinda like life). That said, some things are fun to do regardless of whether or not you ever get to "win."

A competition mode with various goals to determine the winner would be prime. (like online RTS games)

Determine map size, rides allowed, all the variables then choose a goal.

You could do time based play (most peeps after 30 minutes) or goal based (first to reach 1500 peeps and still have a 900 or higher rating)

Mmmmm....Think of all the possibilities.

Right. Not all games need to have goals... why can't the goal be to have a good time? There is a part of me that enjoys RCT because it doesn't really force you to do a certain thing in a certain amount of time- you just play and do things at your own pace. What fun is it to design a great coaster, properly landscape the area around it and make the final adjustments necessary within a time limit? That is too much stress. The open-ended nature of games such as the Sims, SimCity and RCT is what separates them from the usual batch of XBox and PS2 games that people seem to flock to.

That said, some kind of competitive mode with "loose" goals would be fun. I can't see myself liking a race to get peeps into the park in 30 minutes (there are too many ways that one can "cheat" when it comes to that) but it would be nice to set variables and see who can maintain the most guests and best park rating over an extended period of time (10 years or something like that). For me, the challenge in RCT is not short-term success but rather long-term success. A great year-old park is a lot easier to create than a ten year-old park is to maintain.

Ahhh, but see that would be the beauty of why it would work.

Just offer up a game of "highest park rating at the end of year 10" and wait for others to join.

You could please all the little crack monkeys playing blitz style games and still cover the whole spectrum to the other end where someone like you sits.

Seriously, there are already tons of goals to set in RCT. Add a simple pulldown box for each of those (peeps, park rating, park value, time limit, number of rides, number of coasters, coasters with a certain rating, etc.) with variables to 'fill in the blank' like creating a scenario in RCT2's scenario editor along with drop down boxes for game rules (map size, rides available, no landscaping, tree removal forbidden, peep happiness, time limits, etc.) again like the scenario editor and you have an almost infinite number of way to 'compete' online.

It would cover all types of players in the same way the game itself does. Add a real time chat and even make an exchange part of the online community and you have a one stop spot to meet with RCT players worldwide.

I agree... the way RCT was set up from the very beginning, I find it hard to understand why 1) It was not incorporated into one of the "upgrades" that were sold and 2) A special online version was not sold and a website created for it. Seems to be that a lot of people/companies missed out on a lot of sales opportunities thanks to those oversights.

There could be different levels of difficulty- the easiest ones being some kind of standard goal (number of peeps by a certain year) and the hardest being ones that impose unrealistic rules. I like your idea about "tree removal forbidden" because that would surely make for a challenging player vs. player scenario. And with the variables that have been with the game since the very beginning, they could be combined (tree removal forbidden and steel coasters only, for example) so that the challenges are virtually endless.

RCT seems to fizzle in popularity in the months following a new release... I think that a player vs. player online component would change all that.

*** Edited 9/13/2004 8:36:19 PM UTC by Rob Ascough***

How about collaboration mode, where more than one person can work on the same park together? Imagine how cool that would be: one person builds a new ride, another cleans up the puke, another works on the path or theming. It would also take good communication to budget your money wisely.

Ahh! That'd be cool too.

Then you could set up teams vs teams.

The collaborative element sure would be interesting... "Billy, you design and build the rides, Kim you do the scenery and themeing, Dennis you... clean up the puke."

Who decides who gets to clean up puke?

Actually I can see this idea being pretty interesting.... perhaps there could be some way of scoring the "head" of each department separately as well as rating the park's overall performance. Maybe a good ride designer gets a good score even if the poor performance of the head of puke-cleaning brings the overall score of the park down?

Wow, those are some really great ideas! You could set everyone up as a manager over this or that, be it budget, park operations, entertainment, maintenance, construction, etc. and go head to head!

I've wondered why they haven't done this in quite a while.

One thing I always thought would be cool is to have a general park online and have people compete to have their coaster designs put in the park. You could set what Kind of coaster and what you want out of it, then have a design contest. Whoever gets the most votes gets the coaster put in the park, and then you move on to the next coaster. Once there were a decent amt of caosters and rides in the park, everyone could download the finished version or something.